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Erika went on a long, punishing walk. When she’d exhausted herself, she trudged back to the carriage house and took a long bath. She soaked in the hot water until she was so heartily sick of herself and her own endlessly cycling thoughts that she thought she might scream.
She wrapped herself in a bath towel, then padded back to the bedroom. She picked up her phone, scowled at it for a while, and admitted that what she really wanted was for Dorian to call her again. Especially now that they were in the same country again.
I’ll see you this weekend, he’d said, and she shivered now, because she would see him again.
But that meant she would be seeing other people, too. Maybe it was time to stop recovering from Berlin and start handling her actual life. The one that went on no matter how many hard truths Dorian had marked into her skin that weekend.
Erika pulled up Jenny’s number.
So, she texted,what do you think I should wear to your ENGAGEMENT PARTY to MY BROTHER?
Her phone rang almost immediately.
“Oh my God, Erika,” Jenny cried when Erika picked up. “I thought you were blanking me.”
“I wasn’tnotblanking you.”
“Where are you? Are you still in Germany?”
“No,” Erika said, her body flushed from her bath. She looked down at herself, caught by that same awareness that had haunted her since she’d left Berlin. That this wasn’therbody any longer. That he’d made it his. And why was that the only thing that seemed to soothe her? “I’m in Devon with Chriszette and her latest fling. Lord Something or Other. I only stayed in Berlin for that one weekend.”
The way she often had, over these last six months. Jenny would think nothing of it. Another weekend clubbing, that was all. And Erika would let her think it, because she couldn’t articulate what had happened between her and Dorian to herself. There was no way she could explain it to anyone else.
And maybe that was why, when the silence stretched out between them, she let it. Because she understood it.
“It would be better to see you in person—and before the party,” Jenny said after a moment. “Can you come up to London?”
Erika looked around at the carriage house that had become a prison of all the emotions she’d told Dorian she wasn’t experiencing. She thought about the fact she’d be seeing Dorian himself this weekend, and all the anticipation and anxiety, need and longing that kicked up. She thought about the promise she’d made him and what that would mean—could she really apologize to her brother?
Her brother, whom Jenny was marrying, for reasons unclear.
“As a matter of fact,” Erika said, “I would love to come to London. I could use a break.”
She did not addfrom me.
Because that would require explanations she didn’t want to give, not even to her oldest friend.
But if she could, she thought the next morning as she caught the train from Cranbrook to London Waterloo Station, she would have left herself behind.
CHAPTER TEN
THEYMETINthe breathtakingly posh bar of an extraordinarily luxurious and exclusive hotel where they’d liked to sneak away to during their Oxford years and imagine what their lives would be like when they graduated.
Erika could almost squint and see all those dreams dancing there in the dimly lit, aristocratically plush surroundings. It made it impossible not to engage in a game or two of what-if.
What if she’d lived these last years differently? Where would she be now? What would have happened if she’d stayed at Oxford and done as Jenny had—because Lady Genevieve Charlotte Elizabeth Markham, Jenny to her friends, was nothing if not dutiful.
In the flattering light of the cozy, quiet bar, Jenny looked as if she could still be the teenager she’d been when they’d met as first years. She sat across from Erika looking as disarmingly approachable as ever, which had always been her secret weapon. She radiated warmth even when she wasn’t feeling the slightest hint of it herself. Erika had been drawn to it. Who wouldn’t be?
Maybe Conrad could use a little warmth, too, came that dark voice inside.
She told her inner Dorian to go fuck himself.
And then she marinated in memories and more what-ifs while Jenny set about ordering them wine.
Dutiful, well-behaved Jenny had taken the requisite job in an appropriate charity after she’d graduated with her first in classics. Like many girls of her station, saddled with a father consumed with notions of bloodlines and the consolidation of hereditary lands, her charity work had only ever been meant to be a stopgap. A pretty little notation on her résumé. One that she could toss aside the moment she assumed her true duties as a wife of a worthy, wealthy gentleman. Preferably one of her father’s choosing.
“You haven’t posted a single thing on any social media site in weeks,” Jenny said when they were both properly fortified with glasses of wine and a tray of spiced nuts. “I was starting to think the announcement might have killed you.”
