Somewhere Only We Know (27 page)

“Here, Caro, give it here.” Caro shot Alex a nervous look over her shoulder as he made his way over to her. “I think your hands are a bit greasy,” Alex added, a nonsensical but perfectly apt excuse. Caro’s anxious expression slipped into a subtly grateful one as she handed over the wine bottle and the corkscrew.

“Yeah. Thanks. I’d better wash them,” she agreed, moving to the kitchen sink and rinsing her already clean palms under the tap. Alex popped the cork with a practised twist and tug and turned back to the table.

Monty got to his feet. “I’ll do that, mate.”

“Nah, you’re alright.” Alex didn’t even look at him as he rested one hand on the back of Nadia’s chair and used the other to fill up her empty wine glass. She tilted her head back and gave him a tiny smile that made him have to really concentrate on the pouring. Man, it was hard to avoid all the elephants in this room. Monty remained standing, awkward and lanky, thumbing the swell of his glass. Caro diligently avoided looking at anyone as she dried her hands on a tea towel. Rory sat swung right back in his chair, glaring at Monty as if he was the antichrist. Holly studied the congealing remains of her paella and Ledge merely looked confused. Alex plonked the bottle down in front of them so that they could serve themselves.

Monty began stacking up the dinner plates, scraping the leftovers messily between them as he did so. “Dessert, anyone?” he asked.

Alex looked at Nadia's tight face, Caro's still-fidgeting hands. "I think I've had enough," he answered, in a cool voice that left no illusions over what – or who – he'd had enough of.

Nadia

There simply wasn’t going to be enough time between Caro’s front door and the bus stop to adequately express how she was feeling, so Nadia decided to just stay silent. Rory didn’t seem to have the same concerns and had started mouthing off the moment they hit the pavement.

“Cock!” he practically spat. “Complete cock.”

“Rory,” Holly frowned. “He’s not that bad. I mean, he’s always going to have this stigma because we all know he cheated on his wife…”

“And jerked Caro around for a year,” Ledge added, arching his eyebrows.

“But he’s sort of doing the right thing now,” Holly insisted.

“What? Leaving his wife and infant child?” Rory asked incredulously.

“Lots of people get divorced. It doesn’t make them monsters!” Holly tried.

“It’s not him having had an affair that I take issue with,” Rory argued back immediately. “It’s the fact that he’s an arsehole. He should be crawling around on his hands and knees and kissing Caro’s feet and thanking the fucking stars above, not ragging her out in front of her friends.”

“Caro can handle herself, Rory.”

Rory just looked at Holly, shaking his head slightly. “Were you in the same room as me or not? Because
that
Caro was definitely not handling herself. And I don’t like it.”

And Nadia knew exactly what he meant. Not once in the seven years she’d known her had she ever seen Caro’s jaw tremble like that, her fingers so nervy on the stem of her wine glass. Nadia didn’t think that there’d be very many more dinner parties at Chez Caro for the foreseeable future.

“He sure has got his hooks into her,” Alex said suddenly, conversationally, as if he’d been listening to her thoughts and waiting for a pause in which to speak. Nadia noticed with a start that the two of them had fallen into step, into a pair, striding off ahead of the loiterers just as they usually did. The conversation they weren’t having – the one they’d probably never have, now – marched along in the space between them like a third person.

“Do you think we should say something?” Alex continued.

“No. I know her. She won’t hear it. It will just make her angry,” Nadia replied sadly. “I think we just have to be here for her, and hope it, you know, runs its course. Like any nasty virus.”

“Be here for her,” Alex echoed. He looked down at their feet moving against the pavement, not at her face.

“Yup. I’ll just have to tell the Home Office that I simply can’t leave. My friend needs me.” Nadia managed a weak smile. Alex finally looked up.

“She’s not the only one who needs you here, you know,” he said, quietly. Nadia’s breathing hitched up in her lungs and she watched as Alex tugged at his lower lip with the edge of his teeth. He was nervous, gearing up to say something; maybe they’d be having that conversation after all? He didn’t care that she could be deported in two weeks’ time; that she could very well be the epitome of a lost cause; he didn’t care about perfect Lila Palmer. He felt the same way as she did. He knew that a fortnight together was better than a never.

