by Holly Miller
“But you do.” She sneaks me a hopeful smile.
“Maybe,” I say, coyly. “I’m just seeing how it goes.”
I don’t want to admit that what she’s just said has made sense to me in a way that’s weird and perfect all at once.
* * *
—
It’s quite sweet how much effort Tash and Simon have made with lunch today. The table is groaning under Met Gala quantities of decorations—three enormous, peony-stuffed vases, an excess of gold cutlery, pink glassware, printed linen, and coordinating crockery. Tash, Simon, and Caleb are drinking the posh wine, brought up from the basement, and Simon’s put on some classical music.
I hope they don’t think we’re ungrateful for the effort, given Caleb’s just in his usual faded jeans and T-shirt, and I threw on a green-and-white cotton sundress without bothering to press it first.
“So, Lucy was telling us about your beach hut, Caleb,” Tash says, topping up his wine as we’re eating our roast beef.
“Was she?” Caleb says with a smile, and I kick him gently in the shin, because I get the feeling he’s probably thinking about all the sex we’ve been having in there lately.
“What’s a bee shut?” Dylan asks Tash.
“A beach hut. It’s like a little house on the beach,” I explain to Dylan, “where you keep your buckets and spades and shelter if it rains.”
“We don’t go to the beach often enough, do we?” Tash says to Simon. “We definitely don’t make the most of living so close to the coast.”
“I know what you mean,” Caleb says. “I missed it, when I lived in London. Don’t get me wrong, I loved a lot about the city, but ultimately—”
“You’re not a city person?” Tash guesses.
He shrugs. “I suppose I just knew I wouldn’t want to live there forever.”
“I actually feel the opposite,” Simon says.
Caleb sips his wine. “Yeah?”
I frown and turn to Simon. “What? You don’t want to live in London.”
He shrugs. “Sometimes I crave a bit more life than we have here. You know—culture on tap, a better choice of takeaway than a single subpar Chinese . . .”
Tash sighs impatiently, suggesting this isn’t the first time this has come up. “There’s plenty of culture in Shoreley, Simon. You just have to make a bit more effort to find it. And there’s nothing actually wrong with that Chinese. You just had dodgy king prawn balls there one time.”
“Mum, what’s culture?” Dylan asks, pushing the vegetables around his plate.
She looks down at him distractedly. “Eat your carrots, please, darling. Um, culture means things like plays and music.”
“Like what we’re listening to now,” Simon says to him, as on the speaker, the orchestra crescendos to a single, trembling note.
“Caleb and I went to see Romeo and Juliet a few weeks ago,” I point out. “What’s that if it’s not culture?”
“I’d hardly call the Shoreley Players the height of culture,” Simon deadpans, though I suspect that deep down, he’s joking.
I laugh, hoping Caleb isn’t offended. “Don’t be such a snob!”
“Sorry. I just crave something other than Shoreley from time to time, that’s all.”
“Isn’t that what holidays are for?” says Tash. She keeps her tone light, but I can still see her jaw clench. It can’t be easy, I suppose, listening to her husband making throwaway criticisms about the life they’ve built together.
Grinning, Dylan starts repeating the word snob between vigorous snorts of laughter.
This makes Caleb laugh too, which then starts me off as well. The joy that Dylan can derive from a single, supremely unfunny word is adorable.
“So, you don’t miss London at all?” Simon asks Caleb, as Dylan’s face starts turning pink and unruliness threatens to descend.
“Well, there’s some stuff I miss,” Caleb says, and I wonder if he’s starting to feel a bit uncomfortable, given London is where his life with Helen was, “but on balance, no. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
* * *
—
Later that evening, we make the most of the long daylight by heading down to the beach hut, where we fling open the door and settle down together to drink in the view. It’s that grainy half hour now before dusk turns into darkness. The moon in the sky is dulled by cloud, like a lamp in mist.
“Thanks for today,” I say, rocking into Caleb with my shoulder. “Tash and Simon really loved you.”
He smiles. “They’re great. I liked them, too. You’re very lucky.”
I draw the scent of sea-soaked sand to my chest. Tiny lights speckle the horizon—ships, maybe? Oil rigs? The air tonight is warm and calm, still balmy from a day of unbroken sunshine.
“How often do you see your family?”
He wrinkles his nose. “Not often. It’s always a bit like walking on eggshells. Everyone trying not to offend one another. Surface-level chat. The kind of get-together you need a drink to recover from.” He hesitates. “Sorry.”
I shake my head, to let him know it’s okay. “Well, Dylan adored you, too. You’ve got a friend for life there.”
He smiles. “He’s such a little dude.”
“He is.” I sip my tea. “Did you ever think . . . you might have kids with Helen?”
I know it’s an intensely personal question, but it doesn’t feel like personal’s off-limits between us. Plus, Caleb is the sort of guy who’ll be straight-up if he doesn’t want to talk about something.
“Yeah,” he says, then clears his throat. “We actually tried, for ages.”
“You did?” I say, pulling away slightly from where I’ve been tucked up against him, my head on his shoulder. I don’t know why I’m so surprised—I suppose I just imagined they broke up before they got serious about starting a family. I mean, you wouldn’t try to have kids with someone if you thought they wanted completely different things to you, would you?
