Jenny Sparrow Knows the Future Read online

  I shrugged. ‘The reviews said it was edgy.’

  ‘Come on,’ he said, taking my hand, ‘let’s give it a go. If it’s awful, we could always leave and get a pizza from one of these places.’

  We walked through the door and blinked into the gloam like a pair of moles. ‘Can you see anything?’ he asked.

  ‘Ow!’ I replied, as my foot caught on a hidden step. A maître d’ appeared in front of us, and we both jumped.

  ‘Your name?’ he purred.

  ‘There should be a booking for two under Christopher Walsh.’

  ‘Lovely. Follow me.’

  ‘I wish I had thought to bring a torch,’ Christopher whispered as we weaved our way through the tightly packed tables. The space, now that we were inside, was less a restaurant and more a cave, with candles guttering along the walls and ceilings so low they forced you to stoop.

  We arrived at our table, and the maître d’ handed us menus and disappeared with a swoop. ‘The guy must be half bat,’ I whispered.

  Christopher pulled his phone out of his pocket and shone its light at the menu. ‘I hope you’re in the mood for foam,’ he said, scanning the choices. ‘If not, there are some lovely emulsions.’

  I wrinkled my nose. ‘What’s an emulsion?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, but they seem very keen on it here.’

  Our eyes met across the table. ‘You know, I wouldn’t mind a large pepperoni,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘Particularly if there’s garlic bread involved.’

  We got up from the table and scampered out of the restaurant, the maître d’ calling a half-hearted ‘excuse me’ as we darted out the door and back into the night’s air.

  ‘Christ,’ Christopher said, ‘what a load of horseshit! Sorry, love. I should have done my research a bit more carefully before booking it.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said. ‘It was sweet of you to go to all that trouble. I just want to know what the hell those reviewers were talking about.’

  ‘Maybe they wouldn’t let them out of there unless they gave them four stars.’

  ‘Dungeon prisoners,’ I said. ‘Old school.’

  ‘Well, it’s put a spanner in my birthday plans for you, but I’m sure I can recover. Come on, let’s find you a pizza.’

  We wandered along the street, glancing in windows and reading menus. I tried to picture myself getting engaged inside each of the venues, but either the lighting was wrong, or the tablecloths too plastic, or the places were too empty or too full.

  ‘Come on, birthday girl. I’m starving.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, ‘I just know what I’m looking for.’

  At last, we found it. Candles stuck in empty wine bottles, starched white tablecloths, almost full but not too loud. There was a man at a piano playing Sinatra classics. ‘They even have dough balls!’ I crowed as my eyes scanned the menu.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have a winner.’ Christopher waved to the maître d’. ‘Could we have a table for two, please?’

  ‘Right this way, signor.’

  We sat at the perfect table and ate the perfect meal, a thin-crusted pepperoni pizza, with a green salad and a big basket of garlic dough balls. A bottle of Chianti was uncorked and poured into two glasses, and when the waiters overheard us toasting my birthday, they insisted on bringing us two glasses of Prosecco. Christopher disappeared after the plates were cleared away, and when he came back to the table, he was carrying a tiramisu with a lit candle stuck in the middle. ‘Surprise!’ he sang, and then suddenly the table was surrounded by white-shirted waiters singing ‘Happy Birthday’. The rest of the restaurant joined in, and, even though my face was bright red – I could feel it, hot as the sun – my cheeks ached from smiling at the end of it.

  ‘Happy birthday, lovely,’ Christopher said, as he leaned across the table and kissed me.

  This is it, I thought. This is the moment. The perfect moment. He was about to do it. I braced myself to look surprised and delighted.

  ‘Shall we get the bill?’

  We sipped limoncello as we waited for the waiter to bring the card reader over.

  ‘So!’ I said brightly. ‘What’s next?’

  He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s nearly eleven on a school night,’ he said. ‘I was thinking a taxi home. Unless you wanted to go clubbing in Vauxhall or something? I hear it’s bondage night at Torture Garden.’

  I laughed as my heart sank. ‘No, that’s okay. A taxi home sounds good.’

