Chapter 19
19
After the British Library, Tess and I did meet up with the others. Theo swept me up in his arms and spun me around, like he hadn’t just seen me two days ago. When he kissed me, it was slow and exacting, his teeth gently snagging my lower lip: a message that clearly said, More of this later. I felt that breathless rush again, my body easing into something loose and reactive when he held it.
Ginny and Zara and Hamza seemed to take Tess’s lead, treating me immediately as an old friend. Only Callum commented on my presence.
“Don’t you look settled in here,” he said, indicating the bar. But his expressive eyebrows and self-satisfied smirk said more than that. Here with these people, here in your borrowed Highgate house. I smiled and said nothing. It seemed he wouldn’t blow my cover, probably out of loyalty to Theo.
I kept my distance from him when we went out as a group—three more times, since then. Being with Theo, being in Highgate, everyone assumed I was like them. I didn’t have to do much but omit—that I was living in the Wilders’ house, that I was working as a tutor, that not all the clothes I wore were mine. Brushing past these facts didn’t feel good, but it was better than feeling the way I had in Saint-Tropez, with Faye’s friends: like a second-class citizen.
And anyway, it wasn’t like I didn’t omit things with Theo, too. I never talked about my old life, with him—as if I’d been born the day I landed at Heathrow with two secondhand suitcases—and he didn’t push me to. He did keep me busy, though, whisking me out several times for his London lessons. The best seafood (J Sheekey), the best speakeasy (unnamed), the best historical site (Churchill’s underground war rooms, surprisingly fascinating). He wouldn’t let me pay for anything.
I pushed back a few times, but gave up arguing after that. It did make me nervous at first—I was rereading House of Mirth for my dissertation research and thinking about Lily Bart, who’d clung to her lush lifestyle by accepting support from rich men. But I was not Lily; I genuinely liked Theo. I liked how it felt when he laughed at a joke I’d made, or helped me slip on my coat, or pulled me into his lap in the cab home. He seemed to enjoy himself just as much as I did; like I scratched some itch he had, to be the giver of good times, the consummate good date. “Hey, there are worse kinks,” Andre said when I told him.
But of course Theo had to disappear; he was working in Frankfurt this week and next. There was no time to pine anyway—currently I was waiting for Liv and Andre and scrambling to catch up on course reading after a few nights out with Tess. They were coming around to see the Wilders’ house, and we were going to celebrate Pancake Day, which I’d recently learned was the UK’s version of Mardi Gras. Lately, I’d been too busy to see them, and hoped today would absolve me.
Finally, the doorbell toned; I opened it to a paper bundle of grocery store flowers.
“You snooty bitch,” Liv cried, embracing me before she even came in the door. “This place is incredible. Like, look at this road.”
“They must be taking the piss, right? It’s like cosplaying the British Empire,” Andre said, waving a hand at all the identical faux-Tudor-style houses up and down the street. “Should we leave our pleb shoes outside?”
“But won’t your socks be full of holes?” I teased, putting the flowers in a pint glass of water. I didn’t want them to see the whole cabinet of crystal vases I’d found the week before, looking for wineglasses. I knew this place was ridiculous, but I didn’t want them to see quite how ridiculous.
I showed them the cozy living room with the squishy chaise longue, window seat, bookshelves; and the ornamental living room, with stone floors, hard couches, and a baby grand piano. The white marble kitchen, the mahogany dining room. I led them through the leafy conservatory, then out into the backyard, to its carefully landscaped koi pond. “Well, it’s nice to meet your fish friends,” Liv said, settling on the stone-carved bench. “But it was Theo I was hoping for.”
I laughed. “He’s off again for work. Back in a few weeks.”
Andre arched an eyebrow. “You two exclusive?”
“Actually, yes,” I said, blushing a little. I’d finally asked him, before he left—hesitant to complicate things, but scared to be wrong about what I felt was growing between us. Real feelings. I don’t want to share you with anyone , he’d said, brushing his lips down my neck, pressing a kiss below my collarbone.
Andre nodded. “His friends here any better than in France?”
I threw some fish food to the koi. “These friends are much more laid-back,” I said. “I mean they like to go out, but it’s not velvet rope. We don’t get bottle service at the club. ”
Andre nodded. “Are they a load of champagne socialists?”
“What?”
“You know, cheering for the proletariat from up in their Highgate penthouses.”
I shrugged. “They’ve been really kind, including me. They’re good people, I think.” I did think that. Okay, maybe the jury was still out on Sebastian, but I’d only met him twice.
“And they don’t mind you’re skint?” he asked doubtfully. “Can you really keep up? Isn’t it expensive, going out all the time?”
“Well, I’m not nearly as skint now,” I said. “I made good money in Saint-Tropez, and there’s no rent here. I do have to buy the fish food,” I joked, trying to soften the defensiveness in my voice.
I was making it sound rosier than it was; I’d already had to dip into the precious funds I’d brought home from France, buying rounds with my new friends, throwing cash in for the check at dinner. But it was hard to feel that worry when I was out. Hard not to stay for just one more drink. As long as I stayed out with them, I was like them. It was alchemy—Theo’s hand on my waist, the golden glowing bar, another round, everyone laughing, turning to me as I spoke. I couldn’t remember worrying about money or rent, work or school. No one in their world ever ran out of test strips, or insulin, or life.
“I’m fading,” Liv said. “Let’s get these pancakes going. And coffee? Fancy whipping up something with your mega espresso machine?”
“I’ll ask Chef to make us something,” I said, just to see Liv’s eyes widen, believing me for just a moment. Then she threw a fistful of fish food at me, and we went inside.
