Chapter 34
34
I turned in my dissertation a day before it was due, August 31. Just a week later, Professor Randolph emailed a few lines to end my suffering. He and the other grader still had to put together their final marks, he wrote, but I’d done well. Certainly enough to get my degree.
That meant I could start preparing the visa application now and submit it the minute my diploma came through. Queen Mary wouldn’t release it until I’d paid the rest of my tuition, so it would be a race: Could I file my visa paperwork to stay before the Wilders filed their legal paperwork to press charges? If not, my application would be flagged for sure, possibly denied.
But I was trying not to think about that tonight—on my way to meet Liv and Andre for drinks at a bar called Detroit. Fancy, not the kind of bar we could normally afford, but happy hour meant half-price. It was a few blocks north of Covent Garden, where we had a dinner reservation after. A proper but modest celebration of my first good news in a very long time.
When I got off the Tube at Tottenham Court Road, a fifty-foot-high solid-gold Freddie Mercury greeted me, fist raised above the theater where the Queen musical, We Will Rock You , had been running all year. From Freddie I walked south to Earlham Street, the first of the wheel-spoke streets of Seven Dials—each cobbled street leading into the center of the wheel, where slow cars and window-shopping pedestrians nosed around each other. Seven Dials had been laid out in the late seventeenth century. It was classic and beautiful: old buildings, the cobbles worn smooth, everything lit yellow with soft light from upscale boutiques and bars.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. A London number I didn’t know, but I answered anyway, habit from a year of giving my number to random parents and teachers and students.
“Is this Anna? It’s Stephen Findley from the library. Have I got you at a bad time?”
A little bubble of panic swelled under my sternum. “Stephen, hi. It’s a good time,” I said, diving down an alley for quiet.
“I wanted to follow up on the conversation we had,” he said. “I know it’s been a lot longer than I told you it would be, and I apologize for that. We had quite a lot of you to speak with.”
“No, I completely understand,” I said. “I’m sure it’s quite a process.”
He laughed. “It certainly is, and yours was sort of a special case. Ultimately, we decided it didn’t make sense for you to be part of the apprenticeship program.”
I let myself lean back on the alley’s brick wall, the disappointment too heavy to hold. “Of course, I understand,” I managed.
Stephen chuckled. “Wait, wait, there’s good news, too. I was waiting for a chance to chat with my colleague Shari. She’s out on maternity leave, and I didn’t want to pester her—I’m not allowed to pester her—but I wonder, are you free for a chat on Thursday afternoon? Shari will be in for just the afternoon, taking care of a few things. She runs our education programs.”
A second interview? But why? “I’d be happy to talk with her,” I said.
“Well, actually, we’re hoping you’ll be happy to work with her. Once she’s back from leave. Frankly, I don’t know how she’s been doing it all on her own.”
The panic bubble in my chest split into a flurry of bubbles. Was I hearing this right? “So, I’ll—I’ll be working in education, with her, once I start?”
“Shari loved your thoughts about creating teacher resources from the archives, tailoring our online educational content more for students from all backgrounds, from around the world. It will be a lot of work, building that up, but you’re exactly the right person for that role.”
I laughed, and it sounded only a little crazy. “You have no idea how great it is to hear that,” I said, shaking my head alone in the dark alley.
“A much better fit for your skills than the apprentice role. Better pay, too, and no two-year expiration date.” I could hear Stephen shuffling papers. “Let’s say one o’clock on Thursday, for your chat with Shari. She’ll be back from leave mid-month. You could start first of October?”
When I got to Detroit, the bar had its blue Art Deco doors propped open to the summer air, and Andre was there waiting. I couldn’t help it, I had to be a loud American. I screamed my good news at him when I was still twenty feet away. I felt like solid-gold Freddie Mercury, fist in the air.
Andre hugged me, squeezed me in little pulses, punctuating each word: “You did it!”
When Liv appeared, he leaned back enough to say, “She got the job!” And instead of waiting a turn, Liv jumped on top of our in-progress hug, sending us staggering. People on the street gave us a wide berth.
The bar was a basement, low-lit and low-ceilinged. The tables and floors and booths were a hand-molded gray faux stone, a gesture at rugged modern minimalism, but really, we all agreed, it just looked like the Flintstones lived here. Stone Age chic.
“You know,” Andre said, after a waitress took our orders, “good things always come in threes. Dissertation, new job, what’s next tonight?”
“I win the lottery?” I laughed. “They forget to charge us for dinner?”
When our cocktails arrived, we all tried each other’s. “Yeck,” Liv said, making a face and sliding the Negroni back across the table to me. “It’s like cough syrup.”
I passed her gimlet back. “I like the bitterness.”
“Yes, well, you would be bitter, wouldn’t you,” Andre said, nodding toward me. “Been through the wars, this one.”