  He looked at me for a minute. ‘How about a walk first? We could head across the bridge, pick up a taxi on the Strand?’

  I lit up. ‘Perfect!’

  We gathered our coats and headed out into the night. Of course he wouldn’t ask me in a crowded restaurant, I thought to myself. He’s not a showy kind of person. He probably wants to do it somewhere private, where it’s just the two of us.

  ‘Shall we cross at Waterloo or Blackfriars?’ he asked. ‘There’ll probably be more taxis at the Waterloo end of the Strand, but Blackfriars is slightly closer to home.’

  I weighed the romantic possibilities of both in my head. ‘What about Jubilee?’ It’s pedestrianized, I reason, so he won’t risk being run over when he goes down on one knee, and the name sounds suitably celebratory.

  He pulled a face. ‘That’s miles out of the way.’

  ‘It’s not! Plus, there’s a taxi rank underneath the railway arch at Charing Cross.’ I hadn’t envisioned quite so much logistical wrangling in the lead-up to the proposal, but in retrospect I should have known better: he is a lawyer, after all.

  He linked his arm through mine and tugged me towards the river. ‘Jubilee it is.’

  Christopher launched into a story about a fraud case he was working on. Usually I loved hearing about that sort of thing – I liked predicting the verdict before it went to trial – but I was too nervous to concentrate. Every step we took towards the bridge made my throat constrict a little tighter. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, shooting me a worried glance. ‘You’ve gone awfully quiet.’

  ‘Fine!’ I squeaked. I was impressed by his cool – he didn’t look nervous in the least.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘if we don’t hurry, we’ll get caught up in pub kick-out time, and then we’ll never get a cab.’

  We climbed the steps and made our way across the bridge. People streamed past us – commuters rushing home after late work drinks, young couples out on third dates grinning moonily at each other, a group of American college students loudly debating about the location of Bar Opal – but I refused to move at their pace. By the time we were three quarters of the way across – having stopped twice to insist on admiring the view – I was practically moving backwards.

  The stairs down to the arches were approaching. I could feel Christopher’s rising irritation with me. Maybe he would wait until we got back to the flat, I reasoned. Maybe that’s why he was in such a rush to get back. After all, it was the place we spent most of our time together. There would be something romantic about him proposing there, in front of the sofa where we watched television most evenings, or in the kitchen where we chopped vegetables and sautéed fish side by side. It wasn’t exactly what I’d imagined, but maybe if he’d put a bottle of champagne in the fridge …

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ he said, and I turned to find him down on one knee, hands fiddling with something. Time turned to treacle. The world was suddenly in slow-motion, vivid and beautiful and clear. And then my mouth opened and I heard words fly out, unbidden. ‘Ohmygod, YES!’

  He looked up at me quizzically. ‘Yes what?’

  ‘Yes I’ll—’ I looked down and saw that, instead of a ring in his hands, he was holding the two ends of his shoelaces, mid-knot. Panic gripped me. ‘You mean you weren’t—’

  His eyes widened. ‘You mean you thought—’

  ‘Nothing!’ A peal of hysterical laughter bubbled up from inside me. ‘I didn’t think anything!’

  He sprang to his feet and reached for me. ‘
You did! Oh, Christ. Oh, Jenny.’

  ‘It’s just – it’s my birthday and all, and you said there would be a surprise …’

  ‘Beyoncé,’ he said quietly. ‘Beyoncé was the surprise.’

  ‘Beyoncé?’

  He nodded. ‘I got you a pair of tickets for her show in July.’

  ‘Oh! Wow! Great!’ The words sounded flat even to my ears. ‘I mean, that’s a great surprise!’

  We stared at each other helplessly.

  ‘I know you want to get married, Jenny,’ he said quietly, ‘but you’ve got to stop putting so much pressure on me.’

  ‘I’m not putting any pressure on you!’ The pitch of my voice was so high now that probably only dogs could hear it.

  ‘You are! You don’t know it, but you are. Every time we go on holiday, or out to a nice restaurant, or it’s your birthday or my birthday or Christmas or – hell – even a bloody bank holiday, I can feel you waiting for me to ask you.’

