I sent Dan a text almost as soon as I left the house. “Love you. Take care.” He would see right through it; would know I was anxious. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was seriously wrong. I wanted to turn and run back, step inside and triple-check. I needed this to be real.
A bell.
I stepped back hurriedly.
“For fuck . . .” The cyclist glared over his shoulder at me and I felt my whole body lurch. It just couldn’t be. How?
Standing on the pavement I put my hands on my hips and breathed out slowly. A woman with a terrier in a tartan coat passed me, an inquiring look on her face. I didn’t remember that dog. It was a coincidence, the cyclist, surely?
Crossing the road I entered the tube, standing on the escalator staring hard at the people moving up and down. It smelled the same—but the tube always did. There was a man in a padded coat, a rucksack slung over one shoulder. A child’s face peeking over the top of the escalator. A woman in a lurid blue faux-fur coat, headphones over her ears. A man in an overcoat hurrying down one side, a couple of older ladies talking, one staring as the man pushed past.
I checked my phone, amazed to see the messages appear. Have I conjured them because I’ve seen them before? How does this work?
I stared at the Committee thread. There was no way I’d be going tonight, not when I needed to be home. Exiting the tube, I stared for a second at the wash of blue sky. Had that cloud been in the shape of a turtle yesterday? The café was pretty empty and I moved inside.
“I’m not sure I should have caffeine,” I said, almost to myself.
“Headache?” the barista asked sympathetically.
“Something like that,” I said, chewing my lip as I stared at the chalkboard behind him. “I’ll have a freshly squeezed orange juice, please.”
“My mum has the bad migraines,” the barista said, pouring some oranges into a plastic machine. “Have you got the pain pills? I think I’ve got some, I should not really give, but if you haven’t?”
“Oh no, I’m all right, thanks though,” I added.
He got the tongs and picked up a blueberry muffin, popping it into a bag. “On house.” He smiled at me. “Hope it helps.” I noticed again the gap in his front teeth.
“Your smile reminds me of my daughter,” I said suddenly.
“That is nice,” he poured the orange juice into a cup.
“Sorry,” I said, feeling heat in my cheeks. “Weird day.”
He laughed, “Not every day I look like young girl.”
Thanking him I looked at my phone. Ignoring the twenty-seven emails, I opened the message from Hattie. “Time for a catch-up at lunch?”
“Please yes,” I typed back, leaping at the opportunity to talk to her.
Hattie, yes, Hattie was the person to turn to today. She’s always been there for me, taking my side even if I didn’t deserve it. She once sent me a new Clinique Black Honey lipstick because I’d told her I was gutted I’d lost mine. Another time, she cut short a weekend break in Wales she’d been looking forward to forever to see me after I’d called her crying the night before. I needed her, I needed my friend.
The office was empty and rather than head to my desk I found myself wandering along the hallway and up the stairs, treading carefully between the stacks of books balanced on either side of every stair, past wonky frames of book covers, faded photographs of authors, and Award Ceremonies from the Nineties on the wall.
Linda’s office was on the first floor, along with a dark-paneled room packed with old filing cabinets and lever arch folders filled with yellowing royalty statements. There was Linda’s desk, red light on the printer blinking, landline telephone that must be the last left in London, brown ashtray overflowing and giving the room its stale stench. I picked up the mug with the hares on, which she knew I’d been looking for, that clearly said “World’s Best Mum” and was not given to Linda by her three white rats. (Yes, she has rats. They have red eyes and a custom-made cage that cost her over £800.) A centimeter of long-ago coffee sat in the bottom, a cigarette butt stuck to the thick white film on its surface, which made me place it straight back.
Her empire. And a room I wanted to visit in a few days so that things would change around here. I’d been fobbed off at similar meetings in the past but maybe this time I could be brave enough; the prospect of it suddenly seemed smaller and less scary in the grand scheme of things.
A buzz from the door, the waiting taxi visible in the street below through the smeared glass. I stared at the car, the same vehicle, another car turning down the road toward it. Had that one been red yesterday?
Then there were voices in the hallway below and I moved back down the stairs. There they both were: Linda in her hideous fur coat, Arthur still dressed as two thirds of a traffic light.
“Gemma.”
I was pleased to be far enough away to avoid the accompanying kiss.
“It’s Emma,” I corrected, which would have been frostier had I not bent to pick up a pile of Hungarian editions of a WWII saga that I’d knocked off the bottom stair.
“We had to go—”
“Coffee. I know. Poor Arthur can’t abide granules, can you, Arthur?”
“I . . . cannot.”
“Well, the taxi’s waiting again so shall we get on?” I said briskly.
“Do we have to go?” Arthur pouted. “I’d much rather take you beautiful ladies out to lunch.”
“Oh Arthur! So naughty! It is an absolute bore. But Emma here has assured me she’s got it all under control.”
“The meeting is going to be fine,” I announced with a dismissive wave of my hand. I didn’t add “but the bit afterward will take all bloody day to fix” because today there was no way I’d let it. Anger flared within me as I remembered the wasted minutes on the phone last night that had made me even later for my dinner with Dan.
“After you,” I indicated the door.
Linda gave me a strange look.
The honking had begun and I saw the taxi driver lift both his hands, prompting a vertiginous feeling for the hundredth time that morning. Would today be exactly the same? And was it like the tree falling in the wood? If I wasn’t there would it still happen? Arthur had just said “To our chariot,” so I was fairly sure I had my answer.
I froze before stepping into the taxi.
But that would mean.
If it was all the same, that meant . . . I closed my eyes, and my head swam again with a cracked headlight, his leg, his head . . .