Somewhere Only We Know
Read Somewhere Only We Know Online
Authors: Erin Lawless
Somewhere Only We Know
ERIN LAWLESS
A division of HarperCollins
Publishers
Harper
Impulse
an imprint of
HarperCollins
Publishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Harper
Impulse
2015
Copyright © Erin Lawless 2015
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Cover design by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
Erin Lawless asserts the moral right
to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are
the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is
entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International
and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
By payment of the required fees, you have been granted
the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access
and read the text of this e-book on screen.
No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted,
downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or
stored in or introduced into any information storage and
retrieval system, in any form or by any means,
whether electronic or mechanical, now known or
hereinafter invented, without the express
written permission of HarperCollins.
Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.
Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780007558322
Version 2015-05-19
Praise for The Best Thing I Never Had
‘Funny and Addictive…If this is Erin Lawless' first book, I can't wait to read her next one!’
Fabulous Magazine (The Sun)
‘Friendships, trust, lies, deceit, love and so much more – a real page-turner for me!!’
Cosmochicklitan
‘A superb debut about complicated ties, betrayal and lies, and one of my favourite books of the year.’
ChickLit Club
‘The Best Thing I Never Had was mind-blowingly good and everyone should read it.’
ChickLitReviews
‘One of the most engaging books I’ve read this year. I loved it.’
Books with Bunny
'A lovely, warm read to snuggle up on the sofa with.'
Novelicious
Моей лучшей подруге
KSENIA
and also,
to LONDON
a home of my heart
People are like cities:
We all have alleys and gardens and secret rooftops and places where daisies sprout between the sidewalk cracks, but most of the time all we let each other see is a postcard glimpse of a skyline or a polished square. Love lets you find those hidden places in another person, even the ones they didn’t know were there, even the ones they wouldn’t have thought to call beautiful themselves.
Hilary T. Smith
Contents
Praise for The Best Thing I Never Had
Alex
The weight Donnelly was putting on was definitely starting to show; his paunch was forced to rest on top of the boardroom table, his straining lower shirt buttons pointing to the ceiling. He looked as though at any minute he was going to start stroking his stomach like a Bond villain with a cat. The new graduate trainee to Alex’s left was enthusiastically taking notes; Alex had stopped bringing a notepad and pen to this sort of meeting after his first six months. He tilted his head to see what he’d missed whilst distracted by Donnelly’s chub.
Attention to detail
, Newbie had jotted down.
Asking the right questions. Adding value to your day
was underlined neatly. The thing that would add most value to his day, Alex thought, was not having this pointless team meeting scheduled for a Friday afternoon.
After a few more motivational mantras, Donnelly released them back to their desks for the final twenty minutes of the working week. Alex shook his mouse to wake up his PC and had to hurriedly smother his office-inappropriate smile at seeing he’d received an email from Lila.
It was only a couple of lines asking him if he fancied spaghetti bolognaise for dinner or if he had other plans. Like he’d have other plans! Seeing Lila was, no exaggeration, the very highlight of his week. Just getting to eat a meal she’d put together, sit with her in companionable silence as they watched a DVD. Being madly in love with someone made the mundane magic.
Then, as usual, his flatmate, Rory, came straight to the front of his mind, putting a bullet in the brain of Alex's enthusiasm. “Hey, Lils,” Alex typed, with a sigh. “Spag bol sounds great! Thank you! What are you and Rory up to this weekend?”
Nadia
Nadia was almost certain the police were coming for her. It made it difficult to relax.
She made herself yet another cup of tea, but that just made her jittery, so most of it went down the sink. She tried to distract herself with a little Facebook stalking, but – for some reason – other people’s lives weren’t as fascinating as they usually seemed. Television was a lost cause since daytime TV made her want to poke her eyes out with a fork, so she ended up just sitting and fretting for hours. By the time Holly got home from work, Nadia was in a right state and had been waiting in the hallway for twenty minutes.
“I’m having second thoughts,” she admitted, without preamble, before Holly had even got fully through the flat door.
Holly arched an eyebrow at her as she kicked off her shoes. “Bit late for that, hun, the stuff’s in the post.”
“I know. I know. But, I was thinking, maybe we can call Royal Mail, or the sorting office, and get them to, sort of, pull it?” she said, hopefully.
Holly’s eyebrow arched higher. “Pull it?”
Nadia waved her hand vaguely. “Yeah. You know, take it out of the system and… return it to sender.”
“’Fraid it doesn’t work like that,” Holly said, moving past her flatmate towards her bedroom. “Don’t worry about it; everything’s going to be fine.”
