Somewhere Only We Know (17 page)

And despite the constant pleading from her friends to get out of it, this had been Caro’s life for the past eight months. Because despite all evidence to the contrary, despite being told otherwise by absolutely everyone she knew and despite knowing somewhere deep in her own heart that she would never be the exception to the rule, Caro wanted to believe that one day Monty would leave his wife for her.

“He’s never going to leave his wife for me,” Caro wailed, wedging herself as small as possible into the corner of Nadia’s sofa. She was the very embodiment of woe: ratty strands of dark hair sticking to her wet cheeks, a handful of already half-sodden tissues clenched in one fist.

Nadia placed a steaming mug of Caro’s favourite extra-strong green tea on the coffee table in front of her.

“Of course he’s not going to leave his wife,” she said, not unkindly. “They never do.”

“Sometimes they do,” Caro insisted, despite herself.

Nadia launched into her usual script; they’d been having this same conversation for the last half a year. “And what if he did? What then? Could you ever have a proper relationship with him, ever trust him, knowing that he’d cheated on his wife like that?”

“I don’t know,” Caro admitted miserably. “But it’s a moot point anyway because
he’s not going to leave his wife.”

“No,” Nadia agreed, sadly, taking a sip of Caro’s tea herself. “He’s not.”

Alex

Alex frowned slightly, opening the Outlook ribbon and clicking Send and Receive, just to check that there were no emails pending somewhere or other waiting to get in to his inbox. Right in the middle of a very animated conversation about films they thought were severely overrated Nadia had disappeared on him, leaving him alone with his exceedingly boring afternoon in the office.

Alex sighed and turned his attention to the pile of applications and forms he had to process and separate, as well as log onto their systems. It was the usual: student visa applications, extension requests, notifications about over-stayers; human beings reduced to the information you could fit onto one A4 piece of paper. And Alex couldn’t help but wonder how much longer he could do this job.

He’d toyed with the idea of quitting on and off for years now; after all, the Home Office was only ever meant to be a stop-gap, a nice little entry to jumpstart his CV and to allow him to begin paying off his eye-watering student loan. But for whatever reason, he never actually seemed to get around to job-hunting. And now the promotion he’d been working overtime for all summer had gone to a girl who had only started working in his department the year before. He just didn’t display the passion for it, was Donnelly’s blunt feedback, as he’d scratched the paunch straining against his TM Lewin shirt in a bored fashion, like it didn’t even matter. And the thing was, it actually didn’t.

Not everyone could be passionate about their jobs, Alex used to think. Not everyone could have a calling: be a teacher or a doctor or something useful to society. Alex got up and went to work every day simply because otherwise he’d have no way of paying his rent, and that was that. And then he had met Nadia, somebody who had so much passion for everything she did that she was almost exhausting; she was passionate about London, passionate about her volunteer work, passionate about making him into a better person.

“Not a better person,” she’d corrected him when he’d told her that, shaking her head empathically as she spoke. “Not
better
. Not a
different person
. Just more
you
.”

Alex’s thoughts wandered to his upper arm, remembering the buzz and sting of the tattooist’s needle there all those years ago. He’d been meaning to get an appointment and get all that sorted out for years; yet another entry on that mental to-do list that he was never going to get around to. Mainly because it was Nadia’s to-do list was all-encompassing these days. Alex smiled at the thought, wondering what could possibly be next on her agenda.

But he didn’t remember there being any rule that stated Nadia had to set
all
the activities.

Hey, you,
he opened up a new email window to type.
I was thinking and I’ve realised that there’s something that you’ve definitely not experienced before that I can help with. When do you next have a spare six hours?

Nadia

Holly, bless her, had not stopped to ask questions when she’d come out of work to a voicemail from Nadia which perfunctorily instructed her to pick up several boxes of Party Rings biscuits and a large bottle of dark rum. She’d just done as she was told.

The rum had been polished off even quicker than the biscuits. After that, Holly had stepped up and pulled several dusty bottles of expensive red wine out from under her bed; her office had given her one every Christmas in lieu of a bonus for years. The empty bottles joined that of the rum in the plastic recycling box; all three girls’ lips were stained purple in the corners.

