Chapter 12 #2
Cara’s good at this. The full attention.
The right question at the right moment. I watch Bill expand under it, and Frankie arrive and get drawn in, and Tilly comes out from inside the dark cool of the pub, round tray in hand, opening the umbrella that’s slotted into the hole in the table and rolling her eyes like we are all too dumb to work an umbrella and have chosen the route of heatstroke – which is ironic for a woman with a year-round tan.
Then she spies Cara, and her eyebrows lift, a wicked smile darting across her face, and she sits, like she’s forgotten that the reason she came out was to collect empty glasses.
Cara works the table, thoroughly charming them all with her brilliant white smile and free laughter.
At some point she laughs at something Frankie says and her hand finds my arm again – a brief press of fingers, absent almost, the way you reach for what’s familiar. She doesn’t seem to notice she’s done it. I take a long drink of my pint.
‘She’s lovely,’ Tilly tells me, leaning across the table while Cara is deep in conversation with Bill about engine maintenance. ‘Your friend. Very charming.’
‘She is.’
‘Known her long?’
‘University. Same year.’
‘And you’re just friends?’ Tilly’s expression is innocent. Tilly’s expression is never innocent.
‘We’re friends.’
‘Hmm.’ She pats my arm. ‘Well. She seems very nice. Very … suitable.’
‘Suitable for what?’
‘Nothing at all. Just an observation.’ She disappears into the crowd before I can respond.
Cara catches my eye across the table and raises an eyebrow. I shake my head. She grins – that sharp, knowing grin that I liked at twenty-one and still like now, the grin of a person who finds the world genuinely funny – and turns back to Bill.
I let myself like it. That’s allowed. Liking Cara is allowed.
It’s a different skill from Nina’s. Nina doesn’t make rooms hers.
Nina is the room – woven into the fabric of this place, inseparable from the walls, the light, the air.
She doesn’t charm a space; she belongs to it.
Cara is a guest who makes everything better by being there. Nina is the architecture itself.
I take a drink and file that observation under things I absolutely should not be thinking while Cara is sitting three feet away being wonderful.
The flat is cooler than outside, but only just.
Cara walks through slowly, looking at everything – the bookshelves overflowing onto the floor, the veterinary journals stacked by the armchair, the kitchen that’s too clean. She stops at the window. Looks out.
‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘The café.’
I come to stand beside her. The Lavender Café is directly across the harbour – shutters open, the afternoon light hitting the windows.
I can see Nina moving behind the counter, the quick sure gestures, her bangles catching the sun.
Cara steps slightly closer until her arm is just touching mine, warm through my sleeve, looking where I’m looking.
‘That’s it,’ I say.
‘And that’s her.’
It isn’t a question.
‘That’s her,’ I say.
Cara is quiet for a long moment. Close enough that I can feel her breathing. She’s deciding something – I can almost hear it.
‘Tom.’ She turns from the window but doesn’t step back, and suddenly she’s closer than the conversation requires. ‘I want to ask you something.’
‘Okay.’
‘This woman. Nina.’ She holds up one hand before I can speak. ‘I know what you’re going to say. I’ve heard it. I just need to hear it one more time, looking at me, and then I’ll drop it. I promise I’ll drop it.’
‘There’s nothing there.’ I look at her. I hold her gaze. ‘Nina and I are friends. That’s what we are.’
She studies me, steady and unhurried, and for a moment her hand comes up and rests very lightly against my jaw. Not holding. Just – there. One second. My pulse picks up a notch. Then she drops it.
‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I believe you.’
She doesn’t. I can see it. But she’s choosing to believe me because she’s here, and she’s brave, and she has decided that being here is worth the risk of being wrong. That courage deserves better than what I’m giving it, and I know that, and I’m doing it anyway.
‘I’d like to meet her,’ Cara says. ‘Tomorrow? I could come by the café.’
‘She’d like that. I think you’d get along.’
‘I think we would too.’ She smiles – almost her usual smile, but there’s a careful shadow living behind it now. ‘Right. I’m going to shower off this journey and then you’re taking me to dinner. Somewhere with fans.’
