It’s dark by the time Layla gets home from a booze-up at the Defector’s Weld. The first of her university friends is finally engaged, and although she doesn’t feel left behind, she was hoping for good news of her own that day. The junior partnership was within her reach, but those hopes are down to nothing now. The mood changed around her during the week. Elliot and Ortley’s visit didn’t help, but it was more than that. Once or twice she saw Jemima in Frank Silvey’s office, and her manner with Layla went from indifferent and unimpressed to awkward and slightly guilty. It meant Jemima knew something, as office spies usually did.
And yet it isn’t the inevitable failure to get junior partnership that is humiliating so much as the realization of what she’s allowed herself to become this past year. A yes-person. The sort who doesn’t question anything. Who checks her tone and volume when speaking to the partners. Who lets them believe they’re teaching her something she doesn’t already know. Layla’s greatest regret is that she has sold a piece of her soul and still missed out.
It’s rare that she switches on the main light in the staircase, even when she’s back late. Most of the time it turns itself off when she’s halfway up the stairs, which frightens her more than the dark. But tonight she wishes she switched it on. She feels a quick thump of fear when she sees the shadow at her door.
“It’s just me.”
Him.
“I need a place to stay for the night,” Jimmy says quietly, as if it hasn’t been twelve years since they last saw each other. He has nothing with him. No overnight bag, just the clothes he’s wearing.
“Are you legal?” she asks. “Because I don’t need trouble.” She doesn’t care if that sounds harsh. After Calais all those years ago, she owes Jimmy Sarraf nothing.
“I’ve got two days,” he says, and she’s reminded of how much pleasure his voice always brought her. Unlike Noor, educated at the best schools on scholarship, Jimmy would always sound like the neighborhood.
“They think Violette might show her face if she knows I’m in London,” he says.
Layla unlocks the door and lets him in. Already, he fills the space of the room. “Have you seen Noor?”
He nods, looking around.
“How is she taking it?” Layla is trying to ignore how uncomfortable she feels having him look at everything she owns. The art on her walls and the flawless cream furniture suddenly look pretentious. When they were teenagers they knew each other’s interests by heart. Layla knows nothing about him now.
His eyes settle on the piano in the corner. It’s ridiculous to have one in a flat this size, but it belonged to his family. Both their mothers forced them to learn to play. Layla failed miserably. Jimmy never failed at anything and showed as much talent for the piano as for football. When Etienne sold off everything belonging to Noor and her family to pay the lawyers, people were getting their belongings for a steal, so Layla’s mother bought the piano to stop others from taking it.
“Does my mother know you’re here?” she asks.
“I rang Jocelyn.”
“She’ll want to see you. My mother.”
There was always a complicated but profound relationship between their mothers. Especially at the end.
Layla walks past him into the kitchenette to dump the groceries she picked up on her way home.
“I know who Eddie is,” she says, sensing him close behind her, and when he doesn’t respond she figures that if he didn’t trust her enough to tell her about Noor’s pregnancy all those years ago, then he wouldn’t want to speak of it now.
“Do you want a drink?” She’s desperate for another herself.
“I don’t drink.”
To the point. She feels judged. “The couch turns into a bed,” she says, and without a second thought walks out of her flat.
She flags a taxi and tells the driver to take her to St. John’s Wood. Jocelyn phoned earlier that day. “School’s starting soon, the kids need to be home,” she said. “And Mum was driving me insane.”
When Jocelyn opens the door she doesn’t ask any questions. Gigi’s the only one of the kids still up. Sulking.
“She didn’t come home until an hour after I told her to,” Jocelyn says. “She’s angry because I checked in on her a couple of times last night.”
“You think Violette and Eddie are hiding in her closet?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore.” Jocelyn is watching her closely. “Is he staying with you?”
“I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Good,” Jocelyn says. “You can stay up with Ali and smoke your lungs out. He doesn’t want to talk to me either. I’m going to bed.”
“You don’t have to be so judgmental!”
“What do you want me to say, Layla? Go home. Deal with Jimmy so you can get on with your life.”
Layla ends up on the back balcony with Ali, smoking a couple of cigarettes and arguing about Jocelyn.
“She shouldn’t have lied to me.”
“She shouldn’t have had to, Ali.”
“My business will survive this. So will the family name. But do you honestly think that Jocelyn is going to be everyone’s favorite fund-raiser, or playdate mum?”
Layla grinds out the cigarette. “You’re going to lose her if you’re a dick about it, Ali. Fix this up before she packs her bags for good.”