Kim stepped out of my loose hold and turned to face me. “In good time, Jas. Speaking of which, it’s getting kinda late. What time does the estate agent’s place shut?”
Shit.Truth be told I’d forgotten about the real reason for traipsing all the way to London. I glanced at my watch. It was long gone seven, and even with the estate agent’s Thursday late-opening hours, getting there before they closed looked like a distant dream.
Damn it.Always a fucking shambles.“I gotta go.”
I made for the door. Kim moved like a snake and blocked my path. “We’vegotta go, Jas. Friends, remember?”
Well, okay then. There wasn’t time to debate his generous interpretation of being my friend. We dashed through Hoxton, hoofing the sack of wood, and the photos, between us, to the estate agents and made it with seconds to spare. Perhaps because the process was rushed, I didn’t feel much as I signed the flat away and handed over the keys.
Or perhaps it was Kim’s steady presence at my side. His silence was like a blanket wrapped around my shoulders, and later, as we tubed it back to Paddington, I found myself staring at him and trying to imagine the chaos his life must’ve been when he’d been drinking.
“You thinking about us fucking on your bedroom floor?”
“What? Oh, um . . .” Heat flooded my cheeks, as instant as my attraction to him had been when we met. “No, actually, I was thinking about you in a totally different context.”
“How so?”
I shrugged. “I’m trying to picture you as a raging alcoholic.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t.”
“Suits me. Hopefully, you never will.”
“Think you’ll make it this time?”
It was Kim’s turn to shrug. “I try not to think about it at all. Just take each day as it comes.”
“Are you tempted a lot?”
“Not on days like this, when I’m distracted by shit that matters. It’s harder when I’m bored . . . and alone, which is probably why Lena finds it so hard to stay away.”
I could imagine other reasons why Red would find it difficult to stay away from Kim, but I kept those to myself. If Kim didn’t know how much I wanted him by now, then we’d been screwing each other all wrong. “I like being alone. Need it sometimes—the peace and quiet, the solitude. I can’t think straight when I spend too much time with other people.”
“Ah, so that’s why you never thought it was weird that your ex was away so much? Because it suited you not to?”
“I guess so.”
The train rumbled into Paddington and jolted to a stop, throwing us against each other. The contact was electric, and my breath caught in my chest, but the doors opened before I could cross the invisible line we’d sketched out since we’d left my Hoxton flat behind.
We got off the train and rode the escalators up into the overground station, Kim still guarding the photos and his precious wood. In the main ticket hall, we found the big screens in the main ticket hall were awash with red, signalling that many trains heading southwest had been cancelled.Brilliant.I scanned the screens over and over, searching for a way home, more eager to escape London than I’d ever been, but the situation—whatever it was—seemed to get worse by the second.
Kim touched my arm. “There’s a sleeper heading out from platform nine. We’ll have to leg it, though. It leaves in two minutes.”
How he’d seen that in the mess of red on the screens, I had no idea, but I took his word for it and set off at a run, following the bustle of people who’d obviously had the same idea. The sleeper trains took all night to reach Truro, but a seven-hour train ride was better than no train at all.
At least, I thought so, until I remembered too late that sleeper trains were mainly made up of two-man cabins. And as luck would have it—or not—the only spaces left on the train was a single seat next to the communal toilet, or a cabin with the world’s smallest double cot.
“Take the cabin,” the Network Rail worker said. “Your tickets aren’t usually valid for the Night Riviera, so make the most of it. Got phone chargers and everything.”
Like I gave a fuck about charging my phone, which was just as well as it turned out the phone “charger” was a two-pin AC plug socket.
Kim dropped his bag by the tiny bed. “You can have it, if you like. I can sit in the seat.”
As if. I stuck my head out of the cabin door. “Neither of us can sit in the seat. It’s taken.”
“Oh.”