The Flatshare

by Beth O'Leary

  Me: What’s that, then?

  Tiffy, promptly: Top note rose, then musk, then clove. Which means, according to my mum …

  Crinkles her nose a little in thought.

  Tiffy: “Hope, fire, strength.”

  Looks amused.

  Tiffy: That’s me, apparently.

  Me: Sounds about right.

  She rolls her eyes at that, having none of it.

  Tiffy: “Broke, mouthy, stubborn” would be better—probably what she meant anyway.

  Me, definitely tipsy now: What would I be, then?

  Tiffy tilts her head. She looks right at me again, with an intensity that makes me half want to look away, half want to lean across the table and kiss her over the candle teapot.

  Tiffy: Well, there’s hope in there, definitely. Your brother’s relying on it.

  That catches me by surprise. There are so few people who really know about Richie; even fewer who’ll bring him up unprompted. She’s watching me, testing for my reaction, like she’ll pull away if it hurts. I smile. Feels good to talk about him like this. Like it’s normal.

  Me: So I get rose smell in my aftershave?

  Tiffy makes a face.

  Tiffy: There’s probably a whole different set of smells if you’re a man. I am only versed in the art of perfumery for women, I’m afraid.

  I want to push her for the other words—want to hear what she thinks of me—but it’s conceited to ask. So we sit in silence instead, candle flame darting back and forth between us in its teapot, and I sip more whiskey.

  43

  TIFFY

  I’m not drunk, but I’m not exactly sober, either. People always say swimming in the sea makes you hungry—well, nearly drowning in it makes you a lightweight.

  Plus, whiskey on the rocks is really very strong.

  I can’t stop giggling. Leon is definitely tipsy, too; he’s loosened up at the shoulders, and that lopsided smile is almost a permanent fixture now. Plus he’s stopped trying to smooth his hair down, so every so often a new curl breaks free and bobs up to stick out sideways.

  He’s telling me about when he was a kid, living in Cork, and the elaborate man-traps he and Richie would come up with to piss off their mum’s boyfriend (which is why I’m giggling).

  “So, hang on, you’d string wire across the hall? Didn’t everyone else trip up, too?”

  Leon shakes his head. “We’d sneak out and set up after Mam had put us to bed. Whizz always stayed late at the pub. It was a real education in swearwords, hearing him trip over.”

  I laugh. “His name was Whizz?”

  “Mhmm. Though, I would guess, not by birth.” His expression sobers. “He was one of the worst for Mam, actually. Awful to her, always telling her how stupid she was. And yet she always stuck with him. Always let him back in every time she kicked him out. She was doing this adult learning course when they got together, but he soon had her dropping out.”

  I scowl. The man-trap story suddenly isn’t so funny anymore. “Seriously? What an absolute fucking prick!”

  Leon looks a little startled.

  “Did I say the wrong thing?” I ask.

  “No.” He smiles. “No, just surprising. Again. You’d give Whizz a run for his money in a swearing contest.”

  I incline my head. “Why, thank you,” I say. “What about your and Richie’s dad? Was he not in the picture?”

  Leon is almost as horizontal as I am now—he’s sharing my foot chair, his feet crossed at the ankles—and he’s dangling his whiskey glass between his fingers, spinning it back and forth in the candlelight. There’s hardly anyone else left here; the waiting staff are discreetly clearing tables over on the other side of the room.

  “He left when Richie was born, moved to the U.S. I was two. I don’t remember him, or … just the odd shape and sort of…” He waves a hand. “The odd feeling. Mam almost never talks about him—all I know is he was a plumber from Dublin.”

  I widen my eyes. I can’t imagine not knowing any more than that about my father, but Leon says it like it’s nothing. He clocks my expression and shrugs.

  “It’s just never been a thing for me. Finding out more about him. It bothered Richie in his teens, but don’t know where he got with it—we don’t talk about it.”

  It feels like there’s more to be said there, but I don’t want to push him and ruin the evening. I reach across and lay my hand on his wrist for a moment; he shoots me another surprised, curious look. The waiter drifts closer, perhaps sensing that our aimless conversation is unlikely to move anywhere else if he doesn’t do something to nudge things along. He starts clearing the last bits and pieces from our table; I belatedly take my hand from Leon’s wrist.

