Still, it gave me time to mull over my feelings. There were niggling thoughts about luggage and packing, passports and weight limits but, mostly, they were quickly swept aside by the memory of Tom’s hand curled around the bedhead, his profile backlit by an orange streetlamp outside.
We’d spent only long enough out of bed for a quick dinner of toast and tea while I sent the results of our photoshoot to Estelle and uploaded the chosen photo to my website. We danced against a backdrop of crackling radio Christmas carols, before retreating upstairs for the night.
Arriving, I pressed a hand to the door and stepped inside.
‘There’s a look of smug satisfaction if ever I’ve seen one,’ Alfred smiled with a wobble of his head. ‘Look at you with your bed hair.’
I chanced a look in the reflection of the drink cabinet, ruffling my fingers through my hair and tugging at knots. ‘Oh, boy, I didn’t realise it was this bad.’
‘Two guesses what you’ve been up to.’
‘Sleeping.’ I offered a coy smile. ‘I’ve been sleeping.’
‘Liar.’ He placed a ceramic cup on the drip tray of the coffee machine.
‘Cross my heart.’ I fiddled with the wrapped slices of fruit cake on the counter. ‘I have risen early so I can provide breakfast and start my day right. Most important meal and all that.’
‘He’s still asleep, isn’t he?’
I nodded. ‘Ah, yep.’
‘Does this mean what I think it means?’ he asked. ‘Has Isobel finally been convinced to stay?’
‘That would be nice.’ I picked out some toasted sandwiches and two bottles of orange juice. ‘But I fly out tomorrow morning, so I guess today is also goodbye.’
‘Oh, Isobel.’ Alfred’s face fell. ‘Seriously, I’ll let you stay in the cleaning cupboard if I have to.’
‘You don’t have to do that.’ I smiled, embarrassed.
‘Not even if rent is cheap?’ he asked.
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘I’ve made promises. Family commitments and all that.’
‘Free?’ he tried.
‘I’ll be back.’ I watched my total rack up on the screen before tapping my credit card. ‘It won’t be long. We’ll work something out.’
‘Here, give me a hug.’ Alfred stepped out from behind the counter and slipped his arms around me.
For someone who looked like age might have got the better of his strength, his hug was surprisingly tight. I couldn’t lie, it was nice to be this wanted. Nice, and sad. At least no one here had been calling me up and telling me I was selfish for wanting to be happy or making dodgy demands of my job.
‘Is it work?’ Alfred held me by my shoulders. ‘If it is, I can give you a job. You can make coffee, right?’
‘Instant coffee, maybe.’ I kissed his cheek. ‘You’ll be the first port of call when I get back.’
‘See you soon, then?’
‘Exactly.’ I snapped a finger. ‘See you soon.’
Walking up the street, with its light dusting of snow and multi-coloured twinkling lights set against streetlights that hadn’t yet switched off for the day, Tom’s street felt like its own piece of Winter Wonderland. Though the terraced homes all looked so similar, they were as individual as their Christmas decorations, coloured doors, snow-covered windows and neon reindeers.
When I arrived at his front door, I stood for a moment and let the joy of the last week wash over me. That first moment by the bus stop full of shock, surprise, and irritation, had grown to something bigger than even I knew what to do with. He was comfortable, familiar … home.
Home. That had a nice ring to it.
I would miss him. There was no question about it. I’d miss the eternal optimism of a man who smiled despite being in the middle of a constant career-driven rush hour. I’d miss the generosity, and, in spite of all initial impressions, I’d miss his quiet patience. The man who’d knocked me into a gutter was the same man who’d drawn me out into the world of ice skating, mulled wine, and walks through parks where shoes crunched on freshly fallen snow.
I swallowed down nervous excitement and let myself in. Something immediately felt off-kilter.
My backpack, which I was sure I’d left somewhere in a back room, was propped up against the wall by the front door. The house was quiet bar the sound of clinking ceramics and splashing water. Something uncomfortable had settled in the thirty minutes I’d been gone.
