“You considered being a teacher?” That was the last thing Carter was cut out for.
“For about twenty seconds. The holidays looked attractive. I need to get back to the ward. Maybe see you tomorrow?” He kissed the top of my head, easy for him to do when he was eight inches taller than me.
In his house, the house where I’d spent time before he’d moved in, was a chart written on the wall with my dad’s siblings’ heights. Mine was added to it from the day I first met my step-grandparents and then the heights of my cousins and then siblings.
Carter’s parents had kept it, adding Carter’s height to it. We added the few inches I grew as a teen, the distance between us in height growing as we aged, until we grew no more.
“Be safe walking round London at night.”
“You realise I’ve been walking around London at night my entire life.”
“So you know how to be safe. I’m just reminding you. Don’t get complacent.” He managed to sound even more patronising than he was usually capable of doing.
I shook my head, patted him patronisingly on the shoulder and made my exit.
Fallon was early, by which I mean she was on time and I was slightly late. Her dark hair shone, dark eyes assessed me as I walked towards her from the bar, because there was no point arriving at the table she’d bagged without drinks.
“You have a new feature on your face.”
“Upset teenager. I was in the way.”
She shrugged. “Happens. Have you iced it?”
“Yes.” Carter did. But I didn’t want to tell her that.
“Arnica?”
“Will put it on when I get home. How was work?”
She shrugged and looked at her nails. “The usual. Have you checked your phone in the last three hours?”
I scrambled in my bag for it because I hadn’t. I hadn’t had time and I was at the end of my capacity for dealing with Eliza’s texts.
“Save looking for it, you might bruise yourself again. Harriet’s had her offer on a house accepted, but it’s empty and the owner has said she can move in as soon as she likes which takes the pressure off her having to rent somewhere else while it all goes through.” Fallon looked rather murderous. Her nails were acrylics, fresh on, which suggested she had a few days off work because they would not be allowed otherwise.
“Crap.” I’d been trying to ignore the fact that my housemate and best friend would be packing soon.
“I know. You’re off this weekend, aren’t you?” Fallon inspected her talons.
“How do you know?”
“I checked your rota. It’s on your fridge.”
“It’s my new rota – have you been breaking into my flat again?” I frowned, aware that Fallon would probably comment on the creases in my forehead – just because she knew it irritated me.
“I needed a decent coffee and you live far too close to the hospital. You have a key safe.”
“We’d changed the code.”
“You shouldn’t have made it so obvious.”
“It wasn’t obvious. You just have talents you choose to use for evil.” Fallon had won awards for codebreaking things in school and maths competitions; she’d been some type of mathematical genius who’d decided to go into medicine rather than research or whatever maths people did.
“I cleaned your coffee machine out and filled it with new beans. It was about to stop working because neither you nor Harriet even attempt to service it. Which is a shame, because it’s the only thing servicing you at the moment.”
“Which beans did you use?”
“Blue Mountain. They were about to go out of date and why are you worried about it? You drink two coffees a week. I left you some tea bags too, something I picked up from Harrods.” She sounded grumpy, but she wasn’t really. Fallon’s love language was pretending to be standoffish and doing nice things for her friends as a surprise. She hated to be thanked.
