Lifesaving for Beginners

noodles than beef and there’s way too much of it. I pick up my wine glass and empty it, then fill it to the top again. Thomas eats like he always does. As if he hasn’t had a square meal for several days. Then he says, ‘So. Do you want to hear my good idea or not?’
    I shrug my shoulders.
    Thomas says, ‘Actually, it’s a great idea.’
    I’m pretty convinced that there won’t be anything great about the idea. Although this is the man who introduced me to chocolate in chilli. Still, I say nothing.
    ‘You OK, Kat?’
    ‘I’m fine.’
    The thing is, I’m not fine. But it’s difficult to say why not, exactly. It’s nothing really. It’s just . . . well, nothing’s been quite the same since he came to pick me up from the hospital in his beaten-up old Saab with the Get Well Soon balloons tied onto the roof rack. I wouldn’t get in until he’d taken them down. He put them on the back seat of the car but they floated up and covered the back window. They weren’t easy to burst. He had to stamp on them in the end.
    I went to open the passenger door but he got there first. Opened the door. I was about to get in when he stopped me. Put his hands on my shoulders. He said, ‘The apartment’s been fierce quiet without you.’ I came up to the pocket of his shirt. It was pale grey and happened to go very well with his black jeans, which were definitely new as well. No jacket, but, then, he hardly ever wore jackets. He was rarely cold enough.
    I said, ‘Did you go shopping?’
    He is the only man I know who blushes. He said, ‘Yeah. Surprise!’
    ‘You never go shopping.’
    ‘I knew you’d be pleased.’ He put my overnight bag on the ground and gathered the lapels of my jacket in his hands and inched me towards him until I was close enough to see that curious ring of dark green round the grey of his eyes.
    And then he kissed me. Right there on my mouth. As if we were in my bedroom with the curtains pulled and the lights off, and not in the middle of a public car park in broad daylight with everyone gawking.
    I sift through the mound of noodles on my plate, trying to find a piece of beef. I wish I’d ordered the steak and mushrooms and the onions with chips and a dirty big dollop of tomato ketchup on the side.
    Thomas says, ‘So do you really not want to hear my idea?’
    I think the wine has settled me a bit because I say, ‘Oh, go on.’
    He says, ‘I think we should buy a place together.’
    I put my glass on the table. ‘I have a place.’
    ‘I know. And I have my place. I just think it’s time we thought about getting a place together.’
    ‘I like my apartment.’
    ‘See? It’s your apartment. You just said it. But wouldn’t it be nice to have a place that’s both of ours? We don’t have to start looking straight away. We could leave it till the new year. Prices are still going down. It makes sense to wait.’
    I think about my bedroom. My kitchen. My bathroom. Even the cupboard in the utility room where I keep the brush and pan seems dear to me now, in the light of Thomas’s latest idea.
    ‘No.’
    ‘No?’
    ‘I’m not moving. I like living in my apartment.’
    ‘And I like living there too. It’s not about that.’
    ‘What’s it about, then?’
    ‘It’s about you and me. Setting up shop together, you know. Being a proper couple.’
    I push the noodles to one side and put my knife and fork on the plate. Cover the plate with my napkin. ‘Is it OK if we don’t order dessert?’
    ‘Are you OK?’
    ‘I’m a bit . . . uncomfortable . . . the rib . . .’ This isn’t true. But it will get me home and away from this conversation.
    Thomas says, ‘Of course,’ and asks for the bill without even finishing his dinner, which makes me feel bad because he always clears his plate. Even Minnie says he’s a pleasure to cook for.
    He guides me out of the restaurant like I’m a bomb that’s about to explode. He doesn’t mention the apartment again.
    The weird thing is that, until the accident, everything had been going well. I mean, I wouldn’t go so far as to say fantastic or anything like that. Just, you know, quite well.
    Like the writing. It was going really well. For ages, in fact. I suppose since Thomas moved in. I thought his moving in might have an adverse effect on the writing. I hate distractions and Thomas is a pretty big one. He moved in about a year ago, I’d say. Maybe even longer than that. I had just started writing the next book in the series. I can get a bit