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“At least let Ari set up a meeting with Baz,” Nico begged, and I turned my gaze away from the skylight and looked at him, really looked, for the first time in what felt like a long time. I’d been expecting Nico’s trademark knee-weakening smile, but what I got was something far more devastating. He looked… worried. And I realized, maybe for the first time, that Nico’s eternal optimism wasn’t as effortless as it looked. That maybe he was facing the same crunch point that I was, the same realization that if the next roll of the dice didn’t come good, he might be out of the game. Maybe this was a last chance for both of us.
I felt myself giving way.
“Okay. I’ll talk to Baz.”
“Yes!” Nico punched the air. “I fucking love you, Lyla!”
“It’s just a meeting! They might not even want me.”
“Of course they’ll want you. How could anyone not want you? You’re a fucking scientific genius and you’re hot. What more could anyone want?”
A scientific genius wouldn’t have ended up in a research dead end with a publication record that had holes in it the size of the Grand Canyon, I thought a little wearily. But Nico was still speaking.
“… and you know what—I know you can only take two weeks off, but I don’t care. We’re the perfect couple, no matter who takes that prize.”
“We are,” I said. I put down the cup, stood on tiptoe, and kissed Nico on the lips, feeling his wide smile against my mouth, irrepressible even as he kissed me back.
“This is going to change everything.” He spoke the words close to my ear as he gathered me into him, squeezing me tight. “I can feel it in my bones.”
I could only hope he was right.
02/15—02:14 a.m.
Over Easy, can you hear me? The wind is really picking up and I’m getting seriously concerned. Is there any kind of storm shelter on the island?
02/15—02:16 a.m.
Over Easy, if you’re receiving this, please come in, this is urgent. The storm is getting really bad and I think we might need to evacuate. In fact just now— Oh God!
CHAPTER 3
IT’S ALWAYS DIFFICULT explaining what you do as a scientist to outsiders—spike proteins and viral entry pathways isn’t everyone’s cup of tea at the best of times, even post-Covid when everyone and their uncle fancied themselves as a virologist. It’s doubly hard when you’re on a Zoom call with a group of producers who keep talking off mic. When Baz called me a “boffin” for the second time, I felt my patience snap.
“We tend to prefer scientist,” I said, a little shortly.
“What’s that?” Baz said, leaning into the camera. “I didn’t catch that, sweetheart?” He had a strong Australian accent, and the screenname at the bottom of his picture read Baz—Effing Productions.
“The boffin thing,” I said. “It’s just… you know, it’s not how I tend to describe myself. I’d say scientist. Or, you know, virologist if you want to get down in the weeds.”
“Ha,” Baz said, grinning widely. He had an extremely ’90s tongue piercing, which was distracting on camera. You could see it when he laughed, and he kept playing with it when other people were talking, clicking it against his teeth. “You’re funny. I like that.”
Funny? Before I could figure out how to explain not just that I wasn’t joking, but that I didn’t even know what the joke was supposed to be, the conversation moved on to questions about mine and Nico’s relationship—how long we’d been together, where we saw ourselves in five years.
“We’ve been together three years,” Nico said, squeezing my hand. I opened my mouth to correct him—we’d met three years ago, but we’d actually been together slightly over two, and even that was pushing it. But then I remembered, I wasn’t at work, and I closed it again. No one was going to quiz us for supporting documentation and calculation methodology.
Nico was still talking and had moved on from first dates to his five-year plan.
“I mean… this is hard to answer without sounding either pathetically humble or delusionally ambitious, but I’m an actor—I want to be acting. I guess, you know, thinking about the career paths of people I admire, I see myself very much in the James McAvoy, Adam Driver kind of mold: indie word of mouth, critical acclaim, moving on to mainstream success, but keeping the artistic integrity. A bit of theater here and there, keeping myself artistically grounded, not letting success change my commitment to my craft…”
In the corner of the screen I saw Ari shift in his seat.
“… what I’m saying is, where’s the Skins for my generation? Where are the edgy, authentic depictions of life in your thirties?”
“Uh… yeah.” Baz had clearly tuned out and was looking at something his assistant was showing him. “And, uh, Leela, sweetheart, what about you?”
“Me?” I was taken aback. I should have seen the question coming but I’d been so preoccupied by Nico’s answer that I’d failed to anticipate being asked the same thing. “Um, it’s Lyla actually,” I said slowly, buying myself time to think. It wasn’t just that Nico’s answer was sort of delusional—did he really think that he was on an Adam Driver career path? I might as well compare myself to Rosalind Franklin. It was also that not one word of his answer had featured me, or indeed any kind of homelife at all. “Five years. I mean, I—”
I stopped. Where did I see myself? In five years I would be thirty-seven. A few weeks ago I might have answered, if not confidently then at least optimistically, heading up a research team on something exciting—dengue, maybe; there was some exciting work on IgA antibodies coming out of the US—with a permanent academic post. I’d have bought a flat somewhere in east London, convenient for my mum to come and stay. Maybe even a little house, if I were prepared to commute. There might be kids on the horizon—if not actual babies, at least the idea of one, in the not-too-distant future.
