Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
NINA
Tom arrives at six, just as I’m flipping the sign to CLOSED.
‘Ready?’ He’s standing in the doorway, backlit by the evening sun, hands in his pockets, that particular half-hover he does when he’s trying to look casual and overshooting slightly.
We’ve been doing this for years – the outdoor cinema at Pencross, every summer, old films on a big screen under the stars.
Our thing. One of the few traditions that survived us growing from teenagers into adults.
‘Two minutes.’ I untie my apron and toss it in the basket. ‘Just need to sort Chips.’
Chips is at my feet, watching me with those patient eyes. I crouch down, scratching behind his ears.
‘I’ll be back in a few hours. Don’t destroy anything. Don’t eat anything you’re not supposed to. Don’t let Brynn in if she comes by – she’ll give you too many treats and then judge me for it.’
Tail thump. Once. Acknowledgement.
‘Good boy.’ I press a kiss to the top of his head. ‘Guard the café. Important job. I’m trusting you.’
When I stand up, Tom is watching me from the doorway. His face has gone soft in a way that makes my stomach do a slow, uncomfortable turn – not unpleasant, just unfamiliar, like hearing a chord change in a song I thought I knew.
‘What?’ I say.
‘Nothing.’ He shakes his head. ‘You’re good with him.’
‘He’s easy to be good with.’ I grab my cardigan and my bag. ‘Right. Cinema. Let’s go. I’ve been looking forward to this all week.’
We walk out together, the evening air warm but finally starting to ease.
Tom’s Land Rover is parked at the top of the harbour, same spot, same always.
I’m already talking about the film – Brief Encounter this year, which feels almost too on-the-nose for a summer outdoor cinema but I’m not complaining – when we reach the car and I stop.
Cara is in the passenger seat.
She waves through the window, bright and friendly, and my chest constricts – a sharp, physical squeeze, like a hand closing around a fist. I don’t understand it. I have no reason for it. She’s waving. She’s being nice.
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Right. Yes. Of course.’
Tom is already opening the back door for me. ‘I mentioned it to Cara – she’s never seen Brief Encounter, can you believe that? I thought she should come. The more the merrier.’
He’s explaining too much. Tom doesn’t explain things this much. Tom says things once, plainly, and moves on. The over-explanation is its own confession – he knows what he’s done. He knows this was ours and he’s opened the door.
‘Right,’ I say, climbing into the back seat. ‘The more the merrier. Absolutely.’
Cara twists around to smile at me. ‘I hope you don’t mind me tagging along. Tom made it sound magical – blankets, stars, old movies. I’m a sucker for all three.’
‘No, it’s great. It’ll be fun.’
Tom starts the engine. I sit in the back seat, and here’s the thought that arrives uninvited and won’t leave:
I never invited Peter.
Not once. In three years together. The outdoor cinema was always just Tom and me. I told myself it was because Peter wouldn’t enjoy it – old films weren’t his thing, he’d fidget, he’d want to leave early. And that was true. He would have fidgeted.
But I never asked. I never even thought to ask. I kept this one thing – this particular evening, this particular tradition – sealed in a box marked Tom and Nina and I didn’t examine why.
I told myself it was about the films.
Tom asked Cara.
‘You okay back there?’ His eyes find mine in the rearview mirror. ‘You’re quiet.’
‘Long day. The café.’
‘I know that voice. That’s the deflection voice.’
‘I don’t have a deflection voice.’
‘You have several. I’ve catalogued them.’ His eyes are warm in the mirror, teasing, and I look away first. I never look away first. ‘There’s the “I’m fine” voice, the “I’m tired” voice, and the “stop asking me questions, Tom” voice. You’re currently on number two.’
‘Maybe I’m actually tired.’
‘Maybe. But you weren’t tired five minutes ago when you were lecturing the dog about treat rationing.’
Cara laughs. ‘He does this to me too. The noticing thing. It’s unbearable.’
‘It’s invasive,’ I say, and I mean it lightly but it comes out with an edge I didn’t intend, and Tom’s eyes flick to the mirror again and then back to the road.
The car goes quiet. Cara fills it – easily, gracefully, the way she fills every silence. She talks about the film, about Trevor Howard, about how she’d once cried at a black-and-white film on a plane and the man next to her had offered her a handkerchief.
‘An actual handkerchief,’ she says. ‘Cloth. Monogrammed. Like a character from the film had climbed out of the screen and sat in 17B.’
