Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
She came out of the press at twenty past six.
The light was the long blue light of an April evening in Bloomsbury.
The trees in the small green square opposite were halfway between bare and leafed.
There was a smell on the air — the small specific damp smell of London after rain, the kind of smell that, in Chloe’s twenties, had always sat in her chest as the promise of an evening that would, in some way, be larger than the day had been.
She did not, this evening, have plans.
She had told Mira she might stay in town for dinner. She had not made any arrangement. She had a return ticket for the nine o’clock train. She had, between now and Paddington, two and a quarter hours she had not, when she had bought the ticket six weeks ago, accounted for.
She started to walk.
She walked west, then south.
She walked through Bloomsbury and along Theobald’s Road and down Lamb’s Conduit Street.
She walked without a destination, the way she had not walked anywhere for some months.
She found, halfway down a small side street near Holborn, a bookshop she had not previously known.
She went in. She bought nothing. She came out again.
She walked.
She did not, at any point on the walk, take her phone out of her pocket.
She found, on a corner near Theobald’s Road, a small Italian place with a window onto the street and three small tables, only one of them occupied.
She went in. She ordered a glass of red and a plate of pasta.
She read the book of essays Saoirse had recommended and which Chloe, during Halász’s panel, had been quietly impatient to get back to.
The third essay was, as Saoirse had said it would be, the one. Chloe read it twice.
She paid at twenty past eight.
She walked to Paddington.
She had time for a coffee at the station. She bought one. She drank it standing at a high small round table by the platform announcement board. She watched the board change. Her platform came up at four minutes to nine.
She got on the train.
The train pulled out of Paddington at three minutes past nine.
She had a window seat in a near-empty carriage.
The lights of the platforms went past, then the lights of west London, then the lights of the suburbs, then the small intermittent lights of the towns between London and Oxford.
She did not, for the first half hour, do anything in particular.
She sat. She watched. She had her hand in her coat pocket.
Her thumb was, she registered, against her own jaw.
She moved it.
She did not, by reflex, put it back.
Somewhere between Reading and Didcot she took out her phone.
She opened the conversation with Mira.
saw her. I’m fine.
She sent it.
Mira replied inside two minutes.
good. food on. don’t be weird about the lights.
Chloe smiled at the phone.
She did not, immediately, lock the screen.
She opened the contact she had saved on the night of the salon. The number Anna had typed in, with Chloe’s name beside it, on a sofa in a flat on Iffley Road, in the small ordinary courtesy of two adults exchanging a way to find each other again.
There was no message thread.
Anna had not, in the six weeks since the salon, texted.
Chloe had not, in the six weeks since the salon, texted either.
She had, several times, almost done it. She had — once in the third week, once in the fifth — composed a sentence. She had not, either time, sent it. She had been waiting, she had told herself, until she was sure of what she wanted to say.
She was, this evening, sure.
She typed.
Hi. It’s Chloe — from Beatrix’s, a few weeks ago. I’ve been thinking about your last poem. I’d like to ask you what you meant by the line about the phone call. Would you have a coffee with me, if you’re free in the next week or so?
She read it.
She did not, on reading it, add anything. She did not, also, take anything away. She did not, also, sit with the message for three days the way she had sat with the letter from Eleanor in March.
She sent it.
She watched the screen.
She did not, immediately, expect a reply. It was nearly half past nine on a Saturday evening. Anna might have been out. Anna might have been in. Anna might have, in the six weeks of not hearing from Chloe, decided the exchange had not been a thing.
Chloe registered, on this last possibility, that she would survive it.
She had, today, survived a larger thing.
She put the phone face-down on the small table in front of her seat.
She looked out of the window for some time.
The phone lit up at twenty to ten.
She turned it over.
Anna.
Hi. I’d like that. The line about the phone call was — well, I’ll tell you. Are you free Wednesday?
Chloe read it.
She read it again.
She typed: yes.
She sent it.
Anna replied within the minute.
Six? Common Ground on Little Clarendon Street. I’ll find us a table.
