Somewhere Only We Know (9 page)

“Hey, if it’s manly enough for James Bond,” Nadia pointed out. “Besides, you could hardly drink it from a pint glass…”

“Wanna bet?” Alex grinned, taking a slightly larger mouthful; he clearly secretly liked it. Nadia studied his face in the pause as he drank. He was already growing familiar to her, good-looking in a preppy way, boyish and as carefully clean-shaven as the men in razor adverts. His hair was equally tidy, and a rich brown, although she knew it shone auburn in the sunshine. Tonight was the first time she’d seen him out of a suit and without his glasses – he must have gone home after work to change. He seemed bigger and more immediate with his biceps bare where they appeared from underneath the sleeves of his shapeless t-shirt.

“So,” Nadia said, templing her fingers on the tabletop between them. “Go on, then. Tell me about yourself.”

Alex had been about to put his glass back down, but instead re-routed it back to his mouth. He raised one eyebrow. “Has anyone ever told you that being with you is a little exhausting?”

Nadia made an affronted little noise in her throat. “How so?”

“I wasn’t expecting my ‘new experience’ to be a job interview in a rib joint.”

Nadia laughed. “It’s just that I realised I don’t really know tons about you.”

“So?”

“What do you mean, so? It’s just a bit weird.”

Alex’s eyebrow arched even higher. “Have you never been on a blind date? Or out with someone you met online?”

“Yeah,” Nadia admitted, “a couple of times.”

“Then how is this any weirder? Besides – you know where I work, whereabouts I live, who I live with…” He raised his hands expansively, as if to say: what more do you need to know? The hems on the arms of his t-shirt rode up towards his shoulders, momentarily revealing an enigmatic black smudge that looked as if it might possibly be part of a tattoo. Now that was a surprise! Nadia surreptitiously tilted her head for a better look, but the fabric had already dropped back down into place.

“You don’t need to worry about small talk, you know,” Alex continued. “This isn’t speed-dating.”

“Yes, apparently it’s more like a job interview!” Nadia reminded him, pretending to be offended. “Although I don’t know what’s wrong with asking a few interested questions in
any
situation…”

“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” Alex quoted with a grin.

Nadia rolled her eyes. “Did you seriously just quote
Monty Python
at me? Seriously?”

“Why, does the girl who breaks into playgrounds think that’s a bit childish?” Alex mocked.

Nadia played along. “Seriously, if I’d known you were
this
lame, I don’t think I would have invited you to dinner…”

Alex tilted his head. “Really? I thought it was because of exactly that – you felt sorry for me wallowing in my epic lameness and wanted to get me out and about.”

“That’s true,” Nadia said, mock-thoughtful. “Okay, then. But you start quoting
Star Wars
and I’m out of here.”

Alex

Nadia was looking at him strangely, as if he’d unexpectedly changed colour or something. Okay, he knew he was babbling a bit – okay, a lot – but his social interaction hadn’t amounted to much over recent years and apparently his ability to small-talk had gone to pot as a result. He couldn’t quite work out if she was looking at him oddly because he was talking too much, or because he was talking too little. Or maybe she just plain thought he was odd. Although, he comforted himself, this whole thing
was
her idea; she was the odd one.

Cheered by that realisation, Alex took another sip of his Martini.

“So,” he began conversationally. “Part of this was you teaching me to love my city, wasn’t it? Well, this cocktail is quite nice, but I don’t think we can credit that to London. Isn’t this an American chain?”

“I think so,” Nadia laughed. “I think the ‘cowboy’ part of the ‘Cowboy Martini’ gives it away.”

“And the American football,” Alex added, gesturing at the suspended television screens that were broadcasting the unfathomable sport.

“Caro went out with an American guy once,” Nadia remembered, shaking her head. “He used to call proper football ‘soccer’ and it drove everyone up the wall.”

“So what’s the deal with Caro?” Alex asked. “Granted, I’ve been in her presence all of thirty seconds, but she seems a little scary.” Nadia looked flustered by the question and Alex fumbled to redeem himself. “I don’t mean that in a bad way,” he stressed. “Just you and Holly seem a bit more chilled out…”

“Caro always has a lot of stuff on her plate,” Nadia granted, her tone carefully nonchalant as she fiddled with the stem of her Martini glass and Alex knew to leave the subject alone.

Nadia obviously wanted to change the topic too. “I went out with that Matt guy last week.”

