Chapter 13
Rose
For once, the ward wasn’t busy. I needed a day where I didn’t have time to think, one where I could completely lose myself in work, which wasn’t usually an issue. My job meant that I only saw patients when they were in crisis or verging of going into crisis, so life was usually fast paced.
But on the one day I needed a day I could drown in; we had a streak of calm.
No emergencies were admitted, patients all had a good day, we had a breakthrough and two discharges – although there was every chance at least one would be back with us within a month.
The day almost dragged. I had time for paperwork I’d been putting off, and my supervision went ahead with no disruptions.
Which gave me a few minutes here and there to think.
It was much easier to spend my time helping other people solve their problems than work on my own, unless I was motivated to.
Motivation meant I would end up in a safe space where I was absolutely certain everything would be okay.
I knew that everything would be okay with Carter; our friendship had longevity, neither of us would revert to our childhood and throw our toys completely out of the pram.
But I knew I risked being hurt all the same, and while the last couple of weeks had been a special kind of torture, at least I’d still had hope that there might be something for me with Carter. After tonight, that hope might not be there anymore.
I didn’t know what to expect and that was what was disconcerting me the most.
I got home the earliest I had done for months and jumped straight into the shower, needing to wash the eau d’hospital off every fibre of my being.
I pushed thoughts of Carter out of head successfully, for the first time since I’d spoken to him the night before, and accepted finally that what would be, would be and all of those epithets.
I studied my reflection in the mirror as I blow dried my hair, trying to tame the dark red curls that I’d always rather liked. They were the same as my mum’s, the one feature I’d really inherited, although hers were streaked with grey now, something she blamed on me and my siblings. And Seph.
I smiled, thinking of my stepdad and his latest issue with a photocopier. I was sure that most of his photocopier issues were purely for our entertainment and to wind up my Uncle Max. It never failed.
My parents liked Carter. He’d spent enough time at our house to have my dad’s phone number and to have bailed at least one of my brothers out of a party they shouldn’t have been at.
He’d never told on them either, or divulged to me what they’d been up to, and I’d liked that.
He made connections easily and was skilled at deepening them.
Unlike some surgeons he had people skills.
And I was back on Carter.
It’d been nice while it lasted.
I made a quick dinner, and then added some make-up, just mascara and bronzer to try to stop me looking like a Victorian lady with a malaise. The intercom buzzed bang on eight, and my heart rate went from jumpy to participating in a nineties’ rave.
Carter was at my door a minute late, casual, free from any hospital paraphernalia, a battered leather jacket fitting too well across his shoulders, but it was his eyes I noticed first. He was wary.
Nerves attacked me again.
“How’s things?” I closed the door and followed him through to the kitchen. The kitchen was open plan, with one half the space an open living area with a corner sofa, coffee table and a wall-mounted TV. I’d slept there on many occasions and there was a heap of blankets that I hadn’t tidied.
I’d considered tidying up for Carter’s visit, but that would’ve been making a meal of things – he was used to my mess.
“Okay. Yours?”
“Quiet, for the first time ever. Want a beer?” I really wanted to get started on this conversation but social niceties had been ingrained in me.
“Please. I’m not in work until Saturday now so beer’s the right answer.”
“What was the question?”
“It could’ve been anything and beer would’ve been the right answer.” He followed me to the fridge and accepted the bottle I pulled out, then found the bottle opener himself. “What are you having?”
“I think I’ll have a beer too.” Tea didn’t seem appropriate right now.
He passed me his opened bottle and pulled another out of the fridge, opening that, glancing at me every few seconds as if he was checking that I was still there.
“What is it?” The tension between us was taut.
“You’re nervous. I’m not looking forward to this either.”
“Shall we sit down and get it over with?”
“Sofa?”
“I need my blanket fort.”
He laughed, but not for long. Maybe now wasn’t the time to refer to things from years ago. Maybe that was the problem.
He sat in the opposite corner to me, sipping at his beer, silence filling the room like a dripping tap.
“What’s the story with you and Laurie?” I broke it first.
He didn’t answer straightaway, looking around the room, avoiding me.
“You said you were single, but you weren’t available. Is it to do with her?” I needed to know now; staying happily in the dark was no longer an option.
“Yes, but it’s temporary. Can you remember what happened last Easter?” He sat back, resting in his hand, balanced on his knee.
I thought for a moment, the months feeling concertina’d together, events blending into the next because time went by so very very quickly.
“Last Easter, I met Laurie. She was dating a man who she was expecting to propose. This was important, because she was having difficulties with her family, who’d financed her businesses with family money linked to her trust. For the trust to be signed over to her, she had to be married.
The expected fiancé ghosted her – I met her the night he’d not turned up to a family dinner.
” He looked out of the floor to ceiling window that afforded us views of London, the Thames in the distance.
“I remember. I didn’t know that was Laurie, but I remember you telling me about what had happened. Not about the trust though.” A prickle of dawning heated the back of my neck.
