accidentally really hurting someone. And ending up in prison,” said Cormac.
“We’re in prison now,” said Tim.
“I realize that,” said Cormac.
BOROUGH MARKET WAS absolutely heaving, every stall was rammed. And Lissa didn’t know what he looked like. She glanced around. What kind of thing would Cormac like? She didn’t even know, she realized. She knew so little about him.
Finally, right at the back, she spied an empty table at a little hole-in-the-wall tapas bar. That looked absolutely perfect. She slipped into the bar, smiling at the man serving, who showed her to the table with a wave of his hand.
“For one?”
“Two,” said Lissa, beaming nervously. “I’m waiting on someone.”
The man smiled. “Lovely. Can I bring you a negroni?”
Lissa looked around, still feeling excited and nervous and so pleased with the fact that she’d managed to do the right thing. It wouldn’t bring Kai back, but she’d been able to look Mrs. Mitchell in the eye as she’d left.
“Yes, please!” she said. Then she took a picture of the bar sign and texted it to Cormac.
She also sent Anita a Skype message to say she had done it and to say thank you: the woman had been right all along. Anita responded by sending her a picture of an ice-cream cone and Lissa smiled to herself.
SHE FINISHED HER drink and immediately declined another, the idea of being drunk when Cormac arrived too hideous to contemplate. She considered a coffee, then worried her breath would smell and settled for a fizzy water. The waiter looked a tiny bit concerned. A cloud passed across the sun.
She thought whenever Ezra hadn’t been in the mood to see her, he’d just not answer any of her messages or texts. It happened to Kim-Ange all the time, when she met guys and then they got cold feet. Ghosting was awful.
But that wasn’t going to happen here. Not with Cormac. He’d asked her to lunch, after all. They’d arranged to meet.
Although they hadn’t picked anywhere specific, had they? They hadn’t actually said, “This restaurant in this place.” Just Borough Market. It was fairly nonspecific after all when you thought about it.
She shook herself. Come on. She was catastrophizing, overthinking, everything a therapist would say was unhelpful. She’d gotten through one thing today. She was going to manage. She was.
She tried not to drink all her water too quickly. Her battery was running a little low. Still no message.
Chapter 71
“So you came to meet some bird,” said Tim scornfully. “That you’ve never even met.”
They had been in the cell together for some time and were trading stories.
“Yeah,” said Cormac.
“What if she’s, like, a fuckbeast,” said Nobbo.
“I’m sure she’s not a fuckbeast,” said Cormac carefully.
“Well, did she send you pictures? Of her tits and that?”
“No, of course not! Women don’t do that.”
“Fuckbeasts don’t.”
“Could you stop using that term? It’s really unpleasant.”
Tim sniffed a bunch of phlegm up his nose and, with one finger closing a nostril, hocked it into the seatless metal toilet at the side of the room. Cormac didn’t necessarily feel this was an improvement. He paced up and down, feeling worse and worse—she must be there; or had she left by now? Stormed off, furious with him? Maybe she’d never speak to him again. Maybe that was his chance and he’d muffed it. After all, there was only another couple of weeks to go . . .
And he’d be back home, which was . . . well, it was fine of course.
But the cottage could feel a little empty on those long, dark evenings that came in the wintertime.
“MacPherson?” came the guard at the door, unlocking it. “You can make your phone call now.”
“Are you charging me?”
“We’re going to have a word, so hold your horses.”
“He was just pulling off Big Al!” shouted Tim, and Nobbo agreed vociferously, while laughing like an eighteen-year-old at the same time.
Cormac sighed as he followed the officer down the hallway. Who on earth was he going to call?
Chapter 72
Kim-Ange shook her phone crossly. “Oh, for goodness’ sake.”
There was a blubbering noise.
“Stop crying,” she said, as Lissa tried and failed to stop crying down the telephone. “Come home immediately. You know I didn’t have him pegged as a loser. Mind you, he treated Yazzie pretty shabbily. And I never saw his ‘friend’ again.”
“I mean . . . I keep thinking maybe he’s here, but nearly everyone’s gone and all the stalls are closed up and the vans have driven off, and I’ve drunk a liter of mineral water . . .”