Oh yes, broad, blond, Belgian-lager-drinking Matt; him out with the pretty, platinum-haired Nadia probably looked like Nazi Aryan porn.

“Oh yeah? Did you enjoy over-sized meat with him too?” Alex barely stopped himself from wincing as he belatedly realised the crude innuendo. Nadia blinked once, then gamely carried on with the conversation.

“No, we just went for drinks. You know, you’re not meant to arrange an actual dinner on a first date.”

“Why not?”

“In case you don’t like them. In case they’re boring. In case they, oh, I don’t know; make wet noises when they chew, talk incessantly about their ex-girlfriend, order the gourmet steak and six sides because they think you are paying, or cry. A whole dinner is a long time to suffer a guy like that. The length of time it takes to drink a glass of wine is more manageable; especially with the speed with which I’ve been known to drink a glass of wine.”

Alex laughed, ever-so-slightly aghast. “Wow, Matt did all that?!” he teased.

Nadia laughed too. “No, not Matt. But sadly I am speaking from personal experience of each of those date disasters.”

“Christ! It’s enough to make you give up!”

“Maybe, but not yet,” Nadia said with a small smile.

“Ah, a hopeless romantic, eh?”

“You only have to meet The One the once,” Nadia pointed out.

Alex felt a momentary strain in his chest and in the smile on his face. He just couldn’t let himself believe that. First Alice. Now Lila. Both had been The One for him, in so far as one could ever be The One, when it was unrequited. He shook it off.

“And so is Matt ‘The One’?” he asked, taking yet another drink, bringing his glass dangerously close to empty already.

Nadia gave a little embarrassed laugh. “Who knows? He might be!” She shrugged. “He’s got the right name, anyway.”

“The right name?” Alex repeated curiously.

The bridge of Nadia’s nose flushed a pretty shade of pink. “Ah, just a stupid, inside joke,” she blagged, seeing off her own drink too.

Alex gestured lightly towards her empty glass. “Same again? Or are there other spirit-based delights on the menu I should be sampling?”

“Oh no, don’t worry,” Nadia said immediately. “I’m okay.”

“No, you don’t worry,” Alex insisted gently. “It was really nice of you to invite me out to dinner. You’re a really cool girl.”
Cool girl?
Christ, Alex. It just gets better and better from you. Poor thing was going to start thinking she was trapped in an American sitcom from the nineties. Shortly she’d begin eyeing up the door and running through her litany of excuses as if he was a bad date who’d eaten an expensive steak and cried about his ex-girlfriend, or whatever the nightmare was.

But instead, Nadia leaned a little closer to him across the table and briefly squeezed the knuckles of the hand he had lying on the tabletop between them.

“And you’re a really cool guy,” she told him, sincerely, before releasing his hand and reaching for the laminated leaflet that was the drinks menu. “If you insist, there’s always that one cocktail that tastes like an apple pie…”

Chapter 6

Alex

“Okay.” Alex clasped his hands thoughtfully behind his back and shifted his centre of gravity back on his heels to better embody the cliché of man-looking-at-art. A foot or so to their left a bored tourist was fiddling with his iPod, the tinny tsch tsch tsch of his music audible from his over-sized headphones. “So, which Henry is this?”

Nadia smacked him across the chest impatiently with the rolled-up programme. “Hey, this is your heritage here! Show some respect, or at least some interest!”

“I am interested!” Alex protested, whipping the glossy booklet out of Nadia’s loose grip before she could do more damage with it. “I asked which Henry it is.”

“I think it’s an Edward,” Nadia said, tilting her head as she surveyed the grand old portrait taking up the majority of the wall in front of them.

“You think? I thought you were into this stuff.”

“Me?” Nadia looked at him incredulously. “I don’t have a bloody clue.”

“I thought we were doing all your favourite things?”

“As well as all the stuff I never got around to doing,” Nadia reminded him, snatching the souvenir booklet back. “I never could get anyone bothered to do the National Gallery with me…”

Alex arched his eyebrows. “No kidding.”

“Caro always said that you didn’t need to go to the Gallery because all of the most famous portraits are reproduced on the Tube platform walls at Charing Cross.”

“Caro seems like a resourceful woman.”

“Hmm. And she’d probably know which bloody king this is. I’m pretty sure one of her degrees is a history one. I think, maybe.”

