She stood, grabbing the letter off the table and scrunching it up. She wished she had a fire to throw it into so that she could watch it burn, something symbolic to make herself feel better. Instead she had to settle for tearing it into little pieces, pieces she’d have to vacuum up later.
Her phone buzzed where she’d left it on the kitchen counter and her heart jumped. She practically ran to it, and then had to feel her heart shrink as the weight settled over her once again. Bia.
How was your Christmas?? Is hot guy still there?? Can I call you on WhatsApp or will he be listening in? I want to hear the detaaaaillls.
Josie clutched her phone and pressed her lips together. She couldn’t face it, telling Bia, especially when she wouldn’t understand that she felt like this—how could she? Memo and Helen had both told her to be careful, hadn’t they? They’d both known she’d get caught up in it, even if she hadn’t recognized the danger herself.
Wrapping her arms around herself, she padded back across the flat. The sun was shining through the window, sparkling like it was encouraging everyone watching it to share in its joy. She should have taken more notice of the weather yesterday—a warning, perhaps.
Leaving the torn-up pieces of Max’s letter on the living room floor, Josie made her way back to her bedroom and, without switching on the light, got back into bed. She closed her eyes and pulled the duvet cover over her bed. And intended to stay there for some time.
Part Two
April
“This. Is fucking amazing.” Max’s voice was slightly muffled over the mouthful of hot dog he was chewing.
Next to him on the bench that they’d managed to commandeer in Tribeca Park, Liam rolled his dark brown eyes and snorted. “Calm down, it’s not that good.” Though he tried to dial it down, Liam’s accent was typical New York, a testament to the fact that he’d lived here his whole life. He was dressed in what Max had come to think of as a New Yorker style too, a tailored, striped navy suit but with a deep red shirt underneath—bold and expressive, like the city itself, and offset by his deeply tanned skin. To top it all off, he was wearing a pair of stylish black trainers—or sneakers, as Liam called them—rather than the typical business shoes Max himself was wearing. The weather was distinctly warmer than it had been in recent weeks, like the city had finally decided spring was here, and while that was no guarantee that another cold front wouldn’t blast in at any moment, for today both of their coats—his old faithful that he thought was suitable for every occasion, and Liam’s long beige coat, one of many different coats he owned—were slung over the back of the bench in celebration.
Max swallowed, his throat slightly protesting against the particularly big bite he’d taken. “It is,” he insisted. “I’m sure it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact I haven’t eaten since yesterday lunch that it tastes this good.” He and Liam had pulled a late one last night at the office where Max was currently working, preparing for today’s meeting with a high-profile—translation, complete dickhead—client.
“Mommy didn’t leave dinner out for you last night then?” Liam said, chuckling to himself as he spoke, showing a flash of his extraordinarily white teeth.
“She did, actually,” Max said, grinning in a deliberately smug way—the grin he could wind up almost anyone except Liam with. Angel that she was, his mother had taken to cooking for him every night, even when he wasn’t sure if he’d be in, and literally never complained about it if the food went uneaten—which is what had happened last night, given he’d been too knackered to do more than change and fall into bed.
Liam rolled his eyes theatrically, but Max ignored him. He knew all too well that Liam bloody loved his mother, and the feeling was mutual being as how, on a very loose “family friendship,” revolving around his mother and Liam’s father having gone to school together when they were about eight or something like that, Liam had put in a word at the architecture firm where he worked last year, despite the fact Liam had never even met Max until that point. This was before Max had gotten the—somewhat short-lived—job at ALA and he’d done a bit of freelance for Liam’s firm last spring, luckily getting on with Liam immediately. When Max’s mother had told anyone who would listen that Max would be in New York a little longer than expected after Christmas, Liam had casually mentioned it to one of the senior partners, who had immediately given Max a six-week contract to assist on a particularly difficult project. Besides, despite the mutual and apparently instantaneous love between Liam and his mother, Max had resolutely decided there was absolutely nothing wrong with a thirty-two-year-old man camping out at his parents’ for two months, given they’d practically begged him to do just that and the alternative would be some sort of dump with a nightmare commute.