Sorry, I thought you knew.’
‘When was this?’
‘Good month ago, now. Finn spoke to Jack about it. From what I heard they had a falling-out – God knows what about – and Mia changed her ticket.’
Katie’s thoughts whirled. Mia and Finn’s friendship was unshakable. She pictured them as children, Finn with a wig of glistening seaweed draped over his head, Mia bent double with laughter. Theirs was a friendship that was so rare, so solid, that she couldn’t imagine what would be terrible enough to cause them to separate.
*
Ten days later, winter sun flooded Katie’s bedroom. She lay perfectly still, her arms at her sides, eyes shut, bracing herself against a distant threat she couldn’t quite recall. She blinked and, before she had a chance to recall why her eyelids felt stiff and salted, grief bowled into her.
Mia.
She curled into herself, tucking her knees to her chest and pressing tight fists to her mouth. She screwed her eyes shut, but disturbing images bled into her thoughts: Mia dropping silently through the air like a stone, the rush of wind lifting her dark hair away from her face, a rasped scream, the crack of her skull against granite.
She reached for Ed but her fingers met only with the empty curve of where he’d slept. She listened for him and, after a moment, was relieved to tune into the light tapping of a keyboard coming from the lounge: he would be emailing his office. She envied him that – the ability for his world to continue, when hers had stopped.
She knew she must get to the shower. It would be too easy to remain cocooned in the duvet as she had done yesterday, not rising until after lunch by which time she was drowsy and disorientated. Taking a deep breath, she forced herself from beneath the covers.
Drifting towards the bathroom, she passed Mia’s room and found herself pausing vaguely outside the door. They had bought this flat using the small inheritance they received after their mother’s death. Everyone was surprised that they were moving in together, not least Katie, who had vowed she’d never live with Mia again after their acrimonious teenage years, yet she’d worried that if Mia didn’t put her share of the inheritance into something solid, it would slip through her fingers as easily as water. Katie had been the one to organize viewings, deal with estate agents and solicitors, and run through the rain with a broken umbrella to sign the mortgage papers on time.
Wrapping her fingers lightly around the brass door handle, she turned it. A faint trace of jasmine lingered in the cold, stale air. Mia had positioned her bed beneath the tall sash window so she could wake and see sky. A sheepskin coat, which once belonged to their mother, was draped over the foot of the bed. It was an original from the Seventies with a wide, unstructured collar, and she remembered Mia wrapping herself in it all winter like a lost flower-child.
Beside the bed a pine desk was heaving with junk: an old stereo, unplugged and dusty; three cardboard boxes bulging with CDs; a pair of hiking boots with their laces missing; a mound of paperbacks, well thumbed, beside two pots of pens. The bedroom walls were bare of the photos and paintings that had adorned Mia’s previous rooms and she’d made no attempt to decorate; in fact, it was as if she had never intended the move to be permanent.
Katie was the one who’d persuaded her sister to move to London, using words like ‘opportunity’ and ‘career’, when those words had never belonged to Mia. Mia spent her days wandering the parks, or drifting in one of the rent-a-rowing-boats in Battersea Park, as if dreaming she were somewhere else. She’d had five jobs in as many months because she would suddenly decide to get out of the city to go hiking or camping, and take off, just leaving a note pushed under Katie’s door and a message on her employer’s answerphone. Katie tried searching out job opportunities using her recruitment contacts, but fixing Mia to something was like pinning a ribbon to the wind.
Noticing a pair of mud-flecked running shoes, she remembered the evening Mia announced she was going travelling. Katie had been in the kitchen preparing a risotto, slicing onions with deft, clean strokes. She tossed them into a pan as Mia wandered in, a pair of white earphones dangling over the neckline of her T-shirt, to fill her water bottle at the tap.
‘Going running?’ Katie had asked, blotting her streaming eyes with the sleeve of her cardigan.
‘Yeah.’
‘How’s the hangover?’ When she’d gone to shower before work, Katie had found Mia asleep on the bathroom floor wearing a dress of hers borrowed without asking.
‘Fine,’ she replied, keeping her back to Katie. She turned off the tap and wiped her wet hands on her T-shirt, leaving silver beads of moisture.
‘What happened to your ankle?’
Mia glanced down at the angry red cut that stretched an inch above her sock line. ‘Smashed a glass at work.’
‘Does it need a plaster? I’ve got some in my room.’
‘It’s fine.’
Katie nodded, tossing the onions with a wooden spoon, watching their sharp whiteness soften and become translucent. She turned up the heat.
Mia lingered by the sink for a moment. Eventually she said, ‘I spoke to Finn earlier.’
Katie glanced up; his name was so rarely spoken between them.
‘We’ve decided to go travelling.’
The onions started to sizzle, but Katie was no longer stirring. ‘You’re going travelling?’
‘Yeah.’
‘For how long?’
Mia shrugged. ‘A while. A year, maybe.’
‘A year!’
‘Our tickets are open.’
‘You’ve already booked?’
Mia nodded.
‘When did you decide this?’
‘Today.’
‘Today?’ Katie repeated, incredulous. ‘You haven’t thought it through!’
Mia raised an eyebrow: ‘Haven’t I?’
‘I didn’t think you had any money.’
‘I’ll manage.’
The oil began to crackle and spit. ‘And what, Finn’s just taking a sabbatical? I’m sure the radio station will be thrilled.’
‘He’s handed in his notice.’
‘But he loved that job…’
‘Is that right?’ Mia said, looking directly at her. The air in the kitchen seemed to contract.
Then Mia picked up her water bottle, pushed her earphones in, and left. The pan started to smoke so Katie snapped off the hob. She felt a hot flash of anger and took three strides across the kitchen to follow but then, as she heard the tread of Mia’s trainers along the hallway, the turning of the latch, and finally the slam
