Page 28 of Our Stop

‘I agree,’ said Nadia, as the waitress delivered the cheesecake.

‘Thank you, darling,’ Emma said to her.

Nadia liked this. Sitting with her friends and talking and being safe and not judged and everyone trying to understand themselves a little better. This was her happy place. She just wished she didn’t only ever remember to take stock of it after she’d been sad.You don’t need a romance to have a romantic life, she thought, watching her two friends smile and laugh together. She felt so lucky to have them.

15

Nadia

Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire was a green, leafy space populated with a lush restaurant and spa area in converted barns. Emma flashed her black membership card at the gates – a membership that was a few thousand pounds a year but guaranteed a table next to a handful of minor celebrities and bankers-turned-creative-investors who thought they were somehow bohemian because they’d put the cash injection into an actress’s website, or a musician’s charity event.

Nadia and Emma were in cabin thirty-four, and after unloading the car they took their ‘house bikes’ down the smooth tarmac lanes, enjoying the quiet as they zoomed up and down, simply to zoom up and down. Nadia knew the room should have been at least five hundred pounds a night (though Emma insisted she’d got a deal of some sort and so Nadia only owed her two hundred for the weekend, which seemed suspicious to Nadia, like Emma was being nonchalant about the difference because she earned more), so it was ironic that from the outside each cabin had been modelled to look like a tin hut on a Siberian roadside. Still. The sheets were thick cotton and there was a real fire and the balcony hovered over a small river, making it easy to whittle away a solid thirty minutes or more just staring at water. And it was peaceful. Really, really peaceful.

‘Babe, how do you feel about a facial?’ Emma said, when they sat outside with steaming cups of Earl Grey. ‘You know how your skin gets when you’ve been crying.’

It was true – Nadia got even more acne along her jaw when she was stressed or upset and since giving up milk she’d been doing so well. Her skin had been clear for two weeks now, and she’d be damned if Awful Ben would be the reason it didn’t stay that way. To anyone listening, what Emma said could’ve sounded catty, like she was some kind of frenemy, but Nadia knew she meant well. She supposed Emma couldn’t control her running into Awful Ben, but she could control sixty minutes of pure indulgence by a woman who knew how to extract blackheads.

‘Do I have to talk to anyone?’

‘No. Well. Just the facialist. To tell her you’re sad and you want a boost.’

‘Okay. Maybe a pedicure too. I feel more in control of my life when my toes are nice.’

‘Done and done. I just have to make a phone call to the office, and then I’ll let the concierge know.’

Emma opened the sliding glass doors to retrieve her phone from charging inside, and Nadia sat with her feet curled up behind her. Looking out over the stream, Nadia idly wondered what kind of man would make a gesture like writing in to a newspaper. When Emma had picked her up that morning she’d tossed the paper across to her and said, ‘He’s written to you again,’ in a sing-song voice, and as they’d driven out of the city and into the countryside Nadia had replayed his new advert to her again and again in her mind.You’re funny. Do you get told that a lot? Funny and cute. How lucky am I?!

She was enjoying the slow burn of it. Things had gone way too fast with Awful Ben – she knew now that it was called ‘Love Bombing’. Men like Ben seduced hard and fast and quickly, so that the love was disorientating and you lost yourself in it. Once upon a time Nadia had thought that was how love was supposed to be, but she’d learnt the hard way that what was so much better was taking steps slowly, deliberately. Checking in with each other along the way. That’s what Train Guy felt like to her: like a chance to grow something beautiful, over time. There was a reassurance to it. And it was the bit about luck that made her smile.How lucky am I?!Train Guy had said. She felt lucky too. Lucky to still believe she had a chance at love. Even if Train Guy came to nothing, writing back and forth with him was fun. She resolved not to think about Awful Ben anymore. He was the past. She could decide her own future.

Nadia snapped out of her reverie to a low murmured voice around the back of the cabin.

‘Emma?’ she said, craning her neck around the side of their place to see her stood with her back to her. Emma spun around, a funny look on her face.

‘Coming!’ she said, whispering something into her mobile.

She disappeared from sight and Nadia heard the front door open, before her friend appeared by the screen door to the balcony.

‘Facials in twenty minutes!’ Emma said, opening the door. ‘And I was thinking, how do you feel about the pub down the road for dinner? The Ox and Cart?’

She seemed a little wired to Nadia, but Nadia didn’t say anything. Instead, she settled on, ‘Facials: excellent. Pub? Less keen on going out if I’ll have no make-up on. Shall we get room service instead?’

‘Great,’ said Emma, her brightness almost a bit forced.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Me? Yes. Of course. Are you?’

Nadia stared at her friend. Something wasn’t right.

‘Yeah, I’m feeling better,’ she said.

16

Daniel

‘Well, what about the time you stole that bouncer’s waistcoat, and he chased you all the way down to Walkabout and then broke your nose?’ Jonny laughed, as Dean delivered another round of beers to the table.

‘Oh my god – he should have gone to jail for that!’ Daniel was hysterical at the memory. They’d been ribbing Jeremy for a good ten minutes about how out of control he was in third year. Daniel looked around the table in the front room of The Ox and Cart, where his mismatched collection of friends sat. There was the love monster Jeremy, now happily settled down with Sabrina and father to two kids – his second had just been born. Jonny lived with his wife Tilly, not far from Terrence, whose Cotswold estate they were all staying at as his pregnant wife was away for the weekend. Terrence had become a professional poker player at eighteen and used the money to put himself through an undergraduate degree and then an MBA, turning ten thousand pounds into three million by the time he was twenty-eight and adopting twins a few years ago, almost out of a need to keep occupied. And now he’d be a dad to a third! Sam was there, and Taz, Dean too; and although Daniel wished all the uni lads were there, being together with this group was enough. He was having a brilliant time.

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