Page 29 of You Can't Hurt Me

“Not exactly, but it’s a start,” I say. “Let’s begin with interviewing you. From now on, the only person asking questions will be me.” He nods, and for the first time I sense he respects the steely finality in my voice.

I let myself into my apartment and hear the telltale signs of company. Amira is home earlier than usual, which explains the delicate scent of saffron and lemon permeating the hallway.

There’s the suck of a fridge door opening, a man’s gentle murmur I assume is her ex-boyfriend, Alex, followed by the distinct peal of Amira’s laughter. I wrestle off my coat, absorbing a certain flavor of intimacy in the rise and fall of their conversation. I’d rather not intrude and head for the bathroom instead. Amira has always been more of an extrovert than me. Where she seeks out noise and company, I am a born scuttler, heading for the safety of an empty room. After four hours in Nate’s study, pushing back against his iron-clad will, I need to recalibrate.

I turn on the hot tap to full, undress and step into the bath while it’s still running and watch the steam turn the walls wet and glossy. I think of the flawless marble surfaces in Nate’s bathroom where the bath, like a sculpted egg, takes center stage surrounded by mirrored mosaics.

By contrast, I am surrounded by flaws, cracks in the shower glass, the furred ancient taps, black spores of damp blooming between the tiles. The endless desire to compare is like a broken window where envy steals in. More of an impulse than a feeling, this longing keeps my mind focused. I sink beneath the bubbles until my skin feels suitably flayed and, finally, I decompress.

There is a rumble of knuckles on the door.

“Anna?”

I come up for air, open my eyes. “Yes? I’ll come and say hello in a sec.”

“I need a quick word.” Amira’s voice dips, a note of low urgency in her tone. I get out of the bath and wrap a towel around me, open the door and, even in the half-light of the hall, I can see that her cheeks are flushed. Her eyes gleam and the almost empty wineglass she clutches tilts at a perilous angle.

“Everything okay?”

“Sure. I just, I wanted to tell you something, before you came in and saw us.”

“Us?”

“Us,” she echoes, throwing a glance back toward the kitchen.

“You’re back with Alex?” I offer. “That’s fine. I knew it was on the cards. I’ve been there myself. On and off more times than a light switch. We’ve all—”

“Alex?” She recoils. “No way.”

There’s a moment of confusion before I make the connection. Her hesitancy, the guilt. A heaviness descends like rocks in my stomach. No.

“Tony?”

“He dropped by and I wanted to tell you before you found out. We’ve just started seeing each other again.” She looks down, her tone gentle.

“What—?”

“Hey, sis,” he calls from the kitchen in his crude singsong tone. I hear a cupboard door slam, the enthusiastic pop of another wine cork. Irritated, I wrap my towel tighter around me, dripping water on the floor, before locking my bedroom door.

I get dressed slowly, weighed down with a sense of foreboding. I felt the exact same way two years ago when they first met at my birthday party. There were twenty of us crammed around four tables in our local Turkish restaurant. The clatter of our voices bounced off the exposed brick walls and there was Tony and Amira sitting opposite me.

I tried to draw my gaze back to my friends, away from Amira’s luminosity, her dark eyes and halo of curls. From Tony too, his usually pale skin tanned for once after teaching English for six months in Vietnam. He was supposed to be on the next leg of his journey, but he would never let me celebrate a birthday without him.

I had to admit there was something mesmerizing about the two of them, there always is when you see two relative strangers absorbed in one another, oblivious to everyone else in the room. Old friends nodded over at me with sly smiles and I shrugged, amused.

I was pleased for them, wasn’t I? Why wouldn’t I be? I tried to push away that old sensation, something slippery coiling in my chest. I love Tony, but I’ve never liked knowing about his affairs, nor him knowing about mine. It was better that way.

I think back to Dan, my last serious boyfriend, who I met on a press trip. Tony grew hostile toward him on my behalf when the relationship started to flounder. Over that final week, there had been vicious arguments between Dan and me, many of them Tony would have heard. He was staying over at the time after spending a month in Goa.

A month after Dan and I separated, I heard from an old friend that he’d recently come out of hospital after a serious bout of E. coli.

“He deserved it, didn’t he?” Tony had said when I told him, giving me one of his strange wry smiles.

“Tony, nobody deserves a fortnight in hospital on an IV drip.” I roll my eyes. “At one point they thought he’d need dialysis.”

“Well, he shouldn’t have been such a shit to my sister. I heard those things he called you. He needed a lesson.”

“Lesson?Tony, what—”

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