Page 44 of The Wake-Up Call

He seems genuinely nonplussed. I stare back at him in silence, trying to figure him out.

“Sorry, is this a queue for the toilet?” says a small man in chinos, bobbing up at the top of the stairs.

I wave him through. “So you were just... yelling?”

“This is frustrating,” Lucas says, looking back at his phone to refresh the page. “I want to be back at the hotel. And I hate... this situation. I’m not frustrated with you.”

“Right.” I pause, fiddling with my necklace. “Actually, no. I don’t think that’s OK.”

He blinks at me, taking this in.

“You didn’t need to raise your voice,” I say. We’re in new territory here—I’ve never called him out on this before, but as I say it, I realise how much it pisses me off. He does it all the time at the hotel. I wonder how often our arguments start because he raises his voice and that in itself just winds me up. “I’m frustrated, too. I’m not yelling.”

“You’re just saying unkind things instead,” he says. “Is that any better?”

“Excuse me?” I’m genuinely staggered by this. I have been called many things over the years—weird, stupid, ditzy—but I’veneverbeen called unkind.

“I amincapable of fun, you said.”

“Oh, I...” I did say that. I guess when it comes to Lucas, I’ve always just given him shit like that, and he gives it right back to me, so it never occurred to me that it was unkind. I can feel my cheeks getting pink. I press the backs of my hands to my warm skin. “I thought... That’s just sort of... what we say to each other. It’s kind of... jokey.”

“Is it?” Lucas resumes pacing. “Neither of us seems to laugh very much.”

I don’t know what to say. I feel quite ashamed of myself.

“You two OK?” Shannon calls up the stairs. “Our flight’s delayed, so everyone is heading home for tonight—can you get back all right?”

We glance at each other.

“I’m sure we’ll be fine!” I call. “Trains are a bit ropey, but we’ll get there.”

“Great,” Shannon says, sounding relieved. “I’d offer you our spare room, but a few friends who live further away need somewhere to crash, so...”

“We’ll get going, then,” I say, looking at the trains on Lucas’s phone screen. Another one cancelled. Yellow exclamation marks in triangles everywhere. “Thanks so much for having us, Shannon!”

“Safe travels!” she calls, heels already clip-clopping back to the kitchen again.

If this were a Christmas movie, she’d have put us up in her spare room, and we’d have stayed up all night talking. It would have been cosy and gorgeous. But it’s not a Christmas movie, and so Lucas and I end up sitting outside WHSmith at Waterloo, staring morosely at the departure boards, still stewing from our latest argument.

Back there under Shannon’s chandelier, I’d come so close to kissing him. He’s infuriating and short-tempered and there are a hundred things I don’t like about him, but I can’t deny that I’m almostpainfullyattracted to him. I kept thinking of Sameera and Grigg saying there’s no harm in having a fling with him—nobody can get hurt if you don’t even like each other.

But is it normal to want to have sex with someone you hate? Is that something I need to look at? I did a few years of therapy after my parents died, and I learned enough about healthy thoughts to suspect this is a topic my old therapist would probably have wanted to discuss.

I glance at Lucas. He is eating a sandwich angrily, which Ididn’t know was possible, but he’s really managing with aplomb. I roll my eyes. He’s so dramatic. So broody and moody andrude.

And he thinks I’m unkind. I press my hand to the base of my ribs as the thought hits, accompanied by a quick flash of shame. My parents used to have a sign dangling above the oven in our kitchen that saidNo act of kindness is ever wasted—it was important to them that whatever else I became in life, I’d always be kind, and I’m suddenly terrified that I’ve let them down. The thought takes the wind out of me.

“There! Platform seven!” Lucas yells, exploding up from his seat.

His sandwich packaging goes flying as we race each other to the snow-topped train. He’s a fast runner, but I’m craftier—by the time I jump on, he’s still floundering around between two tourists and their luggage.

“Ha!” I say, sticking my tongue out as he eventually hops through the door, breathing hard.

I’m expecting a comeback about how infantile I’m being, but when he looks at me, for a moment his face is unguarded. He’s smiling.

“What?” I say, suspicious.

His smile smooths away. “Nothing,” he says, moving past me, angling—of course—for the only available seat.

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