.

‘There must have been some pre-existing medical condition,’ Clare said, when I showed her.

‘It was very hot.’ Even talking about it made my lungs burn.

‘But that wasn’t your fault, Jamie. You didn’t control the temperature down there. It’s basically a clay furnace, you said it yourself.’

‘Should I reply? You know, ask about the baby?’

‘I wouldn’t. It might be interpreted as an admission of guilt and she’ll come after you with some civil lawsuit. It might be some sort of scam.’

On medical advice, I took a week off, and my GP helped me book a course of CBT sessions. Returning to work, I took a cab, but the traffic was so bad my commute took almost two hours. Next, I tried a complicated route involving only surface trains, but panicked after a stretch through a tunnel and had to leap off at the next station, making my way on a succession of crammed and crawling buses.

I resigned. While procrastinating about setting up as a freelancer and working from home, I looked for a job, any job within range, and, failing that, widened my net to within walking distance of London Bridge. The Comfort Zone was hiring.

I’d already begun there when another mail came from my antagonist: Too much of a fucking coward to get back to me? Should of known.

‘Not a grammarian, then,’ Clare said.

You shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this, said the next.

And then: What goes around comes around. Remember that.

‘You need to close that email account,’ Clare advised.

I did. ‘Weird that it’s a woman who’s got so angry. It was the same at the time, as well. The men were fine.’

‘The tide is turning,’ she said, and perhaps because I was still mid-breakdown she didn’t add what I was fairly sure she was thinking: Get used to it.

15

May 2019

It was hardly a surprise to learn that Melia had googled me and read about my disgrace. What was surprising was how long it took her, given that I’d searched her name as soon as our affair began. This was what lovers did in 2019, they coolly investigated each other. No more subtle gleaning, no more telling your backstory in your own time. Privacy was a setting now, not a human right. And so I’d scanned various three-line reviews of her acting performances from years ago, as well as out-of-date employment listings. Instagram was her favoured form of social media, her activity veering from wild enthusiasm one week – #LoveLondonLife – to total abstinence the next (#HateLondonLife, I guess).

‘We read about that Tube thing,’ she told me. It was about two months into the affair by then, late May. Another workday evening, another one of her apartments, sleek and impersonal crucibles of intense human passion. I lived for our assignations now; I was a trained animal. ‘We didn’t realize you’d made the news.’

We. Kit and her. I imagined the two of them propped on their pillows, sharing the iPad, dark heads side by side. Did he cradle her head the way I did, the way I was right now, my thumb stroking the soft down of her hairline?

‘Sounds like a real drama,’ she added.

‘Yes, it was. And a lot more of a drama because people tweeted about it. The Standard totally stoked it.’

‘Kit loves that Hashtag Commuter Hell thing on Twitter.’

‘That’s still going strong, is it?’

‘Yes, he says people are really witty.’

‘Believe me, it’s not so witty when you’re the one they’re trolling. Did the article you read mention that it was the train in front that broke down? Nothing to do with me. And did it mention that we’re unbelievably lucky not to have had a mass crush in one of our stations? The platforms are as overcrowded as the trains. There’s literally no margin for error, one person could trip and fall and that would be it. Hundreds could die.’

She shuddered and took my hand. The backs of our hands were a portrait of age: mine crinkled, discoloured skin and raised blue veins, hers pale and smooth. Was her blood brighter, too? Were her bones glossier? ‘Maybe you should have cycled?’

I explained about my bike having been stolen. ‘It was out of range of any CCTV, but even if cameras had picked up the thief, I’d never have got it back.’

‘Have you thought about moving somewhere else? Where you could drive to work.’

‘Maybe. But Clare would never leave London. Her business is here. That trumps any of my concerns,’ I added, displaying more pique than I’d intended.

There was a silence. Sometimes with Melia it felt as if her silences were messages in invisible ink; you applied the magic fluid and revealed the words at your own risk. This time, I read: What’s Clare got to do with anything? Though I’d asked her if she’d considered leaving Kit, she’d never asked me if I’d leave Clare.

Dropping my hand, she ran her fingers over my chest, fluttery as moth wings. ‘I quite like crushing up against men on the Tube. Sometimes, you can feel, you know.’

‘What?’

‘That he’s getting excited.’

I had to laugh. ‘You’re admitting you’re a sex pest? Careful I don’t report you.’

She shrugged. ‘It’s not a crime if the victim doesn’t object.’

‘You’re on shaky ground there, darling, legally and morally.’ I wondered if she’d given any thought to the short-term nature of her sexual power. In a decade or two, she might press herself against some guy and be called out for it, humiliated. A new generation of Melias would be quick to deride her.

‘I had a panic attack once,’ she said.

‘Oh yeah? When it occurred to you that you were cheating on your boyfriend and he might find out . . .’ That reminded me of something else. ‘Clare said you think something’s going on between him and Gretchen?’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ she said, displeased.

‘Was that why you got so upset at our place?’

No reply.

‘Come on, Melia, even if he is, you’re not really in a position to object, are you?’

She turned, eyes furious. ‘He hasn’t got a clue about us. What I object to is he thinks he can do whatever he likes. Say whatever he likes.’

It was hard to reconcile her assessment with my own: to me, Kit was a man perpetually frustrated by what he couldn’t do. I said no more and she returned to the story of her panic attack.

‘It was on a flight. There was really bad turbulence and I freaked out. I only stopped when they threatened to restrain me. I was still whimpering and I could hear people saying, “Can’t she shut the fuck up.” People are so mean; that was almost more upsetting than the turbulence.’

As she began to detail individual examples of hatefulness, as if it were hers that had been the career-ending, life-altering trauma, it was hard to tell whether her original aim had been to empathize or simply to talk about herself.

‘There’s a reason “Melia” gets shortened to “Me”,’ Clare said, later, on a cold morning in Edinburgh. ‘It’s because she’s a complete narcissist.’

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

*

The Tube drama wasn’t the only thing about me that Kit and Melia had been discussing. Or the water rats.