Page 99 of Leaning In

I get to the car park and sit in my Polo without starting the engine. The windows slowly fog up around me while I stare at the school gates.

The thing is, I know how Claire works. I’ve watched her file difficult things under “later” her whole life—the texts she doesn’t answer, the conversations she reschedules with herself indefinitely. Like how she avoided talking to me after the gala, ghosting me for a week.

It’s not lying. She doesn’t lie. She just sometimes looks at a problem and decides today isn’t the day. But when we got together she promised to talk to me instead of disappearing. And she has, every single time. We discussed her nerves about telling Kath, then about meeting both my parents and hers. She was brave enough to send things to the design team. She’d have been brave enough to talk to me about this. I know Claire. I know her so well. I love her.

My thoughts feel scrambled, I have no idea what’s going on. Pulling my phone from my pocket I open my thread with Claire, and just stare at the messages for a while.

Claire: WELL??? How did it go? Did you use the flag joke?

Claire: I’ve got champagne. Not Prosecco… I know, exciting! I have my graphic design class tonight, but I’ll come by after.

I start replying and then stop, because each draft is either a lie (“it went great”) or sounds bad over text (“did you know your mum was going to be there?”). I don’t want to send the wrong thing so instead I just tell her that I’ll call her in a bit.

There’s only one reliable way I’ve ever managed to sort through this type of mess in my head. My kit’s still in my bag from earlier in the week. I change in the staffroom, leave the Polo where it is, and run home with only my phone and keys in my pocket. Everything else I can collect tomorrow.

I stop registering my surroundings after about a kilometre, just watching the area directly in front of me that’s lit by my head torch. I’m stuck in that boardroom replaying everything on a loop in my head. I keep spiralling. Did she know? She couldn’t have. She wouldn’t have withheld this. As I run I gain clarity; Mrs Robinson said she saw my name on an email, not that Claire told her I’d be there.

I come to a panting halt in front of my flat, breath wheezing. Kath’s training plan says ten kilometres, but I did sixteen. Those extra kilometres made me realise two things: this is embarrassingly simple, and I’m an idiot.

The woman who rebuilt my slides, timed my rehearsal with a stopwatch, and roped a friend into helping me would never have withheld anything like that from me.

I let myself in the front door but my flat is dark.

“Claire?” I call. I’m only answered by a meow and a brush of grey fur. My legs have stopped being legs, and I shakily make my way to the kitchen. It’s empty too.

God I’m exhausted. The adrenaline of the presentation is wearing off, and the fatigue from a bad night’s sleep from the nerves, and then a long run are beginning to hit me. Sitting down I get out my phone to call Claire, but the screen stays stubbornly black. The battery must have died at some unknown point between here and the river. I plug it in to charge and go back to the sofa.

My last coherent thought is that I really need to call Claire.

Chapter 40

Claire

Iwake up with a crick in my neck, exhausted after approximately three hours of sleep. There are two seconds of blissful amnesia before it hits again.

Tom didn’t call.

I scramble to check my phone, which I left charging on my bedside table. But when I open it there are no messages or missed calls from Tom. Fuck.

Sophia came over at ten, and found me sitting on the kitchen floor next to a bottle of unopened champagne, most of the way through drafting an apology for something I was sure I’d done, even though I didn’t know exactly what it was.

She’d looked at my outstretched phone, with his message and then my string of unanswered calls and frowned.

“I’m sure his phone’s dead. This is the man who triple texted you and signed his name, Claire, he’s not going to ghost you on a random Friday night after months of dating and a key exchange.”

“You don’t know that,” I’d told her. “He’d just done his presentation. Maybe he doesn’t need—”

“Do not finish that sentence,” Sophia had warned me.

I didn’t finish the sentence. But I kept thinking about it all night. This is what always happens. People leave.

But then at four in the morning, staring at the ceiling I caught myself. I know this script. I wrote it at seventeen, and I’ve been casting every man I’ve ever dated in the starring role since. But Tom has always refused to play that part, he’s stayed, he’s listened, he’s helped. So no, I’m going to go and speak to him instead of jumping to conclusions.

I shower, wash my hair and try to give myself a pep talk. Oddly, the pep talk was easier at four in the morning. Somehow the daylight seems even harsher than the dark.

Sophia has a coffee waiting for me in the kitchen.

“He’ll have a reason,” she reiterates.