For a sliver of a second, I hesitate, then shake my head and start walking away.
“Where are you going?”
“Shop. Go home, Tash.” I start striding toward the end of the street, where I turn right and onto the main road. It’s just beginning to rumble with life, with traffic and joggers and people with prams. The strip of sky between the building tops is drab and crammed with grubby clouds, but the air this morning is warm.
I glance over my shoulder to check she’s not following me, then cross the road to the newsagents. It’s only once I’m inside that I realize I’m shaking, and that I’ve completely forgotten what I came out to buy. I end up grabbing milk, bread, coffee, and biscuits before heading back home, praying she’ll have gone by the time I return.
—
She hasn’t, of course. She’s waiting on the doorstep, like a cold caller who won’t take no for an answer.
“Lucy,please. Just let me give you my side. And if... you never wantto see me again, you don’t have to. But will you at least just hear me out?”
I say nothing for a few moments. I realize I haven’t yet met her eye, afraid that if I do, I’ll be confronted with a vision of her and Max that I won’t be able to unsee.
Behind her on the street, a group of women pass by, all in NHS lanyards, presumably having just clocked off from a night shift at the hospital. I stare at them, trying desperately to conjure Jools so I’d have an excuse to turn Tash away.
“Lucy?”
The women walk on. “Fine,” I say, eventually, my voice clipped and cold. “You can come in, say what you’ve got to say, then leave. I’ve got work to do.”
She follows me inside. Thankfully, I’m the only one home right now—Sal’s on nights at the moment too, and Reuben stayed over at his girlfriend’s again yesterday.
I wasn’t lying about work. Though Supernova is everything I’d hoped for and more, the days are long and intense, especially when there’s a big pitch coming up. I regularly get home at eight or nine o’clock, and have worked until midnight at least once a week in the month since I started, plus a couple of weekends.
My most recent project has been creating a new brand identity for a well-known healthy living company, run by a semifamous celebrity. The feedback Seb and I received on Friday about our latest presentation was brutal in a way I hadn’t been expecting from someone with a sideline in meditation clothing—so much so, it left me hyperventilating in the ladies’ for forty minutes. When I eventually emerged, Seb was waiting outside to assure me that Zara wouldn’t sack me off the back of one C-lister’s opinion. Still, until my six months of probation at Supernova are up, I can’t relax.
I wasn’t lying, either, when I told Max they’d have to prize this jobout of my cold, dead hands. Already, it’s impossible to imagine working anywhere else. I feel as though I’ve finally found my calling, the career I was always meant to pursue.
Still, most weekends I feel mentally wrung out—which is why, this morning, I have about as much enthusiasm for listening to Tash’s phony professions of remorse as I do for sitting down to read the complete works of Shakespeare, or learning ancient Greek. Seb and I have agreed to put our heads together first thing Monday morning to come up with some new ideas for the healthy living company, and despite working most of yesterday, I still haven’t hit on anything I can realistically pitch to him. Which means I need to focus on work today, and nothing else. I’m certainly not about to let Tash—or Max, for that matter—distract me from the best job I’ve ever had.
I kick off my shoes, then head upstairs without offering Tash anything, shutting my bedroom door behind us. It’s been a warm night and the space is already stuffy, so I push open the window, letting in the gentle hum of the city waking up, and the balmy, urban air.
I sit on the chair beside my boarded-up fireplace, and wait.
Tash removes her denim jacket and perches on the edge of my bed. Her green top has a plunging neckline, revealing the bones newly outlined beneath her clavicle.
“Lucy,” she says, her voice shaking. “You should know. What happened with me and Max meant nothing.”
I feel my tear ducts firing up, but I fight it. “Come on. It’s been a month. No, actually, it’s beenten years. Surely you’ve had enough time to come up with something more original than that?”
She doesn’t reply, and I wonder for a moment if that’s all she’s got, the sum total of her crappy apology.
“Well, at least it all makes sense now,” I say, coldly. “I could never fully understand why he finished it, and he could never properly explainit, either. I blamed myself for a long time. Thought I’d asked too much of him, scared him off. But you already know all that.”
She wipes a tear away. “All I can say is that I’mso sorry, Lucy—”
“God, all those times I thought you hated him because he’d hurt me, when actually it was because he reminded you what a terrible person you are.”
She rummages in her handbag for a pack of tissues, takes one out and wipes her eyes.
“I literally have no idea why you’re crying.”
“Please, Lucy. Please don’t be so cold—”
“Cold? Are you joking right now?”
“Have... Have you spoken to Max?”
