A fellow guest
A cocktail bar, high above the city. It’s Maisie’s fortieth birthday, the grandparents are here as childcare, and she and Nimesh are making the most of it.
The venue is a fancy one, high above the city in which they used to live.
It’s filled with guests milling about dressed as Mad Hatters and mediocre Gatsbys, Little Women and large white whales.
‘Thanks for coming,’ says Maisie, after removing her Sherlock Holmes pipe from her mouth. ‘Sorry you can’t plunder the open bar.’
Nimesh, Maisie’s own Doctor Watson, is already co-opting the Cat in the Hat to make plans for their next Tough Mudder, so Sherlock takes the Fish to meet some of her friends: a half-arsed Willy Wonka, a sexy Jane Austen, a Lord of the Flies who clearly hasn’t read the book in question.
Her kids are busy overstimulating a Dracula-fanged Finn and a fretful-looking Pippi Longstocking, so the Fish gets talking to a pair whom she presumes are Pippi’s parents.
‘Where did you get so many feathers?’ the Fish asks.
‘She works in films,’ Sherlock chimes in.
‘You’d be surprised what a good costume department can get their hands on.’
The raven is called Clara. The monster over her shoulder is called Seb. And it’s because Seb won’t take his eyes off Clara, because of the way in which Clara inclines her head towards Seb’s broad chest, that the Fish has made her assumption.
‘So, are you two—?’ she begins, intending to ask if they’re local.
‘No,’ Seb says, too quickly.
‘God no,’ Clara says, just as suddenly.
‘God no?’ Seb repeats, sounding offended.
‘Just,’ Clara begins, a blush spreading beneath all that eyeliner. ‘No.’
The Fish is confused. But, as the night goes on, she begins to wonder if she should have been Sherlock Holmes after all, magnifying glass in hand rather than fishbowl over stomach.
She’s sober, so she notices things that perhaps even the raven and the monster themselves don’t.
Like the way that Seb cuts every conversation a little bit short so that he can find his way back to Clara, or the way that Clara stares at Seb with something deeper than gratitude when she sees him twirling her daughter around on the dancefloor.
Or this, after half the guests have gone home and the others have long since lost their ability to see clearly: Seb and Clara, close together by the long windows, talking like they’ll never run out of words to say, the twinkling lights of London beneath them.
Clara’s fingers grazing the back of Seb’s hand, and Seb reaching up to brush a stray feather from the pale skin by Clara’s mouth.
Holding his thumb there for just a moment.
Leaning closer, no longer talking. Clara reaching upwards, Seb being pulled downwards—
And Pippi coming between them, the pair suddenly breaking apart and looking away as if nothing at all was about to happen. Clara scoops up her daughter, and the little girl rubs her eyes and nuzzles into her mother’s neck. Neither of them notices that Seb is already headed for the door.