Somewhere Only We Know (19 page)

She wondered if he’d get drunk tonight. If he did, would he let his manners and the boundaries between them blur? Would he look at her across that room full of strangers and feel the same pleasurable little jolt she felt when she glanced at him? Would he appreciate the new dress she was wearing – short and the colour of blushes – that she’d have to go without food next week to be able to afford?

Finally satisfied that her eyes were as artfully smoky as they were going to get, Nadia stood up straight and stepped back from her mirror, before reaching into her cosmetics bag once again. She pulled her lips into an exaggerated pout to slick some pale-pink gloss over them. She never wore anything on her lips – not really – but tonight she wanted to look different and she wanted Alex to notice. This evening felt important. Nadia felt as if she’d been walking a precipice for weeks now; the time had come to either be rescued from the edge or to let herself fall over.

She just wasn't sure if Alex was the cliff or the precipice. Maybe he was both. Or maybe Matt was? Or maybe Matt was nothing at all in this cliché scenario – and that was, of course, the biggest problem of all.

Nadia was distracted by the familiar sound of Holly bickering with the newly arrived Caro.

“Seriously, it’s not far. We were thinking of walking it.”

“Walking it?” Caro echoed, sounding as dubious as if Holly had just said that she’d been planning on can-canning all the way to Brixton. “These shoes really aren’t meant for walking,” she continued as Nadia wandered into the front room to join them. Sure enough, Caro was sporting a pair of impressively vertiginous white stiletto sandals that looked as if she should be on a podium with a pole in Ibiza rather than attending a casual house party in South London.

“Or we can jump on the 322,” Holly continued from the kitchen, over the tinkling sound of wine glasses against the imitation-slate counter. “It will take us practically the whole way there.”

“The bus?” Caro grimaced. She whipped out her sunshine yellow-coloured iPhone from her clutch bag. “Don’t worry, ladies, Uber has got this,” she announced grandly as she busily consulted her taxi booking app.

Holly exchanged an amused look with Nadia as she re-entered the living room holding two over-full glasses of white wine. The mere mention of having to travel by bus and suddenly Caro was always happy to pay for a taxi.

“Thank you, you’re a star,” Nadia said with great sincerity as she took one of the drinks from Holly’s grasp. Whilst sensibly hooker-shoe free, Holly had also obviously made an effort for tonight, having chosen to wear a flirty denim mini skirt and having tackled her usually fluffy hair into sleek submission with the use of her GHD straighteners. Holly put the second glass of wine down on the coffee table near the preoccupied Caro and returned to the kitchen to grab her own.

“You look gorgeous, by the way, Nads,” Holly told her when she returned, drink in hand. “I love that colour on you.”

Caro glanced up from her phone. “Fit!” was her appraisal. “I love the hair!” Nadia put a hand to the back of her head self-consciously. She’d borrowed a set of complicated-looking heated rollers from her colleague at the Oxfam shop and had had them in her hair for most of the day, resulting in thick, soft waves that made her look a bit like an old-fashioned Hollywood movie star.

“You don’t think it’s a bit much for just a house party?” she asked, worried. Holly cast a meaningful glance down at Caro’s towering heels

“You look amazing,” Caro insisted. “Alex’s jaw is going to be on the floor.” She laughed as she caught Nadia’s wince. “What? This
is
all for Alex, isn’t it?”

“It just seems a bit obscene to be going to one guy’s house and trying to…” Nadia trailed off as she realised she didn’t really know what verb to use to end her sentence.

“Snare another one?” Holly supplied with a grin.

“Hey, hey, hey, not snare; let’s not get back on to the whole kidnapping and keeping in basements rhetoric,” Nadia laughed, rolling her eyes. “I just want to look nice, okay? Mainly to see if it helps Alex to start seeing me in a different light. But also just because I want to look hot.”

Holly laughed. “The very best reason.”

“And you have definitely succeeded,” Caro smiled, moving closer to instigate a three-way chinking toast of the wine glasses.

Chapter 15

Alex

Thankfully, Rory had deigned to tag along to the party in Brixton.

Nadia had said the night was set to really get going at eight, so Alex had decided that around 8.20pm was probably the optimum time to show up. They’d been waved in by the disinterested stranger who’d answered the flat door to them and immediately left to their own devices. Alex had clocked Matt from across the large, modern open-plan kitchen diner but Nadia was nowhere to be seen. He and Rory had duly taken up position in the only real gap between bodies, their backs to the wall and the cold bottles of Carlsberg they’d brought with them wet and slippery in their hands.

