Page 49 of Carry Me Home

He crosses to Isla and his hand finds the small of her back – automatic, unthinking, his fingers spreading against the fabric of her dress like they know the exact place – and she leans into him without looking up, her body adjusting to his the way water adjusts to a new shape. No thought. No performance. Just the quiet certainty of two people who’ve stopped pretending they don’t fit.

I look at my drink.

I look at my drink for a long time.

And then Nina is there.

Not across the room this time. Right here, at the bar, sliding onto the stool next to mine, a glass of wine in one hand and a plate of chicken goujons with Peri-Peri sauce in the other.

‘You’re brooding,’ she says. ‘You’ve got your brooding face on. The one that makes you look like a character from a Victorian novel.’

‘I don’t brood.’

‘You absolutely brood. You brood professionally. It’s practically a vocation.’ She sets the plate between us, still warm. ‘I brought you food because you look like you haven’t eaten since the drill, and Brynn said you nearly passed out from the heat, and I can’t have my⁠—’

She stops. Picks up a strip of chicken and takes a bite.

‘Your what?’ I ask.

‘My quiz partner. I can’t have my quiz partner passing out at public events. It’s bad for our brand.’

She laughs, but there’s a pause. A gap where a different word was going to go. I heard it. Or I’m going mad. I think it’s the latter.

‘Thank you for the chicken.’

‘You’re welcome. Eat. You’re useless when you’re hungry.’

I eat. She sits beside me, close enough that her knee touches mine and I sit next to her and eat my chicken.

‘They’re so happy,’ she says, watching Kit and Isla across the room. Isla’s laughing at something, one hand on her curved bump. ‘It’s disgusting, actually. They’re disgustingly happy. I want to be annoyed about it but I can’t.’

‘Why would you be annoyed?’

‘I wouldn’t. I’m not. I’m delighted.’ She takes a sip of wine. ‘It’s just … seeing it. The way he looks at her. Like she’s the answer to a question he didn’t know he was asking.’ She turns to me. ‘Have you ever looked at anyone like that?’

The question hits me in the chest like a thrown stone.

‘I’m not sure I’d know,’ I say. My voice doesn’t change. My hand tightens on my glass, briefly, and I release it. ‘You’d have to ask someone who’s seen me do it.’

‘I’ve never seen you do it,’ Nina says, thoughtfully. ‘But I think you would. I think when you finally meet the right person, you’d look at them like that all the time. You’d just be quieter about it. More Tom.’

It’s casual. Fond. It hammers into my chest.

I’m sitting right here. I’m right here.

‘Peter would have loved this,’ she says.

She’s looking at the celebration, at the banner, at the full pub. Her expression is soft; her gaze far away, fixated on a place that no longer exists. Then she shakes her head, straightens her shoulders upright.

‘He’d have been in the corner by now,’ she carries on, ‘pretending to be interested in Bill’s theories about engine maintenance, secretly eating all the sausage rolls.’ She looks at my plate. ‘Bit like you, actually.’

‘I’m not in the corner.’

‘You were in the corner before I arrived. I saw you.’

‘I was at the bar. The bar is not the corner.’

‘The bar is the introvert’s corner and you know it.’ She nudges my knee with hers under the bar. ‘He’d have loved this, though. Kit and Isla. The banner. Dot’s opinions about bridesmaids. All of it.’