Caleb glances down at me without quite meeting my eye. “Yeah.” But he doesn’t elaborate.
“Didn’t you . . . break up because you’d grown apart?”
“Eventually, yes. But we were in denial for a long while before then, I guess. Or maybe I was. I think I convinced myself I could be happy staying in London, if we had a family.”
I wait, sensing he has more to say.
“We went through six rounds of IVF.” His voice is heavy with admission. “Unsuccessful, obviously.”
Six rounds of IVF?
“Helen’s five years older than me. She was worried about . . . you know. Leaving it too late.”
I struggle for a moment to find the words. So . . . surely it was those six unsuccessful rounds of IVF that broke them—not disagreeing on whether to hike the Inca Trail or keep their own chickens?
“Caleb, I thought . . .” But then I don’t know what to say.
I take a moment to collect my thoughts, absorbing as I do the peace of the windless night, the sound of sea meeting shingle in soft, briny bursts.
“What?” he says, gently.
“Do you think you’d still be together? If the IVF had worked.”
He exhales. “That’s . . . impossible to answer.”
Hardly the reassurance I was hoping for. “I thought you broke up because you wanted different things.”
“We did. I guess it just took all the stress of the IVF to fully realize it.”
“Wow.” I mouth it more than say it, which I suppose comes across as slightly snarky.
He frowns. I feel his hand grip my shoulder. “Lucy, me and Helen . . . we weren’t right for each other.”
I nod, but I don’t really know how to respond. I’d been thinking their marriage had just come to a natural end, and now I find out that in fact they went through this huge, life-altering thing. That they wanted
to start a family. What if they had become pregnant—would they still be together in London right now, proud parents to a toddler, their very own miracle baby?
I shake my head, an attempt to dislodge the image from my mind. “So . . . who broke up with who?”
He waits a long time before answering. “It was mutual. We realized that without the prospect of a family, we didn’t really have . . . anything left.”
I frown, pulling my hands up inside the sleeves of the sweater I’m wearing, which is a little too long for my arms.
I feel Caleb shift his weight against me. He dips his lips to mine, kisses me softly. I catch the woody remnants of the aftershave he wore to lunch, almost faded now, and find myself wondering if Helen picked it out for him. If it was a birthday present, a Valentine’s surprise.
“It doesn’t really matter why we broke up,” he says. “I mean, the point is, we did.”
I’m not sure I fully agree with that, so I remain quiet.
“And just so you know, there was nothing ‘wrong,’ ” he says. “Medically, I mean. It just . . . wasn’t happening.”
“Don’t, Caleb. You don’t have to tell me stuff like that.”
Another long pause. “Is it . . . something you ever think about?”
I turn my head to look at him, let out a tight half laugh of surprise. “Come on.”
His eyes remain wide, his expression unruffled. “What?”
“It’s weird, asking me that. When you’ve just told me . . . You only broke up with Helen eight months ago. It’s too soon to—”
“Okay,” he says, seeming to accept this. “But I just want you to know . . . I still see all that stuff as part of my future. If it’s not too much to say that.”
I swallow. “Can we please change the subject?”
“Sure. Okay.”
But for a couple of minutes, we don’t say anything else.
“Want to go swimming?” he asks eventually.
“Yeah,” I say, surprised to realize I do. There’s something appealing right now about the thought of jumping into the sea, plunging my head beneath cold water, washing away the strange tension that’s settled unexpectedly between us.
Caleb gets to his feet, offers me his hand. As I stand up, he pulls me close to him. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, “if I wasn’t completely straight with you, about why me and Helen broke up. I was probably trying to downplay it because . . . well, I really like you, Lucy. I mean, a lot.”
“Let’s not talk about it anymore,” I whisper into his chest. “Let’s just go and find the sea.”
Go
Tash has been trying to reach me for a whole month when, finally, early on a Sunday in mid-June, she catches me as I’m popping to the shop.
She ambushes me on the street as I step outside the house, which makes me think she’s been waiting there since dawn.
I wonder if Dylan and Simon have come to London with her. I wonder what Simon knows.
It’s the first time we’ve been face-to-face since I found out, since that unthinkable night in May when my whole world collapsed.
“Lucy,” she says, like I might not have seen her standing right in front of me. She’s lost a lot of weight—so much that I’d find it shocking, if I weren’t already in receipt of a string of infuriating WhatsApps from my mum informing me Tash has barely been eating.
“Go away, Tash,” I mutter. She watched me spiral out after the breakup, questioning everything. And she’s had ten years since to come clean.
“This is crazy,” Tash says. Already she sounds like she might break down. “Please, Lucy. I just want to talk to you.”
For a sliver of a second, I hesitate, then shake my head and start walking away.
“Where are you going?”
“Shop. Go home, Tash.” I start striding toward the end of the street, where I turn right and onto the main road. It’s just beginning to rumble with life, with traffic and joggers and people with prams. The strip of sky between the building tops is drab and crammed with grubby clouds, but the air this morning is warm.
