Serenading her in the middle of the night wasn’t Tom’s first attempt at getting Sophie back. There was the “accidental message” that wasn’t meant for her.
I’m honestly so touched that you think I’m the sexiest man you’ve ever seen and you’re desperate to take me out for dinner and then take me back to yours, but I’m not over my ex. Sorry x
It had seemed genius at 3:00 a.m. after a night out with his best mate, Ralph, and at least seven too many pints, but upon waking he very quickly realized it was not the subtle “whoops that wasn’t for you” he’d intended and in fact quite a blatant made-up message purely for Sophie’s benefit. He hadn’t deleted it though, just in case it had the desired effect and prompted a reply. It hadn’t.
Then there was the running at the wall to injure the side of his arm and the posting of an immediate selfie on Instagram with the captionIs anyone close to Homerton Hospital A&E?To her credit, Sophie called so fast upon seeing that one that he hadn’t had time to think of a lie as to how he’d injured himself and so when she asked if he was okay, he just responded that he was fine and had run into a wall, at which point she sighed and said, “Oh, Tom,” and he hung up before any further sympathy (pity) could be offered.
He was over those desperate acts now. In fact, he was almost envious of that version of himself. At leasthehad had some contact with Sophie. At least he was alert and focused and woke up with a plan every day. At least he woke up in the morning, which meant he was somehow sleeping through the night, rather than his eyes pinging open at 2:00 a.m. Tom definitely preferred that version of himself to the one today, three months later. The one whose enthusiasm for life in general was hovering just above zero, rising only slightly when the neighbor’s cat appeared uninvited on his balcony and Tom fed it tuna and called it his ex-girlfriend’s name.
After a week of waking at two in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep, Tom decided to get up and leave the flat. He’d kicked his feet, thrown off the blanket, sworn at himself and even smacked himself hard in the head as the empty space beside him in bed seemed to mock him, along with the deafening silence of his flat. He pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, opened the front door and was met with the pleasantly cool air that precedes a hot summer’s day. Way too early for it to be stifling, but warm enough to feel comforting, and God, thereliefto see life outside his four walls. The odd person walking the street. Cars, lorries and buses passing on the road. People up and about as though it weren’t such an unpleasant hour to be awake, after all.
The N73 bus pulled up at the stop outside Angel that day as Tom approached it and before he really thought too hard about what he was doing, he just climbed on it, immediately surprised by how alive it was with people. Two women in headscarves talking loudly at the back, one woman with long blond hair heavily invested in something on her phone, a young guy with headphones in and a baseball cap on, head pressed against the window, fast asleep. Tom took an empty seat, embracing this new world he’d discovered as the bus moved slowly through the streets lit up by streetlamps, merrily talking to its passengers through a speaker in a cheery female voice as it approached each stop. The air was stale with a light scent of worn leather and the odd whiff of alcohol or cigarettes as a new passenger stepped on. Every time the bus pulled away and Tom could hear the tires moving on the road, he felt relief. He was going somewhere, and it didn’t really matter where. At least when he was on that bus, it stopped him from staring at the ceiling, guessing the job of Sophie’s next boyfriend.
It was one of the things he thought Sophie loved about him: his job. It was cool. It paid well. It took him to exciting places that he could take her to as well. But that made it worse—that she could love that he was a photographer, and still not stay with him. It meant that everything else about him had to be totally unbearable. Yup. That was him. He was unbearable.
Here he was at the bus stop again and the season had changed and the air had cooled, but otherwise everything was pretty much the same, right down to some of the same passengers waiting on the hard red plastic bench. It had become such an important part of Tom’s routine that on the very odd occasion that he slept past 4:00 a.m. and missed the bus, he woke up feeling like his day was off-kilter. The bus pulled up and the double doors opened. He tapped his card and walked toward the same seat that always seemed to be free, putting some distance between him and theonly other person who was always on the same bus—the blonde woman whose head was always buried in her phone. He threw his backpack down on the seat and moved along to the window, opening his well-worn copy ofOrlandoby Virginia Woolf.
The N73 moved slowly through the streets as the sky lightened by soft shades and the roads got mildly busier, the closer to King’s Cross they got. Farther still and the blonde woman got off as more people got on. The chatter grew louder and outside the window rain started to gently fall, smattering against the glass.
His phone lit up with a message and, as always, he hoped to see Sophie’s name. But he didn’t.
Bollocks. Gary Newman has died. Any chance you can take Martha to school?
He checked his watch. He had a shoot mid-morning—an advert for a popular coffee brand—but if he went home now, he could grab his equipment and head straight there.
No problem! On my way.
That was a shame. He loved Gary Newman inTerminator.
“Thanks for coming,” Tom’s dad’s wife, Laura, said when he arrived at their home in Hampstead just before 8:00 a.m. He refused to call her his stepmum for the simple reason that she was, at thirty-eight, only six years older than him, and that was sickening enough without having to give her a “mother” title.
It always gave him mild PTSD to return to this house, where he’d spent the first week after his breakup lying in the top bunk of his little sister, Martha’s bedroom, his feet dangling over the end as he stared up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, pondering how his life had fallen apart so spectacularly.
“Not a problem,” he said, nodding and scuffing his feet on the mat. “I live for a crisis alert message.”
Laura led him along the hallway and into the brightly lit family kitchen.
“There she is,” he said, his face lighting up with genuine delight as he took in his half sister sitting at the kitchen table with two pieces of toast slathered in peanut butter and a book on Pokémon beside her. Martha’s dark brown hair was tied back in a plait, but somehow she already looked like she’d lived a whole week in that hairstyle, one entire section already having escaped, making a break for freedom toward her chin.
He bent down, fixing his gaze on the toast and started making pig noises before picking up a piece and shoveling it into his mouth. Martha threw her head back and laughed, copying him.
Laura looked over and tilted her head slightly, smiling. It was a thank-you that Tom met with his smallest smile in return. They’d never been close, but the indifference had turned into something closer to icy dislike since he and Sophie had broken up. More accurately since, on The Worst Day, he had seen Laura leaving his flat moments before Sophie then ended things with him. Now he did his best to engage with her as little as possible, but for his six-year-old sister, he had all the time in the world. In particular when it came to her eating, because Martha did not like to eat anything that wasn’t pure sugar. Not without force, or coercion, or the threat of her very much older brother stealing it from her.
“Where’s Dad?” Tom asked, pulling out the chair beside Martha.
“Staying with Glenn while he recovers from his hip replacement,” Laura replied, a smile playing on her lips.
“The joys of the older man,” Tom muttered.
“Dad had to wipe Glenn’s butt,” Martha said, giggling through her mouthful of toast.
Laura rolled her eyes. “I see your father’s been letting youwatch those American cartoons again. We don’t say butt, we say bottom, or bum. Anyway, he didn’t, sweetheart, you misunderstood what Daddy was saying on FaceTime.” Laura attempted to wrangle Martha’s loose strands back into her plait. “And I’d rather it isn’t the first thing you tell Miss Knight when Tom drops you off today.”
“I’m going to,” Martha said, a cheeky smile breaking across her face.
“If you don’t, I will,” Tom added, so the smile turned into laughter.
“Right. Got to go. Gary Newman is literally going to ruin my day. May he rest in peace.The Beatreaders love him. Tom—thank you,” Laura said, bending down to kiss Martha on the head. “And I’ll seeyoulater. Don’t let her run, please. Her asthma’s been bad this week. And make sure she wears a coat.”
