The breakfast nook was the one part of the house that felt completely finished. A built-in banquette ran along the bay window, upholstered in a green linen Diwa had agonised over for two evenings before giving up and letting the designer pick. The table was a slab of pale oak. Diwa steered Colin towards the bench with a host’s flourish.
“Sit, sit. The light’s nice in here in the mornings, when there’s any. I’ve been told the sun situation gets better in May, but I don’t know if I’m being lied to. I don’t think I’ve seen the sun in five days. So I’ve ordered myself a light therapy box.”
“What’s a light therapy box?”
Diwa lit up. “It’s, okay, it’s basically a small panel that puts out ten thousand lux of full-spectrum light, and you sit in front of it for about thirty minutes in the morning, and it tricks your circadian rhythm into thinking you’ve had proper sun exposure. The clinical evidence for SAD is genuinely strong, like, meta-analysis level strong. There’s a serotonin pathway involvement, but the bigger lever is melatonin suppression in the morning, which —”
He caught Colin’s face. “It’s a lamp,” he said. “I bought a lamp. And I sit in front of it every day, so I don’t get cranky.”
“Right.” Colin sat. He set his bag on the floor by his feet, and watched Diwa get to work.
The alpha turned to the kitchen island and started assembling things. Spirulina powder, frozen banana, a knob of ginger, oat milk, and ice. The blender had cost six hundred quid and made a noise as loud as a small jet on take-off. Diwa loved it unreasonably.
“So I literally just got here,” he said, over his shoulder, dropping ice into the jug. “Like, a week ago. From California, originally. Well, I mean, originally from Manila, then Californiafor the last six years, and now here. I lived here before, actually, when I was six. Not in this house, obviously, my mother was doing her PhD at LSE. The house was meant to be done by the time I landed, only obviously it isn’t, as you’ve, um, observed.”
“Mm,” Colin said.
“So I’ve got this serviced flat in Marylebone in the meantime, which is fine, it’s perfectly fine, it’s just that they put a fruit basket in every three days whether I want one or not, and the pineapples are aninsult. I grew up onproperpineapples. Anyway. The contractors keep telling me it’ll be another two weeks, and I’ve decided I no longer believe in the concept of two weeks as a unit of time. It’s like dog years. British contractor weeks.”
He hit the blender. Over the noise of it, he watched Colin sitting with his hands resting easy on the table, taking in the room.
“You here for work, then?” Colin asked.
Diwa poured the smoothie into a glass. It came out the colour of pond water, glugging out thickly.
“No. No, no.” He brought the glass over and set it down in front of Colin with a small flourish. “I’m taking a break, actually.”
“Oh?” Colin picked up the glass and frowned at it. “How long for?”
Diwa opened his mouth to give the answer he’d been giving people at parties in Palo Alto, the one about a sabbatical so he could return recharged in Q3. None of it came out. He shrugged instead. “I’m sort of winging it,” he said.
Colin took a sip of the smoothie. His face didn’t move.
“Hmm,” he said. He set the glass down with great care. “Must be nice. To be able to step away like that.”
Diwa’s smile froze for just a beat. Then he went on. “Yeah, yeah. I’m doing a lot of yoga. There’s a Mysore-style placein Marylebone that opens at six, and I’ve been going most mornings. And I’ve been trying breathwork. The Wim Hof protocol, mostly, though I’m experimenting with box breathing for the afternoons. And I bought a reformer.”
Colin’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. “A what?”
“A reformer. It’s a Pilates thing. It looks a bit like a torture rack, but with springs. It’s brilliant for posterior chain activation, especially if you spend a lot of time at a desk, which I have, historically.” Diwa grinned. “It’s being delivered next week, assuming the contractors have given me a room to put it in by then. And I’m journaling a lot.”
“Journaling,” Colin repeated.
“Three pages every morning, longhand. There’s a method called Morning Pages, it’s from this book. Anyway, it gets the emotional gunk out, you know? Clears the channel.”
Colin’s nose twitched. He pushed the glass another inch away from him and looked at Diwa for a long, considered moment.
“I’ll take a hundred quid,” he said.
Diwa blinked. “Oh — I thought we were going with the smoothie!”
Colin shook his head. “It’s not cutting it. I’ll take the hundred. For trying it.”
“Right. Yes. Of course.” Diwa was already up, crossing back to where he’d left his wallet on the kitchen island. He fished the note out and brought it over with both hands, like a man presenting a passport at a hostile border patrol. Colin took it, folded it once, and tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket without ceremony.
“Let me get you a glass of water at least, before you go. Just to wash that down. I should’ve offered earlier, sorry.” Diwa was at the sink before Colin could say no, running the tap until it went cold. “The water’s actually really nice here. I had it tested when I moved in, because the pipes in some of these houses arestill lead, did you know that? Anyway, this one’s fine. Soft, low mineral content.”
He set the glass down in front of Colin, who picked it up and drank half of it in one go.
