Chapter 8 #2
railing. The unrelenting flow of the Thames below mirrored the chaos in her mind. Each wave seemed to pull at her, threatening
to drag her down into its depths. She stepped back, almost knocking into a man walking swiftly across the bridge.
“Easy, luv,” he said kindly before continuing on his path.
Aida watched him for a moment before her attention was drawn to a sign a few steps down on the bridge.
SAMARITANS
Talk to us, we’ll listen.
Whatever you are going through, you don’t have to face it alone.
There was a number to call, of course, but what Aida found more moving were the things that Londoners had scrawled all over
the sign. A heart. You are loved. One more day. Wait one more day. Your friends would rather hear your problems than go to your funeral. One
day at a time, my love.
Aida was not one to consider suicide, especially over a man, but after seeing the dark swirling river patterns that seemed to map to the despair in her heart, she could understand.
She scoffed at the You are loved, but there was something in the words one day at a time, one more day that not only repeated in the sign, but also inside her, slipping into her mind like a mantra.
One day at a time. One day at a time, my love.
As she crossed the bridge, a strange empty calm descended upon her, a hollow space within her heart that seemed devoid of
emotion. Her gaze returned almost involuntarily to the Tower of London, a monument that had witnessed countless human dramas
over its long history. Somehow, the perspective made her feel infinitesimally small yet also oddly comforted.
As she slipped into the waiting Bentley, Aida expected tears, the cathartic sort that would validate her pain. But none came.
Instead, there was a yawning emptiness. I should be falling apart, she thought. Why am I not falling apart?
Ten minutes into the drive, Yumi’s face flashed up on her screen. Aida accepted the call.
“He saw me and came over to talk. Erin apparently couldn’t bear to face me, and she slinked out like a coward,” Yumi said.
Her cheeks were flushed, clearly from more than just the weather.
“Oh, Yumi, are you okay?” Aida’s concern for her friend momentarily eclipsed her own heartbreak.
“I’m fine. He was just angry. He clearly didn’t expect to be caught. He told me that she had seduced him, and it was only
a lapse. He wished I had tried to talk to him first.”
Aida’s hands clenched into fists. The thought of Graham lashing out at Yumi for his own betrayal ignited a fire in her that
she didn’t know she had left. “And what would that have accomplished?”
“Exactly nothing. I gave him a piece of my mind, which he just stood there and took. He mentioned you had called off the wedding.”
“Yeah.” A little knot of shame formed in Aida’s stomach.
“I can’t believe this is happening. I really need to get my stuff out of there, and I’m not back for another two weeks.
Fuck.” She didn’t have much furniture—she had moved in with Graham, who had been in the town house for a while.
But she would probably need someone with a van to help with what she had.
The thought of moving made her sick to her stomach.
She had never imagined a life that didn’t have Graham in it, or their beautiful house.
Yumi gave her a sympathetic look. “Hey, don’t worry. You can stay with me till you are back on your feet. I’ll help you figure
it out. But I’m not moving boxes, honey. I’m a supervisor.”
Aida had to smile a little at that. “The very best supervisor. Oh god, Yumi . . . I just don’t understand how he could do
this. And with Erin, of all people. She was like a sister to me when we were kids.”
Yumi sighed, her expression a mix of sympathy and anger on Aida’s behalf. “I know. Everything about this sucks.”
Aida stared out the car window, watching the London streets flash by in a blur. “I keep thinking back, trying to see if there
were signs I missed about them. Times they were together that seemed off. But I can’t think of anything.”
“Don’t do that to yourself,” Yumi said firmly. “This is not your fault. They are the ones who chose to betray you like this.
You trusted them, and they abused that trust.”
Aida nodded, but the words felt hollow. How could she ever trust anyone again after this?
Needing to feel some semblance of control, she turned the conversation to moving out. Yumi offered to scout out the movers
and they decided to split up how they would cancel the wedding plans.
“I’m going to lose all the deposits. My god, what a waste it all was,” she said. But it wasn’t the wedding she was talking
about.
Yumi sighed. “I wish I could reach through this phone and hug you. I know this sucks. But you will get through it. You are
strong, Aida. Stronger than you know.”