“But… I’ve lied,” Nadia said, miserably. “On an official document. I could get in some serious trouble over this. Things are bad enough already. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Calm down,” Holly instructed, as she attempted to tame her heat-frizzed hair with a brush and pull it up and away from her flushed face and neck. She'd had a long, hot journey home on the stuffy Tube. “People lie on these things all the time. Besides, I wouldn’t even say you’ve lied, per se.”
“Oh yeah? Well, what would you call it, then?”
Holly considered her response. “You were just a little bit pre-emptive,” she said finally, scooping up an armful of dirty clothes from the hamper in the corner of her bedroom and moving past Nadia into the hallway again.
“Pre-emptive?” Nadia echoed, as she trailed Holly to the kitchen. “How’s that? And stop it with that! I know very well that you only ever do laundry when you’re putting off doing something else.” Holly shot her a guilty expression as she shoved her load into the washing-machine drum. “Seriously, Hol, I am freaking out here.”
“You don’t need to be!” Holly reasserted, standing straight and slamming the drum door shut. “It’s not like you told them you’d been happily married for ten years and are pregnant with your sixth child.
That
would have been a lie.”
“And so just saying that I have a boyfriend is… pre-emptive?” Nadia asked, doubtfully.
“Yup. Anticipatory. A little ahead of yourself.” Holly smiled helpfully.
“More like
way
ahead of myself.”
“Hey, it’s Friday night! If you want a boyfriend so badly, let’s hit the High Street and find you some idiot in a rugby shirt with a popped collar that you can change for the better.”
Nadia sighed. "I've added some stuff to the Netflix list I thought you might like. We could crack on with some of that."
Holly shot her a disparaging look. "I was thinking more along the lines of something where we break up the love affair that is your arse and our couch. Come on. We're going out."
"Ah, Hols, you know I'm broke!" Nadia sighed, flopping dramatically onto said couch. The Home Office had taken away her working visa and her passport nine months ago and she had been existing on a combination of savings, overdrafts and waning parental generosity ever since. “I wouldn’t say no to sharing a bottle of wine from Budgens, though. I think I’ve got a few quid somewhere.”
Holly cocked her head to one side and looked at her friend with exaggerated pity. “Oh, stop it, you’re breaking my heart,” she said, sarcastically. “Go and put some slap on, already. I've been cooped up in that office all week; I'm definitely up to stretching to a few drinks tonight."
Nadia laughed, easily persuaded. “Okay, sounds good. But I will still go and spend my few precious pounds on that bottle; we can drink it while we’re getting ready.”
“Sounds good. But I think I’m on the Mojitos later. I just really fancy a Mojito. Must be the weather.”
“Okay, but please, let’s not wind up in that dive bar again, drinking double-strength Mojitos at four in the morning. You know I had to throw away that top after last time? I loved that top!”
“I make no promises!” Holly laughed. “At four in the morning the liver wants what the liver wants.”
“I guess it wouldn’t do to mess with tradition,” Nadia said thoughtfully; “especially as I am ‘constantly mindful and respectful of historic and cultural traditions’,” she laughed, quoting her recent visa application essay. Holly herself had come up with that particular piece of crap.
“Agreed. A night where we hit Clapham High Street and didn’t over-indulge just wouldn’t be the same. Right! Do you think I'll be way too hot in my skinny jeans?” The cheap Ikea bureau in her bedroom groaned as Holly yanked open one of the drawers.
And Nadia thought it, but didn't say it: this could be one of the last nights that she and Holly ever drank Mojitos together.
Alex
Alex had never had much of a life plan. He had an average grade in a broad subject, which – if anything – opened up too much choice, but the Home Office recruitment booth, decked out in Union Jack bunting, had immediately drawn his attention at that first careers fair. Seduced by aspirations of martinis – shaken, not stirred, naturally – and daydreams of parkouring across Middle Eastern rooftops after bad guys, Alex immediately signed up for their fast-track graduate scheme. Of course, it was just a desk job, the same as any other, and – with the recession double-dipping away – one that turned out to have no career progression, bonuses or benefits. Every year staff were reminded that their relatively low salary should be bolstered by a sense of accomplishment in knowing that they were working for the good of their country, which in the case of Alex’s role seemed to primarily consist of preventing people’s access to it.
Monday morning meant a whole new batch of applications. Almost all of them would be the usual – EU citizens looking for student, or sometimes spousal, visas. All Alex had to do at this point was read through them, making sure the applicant had ticked the right boxes – both literally and figuratively – before sending those who’d got everything right up the management chain.
It was all achingly repetitive – the insincere protestations of patriotism, the stiff Google-translated English, the bored-sounding formal references from companies who’d had the person in for an internship years ago…
“One time, Nadia and I were watching
University Challenge
; the round was politics and she got every question but one absolutely right. How many natural British citizens do you think know that much about their country?”