Somewhere Only We Know (16 page)

He sighed. “Do you think it’s always right to fight for love?” he asked Nadia, having another half-hearted go at his rapidly-cooling jambalaya.

Her eyes narrowed. “It depends. You’re not going to get all overly involved in this break-up and try and get Rory and Lila back together, are you..?”

“No. No, I think that ship might have sailed,” said Alex ruefully. “I’m thinking more… generally. You know I always wondered if things would have been different if I’d battled Alice – you know - when she broke things off with me. If I’d fought for our relationship rather than just lying down like a dog and taking it. Who knows how different my life would be? And I think I would have been able to convince her and save us, you know, if I’d had the balls to try…” He trailed off. He wasn’t sure if he was really thinking about the Alice of years ago or the Lila that might be in his future.

After a moment, Nadia reached past her plate and their water glasses and squeezed his arm sympathetically.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” was all she said.

Nadia

It was so hard to be stand-offish with Alex when he could have absolutely no idea what he’d done wrong. In fact, that in itself was a total misnomer. It wasn’t “wrong” of him to have feelings for someone. Nadia had no claim over his feelings and probably never would and she
really
had to start accepting that.

It was equally hard to stay mad at him whilst he was wearing pyjamas. His lounge pants were hysterical – navy and dark-green tartan – like something that her grandfather would wear. The constant rotation of big-budget superhero movies projected on the screen ahead of them also served nicely to remind her that there were bigger problems in the world than her bruised emotions and that the world needed saving more than her heart did.

It was somewhere around five hours in – mid
Iron Man 2
– that Alex fell asleep, his head lolling suddenly to the side as he lost the fight for consciousness. Nadia – a little more than half-asleep herself – smiled drowsily. They’d lasted longer than she had on her last all-night marathon at the Prince Charles. She allowed her head to tilt too, her cheek pressing into the curve of the slightly scratchy upholstery of the cinema flip-seat. Her face was so close to Alex’s she could feel the warmth of his breath on her skin.

And because she was so far gone into sleep it all already felt like a dream, and because she’d been drinking warm acidic wine from plastic pint glasses for hours and hours, Nadia decided to lean forward those extra few inches and kiss him, just to see, keeping her lips as light upon him as his breath had been upon her.

And he didn’t wake up, and the ceiling didn’t cave in on top of them, and Nadia found that she didn’t feel any better about things. She settled back in her seat and – as a still-rowdy group of boys towards the front of the screening room cheered a particularly large CGI explosion – fell asleep.

Chapter 13

Alex

Everything in his life seemed to have piss-poor timing.

After ignoring him for three days, Lila had suddenly reappeared on his phone saying she’d like to have lunch with him. Unfortunately, Lila’s version of “Sunday lunch” wasn’t a roast like everyone else’s, but rather falafels from her favourite vegan café off Balham High Street, where the menus were all in Arabic and it smelt like his parents’ damp garage. Even more unfortunately, Alex was hideously hung over, with a trapped nerve in his neck from the two hours of fitful sleep he’d got at the cinema.

After his first cinematic nap, Alex had woken with a start, at first just confused as to where he was, then secondly confused as to how he’d missed the second half of
Iron Man 2
and what appeared to have been a rather large chunk of
Thor
. Nadia had still been asleep, her mouth slightly open, her fist curled up loosely by her face and her whole body turned in the chair towards his, like a uninhibited toddler snoozing in her all-in-one pyjamas.

“Are you okay?” Lila asked, sharply. Alex realised he was smiling vacantly at his Arabic menu as he recalled the sleeping Nadia of just a few hours before.

“Yeah.” He threw the dog-eared laminated menu down on the table top. “I don’t know why I’m even trying to read that.”

“Just get the falafels,” Lila told him, right on cue. “They’re lovely.”

Not really having any other option, Alex agreed and waited patiently whilst Lila relayed their order to the café’s one bedraggled waiter.

“So, Lils,” he barrelled in as soon as the waiter had placed their pint glasses of tap water in front of them and disappeared into the kitchen. “What’s up? How are things?”

