Kit Campbell, 8:05 am:
Morning my love, how are you? Xx
Jade Kaya, 9:30 am:
Crazy busy, running into another meeting. Miss you x
Kit Campbell, 12:36 pm:
I’m passing by your office, do you want to grab lunch?
Kit Campbell, 2:20 pm:
Will you be working this weekend? Em and Ollie have invited us round to meet their new puppy x
Kit Campbell, 5:14 pm:
I’ve linked you a band on Spotify, so up your alley.
Kit Campbell, 6:40 pm:
I miss you.
Jade Kaya, 7:35 pm:
Hey babe, I’m so sorry been completely slammed.
It’s been mental.
Been running around like a headless chicken all day.
Literally so overwhelmed.
I’m crying in the toilets.
I cannot remember the last time I had a proper meal.
Gah.
Jade Kaya, 8:10 pm:
Missing you x
Kit Campbell, 10:20 pm:
Was at the pub with the guys. Sounds rough my love. Please try and take it easier—looking forward to seeing my girl tomorrow x
Jade Kaya, 11:52 pm:
Promise I won’t miss it. Love you xx
“I’m here, I’m sorry, so sorry.” I bundled toward Kit. “How long have you been waiting?”
“You’re all right, not too long,” he said. I planted a kiss on him and lingered for a few extra seconds. Since the Savoy weekend, I had missed the following two of our Sundays, spending full weekends on Project Arrow. I expensed pillows and had them delivered to the office, catching naps under my desk. Will gave me work at midnight and asked me to turn it around by S.O.B. Emails flooded my inbox at a rate faster than I could read them. I was fully aware that I found self-worth in overwork. A crisp good job from a senior was enough validation to keep the engine running. I felt an urgent need to respond to emails at lightning speed. To keep my Skype status green. I once apologized for not replying to an email I got at two a.m. until six a.m. A busy day was referred to in the office as one spent “firefighting,” such was the inflated sense of emergency. And of course, self-aggrandization. I relied on Kit to hold the fort. He often said independence and ambition were the most attractive traits in a woman. He understood that sometimes our relationship would have to take the back burner and he would be there to catch me when the thread I was hanging on finally frayed.
Time was a precious scarcity and I’d usually Uber straight from the office to shave ten minutes on the journey. But I hadn’t slept well since that cab ride after lunch with Genevieve. It had hatched an ambiguous fear and my senses continued to fire afterward. I couldn’t shake that panic of entrapment, so I’d hauled across town on a Boris bike instead, wincing with each pedal as the tough saddle rubbed against my sore spot. We had a table booked at the Coach House. It was freezing, but they’d made it cozy in the beer garden, with couples huddled under patio heaters, sharing tartan blankets. The Coach House was “our place”—every couple has one. Somewhere that your love is indigenous to.
Kit first brought me here seven years ago today. After Kyriakos’s class, getting on the train with him felt independent and irresponsible. Tension corkscrewed my insides when we were together. What was the right way to act around him? He’d still not acknowledged our kiss in the chapel.
He suggested we go to a place called the Coach House. The first thing I noticed were the dog treats at the entrance under a sign of a Labrador.
“Take a seat, I’ll grab us drinks,” he had said, his hand grazing the small of my back. I reached for words to explain the effect his touch had on me, but it felt beyond me.
“So, law,” Kit stated as I settled into the glass of wine he handed me. I hated wine at the time, but it’s not like I could ask him for a Fanta.
“What do you mean?”
“Why did you go for it?”
“I really don’t know,” I said listlessly. Kit studied me but said nothing. “There were probably other subjects I might have liked more, but uni isn’t really about enjoyment, right?”
“It’s about intellectual growth, don’t you think? Took me a couple of gap years to figure out what subject would keep me ticking over.”
I looked at him blankly.
He continued, “What would you have studied if you didn’t feel obliged to choose law?”
“I didn’t say I felt oblig—”
“I know you didn’t,” he said softly, “I’m sorry for assuming.”
I eyed Kit over my glass, suspicious of how mildly he breached my defenses.
