Somewhere Only We Know (30 page)

“You felt like you owed him,” Holly summed up perceptively.

“Something like that.”

“So what did the wife have to say for herself?” Nadia couldn’t help but ask. “Did she rant and rail at you? Funny how they never blame the man as much as they do the other woman.”

Caro had started crying again, silently now. “Nothing like that. She called to talk to me. She sensed I didn’t know the whole deal. She was worried he was taking advantage. She was right.”

“The whole deal?” Nadia repeated.

“
He never left her for me
. She kicked him out.” She started almost laughing. “He turned up at my door because he didn’t have anywhere else to go; he was homeless. It wasn’t that he loved me. He never loved me.” And although Caro was still crying, she sounded almost relieved.

“He probably did,” Nadia said, kindly. “But not in the way that you deserve to be loved, that you will be loved one day, Caro.”

“He’s an absolute idiot, who didn’t deserve his wife, or you,” Holly concurred. “You made a lucky escape. The both of you.”

“I know,” Caro admitted, “I know. But it still freaking hurts.”

Mutely, Nadia handed her friend back the wine glass. “I can imagine.”

“And, of course, I’ve got four more months left of him teaching me,” Caro added, ruefully. “That’s going to massively suck.”

“Can you talk to someone about it?” Holly asked.

Caro covered her face with her hands. “No, no. After tonight, quite frankly, I never want to talk about it again.”

“He shouldn’t be able to get away with it,” Holly pointed out, angrily.

“He hasn’t,” Nadia pointed out softly. “He’s lost everything, hasn’t he?”

“And actually, as I don’t think the daily commute between his parents’ house in Derby and central London is going to prove very easy, he might be forced to give up his job, too. He can’t afford to rent anywhere on his own, not on his salary, and he doesn’t really have any friends he can crash with,” Caro said. She just sounded sad now – tired and sad. Nadia ached for her. What a waste of a year, a waste of time and love and hurt that would have been better spent elsewhere. She’d never again be completely the Caro she’d been before she met Monty and become so many new things: the forbidden fruit, the other woman, the doormat. At least she was free to become more new things – better new things – now.

“Can I stay with you guys tonight?” Caro asked suddenly, taking a small sip of her drink. “We had it out and everything and I told him he needed to be packed and gone by the time I got home, but…”

“Of course!” Holly told her. “You can stay as long as you like.”

“But I think in the meantime we should definitely put our boys to good use,” Nadia grinned.

“Our boys?”

“Yes. The ones who are clearly standing in the hallway earwigging.” Nadia raised her voice. “Hey, guys? We’ve got a job for you.” The bedroom door opened immediately, the boys not even having the grace to pretend they hadn’t been right outside it.

“You want us to go over and make sure he’s gone?” Rory asked Caro without preamble. “It would be my pleasure, trust me.”

“Throw us your keys,” Alex added. “We’ll go now and hurry him along.”

“It’s alright, guys, you don’t have to go right this second. I don’t want to spoil your evening,” Caro assured them.

“Seriously, it would be my
pleasure
,” Rory repeated. “Make with the keys.”

The flat buzzer sounded rudely and suddenly, startling them all.

“Maybe after the food,” Ledge laughed.

Chapter 24

Alex

Nadia had stressed that she wanted to keep it very casual. There’d be enough bread and circuses at the courthouse in the morning, she pointed out; all she wanted was a quiet night in. She wasn't expecting to get much sleep. She mainly just didn't want to be alone.

Although Monty had been long gone by the time the three boys had turned up at Caro’s place – their metaphorical guns blazing – Caro had remained living at Holly and Nadia’s. Her junk was scattered everywhere, driving the more minimalist Holly slightly insane, but Nadia had confessed that she found the background bickering distracting, almost calming, and was loving having her two best friends underfoot. And underfoot they were, barely leaving Nadia's side for a second, almost as if they thought that if they left the room, they'd return to find her gone, disappeared away like a magic trick. She'd laughed about it when she told Alex, but it was a sad laugh, incomplete.