‘The Ship has fans.’
‘The Ship will do. Although I’m thinking it will be more battered than fresh.’
My answering grimace says it all. ‘If you want fresh and fancy, you’d love Amber Cove.’ Personally I hate the place, but I know Cara would shine like a star there.
‘Amber Cove? Isn’t that where that famous chef has that restaurant?’
My eyes roll with a will of their own. ‘Yep, and doesn’t the whole of Cornwall know it. It’s where all the super yachts and gin-palaces moor.’ I laugh as she waggles her perfectly groomed eyebrows at me and then turns for the bathroom, stopping at the door and turning back. ‘Tom?’
‘Yeah?’
‘It’s good to be here. Whatever else is going on – whatever I’m walking into – it’s good to see you.’
‘It’s good to have you here.’
She holds my gaze for a beat longer than necessary.
Then she smiles – properly this time, the smile I remember from late nights in the Bristol library, from the morning she showed up at my flat with coffee and lecture notes and the quiet understanding that sometimes just being present is enough – and disappears into the bathroom.
I hear the water start.
I stand at the window for a moment longer.
Across the harbour, Nina is closing the shutters for the evening, one by one, and even from here I can see Chips circling her feet and the ridiculous pink bear visible through the glass – sitting in its corner, bright and absurd, the tourist attraction I handed her three days ago in front of half the village.
I take out my phone.
I write: Friend arrived safely. Cara. From vet school. She wants to meet you – probably tomorrow if you’re around.
Casual. Normal.
Send.
The reply comes within minutes.
Nina: Fun! Can’t wait to meet her. Bring her by for coffee – I’ll make the good stuff.
Tom: The good stuff or the machine that coughs?
Nina: The machine is behaving. Mostly. I’ve threatened it with replacement.
Tom: Effective management technique.
Nina: I learned from the best. See you tomorrow x
I look at the x. It doesn’t mean anything. Nina puts x’s on everything – texts to Brynn, texts to Isla, texts to Dot about fuchsia-watering schedules. It’s punctuation, not declaration. I know this. I’ve always known this.
From the bathroom I can hear the shower running, where Cara is freshening up. Cara who came here knowing what she was walking into. Who looked me in the eye and said I believe you while we both knew she didn’t.
From the window, the café. Nina’s lights going off one by one. The last shutter closing. The fairy lights still glowing through the glass, warm and persistent, the way they glow every night, left on because she forgets, not because she’s leaving them on for anyone.
Two women. One in the next room. One across the harbour. Both of them braver than I am.
I put the phone down. I stand at the window until the café goes dark.
The shower stops. Cara’s voice floats through the door: ‘Tom? Are there any other good pubs? I’m starving and I refuse to be sad about anything tonight.’
‘Well, there’s The Ship,’ I say.
‘We’ve been there already today.’ The bathroom door opens, and Cara pokes her head through the gap. ‘Seriously, only one pub in this village?’
It’s stupid, but I bristle. ‘Yep.’
She watches me, gaze assessing, reading. Then she smiles, dazzling, and perhaps a little evil too ‘This explains so much of your constant pub crawls the first year at uni.’
‘Now you get it.’
‘I’ll be ready in two.’
I step away from the window. I pick up my keys.
I take Cara to dinner at The Ship, and she’s funny and sharp and she tells a story about a disastrous clinical placement that makes me laugh so hard I almost forget, for an hour, for two, that the café lights are probably still on across the harbour.
At some point she reaches across the table and covers my hand briefly and holds it a second before pulling back and carrying on talking, as if it were nothing, as if her being here is easy and natural and entirely uncomplicated.
Almost.
But when we walk back along the harbour front afterward, Cara’s arm linked through mine, her shoulder warm against my shoulder in the night air, I glance across the water and the lights are there. Still glowing. Still persistent. Still left on for nobody.
Cara follows my gaze.
She doesn’t say anything.
She doesn’t have to.