“Poker. If I can find anyone to play with. You’d be great at poker,” he adds.
“I’d be terrible!” I contradict him. “I’m crap at gambling, and-” I stop as Ed shakes his head.
“Poker’s not about gambling. It’s about being able to read people. Your Eastern mind-reading powers would come in handy.”
“Oh, right.” I blush. “Well… my powers seem to have abandoned me.”
Ed raises an eyebrow. “You’re not hustling me here, Miss Lington?”
“No!” I laugh. “They really have! I’m a total novice.”
“OK, then.” He takes out the pack of cards and shuffles it expertly. “All you need to know is, do the other players have good cards or bad? Simple as that. So you look at your opponents’ faces. And you ask yourself, Is something going on? And that’s the game.”
“‘Is something going on?’” I repeat. “And how can you tell?”
Ed deals himself three cards and glances at them. Then he gazes at me. “Good or bad?”
Oh God. I have no idea. His face is dead straight. I survey his smooth forehead, the tiny lines around his eyes, the hint of weekend stubble-searching for clues. There’s a glint in his eye, but that could mean anything.
“Dunno,” I say helplessly. “I’ll go with… good?”
Ed looks amused. “Those Eastern powers really did desert you. They’re terrible.” He shows me three low cards. “Now your turn.” He shuffles the pack again, deals out three cards and watches me pick them up.
I’ve got the three of clubs, the four of hearts, and the ace of spades. I study them, then look up with my most inscrutable expression.
“Relax,” says Ed. “Don’t laugh.”
Of course, now he’s said that, I can feel my mouth twitching.
“You have a terrible poker face,” says Ed. “You know that?”
“You’re putting me off!” I wriggle my mouth around a bit, getting rid of the laugh. “OK, then, what have I got?”
Ed’s dark brown eyes lock on mine. We’re both silent and still, gazing at each other. After a few seconds I feel a weird flip in my stomach. This feels… strange. Too intimate. Like he can see more of me than he should. Pretending to cough, I break the spell and turn away. I take a gulp of wine and look back to see Ed sipping his wine too.
“You have one high card, probably an ace,” he says matter-of-factly. “And two low ones.”
“No!” I put the cards down. “How do you know?”
“Your eyes popped out of your face when you saw the ace.” Ed sounds amused. “It was totally obvious. Like, ‘Oh wow! A high one!’ Then you looked right and left as though you might have given yourself away. Then you put your hand over the high one and gave me a dirty look.” He’s starting to laugh now. “Remind me not to give you any state secrets to keep anytime soon.”
I can’t believe it. I thought I was being really inscrutable.
“But, seriously.” Ed begins shuffling the cards again. “Your mind-reading trick. It’s all based on analyzing behavioral traits, isn’t it?”
“Er… that’s right,” I say cautiously.
“That can’t have just deserted you. Either you know that stuff or you don’t. So what’s going on, Lara? What’s the story?”
He leans forward intently, as though waiting for an answer. I feel a bit thrown. I’m not used to this kind of focused attention. If he were Josh, I’d have been able to fob him off easily. Josh always took everything at face value. He’d have said, “Right, babe,” and I could have moved the subject on quickly and he never would have questioned it or thought about it again…
Because Josh was never really that interested in me .
It hits me like a drench of cold water. A final, mortifying insight that instantly has the feel and ring of truth to it. All the time we were together, Josh never challenged me, never gave me a hard time, barely even remembered the fine details of my life. I thought he was just easygoing and laid-back. I loved him for it. I saw it as a plus. But now I understand better. The truth is, he was laid-back because he didn’t really care. Not about me. Not enough, anyway.
I feel like I’m finally stepping out of some trance. I was so busy chasing after him, so desperate, so sure of myself, I never looked closely enough at what I was chasing. I never stopped to ask if he really was the answer. I’ve been such an idiot .
I look up to see Ed’s dark, intelligent eyes still keenly scanning me. And in spite of myself I feel a sudden weird exhilaration that he, someone I barely know, wants to find out more about me. I can see it in his face: He’s not asking for the sake of it. He genuinely wants to know the truth.
Only I can’t tell him. Obviously.
“It’s… quite tricky to explain. Quite complicated.” I drain my glass, stuff a last bite of cake into my mouth, and beam distractingly at Ed. “Come on. Let’s go to the London Eye.”
As we arrive at the South Bank, it’s buzzing with Sunday afternoon tourists, buskers, secondhand-book stalls, and lots of those living statues, which always slightly freak me out. The London Eye is creeping around like a massive Ferris wheel, and I can see people in each transparent pod, peering down at us. I’m quite excited, actually. I’ve only been in the London Eye once before, and that was at a work do with lots of obnoxious drunk people.
A jazz band is playing an old twenties tune to a crowd of onlookers, and as we pass I can’t help meeting Ed’s eye. He does a couple of Charleston steps and I twirl my beads at him.