Our Stop - Laura Jane Williams Page 0,85

he was looking and took in the atmosphere: he didn’t mind that he wasn’t VIP, over in the roped-off area. He knew those tickets were almost double what he’d paid. There was room for everybody, and there was a camaraderie in the air.

For a moment he watched a couple very obviously on a date smooth out their blanket and take off their shoes. The guy looked weirdly familiar to Daniel. He was tall, and very smiley, with bright red hair. Daniel watched as the man presented his date with a giant pair of woolly socks, and the girl tipped her head back, laughing. The man whispered something in her ear, putting his arm around her shoulder to do so, and the action took Daniel right back to the morning after he was supposed to have met with Nadia, when she was on the train with her boyfriend. The guy had the same ease with his body, the same comfortableness with intimacy and physical touch. And then the penny dropped: it was him! That was the boyfriend! The image of him listing off their weekend plans into Nadia’s neck as he sat with a hand on her leg was seared in Daniel’s mind. He was sure this was the same guy. Totally positive. The two of them arranged their snacks and drinks to the left and right of themselves and then snuggled down underneath a second blanket, wearing their socks, chatting together as if there was nobody else around.

‘Couple of lovebirds over there, huh?’ said Sabrina.

Daniel came to. ‘Huh? Oh. Yeah. Actually, I think I know him.’

‘Are you going to go say hello?’ Sabrina asked.

Daniel shook his head. ‘No. No, I don’t know him that well,’ he said. Daniel didn’t actually know him at all. But. If he was right – and he was pretty convinced he was – if that was Nadia’s boyfriend, then he certainly wasn’t with Nadia. So, had they broken up? Daniel wasn’t sure if that mattered. The only thing he had promised himself – and Romeo – was that if he saw her, he’d speak to her. But he hadn’t seen her. She hadn’t been on his train, or on the platform, or bustling through the crowds of other commuters. It was like she’d vanished. He hadn’t thought about her for a few weeks, actually. He had even stopped reading the paper, because all he did was flick straight to the Missed Connections section, half hoping she’d written to him. She never had, of course, because why would she? His brain started to spiral, the way it had before: had it even been her writing back? What had he been thinking with all that nonsense? It was mortifying. He must have just been a bit brain-addled after his dad, clinging on to the weirdest things.

‘Earth to Daniel?’ Sam said. ‘Hello?’

Daniel turned and looked at him.

‘Huh?’

‘Those snacks, dude. It’s two popcorns, four pulled pork burgers and some beers.’

‘And something sweet too!’ added Rashida. ‘If they’ve got Revels or Buttons or something.’

Jeremy stood up from where he’d been nestled into a spot on their picnic blanket. ‘I’ll come with you, mate. You can’t carry all that.’

As they walked to the concession stands, Daniel threw a glance back over his shoulder. I’m sure that’s him, he thought.

39

Nadia

Nadia wandered arm-in-arm with Naomi, her old colleague from a job years ago who had since left the world of STEM to become a professional Instagrammer with almost three hundred thousand followers. She was the one in the picture-perfect relationship with Callum, who was now officially her ‘Instagram Husband’, snapping her for uploads that she could command up to eight thousand pounds for. Nadia reflected on her hundred and thirty-three followers on her own account and wondered what she could charge. About thirty pence, maybe? She couldn’t be too envious, though – it was Naomi’s followers that meant she got offered free tickets to an event like tonight, something Nadia would have paid for anyway, but it was so much sweeter to be comp’d as a VIP.

All around them, people dressed as Montagues and Capulets meandered around, the actors placed amongst them reciting lines and having rap battles and generally adding to the atmosphere. It was like an immersive theatre event, with anything able to happen next. Nadia was thrilled to be there. She’d kept a low profile since breaking up with Eddie, heading to work and going to her classes at the gym and reading a lot at home on the sofa.