I left him on the sofa, grabbing my coat from the coat stand and yanking on my boots. Harriet had a scarf and hat near the door and wouldn’t be needing them tonight, so I put those on and took the lift to the ground floor, nodding at the concierge as I headed out.
London was rarely quiet, and tonight was no exception. I passed couples out for an evening walk, maybe heading to a bar or a restaurant. Individuals walking back from work, some still in formal workwear, on phones or checking the screens as they dodged passersby like aliens in an arcade game.
I replayed what Carter had told me, making it make sense. He was marrying Laurie in a matter of weeks. He’d say ‘I do’ to another woman and the idea of that undid all of the work his father had done to repair my heart.
I stopped by the river, pausing to look over the width of the Thames, boats docked, some still sailing. Across the water I could see the Shard, a piece of architecture that had always been my symbol of being near home.
Every one of Carter’s girlfriends had jarred me, right from Lacey Lutterworth when he was sixteen and she was a year older. Back then, he’d been too old anyway. Then there was ClaphamCommon, and suddenly he wasn’t too old and I wasn’t too much of a nerd, but we were on different timelines and too young yet for anyone serious.
But I’d still felt threatened by every girl he’d talked about or I’d met, I’d still made sure they knew just how long me and Carter had been friends.
I was the human female equivalent of a tom cat spraying its territory, or whatever the appropriate animal was. I’d have to look that up.
So why had Carter offered to marry Laurie? She was gorgeous and intelligent – Carter wasn’t the only option, surely?
My head whizzed through a gazillion scenarios, none of them landing right, none of them providing me with the explanation that I probably needed.
I sat down on a bench, watching the river and the thousands of years’ worth of secrets it carried in its current out to sea, a rhythm that was older than the city itself. I wasn’t the first person to sit here, lamenting something that was never quite understood anyway, and I wouldn’t be the last.
Carter was single. He wasn’t going to stay married to Laurie for long. He wouldn’t be divorced; the marriage would be annulled, and I knew enough about family law, learned by osmosis from my own family, to understand how that process worked.
That realisation left me even further adrift.
Because we’d both still be single at the same time. I didn’t doubt that for the first time, we’d both be on the same page of a book we started together long ago. We’d never made a pact about what would happen if both of us were unattached in twenty years’ time, never out loud.
The kiss on Clapham Common.
The phone calls through years, a tether between us. A feeling of unsettlement every time I dated someone new.
The kiss outside, looking over London.
What if it didn’t happen? If he suddenly fell in love with Laurie?
What if it did happen and it didn’t work out?
What if it did?
The Thames was almost black, a swirling tide in which no one except the gulls would swim. It was impossible to see the bottom.
I headed back towards my apartment, slower this time. I’d been gone longer that I’d expected and I half wondered if Carter would still be there, or whether he’d decided I needed more time.
Only he was stubborn, as stubborn as I was, and maybe more of a fool for seeing things through. As I grew closer to the apartment block, close enough to see silhouettes at the windows, at least on the lower floors, I imagined him watching out for me, and I wondered what he’d been thinking while I’d been gone.
And I wondered again why the fuck he’d agreed to marry Laurie.
CHAPTER 14
Carter
Icould smell Rose’s bath stuff even from the living room, could hear the sound of music playing from her bedroom, although I hadn’t noticed it before. She was the first person I’d told about the wedding; as far as I was concerned nobody else needed to know, not from my family anyway. I needed to have a few guests there and someone to act as best man, and I knew how people would judge if they knew it was a favour because what was I getting out of it?
When I’d suggested it, I’d gotten a lot.
I couldn’t sit still and didn’t want to dive into the cesspit of doom scrolling on social media until Rose came back, which I knew would be longer than she’d said because she’d get lost in her thoughts. So I went into the kitchen area and checked the dishwasher. It needed emptying, and if I knew Rose, and Harriet was away, it would be emptied as she needed items and then a stack of dirty dishes would be precariously left next to the sink. Everything was where it was the last time I’d done this, which was more than a couple of years ago, before I’d started my residency in New York. Both she and Harriet were creatures of habit, which somehow worked even though Rose was not the tidiest and Harriet had a place for everything. Plates, bowls,cutlery, mugs – she still had a mug I’d bought for her years ago, a Shakespeare quote about a Rose with any other name.
I left the mug next to the kettle, figuring she wouldn’t finish the beer when she came in. I noticed the pile of books on the dining table, a couple of new hardbacks and a volume of poetry, a bookmark sticking out of it. Rose had always read voraciously, that had been one of the things we’d talked about the way home from school. When I did my exams at sixteen, she’d coached me through one of the set texts, Great Expectations, because I’d not really paid much attention in lessons, thinking about girls instead of what techniques the author had used, and what techniques I could use, more about whichever girl would be at Friday night’s party rather than what I’d use in an exam. Rose had been a good teacher, and at that age, she somehow kept me focused on studying, helping me revise, offering something I’d needed then – friendship.
It hadn’t stayed that way.