“It’s got to be a Henry. I mean, sheer probability, there have been more Henrys than any other name, right?”

“I’m pretty sure there’s been just as many Edwards.”

“Honestly, Miss Osipova, I don’t know how you expect to get citizenship if you can’t recognise every British monarch of the past thousand years…” Nadia thwacked him with the guide again.

The pencil-skirted gallery guard shifted from her position on a nearby stool, finally goaded into movement by the inanity of their conversation and the new, violent direction it was now taking. She gave them a pinched, suspicious look.

“This is a portrait of Henry II,” she told them primly – Alex shot Nadia a triumphant look – “who reigned in the twelfth century. The portraits are all labelled,” she sniffed, gesturing at the small, polished bronze plaque over to one side that Alex was suddenly very unsure how they’d missed. Nadia made a small squeak; Alex looked across at her and saw that she had her lips pinched together, desperately trying not to make things worse by giggling.

“Ahh,” was all Alex could manage, laughter brewing in his own chest; his lips twitched.

The guard’s narrow eyes narrowed even further. “If you would prefer a guided tour, they begin in the atrium at ten past and twenty to the hour,” she said slowly. She flicked her eyes to a red-faced Nadia and then back to Alex. “You certainly seem like you could… use some guidance.” Nadia made that small mouse-like squeaking again.

“Thank you, but I think we are okay,” Alex announced politely, groping blindly behind him for Nadia’s wrist. “Actually, we came here with the sole aim of seeing the Henry the Third, er, Second and so, er, I think we’re done, right Nadia?”

Nadia squeaked again in response and allowed Alex to pull her with him as he slalomed through the pockets of tourists and art enthusiasts towards the exit.

A rush of city heat pressed against them as they left the air-conditioned gallery behind and escaped out onto the dirty white steps. Nadia immediately subsided into helpless laughter and Alex couldn’t help but join in.

“Okay,” Nadia managed finally. “So that wasn’t so successful.”

“To be fair, nothing is going to be as successful as those amazing ribs from the other day,” Alex told her, gravely.

“Oh well! At least I can now say that I’ve been the loud, ignorant Londoner at a tourist attraction!” Nadia laughed, miming ticking a box in the air as she spoke.

“I think we were the first two Londoners to go to the National Portrait Gallery full stop, to be fair!”

Nadia nudged him playfully with her shoulder as she slipped the redundant rolled-up gallery guide into her handbag. “Ah well. I’m so sorry I got you to come all the way out to the centre of town on a Saturday afternoon for nothing.” Nadia looked up at him, squinting slightly as the sun bounced off the whiteness of the building and created whorls of blurry heat haze. The days were still like a furnace, the city on its last nerve and smelling of baked dust.

“Don’t worry about it. I had a great, er, ten minutes,” Alex grinned. “That Henry II, eh?”

“Majestic!” Nadia agreed.

“So.” Alex stuffed his hands into the pockets of his long cargo shorts. “What next?”

“Next?” Nadia echoed, confused.

Alex’s mood immediately fell flat. “Oh. Unless you just want to head home…”

“No, no!” Nadia shook her head. “I thought you might want to, though.”

Alex shrugged widely. “Me? Pitiable loner with more friends on his PlayStation network than his Facebook, remember?”

“I assume you’re exaggerating when you say things like that!” Nadia laughed. He was – but only a bit, worryingly; Alex decided not to specify.

“Well, we’re in Trafalgar Square,” he pointed out, nodding across past the stream of black taxis and bright-red buses to where Nelson’s Column rose high against the cloudless sky, casting its long shadow across one of the large fountains nearby. “Do you want to keep playing tourist?”

Nadia

They walked cheerful circuits around Trafalgar Square, pigeons scattering lazily in their wake, until one of the benches became free, the back of it warm against their own as they sat. Nadia drew one leg up across the rest of her body as she turned ninety degrees to face Alex as they chatted companionably. He gestured across the square to where the old Saint Martin in the Fields church rose grandly in the east, looking like a transplant from some ancient Greek acropolis. She’d always loved that about London. Just as often as there was tradition, there was something unexpected, something that jarred against the outsider’s preconceptions. Smiling, she watched a gaggle of over-enthusiastic Chinese tourists taking pictures over by one of the famous lion plinths. Even the tourists – as annoying as they were when you were stuck behind them when you were trying to get to work – were part of the magic of this ancient city; the old, and the new, and the now.