‘Tom?’ I asked. ‘Are you okay?’
He glanced at me over his shoulder, his hands still in the sudsy water. ‘Your phone’s been rather busy this morning. You might want to check it.’
‘My phone?’ My brow twitched. ‘Is that why you’re upset? I can put it on silent if you like.’
While Tom dried his hands, I pulled my phone from the charger. It was Edwin and his brigade of missed calls and messages. The latest one, bright and large on the screen, made my knees buckle and my eyes prickle.
The team are excited to read your My Week with Tom piece. Make sure it’s through before the flight. See you on the flip side.
‘No … Tom … this isn’t—’
‘I want you to leave,’ he cut me off.
‘No, if you could just let me explain,’ I pleaded.
‘I agreed to one article. One with you. One for you. One that was supposed to be discussed, approved, my side of the story.’ He snatched my phone up from where I’d put it on the bench. ‘Not this. This is trash and yet, here you are going behind my back? Is this what I get for helping you?’
‘No.’ I felt my chin crumple. ‘I told him no. I said I wouldn’t do it.’
‘Really? Because this does not look like you said no,’ he raised his voice. ‘This looks like it’s a done deal and they’re only waiting to press the upload button.’
I watched as he paced the small space of his kitchen. I wanted to move to him, to touch him, to tell him that this was all a mistake, but I couldn’t. My feet were glued to the spot. I couldn’t move for fear of breaking.
‘Call him and ask him. I told him there was no way I would do it, that it was unethical, and not at all who I am,’ I argued.
‘And why should I believe any of that?’ he asked. ‘He’ll just side with you then run the article anyway. This is exactly what I was angry about the day we met. I’d invited someone to set for a day and this is identical to what they did. Fool me once, right?’
‘I’m not like them, Tom,’ I pleaded as anger bubbled up and made my fingers tingle. ‘Surely you know that? Surely I’ve proven that to you?’
‘No, actually, I don’t know that,’ he argued. ‘For all I know there’s probably some journalistic guidebook that gets passed around the first day of work. Read it, study it, befriend the subject. Hell, sleep with them if it’ll get you an exclusive.’
‘You know what?’ I snatched my bag up from beside the door. ‘You can be angry all that you want, but you don’t get to be cruel. You can go to hell.’
The front door slammed so hard the glass in the side panel rattled and the door knocker bounced once. I thought about going back inside and spewing out what was left of my anger, but that would serve to do nothing more than open the wound further. It would reduce me to the insults I’d just rallied against, and I didn’t want to be that person.
I shouldered my bag and walked to the corner. While I had no idea where I was going to go and what I was going to do right now, I did know that I’d never felt more alone in my life.
I was miserable.
* * *
So, where to from here? I didn’t feel like going back to Estelle’s. Not just yet, anyway. It was all too raw and having to explain everything would be like trying to make sense of a jumble sale. My Christmas spirit had shrivelled quicker than one of Estelle’s Shrinky Dinks.
I didn’t want to go home, which was a confusing concept at this point. Was home in Melbourne with a sister who wanted to argue on points of my happiness? Despite the fact I was crabby at her right now, I did get a small chuckle out of knowing
I’d soon be hearing her ‘Told you so’s’ while she poured me a class of wine.
Or was home Estelle’s house, with its constant warm heating, endless supply of red wine, and a friend who understood that family wasn’t always what you were born into? For a moment, I’d thought it had been Tom, but I’d apparently managed to conflate what I was feeling in direct contrast to my feelings of going home. The more I sank into him, the less I wanted to get on that plane.
To keep my brain busy and distracted from the events of the last hour, I boarded a bus and headed towards Piccadilly Circus. Usually, it was a distracting hive of activity; the lights, the screens, the raging traffic. But, today, it wasn’t working.
In the corner of a busy café, one where nobody knew me and I could be completely invisible, I scrolled through my phone, my social media and searched for Tom’s profile. Our messages back and forth had been short and sweet, the deeper stuff saved for real life, but all I could see was ‘You can no longer reply to this conversation’ plastered across the bottom of the screen.
