Page 70 of Carry Me Home

‘That’s an atrocity,’ I tell her. ‘That’s a crime against the entire nation of France.’

‘Your accent is no better, Tom Darcy. Do not even try.’

‘I wasn’t going to try. I have dignity.’

‘You ’ave no dignity. You are drinking somezing wiz an umbrella in it.’

‘So are you.’

‘Yes, but I am French now, so it is sophisticated.’

Cara is watching us. I catch her watching – the back-and-forth, the ease, the way Nina’s whole face opens when she’s enjoying herself. When our eyes meet, Cara’s expression is layered: fond and sad and clear-eyed. The expression of a woman who has just watched the evidence confirm the hypothesis.

She looks away first. Picks up her drink. Joins in.

That generosity costs her. I know it costs her. And I take it anyway, the way I take everything – Nina’s friendship, Cara’s patience, the village’s silence about the thing everyone can see and no one will say.

‘Karaoke!’ Tilly’s voice cuts through the noise. ‘Who’s first?’

She’s already looking at us. She has been looking at us since we walked in – Tilly, who forgets nothing, who has been running the social architecture of this village with an iron fist, and who has clearly been planning this for longer than I care to think on.

‘Tom and Nina,’ she says. Pleasantly. Inexorably. With a damn evil smile. ‘Come on. Like you used to.’

The table goes still.

Across the table, Nina’s eyes find mine.

‘That was years ago,’ she says.

‘Three years,’ Tilly agrees, with the precision of a woman who keeps count. ‘Long enough.’ She holds out a hand to Nina, palm up, the universal gesture of a woman who has already decided. ‘Song’s already chosen. Don’t make me ask again.’

‘Tilly—’

‘Nina. You know I’ll wait.’

She will. She’d wait all night. We both know it. Nina looks at me – are you going to save me from this? – and the answer is no, because Tilly is right and some things have been on hold for three years and maybe it’s time.

‘Fine,’ Nina says. ‘But I’m blaming you.’

‘You always blame me,’ I say. ‘It’s our dynamic.’

The opening bars of ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’ fill the pub and Nina groans, and it’s been three years since we’ve done this, three years since I stood next to her at this microphone, and my body remembers it before my head catches up. The first verse is mine. I take a breath and do it – badly, undoubtedly, but the crowd is cheering and Nina is grinning beside me and for a few bars it’s just noise and warmth and the simple relief of not thinking.

Then she comes in on her part. Her voice is terrible – genuinely, objectively terrible; she sings the way she parks, with confidence and no accuracy – but she’s selling it completely, one hand on her heart, the other gesturing at me with the kind of dramatic commitment that suggests she’s forgotten there are other people in the room.

She points at me for the chorus. I point back. The whole pub is singing along, Bill loudest, and Nina is laughing so hard she can barely find the words, and my hand is on her shoulder because the choreography demanded it and her shoulder is warm and shaking with laughter and I am standing in front of everyone I know singing a song about not breaking someone’s heart and the irony is so precise it could be surgical.

The song ends. The crowd erupts. Nina takes an exaggerated bow and then her arms are around me – not the quiz night hug, not the brief celebration. Something more. She holds on. Her face is pressed against my shoulder and she’s laughing and I can feel her ribs and her breath and the particular vibration of her joy against my chest, and my arms come up around her and I hold her the way I always hold her – carefully, precisely, exactly the right amount – except this time I close my eyes, just for a second, just briefly, and I let myself feel it without managing it.

One second. That’s all.

She pulls back. Not far. Her face is flushed and happy, inches from mine, and she’s still half-laughing, and her hands are on my shoulders – five points of pressure, the same five from quiz night – and the pub is loud and bright and I can feel every one of her fingers through my shirt.

‘That was awful,’ she says. ‘We’re never doing that again.’

‘We say that every year.’

‘This time I mean it.’