Chloe wrote: yes. I’ll see you then.
She did not, after sending it, do anything in particular with her face.
She did, however, find that she was — the small steady part of her registering it — smiling at her own reflection in the dark train window.
The smile was nothing in particular. It was, by any external measure, the smile of a woman who had just made a small arrangement to have a coffee on a Wednesday at six.
She put the phone away.
She watched the dark fields go past.
She thought, in the dim warmth of the carriage, with the small ordinary fact of the arrangement on Wednesday sitting in her chest where, six months ago, a quite different kind of arrangement had been sitting, that she had finally — without intending to, without rehearsing it, without giving it a sentence — answered a question Eleanor had asked her, by the fire, on the night of the small kiss.
Tell me what you want.
She had told her, that night, the word she had been able to give. You.
She had told her, on the rug, in the firelight, the word she had been able to give there. This.
She had told her, on the threshold of the study, on the afternoon of the Jess letters, the answer she had been carrying around in her body without admitting it. To leave.
And she had told her, here, in a dark train carriage between Didcot and Oxford, on a Saturday in April, with a glass of red and a plate of pasta in her stomach and an arrangement to have a coffee on Wednesday in her phone, the final answer.
She had told her: this also.
Which was to say: my own life. The small ordinary one, the one with the freelance work and the kitchen with Mira and the books underlined too much and the new notebook on the desk and the coffee on Wednesday and the unspectacular small steady warmth of being, in her own body, in her own room, the person who had answered her own door.
She watched the lights of Didcot go past.
She watched the lights of Radley.
The train slowed for Oxford.
She stood. She put on her coat. She put her bag over her shoulder. She walked, in the carriage’s quiet end-of-day light, to the door.
She did not, on the platform, take out her phone again.
She walked through the station. She crossed the bridge.
She walked along Hythe Bridge Street into the city, into the small grey-blue April evening, the streetlamps coming on one by one as she walked, the lights warming, the city the city she had walked through for nine months, only this evening her city, only this evening her walk, only this evening her body in her own coat in her own life, going home.
She walked.
She did not, on the walk, register much else.
She did, somewhere on the corner of George Street and Cornmarket, hear herself laugh briefly, quietly, at nothing in particular, the small bemused private laugh of a woman who had not, before that evening, been entirely sure she was going to be the woman who would, eventually, be laughing on the corner of George Street at nothing in particular on an April Saturday at twenty past ten.
She let it land.
She kept walking.
Mira had left the kitchen light on.
Chloe let herself in. She took off her coat. She hung it on the hook in the hall. She went into the kitchen. There was, as Mira had said, food on — a small plate of pasta covered with a tea towel, a glass of water beside it, a note that said please.
She sat down at the table.
She ate.
Mira came in from the sitting room in her pyjamas. She did not, this time, ask anything. She sat down opposite Chloe. She watched her eat for a minute.
She said, “All right?”
Chloe said, “All right.”
Mira nodded. She got up. She put her own mug in the sink. She kissed the top of Chloe’s head on the way past, the way she had done on the morning in March before the salon.
She went back to the sitting room.
Chloe finished the pasta.
She washed the plate. She put it on the rack. She turned off the kitchen light.
She went into her room. She turned on the bedside lamp. She undressed. She got into bed.
She did not, for a moment, switch off the light.
She lay on her side. She looked at the small ordinary objects on her bedside table — the lamp, the glass of water, the new notebook, the slim Carson she had collected from the study on the afternoon of the visit, the book on the shelf above her desk that contained Eleanor’s letter.
She did not, this evening, take the letter out.
She did not, this evening, need to.
She turned off the light.
She slept.
It was a deep ordinary sleep, the kind a woman had after a long walk in the cold, the kind she had not had in some months, and would have, from now on, more often.
A little bonus for you…
What really happened in the study during bubble week?
This exclusive bonus scene takes you behind a closed door and into Chloe and Eleanor's steamy and most intimate night together. If you loved the slow burn, the tension, and the irresistible pull between them, this is the scene you've been waiting for.