Chapter 35

CHAPTER 35

Okay. First things first.There's no way she's spending her Saturday night hanging out by a big fire with two strangers she kind of liked in a bar while the possible love of her life, briefly single and even more briefly in the same city as her, is right there.

And there's no way she's going to spend two hours on Tuesday driving around to houses she doesn't want to buy with a man she's never even met, let alone kissed.

She messages Elena. Mountains are fine but I don't know why they need so many of them

She messages Bohai. You ever been to Denver?

She messages Toby, who is watering her plants while she's away. Well, plant—the succulent is still alive but doesn't need much attention. How's everything going? Are the plants dead?

They're good , he sends back, with a photo of the big one. Hey do you want me to move your furniture back while I'm up here? It's no problem

Of course: her living-room furniture is still, still piled in a tiny pyramid. But it's fine there, thank you very much, Toby. She throws herself back on the hotel bed, arms and legs outspread, phone face-down, and looks up at the ceiling, then over at the window.

Then she sits up, swings her legs on to the ground.

Because she still has four days left.

And she should be able to figure out where Carter will be tomorrow night. He said one of those rooftop bars , and how many of those can there be in one medium-sized city?

She will be there, it will be a charming coincidence, and they will hit it off, or they won't, but either way she'll know for sure.

Her mistake, not that she's made one, was to go for the outdoorsy look. Carter loved her in London, he even loved her in a bridesmaid dress, so she shouldn't try to be someone else; she should be the best possible version of herself, a charming city girl who doesn't know how horses work.

And so the next day she spends substantially more money than she has on a dress, diving hard towards the bottom of her overdraft, but it's green with a boat neck and an angular body that gathers in at the waist and narrows around her hips, and it looks amazing, exactly what you'd expect someone visiting from London to wear. She goes to a Sephora and they haul out the eyelash curlers and scan her with a device to match a lipstick to her skin tone.

Then she stops for a coffee in a park, and picks a daisy, and pulls off the petals. Always start with the answer you want, Jason said that time. He loves me, he loves me not , she tries, and it ends up on he loves me not , which isn't what she was after but she guesses uneven petals are never guaranteed. Anyway, daisies have sex by growing nectar to lure in bees that get rubbed up in pollen and then go rub it off on a different daisy somewhere else, so what do they know about love?

She sits down with a map, marks the plausible rooftop bars. There are at least seven, depending on how stringently you define "rooftop" and for that matter "bar."

The route she plans is biased towards a couple that look familiar: perhaps she has seen them in the background of Carter's many photos of his different Denver lives.

The first bar is almost empty, way too fancy. The second: rammed, hard to find her way through, and as always she worries that she will miss Carter in the sea of men like him, but no, she's sure he's not there. The third: that's him, that's him, she thinks, but it's not. And then she turns around. And there he is.

She goes up to the bar and orders a beer. The stool is slippery, which combined with the tight skirt of her dress makes sitting difficult, and it's been getting cold fast; she wants to put her jacket on but she spent so much money on the dress so she steels herself against the temperature and brings out the book that she bought on the way, which is Les Misérables because it was the only vaguely impressive option in the newsagent near the park. She cannot concentrate even a little on Les Misérables but she can at least look at it with a thoughtful expression, and she can gaze around occasionally with the air of someone who is reflecting on something they have read in Les Misérables and how it illuminates the modern world .

She has learned from her first night that Americans are friendly; she is confident that she can get a conversation started. She keeps an eye on Carter's table until someone goes up for drinks: a woman with a crocheted top. She heads over.

"I love your top," she says to the woman.

"Oh, thanks," the woman replies. "My sister made it for me."

"It's so cute. Crochet, right?" The woman isn't engaging; Lauren needs to keep talking. "We don't have crochet in London," she adds.

"Oh wow, really?" The woman turns to the bartender and places her order; it's a big one but Lauren still only has a couple of minutes.

"I'm in town for a week," she tries, "so I thought I should visit one of these Denver bars that everyone's always talking about."

"They are?" the woman says. "I didn't know anyone outside Colorado ever thought about Denver."

"No, people in London say the bar scene here is great."

"That's so cool," the woman says.

"Yeah," Lauren says. "And everyone's so friendly here. In London I'd be sitting in a bar on my own but here everyone is always starting conversations."

"I guess that's true."

God, can this crochet woman not take a fucking hint? The bartender is bringing her last drink over.

"Can I help you carry those?" Lauren says, a final effort.

"Oh," the woman says. "Yeah, thanks. Do you want to join us? There's a few of us, it's a friend's birthday party."

At last . "Oh," a tone of intense surprise. "How lovely. That would be wonderful. Just for one drink."

She has finished her drink and only has water, but ordering now would mess up the plan. She can come back in five minutes once she's established herself.

So she picks up her water and two of the beers and follows the crocheted woman over towards her table, where maybe fifteen people are clustered, more people than there are seats but that's okay, her dress looks better standing anyway, and she prepares her expression of utter surprise.

And he turns, and sees her, and she lets her eyes widen, and her mouth open into astonishment. "Oh wow," she says. "Carter, right?"

And he looks at her and frowns. "Hi," he says.

She waits a moment.

