Page 23 of The Last Train Home
He looks at me as if he’s weighing up saying something else. And then he opts for, ‘Life goes on. My life goes on. So does yours.’
‘My life is still going on,’ I say quietly.
‘Is it? Have you been out much since that day?’ he asks.
‘A bit.’ It’s true. ‘I’ve been out with friends from work and my best mate, Natasha, over in Docklands. It’s only been two weeks and I’m on a journalist’s salary, as you like pointing out to me. I can’t go out every night. I can’t afford it.’
He goes to cut in, but I stop him.
‘Besides, it’s not going out that frightens me; it’s not drinks in pubs with friends that I can’t get to grips with – it’s getting around this bloody city that’s giving me grief.’
‘I get that. How did you get in from Docklands this morning then? You left your bike in the rack at work last night.’
‘I took the DLR really early and then I walked the rest of the way.’
He tips his head to the side. ‘You’ll get on the Docklands Light Railway, but you won’t get on the Tube?’
‘The Tube’s different,’ I say.
‘And you get on the mainline rail from your house into Liverpool Street,’ he says.
‘Again,’ I say forcefully, ‘The. Tube. Is. Different. And no, I can’t make sense of it, either.’
I know why he’s concerned. It’s just how I feel, and I can’t make it change.
‘Give it time, I guess,’ he suggests.
‘Yeah, maybe.’
He folds his arms across his chest and looks at me as if there’s more we both need to say. I wish he’d stop looking at me like that. I like it when he smiles, when he looks interested while I’m talking, not when he looks this concerned. But perhaps it’s a good sign that Tom is concerned. He’s such an unexpected friend, and I don’t think any man (other than my dad) has ever cared about me like this before, even when I’ve been in relationships.
Tom drops the subject, rips the cellophane off the pizza and puts it into the oven.
‘You need to take the cardboard disc out from underneath,’ I tell him.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ he says, opening the oven again.
I can’t work out if this is the best thing for us – two tipsy people comforting each other while watching bad films from the nineties – or the worst thing ever. But I need this so much. This is the first proper night when I’ve let my hair down in … a long time. I couldn’t do it before, in the club. But here, with Tom, I can.
We are dealing with our problems by not dealing with our problems. Instead he’s teaching me how to do magic tricks with a pack of cards. We’ve resorted to this because when wetried to play an actual card game I lost every time and, far from Tom being pleased that he kept winning by default, he just lost interest. ‘Where’s the challenge?’
So now he’s shuffling cards around and my eyes are swimming, trying to follow the ace of spades. ‘Slower,’ I say. ‘I’m going to get it this time.’
‘You’re not,’ he says.
‘Where did you learn this?’ I ask. ‘It’s really geeky.’
‘It’s not geeky. It’s hot,’ he says with confidence. ‘I learned it at school.’
‘Magic school?’ I tease.
‘No, actual school. Boarding school.’
‘You really are a cliché,’ I say, tapping one of the cards he lays down. He turns it over and it’s the queen of diamonds.
‘Ha,’ he says and picks up the cards again. ‘You lose. One more time.’
‘Yes! We keep going until I get it.’