  “We should go to bed, shouldn’t we?” I say.

  “Probably,” Leon says. “Is Babs still about?” he asks the waiter.

  He shakes his head. “She went home.”

  “Ah. Did she say which room was mine? She said Tiffy and I could stay over.”

  The waiter looks at me, then Leon, then me again.

  “Err,” he says. “I think … she assumed … you were…”

  It takes Leon a while to clock the issue. When he realizes, he groans and facepalms.

  “It’s all right,” I say, getting the giggles again, “we’re used to sharing a bed.”

  “Right,” says the waiter, looking between us again, more puzzled than ever. “Well. That’s good, then?”

  “Not at the same time,” Leon tells him. “We share a bed at different times.”

  “Right,” the waiter repeats. “Well, err, shall I…? Do you need me to do something?”

  Leon waves a hand good-naturedly. “No, you go home,” he says. “I’ll just sleep on the floor.”

  “It’s a big bed,” I tell him. “It’s fine—we can just share.”

  I let out a yelp—I’d been way too ambitious with trying to put weight on my sprained ankle as I get up from the table. Leon is at my side in an instant. He has very fast reactions for a man who has consumed quite a lot of whiskey.

  “I’m OK,” I tell him, but I let him put his arm around me to help support me as I hop-walk. After a certain amount of that, when we get to the stairs, he says, “Feck it,” and picks me up again to carry me.

  I shriek in surprise and then burst out laughing. I don’t tell him to put me down—I don’t want him to. Again I see the polished bannister and quirky pictures in their curly gilt frames sliding by as he jogs me up the stairs; again he opens the door to my room—our room—with his elbow and carries me through the doorway, kicking the door shut again behind him.

  He lays me on the bed. The room is almost dark, the light from the streetlamp outside the window laying soft yellow triangles across the duvet and running gold through Leon’s hair. His big, brown eyes stare down at me, his face only inches from mine as he gently takes his arm from underneath me to settle my head on the pillows.

  He doesn’t move. We stare at one another, our gazes locked, just a breath or two between us. The moment hangs taut, charged with possibility. A little flicker of panic sparks somewhere in the back of my mind—what if I can’t do this without freaking out?—but I’m aching for him to kiss me, and the panic flickers out again, blissfully forgotten. I can feel Leon’s breath on my lips, see his eyelashes in the half-light.

  Then he closes his eyes and pulls back, turning his head aside with a quick sigh like he was holding his breath.

  Oof. I pull back, too, suddenly uncertain, and that taut silence between us breaks. Did I … misread that whole gazes-locked, staring-at-each-other, lips-almost-touching thing?

  My skin’s hot, my pulse fluttering. He glances back at me; there’s still heat in his eyes and a little frown between his eyebrows. I’m sure he was thinking about kissing me. Maybe I did something wrong—I’m a little out of practice with all this, after all. Or maybe the Justin curse has stretched to ruining kisses before they even begin.

  Leon lies back on the bed; he’s looking miserably awkward, and
as he fidgets with his shirt I wonder if I should take the lead and kiss him, just press myself up beside him and turn his face toward mine. But what if I’ve misunderstood the situation and this is one of those times when I should just let things drop?

  I lie down carefully beside him. “We should probably go to sleep?” I say.

  “Yeah.” His voice is low and quiet.

  I clear my throat. Well, I guess that’s that, then.

  He shifts a little. His arm brushes mine; my skin turns goose-bumpy. I hear him breathe in as we touch, just a quiet huff of startlement, and then he’s up, heading for the bathroom, and I’m left here with my goose bumps and my heart fluttering, staring at the ceiling.

  44

  LEON

  Her breathing slows. Risk a sideways glance at her; can just make out the soft fluttering of her eyelids as she dreams. She’s asleep, then. I breathe out slowly, trying to relax.

  Really, really hope I have not messed this up.

