Chapter 14
Ash
Ash feels … well. Many things. Anger, mostly.
Hot lava coursing through her veins, heart racing, breath shallow.
She’s so angry, in fact, that it’s blurring her vision – or wait, perhaps that’s the tears.
Why is she incapable of feeling cross without also crying like a little girl?
That makes her even madder! How dare these people push her like this, goad her, use her.
She doesn’t even care about CJ, this is all on Luis.
Or maybe it’s all on her, on Ash. Did she read too much into their liaison?
It’s not as if she expects exclusivity right away, not like they owe each other anything.
Except, she thinks, flopping down on her bed and staring at the ceiling, her and Luis kind of do owe one another something.
It shouldn’t be bad to think that in spending a few nights together they might like each other, and people who like each other don’t also do whatever Luis was doing in the back office.
It’s humiliating. She feels humiliated. Ash has engaged with Luis from hope, despite all of her previous experience warning her not to, because she thought – hoped?
Assumed? – things would be different here in Lisbon.
But it turns out no, they’re not, and neither is she.
Despite a few flirtatious encounters and a couple of drunken nights with a handful of new people, Ash is still Ash.
Nothing has changed at all. CJ said it was game on.
Well. Ash has lost. She has a fleeting thought, a sort of wishful flash of another life where she could pick up the phone and talk to her mother about all this, get insight from somebody who loves her no matter what and won’t judge her for being so unmoored, so untethered.
But Pauline Davies isn’t warm and fuzzy that way.
Pauline Davies only ever makes Ash feel like she’s let her down by not having her life together already – whether she means to or not.
There’s a knock at the door. Ash freezes.
She told Luis not to follow her, and she meant it.
She wants to be alone to calm down, needs to take some time to shower, wash the day off her, calm down her nervous system and maybe have a look at flights home.
Would she really do that? Leave? It’s not like there’s anything waiting for her in Bristol, that’s the whole damned point.
She should probably find somewhere else to stay, though.
CoLab is the height of unprofessional and gross, and she would likely fare better in a nice Airbnb for one, or at the very least a different co-living and co-working space.
Lisbon is crawling with them. It wouldn’t be hard to check in somewhere else.
More knocking. And then:
‘Ash? It’s CJ. Will you open the door?’
Oh god. The only person she wants to talk to less than Luis is CJ.
‘I promise you’ll want to hear what I have to say,’ CJ continues, and Ash has to admit, she does sound …
if not sorry, then at least borderline genuine.
Ash hates that it prods at her curiosity.
She sits up, looks in the mirror over the vanity unit and wipes under her eyes.
She’s had such a great day with Mona, walking, talking, exploring, talking some more.
Mona is so easy to be around, it is so fascinating to hear her take on being alive, to learn about what a sixty-something woman makes of this thing called life.
If Mona was here now, what would she advise Ash to do?
Ignore CJ, or open the door with defiance?
It’s a toss-up – is life too short to cower away, or is life too short to waste time on people who aren’t worth it?
For only the twelve millionth time in her adult life, Ash wishes once again that there was a handbook for it, a clear-cut yes/no Magic 8 Ball that would allow one to do the exact right thing instead of guess and hope for the best.
‘Urgh,’ Ash sighs, finding herself standing. ‘What?’ she says, as she opens the door, face impassive, voice hostile.
CJ gives a small nod, as if confirming she has received Ash’s energy and understands. ‘I’d like you to come with me,’ she says. She must register Ash’s confusion, and utter disdain, because she then adds, more gently, ‘Please.’
Ash blinks. CJ really does think she’s the boss of the universe, doesn’t she, commanding people to do this, go there, dance to her tune and her tune only.
‘Where?’
‘You’ll see.’
‘That’s not good enough. I’m not going anywhere if I don’t know.’
CJ sighs. ‘I promise, you’ll be safe, and you’ll like it.’
Ash frowns. ‘Is he,’ she asks, not wanting to use Luis’s name, ‘still down there?’
CJ shakes her head. ‘He’s gone for the day. He knows you need space. I made him promise he wouldn’t loiter, or even text.’
Ash almost says thank you, before she remembers who she’s talking to.
CJ must sense Ash’s softening, and so presses, ‘Please, Ash. Grab your bag, and let’s go.’
