“Use this as time to prove you can handle the job. Think of it as a working interview. If you keep bitching and moaning, she might tell her dad you’re not up to the job. It’s time to put your game face on and try to get along with her. I know you can do it. Stop treating Eliza like the enemy and start being charming. You need to win her over, remember? Especially after that Sage situation you mentioned. Your mum wants you running this company, and the path to that goal goes straight through Eliza Carpenter.”
She flicked her hair out of her eyes with lawyer-like precision.
“You think you can handle that, my little Pop Tart?”
Amina was definitely the only one of my friends who got to call me that.
“I guess we’ll find out.”
CHAPTER 6
There was an issue with Eliza’s room on the sleeper train. The sort that involved meaningful glances between staff and the kind of customer-service smile that screamed damage control.
“If you’d like to visit the club car, your first drink is complimentary while we resolve this,” one attendant chirped, shepherding us away from whatever cock-up they were covering.
At least their crisis management was top-notch.
“Do you still run?” I squeezed through corridors so narrow I had to almost deflate my ribcage to make progress.
Eliza turned, shaking her head. “Injury in my mid-twenties. These days it’s yoga and the occasional guilt-driven gym session.” She shrugged. “I was only ever fast because Roger was fast. But sibling rivalry makes terrible motivation long-term.”
Roger was Eliza’s older brother, who’d gone to the Olympics and represented Great Britain in middle-distance running.
“Is he still in the US?”
Eliza nodded. “Married, two kids, coaching at Stanford, seems happy.”
“Does he get back much?”
“Not nearly enough for Mum’s liking, though she’s taken to stalking him via transatlantic visits.”
A door swung open ahead of us. Eliza stopped dead, and I promptly walked straight into her back like some sort of human domino.
“Sorry, I—”
But the apology died on my lips as her scent hit me. Clean soap and something indefinably warm that sent my memory careening back to stolen moments in the school library. I’d told myself I was studying, but really I was watching Eliza with her friends across the room, cataloguing the way she laughed at their jokes, how she bit her lip when she concentrated. I’d convinced myself it was admiration, maybe a touch of hero worship.
But standing here now, breathing her in, that same flutter of awareness I’d dismissed as teenage confusion swept through me. Maybe I’d been lying to myself about what those feelings really were.
An elderly couple emerged from their room, mercifully breaking the spell. We followed them to the club car and waited to be seated.
We slid into seats opposite each other, on a table for four. I studied her face in the fading evening light filtering through the windows. I doubt she remembered those library afternoons the way I suddenly did. I doubt she’d even known I was there.
“How are Katy’s twins? Mum mentioned they’re at nursery now?”
I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face. Our family had experienced its fair share of death in the last few years, but Katy having the twins a few months before Mum died had been a bright spot. Without having to get up for the girls, Katy told me she may have laid in bed for months. They might never know it, but Lily and Vivien helped us all through thefog of grief just by existing. They would always be our miracle, healing babies.
“The twins are incredible. A shit-ton of work that would put you off having kids for life, but you know what Katy’s like. She was born responsible, and she and Bryce are doing well as parents. I go over every few weeks so they can go out to the pub and have a meal together.
“I remember my mum telling me you spend the first five years of your child’s life trying to stop them injuring themselves. I understand that description now.”
“It’s nice that you’re close, though,” Eliza replied. “Roger lives thousands of miles away, so his kids don’t know me.”
The conversation felt surreal: like picking up a book I’d abandoned mid-chapter years ago, and finding the plot surprisingly familiar. I glanced at Eliza as she read the menu, wondering if the feeling was mutual.
“Wonder who our dinner companions will be,” I mused. “Fingers crossed for two humans on the right side of the political divide. Could be awkward otherwise.”
Eliza’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “If they’re properly horrified by lesbians, we could always put on a show. Full sapphic passion before they’ve even delivered the bread rolls.”