Andre cooked us what he declared to be several perfect specimens of traditional British pancakes: thin, unrisen, almost like the crepes I’d had in France. Delicious, served with a sprinkle of caster sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice.
After we returned the gleaming kitchen to its gleaming state, I made espressos for all of us, the way Theo had taught me. On Liv’s insistence, we took our mini glass espresso cups into the formal living room. Andre and I perched on the uncomfortable damask sofa, and Liv straddled the piano bench, the coffee in front of her on a teak coaster.
“You play, don’t you?” I said.
“My brother was the real virtuoso,” she said. “But I had lessons all through college. Mom thinks I’m still taking them here.”
“All the kids in Highgate play six instruments,” Andre said, putting on an insufferably posh accent. “Polyglots by nursery school, polo stars by sixth form.”
Liv sat up straight. “I forgot! Were you back at Westminster this week?”
Quite literally in the shadow of the Westminster Abbey, Westminster prep school was a fourteenth-century marvel of stone archways, gabled ceilings, and staggering, historical privilege. Boys in full suits and ties; the girls in sweaters, skirts, blazers. Only Kramer’s best SAT teacher, Bruce, was allowed to teach there. But Bruce was too important to administer the four-hour practice tests for his class, so I was doing them.
I grimaced before I could stop myself.
“That bad?” Liv asked. “Were they brats?”
“Not them.”
After I was done timing the test, I walked up Whitehall to the Kramer office, just on the far side of Trafalgar Square, to scan the test sheets. My paycheck was in my pigeonhole, and I checked it carefully. My rate was meant to be ￡18—a raise I’d earned painstakingly with stellar student reviews—but I’d been paid less for the first test session at Westminster.
My supervisor, Grant, was in his office, so I knocked and went in.
“Anna, where’d you come from?” he said. The small office filled instantly with his perpetual bad breath. I tried not to inhale.
“I was wondering if I could ask you—I think there’s been a mistake. I only got eleven pounds an hour for these sessions.”
Grant looked at the pay stub. “Do you think those are your proctoring hours? From Westminster?”
There was something in his tone that put me on edge, but I smiled politely. “Yes, but that’s not my rate.”
He laughed, halitosis billowing. “You know proctoring pays eleven pounds an hour. It doesn’t follow your teacher rate, since you’re not teaching.”
I could feel my cheeks beginning to burn. “When you sent out the assignment, you didn’t say that it would pay less.”
“Oh, it’s all in your training manual,” Grant said, waving toward a shelf of teacher handbooks. “If the students aren’t your students, proctoring pays at the base rate.” This was not in the handbook, anywhere; I’d read it cover to cover. “But if you’d rather not do the remaining two test sessions, I’m sure someone else can pick them up,” Grant added, like he was offering to do me a favor. He knew I couldn’t afford to turn down the hours, even now that I’d found out he was undercutting me. And even if I did, he’d just pull the same trick on the next desperate teacher.
“That absolute slimeball,” Liv said when I’d finished the story. She was shaking her head, scowling deeply. “That’s why I told you you had to go to France, you know? Why be loyal to Kramer, they’re never looking out for you.”
I flopped back on the sofa. “If I had any loyalty, it’s long gone. They’ll never pay me what my time’s worth.” Never enough to keep up with my new Highgate friends, like I desperately wanted to. Never enough to have the kind of life I wanted here—secure, self-sufficient, exploring and enjoying the city like Theo or Tess could. “But I can’t just get my own students. I can’t advertise online, on tutoring sites. Kramer scouts them.”
“What happens if they find you there?” Andre asked, looking between us.
“Immediately fired,” Liv said.
“But you could still find students some other way?”
“What other way?”
Liv was looking at Andre. “Remember those kids we saw on the way here, on the Heath, by the paddling pool?” She turned to me. “Three of them, all in Burberry raincoats. The mom had a little dog in a Prada coat.”
“There’s a lot of that around here, yeah,” I said. No need to mention the closet of designer clothes here in the house with us.
“Think of what a person like that could pay for tutoring, if they had teenagers. You could charge them anything.”
It was true, of course. But how did it help me? “I can’t just roam the park looking for students.” I shrugged. Not like I could put up flyers that my new friends might see.
“Listen, I know my school was nothing like the schools around here,” Andre said. “But in mine, there was a bulletin board by the entrance, where the parents waited to pick us up. Covered in business cards and flyers—tutors, nannies, piano teachers, language lessons. You could do that, but here. I mean, this is where the rich kids are, right? All the expats? The ones most likely to be thinking about American unis?”
Liv nodded eagerly, her knees bouncing up and down on the piano bench. “Really, Anna,” she said. “Ask the Wilders to be a reference. They can give you a little testimonial for the back of your new business cards!”
I put up my hand to hold them. “Just give me a minute,” I said. Were they right? Could it be that easy? Living in this area, having an N6 postcode on my business card, a Makepeace Avenue address—it would be its own recommendation, my own Highgate credential. If I could drum up even a few more students in this area, maybe word would spread from there. I was a good tutor, and I’d helped a lot of students succeed. I even enjoyed it. But if I wanted to earn a better wage doing it, Liv and Andre were right. I’d have to hustle.
They were waiting expectantly, eager for me to get on board with this plan. I took a sip of my espresso. Part of me wanted to extend this tender moment: the friends who were always on my side, gathered here in this unreal house, making time in their own overworked lives to help me make this new life work. Even though it might not succeed. Even though if it did, it would only take me further away from them, from our matching mouse-ridden flats and buttered-pasta dinners.
I smiled at them. “Where do I get business cards?”