  It was very out of character for me, picking her up like that, laying her down on the bed. It just seemed like … I don’t know. Tiffy is so impulsive it’s contagious. But then, of course, am still me, so impulsiveness ran out at potentially crucial moment, to be replaced by familiar, panicked indecision. She’s drunk and injured—you don’t kiss drunk injured women. Do you? Maybe you do. Maybe she wanted that?

  Richie gets the reputation for being the romantic, but it’s always been me. He used to call me a pussy when we were teenagers, him chasing anything that’d give him so much as a look, me pining after the girl I’d fancied since primary school and been too scared to talk to. I’ve always been the one who thinks before they fall—though both of us fall just as hard.

  I swallow. Think of the feeling of Tiffy’s arm pressed against mine, how the hairs on my forearm stood on end at the merest brush of her skin. Stare at the ceiling. Realize belatedly that curtains are still open, streetlight streaming in to light our room in ribbons.

  As I lie there, thinking, watching the light move across the floor, it comes to me slowly that I haven’t been in love with Kay for a very long time. Loved her, felt close to her, liked her being part of my life. That was safe and easy. But I had forgotten the blazing can’t-think-of-anything-else madness of these early days of meeting someone. There wasn’t even a spark of that left with Kay for the last … year, maybe, even?

  I look across at Tiffy again, her eyelashes casting shadows on her cheeks, and think back to what she’s told me about Justin. Notes made me feel he wasn’t especially good to her—why did she have to pay back that money all of a sudden? But nothing as alarming as what she’d said on the train. But then, as much as they were significant to me, they were just notes. Easier to lie to yourself in writing and for nobody to spot it.

  Head is too full of panic, regret, and whiskey buzz for me to sleep. Stare up at the ceiling. Listen to Tiffy’s breath. Play out all the ways it could have gone: If we’d kissed and she’d stopped me, if we’d kissed and she hadn’t …

  Best not to pursue that one. Thoughts straying into inappropriateness.

  Tiffy turns over, dragging the duvet with her. Half of my body is now exposed to night-time air. Can’t really begrudge her, though. Important that she gets warm after near-drowning.

  She turns over again. More duvet. Now only my right arm has coverage. Absolutely cannot sleep like this.

  I’ll have to just pull it back. Try it gently at first, but it’s like playing tug-of-war. The woman has the duvet in a vice-like grip. How can she be this strong when unconscious?

  Going to have to opt for an assertive yank. Maybe she won’t wake up. Maybe she’ll just—

  Tiffy: Ow!

  She came with the duvet, rolling over, and I seem to have migrated toward the middle, too, and now we’re face to face in the darkness, tantalizingly close.

  My breath quickens. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes heavy with sleep.

  I belatedly clock that she just said ow. The movement must have jerked her ankle.

  Me: Sorry! Sorry!

  Tiffy, confused: Did you try and pull the duvet off me?

  Me: No! I was trying to get it back.

  Tiffy blinks. I really want to kiss her. Could I kiss her now? She’s probably sobered up? But then she winces at the pain in her ankle and I feel like the world’s worst human being.

  Tiffy: Get it back from where?

  Me: Well, you sort of … stole it all.

  Tiffy: Oh! Sorry. Next time, just wake me up and tell me. I’ll go right back to sleep.

  Me: Oh, OK. Sure. Sorry.

  Tiffy shoots me a half-amused, half-asleep look as she rolls back over, pulling the duvet up to her chin. I turn my head into the pillow. Don’t want her to see that I’m smiling like a love-struck teenager because she just said “next time.”

  45

  TIFFY

  I wake to the daylight, which is much less pleasant than people make it sound. We didn’t close the curtains last night. I turn my face away from the window instinctively, rolling over and realizing the right-hand side of the bed is empty.

  At first it feels totally normal: I wake up every day in Leon’s bed without him there, after all. My sleepy brain goes, Oh, of course—no, hang on, wait …

  There’s a note on his pillow.

  Gone out in search of breakfast. Back soon, bearing pastries x

  I smile, and roll back the other way to check the time on my phone on the bedside table.

  Shit. Twenty-seven missed calls, all from an unknown number.