And it wasn’t just the conversation he was trying to stop. He’d unfollowed me on every platform I was on. All his previous comments were gone. No doubt that, if he could, he’d magic up a spell to send me into the ether, too.
I was so angry at myself for not just coming out and explaining the situation to begin with; for not putting out the assuring words before it became a bigger problem. Before it became … this. It was stupid, I knew that now. He was understanding when I’d told him I was leaving, but I’d assumed that maybe this wasn’t as simple as that. Apples and oranges.
Hindsight was a wonderful thing. Maybe if I stopped by his house and just explained, even if it was through the little mail slot in the front door, then he would understand.
On the steps of Bond Street Station, I scrolled through to his name and dialled his number. For the next few moments, I heard nothing but the dial tone. It was punctuated by chatter emerging from the Underground and a few train announcements. When I tried again, his phone was off.
I lumbered my way towards the turnstiles and got the first train back to Sloane Square. By the time I’d arrived home, I’d decided to make one last call. One small mercy was that Estelle was at work and that meant no one else was audience to what I was about to do.
‘Isobel,’ Edwin answered quickly. I was so busy circling my bedroom that I wasn’t entirely sure I’d even heard the dial tone. ‘Is this you replying to my message?’
‘It is,’ I said. My hand shook. ‘And I quit.’
‘You what?’ He roared with laughter. ‘You can’t quit. What are you doing to do? You don’t have any money.’
‘I don’t need money,’ I argued. ‘And I certainly don’t need it from you.’
‘And I suppose lovely Thomas is going to save you, is he?’
‘I’m going to save me.’
‘You need to give four weeks’ notice. I’ll see you back in the office next week.’
‘No.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said no. You’re not going to bully me around. I quit. Effective immediately.
‘At least now I can hire someone to do the job properly,’ he spat. ‘You weren’t going to be there much longer, anyway. It was a mistake hiring you. For all the purported success of your viral video, it never once translated into money for us.’
‘I know for a fact that’s a lie,’ I said. ‘What are you going to do, retract all my performance reviews because you’ve been called on your shit? Do it. I don’t care. I don’t need you, and I don’t need your pitiful, self-indulgent job.’
I threw my phone, and it landed with a thud in the bottom of my suitcase. Then I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes. It was more than I could deal with in one day.
Chapter 21
2 Days ’til Christmas
‘You look horrid.’ Estelle shoved a mug at me without so much as asking. ‘Which means it was either a very good or a very bad night. The fact you aren’t smiling and, oh God, your lip is wobbling, tells me it was the latter. Isobel, what happened?’
I was so exhausted I didn’t move all night – not for food, or the bathroom, not to check my phone, and not even when Estelle arrived home just after midnight. Everything felt hopeless and I just wanted to be left alone.
My text messages hadn’t been read, let alone replied to, each of them more desperate than the one before it. Every other form of communication had been blocked and, for some ridiculous reason, I was panicking about no longer having a job to go home to. Stupid, right?
In an ideal world, I would have quit before Edwin’s demands got way out of hand. I should have. I knew that now. There was every chance I wouldn’t have ended up in this predicament to begin with had I just backed myself sooner.
I wiped at my eyes and felt my chest contract. Estelle pushed down on my shoulder until I ended up sat at the tiny dining table.
‘It’s just my boss,’ I held my head, elbows on the tabletop. ‘He wanted a story. I said no and Tom found out.’
‘Can you translate that for me?’ She sat opposite me, bringing with her salted butter and jam. ‘Take a deep breath.’
While I tore apart what felt like an entire bakery’s worth of apricot Danishes and drank enough coffee to make my heart skip, I explained the whole sorry story to her. From the bus stop through to the winter market, take a right a Somerset House, and onward through a week of utter joy at having found someone I’d thought I’d connected with.
