Page 46 of Postscript

She sticks out her tongue and hands me back the box. ‘Fine, I’ll ask Mathew. Good luck with Gabriel, and tell him I’m …’ she pauses as I throw her a warning look. She thinks Gabriel is angry with her for making me take part in the podcast, and therefore angry with her for my involvement with the club. I keep telling her to stop apologising, he’s not angry with her, just me, but I don’t think that’s true. He seems to be irritable with everyone these days.

‘Tell him you’re what?’ I ask.

‘Nothing,’ she finishes her sentence.

‘Easy. I tell him you’re nothing all the time,’ I grin, wiping her fingerprints off the mirror.

At one of our regular spots, Cucino, an Italian bistro near his house, I find Gabriel seated outside. It’s a cool evening but the gas heaters give it a greenhouse effect and make it feel as though we’re in the midst of a balmy Italian summer.

He kisses me and helps me into my chair, laying the crutches on the ground beside us. I scan the menu and choose instantly. I always get the same thing. Gnocchi in burned butter and sage sauce. I wait while Gabriel chooses his dish. He’s leaning over the menu, forehead furrowed in deep thought and concentration but his eyes aren’t moving over the words. I watch him pretending to study the menu. He lifts his glass and takes an enormous slug of wine, then eyes back to the menu, back to the same place. I study the bottle on the table. Two glasses gone already.

‘What do you call a zoo with one dog?’ I ask, finally breaking the silence.

‘Hmm?’ He looks up.

‘What do you call a zoo with one dog?’

He looks at me blankly.

‘A shih-tzu,’ I say, smiling.

He has no idea what I’m talking about.

‘A shih-tzu. Shit. Zoo.’

‘Holly, I don’t … what are you talking about?’

‘It’s a joke!’

‘Oh. OK.’ He smiles a little, a vague one, and returns his attention to the menu.

The arrival of the waitress to take our order is the only break in the silence. We order, hand the menus back to the waitress and then he twists his hands and fingers together, fidgeting. And then it occurs to me. He’s nervous. I pour his wine to give him a moment to collect himself, but he seems to get worse as he waits, making trumpet-like sounds as he fills his upper lip with air, then stopping to drum the counter un-rhythmically with his forefingers, before resuming his odd in-out lip movements.

The waitress brings bruschetta and chopped tomatoes to the table while we wait for our main course. Seemingly relieved to have a new distraction, he turns his attention to the food, busies himself with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, giving it more attention than he ever has before. He starts playing with his food, separating the chopped tomatoes from the tiny pieces of basil, a wall built from crumbs in between, a precarious structure that rises and stumbles. He studies the increasingly interesting bruschetta. Basil to the left, tomatoes to the right. Crumbs down the centre.

I lean in. ‘What’s going on, Gabriel?’

He pushes his finger down on the crumbs on his plate, gathering them on his finger, then dusts them off, sprinkling them back to where they were.

‘Are you going to act like this the entire time I help the PS, I Love You Club? You don’t even know what I’m doing with them. Do you want to ask some questions? You don’t even know their names.’

‘It’s not that,’ he says firmly, abandoning the bruschetta and pushing his plate away. ‘It’s Ava.’ He leans in, elbows on the table, hands and fingers pressed together as if in prayer, and rests them over his lips. ‘She wants to move in with me.’

‘Move in?’

He nods.

‘With you?’

Nods again.

‘Into the house?’

‘Yes.’ He looks confused. Of course, where else would she live?

My head races. I’m supposed to move into the house.

‘She asked me a few weeks ago,’ he says, avoiding my eye, and I realise the reason for his distance. It had nothing to do with the accident, silly Holly, nothing to do with the club, he just let you think it was. So that’s what all those meetings with Kate and Ava were about.