The Flatshare

by Beth O'Leary

  Almost stumble, like someone has physically put out hand to stop me.

  Me: It’s something, though. There’s not been something for so long.

  Kay: And I thought you weren’t ever going to meet Tiffy. That was the first rule we set when I agreed to this flatshare.

  Me: What … ever? Can’t meet her ever? She’s my flatmate.

  Kay: Don’t make out like I’m being unreasonable.

  Me: Didn’t realize you meant … Eh, this is silly. I didn’t meet her, anyway. I called to tell you Richie news.

  Another long silence. I frown, walking slower now.

  Kay: I wish you’d come to terms with Richie’s situation, Leon. It’s draining so much of your energy, all of this—it’s changed you these last few months. I think the healthiest thing—if I’m honest—is to reach acceptance. And I’m sure you will, it’s just … it’s been a while. And it’s really putting a strain on you. On us.

  Don’t understand. Did she not hear? It’s not like am saying same old things, hanging on to same old hopes—I’m saying, there is new hope. There are new things.

  Me: What are you suggesting? We just give up? But there’s new evidence to get, now that we know what to look for!

  Kay: You’re not a lawyer, Leon. And Sal is a lawyer, and you’ve said yourself that he did his best, and I personally think it’s not right for this woman to be interfering and giving you and Richie hope when the case was so open and shut. The jury all thought he was guilty, Leon.

  Coldness growing low down in stomach. Heart rate up again, and for all the wrong reasons this time. I’m getting angry. That feeling again, the trapped hateful rage at hearing someone you try so hard to love saying the worst things.

  Me: What is this, Kay? I can’t figure out what you want from me.

  Kay: I want you back.

  Me: What?

  Kay: I want you back, Leon. Present. In your life. With me. It’s like … you’ve stopped seeing me. You drift in and out and spend your spare time here, but you’re not really with me. You’re always with Richie. You always care about Richie—more than you care about me.

  Me: Of course I care more about Richie.

  The pause is like silence after a gunshot. I slap hand to mouth. Didn’t mean to say it; don’t know where it came from.

  Me: I don’t mean it like that. I don’t mean that. Just … Richie needs more of my … care right now. He has nobody.

  Kay: Do you have any of your care left for anyone else? For you?

  She means, for me?

  Kay: Please. Actually think about it. Actually think about you and me.

  She’s crying now. I feel wretched, but that roaring hot-cold sensation deep in my stomach is still burning.

  Me: You still think he’s guilty, don’t you?

  Kay: Damn it, Leon, I’m trying to talk about us, not about your brother.

  Me: I need to know.

  Kay: Can’t you just listen to me? I’m saying this is the only way you can heal. You can carry on believing he didn’t do it if you like, but you need to accept that he is in prison and will be for a good few years. You can’t keep fighting. It’s pulling your life apart. All you do is work and write to Richie and fixate on things, whether it’s some old guy’s boyfriend or the latest detail in Richie’s appeal. You used to do stuff. Go out. Spend time with me.

  Me: I’ve never had much spare time, Kay. What I have has always been for you.

  Kay: You go to see him every other weekend these days.

  Is she really angry at me for visiting my brother in prison?

  Kay: I know I can’t be mad at you for that. I know that. But I just … What I mean is, you have so little time, and now I feel I get an even smaller fraction of it, and …

  Me: Do you still think Richie is guilty?

  There is silence. I think I’m crying now, too; there’s a hot wetness on my cheeks as yet another bus speeds by, and I can’t bear to get on.

  Kay: Why does it always come back to this? Why does it matter? Our relationship shouldn’t have this much of your brother in it.

  Me: Richie is part of me. We’re family.

  Kay: Well, we’re partners. Doesn’t that mean anything?

  Me: You know I love you.

  Kay: Funny. I’m not sure I do know that.

  Silence stretches on. Traffic speeds by. Scuff my feet, looking down at the sun-scorched pavement, feeling unreal.

  Me: Just say it.

  She waits. I wait. Another bus waits, then drives on.

