Somewhere Only We Know (23 page)

Lila’s mouth formed a little “o” of surprise; she obviously realised she’d crossed a line, even if Alex himself wasn’t entirely sure where or what that line was. “I don’t mean it in a bitchy way,” she assured him immediately. “I quite like Nadia. Like I said, she’s fun. It’s just that, well, she’s going to be deported, isn’t she?”

Alex gritted his teeth. “Not necessarily.” It was something that, to be honest, had been playing on his mind more and more recently. Nadia should be receiving her court hearing date for her appeal any day now, and it was all uphill from there. She’d joked the other day that she wasn’t ready, that her to-do list spread over countless more notebook pages, and that she was going to have to abscond from the system, live as a nationless nomad hidden in the mews of London…

“I mean, I won’t have an identity, or, you know, a home,” she’d laughed. “But at least I’d never miss a Candy at Closet night!” And Alex had laughed too, but the laugh had felt a little hollow and unpleasant inside his chest as he did so.

“She’ll go in front of a judge soon,” he continued, trying to sound confident, dismissive. “And she’ll get her Indefinite Leave. I’m sure of it.”

“But Rory said that you told him that probably wasn’t going to happen,” Lila pointed out. Alex cursed his pessimistic self of six weeks ago, the self who had stood there with his Border Control Enforcement hat on and known that Nadia simply didn’t have a legal leg to stand on, and had explained to Rory as much.

“I reckon she’s got a fair shot,” he lied.

Lila obviously saw the lie in his face; she smiled sympathetically. “See, this is what I was talking about. You’re close to her. I mean, not in the way I thought you were – obviously – as it turned out you liked me all along.” She blushed delightfully, making Alex’s stomach go a little funny. “I just mean it would have been a massive shame if you’d avoided relationships for like, half a decade, only to have your new girlfriend kicked out of the country!”

She had a point. Alex was already feeling vaguely sick to his core over the thought of Nadia being denied her Leave to Remain and having to go. He couldn’t imagine how he’d be feeling if she was his girlfriend.

“Alice was always a laugh, but she was a bit of a bitch. Especially to you," Lila continued, assertively. "I never wanted to see you hurt again,” Lila finished, fumbling for Alex’s hand on the table top once again. “You don’t deserve it. You’re one of the good guys, Alex. You’d never hurt anyone. You deserve all good things.” And as she spoke, she lifted his loose fist and brought it to her mouth to place a kiss on his knuckles, the chill the wine had left on her lips pressing against his skin.

Nadia

“He’s still not answering.” Caro threw her phone to the carpet, where it bounced off its corner and came to rest under the coffee table. She raked her hair back off her face with her fingers, pressing the swell of her palms into her temples in frustration.

“He’s probably with his wife,” Nadia reasoned.

“No, no, she’s away at her parents for the weekend,” Caro insisted, her voice muffled by the fact that she had her arms up over her face. “That’s why we arranged to go out.”

Monty hadn’t turned up at the Chelsea bar where they’d agreed to meet. He hadn’t called and he hadn’t answered his phone when Caro had eventually swallowed her pride (and two Passion fruit Daiquiris) and rang to see what was up. There was nothing from him: this great, terrible, foreboding nothing. And whereas Nadia had longed for Professor Fletcher to have absolutely nothing to do with her friend for months now, she could see how utterly miserable Caro was when it actually happened; it just made her hate him all the more.

Love changes you, so they say – how romantic. But nobody ever says that love can change your life for the worse, can turn you from a beautiful, confident woman into a shaking, phone-throwing mess. They should put
that
on the Valentine’s cards.

“I know you think I’m stupid,” Caro said suddenly, but there was no tone of reproach in her voice. “Hell, even I think I’m stupid. But I just don’t want to have gone through all the pain I’ve gone through for nothing, you know? I need to believe that we’re meant to end up together, me and him, otherwise it means I’ve just wasted my time, for nothing; been the other woman, for nothing; cried so hard I’ve felt like throwing up, so many times, over and over, and always for nothing. And I just can’t bear that.” Caro let her arms drop down into her lap, her hands hesitating there for a moment, before she moved to retrieve her phone.