“English, I think.”
“I can see that…” Kit trailed off. “But I think that would have been a mistake.”
I scoffed.
“Laugh all you want,” he said, “your essay this morning was really eloquent. I thought the euthanasia piece might have been a fluke, but you proved me wrong.”
“Are you trying to be complimentary?” I said. “You’re not very good at it.”
The corner of his lip lifted. “You might not realize it, but everyone there”—he gestured vaguely around him, I assumed to signify our peers, before leaning forward—“they’re all spoon-fed toffs who perform self-hatred about how easy they’ve had it when actually, deep deep down, they feel entitled to everything they have.”
“Odd,” I said, my index finger circling the rim of the wineglass, “I don’t think there’s anything self-hating about you.”
“Touché,” he wheezed. “You’re right. I wish I could be more proud of myself. Like you can be.”
“I thought you were done assuming things about me.” I feigned prickliness because I guessed it would make me seem aloof and uninterested in his view of me.
“Well, if you’re not proud of yourself, you should be.”
What did pride have to do with it? I was about to ask what he meant by that, when Kit said, “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
His face lifted as he looked past me into the middle distance. I turned to see a woman in her fifties swanning in. She was in a crisply ironed pale-blue shirt, oversized blazer, cropped straight-leg jeans and, white plimsoles. She welcomed me with outstretched arms, auburn head tilted and a wonky smile.
“Honey, come here,” she exclaimed. I didn’t have time to hide my surprise before she enveloped me into a huge hug. “So excited to meet you.”
“Jade, this is my mum, Angela.”
I was shocked. His mum? What are the chances of running into her? On our first date? Is this even a date? I tried to quickly gather my composure.
“Mrs. Campbell! Such a pleasure to meet you.” I was keen to come across as the picture of politeness.
“Call me Angie. Mrs. Campbell is my husband’s mother as far as I’m concerned!”
“London’s such a small world,” I exclaimed, “running into you like this.”
Kit smiled lovingly. “Jade,” he said under his breath, “the Coach House is ours.”
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t know.” I felt a bit provincial for not realizing. So his family owns this place.
Kit reached over and kissed his mum on the cheek. How civilized was this? I rarely saw my parents outside their house, whereas Kit and Angie’s interaction was so inherently social. So casual. I couldn’t imagine updating my parents about a boy I fancied that I’d met only twice before. Angie turned to me while Kit was hanging up her blazer.
“It seems you have quite enraptured my firstborn, he’s been texting me about bringing you here tonight,” she whispered conspiratorially, nudging me with her elbow. She was so chic, radiating affection. I imagined her as a high-society starlet in her youth, frequenting Tatler’s Bystander pages, attending glamorous parties that moonlighted as charity galas. “And I can certainly see why!”
I smiled, not knowing how to act. After a few more minutes of small talk, Angie plucked up her fashionably weathered Mulberry Bayswater bag and kissed us both on the cheeks. “Okay, my loves, I’ll get out of your hair. Have a delightful evening!”
“Your mum is gorgeous,” I said as we sat back down.
“She’s great.”
“Will your dad be coming by tonight as well?”
Kit’s head turned robotically toward me, as if I had activated a troubleshooting mode.
“No.” He cleared his throat. “He’ll be in Notting Hill. With Lisa.”
There was a new slipperiness in his voice.
“Is she one of your sisters?”
Kit laughed mockingly, though it seemed he was mocking Lisa, not me.
“Absolutely not.”
“We can talk about something else,” I mumbled.
“No, it’s honestly fine.” Kit shrugged, with the tense machoism of a man who has learned to not show that anything remotely bothered him. “We can talk about it. We were in Provence, we didn’t know it at the time, but it was our last normal family holiday.” Kit looked into the fire we were sat opposite of. “My middle sister hit her head doing a cannonball in the pool. There’s blood—it always looks worse spreading in water. Dad rushes toward her, screaming, ‘Liv, Liv, are you okay?’ ”
There was a pause. This detail was important.
“My sister’s called Elizabeth.”