I laughed, looking down into my drink. “There’s still a lot that could go wrong. This legal shit could still blow up my visa.”
We sipped our drinks, and Liv told us about her PhD program, which would be ramping up next week. When she and Andre started comparing notes on UCL professors, I excused myself to the bathroom.
In the mirror, I brushed my fingers through my hair, then pulled it behind my shoulders and tried to sort out how I was feeling. Maybe it was just that old urge to call my mother, tell her my good news? And it was—it always was—but it was something else, too: I wanted to tell Callum.
Normally, this would’ve been a perfect excuse to email him. I could tell him the news, then offer to buy dinner or drinks to show my gratitude for his help with Muswell Hill Academy, even though nothing had come of it. Wait for him to reply, as nervously as I’d waited for the British Library to call.
But late last night, scrolling on Facebook, I’d seen a photo that was still sitting in my stomach like a stone. Callum and a few people I vaguely recognized, in a location I precisely recognized: that turmeric-yellow palace-hotel in Saint-Tropez.
Faye wasn’t in the photo, but I felt like she was. I felt like if Callum was there, he would definitely see her, probably already had. Maybe he was like Theo, and Faye could reel him back in whenever she wanted to. He didn’t owe me any loyalty, after all.
Back at the table, Liv and Andre had another round of cocktails waiting. “The waitress said she’d comp us a drink if we paid cash,” Andre said, thumbing through his wallet. “So let’s be good tippers.”
“I’ll be right back,” Liv said. “There’s a cashpoint just outside.”
I followed her out, since I only had a five. While I waited my turn at the ATM, I wondered what my new job would pay. Maybe I could really treat my friends, next time: drinks on me at the Flintstone house.
When it was my turn, I did a balance check before withdrawing, as I always did. The number on the bluish screen was high, higher than it should have been. Thousands. Had my most recent tuition payment to Queen Mary somehow failed, or been rejected? That would be disastrous. As soon as I got the cash, I pulled out my phone.
“What’s up, can we go back in?” Liv asked.
“I just need to check my online banking,” I said, waiting for the glacially slow page to load. I waved back at the door to the basement bar. “No cell phone service down in the Stone Age.”
But then the page did load—that too-high number again. I shook my head.
“What is it?” Liv asked, watching me.
“Just a minute.” The individual transactions were loading, one by one.
And there it was: a deposit, the exact amount I’d agreed on with Muswell Hill Academy. Enough to pay off the entire remaining balance of my grad school tuition, and then some. I didn’t notice putting my hand over my mouth, but there it was, covering what was both a smile of relief and also the trembling lip that preceded a crying fit.
Liv grabbed my wrist. “Anna, what the hell?”
“The money’s here, that school finally paid me,” I said, gulping down breaths until I was sure I wouldn’t cry. “It’s a lot. Enough to pay off everything.”
I got the whole bill, for all of us, proudly. Once we’d properly celebrated (an appropriate American clamor for the level of good news, but inappropriate for the volume level of such a self-serious cocktail bar), we emerged back on street level. It was getting dark, and a fine mist of rain hung in the air, glowing halos around each streetlamp. We backtracked up Earlham Street to the center of Seven Dials, to the sundial pillar, so Liv could take photos.
“It’s so pretty with everything lit up,” she said, turning in a slow circle, all the cobbled streets spinning off from this spot, all the Londoners swirling around us. One of them stopped, suddenly, and called out to me.
He said my name like he always used to, like it was a surprise bit of news he’d just heard and couldn’t believe. “Anna!” Theo strode toward us across Monmouth Street, people stopping to let him pass, to admire him as he did.
He was in front of me before I could decide if I was happy to see him, or angry, or indifferent. “Great luck to run into you here!” he said, bending to kiss my cheek, as if we were friends. As if it hadn’t been almost four months.
“Theo,” I said noncommittally.
Andre had already recognized Theo from our reality show viewings, but Liv’s face dropped into a scowl when she heard the name. “We’ve got to get going,” she said to me, clearly intending Theo to hear the dismissal. “They won’t hold our table.”
Theo introduced himself to Liv and Andre, pumped their hands. He was as handsome as ever, of course, but now it all seemed a bit over the top. A face like that could hide anything. And had.
I stepped back. “Liv’s right, we’ve got a reservation in Covent Garden.”
“Well, that’s lucky, too,” Theo said. Delighted, impervious to my stony greeting. “I’m due at the theater on Long Acre—I can walk you. I want to hear how you’re doing.” He bent, trying to bring his face down to my eye level, trying to make sure I saw his sincerity. And, surprisingly, I did. I said he could walk me.
When Liv and Andre started up Mercer Street, Theo and I followed at a slower pace, letting a short distance lapse.
“So, tell me what’s happening with you.” he said. “Dissertation done? Where did you land?”
Lucky for him that I was in a good mood, that I’d had so much good news today. I felt myself thawing, just enough to enjoy this.
