Somewhere Only We Know (10 page)

“Where’s the best place you’ve ever been?” she asked Alex.

“Bodeans,” he answered, without skipping a beat. Nadia rolled her eyes at him.

“You know very well I mean country, city, that sort of thing.”

Alex rolled his shoulders back and looked up at Nelson atop his column. “I went to Majorca once, with my parents and my little brother,” he answered, deadpan. “Me and Jason spent most of the week trying to find the nudist beach we were sure must be around somewhere.”

“Oh, God! What were you? Ten?” Nadia asked, amused.

“Sixteen and fourteen,” Alex admitted.

“Okay!” Nadia changed the subject. “Well, not to disparage the appeal of the Spanish islands, but Majorca is not an acceptable answer. Anywhere else?”

“Well, what is an acceptable answer, then? But if you start talking about ‘finding yourself’ at dawn on a Caribbean beach or building a well in Africa, I’m calling bullshit.”

Nadia blanched; he was serious. “You’ve never been abroad?” she asked, slowly.

Alex frowned. “I told you, I’ve been to Majorca.”

“I mean, abroad abroad. Somewhere where the local people don’t all speak English and serve chips with every meal.”

Alex looked uncomfortable. “I guess I’m not a travelling sort of person.”

“You’ve never wanted to travel? Even a little bit?” Nadia couldn’t believe it. “Where’s your sense of…” She trailed off – “adventure” didn’t quite cover it. She lapsed into Russian. “
Avantyura
,” she finished, gesturing vaguely. “Have you never, I don’t know, wanted to expand your horizons..?”

“If you
must
know, I was going to take a gap year and do some travelling after I left university,” Alex admitted, looking more and more put upon. “But the person I was meant to go with pulled out at the last minute, so I never went.”

“Why didn’t you go on your own?” Nadia probed.

“There was a lot of stuff going on at the time, okay?” Alex barked, before looking faintly embarrassed at his tone. “It just… wasn’t going to happen. And then I had to get a job, and – trust me – I am nowhere near important enough to ask for a sabbatical off work to go travelling!”

“What about just two weeks in the summer, like the rest of us?
One
week, even!” Nadia insisted.

Alex kept his eyes trained on Nelson. “I don’t know. It just never appealed to me.” He finally turned to look Nadia in the face. “So, is the Spanish Inquisition over now?” he asked, teasingly.

He was lying, of that Nadia was sure; what she wasn’t sure of was why.

"I couldn't not travel," she said, bluntly. And it was true; the fact that she hadn't been able to go anywhere since the Home Office had confiscated her passport was driving her nuts, flat-out itchy with wanderlust. "I've gone somewhere abroad like, twice a year, for as long as I can remember."

"And you wonder why your application for ILR was denied?" Alex muttered darkly.

Nadia pulled herself up short. "What did you say?"

Alex had looked uncomfortable before, but that was nothing compared to how he looked now. "Nothing, nothing," he insisted, immediately. He rubbed the back of his head so that his hair there mussed every which way; she was starting to notice he did that when he was nervous.

"You said something about my Indefinite Leave to Remain being rejected because I travel too much," Nadia pressed. "What makes you say that?"

Alex kept her eye contact, apologetic yet oddly defiant. "Well, obviously I'm just assuming. If you really have gone abroad that often. Don't you need continuous residency for a certain amount of time? I mean, I'm just going by something I think I heard…"

Nadia nodded slowly. “Yeah.” She felt as deflated as her tone. Every so often, such as on days like today – with good weather, good company and her beloved London spread out at her feet like a personal secret – she’d let herself forget. But if even Alex was pointing out her appeal’s shortcomings, what chance did she really have?

“Hey, hey,” Alex said, reaching awkwardly to rub her upper arm. “None of that, now. It’s going to be fine.”

“I think that sometimes. I can't quite believe I'll actually go. But then I go and do this.” Nadia asked, despondently. “My swan song,” she clarified, doing sarcastic quotation marks with her index fingers. "Dragging a stranger to the National Portrait Gallery. Force-feeding him ribs."

Alex gave her a slow smile. “Well, I wasn’t going to admit this, but I’m just jumping on this bandwagon for selfish reasons. I don’t believe you’re going to get deported in the slightest. I just wanted to see that portrait of Henry II so fucking much.”

