Chapter 1 One at a table for two

Valentines Day, 14 February, fell on a Monday this year and the cosy family restaurant was already mostly filled up with diners as I was shown to my seat about three minutes before my booking time of 7 o'clock in the evening. I gave the waiter my drinks order, thanked him and added quietly that I could seat myself, thanks. He nodded silently and left me two menus. I sat with my back to the wall and put the heavy plain Italian brown bottle bag, I had been carrying by its white twisted thread handles, placed at the empty place setting opposite me on the tiny table, which was set intimately for two, and leaned against it a large C4-size white card envelope. I had arrived first and alone.

I glanced around the room, suddenly feeling a little claustrophobic after almost exactly two years of lockdown, relieved only by brief spells of relaxed regulations about meeting people in public places until they were lifted completely recently. It was exactly two years to the day that I last sat at this, once our favourite regular table. By regular I meant about once a month on average, a date night always booked well in advance to secure this particularly favoured spot.

The restaurant appeared to be packed tonight with tiny two-person tables, appropriate to the occasion, but it felt … slightly uncomfortably crowded rather than intimate and I guessed that I had become conditioned to isolation both by the restrictions and having worked from home alone for so long.

The waiter returned with a bottle which he uncorked and poured a sample into a glass for me to taste. I nodded my approval and asked him to pour only a half of one glass before he left me alone once more.

Out of what must be twenty-five to thirty or so small two-person tables in this part of the restaurant, only three or four tables were empty, one of them right next to mine, to my left. At a glance, without examining too closely, I thought my table was the only one that had a single person sitting at it. I had of course booked for two and, before I even thought that Lydia was running late as usual lately, I heard the quiet beep from my mobile phone, indicating a message received.

I pulled it from my suit jacket pocket and pressed the button to light it up. The time immediately flashed up: "19:01". I always use the 24 hour setting on my phone and digital clocks. I've been a freelance feature writer now for almost eight years but as boy and man for fourteen years I was a Fleet Street daily newspaperman, starting as copy holder, and responsible for small ads and being general gopher, then junior reporter, senior reporter and sub-editor, mostly on the late afternoon and evening 'lobster' shift and, while words and facts are of course important, in daily newspapers the deadlines are absolutely paramount.

As I stroked and tapped the screen to get to my messages, in my peripheral vision I couldn't help but notice the empty table next to me on the left being occupied, the lady of the no-doubt happy couple brushing past me in a three-quarter coat and long dark blue dress to get to her seat by the wall.

That made me smile, for only the second time today. Well, not smiling warmly, I was long past doing that, but it was a chilly February night in our neck of the woods and my wife's seat of choice (if she had arrived on time) would've been the wall seat where I now sat, plumb in front of the warm radiator.

No, I didn't smile for Lydia, I hadn't even see her this morning as she left for work early for a strategy meeting apparently. I only smiled for my kids as I dropped them off to school, kissed them and told them to be on their very best behaviour tonight. I wondered if I would be able to do the same. I had arranged for Lydia's parents to pick them up after school and keep them overnight, leaving Lydia and I to celebrate our anniversary without having to worry about Sam and Katie.

As I said, the tables were quite close together and, as the lady passed close by me through the narrow gap between, I caught a whiff of her lovely perfume. It smelt nice, rich and alluring as it first struck the senses, but turned light and flowery as it lingered long on the palate. It was a smell that would awake emotions and could probably delight whoever was with her, well, forever.

'Lucky bastard!' I thought, taking my eyes off my phone screen to glance briefly at the seat diagonally opposite, where the new arrival's partner was to sit, but the seat was empty. I could only see the back of the departing maître d, Joe Junior, the fresh-faced son of the owner, hurrying off to welcome the next couple standing at the entrance to the dining room.

It looked like the lovely-smelling lady was waiting on her beau just as I was waiting on my rather tardy wife, my wife of ten years exactly to the day.

We always came here to this very table, or at least this table position. Sometimes a different table would be here as we had demanded, to sit four or six with high chairs where needed, on high days and holidays, although recently only when government restrictions allowed. Here is where we had our first date together, Lydia and I, where I proposed marriage to her and where she accepted, and where we celebrated all our family birthdays and anniversaries, including today's anniversary.

The anniversary date was romantic to us for more than the single reason that it was St Valentine's Day, the patron saint of lovers. It was also the day we married, on Tuesday 14 February 11am 2012 at the local Registrar's Office. We were both 29 at the time and Lydia's biological clock was ticking loudly. We didn't know at the time, or at least I didn't know, that Lydia was already pregnant with our boy Sam. She only told me on our wedding night that she was a week late for her period, but that hadn't occurred to her until that morning, what with all the stress leading up to the wedding and not having seen me before the ritual began, to pass on the possible news until we were alone afterwards. Not that I wouldn't have 'done the right thing' if it was not our wedding night, I had wanted to marry Lydia long before I asked her, anyway. We were living together by then, had been a couple for exactly five years and the wedding had been planned for many months. For me, at the time, Lydia was 'the one'.

She may have been 'late' at that time ten years before, but she was rather late all the time now.

She was definitely late for our eighth wedding anniversary, two years before. I was here, waiting for her on my own, staring at that brick wall, forewarned by a similar 'running late' message on an older phone, and I had hung on waiting until 9 o'clock that night, until I had to relinquish the table, leaving a roomful of selfish lovers with my tail between my legs as I made the lone walk of shame on Valentine's Day. I had insisted on paying the approximate cost of a meal for two at the front desk before leaving. Joseph, the restaurant owner, was apologetic about asking me to leave but it was Valentine's Day and all the tables were booked for the next session. This turned out to be only five or six weeks before the first lockdown began.

I had met Lydia at a late January wedding, fifteen years ago, when we were both about 24. I knew the groom as a college friend, she had gone to school with the bride. I was working unsociable hours on afternoons through to well gone midnight at the newspaper most nights and I actually had no girlfriend or many opportunities to attract one.

Lydia was studying hard to be a lawyer and concentrating on her bar exams, so she also came alone to the wedding. During our conversations we discovered we both lived in the same town and both daily commuted to London for work. My 'weekend' on my shift pattern was Tuesday and Wednesday back then and she suggested we got together in a couple of weeks' time on the Wednesday. We checked our diaries and we set the day as the 14th February and at this family restaurant venue, where I'd never actually eaten before. Lydia explained that she had been a waitress here during school and college holidays and even weekends before that while still at school.

If that date goes well, she told me, we can exchange telephone numbers and take it from there.

[to be continued]