It was well into September but the heat refused to die and the evening was still as light as midday outside, as if the sun was refusing to set on this summer, this final evening. There would be other evenings, of course; even if it all went to shit tomorrow Nadia would still have twenty-one days’ grace to leave the country. But, either way, there would never be another evening like this, one where she was still uncertain, floating in hope.

When Nadia came back from serving drinks she squeezed in next to Alex on the sofa, her body slotting precisely against his as she continued chatting casually – grinning up at him as she passed him a new bottle of beer – and the idea that she might one day not be right there seemed completely unfathomable to him.

But although she was chatting and smiling and drinking, there was an edge to Nadia tonight, a palpable panic beneath the jokes, like a hummingbird’s heartbeat. It was almost catching; nerves yawned inside Alex’s chest, empty and sharp, no matter how much beer he poured in to fill it.

Caro and Rory sat across the room, sharing both a bottle of red and the oversized beanbag, flirting outrageously, as if they were aware of the fact that they needed to be an entertaining distraction, or maybe they just didn’t care. Holly and Ledge did their best, too, keeping up a rattle of conversation.

They’d made quite a good six, somehow, out of nowhere. Ages ago, before he really knew them, Nadia had told him that she wasn’t sure if Holly and Caro would remain friends without Nadia there between them, and Alex knew what she’d meant. Nadia was the heart of everything. He’d never be in a room where she wasn’t missed. He threw yet more beer down his neck in a valiant attempt to plug that cavernous hole.

Ledge left for home early enough to make the last train, but Rory and Alex hung doggedly on, not quite wanting to let the night end, not just yet. But as the hours crept towards dawn, Alex knew they’d have to go. The hearing wasn’t until two in the afternoon, but still, they all needed to get as good a night’s sleep as what was left to them. Nadia, yawning, was starting to stack the washing up in the sink and he popped quickly across the hallway to use the bathroom.

He was straightening the hand towel on its rail as he opened the toilet door, so he didn't see her straight away, and jumped when he did; Holly was standing in the gloom of the corridor.

“Sorry,” she said, sotto voce. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Well, don’t lurk around like some sort of toilet ninja then,” Alex laughed back, going to move around her and back into the lounge.

“Alex.” It was more her tone rather than the hand she brought up to his side that paused him. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Alex blinked. He hadn’t expected a belated “what are your intentions?”-type conversation from Holly of all people. “Yeah, sure, what’s up?” He’d automatically dropped the volume of his voice to match hers.

“I need you to be straight with me, here.” Holly wrapped her arms around her torso self-consciously.

“Of course. Seriously, what’s up?” Alex asked resignedly.

Holly’s voice had dropped so low, Alex strained to hear her. “What are her chances? Be honest.”

Alex felt rather as though someone had just dropped a bucket of iced water over his head. “Her chances?” Holly wasn’t fooled by his obvious attempt at stalling. She just stared him down in stubborn silence. He sighed. “I don’t know, Hols. I work for the Home Office, yes, but it’s not like I’m a judge who sits on the hearings.”

Holly’s frown increased. “You said you’d be honest. I just want to be prepared, okay? And ready to be there for her. It’s not like you’re going to be.”

That last dig hit its mark. Alex bristled. “You really want to know?” Fine. Why should he be the only person eaten up by this? “It’s not good. It’s not good, Holly. But you know that. You’re not an idiot. You know she ticks none of the boxes. You know that Russia is like the persona non grata of the UN right now and so she pretty much couldn’t be from a worse country. You know that the government is being judged on its immigration stats and that it can’t stop people from the EU from coming in but it can stop her. How do
you
think tomorrow’s going to go?”

Holly didn’t speak right away. She looked the queerest combination of sick and relieved. The hallway was horrifically silent. Alex could hear clattering and banging and Caro raising her voice in the living room, loud as usual, breaking the spell of angst. Regret smashed into him like a truck.

“I’m sorry…” he began immediately.

“What for?” Holly interrupted, with a sad smile. “You’re only being honest.”

Caro tumbled into the hallway, smacking her palm flat against the light switch. Holly and Alex both flinched as the space flooded with brightness.

“You guys” Caro half-shrieked, half-growled. “What the hell is your problem?”

Alex looked at Rory for clarification as he brought up the rear, but he looked as livid as Caro.