  Kay: I think Richie did it, Leon. It’s what the jury decided, and they had all the information. It’s the sort of thing he’d do.

  Close my eyes slowly. It doesn’t feel like I expected it to—it’s strange, but it’s almost a relief. Have been hearing her say it in silence for months, ever since The Argument. This is an end to the endless twisting in the gut, the endless waiting on the edges of conversations, the endless knowing but trying not to know.

  Kay is sobbing. I listen, eyes still closed, and it’s like I’m floating.

  Kay: This is it, isn’t it?

  It’s obvious, all at once. This is it. Can’t do this anymore. Can’t have this eating away at my love for Richie, can’t be with a person who doesn’t love him, too.

  Me: Yes. This is it.

  23

  TIFFY

  The day after my visit to the hospice, I come home to the longest and most incoherent note I’ve ever had from Leon, lain on the kitchen counter beside an uneaten plate of spaghetti.

  Hi Tiffy,

  Am a bit all over the place but thank you so much for note for Richie. Can’t thank you enough. Definitely need all help we can get. He will be thrilled.

  Sorry I didn’t find you at work. Was my fault completely—left it too late to come and find you, wanted to read your letter to Richie first like you’d asked but took me ages, then just messed up and left it too late, always takes me a while to process things—sorry, am just going to go to bed, if that’s all right, see you later x

  I stare at it for a while. Well, at least he didn’t avoid me all night because he didn’t want to see me. But … uneaten dinner? All these long sentences? What does it mean?

  I lay a Post-it beside his note, sticking it carefully to the countertop.

  Hey Leon,

  Are you all right?! I’ll make rocky road, just in case.

  Tiffy xx

  The unusual wordiness of Leon’s letter is very much a one-off. For the next two weeks his notes are even more monosyllabic and lacking in personal pronouns than usual. I don’t want to push it, but something has clearly upset him. Are he and Kay fighting? She’s not been round, and he hasn’t mentioned her for weeks. I don’t know how to help when he won’t tell me, though, so I just bake a bit too much and don’t complain that he’s not been cleaning the flat properly. Yesterday his coffee mug wasn’t on the left of the sink or the right—it was still in the cupboard, and he must have gone to work without any caffeine at all.

  In a flash of inspiration I leave Leon the next manuscript from my bricklayer-turned-designer, the one who wrote Built. Book two—Skyscraping—is maybe even better, and I’m hoping it’ll cheer him up.

  I come home to this note on top of the ring-bound manuscript:

  This man. What a guy!

  Thanks, Tiffy. Sorry the flat’s a bit of a mess. Will clean soon, promise.

  Leon x

  I’m counting that exclamation mark as a major sign of improvement.

  * * *

  It’s the day of our trial book launch, the one we’re taking Katherin to so PR can persuade her that a huge launch is exactly what she’s always wanted.

  “No tights,” Rachel says decisively. “It’s August, for god’s sake.”

  We’re getting ready together in the office loos. Every so often someone comes in to pee and lets out a little yelp as they see that the room has been transformed into a dressing room. Both our makeup bags are emptied across the sinks; the air is clouded with perfume and ha
ir spray. We each have three outfit choices hung up along the mirrors, plus the ones we’re now wearing (our final choices: Rachel is in a lime green silk wraparound dress, and I’m in a tea dress covered in enormous prints of Alice in Wonderland—I found the fabric in a Stockwell charity shop and bribed one of my most obliging freelancers to make it into a dress for me).

  I wriggle around and whip my tights off. Rachel nods in approval.

  “Better. More leg is good.”

  “You’d have me dressed in a bikini if you had your way.”

  She grins cheekily at me in the mirror as she dabs at her lipstick.

  “Well, you might meet a handsome young Nordic man,” she says.

  Tonight is all about Forestry for the Ordinary Man, our woodwork editor’s latest acquisition. The author is a Norwegian hermit. It’s quite a big deal that he’s left his treehouse for long enough to come to London. Rachel and I are hoping that he has a complete meltdown and turns on Martin, who is organizing this event, and really should have taken the author’s hermit lifestyle as a sign that he probably doesn’t want to give a speech to a room full of woodwork fanatics.