Alex

Although he was absolutely stuffed, it felt like a three-course sort of evening, and so Alex insisted that they order dessert. After some convincing, Lila agreed to share one, so Alex did that terribly kitsch but heart-warming thing of asking the waiter for “two spoons, please” with a knowing smile. And so the pair finished off their delicious but pretentious chocolate soufflé and the dregs of bottle of wine number three, and headed out into the summer night.

Lila was swaying slightly on those high heels of hers, but seemed steady enough as they meandered their way down the Strand, packed with its usual Saturday-night mixture of tourists and native Londoners, who – like them - apparently didn’t know any better. The pavements outside the pubs and bars were thronged with people smoking, or queuing, or simply enjoying the balmy evening. Alex had to take Lila’s elbow as these blockages forced them to walk in and out of the road, laughing as they raced back over the curb of the pavements as taxis neared and beeped their horns angrily. He still had her elbow as they arrived in the grey expanse of Trafalgar Square, having headed in that direction by some sort of silent accord.

The lions sat quietly on their high plinths, only obvious as black hunched shapes against the indigo of the clear night’s sky. Despite the busyness of the Strand and Charing Cross itself, the Square was relatively peaceful, mostly just couples strolling arm in arm, craning their necks as they took in the surrounding architecture.
Couples like us
, thought Alex, realising that Lila had at some point curved very prettily into his body as they walked and talked, making them into a pair of parentheses, although he didn’t know what – if anything – they were circling. The nerves that Alex had successfully evaded all evening suddenly bloomed in his stomach.

“Did you know that the lions are made out of bronze melted down from cannons seized from enemy ships after the actual Battle of Trafalgar?” he found himself saying. It was a neat little bit of trivia. When he and Nadia had spent the afternoon in the Square after their abortive trip to the National Portrait Gallery they’d spent at least an hour looking up information on their phones and reading the most interesting facts aloud to one another.

“Wow, that’s really interesting,” said Lila, in a tone that suggested she was being polite. She stopped walking and curved around to face him, still linked, his hand in the crook of her elbow. “Thank you for a really great night.”

Alex gave a lopsided smile. “Are you just trying to change the subject away from pointless war history?” In response, Lila mutely drew her free arm closer, grazing her hand in a line across Alex’s hipbone as she did, causing his abdomen to stiffen into rock underneath his thin shirt. This was actually happening. Above him, the lions stared outwards across London and the stars battled dimly against the light pollution. Down here, Lila Palmer was now officially in his arms and he could feel the heat off of her skin and watch her wet her bottom lip with her tongue with excruciating slowness.

And it felt a little like fate, that moment. That the good things that people had been saying he had been due for for years were finally arriving. That if Lila had never gone out with Rory for so long, she would never have had the opportunity to get to know him, to give him a chance to take her out for dinner, to kiss her underneath lions and stars.

Channelling an assurance Alex could have sworn the past five years had throttled out of him, he took Lila by the waist, felt the dimples at the base of her spine through her thin, tight dress as he slid his other palm across her back. And then he did what he’d wanted to do ever since that pretty blonde girl he used to know had walked up to him at that house party the previous spring, and kissed her.

Chapter 18

Alex

Rory had assured him that he didn’t have a problem with it, but Alex couldn’t help but imagine that things felt rather strained in the flat. To add insult to injury, even Nadia was quiet this week. She wasn’t ignoring him per se, but she was taking ages to reply to his messages and not exactly being receptive to his suggestions of meeting up.

But of course, now there was Lila. He hadn’t seen her since the weekend, but his lips still felt bruised. That was hardly surprising; he’d kissed her for so long, so desperate for it to feel like how he’d imagined it would. Alex exhaled petulantly at the memory. He knew that nothing could ever live up to fantasy, and that the Lila in his arms would never be the same as the Lila he’d put up on that pedestal. But still, after everything, after getting the sense that the stupid fates were finally aligning for him, he guessed he couldn’t be blamed for maybe expecting something
more
.

His mobile phone burst into life, its cheery ringtone startling Alex out of his disquieting chain of thought. He reached for it guiltily, assuming it would be Lila, but checked himself when he saw the caller name on the screen display.