Aida managed a small grateful smile. “Thank you, Yumi. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
“I’ve got your back, always,” Yumi promised. “Just take it one day at a time.”
When Aida hung up a few minutes later, the numbness clung to her like a shroud. The tears still didn’t come. Her heart was
a dark numb spot that floated empty within the space between her ribs. One day at a time. On impulse, she asked the driver to make a diversion from going straight to the hotel. He obliged without question and drove
to Baker Street station.
Aida stepped out of the car into the familiar yet altered landscape of Baker Street. The iconic Sherlock Holmes statue stood
as proudly as she remembered, but her heart sank at the sight of the nearby museum—closed indefinitely. Its shuttered doors
marked a poignant shift from her youth when she had first visited this place, wide-eyed and hand in hand with her parents.
Her father had marveled at Holmes’s legendary deductive powers, sparking Aida’s early fascination with meticulous research
that fueled her work and writing. She could still hear his voice, full of warmth and curiosity, explaining the finer points
of Holmes’s methods to her.
Those moments with her parents had felt so steady, so rooted in love. Back then, the world had been a place where problems
were solved together, and her parents’ guiding hands made everything possible. Their absence now though left an emptiness
that nothing had quite filled.
As she stood on the same street, reeling from her call with Graham, the contrast hit her hard. The warmth and security she
had once found in her parents were so distant, and the bitter sting of Graham’s betrayal made the void even sharper. She had
come to Baker Street seeking comfort, a reminder of a time when love was simple and unconditional. But now, with the museum’s
closure and the shadow of her crumbling relationship looming large, the memory seemed a distant echo—fading just when she
needed it most.
She wandered a bit, heading farther down Marylebone Road, which, she was sure, had another attraction they had enjoyed as a family. The memory was fuzzy, like a word on the tip of her tongue, but she recalled it was a place where she’d been enveloped by a great warmth from her parents.
She paused at the next corner, near two iconic red phone booths. The area felt familiar. In front of her was a circular building
with a big green copper dome, like the planetariums she had loved visiting as a kid. This, however, did not appear to be a
planetarium. Instead, plate glass windows gave a glimpse inside, of elderly people sitting in recliners watching a big-screen
television. A woman with a walker stood at the window staring out at her. Aida, unnerved, continued walking. Sure enough,
a couple of windows down, she came to a sign that proclaimed the odd building as an assisted-living facility.
The massive white edifice just beyond the green dome also felt familiar. There were no windows, save above a simple, unassuming
entry half a block down, with big old windows on the floor above the front door. A sign above the entrance proclaimed the
building as Her Majesty’s Young Offender Institution. Aida stared at the front door, trying to understand what she was looking
at. She was absolutely sure that neither the old folk’s home nor this juvenile detention center was there when she had last
visited, perhaps four or five years before when she had been in London for a conference. But what had been there? She stared
at the pavement, racking her brain to remember, but for some reason she could only conjure up hazy, half-formed images of
Queen Elizabeth, David Bowie, and Darth Vader. Suddenly dizzy, she leaned against a signpost for support. What was wrong with
her? Stress, it had to be.
A middle-aged woman in a pink sweatshirt and a teenage boy in a black hoodie emerged from the building. The woman came toward
Aida. “Oh, dearie, are you all right?”
“I—I think so. Thank you. Just felt a little lightheaded, but I think it’s passed.”
“Come on, Mum,” the pimply-faced boy said, tugging on his mom’s arm. Aida guessed he was embarrassed to be seen near the facility. She wondered what he had done to end up there.
“You look after yourself.” The woman let her son lead her away.
“Wait,” Aida called after them. The woman turned back. “What used to be in this building? Do you know?”
She looked up at the building. “The YOI? It’s been here for as long as I can remember. No idea what it might have been back
in the day.”
Aida sighed. “Thank you.” She watched them retreat, then made her way back to the waiting Bentley. She must have been mistaken
about the location.
Still, as she took her seat in the car, she was left with an overwhelming sense of something about the building being wrong,
something she couldn’t put her finger on. Something that was just beyond the reach of her memory.
The driver honked his horn at someone. Aida’s train of thought broke, and she couldn’t recall what she’d been ruminating about.
But there was an ache in her heart, an ache for what she once had.