I gasped.
“Mum and Dad are freaking out—my sister was fine in the end, just a concussion. But the bomb had starting ticking. Two days later, over family dinner, it’s like a switch flipped. I remember that exact moment.” Kit clicked his fingers. “I think that was the moment our family imploded. Mum looks up and goes, ‘Ian, who the hell is Liv?’ ”
“Wow.”
“He laughs and insists he said ‘Liz,’ you know, for ‘Lizzie.’ Said she must have heard wrong. But the show was already over.”
“What happened after that?”
“It came out that Dad had another daughter. The same age as Lizzie—three months apart.” Kit almost laughed. “He had an entire double life with his second family. Lisa and Olivia. Liv.”
“That’s awful,” I finally said, slightly shell-shocked. “I’m so sorry. How old were you?”
“Sixteen.”
“That’s so much for you to cope with at that age.” I was eighteen, but I acted like sixteen was distinctly adolescent. I was putting the story together in my head; Angie referred to her “husband” earlier.
“It was fine for me, I had my friends and stuff. My sisters were younger, though. And I know how important having a stable home life is for girls at that age. We flew home and, as soon as we were on British soil, it was like a decision was made: Dad told us we shouldn’t upset Mum by bringing it up and, somewhere along the way, that morphed into us all turning a blind eye.” Kit sighed. “Dad still spends most weeknights with them; it’s so blatant. The nights he’s at home with Mum, they stick to their separate quarters of the house. But we never speak about it.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
I leaned forward and touched his arm. I hadn’t had a conversation like this before. That recounted an emotionally fraught experience so openly. To a practical stranger. Omma and Baba had a strict code of silence: family matters stayed within the family. I wanted to show that I could match him on his level, this older guy who had whisked me away from the juvenility of campus to drink wine with grown-ups in leafy pockets of London.
“Life since,” Kit continued, “was an eye-opener for me. It’s kinda like once it was all out in the open, Dad was free to live this brand-spanking-new life with Lisa and Liv in private, as long as he would go along with Mum’s wish for the Happy Campbells in public.” He pulled a wry smile. “Being a dad to us since has meant throwing us money. He buys us whatever we ask for on our birthdays, but never spends the day with us. Pays for my sisters’ school fees, but hasn’t showed up to a single parents’ evening. It’s one of those things that makes you see, like seriously, that money can’t replace love. Do you know what I mean?”
I nodded, not knowing what he meant. I was mainly curious about his quartered house.
“God,” he suddenly said, “I’m sorry.”
“What for? You don’t have to be sorry.”
There was a pause.
“It’s strange,” he said, “I’ve never felt more comfortable saying these things to anyone. I’m lucky to have met you, Jade.”
“You don’t know me,” I murmured, trying to remain nonchalant, while my heart was singing and angels were fanfaring.
“Cheers,” Kit said now, holding up his glass. “Happy anniversary!”
“Cheers.” I clinked my glass against his, finally relaxing from my nightmarish month.
“Who would have thought, eh? That we’d still be going strong after all these years?”
I put my hand on my heart and mocked concern. “You’re not getting the seven-year itch, are you?”
He stood up and walked around the table, as my eyes followed him. He squeezed himself on the bench I was on, lifting the blanket off my lap and swinging both my legs over his. Festoon lights crisscrossed behind him, the heaters crackled and candles flickered in their tumblers. He wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me closer to him and kissing the tip of my nose.
“Far from it.”
“Good, ’cos you’re stuck with me.”
“Oh”—he pulled back and patted his pockets—“before I forget, I wanted to give this to you.”
Kit began digging around and pulled out a small dark-green velvet box. Men in their late twenties loved to engagement fish. But Kit was understandably disillusioned about marriage, and I’d always agreed that it should not be the end goal for us, feeling very nouveau in my rejection of institution. I inhaled deeply and flipped the top open. Inside, a glint of gold. Hanging from the chain was a light-green spherical pendant, nestled on the satin cushion.
“It’s a jade stone,” Kit explained. “Do you like it?”
