Page 29 of The Last Train Home
She names a figure I’m sure I can stretch to, especially if I don’t have to pay for an overground season ticket any more, which I won’t have to, if I’m living so close to work.
‘I’m meeting the estate agent in an hour, to sign for it,’ she says. ‘It’s a brand-new development. It’s only down there.’ She points vaguely downriver. ‘Come and see it? Then we can come back out and grab some dinner and you can decide how you feel.’
We’re in the lift riding up to the fifteenth floor of a sleek, glass new-build complex. Natasha’s on at me about how I don’t want to live in Enfield with my parents for the rest of my life. If she takes this flat, she’s about a ten-minute walk from her office block. She obviously has the same attitude to commuting as Tom.
The lift opens and we walk down a long, white marble corridor. At the end of it the estate agent is waiting in the open door to the flat, having buzzed us in. He greets us bothwarmly and opens the door fully, ushering us in to what turns out to be a high-ceilinged apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows with a view over the City. I stand at the window and look out in the general direction of where I work. I am speechless. You can see for miles.
‘What do you think?’ Natasha asks.
‘I’ll take it,’ I tell her – sort of as a joke and sort of not. Behind me she whoops for joy.
‘Really?’ she questions.
‘Maybe,’ I say, laughing. ‘If you’re sure?’
I turn round to see her signing the rental paperwork and doing a little jig at the same time. I love Natasha so much.
And in only a couple of weeks I get to live with my best friend, in a deluxe pad in London. And even better than that, if I wake up early I can bike it to work from here, so I don’t have to worry about getting on any form of public transport ever again.
Chapter 18
Tom
I see her every single day. She’s at her desk, but she never looks at me, despite me boring my gaze into her, willing her to look. Abbie must know I’m looking. I don’t bother messaging her any more. She doesn’t reply, so there’s no point.
I was right. I had broken my hand punching the wall when running after Abbie. I acted like a child doing that. Then I acted like an adult and took myself to A&E that morning. I looked more presentable than if I’d gone while still blind drunk. My hand was bound tightly for weeks, and so Sean’s been opening all my packets of sandwiches and drinks bottles for me during the working day, literally turning into my right-hand man.
I reach for my water bottle and see it’s open. ‘Thanks, mate,’ I tell him over our computer screens.
‘No problem. I realise now I could have held you hostage for weeks over this: forced you to tell me how you did it or refuse to open your drinks and crisp packets.’
I smile. ‘I’d have held out.’
‘And be dead of starvation and dehydration within a week,’ Sean deadpans.
‘Maybe.’
‘You still not going to tell me how you did it?’ he probes, not for the first time and not for the last either, I reckon.
I shake my head. I’m not trying to be mysterious. I just don’t want to lie. Neither do I want to tell the truth. It’s private. It’s between Abbie and me. Or rather, it would be, if she’d ever bloody speak to me again.
‘Fair enough,’ Sean says and resumes typing. He’ll ask again in about an hour.
I consider going out for a cigarette, even though I’ve already been five times today. I go into the courtyard for cigarettes a bit more regularly than I should, in the hope I’ll catch her, but Abbie never comes down. I never see her smoke any more, or beg cigarettes off anyone. She doesn’t come down at all. Or if she does, she times it when I’m out for lunch or in a meeting, which means she must be looking, assessing the opportune time to leave. Maybe I’m overthinking it. Maybe she doesn’t actually give a shitwhereI am. I look at the Beanie Baby that I put on my desk and adjust its legs, so it’s sitting back up again. The little bugger keeps falling over.
I look back across the courtyard, but she’s typing away. If I’d seen her once outside her building, I’d have been there like a shot. I meander down aimlessly now, stand outside my office on my own, with my hand in my pocket and a cigarette between my lips, and look up at her window every now and again, like some sort of Z-list Romeo, hoping I’ll catch Abbie looking down at me. But she never does. Ever. She’s got balls of steel.
In the pub, one lunchtime with Sean, we’re standing at the bar on our second pint. We shouldn’t have ordered asecond one, for various reasons. We’re putting together a presentation document in about twenty minutes, moaning relentlessly about it and, by the time we got served, we only have five minutes to neck it down. My senses are all off now. I’m not merry, though. The pint’s having the opposite effect.
‘Do you see that girl from the train much these days?’ Sean asks conversationally. ‘The one I met in here last month.’
I shake my head, sigh and put my pint on the bar. ‘Not really. Not much.’
‘Is she really just a friend?’
‘Yep.’ The answer is instinctive. I don’t even need to think about it. ‘But I think that friendship ran its course.’
‘Let me guess: you tried to bang her and she turned you down?’ That’s not a bad guess. He’s halfway there.
