“It sounds stupid, but I pictured you in a big apartment block.”
He hesitates before offering a shy smile. “That’s not stupid—I used to live in one, back when we… first met. Remember?”
“Yes,” I say, blushing. “I remember.”
“I moved here a couple of years ago.”
He slides the key into the front door and heads into a shared hallway, ushering me in and picking up some of the post on the floor addressed to him, before unlocking the door on the right. There’s one other door straight ahead.
“This is just two flats, then?” I ask.
“Yeah, I’m the ground floor and then a guy in his twenties lives in the flat above. He’s great—a real computer geek. He works for Apple. Very handy whenever I have any technical problems.”
He swings open the door and gestures for me to go in ahead. I step inside and am immediately struck by how spacious and tidy it is. Considering the traditional Victorian exterior, it’s very modern, renovated so that the kitchen and living room are open plan, with smart wooden flooring and amazing floor-to-ceiling windows at the back that look onto a small garden.
A light gray corner sofa faces a wide flat-screen TV hanging on the wall above a fireplace that’s been painted dark gray, and there’s a glass coffee table in the middle with an unused three-wick white candle set perfectly in the center of it. Either side of the TV, the walls are lined with shelves of books—and on closer inspection I notice that the books are in alphabetical order according to the author’s surname.
“Some things don’t change,” I murmur under my breath as Ryan goes straight to the fridge.
“What was that?”
“Nothing!” I reply, scanning the shelves. “This place is amazing.”
“Yeah, I got lucky. It belongs to a friend of mine from uni, who moved to New York to set up a new office for his company. He lets me pay mate rates. There’s no way I could afford this on a journalist’s salary. The location is great, too.”
“It really is. And you keep itverytidy.”
He chuckles. “You’ve met my dad, so you know where I get it from now. Let me guess, your flat is a little more… chaotic?”
“It’screative.”
“Much like your desk.”
I tear my eyes away from the books with the intention of following him into the kitchen, where he’s pouring the wine, whensomething catches my eye: a framed newspaper article hanging on the opposite wall near the door. I don’t know how I missed it when I first came in; I was distracted by the big open space, I suppose. But I recognize it straightaway.
“Oh my god!” I exclaim, breaking into a grin as I get up close to admire it. “Ryan!”
“Oh yeah. That,” he says sheepishly, strolling over and placing the two glasses of wine down on the coffee table before coming to stand next to me.
“I can’t believe you still have this. And you got it framed!”
He shrugs. “Yeah, well. It was my first-ever article in a paper. My first-ever byline.”
“Mine too.”
“I know.”
Side by side, we gaze at the framedDaily Bulletinarticle that was published in 2012. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, but there it is, the first time Ryan and I ever had our names in print:
THE BEST PICNIC SPOTS IN LONDON
Compiled by Harper Jenkins and Ryan Jansson
The day this article was published was, I suppose, the day Ryan and I officially became journalists. And it was the day that everything between us fell apart.
AUGUST 2012
The last day of the internship is Wednesday and that’s the day I’m called to Martha’s office. We only interviewed on Friday, but it’s felt like averylong wait to find out whether or not we’ve got the job, which Martha acknowledges as soon as she’s told me that I didn’t get it.