  What the—

  I scramble out of bed, heart thumping, then yelp with pain as I knock my ankle. Fuck. I dial voicemail, a bad feeling blooming in the base of my stomach. It’s like … yesterday was too good to be true. Something terrible has happened—I knew I shouldn’t have—

  “Tiffy, are you all right? I saw Rachel’s status on Facebook. Did you nearly drown?”

  It’s Justin. I go very still as the message rolls on.

  “Look, I know you’re in a mood with me at the moment. But I need to know you’re OK. Call me back.”

  There are more like this. Twelve more, to be precise. I’d deleted his number after a particularly girl-power-inducing counseling session, so that’d be why the calls came from an unknown number. I think I knew who it was going to be, though. Nobody else has ever called me that many times before, but Justin has—usually after a fight, or a breakup.

  “Tiffy. This is ridiculous. If I knew where you were I’d come out there. Call me, all right?”

  I shiver. This feels … I feel awful. Like yesterday with Leon should never have happened. Imagine if Justin knew where I’d been, and what I’d been doing?

  I shake myself. I can feel that that doesn’t make sense even as I think it. I’m scaring myself again.

  I tap out a text.

  I’m fine, I lightly sprained my ankle. Please don’t call me anymore.

  Within moments, he replies.

  Oh, thank god! What are you like without me there to look after you, hey? You made me so worried. I’ll be good and stick to your rules, no contact until October. Just know I’ll be thinking of you xx

  I stare at the message for a while. What are you like. As if I’m such a klutz. Yesterday Leon pulled me out of the sea, and yet this is the first time all weekend I’ve felt like the girl who needs rescuing.

  Fuck this. I hit block and delete all the voicemails from my phone.

  * * *

  I hop to the bathroom. It’s not the most dignified method of travel—the chintzy lamps on the walls are vibrating a little as I go—but something about the general stompiness is quite therapeutic. Stomp, stomp, stomp. Stupid, bloody, Justin. I slam the bathroom door with satisfying force.

  Thank god Leon went out for breakfast, both because he avoided witnessing this mess of a morning and because he will hopefully return with something highly calorific to make me feel better.

  Once I’ve showered and redressed in yesterday’s clothes—which, becau
se they’re covered in grainy, shingly grit, also ticks exfoliating off my to-do list—I hop back to the bed and launch myself onto it with a thud, burying my face in the pillow. Ugh. Yesterday was so lovely, and now I feel all horrible and mucky, like the voicemails left a taint on me. Still, I blocked him, something I would never have been able to bring myself to do a few months ago. Maybe I should be glad of all those voicemails for pushing me to do it.

  I sit up on my elbows and reach for the note Leon wrote me. It’s on hotel stationery; The Bunny Hop Inn is traced in jaunty letters across the bottom of the paper. The handwriting is just the same as ever, though—Leon’s neat, tiny, rounded letters. In a moment of embarrassing sentimentality, I fold the paper in half and reach to slip it into my handbag.

  There’s a quiet knock on the door.

  “Come in,” I call.

  He’s dressed in a giant T-shirt with a picture of three sticks of rock on the front, and BRIGHTON ROCKS in big letters underneath. My mood immediately improves about tenfold. There’s nothing like a man in a novelty T-shirt to brighten up your morning—especially when he’s holding a very promising paper bag with Patisserie Valerie written on the side.

  “One of Babs’s finest?” I say, pointing at the T-shirt.

  “My new personal stylist,” Leon says.

  He passes me the bag of pastries and sits down on the end of the bed, smoothing his hair back. He’s nervous again. Why do I find his nervous fidgeting so adorable?

  “You made it to the shower OK?” he asks eventually, nodding toward my wet hair. “With your foot, I mean?”

  “I showered flamingo style.” I curl one knee up. He smiles. Getting one of those lopsided grins from him feels like winning at a game I wasn’t aware I was playing. “The door doesn’t lock, though. I thought you might walk in on me, but it seems Karma was busy elsewhere this morning.”

  He makes a strangled sort of mhmm sound and busies himself eating his croissant. I suppress a smile. An unfortunate side effect of finding his nervous fidgeting adorable is that I seem unable to resist saying things I know will make him fidget.