“Actually, I just got a call this afternoon that I’ll be starting at the British Library on October 1. Working on their education programs. It hasn’t really sunk in.”
Theo’s eyes widened, cartoonishly excited. “That’s brilliant! Oh, Anna, you must be so chuffed. I know you loved that place when Tess took you.”
I nodded. “So much that I practically lived there the last few months, writing my dissertation. And now I’ll be staff!” I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d tell Tess. If she’d be happy for me. “Do you still see Tess?” I asked.
“Of course! I just came from drinks at the Hawksmoor, with Ginny and Hamza.” I guess it was on again, with those two?
“How is everyone?” I asked. I couldn’t resist. I had wondered so often, for so long—how life in Highgate continued on without me.
“Oh, you know, just the same really,” he said. “The girls just got back from Ibiza, shockingly tan. And already planning the next holiday.” I could picture Tess, lightly freckled, her auburn hair lightened from the sun. Her easy laugh.
I forced a smile. “Just the same, then. No one ever has to grow up here.” Neverland.
“What, in London?”
I looked up at him. “In your London, yes. In my London, everyone has to grow up.”
Theo nodded thoughtfully. “I have a hard time imagining that you were ever young,” he said. “You’ve always seemed so mature. Like you knew too much. And we knew too little.”
But all Theo had were the vaguest outlines of me. As far as he was concerned, I’d just popped into existence the night we met at the palace-hotel, and then winked out again the day he dropped me and my bags at Liv’s.
“Is that why you introduced me just as Faye’s friend when I got to Highgate?”
We were waiting on the corner of Long Acre now, waiting to cross, looking for a break in the stream of black cabs. I watched Liv and Andre ahead of us, already turning left up the street, but Theo was looking down at me.
“You can imagine how much I regret it now,” he said, his voice low, just loud enough to hear over the traffic. “It seemed harmless, at the time. I thought—I thought maybe you could just enjoy it. That I could give that to you.”
There was a break in the traffic, and people around us streamed forward, down toward the main square and covered market of Covent Garden. “It would’ve crashed down at some point,” I said. “Faye just made sure there were some very big fireworks.”
“I’m afraid she hasn’t let up much, though I’ll spare you the details. It’s a side of her—well, I guess we’ve all known her so long, we forget. It’s been, ah, eye-opening, to say the least.”
I laughed. It was no surprise to me that she was still grinding that axe. “Bet she can’t wait to have her day in court, finally hold me to account,” I said. “You know she already has the outfit picked out, pressed and steamed.”
“Well, who knows if that’s going to happen.”
Before I could say anything, a cab honked; it was waiting for us to go. Theo took my hand and pulled me across the street.
I couldn’t believe him. He was defending her, to me. “You can’t be serious,” I said, yanking my hand away. “She’s not just going to let it go.”
Theo only looked confused. “Well, she won’t, no, but that might not matter. It’s really just about getting her parents to see sense. I thought he told you? He said—”
“ Who said?”
“Callum. He’s been working on the Wilders for a few months, trying to talk them down,” Theo said. “Not Faye, of course—no telling her anything—but you know her parents are reasonable people.”
Seeing my stunned face, he steered us into the doorway of a shuttered luggage store, out of the fast-flowing theater crowds. Looking at me closely, Theo said hesitantly, “It’s just, I was sure you knew because— You mean Callum really never said anything about it?”
I was too shocked to process what Theo was saying. “We don’t really keep in touch,” I said. “He just helped me get payment from a school that had stiffed me.”
Theo tilted his head. “Oh, I guess that’s not the impression I had, from talking to him. But probably that’s my fault, imagining something more there.”
“Something where? ”
“Well, never mind all that.”
“Explain,” I said, fixing him with my full attention. “When did this happen?”
Theo shrugged. “Well, it’s been months, as I said. But he went out to Saint-Tropez—was it two weeks back? Put together all sorts of notes for them—how a criminal court would need to prove your deception was expressly for financial gain. And there’d be no point in suing you, since you don’t have any funds or assets—sorry, forgive me, that’s crass—well, they don’t have anything to gain there. Just some embarrassing gossip in the Ham his touch rippled through me, the way it used to, urgent and physical. But I didn’t have any space for it. All I could think of was Callum. The pull I’d felt toward him, an invisible thread between us since the night we’d kissed in Lisbon. Anchored.
I stepped back, then out onto the shining sidewalk. The streetlights and the rain found me again. “That’s all over, Theo.”
He reached for my hands again. “No, don’t say that.”
“You’re going to be late to the theater.”
And I watched him then, in the doorway: shutting down his disappointment, pulling up the old Theo I knew, like a costume, like a character. Charm, good looks, a good show, if nothing else. “And you’re going to be late to your dinner,” he said, bowing gallantly to kiss my hand. “Goodbye, Anna.”