“Nads, I can’t come to your hearing,” Alex said eventually, looking away as he did. “I can’t be a character witness for you.”

That ricocheted off so many layers that Nadia had to take a few moments to fully absorb it.

“Can you… not get the time off work?” she asked; it was the only reasoning that seemed to make sense to her. The hearing was set for a Thursday afternoon.

Alex hesitated again and Nadia braced herself.

“No, it’s not that. Or, well… It kind of is to do with work.”

Realisation dawned. “Oh. It is because you work for the Home Office?”

“Yeah. But it’s not just that. Nadia, I may have… downplayed my job slightly.”

Nadia raised an eyebrow. “You’re actually the Home Secretary?”

Alex laughed awkwardly, even though her joke hadn’t been funny. “Not quite. But I do work in Immigration. And, the thing is… well, you should know that… it's not a big deal but… my name is going to be included on the list of officials who handled your application.”

Nadia’s faltered, her stride immediately broken. Alex whirled around to grab her hands, keeping her moving next to him, ahead of the others.

“I really am basically just an admin monkey, I haven’t lied about that,” he insisted earnestly. “It’s nothing sinister, I promise. It’s just I sorted your application when it arrived in my department. I passed it on.”

Nadia just stared at him, stared at their hands clasped together.

“I could have rejected you out of hand, you know,” Alex babbled on, perhaps nervous that she wasn’t saying anything; she didn’t know what to say. “But I liked you. Even then, I liked you, Nads.”

Nadia stirred. “This was before we met?”

“Yes, just before. About a week before.” Alex rubbed his thumbs nervously across her knuckles, giving her a feeble attempt at a smile. “Isn’t it a small world?”

Nadia glanced behind. Ledge, Holly and Rory were only a few feet behind them. Holly clearly knew that something was up. She tried to catch Nadia’s eye, but she turned back to Alex, whose face fell slightly as she pointedly extricated her hands from his.

“Why did you never tell me this before?”

Alex rubbed his palm against the back of his head, mussing up his hair. “I don’t know. The usual. I didn’t want to come off creepy. Did it really ever matter? You knew I worked for the Home Office. I never lied to you, Nadia.”

Nadia barked a short, humourless laugh. “No, I suppose you didn’t.”

“Anyway,” Alex continued, awkwardly. “My name and office designation will be included in your appeal notes bundle and I don’t even know if you would have noticed, or seen it, but…” He exhaled. “I thought I should actually come clean, just in case.”

“How big of you,” Nadia snapped. She hated this. Her stomach ached with the hate of it. It was like when she’d found out about him secretly being in love with Lila. Just when she thought she had a handle on Alex Bradley, he shifted away like sand underfoot. “Okay. So you can’t be a character reference for me. Okay. Can you not even just come? As my friend? In support?”

Alex was already shaking his head before she’d even finished the sentence. “Nads, I can’t. I could lose my job.”

“You hate your job.”

“Come on, Nadia,” Alex tried, but his ‘don’t be like this’ tone only served to infuriate her further. “I will help you all I can, you know I will. I just can’t physically be there on the day.”

Nadia felt her jaw set, felt the steel there. “Don’t worry about it,” she clipped out.

Alex groaned, reaching for her hands again and pulling her to a stop in front of him. Their three friends came to an immediate, unsure halt behind them.

“Give us a second, guys?” Alex asked, not looking at them.

“Everything okay?” queried Ledge.

“Everything’s fine. Just finding out that Alex can’t come to my appeal hearing because he was one of the Home Office Immigration officials who
handled my application
.” Nadia watched as Holly’s mouth dropped open in shock and Rory’s tensed up in a wince. “And now I’m hearing a load of bullshit about why he can’t be my character witness. But it’s fine.” She waved her friends on down the road. “Carry on. We’ll only be a minute.” This last sentence she shot as a warning at Alex.

After a hideously awkward moment of indecision, the trio carried on down the road, Holly looking back over her shoulder reluctantly. “He’s not some sort of crazy stalker, is he?” Nadia heard her ask Rory as they moved away and out of earshot.

Nadia pulled her hands away from Alex’s for the second time that night and moved to lean against the nearby front garden’s brick wall.

“I can’t believe you,” she said, after a moment.