I laugh because the story is funny and Cara is charming and I hate – I hate – that I can’t find a single thing wrong with her, that she is warm and clever and interesting and that Tom’s neck has relaxed since she started talking, the tension draining out of him because Cara makes things easy and I have apparently been making them hard.
The back seat of Tom’s car has never felt this far from the front.
Pencross puts the cinema in a field at the cliff edge – the kind of perfect English setting that looks accidental but isn’t: fairy lights strung between poles, a tea stand doing steady business, families on picnic blankets and couples sharing wine and a group of teenagers who’ll talk through the whole thing and get shushed by someone’s nan.
The screen is white and enormous against the darkening sky. There’s a shift of air – a collective settling, the hush before the lights go down. I used to love this feeling. The magic of it. Tonight it feels like standing outside a party I used to be invited to.
Tom carries the blankets. Cara carries a picnic basket she apparently packed while I was closing the café. I carry my cardigan and my mood and try not to examine either.
‘Here?’ Tom stops at a good spot. Not too close, not too far.
‘Perfect.’
He spreads one blanket. Then another. Side by side. Two blankets.
Not one. Not the one big blanket we’ve shared every summer for eleven years, shoulders touching, his warmth along my left side, close enough to whisper commentary and pass the popcorn and exist in the same small space.
Two blankets. A gap between them.
‘I thought you might want your own space,’ Tom says, catching whatever’s on my face. ‘You know, to stretch out.’
‘Very considerate.’
‘I try.’
Cara settles onto the first blanket, kicking off her sandals. Tom sits beside her – not touching, a few inches between them, but close. Together. A unit.
I sit on my blanket. The one beside them. The one with the gap.
I pull my cardigan around my shoulders and I look at the space where Tom usually sits – the specific patch of blanket where his arm would be, warm and solid, close enough that I could lean into him if I wanted and never once felt the need to explain why – and the space is empty.
The sun drops. The screen flickers to life. The opening credits roll.
I try to watch Brief Encounter. I’ve seen it four times. I know every scene, every line, every devastating shot of Celia Johnson’s face trying not to fall apart.
I don’t see any of it.
I see Tom’s profile in the flickering light – the line of his jaw, the set of his mouth, the way his hands rest on his knees, still and steady.
I see Cara lean into him during a scene and his shoulder adjust to take her weight, the small mechanical kindness of a body making room.
I see her hand settle on his forearm, light and casual, her fingers resting where mine have rested a hundred times – on the arm, on the sleeve, in that spot between wrist and elbow that I think of as mine and that isn’t mine, has never been mine, has apparently always been available to anyone who wanted it.
My nails press into my palms. I make myself look at the screen.
On screen, Celia Johnson is falling in love with a man she can’t have, and she’s trying not to, and she can feel it happening anyway, and her face in the train station is the face of a woman who has just realised that the life she built is not the life she wants, and—
I pull my cardigan tighter. I watch the screen. I do not look at Tom again.
The interval comes and people drift towards the tea stand.
Cara appears beside me with two paper cups.
‘Two cups of semi-flat supermarket own-brand pop.’
‘Thanks.’ I wrap my hands around the cup, it’s not cold at all. ‘Are you enjoying the film?’
‘It’s devastating. In the best way.’ She sips her cola. ‘I can see why you two come every year. There’s a real magic to it – the stars, the screen, everyone wrapped up in the same story.’
‘It’s a tradition. One of the few that has stuck over the years.’
‘Tom said. He said you’ve been coming since sixth form. He said—’ She pauses, and her expression shifts into something lighter, amused. ‘He told me about your first date, actually.’
My hands tighten on the cup.
‘The whole “like kissing my brother” thing.’ Cara laughs, all easy-going and oblivious, while my breath starts to catch in my lungs.
‘He said you told your friends it was a disaster. That you nearly killed each other. I think his exact words were, “She said it was like kissing her brother and I heard her say it and that was pretty much that.”’
I swear my stomach drops.
‘He heard that?’
‘Apparently. Through a door or something.’ Cara is watching the queue, casual, no idea what she’s doing to my insides. ‘He laughed about it. Said it was formative.’
He heard.
Tom heard me. Seventeen years old, stupid and careless, performing for girls whose names I can’t even remember now. Saying it was gross. Saying it was like kissing my brother. Saying I’d rather die. Laughing.
And he was on the other side of the door.
And he never said a word.