the print on the framed poster across from the bed. the face in the corner: animal portraits, national portrait gallery, london, 1998. There was a painting of a lady, and in the foreground, a black cat dipping a paw into a goldfish bowl. He thought of Sanders, the cat that was always in his apartment. Thinking of Sanders made him think of everything he’d left behind, but he shut down those thoughts. Instead, he closed his eyes, trying to will himself to sleep. Despite the shower, he could still smell Martha, the girl from the pub, all over him. He thought of her upstairs, now, wondering if she was thinking of him. Of course she was. He could go upstairs right now and fuck her if he wanted to. The thought filled him with sadness, more than anything. He pictured her drunken, excited expression as she opened the door, the way she’d lift her hips to let him take off her tiny underpants, the awful expectant look in her eyes. Then he imagined the look of fear in those eyes.
He turned the thought off as he shifted over onto his stomach. He pressed his face into the unfamiliar pillow that smelled of floral dryer sheets. He hadn’t had a thought like that for a while. Maybe it was being in London. Maybe coming here had been a big mistake. He’d thought fifteen years had been enough time, but clearly it wasn’t. She’d been on his mind all day. So he allowed himself to think of her, to think of Claire Brennan, the girl who changed everything.
Chapter 13
The Hutchinson School of Business and Economics, where Corbin Dell studied during the second semester of his junior year, was situated in an ugly block of Georgian flats just south of the Mornington Crescent tube station. The school also owned and operated the Three Lambs pub, a wood-paneled drinking hole in the student union. It was there that Corbin met Claire Brennan, who was serving that night at the bar.
“What’s good here?” he’d shouted above the overloud Coldplay song coming from the speakers.
She pushed a strand of her raven-black hair behind an ear and leaned across the bar. “Sorry. What’ll you have?”
Corbin almost asked her again what was good but her cold blue eyes stopped him. He glanced across the beer pumps, selecting one at random.
“Pint or half?” she asked. Her accent was thick and lilting.
“Half,” Corbin said, not knowing what it even meant.
After being served, Corbin sipped at his small glass of malty-tasting liquid. It was his second night in London. He’d gone to an orientation earlier that day with other visiting American students. Most of the orientation had been centered on how to find a flat in the city, and afterward, the other American students, gripping their list of real estate agents, had anxiously formed small groups to hunt for lodging. Corbin already had a place to stay, however, so he walked out of the orientation not having met anyone. His father had set him up in the spare room of a friend’s apartment. It was a tiny flat on the third floor of a narrow brick building on a residential street south of the river. The spare bedroom was closer in size to a closet, and judging by the sparse furnishings in the rest of the flat—a stereo system, a loaded bar, a bed with satin sheets in the master bedroom—it was clear that the flat was probably nothing more than a sex hideaway for his father’s business colleague. “He’s never there,” his dad had said. “You’ll have your own bachelor pad in London.”
Corbin hated the place already, and had gone to the Three Lambs in hopes of meeting other students. After getting his drink he leaned against the bar and surveyed the room, half populated with students, most in groups of three or four. He noticed, with a stab of shame, that the only students with small glasses of beer were female students, and that all the men had full pint glasses. He felt sudden, deep hatred for the bartender for even asking him what size glass he wanted. It should have been obvious he’d wanted a full pint glass.
He turned his back to the room and drank the warm beer down in two gulps. The bartender was now serving three male students, all of whom were getting pint glasses of Foster’s. Corbin decided to get one of those as well. He waited patiently for her to serve the other