Then Edwin had come in like a wrecking ball. I explained what he’d wanted, that I’d said no and thought that was the end of the conversation. By rights, it should have been. What he wanted was grossly unethical. Except it wasn’t the end, and it had come back to bite me in the early hours of yesterday morning.
‘I don’t know what to do.’ I pushed another piece of pastry in my mouth. I wondered if someone held a mirror to me, would I look like a sideshow attraction? Give me a red balloon and throw me in the gutter, because I certainly felt like a clown.
‘Can I be honest?’ Estelle crossed her legs at the knees.
‘Please.’
‘If I were to ask you right now how you wanted this to end, what would you say?’ she asked. ‘Would you stay if he asked you to?’
I stopped chewing and looked at her. ‘That’s the thing, I don’t know.’
‘Well, I mean, you’ve quit your job, haven’t you?’ she asked.
I nodded and wiped at my eyes. ‘Yeah, but I promised my family I’d be home, so I still need to go.’
‘Yes, but you could come back—’ she shrugged ‘—if you wanted to.’
It wasn’t like that hadn’t crossed my mind a million times already. My brain had been like an extended episode of shower thoughts, where I played out all the possible endgame scenarios. Fourteen million endings, and only one of them would ever be the right one. Unfortunately, I had no way to access the right one.
My shoulders sank. ‘It doesn’t matter. He’s not answering me anyway.’
‘Can you go to his house?’
‘I could,’ I said, hesitating. ‘But I’m not comfortable with that if he’s not otherwise interested. That just makes me look like a crazed stalker lady. I’d rather like to avoid that on top of all the other stupidity I’ve indulged in.’
Estelle sank back in her chair and shrugged. ‘Let him go then.’
‘It’s for the best,’ I said. ‘It is, isn’t it? This could never be anything more. It was silly to get involved in the first place.’
‘Was it?’
Whether it was or not didn’t matter. No matter which way I tried to explain away the text, it still looked suspicious. Edwin had left almost zero wriggle room for me to explain anything. I couldn’t. I’d tried. I’d tried so hard. But the message had been worded in such a way it looked like the article was already a sure thing. So, what now?
I tried calling one more time. Tom’s phone was switched off. There was nothing left for me to do but gather my th
ings, check under my bed one last time and head for the airport.
* * *
‘Maybe he’s just not that into you.’ Estelle nudged me. ‘Hey? Hey? No? Not funny.’
I smiled. ‘Oh, no, I get it.’
‘You’re going to be okay.’ Estelle cupped my face. ‘I promise this isn’t the end.’
I licked a tear away from my upper lip. ‘I’ll see you soon.’
‘Room’s always yours.’ She pushed me away with a tap on the backside. ‘Now, get out of here.’
There was a small part of me that was thankful the Tube was packed. I mean, it always was, but it was a relief to be so busy trying not to run over feet with my luggage that it stopped me thinking about the last twenty-four hours. I stepped into the first carriage and, back to the wall on a little half seat, started my journey to Heathrow.
When service allowed, I updated social media. Unemployed. That had a nice ring to it. Perhaps Tom was the call to change I needed, for my work at least. The impetus to stand on my own two feet and really start doing what I wanted to do in my life. When service dropped out, I used the time to capture ideas; a workplace relations expert would be great to interview! Even if I wasn’t working for him, it appeared Edwin was still going to provide me with a plethora of inspiration.
He was a laundry list of what not to do. Then again, maybe that was just me.
When I got bored of all that, I watched the human traffic come and go, out through Earl’s Court and Barons Court, Hammersmith and Acton Town. On the approach to Hounslow West, I caught sight of some commotion in the next carriage. People parted like the red sea as somebody searched desperately through spaces. With his dark hair and stubble, and a dark coat that looked far too familiar, it could only be one person.
Heads were already turning and, when the doors parted at Hatton Cross, I felt my knees quiver.
‘Isobel!’ Tom’s eyes met mine across the carriage.
I wasn’t imagining it. I took a deep breath in. And held it.
Time stopped. And thank God for the blood rushing through my ears because, otherwise, I might have thought my heart had given out on me too.
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