“Mate. This is a total sausage fest.” Rory scowled around the room of mostly men as he tipped his bottle to his mouth. “Why did you drag me here?”

Alex rolled his eyes. “It’s just a house party, Ror. I didn’t promise you… whatever the opposite of a sausage fest is.”

Rory grinned unashamedly. “An all-you-can-eat buffet?”

Alex snorted with laughter and most of the mouthful of lager he’d just taken sprayed over his hand. “I really have no comprehension about how you persuade women to go out with you, you know,” he told his friend, shaking his head.

“It’s because I’m so charming,” Rory replied, deadpan.

Alex raised a sceptical eyebrow. “Yeah, sure. Anyway, Nadia should be here in a bit.” He had considered texting her to ask where she was and what her ETA was, but he felt that might be a bit lame.

“Well, that’s no good to me,” Rory frowned. “Can’t have her, can I?”

“No, you cannot,” Alex answered immediately. “Wait,” he backtracked. “
I
know why you can’t have her, but why do you think you can’t have her?”

Rory looked at him like he was stupid. “Because she’s your bird, isn’t she?”

Alex gave a nervous laugh. “No. Even putting aside the fact that we are standing in her boyfriend’s flat, I keep telling you – she’s just a mate. Fair enough, she’s one that I would lay my dead carcass down in front of as a barrier to stop you getting your hands on her. But other than that, she’s not ‘my bird’.”

Rory just smirked as he took another drink from his bottle. “Sounds like she’s your bird to me,” was all he said.

Then, as if she’d been loitering on the landing outside waiting for just such an opportune moment, Nadia made her grand entrance. She had already made it halfway across the room, Caro and Holly trailing after her, before Alex’s brain caught up with his eyes and he realised the woman he’d just been gawking at was actually Nadia. She had really made an effort; she looked completely knock-out gorgeous, wearing a soft-pink dress that span around her body a half a second behind her turns and movements, and with a hairstyle that made her look as if she’d just stepped off the set of a shampoo advert. Alex blinked a tad manically – as if by doing so Nadia would morph back into her casual, denim-clad self – clutching at the neck of his bottle of lager.

Matt, formerly lost in the crowd, appeared just as dramatically.

“Nads!” he cried, and for some reason Alex’s skin crawled ever so slightly at the familiarity of it. “You look fantastic.” Matt grabbed a startled-looking Nadia by one forearm and made a valiant attempt to dip her so he could kiss her; unfortunately Nadia probably hadn’t realised that was his intent and remained ramrod straight, resulting in Matt simply hooking himself over her like an awkward hunchback and everyone in the room exchanging embarrassed smirks over their drinks.

“Matt.” Nadia placed her palm flat on his chest almost as if she was pushing him away. “Hi.”

A tall individual in a salmon-pink Hollister t-shirt sauntered over to the couple. Matt slapped him vigorously on the back and gestured grandly at Nadia as if he was offering this guy to her as a gift.

“This is Jez,” he beamed. “Jez, Nadia,” he concluded, which Alex found a little unnecessary at this point.

Nadia nodded politely. “Hi, Jez. Happy birthday.” She motioned behind her and opened her mouth to present her companions.

“And this is Holly and Caroline,” Matt introduced them before she could get the words out. Nadia’s forehead creased in an ever-so-slight frown

“Hiya.” The birthday boy grinned at each girl in turn. “Cheers for coming. What are you ladies drinking?”

Caro pushed forward, moving off and away towards the kitchen sides. “What have you got?”

Nadia

Nadia was already reaching into her bag for her phone to text him when she noticed Alex standing across the room, watching her with a weird look on his face. Rory was by his side, looking at her a tad more appreciatively. Great! Right dress, wrong flatmate. Leaving Holly to field Matt and Jez, Nadia edged her way over through the mass of bodies to where Alex and Rory were squeezed against the wall.

“Hi,” she beamed as she went up on her tiptoes to throw her arms around Alex’s neck. She felt him hesitate, just for a second, before leaning in and returning her hug. She slipped back down to her heels and smiled politely at Rory. “Glad you guys could come. Sorry we were late. We had to finish the bottle of wine we’d opened – they don’t really let you take drinks in Uber taxis.”

Alex smirked. “It took you three that long to finish one bottle of wine? I don’t believe that for a second!”

Nadia nudged him playfully. “Hey! We were talking as well.”

