“Dan and I did have some and then I got a bit more in my early twenties...” She thought about how to phrase the next bit. “I probably ended it too soon,” she said. “Maybe I should think about some more.”
As if he were a mind reader, Daisy’s phone lit up with a message from Zack. She opened it immediately.
Babe, can we talk about the lunch budget? EIGHTEEN pounds on fish and chips!! That’s a cover for a chair on the wedding day.
“Maybe we shouldalsothink about a second glass of wine?” Clara said as Daisy turned her phone over, her cheeks burning hot.
Chapter Four
Tom
The last thing Tom wanted to see on his bus journey was three drunk men, sitting on the back row laughing at all their own jokes. They were the type of men who destroyed the reputation of good guys. He wasn’t going to say “good guys like him” because, well, he wasn’t a total knob. But they just made men in general look bad, these pissed wankers who, even at 4:00 a.m., found themselves the most interesting people in the room. Or, in this case, on the bus.
It wasn’t like Tom wasn’t used to it. He’d photographed enough actors and male models to know that men who showed an interest in other people were a rare breed. Take the guy yesterday for example. He held up the entire shoot because he insisted on getting every member of the team to vote on each photo of him before he chose a favorite. Those men who cared were like Bill Nighy—one of the most loved British actors in the last century. Why? Because he stopped to talk to fans. He asked them questions. He laughed with them, and once he’d been pictured standing still in the middle of the road with his eyes closed, just to feel the sun on his face. The world needed more Billy Nighys.
If Tom could escape the editorial world, he would. He’dgone into it because it paid well and he and Sophie were saving for their dream home in Hampstead—a fixer-upper close to the park. Together, they’d make it their forever home.
“I just need some decent acting jobs,” Sophie would say. “A few big adverts.”
“I’ll take on more editorial work,” Tom promised. “It pays better. We’ll get there.”
They’d get giddy with excitement at the thought of their life together in one of those houses. Sometimes Tom would take a photo of Sophie outside one of them, just in case it became theirs in the future. He imagined years later, showing the photo to their kids. “Here’s Mummy outside this house a decade before it was ours. We didn’t even know we’d own it one day.”
Tom squeezed his eyes shut at the memory and turned toward the window, resting his forehead against the glass, flashes of light from the roadside appearing and disappearing as the bus rolled onward. One of the drunk men shouted, “Ooooh. She’s touchy!” to the very sober woman who sat in front of them. The one who was always on the bus.
He hadn’t told Sophie that the day he’d got home from work early on The Worst Day, and she’d really calmly turned to him with a cup of tea in her hand and told him that she couldn’t “do this anymore” was the day he planned to ask her to marry him. It was a secret he kept to himself and would only remind himself of when the pain felt just about bearable, kickstarting the stabbing sensation all over again. He’d printed, in black-and-white, his favorite photographs that he’d taken of her since the day they met, starting with the one of her leaping in the air on the beach in Byron Bay in denim shorts and a crop top, before he even knew he would one day love her. Sophie with ice cream on the end of her nose, leaning toward the camera, laughing. Sophie blowing a kiss at Tom on some blustery walk in Wales, hair wind-blown at an angle with flushed cheeks andbright eyes. Sophie, head in her hands next to a half-collapsed tent before they’d gotten really good at camping. Sophie dressed in ski gear beside a rental car Tom had off-roaded into snow in Iceland. Their entire journey together, right up to the one he’d taken of her the day before their breakup, lying in bed readingOrlandowith the sun shining through the window and casting half her face in shadow. The final photo he’d printed was of himself, down on one knee, holding a ring box. He’d asked his best mate, Ralph, to take it on his day off and Ralph had willingly agreed and taken about one hundred and fifty photos from different angles for Tom to choose from.
Tom was going to ask Sophie to pop out for something that evening, and then trail the photos all the way through the flat he owned in Angel, ending with the final one of him on the balcony. The balcony was the reason they fell in love with the flat and the reason why Tom spent more of his savings than he’d wanted to on the deposit. Their home made Sophie so happy she’d sing in the mornings when she woke up, before she’d even had a coffee, and when Sophie was happy, Tom’s world shone with a dazzling light that he’d never experienced before.
That’s why he found life so hard now. The light had been switched off.
A sudden screeching sound tore Tom from thoughts of Sophie, before a loud puffing noise came from somewhere near the back. The next second he was thrown forward on his seat as the driver steered to a juddering halt at the side of the road. Steam started pouring past the window and Tom flung his head up to look at the other passengers in confusion before the bus driver’s door opened.
“Everyone off,” he called, and Tom immediately jumped up, wiping the condensation off the window to peer out onto the street. He couldn’t tell exactly where they’d stopped. The pavement was empty and lit up by stark streetlamps. The bus stopnearby featured three framed posters, all advertising the same thing—some club night in Camden somewhere. They could be anywhere. Tom followed the driver from the bus, zipping up his brown coat as he stepped off. The air felt fresh and cool against his face and he looked around, unsure what he should do. He could just cross over and get on the same bus going back the other way, but the road was empty. There was no other bus stop in sight.
The blonde woman he saw on the bus every morning came next and then, unfortunately, the three men who had been shouting and rolling around at the back.
All of them stood there, surveying the steaming bus and waiting for any further information. The driver lit a cigarette and held his phone to his ear.
The woman who stepped off after Tom checked her watch. She seemed to have a small circulation of outfits; he’d noticed over the weeks—months now, he supposed—of sharing the N73. Today she was dressed in dark blue jeans and a white T-shirt, with a navy jacket over the top. Her sun-kissed blond hair fell in waves around her shoulders. She had a variety of different jackets she wore a lot, and they suited her, Tom thought. Would that be a weird thing to say out loud to her?
From somewhere nearby, a loud, booming laugh filled the air.
“Are we... waiting here a while?” Tom asked the driver who had just ended his call. He asked it more on the woman’s behalf than his own. She seemed anxious.
“Waiting for someone to come out and check it over,” the driver replied. “There’ll be another bus along soon enough.”
They all looked toward the electronic timetable. The next bus was in twenty-eight minutes.
The woman swore under her breath and began typing furiously into her phone.
“I can probably get to know youverywell in twenty-eightminutes,” said one of the passengers who had been at the back. He was tall and stocky with a wide nose and a shaved head—a rugby player, Tom would bet—and he sidled up toward the woman. She looked up, at first unsure who he was talking to, and when she realized it was her, Tom watched her shoulders droop. “In fact, I’ve been known to do a lot of things quite well in less time.”
His two mates started laughing and walked over to join him.
“One minute, even,” the only one with any hair said, running a hand through it as if to make a point. “If you’re lucky.”
The woman stepped a bit farther away, but Tom saw her eyes widen slightly as she did so.
