Page 62 of Carry Me Home

I look at the x. It doesn’t mean anything. Nina puts x’s on everything – texts to Brynn, texts to Isla, texts to Dot about fuchsia-watering schedules. It’s punctuation, not declaration. I know this. I’ve always known this.

From the bathroom I can hear the shower running, where Cara is freshening up. Cara who came here knowing what she was walking into. Who looked me in the eye and said I believe you while we both knew she didn’t.

From the window, the café. Nina’s lights going off one by one. The last shutter closing. The fairy lights still glowing through the glass, warm and persistent, the way they glow every night, left on because she forgets, not because she’s leaving them on for anyone.

Two women. One in the next room. One across the harbour. Both of them braver than I am.

I put the phone down. I stand at the window until the café goes dark.

The shower stops. Cara’s voice floats through the door: ‘Tom? Are there any other good pubs? I’m starving and I refuse to be sad about anything tonight.’

‘Well, there’s The Ship,’ I say.

‘We’ve been there already today.’ The bathroom door opens, and Cara pokes her head through the gap. ‘Seriously, only one pub in this village?’

It’s stupid, but I bristle. ‘Yep.’

She watches me, gaze assessing, reading. Then she smiles, dazzling, and perhaps a little evil too ‘This explains so much of your constant pub crawls the first year at uni.’

‘Now you get it.’

‘I’ll be ready in two.’

I step away from the window. I pick up my keys. I take Cara to dinner at The Ship, and she’s funny and sharp and she tells a story about a disastrous clinical placement that makes me laugh so hard I almost forget, for an hour, for two, that the café lights are probably still on across the harbour. At some point she reaches across the table and covers my hand briefly and holds it a second before pulling back and carrying on talking, as if it were nothing, as if her being here is easy and natural and entirely uncomplicated.

Almost.

But when we walk back along the harbour front afterward, Cara’s arm linked through mine, her shoulder warm against my shoulder in the night air, I glance across the water and the lights are there. Still glowing. Still persistent. Still left on for nobody.

Cara follows my gaze.

She doesn’t say anything.

She doesn’t have to.

Chapter Thirteen

NINA

Dot tells me about Cara before I’ve finished my first coffee.

‘Tom’s got a visitor,’ she announces, appearing at the café counter at quarter past eight with a bag of change for the till and the expression of a woman who has been waiting all night to deliver this news. ‘A woman. Blonde hair. Very pretty. Arrived yesterday. They were at The Ship together looking very cosy.’

‘I know. He texted me.’

‘Did he.’ Dot’s eyes narrow. ‘What did he say?’

‘That his friend from vet school had arrived and she wanted to meet me.’

‘Friend.’ Dot repeats the word the way Mum repeated it at the fete. The way everyone seems to repeat it lately, like they’re holding it up to the light and finding it insufficient. ‘Is that what we’re calling it?’

‘That’s what Tom’s calling it.’

‘Hmm.’ Dot sets the bag of change on the counter with more force than necessary. ‘Well. She’s staying at his flat. In the spare room, apparently, though according to Tilly⁠—’

‘Dot.’

‘I’m just relaying information. It’s a public service.’ She straightens. ‘Her name’s Cara. She’s a vet too. They were at university together. Tilly says they dated.’