The combination of sugar and alcohol had done the trick; Caro was no longer crying. Instead she was that sombre sort of silent, staring into the dark depths of her wine glass as if she could see her future in it if she just tried hard enough.

“You just need to cut him out of your life now,” Nadia insisted. “See this as the opportunity it is. A kick up the arse.”

“How can I avoid him? He’s my fucking teacher,” Caro moaned.

Holly and Nadia exchanged a look. “When is this course over?” Holly asked.

“January.”

“Ahhh.” Holly took a tactful sip from her wine glass rather than commenting further.

“You’re going to have to see him tomorrow. He’s got your house keys, for crying out loud,” Nadia pointed out.

“I bet I’ll find a manila envelope in my departmental pigeonhole tomorrow with my stuff inside it,” Caro sighed. “That seems more his style.”

“His ‘style’ is being an absolute arsehole,” Nadia retorted, the hours of heavy drinking making her tongue loose and her words harsh. “His ‘style’ is
having his cake and eating it too
, that’s what his flipping ‘style’ is.”

Holly’s forehead creased in drunken confusion. “Wait, wait. Is Caro the ‘cake’ or the ‘too’ in this situation?”

“That’s not the point!” Nadia declared, waving her wine glass dramatically in Caro’s face as she did. “The point is, you shouldn’t have to put up with it. Why you have for so long,
I don’t know
.”

“Because I love him,” whined Caro, causing both Nadia and Holly to instantaneously roll their eyes.

“But
why?
” Holly pressed.

“I guess that’s something that
I
don’t know,” Caro admitted, rolling her head back against the plush back of the sofa. “Love is an absolute shitter,” she concluded, petulantly.

“You’re sort of making me glad I’m a professional singleton,” Holly sighed. “Come on, you girls are meant to give me hope in true love, not utterly destroy my faith in it.” She turned to Nadia. “Please tell me how great things are going between you and Matt and how your future is full of marriage and babies and puppies before I slit my metaphorical wrists.”

Nadia fidgeted awkwardly. “I keep telling you and telling you. Matt and I are just casual. In fact, I’m thinking of breaking it off…”

Caro gasped and sat forward, immediately distracted from her own woe. “Well, whatever you do, don’t bloody do it before your court hearing.”

“You see this, Hols?” Nadia pointed at Caro with the hand that was holding her glass, causing the wine within to slosh alarmingly. “
This
is why romance is dead.”

“This isn’t about romance, this is about being practical,” Caro retorted. “The perfect
British
boyfriend with the
exact
name fell into your lap at
precisely
the right time and has remained there ever since. The sod might as well have Golden Ticket stamped across his face.”

“I hate myself a bit for it, but I agree with Caro, Nads…” Holly admitted.

“The universe saw you were in need and the stars aligned and sent him to you,” Caro continued, characteristically theatrical.

“Okay, I don’t agree with that…” Holly added quickly.

Caro sighed. “I used to think that the universe had brought Monty and I together…”

“I think there’s something in all of that, you know,” Nadia interjected quickly, half to distract and half to console Caro. “NOT about you and Monty,” she frowned, “but the whole
people come into your life for a reason
thing. Think about it,” she insisted, ignoring Holly’s doubtful expression. “If your parents hadn’t been going through that messy divorce, then you wouldn’t have been sent to our school, right?”

Holly rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, that’s right. Bring up my painful childhood; unwanted by my parents! Shunted off to boarding school…”

“And if my grandfather hadn’t died when he did, my parents wouldn’t have had the money to send me to the UK for my education,” Nadia continued, warming to her theme. “And we would
never have met
.” Nadia took advantage of the dramatic pause to liberally top up everyone’s wine glass.

“And then us two wouldn’t have met at uni,” Caro pointed out. “And I wouldn’t be sitting here, far too drunk for a Tuesday…”

“Not knowing Nadia wouldn’t mean you’d never meet Monty the Pervy Professor, I’m afraid,” Holly pointed out. “You’d still be stuck with that. But you wouldn’t have such attractive and accommodating drinking company, as well as access to several bottles of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.” Holly and Nadia chinked their glasses together in a toast to themselves.