I glance over my shoulder to check she’s not following me, then cross the road to the newsagents. It’s only once I’m inside that I realize I’m shaking, and that I’ve completely forgotten what I came out to buy. I end up grabbing milk, bread, coffee, and biscuits before heading back home, praying she’ll have gone by the time I return.
* * *
—
She hasn’t, of course. She’s waiting on the doorstep, like a cold caller who won’t take no for an answer.
“Lucy, please. Just let me give you my side. And if . . . you never want to see me again, you don’t have to. But will you at least just hear me out?”
I say nothing for a few moments. I realize I haven’t yet met her eye, afraid that if I do, I’ll be confronted with a vision of her and Max that I won’t be able to unsee.
Behind her on the street, a group of women pass by, all in NHS lanyards, presumably having just clocked off from a night shift at the hospital. I stare at them, trying desperately to conjure Jools so I’d have an excuse to turn Tash away.
“Lucy?”
The women walk on. “Fine,” I say, eventually, my voice clipped and cold. “You can come in, say what you’ve got to say, then leave. I’ve got work to do.”
She follows me inside. Thankfully, I’m the only one home right now—Sal’s on nights at the moment too, and Reuben stayed over at his girlfriend’s again yesterday.
I wasn’t lying about work. Though Supernova is everything I’d hoped for and more, the days are long and intense, especially when there’s a big pitch coming up. I regularly get home at eight or nine o’clock, and have worked until midnight at least once a week in the month since I started, plus a couple of weekends.
My most recent project has been creating a new brand identity for a well-known healthy living company, run by a semifamous celebrity. The feedback Seb and I received on Friday about our latest presentation was brutal in a way I hadn’t been expecting from someone with a sideline in meditation clothing—so much so, it left me hyperventilating in the ladies’ for forty minutes. When I eventually emerged, Seb was waiting outside to assure me that Zara wouldn’t sack me off the back of one C-lister’s opinion. Still, until my six months of probation at Supernova are up, I can’t relax.
I wasn’t lying, either, when I told Max they’d have to prize this job out of my cold, dead hands. Already, it’s impossible to imagine working anywhere else. I feel as though I’ve finally found my calling, the career I was always meant to pursue.
Still, most weekends I feel mentally wrung out—which is why, this morning, I have about as much enthusiasm for listening to Tash’s phony professions of remorse as I do for sitting down to read the complete works of Shakespeare, or learning ancient Greek. Seb and I have agreed to put our heads together first thing Monday morning to come up with some new ideas for the healthy living company, and despite working most of yesterday, I still haven’t hit on anything I can realistically pitch to him. Which means I need to focus on work today, and nothing else. I’m certainly not about to let Tash—or Max, for that matter—distract me from the best job I’ve ever had.
I kick off my shoes, then head upstairs without offering Tash anything, shutting my bedroom door behind us. It’s been a warm night and the space is already stuffy, so I push open the window, letting in the gentle hum of the city waking up, and the balmy, urban air.
I sit on the chair beside my boarded-up fireplace, and wait.
Tash removes her denim jacket and perches on the edge of my bed. Her green top has a plunging neckline, revealing the bones newly outlined beneath her clavicle.
“Lucy,” she says, her voice shaking. “You should know. What happened with me and Max meant nothing.”
I feel my tear ducts firing up, but I fight it. “Come on. It’s been a month. No, ac
tually, it’s been ten years. Surely you’ve had enough time to come up with something more original than that?”
She doesn’t reply, and I wonder for a moment if that’s all she’s got, the sum total of her crappy apology.
“Well, at least it all makes sense now,” I say, coldly. “I could never fully understand why he finished it, and he could never properly explain it, either. I blamed myself for a long time. Thought I’d asked too much of him, scared him off. But you already know all that.”
She wipes a tear away. “All I can say is that I’m so sorry, Lucy—”
“God, all those times I thought you hated him because he’d hurt me, when actually it was because he reminded you what a terrible person you are.”
She rummages in her handbag for a pack of tissues, takes one out and wipes her eyes.
“I literally have no idea why you’re crying.”
“Please, Lucy. Please don’t be so cold—”
“Cold? Are you joking right now?”
“Have . . . Have you spoken to Max?”
“Nope.” We haven’t spoken since that night on my front doorstep last month, when he confessed to having sex with my sister. He’s tried—turning up at the house and my office, messaging, voice notes, calling, even writing me a letter. But whenever I think of him, my imagination pairs him up with Tash all over again. My sister. The person who’s supposed to love me most in the world. I’ve tortured myself wondering whether the sex was good, memorable, mind-blowing; I’ve tried to work out how many times I’ve slept with him since he did the same with her; I’ve gone over and over the impact the whole thing has had on my life over the past ten years, without me even knowing it.
Anyway, he’s backed off this past week, since Reuben threatened to report him for harassment.
* * *
—
It ended like this.
I’d bumped into Max’s friend Rob in the little campus supermarket on that warm September Friday. He dropped into our brief conversation—casual as you like—that Max wanted to live with him and Dean the following summer, when they all moved to London for the LPC. I felt the shock of this claim like a slap—only the previous night, Max and I had been checking out flats of our own, making plans for our big move to the city in nine months’ time.