Opening a bottle of wine, Kelly placed it with her favourite glass on the coffee table in the room she called ‘the snug’. She made a nest for herself on the sofa with the cushions and lit a scented candle before clicking onto her Spotify playlist.
Greg was in the living room watching some detective series on TV, and Kelly was looking forward to disappearing into her own little world for the evening. She would listen to some music and enjoy a few trips down memory lane.
Before long, she was texting her best friend, Tess, with a link to a Chaka Khan track.
Hey, Tess, remember us dancing to this at Xenon?
Tess texted straight back. Yeah, those were the days!
Kelly smiled and wiggled her toes along to the music. Ain’t Nobody drifted into Sade’s The Sweetest Taboo. Kelly took a sip of her wine and laid her head back on the cushions. She closed her eyes and suddenly she was back in London again, in that dingy little wine bar on Charlotte Street.
‘Where on earth are you taking me?’ she’d asked Harry, the first time they’d gone there.
‘It’s somewhere new,’ he said. ‘I discovered it last week on my way back from that contemporary art exhibition.’
Harry was studying history of art at university and was always visiting some exhibition or other. He was three years older than Kelly and had seemed so sophisticated compared to her previous fling, when she was in her final year at secretarial college.
It was approaching evening, but the city was still basking in the summer heat. The scent of honeysuckle blended with the whiff of car fumes and the clear blue sky was filled