“Holly?” he greeted, not bothering to mask the curiosity in his tone; he didn’t think Holly had ever actually called him before. “What’s up?”

“Hey, I’ve only got a minute,” she began, without preamble. “I’ll be home soon.”

“Okay…” Alex said, nonplussed. Good for her?

“So what’s your plan for the weekend, then?”

“My plan for the weekend?” Alex repeated stupidly; it was Thursday night, and as far as he knew he hadn’t been involved in any plans with the girls over the next few days. He’d been hoping to maybe take Lila out for a picnic on the Common, to feed her fat genetically-modified strawberries and drink wine from plastic cups, try again to make her lips taste like the love he was sure he’d been feeling for almost a year.

“Wait, have you not arranged something with Nads?” Something was up; Holly sounded unreasonably cross.

“No, I hadn’t; why, what’s the big deal?”

“That little liar, I’m going to be having words with her,” Holly ranted, more to herself than anything else.

“Holly! What’s going on?” Alex pressed.

“I’m away in Birmingham for a work conference this weekend,” she admitted, as if that explained everything.

“Okay.” Alex paused. “That’s sad and all, but I’m sure Nadia can handle being alone in the flat for a couple of nights. Look, I might be busy Saturday but maybe me and her can do food on Friday or the cinema on Sunday, I’ll call her now…“

“It’s her birthday,” Holly interjected. “And you didn’t even know? God, what is she playing at?”

Alex’s stomach flipped over unhappily. Shit, Nadia’s birthday. He’d never actually known when it was; she’d never referenced it, it wasn’t on her Facebook. Why hadn’t she told him? He would have thrown her a party, taken her anywhere she wanted to go. Was this why she was avoiding his calls? He hadn’t seen her for a whole week, not since last Thursday’s Candy at Closet; it was the longest they’d spent apart since they’d met.

“Is she at home?” he asked Holly, grimly, already moving into the hall to grab his keys from the console table and shove his feet into his shoes.

“Yes, she’s in,” Holly confirmed.

“Okay, I’m coming round now. I promise she won’t be alone on her birthday, Hols, don’t worry.”

There was a heavy silence on the other end of the line before Holly spoke again. “It might be her last one here,” she said, in a small voice. Alex winced. Out of all of them, Holly went out of her way the most to never mention the potential deportation. “I tried to get out of the work thing, Alex, I really did. But I thought she had made plans with you, so I didn’t feel as bad.”

“She will have plans with me,” Alex promised. And he was almost done formulating those plans as he reached Carrington Avenue, ready to take his suddenly infuriating friend to task.

Nadia

She loved travelling, no matter what the medium was. She knew she looked a bit like a child as she pressed herself up against the train window but couldn’t quite bring herself to care; she just continued enjoying the gold and green blur of the fields stretching out from the train tracks speeding past, as huge and expansive as the feeling in her chest: freedom, adventure.

The pair brunched on a combination of homemade sandwiches already warm inside their clingfilm and over-priced crisps and chocolates from the refreshment trolley. Nadia taught Alex all of the card games that growing up at a boarding school had left her crazily good at: hearts and whist and shithead, the last of which she was the undisputed champion of. By the time they were slowing down as they went through Hove, Alex was getting worryingly close to winning a hand, and so as much as Nadia felt she could have stayed on that train forever, she was secretly relieved it was almost time to disembark.

Like most coastal towns, Brighton was hilly and unreasonably steep, with the train station some way out from the centre of things. Even though Alex was carrying her holdall bag for her, Nadia was still slightly out of breath by the time they reached the bed and breakfast. The door was painted a fresh mint green with a heavy brass knocker, shabby chic and utterly charming, with old-fashioned leaded windows framed by white curtains, so old and washed so many times they were as soft and shapeless as down.

The whole weekend break was so last minute that there had been no way that Rory could get the time off work and, likewise, Caro had several seminars that Friday afternoon that she couldn’t miss; they’d be joining them in the morning. But for now it was just her and Alex.

He threw himself down on one of the rickety twin beds; its ancient iron frame squealed in protest. “So what do you want to do first?” he asked, grinning at her. “Shops? Aquarium? Beach? Pier? Chips?”