  “I’m not sure I’m ready for handsome young Nordic men. I don’t know.” I find myself thinking back to what Mo said to me about Justin a few months ago, when I’d rung him in a state about whether Justin would ever get in touch with me. “I’m struggling with being … ready to date. Even though Justin left ages ago.”

  Rachel pauses mid-dab to stare at me with concern. “Are you all right?”

  “I think so,” I say. “Yeah, I think I’m fine.”

  “So it’s because of Justin?”

  “No, no, I don’t mean that. Maybe I just don’t need that in my life right now.” I know that’s not true, but I say it anyway because Rachel is looking at me like I’m ill.

  “You do,” Rachel tells me. “You’ve just not had sex for too long. You’ve forgotten how exceptional it is.”

  “I don’t think I’ve forgotten what sex is, Rachel. Isn’t it like, you know. Riding a bike?”

  “Similar,” Rachel concedes, “but you’ve not been with a man since Justin, which ended, what, November last year? So that means it’s been more than…” She counts on her fingers. “Nine months.”

  “Nine months?” Wow. That is a very long time. You can grow a whole baby in that time. Not that I am, obviously, because otherwise this tea dress would not fit.

  Unsettled, I apply blusher a bit too vigorously and end up looking sunburnt. Ugh. I’ll have to start again.

  * * *

  Martin from PR may be a pain in the arse, but the man can put on a woodwork-themed party. We’re in a pub in Shoreditch with exposed beams looming low above us; there are piles of logs as centerpieces on every table, and the bar is decorated with pine branches.

  I look around, ostensibly trying to find Katherin, but really trying to locate the Norwegian author who hasn’t seen a human being in six months. I check the corners, where I suspect he will be cowering.

  Rachel drags me to the bar to find out once and for all if the drinks are free. They are for the first hour, apparently—we curse ourselves for arriving twenty minutes late and order gin and tonics. Rachel befriends the bartender by talking about football, which actually works a surprising amount of the time, despite being the most unoriginal topic to assume a man would be interested in.

  We obviously drink very quickly, that being the only reasonable reaction to a one-hour window for free drinks, so when Katherin arrives I give her an especially effusive hug. She looks pleased.

  “This is a bit decadent,” she says. “Will this man’s book pay for this?” She is no doubt thinking of her previous royalty checks.

  “Oh, no,” Rachel says airily, gesturing for a top-up from her new best friend and now fellow Arsenal fan (Rachel supports West Ham). “Not likely. But you have to do this sort of thing occasionally, otherwise everyone will just self-publish.”

  “Shhh,” I hiss. I don’t want Katherin getting any ideas.

  Several gin and tonics later, Rachel and the bartender are more than friendly, and other people are really having trouble getting served. To my surprise, Katherin is in her element. Right now she’s laughing at something our head of PR has said, which I know is an act, because the head of PR is literally never funny.

  These events are perfect for people-watching. I swivel on my bar stool to get a better view of the room. There are indeed quite a lot of handsome Nordic men about. I consider the possibility of taking myself out into the room until someone obligingly introduces me to one of them, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.

  “Kind of like watching ants, isn’t it?” says someone from beside me. I turn; there’s a smartly dressed business type leaning against the bar to my left. He smiles ruefully at me. His light-brown hair is buzzed short, the same length as his stubble, and his eyes are a cute blue-gray with crinkles at the edges. “That sounded a lot worse out loud than in my head.”

  I look back at the crowd. “I know what you mean,” I say. “They all look so … busy. And purposeful.”

  “Except him,” the man says, nodding to a guy in the opposite corner, who has just been abandoned by the young woman he was talking to.

  “He’s a lost ant,” I agree. “What do you reckon—is he our Norwegian hermit?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” the man says, giving him an appraising look. “Not good-looking enough, I don’t think.”

  “Why, have you seen the author photo?” I ask.