“Nadia, I’m really sorry. I was going to mention it, and then I sort of didn’t, and then it had been so long that it would have been too weird to suddenly blurt it out…”

“Not that.” Nadia shook her head. “Although you must have known all along it would come down to this.”

Alex shrugged. “I guess I never expected to…” he trailed off. “Become such good friends with you,” he finished, after a minute.

“Well, I’m sorry!” Nadia growled.

“Don’t. Don’t say you’re sorry.” Alex was pressed up close to her so quickly, she hadn’t even registered his movement; he crowded her against the wall, the bricks damp and cool against her back. “Don’t ever say that.” He took up her hands and placed them flat against his collarbones, as if he could force her into hugging him. “I’m sorry. I know you hate secrets and you hate liars. I’m sorry.”

“I just feel like a prize idiot,” Nadia managed, after a moment; she left her hands where he’d placed them. She could feel the heat of his skin through his t-shirt, against her palms.

“Never. Not ever. That’d be me.” And if he’d sensed her softening towards him, Alex hugged her. It was a proper hug; his face was buried between her neck and her shoulder and his arms tight around her waist. “But don't give up on me,” he murmured against her skin.

Nadia waited for him to pull away, as he usually did, but he didn’t. She sighed. “Oh, Alex. I guess I just thought… we were a little closer than that.”

At that Alex did pull back, looking at her searchingly. “Nadia. It’s not that. You know, though? You know how I feel. About everything. About you..?”

If he felt the same way that she did, Nadia thought to herself again, he’d know that a fortnight together would be better than a never.

“But I don’t,” she answered, honestly. She was tired of it, tired of the conversation that was always underneath the conversation they were actually having. “I don’t know how you feel, Alex. And now there’s just no time.”

Alex tightened his grip on her waist. “There will be time. We’ll have all the time in the world because you’re not going anywhere. I want to help you. Let me help you.”

“How are you going to help me when you can’t even be in the room for the hearing?” Nadia asked with a sad smile.

“I’ll figure something out. Do you know how many ILR applications I read through a day? Feels like a billion,” he clarified with a dry laugh, after Nadia mutely shook her head. “And yours is the only, only one I ever remembered after I got home. And then, a couple of days later, you’re sitting opposite me in the pub. And then we’re on the Tube together, we’re breaking into playgrounds together! I really think, Nadia Osipova, that the universe wants us to be together.”

Nadia almost felt like she could cry as she heard Alex voicing her own secret thoughts. “But what about Lila?” she managed to force out.

Alex gave her a little smile; unreadable, maddening. “What
about
Lila?”

“Have you… finished with her?”

“Well, there wasn’t really anything to finish. But yeah.”

“Oh.” Nadia pinched her lips together to stop a wholly inappropriate smile from spreading across her face.

“So, you see,” Alex continued, as if Nadia had never interrupted, never mentioned Lila, “the universe would never, ever send you back to Russia. The universe wants you to stay right here. Next to me. And when you’ve dealt with this appeal and you’ve got your Leave to Remain, then you and me are going to have a very long talk about all the other things that you apparently don't know I feel,” Alex finished with a grin.

“Guys!” Ledge hollered at them from the bus shelter at the far end of the road, gesturing with exaggerated motions behind them. “Bus! Move it!”

And Alex took up her hand again with a grin and began to jog, keeping just ahead of the approaching headlights. Nadia laughed as her flip-flops smacked and slid on the pavement, feeling her heart beating hard and sharp and certain.

Chapter 22

Nadia

Caro’s bedroom always felt like an oasis of calm. Artfully distressed French furniture – just the right level of shabby chic – looking as if it had just been pulled from the pages of interior design magazines, carpet the faintest of eggshell blues. But that day there were things that jarred. It wasn’t the growing mountain of clothes in the centre of the king-sized bed – that was par for the course for an activity like this. It was in the little things. In the pair of dark chinos slung carelessly over the back of a chair. Contact lenses sitting in little round pods on the vanity unit, when Caro had perfect eyesight. A new heaviness in the very smell of the room.

Monty was at work. Nadia didn’t let herself wonder if she’d have still been as welcome around here if he hadn’t been. She just let Caro do what Caro did best and busied herself fingering the expensive fabrics and marvelling at the styles and colours as things were thrown at her from the depths of the walk-in wardrobe. This was serious. They were building Nadia’s court hearing outfit.