Lila took a very careful sip from her water, tucking one side of her honey-blonde bob behind her ear with her free hand as she did. “Things are… okay,” she said, after a moment. “It was a long time coming, actually. But you’re sweet to be concerned.” She flashed him one of her usual warm smiles, the kind that made him feel giddy and reckless.

Alex had seen Lila’s text as a sign. Obviously she wanted to stay friends; but Alex wasn’t sure that he could stay being “just friends” with Lila Palmer. He had to grow a pair – as he was sure Nadia would say – and tell the girl how he felt, right now, here, at this point where he had the least to lose.

He just wished he didn’t have such a wicked hangover for what could turn out to be one of the defining moments of his life.

“I’m just looking forward to taking some time to myself, enjoying being single, reconnecting with Penny and my other friends,” Lila was saying. “You know, it got pretty intense pretty quickly, me and Rory…” Alex nodded solemnly; he sure did know. “I’m actually not surprised it burnt out the way it did.”

“It obviously wasn’t meant to be…” Alex agreed, wondering how the hell he was going to subtly circle the conversation away from bloody Rory.

Lila hesitated, momentarily biting at her bottom lip. “Can I… Alex, can I ask you something?” She looked across at him nervously through her lowered eyelashes.

Alex blinked. This felt momentous. What if he’d had it wrong and Lila had always secretly had a thing for him? A thing she was now free to confess? There had certainly been
something
between them in recent weeks, since the shit had started to hit the fan with Rory, anyway. There had been deep, lingering looks that lacked context, barbed comments that made no sense, expressions that caused questions, questions…

“Sure,” he managed, after a moment, straightening his feet under the café table, preparing himself both mentally and physically.

“Do you think that Rory might have been seeing someone else?”

Alex’s visions abruptly deflated like a collapsed soufflé. “What?” he managed, fumbling through the mental wreckage of his hope.

“Like, an affair. Like, maybe he wasn’t working late at all – he was seeing another girlfriend.” Lila’s bottom lip trembled and she clenched and unclenched her fists against the plastic tablecloth.

“Oh, Lils, no. I don’t think so. Rory may be a pain in the arse, but I don’t think he’d do that to you. He cares about you, I know he does. He’s just genuinely… in a place with his work at the moment…”

“Oh, don’t you start!” Lila barked, drawing both of her hands into her lap and out of sight. “I’ve already heard it. ‘In a delicate place in his career’ and all that bollocks,” she said, mockingly. She exhaled shakily. “It might actually be better to be dumped for another woman than for his desk…”

The waiter chose that moment to interrupt, with two plates of slightly wilted-looking salad and falafel balls. Alex and Lila politely paused their tense conversation until he’d retired into the back once again.

“Lila,” Alex started, trying to inject as much sincerity into his tone as possible. “You shouldn’t take this at all personally. You were too good for Rory to start with! Even he agrees! The reason he’s broken up with you is because he thinks you can do better, isn’t it? So you can find a guy who’s not quite so much of a douche about work and can give you all the time and attention in the world.”

Lila gave a little, watery smile. “Do you really think that?”

“I know that. Come off it, Lila! You’re gorgeous, you’re funny, you’re smart. You could have any guy you wanted. “

Lila looked at him curiously. “Do you really think that?”

“Totally. Any guy off the street!”

“No. About me being… pretty and stuff.”

Alex’s heart suddenly thumped in alarm. “Of course,” he managed, after an agonising beat. “You’re… great.” And here it was – a golden opportunity on an equally golden platter. Time to stop being the loser that Alice Rhodes had turned him into all those years ago and just say it, spit it out; fight for love. Alex inhaled deeply, steeling himself. “In fact…” he choked out.

“Oh, Alex,” Lila said at the same time. “You’re great, too. I’d really, really like for us to stay good friends, despite Rory, you know?” She smiled at him as she picked up her knife and fork and cut energetically into the falafel ball, causing it to fall apart into a heap of processed crumbs.

Alex couldn’t help but relate.

Nadia

Nadia planted her palms flat on her living room’s crumbling sill and hoisted her entire upper body out of the sash window, straining her eyes to see as far down the road as she could. Caro was by now twenty-five minutes late. Caro was never, ever late.