  ‘I just – I thought you wanted to be with me.’

  He took my hands in his and smiled at me sadly. ‘I do. I am! I just don’t feel ready for the whole caboodle.’

  ‘The whole caboodle?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  I folded my arms across my chest. ‘I really don’t.’

  ‘Marriage! Babies! Matching crockery sets! Retirement funds! Moving to the country! Commuting by train! Discussing nurseries at dinner parties with people we don’t even like but are forced to socialize with because we live in the country and can’t be arsed to commute into London for a night out!’

  ‘You’re being crazy.’

  His eyes shone in the moonlight. ‘Am I?’

  I nodded weakly. ‘I hate matching crockery sets.’

  He threw his hands up. ‘You see! But you’re not actually opposed to the rest of it, are you?’

  I shrugged. ‘I mean, you’re not exactly painting it in rosy tones, but no, I’m not opposed to it in theory. Maybe not exactly how you just described it, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a little security.’

  ‘Jenny, our lives are mired in routine. Every day we go to work, and every night we come home and eat one of the four dinners we have on rotation, and we have the same Kung Pao chicken from the same Chinese takeaway place every Friday, followed by the same Sunday lunch at the Queen’s Head. If we were any more secure, we’d be encased in cement!’

  ‘I thought you liked our life!’ I said, my eyes filling with tears.

  He sighed. ‘I do! I do.’ So he was capable of saying those words. ‘I love our life, and I don’t want it to change. Don’t you see? If we get engaged, things might change.’

  ‘They might not.’

  ‘But they might. And I’m not ready to risk that.’

  I took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘Do you know if you’ll ever be ready for the whole kit and caboodle?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

  I let that sink in. He might never be ready to marry me. I was meant to get married to my soulmate this year – it had been etched in stone on the list and on my mind for eighteen years – but my soulmate was telling me it might never happen. ‘I’d like to go home now,’ I said. Though the thought darted across my mind, quick as a silverfish, that it might not feel like home anymore.

  We were silent for the cab ride home, the driver stealing curious glances at us in the mirror until I eventually just closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. We pulled up to the curb outside our flat, and I waited on the sidewalk as Christopher paid. He led me up the steps and into the house, his hand gently supporting my elbow, as if I were an invalid. Our footsteps echoed on the wooden floorboards as we walked into the hallway.

  ‘You want a drink or anything?’ he asked, heading towards the kitchen. I followed him. There was a frosted chocolate cake slumped on the counter next to the oven, a white envelope with my name scrawled across it propped up next to it. ‘It came out a bit wonky,’ he said, nodding sheepishly towards the cake.

  ‘You baked it yourself?’

  He nodded. ‘Sneaked off work a couple of hours early. I think there might be something wrong with the oven though, as both of the sponges only rose on one side. I tried to even them out when I stacked them together but it’s still a little crooked.’

  I burst into tears.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, coming towards me and pulling me into his arms. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I shook my head as I wept into his chest. I could feel the material of his shirt dampen with my tears. ‘It’s not your fault,’ I wailed. ‘You’re perfect!’

  He stroked my hair and led me to bed, where I lay down and cried myself into unconsciousness while he rubbed my back with the flat of his hand.

  2

  I woke up the next morning feeling as if I’d gone nine rounds in the ring and lost, badly. My throat ached from crying, and my eyes had swollen to slits. Christopher was already showered and dressed when my eyes fluttered open, and he leaned down and kissed the top of my head. ‘Maybe you should call in sick today,’ he said, taking in my puffy face and the black circles underneath my eyes.

  I shook my head. ‘I’ve got a meeting at half ten.’

  ‘Better get up then. It’s nearly eight, sleepyhead. I’ll see you tonight, okay? Maybe we could go for a little post-birthday drink?’

  I attempted a smile. ‘That would be nice.’

  He paused in the doorway and opened his mouth as if about to say something, but instead he just shook his head and blew me a kiss. ‘Have a good day, love.’

  I heard the door shut behind him, and pulled myself out of bed with a groan.