Ash studies CJ’s face, her huge eyes that seem to say so much beyond the words she speaks, the lashes that are mascara-free and yet still upturn, dark and thick, to frame her gaze.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Ash grunts, for the second time in five minutes. ‘Fine. But if you’re luring me to my death, just know I will come back from beyond the grave, and I will have my vengeance. In fact, haunting you would be an honest-to-god pleasure.’
They head out of CoLab and hang a left, and since CJ has been stubborn enough not to reveal their destination, Ash has decided to prove a point and refuse to ask again.
CJ would, no doubt, only revel in the satisfaction of being in charge, as is her way, and so they walk in silence, past the restaurants laying outdoor tables for the evening crowd and coffee shops closing up to go home.
They fall in step, Ash just behind CJ, who walks with her shoulders back, head high, saying hello to almost everyone they pass, the mayor of bloody Bairro Alto.
Good for her. Politicians are renowned for being smarmy snakes, after all.
After a few minutes, they come to a stop outside an apartment block, a big pink building on the corner with buzzers alongside the door giving away the fact that it is home to half a dozen residents.
CJ turns her key in the lock and then stands back to allow Ash entry.
Ash furrows her brow, as close to a question as she can manage, and CJ smiles encouragingly.
‘Fine,’ Ash says, crossing the threshold. ‘I’ll play along.’
Heart beating hard, Ash waits for CJ to come inside too, and to flick on the timer light for the staircase.
CJ heads up to the third floor, Ash in hot pursuit.
CJ opens an apartment door, pushing it open to reveal a giant loft-like open space, all wood floors and massive windows and light-coloured furniture, cream fabrics and industrial lighting.
A small boy comes crashing around the corner, smashing into CJ’s open arms with an impressively nimble leap.
‘Mummy!’ he says, wrapping his arms around her neck and burrowing into her face.
CJ smothers him with kisses as she tips him backwards, making him squeal.
A man appears in an apron – massive, great smile, blond. ‘Hey,’ he says, wandering through to the big dining table with hands full of empty plates.
Ash can’t place him, but she knows him from somewhere. CJ ushers Ash inside so she can close the door, the little boy still in her arms, babbling away about his day, mostly in English but with the odd slip into Portuguese.
‘I’m Todd,’ the handsome man says, arms now unburdened. He extends a hand and Ash takes it, shaking it without saying anything. Todd presses, ‘I take it you’re a friend of CJ’s.’
CJ puts her kid down with another flurry of kisses and says, ‘She is. This is Ash. She’s staying at CoLab for a while.’
Todd’s eyes widen and he repeats, ‘Ash!’ in a way that makes Ash beyond certain CJ has reported back stories to him before now.
But before she can enquire as to the fact, another man appears, also handsome in an improbable way, also barefoot.
‘Oh! Are we five for dinner?’ he asks, his voice accented. He looks between the three adults loitering by the door. ‘Hi, I’m Miguel.’
‘Ash,’ Ash squeaks, and before she knows it there’s a flurry of activity where Todd compliments her handbag, Miguel hands her a glass of something white and delicious, and the kid says his name is Jorge and does Ash like racing cars?
CJ takes a lid off what is cooking on the stove to smell it, giving Todd a light round of applause as she says, ‘Delicious, as per. You spoil us, Todd. You really do.’
Todd kisses CJ’s cheek, and CJ hangs off Miguel’s shoulder as he recounts something about his day – a customer, a delayed delivery – and Ash tries to figure out what exactly is happening here.
CJ appears to live with two very gorgeous men and her child, but nobody is the man she saw her with the other week when she was in her tennis whites.
Is this a commune? Is CJ in an open relationship with these men?
Are these men also in a relationship with each other? It is mind-boggling.
‘Sorry,’ Ash says, when there’s a lull in conversation. ‘Are you … is this … CJ, are you in a throuple? No judgement, I just don’t understand what’s happening here.’
Todd laughs, over in the open-plan kitchen, and Miguel chuckles. ‘A throuple of sorts, I suppose.’
CJ pretends to gag. ‘Eww,’ she says. ‘Gross. Now can you tell her you’re my cousin, so Ash knows how gross that joke is?’
‘When you put it that way,’ Miguel says.
‘Yeah, fair. No, Ash, not a throuple. Todd and I are married, and we’re living here as we save up the deposit for our own apartment.
We run a café together, so don’t exactly make millions, and Lisbon’s Airbnb scene has raised the prices around here something stupid.
I wish we could let the property-owning dream go, as per the rest of Europe, but unfortunately our Anglo-American upbringings—’