Nadia rolled her eyes, lips twitching into an unexpected smile. “Well, I’m glad my immigration problems have proved to be of assistance.”

“I mean it. Don’t worry about it,” Alex insisted. “You’ll have your day in court. And no sane judge in this country will be able to look at you, and listen to you, and know you and not agree that you belong here, with your friends.”

Nadia felt an embarrassing little clench in her chest. She ducked her head as she felt a flush spread across her cheeks. “I guess I can only try my best, huh?”

“Do, or do not,” Alex intoned solemnly. “There is no try.”

“Alex!” Nadia slapped him playfully on the hand he still cupped to her shoulder. “I warned you about quoting
Star Wars
!”

Alex

They’d talked all day, sitting on that bench in Trafalgar Square, heedless as the sun moved clear across the sky, Alex careful to skirt around any mention of her visa after his earlier near miss. Eventually hunger drove them away from Nelson, and they’d eaten Vietnamese street food standing in the cobbled mews off the Strand, where they’d found the vendor. Finally, remembering their abortive attempt at the National Portrait Gallery, they’d headed down into the Underground to take a closer look at what they’d missed out on.

They’d shared what was left of their lukewarm bottle of mineral water and moved from one National Portrait Gallery reproduction to the next, Nadia snapping selfies with her phone of them blowing kisses at Mary I, looking shocked at Henry V, making tasteless neck-slicing gestures in front of Anne Boleyn, holding the mouth of the plastic water bottle helpfully up to Shakespeare’s grey lips. They’d run laughing through the closing doors of the last Tube, almost missing it despite the fact they’d been on the platform for nearly an hour by then.

They’d parted reluctantly, both caught in the magic of a day that nobody else would ever understand. Nadia had lingered in the Tube seat next to him, even as the train began to slow in its approach to Clapham Common. She’d email him a link to where he could buy an entrance ticket to the next activity she’d promised him – and yes, this was definitely something she’d done before. When Alex had jokingly asked if there was a high probability of them being kicked out, Nadia had thrown her head back and laughed. They’d have to be very, very bad to get kicked out of this particular place, she’d assured him, an appropriately wicked glint in her eye.

It had gone half-twelve by the time Alex let himself in, the flat so still and quiet that he would have been convinced Rory was over at Lila’s, were it not for the fact he’d noticed a low light glowing through the front-room window as he’d made his way up the street. Sure enough, the lamp was on in the main room. Lila was sitting on the sofa, her legs curled up underneath her; she readjusted her position as Alex entered the room, turning down a corner of the page of her book as she did so.

“Hey,” she said quietly, “it’s late.”

Alex felt an irrational flare of annoyance. So what if he was coming in late? She wasn’t his keeper. She wasn’t even his girlfriend.

“Rory went to bed,” Lila continued, in that same hushed, slightly accusatory, tone.

“Did you guys have a good evening?” Alex asked, at his normal volume, as he kicked off his shoes.

“I brought over that film you said you wanted to watch,” Lila said, gesturing over to where a DVD in its case lay carelessly in front of the TV bench.

“Oh.”

“I didn’t know you were going to be out. All night,” Lila continued, the accusation growing unmistakable.

“Oh,” Alex repeated again, feeling stupid. “Sorry Lils?” He allowed the apology to come out like a question; he wanted her to know that he wasn’t actually sorry.

Lila continued to stare at him, as if she suddenly wasn’t quite sure who he was. “What did you get up to?” she asked, and Alex felt the frustration flare again. What was her problem? Was he seen as that much of a lapdog that he couldn’t have one night away from her?

“Just out with a friend,” he answered airily, as he moved into the kitchen to pour himself a pint of water. He wasn’t all that surprised that Lila followed him, standing unsure and small in the open doorway between the kitchen and the main room.

“A friend?” she echoed.

Alex moved past her politely and out into the corridor. “Yup. Lunch with Admiral Nelson; drinks with Will Shakespeare,” he said with a grin. “G’night.”

Leaving Lila standing gratifyingly open-mouthed, Alex shut his bedroom door behind him.

Chapter 7

Nadia

“It’s so inconsiderate,” Holly moaned, stomping aimlessly around their living room. “Six
hundred
pounds. That’s not a weekend away, that’s my yearly
holiday.
” Nadia stared at her friend balefully across the rim of her mug of tea. Holly continued ranting, heedless. “It’s going to be chick peas for dinner from now until then.
Tesco Value chick peas
…”

Nadia, who had eaten value chick peas for dinner the previous night, and twice last week, lost her patience.

