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‘So, am I getting an answer?’

Gillian looked up from the table in Oscar’s champagne café, her eyes focussed not on his face but on the window behind him. The blue sky had suddenly disappeared behind a watery stew of cloud that leaked rain onto the streets below. A few drops wriggled across the glass behind Mark into the corners of the window frame, like tadpoles nosing up to the edge of a pond. Gillian held her breath and looked out over Chichester Street. She watched a car pull up and stop with the front wheel on the kerb outside the café. A woman she hadn’t noticed stepped out from her shelter beneath Oscar’s awning and made her way towards the car.

The driver was a solid looking man in his late fifties, dressed as he would have dressed every day in life for the past thirty odd years – smart in a shirt and tie combination with coordinating sweater over the top. His hair was thinning, but spread evenly over the top of his head like butter on a slice of toast. Everything about the man was neat and tidy. Even the way he sat, hands resting in his lap either side of the creases in his trousers so as not to flatten them, head carefully positioned between his shoulders, mouth tucked into a downwards curve – not a frown exactly, more an expression that had taken root there after years of moderate dissatisfaction; years of having to accede to decisions that went against the grain; years of having to deal with the indiscretions of his children; years of having to step out every morning into that immaculate company Renault and drive to a job that he had never enjoyed and step back into it every evening to drive home to a wife he no longer loved.

He sat there, impassive, while the wife wrenched open the door of the boot and started loading in the week’s shopping. He made no move to help – it wasn’t expected of him. She wore a harassed expression on her crumpled face. Her greying hair had gone frizzy in the rain and she combed at it with her fingers in a distracted fashion. A shapeless cotton skirt clung around her knees like an unhappy toddler. Her blouse had worked its way free of the confines of her waistband and flapped uselessly in the wind. It was of an indiscriminate colour, but managed, nevertheless, to clash with the machine washed, ‘hand wash only’ cardigan thrown over the top.

The shopping bags went in one by one – a line of plastic carriers from M&S, stretched by the angular shapes of microwaveable ready meals – the shopping of a woman who couldn’t see the point in cooking proper meals, now that it was just the two of them at home.

A group of teenagers came laughing through the rain and split apart like a swarm of bees to swing round the car with its driver and the woman standing behind. Gillian watched the woman watching their retreating backs; girls with jeans slung low on the hips to give a hint of the tattoo at the base of their spines; boys with hair shaved so close in patches that it left a pattern of scalp. The woman watched them until they disappeared round the corner into Donegal Square. The look in her eyes was a kind of hunger.

The woman finished loading the shopping into the car. She untangled an ancient handbag from around her neck, set it on the shelf of the boot and started rummaging through the contents. Eventually she pulled out a small Boots bag and extracted a tube of lipstick. She set her handbag amongst the shopping bags and reached up to slam down the lid.

She stepped into the road to walk round to the passenger side door. A blue Ford van drove past, its tyres making a swish as they threw up a puddle of dirty water, soaking the woman from the knees down. She barely glanced at her tights, sodden and streaked with mud, as she pulled open the car door and folded herself into the seat. She peered into the overhead mirror and quickly slicked the lipstick around her mouth. Her husband registered the new look with the slightest raising of an eyebrow – too little, too late. Neither of them spoke. The woman pulled her cardigan across her chest and folded her arms over it to hold it in place. Both of them stared straight ahead. The man put the car into first gear and drove slowly away.

Gillian stared out at the now empty street for a few moments longer. Then she turned to look at the small black box on the table in front of her. The ring was beautiful, a square cut diamond solitaire. Wasn’t this exactly what she had wanted? Hadn’t she pictured this moment for ages, dreamt about it, wondered if he would never get round to asking her?

‘Well?’ he asked. There was a nervous flicker at the corner of his smile.

Gillian found that her mouth had gone dry. She took a sip of her wine and reached out a forefinger to touch the diamond lightly. She took off her glasses and wiped them on the napkin on her lap. Then she looked up and blinked a couple of times, trying to refocus. Somehow the picture had changed, the scene wasn’t quite how she had imagined it.

‘Well…’, she began.