  “Yep. Handsome guy. Dashing, some might say.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the author.”

  He smiles, and the crinkles in the corners of his eyes lengthen into tiny crow’s feet. “Guilty.”

  “You’re very well-dressed for a hermit,” I say, a little accusingly. I feel misled. He doesn’t even have a Norwegian accent, damn it.

  “If you’d read this,” he says, waving one of the samplers that was available on our way in, “then you’d know that before I chose to live alone in Nordmarka, I was an investment banker in Oslo. I last wore this suit on the day I resigned.”

  “Really? What made you do it?”

  He opens the sampler and begins to read. “Tired of the corporate toil, Ken had a revelation after a weekend spent hiking with an old school friend who now made his living in woodwork. Ken had always loved to use his hands”—and now the look he gives me is definitely flirtatious—“and when he went back to his old friend’s workshop, he felt suddenly at home. It was clear within moments that he was an extraordinarily skilled woodworker.”

  “If only we always had a pre-written biography for meeting new people,” I say, raising an eyebrow. “Makes it so much easier to brag.”

  “Give me yours, then,” he says, snapping the sampler closed with a smile.

  “My bio? Hmm. Let me see. Tiffy Moore escaped the smallness of her village upbringing for the great adventure that is London as soon as she could. There, she found the life she had always wanted: overpriced coffee, squalid accommodation, and an extraordinary lack of graduate jobs that didn’t involve spreadsheets.”

  Ken laughs. “You’re good. Are you in PR, too?”

  “Editorial,” I tell him. “If I were in PR, I’d have to be out there with the ants.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re not,” he says. “I prefer to be away from the crowd, but I don’t think I could have resisted saying hello to the beautiful woman in the Lewis Carroll dress.”

  He gives me a look. A very intense look. My stomach flutters. But … I can do this. Why not?

  “Do you want to get some air?” I find myself saying. He nods, and I grab my jacket off the chair and head for the door to the pub garden.

  It’s a perfect summer evening. The air is still tinged with warmth even though the sun set hours ago; the pub has hung up strings of lightbulbs between the trees, and they cast a soft yellow glow across the garden. There are a few people out here, mainly smokers—they have t
hat hunched look that smokers get, like the world is against them. Ken and I take a seat on a picnic bench.

  “So, when you say ‘hermit’…” I begin.

  “Which I haven’t,” Ken points out.

  “Right. But what exactly does that involve?”

  “Living alone, somewhere secluded. Very few people.”

  “Very few?”

  “The odd friend, the grocery delivery woman.” He shrugs. “It’s not as quiet as people make it out to be.”

  “The grocery delivery woman, eh?” I give him a look this time.

  He laughs. “I’ll admit, that’s one downside of solitude.”

  “Oh, please. You don’t need to live alone in a treehouse to not have any sex.”

  I press my lips together. I’m not entirely sure where that came from—possibly from the last gin and tonic—but Ken just smiles, a slow, really quite sexy smile, and then leans down to kiss me.

  As I close my eyes and lean in, I feel giddy on possibility. There’s nothing to stop me going home with this man, and it’s a sunlight-through-the-clouds moment—like something’s lifted. I can do whatever I want now. I’m free.

  And then, as the kiss deepens, with disorientating suddenness I remember something.

  Justin. I’m crying. We’ve just had a fight and it was all my fault. Justin has gone cold, his back turned on me in our enormous white bed with all its trendy brushed cotton and endless pillows.

  I am deeply miserable. More miserable than I have remembered being before, and yet it doesn’t feel at all unfamiliar. Justin turns toward me, and suddenly, giddily, his hands are on me and we’re kissing. I’m muddled, lost. I’m so grateful he’s not angry with me anymore. He knows just where to touch me. The misery hasn’t gone, it’s still there, but he wants me now, and the relief makes everything else seem small.

  Back here, in the garden in Shoreditch, Ken pulls back from the kiss. He’s smiling. I don’t think he can even tell that my skin has gone clammy and my heart is racing for all the wrong reasons.

  Fuck. Fuck. What the hell was that?