“Hey,” Rory said, suddenly, gesturing with the hand that was holding his bottle towards the kitchen area. “I think your friend wants you.” Nadia turned to see Caro, all but pinned into a corner by Jez, eyeballing her frantically over his shoulder.

“Oh God,” Nadia sighed, heading to Caro’s rescue. “Excuse me there, Jez, sorry,” she said loudly as she squeezed her way in between them. “Caro, need help doing the drinks?”

“We brought that bottle of rum there, if you girls want to make something with that,” came a voice from behind her. It was Rory; he and Alex had followed her across the room.

Jez was seemingly undeterred by the appearance of an audience at his attempt at seduction. “I’ve got a bottle of gold label tequila,” he purred at a desperate-looking Caro. “It’s some real good shit – I got it at the duty free – so I keep it in my bedroom.” He grinned hopefully over Nadia’s shoulders at Caro, who was looking vaguely ill at the thought of the duty-free tequila – or maybe it was at the thought of Jez’s bed.

“I’m good with the rum,” she insisted, reaching across for the bottle as she spoke. “Thanks anyway, Jez.”

“Maybe later?” he tried, as Caro grasped Nadia’s hand and attempted to make their escape, pulling her towards the pile of plastic cups on the far side of the kitchen counter. Caro sighed and turned back to their hapless host, taking him in from head to toe with an unimpressed expression on her face.

“I’m just… really not a tequila sort of girl,” she finally said, tone exaggeratedly polite. By now there were clumps of nearby party guests eavesdropping on the exchange; it was obvious to anyone with a couple of brain cells that what Caro really meant was that she wasn’t a Jez sort of girl. Even Jez finally seemed to twig that he was being taken the piss out of; his face hardened slightly.

“Come on,” he pressed, moving to take the bottle of rum from Caro’s hand. “It’s good stuff,” he insisted.

“I don’t want your ‘good stuff’,” Caro snapped, her patience at an end.

“Hey,” Rory interjected, suddenly interposing himself between Caro and her ardent wooer. “The lady said no,” he thundered at Jez, and suddenly it was he rather than Alex who sounded as if he’d just wandered out of the nineteenth century.

Caro immediately rounded on him. “I don’t need your input here, thank you very much,” she barked. Rory shied backwards in alarm. Apparently giving up the pretence of wanting a mixer – or even a glass – Caro marched off in the direction of Holly, still carrying Rory’s litre bottle of rum by its neck. Jez seemed to realise belatedly that most of his house guests had been watching that embarrassing little scene and his face and neck turned an interesting shade of red.

“Whatever,” was his magnificent closing statement. He grabbed a couple of the plastic tumblers off the kitchen side and disappeared out into the corridor, presumably in search of his “really good shit” bottle of duty-free tequila and a more agreeable girl with whom to drink it.

Nadia turned to Alex, eyebrows raised. “Sorry about that,” she said. She turned to Rory. “And sorry about Caro. She’s just really not a damsel-in-distress type.”

“Don’t worry about it. I just don’t like seeing women treated like meat is all,” Rory explained, with a self-deprecating shrug. There was what sounded suspiciously like a disbelieving snort from Alex, but when Nadia glanced at him he was studiously staring out across the room and glugging down a large amount of his lager.

“Anyway, I’m glad you guys could make it,” Nadia continued, brightly. “Sorry about your rum. But, it’s okay!” She reached into her oversized handbag with a grin. “Cos I went stereotypical and brought vodka.”

Alex

Two hours and most of the bottle of Smirnoff later, Alex began to wonder if he was a participant in a game that nobody had bothered to tell him he was playing. The ultimate aim of the game seemed to be annoying poor Matt. The guy was a bit of a tool, but Alex wasn’t sure what the guy had done to deserve being constantly dragged to and fro.

“Matt!” Caro had called cheerfully, as Matt had squeezed his way over to sit on the arm of the sofa near Nadia. “Where have you been?” She’d linked their arms together firmly like handcuffs and pulled him back to his feet. “Give me the grand tour!” she’d demanded, leading him off before he’d even had a chance to agree (not that anyone usually disagreed with Caro).

And later: “Matt!” Holly had chirped, as soon as he had escaped Caro’s unprecedented interest in a pretty standard three-bed, new-build flat and attempted to return to Nadia’s side. “My glass is empty. Shall we go to the kitchen and see what there is to be had?” And so poor Matt had been dragged off – quite literally – once again, looking more than slightly perplexed.