  I showered and shaved my legs and washed my hair, and then applied various creams and unguents to my face before daring to look in the mirror. Here’s a truth that should be universally acknowledged: eye creams that promise to ‘de-puff’ and skin creams that promise to ‘brighten’ summarily fail to de-puff or brighten anything following a two-hour cry-fest. It’s just a physical impossibility. I would look like hell for the rest of the day, and there was nothing on this earth that could stop it. Not even in Space NK.

  I pulled on my coat, slung the little leather J.Crew bag I’d splurged on last month, and the supplementary canvas tote bag that actually held most of my belongings over my shoulder, and headed for the Tube. Christopher had bought the flat in Dartmouth Park just after the 2008 crash, thanks to a combination of squirreled-away savings and what his parents had described as ‘early inheritance’. It was a ground-floor two-bed, with high ceilings, crown moulding, and a little rectangle of green out the back. Every once in a while, after too much red wine, we’d look up the value of the flat and fantasize about selling up and moving to Lisbon or Barcelona, but we both knew it wasn’t going to happen. Christopher loved the flat and loved London, and I loved him. I’d known the choice I was making when I boarded the plane with my work transfer papers three years ago. My mother’s face flashed in front of me, and I pushed it out of my mind. I couldn’t think about that. Not now.

  It was a crisp spring morning, blue-skied and gentle-breezed, too beautiful for my current state of mind. I wanted low gray clouds and persistent drizzle, maybe even a hailstorm. But, as usual, the English weather refused to cooperate.

  I joined the huddled masses at Tufnell Park Tube and let three packed trains pass before hurling myself onto the fourth. Despite the fact we were pressed together, nose to shoulder, like a pack of breadsticks, the compartment was silent apart from the occasional sneeze and muttered chorus of bless-yous. I pulled out a paperback and tried to lift it past my waist, but a man in a tan overcoat kept pressing his back against my arm, pinning it to my side, and I eventually gave up and just closed my eyes.

  I replayed the previous night’s conversation as the train rocked between stations. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. He hadn’t said never, right? Then again, he hadn’t said some day.

  I knew he loved me. I knew that that should be enough. It was 2017, for God’s sa
ke. Marriage was a dying tradition! The divorce rates were sky high! The wedding industry was a sham! I should embrace the fact that he was essentially freeing me from the shackles of a patriarchal institution. Why couldn’t I just be happy that we were together? Why did I need a piece of paper to prove it?

  I shook my head, jostling the arm of the woman holding onto the pole next to me. I don’t know why I needed it, but I did. I didn’t care about a big white wedding – I’d never been one to stage Barbie and Ken nuptials as a child, preferring instead to enact elaborate kidnapping plots – but I did care about the piece of paper. I thought Christopher had known that. I thought he’d been on the same page.

  My throat ached and I felt the tears start to build behind my eyes. Maybe he just doesn’t love me enough. Maybe I bore him. I thought of the distracted way he half-listened to my stories sometimes, the long pauses in conversation over pints at the pub, the way his gaze would sometimes drift to a point slightly to the left of my head. I blinked rapidly to try to fight it off, but it was too late. A tear fell from my eye and sploshed on the arm of the man in the tan overcoat. A darkened circle appeared on the material. After that, it was like a tap had been turned on. I tried to reach up and brush them away but I couldn’t extract my arms from the crush of the crowd.

  ‘The next station is … Camden Town.’

  A few people got off, but even more pushed on. The man in the tan overcoat’s arm was now dotted with wet splashes. I willed him not to look down. Maybe I should get off, I reasoned. Maybe I should go and sit on one of those iron benches on the platform and put my head in my hands until I got myself together. But then someone might ask me if I was okay, and there was no way I would be able to respond without losing my shit completely.

  The stations whizzed by. The man in the tan overcoat got out at Euston, and I breathed a sigh of relief. The compartment had emptied slightly, enough for me to wipe the mascara from under my eyes and apply a futile swipe of lip balm. People were staring at me, I could feel it.

  I changed to the Victoria Line at Kings Cross and let it whisk me to Green Park. I could have stayed on until Victoria – our offices are in a cold gray building a few blocks from the station – but most days I preferred to walk through the park.