Sunshine on a Rainy Day: A funny, feel-good romantic comedy. Bryony Fraser

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СКАЧАТЬ him with something like sympathy in her eyes.

      ‘Well, you know best, Jack, obviously.’

      The starters arrived – garlic bread for Graham, crab terrine for Linda – and Zoe and Jack worked their way in silence through the complimentary bread basket while his parents ate, Graham in small mouthfuls, Linda spreading a single piece of toast with the crab terrine before sniffing it, wrinkling up her nose and putting it back on the plate.

      ‘Is it alright, Mum?’

      She wrinkled her nose again, her mouth a disgusted moue. ‘I don’t think that crab’s any good, you know.’

      ‘Well, do you want to tell the waiter?’

      ‘Oh no, it’s fine.’

      ‘It’s not fine – if your crab’s off we should tell them. Get you another one.’

      ‘No no, if that one’s spoiled, they’re probably all off.’

      ‘Let’s get you something else then. Do you want me to tell the waiter?’

      ‘Jack, just leave it, I’m fine. I don’t need a starter. Once they bring me something else your mains will be arriving anyway.’

      Jack took in a huge breath, slowly breathing out through his nose while Zoe squeezed his thigh under the table. He put his hand on hers and squeezed it too, his breathing becoming easier.

      The waiter came over, went to take the plates away, but saw Linda’s was still full.

      ‘Are you – is this still going?’

      ‘No no! It’s fine, I just don’t want to spoil my appetite for my main course!’

      The waiter looked baffled. ‘Was everything alright?’

      ‘Yes! Lovely! Thank you!’

      Jack dropped his head down, closing his eyes. When the waiter had taken the two plates away, he said, ‘Could you not have told him, Mum?’

      ‘Well. I don’t know. Maybe the crab wasn’t spoiled. It just smelled a bit—’

      ‘Don’t say fishy.’

      ‘Well it did!’

      ‘Mum.’

      ‘You didn’t have to eat it, Jack. You wouldn’t have been the one with food poisoning.’

      ‘I didn’t eat it because you didn’t offer it to me. If I’d thought you were basing your rejection of your seafood dish on it “smelling fishy” I would have made more of an effort to try it myself.’ Zoe squeezed his thigh again and Jack took a quick drink. ‘Sorry, Mum. It was your food.’

      Linda blinked at him. ‘Thank you, Jack,’ she said, surprised. ‘I’m sure I’ll say something if there’s anything wrong with the main.’

      Zoe gave Jack a tiny nudge, and he snorted into his glass of water. She smiled at Graham, who smiled absently back at her then returned to rearranging his napkin on his lap.

      After a few moments, Zoe dabbed at her mouth with her own napkin, and said, ‘So do you get to see Jack much then?’ Under the bright restaurant lights, she was beginning to feel sweaty, as the aftereffects of the drinks she and Jack had shared with the pizza last night finally kicked in. She was also sweating with the realisation that she barely knew Jack from a broom in the corner, and she was wondering just how deep they were digging by sitting here and letting his parents think they was something stable and long term, when he was still listed in her phone as ‘Hot Barman’.

      ‘Well, you know how it is, Zoe, it’s a long way to travel when we’re all the way out east—’

      ‘In … Asia?’

      Linda looked baffled. ‘No, dear, in Norwich. It’s quite a way for us to come to visit Jack here at university, and Graham doesn’t really like the journey. Do you, Graham?’ She looked over at her husband, who was staring into his glass, rattling the ice cubes. She gave a tiny sigh. ‘And whereabouts are your parents? Are they … Do they live in this country?’ Despite having spoken with her for the last hour, Linda’s voice suddenly became fractionally louder and over-pronounced for this final part of the question.

      Zoe beamed at her. ‘Yes, they’re up in Leytonstone. North-east London.’

      ‘Right. Right.’ Linda looked confused again, unsure how to navigate a question which surely had been misunderstood. ‘Well, speaking of your Auntie Chrissie, her dentist told her that his sister has just been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia.’ She looked at Zoe, questioningly. ‘Not like … your … people—’

      ‘Mum, look, the mains are here!’

      Zoe met Graham’s eye and wondered if he’d heard a word, he looked so disengaged; when his lamb was put in front of him he just gave the waiter a grateful smile and tucked in, eyes down.

      Zoe looked at the bowl in front of her – brown beans mixed in with some green unknowables and some sad lettuce leaves – looked at Jack’s identical portion, then up at Jack. They both laughed.

      ‘Anything wrong, you two?’ Linda asked, a forkful of salmon en croute halfway to her mouth.

      ‘No, Mum,’ Jack said, scooping up some mystery salad. ‘Everything’s just fine.’ He nudged Zoe’s knee with his own under the table, and Zoe felt his body relax a little beside hers.

      ‘I suppose it’s nice to have a degree where you know what you’ll do with it afterwards,’ Linda said.

      ‘I should hope so – I’ll have spent long enough on it. Although sometimes people do change their minds and go into engineering, manufacture, even completely different subjects.’ Zoe nudged her three-bean salad around the dish. ‘I suppose sometimes you need to try things before you know if they’re right for you or not.’

      ‘I know, I know, I say this to Jack all the time! I mean his friend Iffy’s doing medicine, so he’ll be fine, but Jack! He can do this little art course, though God knows what it’s costing us—’

      ‘Mum, I pay for the course myself.’

      ‘But eventually the time will come when he has to decide how he’s going to make his living. If he wants to settle down and have a wife and a family, he needs to think about how he’s going to support them all, and stop lying around living this student lifestyle, waiting for hand-outs from the state—’

      ‘What are you talking about, Mum? I don’t get any state benefits.’

      ‘Not for want of trying, I’ll bet,’ she chuckled ruefully.

      ‘I … don’t …’ Jack looked at Zoe, wide eyed. She tried not to laugh.

      ‘I mean it though, Jack, you have to think about life after college. Don’t you think, Graham?’ Jack’s father was pushing his vegetables around his plate with great concentration.

      ‘I literally think about it every day, Mum. My whole course is geared around making us skilled and СКАЧАТЬ