“But who’s to say in this alternate universe Monty didn’t leave his wife for me?” Caro pointed out, eyes gleaming. “Or – even better – was never married in the first place!”

Holly placed her glass down on the coffee table in exasperation. “Talk about a dog with a bone,” she muttered under her breath.

“Isn’t it scary? How easy it could be to be living a different life..? Sit next to a different girl at school when you’re eleven; balls up a job interview at eighteen; marry the wrong guy at thirty.” Nadia considered the depths of her wine glass. “Do you remember, Hols, how that night at the Bellevue quiz, we refused at first when they wanted us to be moved to that other team?”

Holly looked at her curiously. “Yeah.”

“See what I mean? Such a simple thing. If two other people had gone over to Alex’s table instead of us that evening, I’d never have met him.”

“Nadia.” Holly sat forward as she spoke; Nadia winced at the formality of her full name being used. “About Alex. Usual disclaimer: I'm only saying this because I love you. I think that it’s this little Stockholm Syndrome crush you’ve got going on for him that’s impacting on your relationship with Matt.”

“Stockholm Syndrome?” Nadia echoed, incredulously. “He hasn’t
kidnapped
me.”

Holly gestured dismissively. “Either way round.”

“Well, I haven’t kidnapped him either!” Nadia immediately argued. “I dared him to come to a couple of random places with me. It’s not like I locked him in my basement.”

“Well, you live in a mansion block,” Caro pointed out, gravely. Holly and Nadia looked confused. “As in, you don’t have a basement,” she clarified.

“Even if I happened to have a basement, kidnapping random men and locking them inside it wouldn’t exactly be my first thought,” Nadia pointed out, scathingly.

“Daddy keeps wine in his basement,” Caro added brightly, following the mention by topping up everyone’s drink once more, despite the fact that Nadia had just done so, and that she'd clearly already had enough.

“If there’s wine in it, doesn’t that make it a cellar?” queried Holly, picking up her glass to take another drink the moment that Caro had stopped pouring.

“Anyway,” Nadia said, belatedly, “I don’t have ‘a crush’ on Alex. I’m not fifteen.” She scowled at Holly, who graciously ignored it.

“Nadia and Alex, sittin’ in a tree,” Caro sung to herself, delightedly. “K, I, S, S, I, N, G…”

“Nads. You forget how well I know you,” Holly continued. “And I knew you when you were fifteen. You are crushing. Hard.”

“I have to admit, I’ve picked up on this too. The chemistry between you two the other night. You are totally crushing,” Caro declared, matter-of-factly.

“And it’s alright to be, you know,” Holly added. “I like Alex. He’s grown on me.”

“Yeah, I totally see it. He’s quite hot. You know, in a geeky way,” was Caro’s opinion.

“It’s not like that between us,” Nadia insisted. “He’s not interested in me, not in
that
way…”

“Probably because you have a boyfriend?” Holly pointed out bluntly. “And he’s all super-gentlemanly and wouldn’t want to, you know, get called to a duel by Matt because he’s coveted his lady. Or whatever.”

“Okay Hols, is Alex Hugh Grant from the ‘90s or a Victorian duke?” Nadia sighed, “because I don’t think he can be both.”

“Did Hugh Grant ever play a duke?” Caro asked, absently. “It seems like the sort of role he’d play…”

“Either way,” Nadia interrupted impatiently, growing immensely tired of the meandering conversation. “He…” she hesitated, still not remotely comfortable with the idea. “He likes someone else. So that’s that.”

“Not more than he likes you, surely?” Caro scoffed immediately. “He’s like, your biggest fan.”

“He’s always looking at you,” Holly added.

Nadia blanched. “What do you mean, looking at me?” She had a flash of Alex with his face pressed up against the window leering at her and giggled at the image.

“You know, when he’s talking to you. He looks at you.”

Nadia raised her eyebrow. “Oh no,” she intoned, sarcastically. “What a creep.”

“No, no, I know what Holly means,” Caro interjected, readjusting her position on the sofa so that her legs were underneath her; she bounced a little with excitement. “He
looks
at you,” she paused dramatically, “like you
really matter.
”

Nadia couldn’t help but snort with laughter. “That’s sort of the least I’m looking for in a friend, guys,” she giggled.