"Great to see you," he adds.

He doesn't remember her.

Or rather, he doesn't recognise her, she thinks, and that's hardly his fault, she's dressed differently, different makeup, he was in work mode, he probably wasn't letting himself notice what people looked like in case it felt inappropriate. "Lauren. We met yesterday," she says.

"So we did," he says. "Huh!"

"So weird to see you here!" That's enough, she can ease back.

"Yeah," he says, "I thought you were going to a bonfire or something?"

"I was, I am," she says, "no, that's tomorrow."

"Do you two know each other?" the crocheted woman says. "We just met at the bar, we got talking about crochet. Did you know they don't have it in London?"

"We don't!" Lauren says. "Anyway, I met my friend for a drink here earlier," again, it's important that he knows she has friends, "but she had to run off so I stayed to read for a while," she tries to gesture with Les Misérables but she's left it up at the bar, "and what a coincidence." She smiles at them, plausible.

"Okay," Carter says, "well, hope you're enjoying the Denver nightlife," then turns back to the guy he was talking to.

"I'm Tia," the crochet woman, "and this is Maisie, it's her birthday, and this is Mallow."

Right. "It's so nice to meet you."

She manages to get in on another couple of conversations with Carter as the night goes on, bringing up things she knows he likes: horses, right? Tiramisu? Mostly he liked her . She mentions chasing after chickens once, but it doesn't go anywhere.

She warms up, at least, with the beer, and the green dress is great, and Tia is friendly and kind and asks her a lot of questions about London and her work and her hypothetical move to Denver, which Lauren is not entirely equipped to answer.

She makes one last-ditch effort at the end of the night. Tia is talking about going on somewhere else, but it looks like Carter isn't joining so Lauren declines. "It was lovely to meet you," she says loudly to Tia. "If you're ever in London, let me know—I've got a spare room if you need somewhere to stay." A spare room is presumably less impressive to people in Denver than to people in London, but it's good to seem hospitable. "Until I move, anyway," she adds hurriedly, remembering her cover story.

"That's great," Tia says. "You're okay to get back to your hotel, right?"

"I'm fine." These young cities can't intimidate her, their gridded streets can't get her lost.

"Okay. Well, you take care."

Lauren says goodbye to Carter, one hand on his arm.

"Hey," he says, "can I talk to you for a minute?"

He can! He absolutely can! Is this it? Is this the moment? They step away from the group.

"Look," Carter says, low, "I don't want to embarrass you and I'm sorry if I'm on the wrong track but it feels like maybe it's not a coincidence you were here?"

"Well," she says. Is testing out a theory about destiny the same thing as coincidence?

"And it's okay," he says, "I don't want you to feel bad or anything, but I think it might be a good idea if you find a different realtor."

"Oh," she says.

"Get home safe," he says, and his face is so beautiful.

She leaves without picking up Les Misérables or, she realises two blocks away, her jacket, but fury keeps her warm. He doesn't want her to feel bad ? If he didn't want her to feel bad maybe he could have considered not saying anything? Also, how vain do you have to be to meet someone twice, twice , and immediately conclude that they're following you? And sure, she was, but not like he thought, it was just to find out if they were destined , which thankfully they are not, fuck him, and second, it could absolutely have been a coincidence, Denver isn't that fucking great, there aren't that many nice places to have a drink.

In the hotel she turns the shower as hot as it goes, and warms herself through, and washes her face and washes it again, and it's not as good as resetting the world with a magic attic, but it's as close as she can get.

Then, back on hotel Wi-Fi, notifications popping up, she deletes every email she has sent to Carter or received from him, and sorts through the evening's messages. Taj at least has forgiven her, and sent a screenshot of a guy from the dating app she's supposedly not on any more— not for me but might work for you? —and there's a message from Bohai saying Lol i'm engaged , which she can't even begin to think about, and from Amos, with a deeply gratuitous formality:

Hey, hope you're doing well. Just wanted to figure out what our plans should be about the paperwork. Big news but I'm moving to New Zealand for a bit; might make sense to do the forms and finalise it all first?

She reads it again.

The phone lights up with a follow-up message. Maybe a coffee somewhere. Are you free this weekend?

She puts the phone down. She doesn't have capacity for this. She will work it out in the morning. But Amos, for whom it is presumably morning already, has different ideas. The phone again: I know this is a bit sudden .

She throws the phone on to the uncomfortable hotel armchair by the window and it bounces off on to the ground and buzzes yet again. She picks it up. Maybe I should have told you in person, sorry. Ridiculous. How dare he think that she's upset because of him? He isn't in the top five things she's upset about. He can move to Pluto as far as she's concerned.

Except then she'd be stuck here, in this world where she's not destined to be with anyone, where she's lightly stalked at least two of her husbands, where she's spent all her money and then some, where she's half painted half her walls, and where Carter has politely, kindly, perfectly asked her to stop being a weirdo.

And her only way out is to get Amos into the attic.

Coffee sounds great , she texts back. Sorry, noisy here, in a bar in Denver!! I'm back in a few days though, let's catch up then? She feels her mouth twist and her arms shake but she adds another exclamation mark and hits send.

Then she plugs the phone in to charge, turns it over, and waits for sleep.