Lavinia told Hugo she wanted an evening of old songs and bad dancing for her thirty-seventh birthday, then waited for him to improve it.
He was sitting on her sofa, holding the leaflet she had found at the library. A small band would play in an upstairs room at the hotel near the station. There would be food beforehand if they booked. The photographs promised no sophistication at all.
“I’d like to go,” he said.
“You don’t have to.”
He looked up.
She made herself continue before he could help. “No. That’s the sentence I wasn’t going to say. I want you to come with me. Do you want to?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a Friday.”
“I’m free. I’ve checked.”
“The meal looks rather ordinary.”
“I have survived my own tart.”
She laughed. It was the first time since the lost Saturday that she had felt the joke arrive without checking whether…
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