I gasped appropriately. The necklace looked antique, with a weathering to the gold that showed it was solid.
“I love it,” I said. I pulled his face toward mine and kissed him. “And I love you.”
He lifted the necklace out and fumbled to fasten it, before admiring it burrowed in the hollow of my throat. “To many more years with you.”
I smiled and my hand went to my neck. Kit got up to go to the bathroom, as one of the Campbells’ longest-serving employees came over. He set two wineglasses directly in front of me before opening the Malbec Kit had ordered. With a twist of his wrist, the cork was released with a hollow burp. My gaze blinkered on the deep red welling inside the glass, my body suddenly welded to the bench as the din of the Coach House fell away.
“This Malbec looks…” My hearing was muffled, like I had water in my ears. Words apple-bobbed around my head, evading me. My flat was nothing but sensory fuzz around me. My body felt so light it could levitate and, at the same time, sinkingly heavy.
“Yeah.” The only word I could bite into.
“… corkscrew?”
I waved my hand in the general direction of the kitchen. My arm dropped like a dead weight.
My knees wobbled and I dropped onto the sofa. Faint clanging. My eyelids drooped.
The scene was blank for a moment, like a buffering video, before coming back alive. There was a glass in my limp hand, about to tip over.
“I… I don’t…”
It’s so late. I need to sleep.
“You’re not going to let me drink alone, are you?”
“And here’re your starters, enjoy!”
I blinked. You’re okay, I told myself, it’s okay. My palms were damp, my eyelids stapled open. Who was that? When was that? My pulse rampaged around my skull and sloshed in my eardrums. I jumped as Kit, walking up behind me, clapped his hands together at the food.
“Yum, I’m starving!” We’d ordered a round of shell-on prawns and bruschetta, along with some crispy calamari.
“So,” Kit began with trepidation, “when is work going to stop flogging you?”
“Ugh! Can we not?” I whined.
“I’m really worried about you, J.” He stroked my arm, a decapitated prawn head in the other hand. Fingers glistening with garlic oil. “I don’t want you to fall into the trap of mistaking overwork as an opportunity to prove yourself. Been there, done that.”
“I’m not sure what other choice I have.”
Kit sighed. “You just seem so stressed. All the time.”
“I am stressed all the time.” I rubbed my eyes in exasperation.
“I know, but you’re going to burn yourself out. And I realize you did the same for me, but it’s getting really rubbish not seeing you for a fortnight at a time.”
Kit, straight after finishing his law degree, decided that a job in law wasn’t for him after all. Three years of tuition fees were incomparable to the moral cost of being in blinkered complicity with us Machiavellian corporates. His calling was shortly discovered at Calthorpe Communications, a public affairs firm specializing in political advisory. It didn’t have a website for a reason. Read: spin-doctoring, engineering tactical leaks, image mop-ups, smoothing ethical potholes. All in the name of a utopian end that supposedly justified the means. As I was four years younger than Kit, during my student years I patiently orbited my time around his burgeoning career. Rushed dinners, relentless quoting of The West Wing, BBC Parliament on constantly, canceled holidays following another MP’s blunder, describing himself as apolitical. Particularly arduous was his phase of listening to podcasts with titles such as The Five Rules of Persuasion and reading books solely about power or manipulation. I only lost my temper with him once, after he’d explained the Chatham House Rule to me for the third time during the same dinner.
“I’m sorry it’s so tough,” he said.
“It’s actually better now. You know Genevieve—the client at Arrow?”
“What about her?”
“She likes me.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Kit said with a grin that mildly irritated me.
“I’m serious. It’s a big deal.”
“I know it is!”
“Do you? I’ve never had anyone back me before,” I said, unable to stop the bitterness leaking into my voice. Kit’s godfather was none other than the eponymous Sebastian Calthorpe, of Calthorpe Communications. Kit stopped chewing for a moment, surprised at my tone. “I love working for her. She’s—I don’t know—a mentor?”
“I’m so proud of you. You’re finally being recognized for your talent.”