“How was that an appropriate conversation to be having?” Caro continued, glaring at them.

Holly suddenly looked even sicker. “You could hear us?”

“WE’RE NOT DEAF,” Caro bellowed. Maybe Alex hadn’t been as quiet as he’d sounded in his own head after all.

“Neither is Nadia,” Rory added, gesturing behind them to the living room and Alex belatedly recognised what those sounds had been; the way the flat door’s letterbox clattered a bit when you opened and closed it, Caro’s voice raised in slight panic as she called her friend’s name. He barrelled past them into the living room, confirming it was empty.

Alex whirled back round to Rory and Caro. “Where’s she gone? Why’d you let her run off like that?”

“Hey, this isn’t my fault!” Caro argued back. “And it’s not like she ran off crying. She just said she needed some air and to be alone. To be quite frank, I didn’t fucking blame her. You’re drunk and you’re loud and you’re a bloody pig, Alex.”

“I think you’ve spooked the shit out of her, mate,” Rory concluded disapprovingly.

Wordless, Alex made his way to the huge sash window that had been open all night, allowing the breeze and ever-fast rumble of traffic from the city at all hours to circulate the stuffy flat. He hung his whole body out, staring through the pre-dawn blur west towards the high street, north towards the Common. Holly was trying to call Nadia, but her forgotten mobile phone just rattled and buzzed against the top of the coffee table.

“Shit,” she said, jabbing End Call. She looked at Alex. “We have to go find her. Do you know where she'd go?”

Nadia

Nadia stepped off the night bus and took in a lungful of fresh air after a half-hour journey of smelling the vinegary chips the homeless man at the back of the bus had been ploughing through.

It was almost four in the morning but Nadia was far enough into the city now that people were still bustling past her, crowding and rushing as usual, not paying the blonde girl the slightest bit of notice as she descended the stairs to the right of the bridge, extra careful on the steps in the half-light.  Funny how her quiet place was in one of the busiest parts of the city.

It had been surreal, almost, to hear Holly half-whisper the question that Nadia had been dying to ask Alex herself – weirder still to hear Alex answer it so baldly. But she didn't blame them. She blamed herself. She blamed denial. She should go back. They'd be worried. And yet…

It was almost like going into shock. All of the air inside her body had rushed out, leaving her bones creaking and her heart shaking, cold and alone in the suddenly certain knowledge that this time next month she would be living a different life: that the Nadia Osipova she’d been would be no more than a ghost or a memory. What would happen to the Nadia who lived with her best friend in Clapham Old Town, who ran laughing into the Underground, always just about making the last Tube; always made Candy at Closet every month without fail; the Nadia who fearlessly walked the banks of the Thames at low tide, keeping one eye out for buried treasure; the Nadia who Alex Bradley had fallen for. Not one second of that Nadia's life had been nothing.

She wasn’t ready to leave London. There were still streets she hadn’t walked down, museums and galleries she hadn’t wandered through, must-go and must-see places she’d never made it to or seen. She'd never done the ice-skating outside of Somerset House at Christmas, or visited the Olympic Park, or seen
The Mousetrap
. She hadn’t seen Caro fall in love or helped Holly find a better job. She hadn’t truly kissed Alex, not the way he deserved it, down to his toes, with everything she could manage to put into it.

Nadia perched on the first cinder block she came across, staring out across the water, so still in the darkness that the line between the water and the far bank was an almost indistinguishable blur. The moon was on its way down, fat, full and butter-yellow and so, so close it was almost as if it was sitting atop the curve of the river, just there – as though she could walk right up to it. She wrapped her arms around herself against the wind off the river; for the first time in months she felt chilled.

At least her last London summer had been a glorious one – in all ways – one she’d always remember as a string of endless sunny afternoons with glorious friends; non-stop laughter; stomach-churning, knee-trembling, lip-biting falling in love; the man who’d always be her greatest What If…?

Suddenly decisive, Nadia pulled her handbag across to her knees and scrabbled around inside for the notebook and pen she always carted around but never actually used. She knew exactly the sort of distraction, the sort of catharsis she needed tonight.