answer is so typically Will that I can’t help but smile. He’s a good person. Nothing he’s said or done in the last three months has given me reason to think otherwise, but I don’t trust my instincts. You can spend years of your life with someone and still not know them. So how can I trust someone I barely know?
“Hello?” He waves a hand in front of my face. “Anyone there?”
“Sorry?”
“I just asked why you asked that? About the lie?”
“No reason, just curious.”
He stares at me for several seconds then sighs softly and reaches for my plate. “I’ll get dessert. And if you don’t eat my world famous raspberry cheesecake, I’m taking you to a doctor to get your tastebuds checked.”
“Will,” I say as he disappears into the kitchen.
“Yes?” He pokes his head out the door, my plate still in his hand.
“Thank you.”
He looks confused. “But you didn’t like it.”
“I wasn’t talking about the fish.”
“What for, then?”
I want to thank him for not pushing me to talk about my past and for just accepting me at face value, but the words tie themselves in knots on my tongue.
“For this.” I wave a hand towards the bottle of wine and the flickering candles on the table. “It’s just what I needed.”
He pauses, as though trying to work out if I’m being sarcastic or not, then grins broadly. “If flattering me is your subtle ruse to try and get out of tasting my cheesecake, I’m not falling for it. You know that, don’t you?”
Five Years Earlier
“So did you sleep with the bouncer, then?”
Daisy smirks from behind her mug of tea. “Someone had to distract him from throwing Al out.”
Leanne looks up from her mobile. “That’s a yes, then.”
It’s been a week since we manhandled Al out of the nightclub, and the three of us are gathered in Leanne’s tiny studio flat in Plaistow, East London, to talk about how best to help her. Daisy and Leanne are sitting cross-legged on her single bed, the crocheted bed cover pooling on the threadbare beige carpet, while I’m perched on the only chair in the room, a hard-backed pine affair by the window. There’s a basic kitchen on the other side of the room – sink, microwave, fridge and a two-ring portable electric hob – and a clothes rail along the wall opposite the bed, and a small chest of drawers with a 14-inch flat-screen TV on the top. Leanne’s tried to cheer up the room with a print of a sunny poppy-filled field, a small porcelain Buddha, a plaque that says, “Only Truth Will Set You Free” on the windowsill, and a spider plant next to the cooker, but it’s still undeniably bleak. In the two years that Leanne’s lived here, it’s only the second time she’s invited me round. Correction: Daisy invited me round. Leanne texted her to suggest they get together to talk about how best to help Al; Daisy suggested I come, too.
“Right.” Leanne sits up a little straighter and presses her glasses into her nose. She’s been unusually chirpy ever since we turned up, which is slightly weird considering she told Daisy on the phone that Al was sacked from her job three days ago and she was worried she might be a suicide risk. “I’ve been thinking about how best to help Al and I’ve come up with an idea.”
Daisy puts her mug down on the chest of drawers. “Go on.”
“There are three main issues here.” Leanne pauses, relishing the fact that she’s got a rapt audience, then holds up her index finger. “One: Al is physically stalking Simone and Gem. She sat outside Gem’s house all night last night – literally on the front doorstep – waiting for Gem to come out. Simone called the police.”
“Shit.”
Leanne raises her eyebrows. “I know. Apparently they just had a ‘friendly word’ and told her to move on, but if she does it again … Anyway.” She raises a second finger. “Two: Al is stalking Simone on the internet. Now she’s lost her job, she’s spending every bloody second on her laptop. I was round there yesterday and when she went to the loo, I took a quick look at the screen. She was on some kind of forum about hacking Hotmail accounts. And three,” she adds before I can interrupt again, “well, it kind of ties in with one and two. She’s spending too much time on her own. We need to keep an eye on her, but none of us can do that twenty-four seven, unless …” She pauses dramatically. “… we take her on holiday.”
“Yes!” Daisy’s silver bracelets rattle as she punches the air. “Let’s go to Ibiza. I love it there. I know a guy who used to work for Manumission who could get us free tickets.”
“Did you shag him?”
She gives me the middle finger.
“That’s a yes, then,” I say, and she laughs.
“So? Ibiza, then? Ian will give me the time off, and I’ve got a month until my next runner job. Whoop, whoop! Ibiza, here we come.” The bed squeaks in protest as Daisy bounces up and down.
“How long for?” I ask. “I’ve got three weeks’ holiday left but I was hoping to save one of those weeks for Christmas.”
“Quit. Honestly, Emma. It’ll be the best decision you ever make. Go to Ibiza and get another job when you come back. You can afford it. You’ve got three months’ emergency money saved up, you said as much last week.”
“Actually …” Leanne tentatively raises a hand but Daisy ignores her.
“Go on, Emma, it’s for Al. She’d love a couple of weeks in Ibiza. She went last year, didn’t she?”
“Didn’t she go with Simone?”
“How’s that a problem? She won’t be there this time. Will she?”
“I don’t know, but she’ll have lots of memories of going there with Simone, and—”
“Emma!” Leanne snaps. “Can I get a word in, please?”
“Why are you having a go at me? I wasn’t the only one talking.”
“As I was saying” – she peers over her specs at Daisy – “I think we should go on holiday, but we should go to a place where, a) she’s a long way from Simone, and b) she hasn’t got access to the internet, and c) she get can her head together.”
“Like where?”
“Nepal,” Leanne says.
“Where?”
“Nepal! It’s in Asia, near Tibet.”
Daisy wrinkles her nose. “Why would we want to go there?”
“There’s an amazing retreat in the mountains called Ekanta Yatra. My yoga teacher told me about it. Look!” She flashes her mobile at Daisy then taps the screen. “Amazing fresh, home-cooked food, yoga, a river you can swim in, a waterfall, massages, facials. We could spend a day in Kathmandu then do two weeks at the retreat, then we could fly to a place called Chitwan and go on a jungle safari. It would be the adventure of a lifetime.”
Leanne’s face is aglow. I’ve never seen her look so energised; she normally looks so wan and tired. She’s desperately thin, and Daisy and I have speculated several times about whether or not she might have an eating disorder.
“Could I see that?” I reach out a hand for her mobile. She presses it into my palm without saying a word.
I scroll through the website. It would seem