“Well, don’t go then!” she snapped.

Holly stared at her. “You know I can’t
not go
,” she scoffed.

“Why not? I’m not going,” Nadia countered.

“Yes, well, that’s because you
can’t go.”
Holly let her sentence trail off as she realised what she’d said and looked across at her friend guiltily. “Sorry!”

Nadia exhaled with a sigh. “Don’t worry. It’s not your fault.” Their friend from school was throwing a prohibitively expensive – yet no doubt epically fun – hen weekend skiing on the Swiss/French border. Even if Nadia hadn’t been as skint as she was, without her passport the closest she was going to get to skiing was the dry slope in Milton Keynes. “I’m just crabby because I’m jealous,” she admitted. “You know how much I love skiing.”

“I haven’t been skiing since – when did we go to Bulgaria?”

Nadia squinted, counting back. “God. Like, three, four years ago?”

“Where has the time gone?” Holly asked, sadly, finally flopping down on the sofa next to Nadia and laying her head on her shoulder. “You should definitely schedule in a super-fun weekend while I'm away,” she said, after a moment, with a suggestive grin and a waggle of her brows.

Nadia laughed. “Yes. We were thinking all-nighter movie marathon at the Prince Charles, actually. I hope the weather has cooled down enough that I can wear my onesie.”

Holly looked at her curiously. “Wear your onesie? Why the hell would you wear your onesie?”

“We’re talking, like, eight hours of cinema here,” Nadia explained. “Comfort is of the essence.”

“I don’t agree with your onesie at the best of times,” Holly countered, raising her head, “so I don’t agree with it in public, and I most
certainly
do not agree with it being worn on a date!”

“A date? No, I don’t mean I’m taking Matt to the Prince Charles cinema, I mean I’m taking Alex!”

“Oh.” Holly arched one eyebrow. “I meant Matt…”

Alex

Alex was quite looking forward to whatever the third thing on Nadia’s to-do list was. He hadn't seen her since their random day in Trafalgar Square, but they'd been in near-constant email contact making big plans ever since. A few days earlier he’d received an email that linked him to a ticket vendor site, urging him to buy entrance to something called “Candy at Closet” on Thursday night. The entrance was only £3 – the booking fee the same again – and apparently showing the confirmation number at the bar would entitle him to a free “Candy Cock Tail”; he wasn’t quite sure if that was an innuendo or a typo.

Nadia met him straight after work in Piccadilly Circus. She was immediately noticeable amongst the tourist throng, standing on the highest step around the Shaftesbury Memorial, bright and obvious in denim shorts and a flowy top the colour of pistachio ice-cream, her hair in a style he was learning she favoured, the loose side-plait almost white in the sun. She shaded her eyes with her palm when she caught sight of him, as if confirming it was him. Recognising that it was, she firmly but politely skipped her way through the throngs of people on the lower steps and met him on pavement level, the tides of commuters and tourists breaking around them as if they were standing on an island.

“Hey!” Nadia greeted him with a grin. “How’s your week been?”

Alex skimmed through his week in his head: work, work, microwaveable meals, more hours than necessary playing
Call of Duty
online, Rory working late more and more evenings and Lila ghosting in and out, reprimanding and silent, giving him looks akin to those of a disappointed parent.

“Fine,” he answered, with a shrug. “What about yours?”

Nadia wrinkled her nose. “We’ve got some sort of… infestation at the shop. Someone donated something with bed bugs or something on it and so we’ve had to call the pest people out. Quite a lot of the backroom stock has been ruined. It’s taken ages moving everything and trying to save what we can. Weird to work for free and still be doing overtime! But, you know, it had to be done.”

Immediately Alex felt like a bit of a shit. There he was – only not in his pyjamas by seven each evening because Lila was so often hanging around – doing sweet F.A. (aside from shooting bad guys, obviously). Maybe he should consider some sort of volunteer work?

“That sounds like the week of a girl who could use a drink. Now, where can one get a nice Cowboy Martini ‘round here?” he joked. Nadia laughed and linked her arm with his, moving them north towards Golden Square.