Swinging back inside again, Nadia swiped her phone from the top of the coffee table, tapping the call button impatiently to re-dial the last number in her history. Once again, Caro’s mobile rang out, proving only that she wasn’t trapped underground on the Tube with no signal. Nadia dropped her mobile phone to the table top again, half concerned and half annoyed. Caro had promised she’d be round before one o’clock – and that she’d bring lunch – and that the two of them would do some work on the basics of Nadia’s Indefinite Leave to Remain appeal. She was due to get her court date before too long and the whole thing was getting much harder to ignore.

Throwing herself down on the sofa with a sigh, Nadia pulled her laptop towards her. She might as well start reading the advice blogs without Caro, no point wasting any more time. But instead she found herself loading her Gmail and typing out a quick message to Alex.

She imagined him noticing the email notification sliding up in the corner of his screen and giving one of his unhurried smiles. She often amused herself by picturing him at his desk. He’d admitted the other day that he wore glasses at the office to reduce the strain on his eyes from the computer screen, which fitted in nicely with her whole Clark Kent/Superman opinion of the real Alex Bradley. At work he was the guy she’d met all those months ago; he probably had his hair super-tidy, his face cleanly shaven, glasses on, neat and prim in the sort of suit she now only saw him in if she was meeting him directly after work, a sensible half pint of chilled water from the cooler to the side of his keyboard…

Okay, so she knew she was picturing Alex’s office like something out of the fifties and she knew that he’d told her not to email him at work that often in case he got in trouble for personal correspondence, though he couldn’t be all that worried about it because he always immediately replied.

Nadia was so engrossed in their email conversation that she almost didn’t realise her mobile was ringing until the call had almost rung out. Letting her laptop slide from her legs she reached to grab her phone; Caro was calling back, at last.

“Hello?” she said, allowing her annoyance to be evident in her tone. “Are you okay? Caro, I swear to God…” Nadia trailed off as she realised that Caro wasn’t making excuses; in fact, Caro wasn’t saying anything at all. “Are you okay?” Nadia repeated. “Where are you?”

“Lavender Hill,” Caro admitted, in a small voice.

Realisation dawned. “Caro, are you with Monty?” Nadia asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

Caro sniffed, an altogether very un-Caro-like noise. “I was.” She fell silent.

“And are you coming over?” Nadia asked impatiently after she felt the dramatic silence had gone on for too long.

“I left my Oyster card and my keys in his flat,” Caro admitted, her voice even smaller than before.

Nadia’s ears pricked up. “Have you guys had a fight, or something?” she asked, taking care not to sound too pleased at the prospect.

“We’ve had
the
fight,” was all Caro said.

Nadia sighed. “Just get in a taxi.”

Montgomery Fletcher had been a thorn in Nadia’s side since the start of the previous academic year. Caro had come to the pub after her first day of classes for her new Masters’ in Art History full of stories about the impossibly rakish lecturer who wore converses and skinny ties and seemed truly and honestly passionate about his subject. Within a month, Caro was hooked. Before the autumn term was over, she was in love. At the departmental Christmas drinks the pair had shared a drunken kiss and suddenly, by the time January came around, it had become a full-blown secret affair.

And while Caro was blissfully happy, Monty became increasingly paranoid. He was her tutor, after all; if the university found out about them he would lose his job and Caro would be kicked off the course. He’d probably never work in education again. But that wasn’t the reason that Monty was so paranoid, why he refused to even smile at Caro in public, why he constructed overly elaborate reasons for her being in his office so often, why he took out another phone contract to conceal the fact that he was in always contact with her.

Monty was paranoid because he was married – with a two-year-old daughter – and because Monty had already been caught cheating twice during his marriage, he knew that he was truly on his final strike when it came to his long-suffering wife. Sally must never find out, he stressed to Caro, raising his voice at her as though somehow it was all her fault;
Sally must never find out
. And it was for that reason he shunted Caro in and out of his Battersea flat like a package whenever Sally was out of town with the baby, vacuuming the flat obsessively, over and over, even whilst she was still there, as if Sally would return home and immediately notice a rogue strand of hair in a brown two shades darker than her own and cry foul.