“Great,” I say briskly, standing. “Take a scan of your invoice, send it to your supplier, then go get ready. I’ll straighten up your flat a bit, and when you’re ready, we’ll go out.”
She pulls a face. “I can’t let you do that.”
“Why not? You’d do it for us, if our situations were switched.”
“Well, yeah, but—” she trails off, her cheeks pinkening.
“But what?”
“If you see how gross my flat is, you’ll never look at me the same again.”
“You’re embarrassed because you’ve been working too hard to clean?” I say incredulously. “Christ, Layla. You’re my friend. I don’t care about the mess, I care about you.”
That startles her into silence for a few seconds. Her green eyes are wide as she stares up at me.
“Okay,” she says eventually, uncrossing her arms. “Thank you.”
TWENTY-NINE
LUKE
Two hours later, we’re both sitting in a booth at the back of a London pub. It’s packed tonight; there’s a football match on, so the place is full of fans watching the game. Layla and I have both had to squeeze onto one tiny bench, pressed close together. Layla has a mojito in front of her, and is looking a lot happier. The colour is back in her cheeks, and she’s finally smiling again.
“I still can’t believe you don’t remember me from high school,” she shouts over the clamour of the pub, kicking her heeled feet as she sips at her straw. “I was such a good student.”
“I’m sure.” I swig at my own beer and try to ignore the feeling of her thigh pressed against mine. After she showered, Layla changed into little black shorts and a skimpy green top. She looks lovely, of course — but it’s an awful lot of bare skin to have pressed up against you. I can’t help myself glancing down the long stretch of white leg as she shuffles closer, making room for a guy to squeeze into the booth on her other side.
“I was!” She insists. “I wrote an essay on the use of light in A Streetcar Named Desire. You said it was the best in the class.”
“I’m sure it was brilliant,” I agree. “Unfortunately, I think I’ve read about four hundred essays on that topic, so nothing is springing to mind.”
She kicks me under the table, her eyes crinkling. “You were everyone’s favourite teacher, you know. I was so excited to move into your class.”
I look down at my hands, my smile fading. “Hopefully I wasn’t too much of a disappointment. I probably wasn’t at my best when I was teaching you.”
She nods. “It was when your divorce was going through, right?”
I wince. “The students knew about that?”
“We knew. Mrs Martins—” she frowns, thinking. “Um…”
“Amy,” I supply.
“Right. She’d talk about you in class, sometimes. A lot of the girls were happy that you were back on the market.”
I grimace, and she laughs. “You were, what, sixteen at the time?” She nods. “You must have the reunion coming up soon, right?”
Layla’s face shutters. “Yeah. I got an email about it a few days ago.”
“Are you going to go?”
She taps her straw against the rim of her glass. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“Well. I might be there as well. I got my invite just this morning.” Amy emailed it to me specifically. I’m not sure if it’s just part of her role as headmistress, or she was trying to dig at me.
Her eyes flash to mine. “Really?” She considers. “That’s convenient. Maybe you should just come with me, then.”
I sputter on my beer. “Like, as your…”
“Date, yeah.” She leans against me, amusement glinting in her eyes. “I’m really big on reducing carbon emissions. It would save petrol.”
“My car’s electric,” I manage.
She rolls her eyes. “That’s the nerdiest way I’ve ever been turned down. And I’ve been turned down a lot, as you well know.”
I clear my throat, setting down my beer. “Layla—”
“I know, I know. You wouldn’t touch me with a barge pole. I’m just kidding.” She sighs, turning back to her drink. “Do you seriously go to the reunion every year? Why would you want to go back to that hellhole?”
My eyebrows raise. “You didn’t like Emery High? I thought it was a wonderful school.”