Page 76 of The Woman Who Said Yes

The kiss sends me spinning off into the warm and humid spring night. We are still kissing as the rain comes on, until finally we stop. He grabs my hand and we just look at each other. I love that barely visible scar on his chin, from where he slipped when he was larking about in a fountain as a kid. I love the way his eyes crease up when he laughs, and how he has always been up for anything.

‘Tell you what,’ I say, leaning up to kiss him again. ‘Why don’t we go back to my place?’

43

FIVE MONTHS LATER

I like to think that Jake and Kian decided to get married in London because we are all here: me and his dad and sister and Kian’s family too. But actually, I think it’s because Niko’s is here. ‘Good idea of mine, wasn’t it?’ Eva says.

‘I actually think it was mine?’ Niko has appeared, and bobs down onto the chair next to her.

‘Okay,’ she says, laughing. ‘You’re right. And you’ve done them proud.’ He beams and Eva kisses his cheek. Lovely, handsome Niko: a devoted dad and granddad, a gifted baker, indefatigable restaurateur and host of more Knitwits’ dinners than we could possibly count. It’s very new, this thing he and Eva are having – or as new as anything can be when you’ve known a person for nearly forty years. Niko was still a young man when we first discovered this place, purely by chance, having dived in to escape torrential rain. A husband and father too, and then later a widow. And throughout all of life’s ups and downs, he has greeted us with his beautiful smile.

This time, Eva has joked, she is absolutely not rushing in. ‘I’ve known him for almost as long as I’ve known you two,’ she reminded us, which hardly seems possible. ‘I mean, two thirds of my entire life.’

Now Tara approaches with a tray of glasses and stops by our table. ‘How d’you think it’s all going?’ she asks.

‘Great,’ I say, glancing at Jake and Kian across the room. ‘You’ve done us proud, Tara.’

She smiles. ‘Can you believe it’s our first wedding party here?’ She turns to Niko. ‘In all these years, Dad⁠—’

‘I know!’ He laughs. ‘We should start doing more!’

‘Oh God, I’m not sure about that.’ She laughs, feigning an exhausted face, although I know she is rightly proud of how the day has turned out. As I am, as Sam returns to our table, having caught up with Theo and Farrah at theirs. It’s the first time Sam has seen her since she left the shop.

‘Were you trying to persuade her to come back?’ I ask.

‘No chance of that,’ he says, chuckling. In fact, Theo had known that Farrah had planned to leave his dad’s shop as soon as her course finished. She is fond of Sam – that’s obvious – and knew she’d have to tell him, but somehow she’d kept putting it off. Perhaps she’d thought the place would fall apart without her. Theo certainly seemed to think so, it transpired. It had gnawed away at him, he’d admitted to his dad – keeping the secret that, on top of looking after her mum, Farrah needed to throw herself wholeheartedly into planning her future.

Straight after graduation she landed a covetable job as a visual merchandiser in a flagship West End store – and then of course she had to break it to Sam. Although delighted for her, he was a little panicked. Somehow, Theo has ended up stepping in to help out – ‘just temporarily’, as he keeps saying, while showing no sign of wanting to stop.

Now the tables have been moved for dancing. ‘Look at those two,’ I murmur to Sam as Farrah pulls Theo to his feet.

‘My God, he’s actually going to dance,’ Sam marvels, and rather naughtily I take a candid photo, as evidence that this actually happened. Now Trudy is beckoning my dad to the floor. My heart lifts as I see him making a show of protesting, as if he has any say in the matter. This time, rather than staying ‘way, way out’ at my place, they have booked into a hotel – although they were round at my place for dinner last night. I’d dithered over what to do about Gideon this time. In fact, Trudy coped admirably when I explained away his absence from my living room wall with a simple, ‘I just wasn’t quite sure he worked there, in that spot.’ If she had been a little shocked, this was soon counteracted by the fact that Sam and I are together which – of course! – she had always known would happen one day.

‘I did tell your dad that,’ she announces as she flops, a little pink in the cheeks, at our table. ‘You two, I mean,’ she clarifies. ‘You and Sam. I could see it, that one time I met him at your flat. Didn’t I say that, Ronnie?’ She turns to Dad as he joins us, bringing her a glass of wine. ‘Didn’t I say that those two are perfect for each other?’

Dad raises his eyebrows and smiles non-committally, and Sam wraps his hand around mine. ‘You were right, Trudy,’ he says.

She laughs. ‘Well, I’m glad someone thinks so!’ Then she’s up again and dancing, seemingly taking a moment to realise that she is still clutching that full glass of wine. Deftly, Niko takes it from her, making a point of showing her where he’s putting it in case she fears that she will never see it again.

And so the day goes on, with speeches from Jake and Kian and Marnie and Phil. And although it wasn’t planned, I too am cajoled into making a short, impromptu speech during which I babble on about how lucky Phil and I are to have such a wonderful family and friends, and that I knew the day would be perfect when I woke up to discover that my dress was no longer crackling with static, and that all wedding parties should be held at Niko’s.

When I sit back down I see that Eva’s eyes are wet. ‘So this is how to do a wedding,’ she announces.

‘I reckon it is,’ Sam agrees.

Eva smiles, and I catch her glancing at Niko as he brings out the cake: a simple one, with just a single tier, which he baked himself. ‘I don’t think it matters how you do it,’ I add, ‘as long as it’s the right person.’

‘And you don’t just fall in love with the idea of having a wedding,’ she declares.

‘Well, yes, that too,’ I say, smiling.

She fiddles with her glass. ‘What was I thinking, Andie? I don’t think I ever apologised…’

‘What for?’ I ask, confused.

‘For almost marrying Dom. For putting you through all that⁠—’