I was slightly annoyed again at the implication that we were all subject to blind meritocracy. I couldn’t stay mad, though, especially when he ordered champagne to celebrate our anniversary. I tried to ignore the pangs of stress at the sudden reminder of the amount of champagne I managed to down at the Savoy. Instead, I let Kit take my hand and forced my mind to go blank.
“I’ve missed you so much,” Kit murmured, pulling my sweater over my head as we stumbled backward into my bedroom. Somewhere around glass two or three of champagne we’d exchanged looks signaling that it was on tonight. Over the years, sex fell lower and lower on our relationship agenda. I still found Kit hugely attractive. When I saw him across a room, I often noticed other eyes glancing toward him and felt a swell of pride that he was mine. When he was in his navy suit and me in my pencil-skirt set, I was turned on by how we looked commuting to the City together. How young, professional, and successful we must look. We last had sex over a month ago, on his birthday. It could have been years since we’d fucked. But that’s fine. Our sex life was replaced by the arousal I felt when someone commented that we made a gorgeous couple.
Kit unhooked my bra. He knelt on the ground and started kissing my stomach.
“Look at how smooth your skin is.” His big hands gripped my arse as he suddenly lifted me up and threw me on the bed. After a few minutes between my legs, Kit sprang up and flipped me onto my stomach. He pulled my hips toward the edge of the bed and stood behind me, pushing into me. I flinched. We haven’t had sex in ages, I’ll loosen up in a bit.
He held my wrists behind my back and pushed my head into the pillow. I couldn’t see, and with the angle of my body, the booze rushed to my head. My nose was squashed against the pillow and I couldn’t breathe. His grip tightened on the back of my head. Panic rose inside me as I gasped for air, feeling only the cotton pillowcase against my tongue. In my head I was thrashing against him, but I felt like I was screaming into a vacuum. My mouth was open, but no sound was coming out. I screwed my eyes shut. I wanted to see a blank black void. Something neutral until this was over. Instead, an image flicked on, like a photographic slide turning in a projector. In it, I was in the same position, face down on the bed, but my cheek was on the pillow, my gaze sideways. My eyelids were the heaviest things I’d ever carried, keeping them open a strain. Just as my eyes shut, an opaque silhouette, flimsy but dangerous like black smoke, came round the side of the bed.
Something within me gave way, and an intense pain ripped through my core. With newfound strength, I pried my head up.
“Ow ow, stop, Kit, stop, stop!” I screeched, back rising like an angry cat and trying to pull my body off his.
“What? What’s wrong?” Kit pulled out and half his penis was coated in blood. Not the brown blood from the remnants of my period, but visceral scarlet blood. I coiled myself into a fetal position and tears poured down my face. Who who who was that? Is my mind playing tricks on me?
“What is it, Jade?”
In the background, Kit was asking me question after question. What was that? Are you okay? Talk to me. Jade? Jade? I didn’t mean to hurt you. Are you all right? It was white noise. I remained curled up in the bed, unresponsive. After a while, I can’t say how long, Kit lay down next to me.
Some hours later, my eyes flickered open and my heart slammed against my rib cage. Someone was here. A shadow, but definitely a person. A man. At the foot of the bed, approaching me. What do you want? I tried to scream, but no sound came out. The room was undulating. He reached an arm out. It felt like hours, his reaching for me. He clamped my ankle and tugged me toward him as I thrashed to free myself.
“Jade! Jade!”
Kit? I thought. Where are you?
Help me.
“Jade, wake up!” Kit was shaking me. I kept throwing myself into wilder and wilder shapes. “Please, Jade.”
I ripped out of one dimension into another as I bolted awake. Kit was half on top of me, gently holding me down from accidentally hitting him. I turned frantically to take in the surroundings. My IKEA wardrobes with the doors still open, my ugly bra hanging up next to my sexy bra. Last night’s outfit thrown on the armchair in the corner that always had a rotating pile of clothes on it. There was no one else here. I need to work less. The stress is clearly getting to me. I looked at my grandmother’s walnut bedside table, the ring still boldly branded into it, and a chill scurried up my spine.