“Oh, no,” Caro laughed lightly, putting the hanger back on the rail but continuing to leaf through the jumble of items with her manicured fingers. It was hard to be mad at her; Caro’s family probably gave more to charity every year than this tiny little back-street Oxfam made per annum.
Because Caro was rich; double-barrelled surname rich. Her family business was something dreadfully unglamorous, but dreadfully lucrative, which allowed Caro and her brother to officially Do Nothing. The brother had disappeared from Heathrow with a backpack and a credit card as soon as he graduated from his mandatory university degree. Caro was more of a home bird, and so had decided she'd rather remain the eternal student. She was currently halfway through Masters degree number two and starting to give serious consideration to which of her many qualifications she was going to take through to a gratuitous PhD afterwards. Considering that this was probably the biggest concern that Caro had, it was lucky she was genuinely sweet and a wonderful friend, or else Nadia would have long since strangled her with a charitably donated knitted scarf.
“So, I assume you haven’t heard?” Caro asked, finishing with the jumpers and moving on to the rail arm of skirts.
“From the Home Office? No. I’m meant to by the end of the week.”
“Still hopeful?”
“Yeah,” Nadia lied. She wasn’t exactly hopeful. But it was important that she pretended to the others that she was; it made things easier for them, especially for Caro, who was still smarting after having her generosity snubbed. She’d tried to insist on using Daddy’s credit card to hire a proper immigration lawyer for her friend, but Nadia had just as insistently refused, assuring her that she and her family could handle the cost on their own. That was a lie too. The closest Nadia had gotten to a lawyer was a Google search for helpful blog posts on immigration law.
“Good.” Caro smiled. “Me too.” She pulled out a panelled tartan skirt. “I saw a lush skirt just like this in Bottega Veneta last month!” She laughed. “And that one was £845.”
Nadia rolled her eyes. “So buy it!” Caro laughed again, as though Nadia had just made the funniest joke ever, and continued her blasé browsing.
Alex
Lila’s thighs were clammy. Alex knew this because Lila kept mentioning it, as if it was absolutely no big deal to discuss the condition of her naked skin as she squeezed past him over and over again as they both tried to cook simultaneously in the poky kitchen.
Her pasta bake finally assembled and in the oven, Lila sat down on one of the kitchen’s two foldaway chairs and crossed one (apparently clammy) leg over the other.
“It does feel sort of sordid having bare legs in the office and on the Tube,” she confessed as she reached for her glass of water. “But even clear skin-coloured tights are just unbearable in this weather, you know?”
Alex snorted. “Imagine having to wear a suit and tie to the office and on the Tube!” he mocked. “You don’t exactly have my sympathy, Lils.”
Lila waved her hand dismissively. “Suit trousers aren’t skin-tight,” she argued. “It’s not the same. Besides, you could always buy a pair of those city shorts?”
Alex gave her a withering look. “Lils, have you actually ever seen anyone wearing those shorts?” he asked her.
“Yes!”
“I mean, like on the Tube, not in a magazine!”
“Then no,” Lila admitted, laughing.
“That’s because they’re a myth. Because men know that if they wear them, it will appear as if they have simply forgotten the bottom third of their suit.”
“You said men wearing Ugg boots was a myth,” Lila argued. “And then David Beckham wore them.”
“David Beckham is a celebrity, not a ‘man’!” Alex immediately countered, turning his attention briefly to his bubbling saucepan.
“Oh, he’s a man all right,” Lila joked. “And what a man!”
They both turned, distracted by the jingling of keys in the front-door lock. Lila hopped to her feet expectantly and moved out into the hallway to greet Rory as he arrived home, looking rumpled and sweat-stained, his tie already removed and three of his shirt buttons undone.
“S’bloody hot out there,” he informed them, as if they somehow weren’t aware of the fact.
“Was the Tube a nightmare?” Lila asked, sympathetically, going up on her tiptoes for a peck on the lips.
“Yeah. Central Line. Hottest line on the Underground, apparently.”
“I don’t understand how they can manage to give us WiFi underground, but not bloody air-conditioning!” Lila complained.
Alex stood awkwardly, half-in and half-out of the kitchen. Right on cue, that old third-wheel feeling had started up, making him feel like a horrible, pointless person. He’d mentioned it to Lila once, one night, after too many beers, and she’d just laughed, totally not getting it. She never got it.
“Third wheel?” she’d echoed. “Don’t be silly. What if we’re more like a tricycle, you, me and Ror?” But that was just her being sweet, of course, and it didn’t change the fact that Alex was well and truly a sad little unicycle, all on his own.
On the face of it, it should all have been so different. Lila was his friend, or she had been, back at university, anyway. Sure, they may have fallen out of touch for a couple of years, but fate had intervened in the end. It was one of those “six degrees of separation” things; she was in a house-share with someone who was casually dating a mate of Rory’s from work. If that mate hadn’t thrown a house party at exactly that point in time, in a city of eight million people, Lila Palmer may just have remained an obscure Facebook Friend. And Rory – Alex's taller, darker, richer and generally more attractive flatmate – would never have met her. But meet they did, and within two weeks she was sitting sheepishly across the breakfast table from Alex wearing Rory’s dressing gown and exchanging awkward small talk about how life had been to them since graduation. And within six weeks, Alex was painfully certain he was in love with her.
Alex remained stupidly paused in the doorframe as Lila followed her boyfriend into his bedroom, chattering away brightly as she’d just been doing in the kitchen with him; the bedroom door was kicked closed, almost like an afterthought. He guessed he wouldn’t be getting to hear what else Lila thought about David Beckham, not that night anyway.
Alex jumped as his saucepan of veg finally boiled dry on the hob, hissing loudly as if it was as pissed off with Alex as he was with himself.
Nadia
Nadia was home from her shift at the shop a little later than usual for a Thursday evening; she’d stopped off at Tesco to buy herself a cheap (but probably not that nutritious) dinner of value-brand instant noodles (supposedly “chicken flavour” but ominously suitable for vegans). Holly was already home when she got there, sitting awkwardly on the very edge of the sofa cushions, knees and ankles together, shoes still on. An impossibly crisp white envelope sat on the coffee table in front of her.
“It came, then?” Nadia asked, in a ridiculously calm voice.
“It came,” Holly confirmed, pressing her palms to her knees, as if she was physically stopping herself ripping open the letter herself.
“Hmmm.” Instead of pouncing on the piece of paper that pronounced her future, Nadia walked into the kitchen and began methodically unpacking her shopping into the cupboards. Holly came to stand in the doorway.
“Well, aren’t you going to open it?” she asked, incredulously.
“In a minute,” Nadia replied.
“How can you wait?”
Nadia