“So in July, I offered to help her out,” he continued, managing to look at me. “We’d get married for the purpose of her trust fund. We’d sort a pre-nup so I wouldn’t have claim on it and we apply for annulment straight after. The trust stipulated Laurie was married, but nothing about how long for.”
The body can have a physical response to stress. Some people will go into fight or flight mode, others may go into freeze. My freezing didn’t involve numbness, but dizziness and the world lost colour. Stress impacted my pulse rate and my world would turn upside down.
That was what was happening now.
“You’re married?” My mouth was dry and I couldn’t move.
“Not yet. We get married in three weeks. Laurie’s family will be here for it. We’ve already prepared the documents for the annulment.”
“Oh.” I felt my nervous system begin to regulate, my breathing steadied, the fizzing of my skin subsided.
He didn’t say anything, he didn’t add any more words.
I remembered the times when I’d been in school and something had upset me, mean girls or a situation I wasn’t sure of.
Carter, mainly because we used to walk to and from school together most days.
He had been the one to hear first about my day, the retelling so I could process and make sense of it.
There had been times when I’d just needed to cry and I’d sat in his bedroom, talking it all out and he’d given me space, listening, not adding more sentences for me to have to work out.
“Are you together? Like a couple?” Because if they were, and he’d kissed me – even though it was only a kiss – would change how I saw him.
“No. We went out on a date after I’d offered to help her out and we had no chemistry.
That’s why the fake marriage seemed like a good idea – we weren’t going to suddenly catch feelings.
” He put his beer, still half full, on the coffee table, straight onto a mat because Harriet had us all well-trained.
“Oh.” My breathing had slowed. “Carter, why the fuck did you think that was an okay favour to give? Who in their right mind does that as a favour for a friend? What were you getting out of it? That’s insane.” And that was anger. Frustration.
“It wasn’t my best move.”
I stood up, the room feeling too small. “I’m going to go for a walk round the block for half an hour. Will you still be here?”
“Do you want me to still be here.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be here.”
I left him on the sofa, grabbing my coat from the coat stand and yanking on my boots. Harriet had a scarf and hat near the door and wouldn’t be needing them tonight, so I put those on and took the lift to the ground floor, nodding at the concierge as I headed out.
London was rarely quiet, and tonight was no exception. I passed couples out for an evening walk, maybe heading to a bar or a restaurant. Individuals walking back from work, some still in formal workwear, on phones or checking the screens as they dodged passersby like aliens in an arcade game.
I replayed what Carter had told me, making it make sense. He was marrying Laurie in a matter of weeks. He’d say ‘I do’ to another woman and the idea of that undid all of the work his father had done to repair my heart.
I stopped by the river, pausing to look over the width of the Thames, boats docked, some still sailing. Across the water I could see the Shard, a piece of architecture that had always been my symbol of being near home.
Every one of Carter’s girlfriends had jarred me, right from Lacey Lutterworth when he was sixteen and she was a year older.
Back then, he’d been too old anyway. Then there was Clapham Common, and suddenly he wasn’t too old and I wasn’t too much of a nerd, but we were on different timelines and too young yet for anyone serious.
But I’d still felt threatened by every girl he’d talked about or I’d met, I’d still made sure they knew just how long me and Carter had been friends.
I was the human female equivalent of a tom cat spraying its territory, or whatever the appropriate animal was. I’d have to look that up.
So why had Carter offered to marry Laurie? She was gorgeous and intelligent – Carter wasn’t the only option, surely?
My head whizzed through a gazillion scenarios, none of them landing right, none of them providing me with the explanation that I probably needed.
I sat down on a bench, watching the river and the thousands of years’ worth of secrets it carried in its current out to sea, a rhythm that was older than the city itself. I wasn’t the first person to sit here, lamenting something that was never quite understood anyway, and I wouldn’t be the last.
Carter was single. He wasn’t going to stay married to Laurie for long. He wouldn’t be divorced; the marriage would be annulled, and I knew enough about family law, learned by osmosis from my own family, to understand how that process worked.
That realisation left me even further adrift.
Because we’d both still be single at the same time. I didn’t doubt that for the first time, we’d both be on the same page of a book we started together long ago. We’d never made a pact about what would happen if both of us were unattached in twenty years’ time, never out loud.
The kiss on Clapham Common.
The phone calls through years, a tether between us. A feeling of unsettlement every time I dated someone new.
The kiss outside, looking over London.
What if it didn’t happen? If he suddenly fell in love with Laurie?
What if it did happen and it didn’t work out?
What if it did?
The Thames was almost black, a swirling tide in which no one except the gulls would swim. It was impossible to see the bottom.
I headed back towards my apartment, slower this time. I’d been gone longer that I’d expected and I half wondered if Carter would still be there, or whether he’d decided I needed more time.
Only he was stubborn, as stubborn as I was, and maybe more of a fool for seeing things through.
As I grew closer to the apartment block, close enough to see silhouettes at the windows, at least on the lower floors, I imagined him watching out for me, and I wondered what he’d been thinking while I’d been gone.
And I wondered again why the fuck he’d agreed to marry Laurie.