“Sounds even better,” Clara said, giving Daisy a warm smile that told her all was forgiven. It was forgiven, and that meant the wedding was still going ahead. “Now there’s one thing we haven’t discussed, and it’s urgent,” she added.
Daisy’s heart sunk again. She wasn’t sure she could face anything else.
“You are having a hen party. It’s the rules of weddings. Me. You. Weekend away. This weekend. It is not optional.”
Since the job had been removed, Daisy was trying to do more investigative work in her day job and she’d realized how many more stories were out there than the ones she’d been reporting on. She was hunting down leads from Instagram quotes, seemingly innocuous TikTok videos, or from one sentence in an interview. It turned out that if you dug beneath the surface, there was always more to what people were saying. It was a bit like Tom had been trying to do with his exhibition about happiness. He was encouraging people not to take things at face value.
As she rode the N73 to work, windows steamed up from the January cold outside, she was searching through social media for clues after rumors one of the cast members ofEastEndershad been fired. The grounds under which it had happened and which cast member it was were yet to be announced, but Daisy was sure that with enough digging, she could find them. She started looking through each of the actors’ profiles, checking who they were following and who was following them. Which other actors had recently liked their photos. Her heart beat more quickly as she saw that one of the main actors wasn’t following theEastEnderspage, nor, it seemed, was he following any of the cast.
She started reading comments under Instagram stories aboutthe rumors and sure enough she could see that the same actor was liking any about how unfair or unjust it all sounded. She sent him a quick message from the Entertainment Now! profile, asking if he was willing to speak to them. It was worth a try. She kept searching too, just in case.
She was, in fact, so deeply invested in being the first to discover the identity of this actor, that she didn’t even notice when the bus pulled into Angel and drove off again until a voice interrupted her thoughts.
“Hello, stranger.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Tom
All of it was true. He did have a job that day. He did have to get up early. It did make more sense for him to get the bus to Euston at that time in the morning. Or, it made as much sense as taking the free taxi thatVoguehad offered him, but no one needed to know that.
He’d left Sophie sleeping in his bed and he was grateful she was asleep so she didn’t pick up on his nervous energy as he got ready to leave. He’d hardly slept at all, as all night he kept imagining how it would feel to step onto that bus again, like old times.
Tom and Daisy still hadn’t spoken, and there was a chance she wouldn’t even be on the bus. That she took another job, or she had a day off, or she’d won the lottery and took Ubers these days. Any number of reasons meant Tom was preparing himself for the fact he might not see her, but his body wasn’t really getting on board with that. His body was buzzing with anticipation at the notion of seeing her. Just as his friend. His friend who he missed. His friend who he’d got used to seeing every day who had suddenly disappeared completely from his life, making him feel a bit empty.
Tom had felt a little like that ever since Christmas too—empty. At first he put it down to Martha’s wish (why did she keep saying he was sad when he didn’t think he was?) to Sophie being so in awe of how he’d saved Daisy, the way he knew she would have been. To easing himself into this new relationship with his ex-girlfriend, where everything was the same. Same, but different. He had it on the edge of his tongue at all times. How had she gone from being so certain he wasn’t right for her to so certain he was? What had changed, and how sure was she it would stay that way?
As Tom saw the bus pulling up, he started kicking his feet against the ground. He didn’t dare look through the window to see if he could see her. She wasn’t the only reason he was taking the bus, he had to keep assuring himself. Job. Early. Euston. Bus easier.
It was annoyingly busy, and a few people pushed in front of Tom before he finally stepped on, using his card to pay. The queue gathered ahead of him and Tom kept trying to lean around them to get a view down the aisle, tapping his foot as he waited. Eventually the people dispersed and he scanned the heads, his pulse quickening as he caught sight of her. He was—what?—disheartened, maybe, to see that she didn’t even look up. That she’d stopped checking for him. That she’d given up on him so easily. Instead she was staring down at her phone, her eyes fixed on the screen as she bit down on the corner of her bottom lip. A smile broke across Tom’s face as he noticed that actually, nothing much had changed at all, because she was still in one of her five rotating outfits. His favorite. The black jacket and white T-shirt. Once he got closer, he knew she’d also be wearing the faded black denim jeans that she paired it with. White trainers if it was slightly warmer. Black boots if it wasn’t.
Black boots, he noted, as he reached her.
“Hello, stranger,” he said, wondering too late if that was too creepy a first greeting after so long. He watched her shoulderslift slightly as though he’d caught her by surprise. Which, actually, he probably had. He put his heavy backpack down on the ground and watched as she turned to look at him, a smile breaking across her face so her dimples appeared and her eyes brightened. A rush filled his body, making it hard to breathe for a second. There she was. He hadn’t realized until now how familiar her face had become to him.
“Hello,” she said, and her voice wrapped around him like a hug. It had always lifted him to hear her speak but it seemed different, somehow. A little more flat. She tapped the seat beside her and shifted across, closer to the window to make space for him.
Moving his backpack between the seats, he sat beside her. “Is it weird if I...” He reached an arm up and she smiled, leaning into his hug and resting her hand on his back.
“It’s good to see you,” he said. “What are the chances?” He looked across at her then, grinning, and she rolled her eyes.
“Little old predictable Daisy is still riding the bus to work, so I’d say... high.” The bus let out a rumble as it pulled away from its stop, as though it agreed with her.
“You’re far from predictable,” he said, and she tilted her head slightly to one side, watching him. He was trying to read her. Was she happy to see him? Had it impacted her day in any way that he had got the bus today? From the way she hadn’t looked up and how she’d casually moved toward the window to make space for him, he suspected not. He wasn’t expecting that.
Her phone lit up and he saw that she’d changed the picture from a sunset to a photo of her and Zack, faces pressed together.
“How are the wedding plans coming along?” he asked, pointing to her phone, as a man behind him started to hum along, more loudly than was necessary, to whatever was playing in his headphones.
“Actually, good,” she said. “I think it might come together in time, which is a relief.”
Tom laughed. “You say that as if it was all out of your control.”
“It sort of felt like it was, but I don’t really know why.”
He forgot she did this, gave him such honest responses to any statement he made. It always made him feel like he owed her the same in return.
“I know what you mean. It’s hard to remember that we’re responsible for our own lives. Sometimes it’s just easier to wait for other people to tell us what to do, or to do it for us, or to make the decision so we don’t have to.” Tom didn’t even know he felt like that until he said the words out loud. Daisy always did this to him. Got him to speak about the things he was hiding, even from himself.
