PROLOGUE
1.
Callie
Joel, I’m so sorry. To see you again like that... Why did I get on the train? I should have waited for the next one. It wouldn’t have mattered. I missed my stop anyway, and we were late for the wedding.
Because the whole way to London, I could only think of you, about what you might have written in the note you gave me. Then when I finally opened it, I stared at it for so long that by the time I next looked up, Blackfriars had come and gone.
There was an ocean of things I wanted—needed—to say to you too. But my mind just misfired when I saw you. Maybe I was scared of saying too much.
What if today was it, though, Joel? What if today was the last time I’ll see your face, hear your voice?
Time’s rushing by, and I know what’s coming.
I wish I’d stayed. Just a few minutes more. I’msorry.
PARTONE
2.
Joel
It’s one in the morning and I’m standing bare-chested at my living room window. The sky is still and blistered with stars, the moon a marble.
Any minute now, my neighbor Steve will leave the flat above mine. He’ll head down to his car, the baby squirming furiously in her carrier. He takes Poppy for drives in the middle of the night, tries to soothe her to sleep with the rumble of tires and his playlist of farmyard-animal sounds.
Here it comes. The sleep-slackened tread of his feet on the stairs, Poppy whimpering. His trademark mishandling of our fractious front door. I watch as he approaches the car, flicks the lock, hesitates. He’s confused, knows something’s not right. But his brain’s still catching up.
Eventually it clicks. He swears, puts a hand to his head. Makes two disbelieving laps of the vehicle.
Sorry, Steve—it’s all four tires. Someone’s definitely let them down. You’re not going anywhere tonight.
For a moment he’s a statue, lit up by the laboratory glow of the streetlight. Then something makes him stare straight into the window I’m looking out of.
I hold my nerve. As long as I stay still, it must be nearly impossible for him to see me. My blinds are shut, the flat silent and dark as a reptile resting. He can’t know I have my eye pressed against a single slat. That I’m watching everything.
For a moment our gazes are soldered together before he looks away, shaking his head as Poppy treats the street to a timely scream.
A light springs on in the house opposite. Brightness strikes the darkened street, exasperation drifting down from the window. “Come on, mate!”
Steve lifts a hand, then turns to come back inside. I hear the two of them trail upstairs, Poppy wailing determinedly as they go. Steve’s used to keeping strange hours, but Hayley will be trying to sleep. She’s recently returned to her job at a prestigious London law firm, which means it matters if she nods off in meetings.
Still. My tasks for tonight are complete. I cross them off in my notebook, then sit down on the sofa, parting the blinds so I can look at the stars.
I reward myself with a shot of whisky, because that’s what I do on special occasions. Then I make it a double and down it, fast.
Twenty minutes later, I’m ready to crash. I’m after a very specific kind of sleep, and everything I’ve done tonight should help me achieve it.
•••
“He’s ever so hot,” says my eighty-something near-neighbor Iris, when I pitch up at her house a few hours later to walk her yellow Labrador, Rufus.
It’s not yet eight in the morning, which might account for why I haven’t got a clue who she’s talking about. Her neighbor Bill, who pops round most mornings with a nugget of gossip or a weird little leaflet? The postman, who’s just waved jauntily at us through the living room window?
Postmen. They’re always either inanely cheerful or miserable as sin. Never a middle ground.
“He’s been sleeping on the kitchen tiles to stay cool.”
