The Body in the Clouds by Ashley Hay Read Free Book Online

the time.
    â€˜The way you talked about her, and you’ve her picture on your fridge, not your mum’s. You’re lucky I’m not the jealous type.’ She pulled her fingers through her hair, erasing what was left of the day’s style.
    â€˜She’s like a sister, Caro. You know that: I’ve told you. Charlie didn’t have a mum, and I did; I didn’t have a grandfather, and she had Gramps. Neither of us had dads. So we just sort of . . .’
    â€˜Merged,’ said Caro. ‘I know. I like the story. But still . . .’ She reached out and cut herself another slice of the cake, picking little pieces from it and eating them delicately. He’d never seen a piece of cake last so long. Shaking the last of the crumbs from her hands, she smoothed her hair. ‘I just wonder sometimes, if you’re really so close to your mum, and to Gramps, why do you go on living here, and how long are you going to stay?’
    Dan leaned forward, working fragments of icing free of the cake. How long are you going to stay? He felt uneasy, defensive; he’d meant it in the cab when he’d said he liked things exactly how they were.
    â€˜I was thinking about it tonight,’ he said at last. ‘I was thinking about how some people come and stay, and some people come and go, and some people come and just drift, don’t really know what they’re doing.’
    â€˜Neither here nor there,’ said Caro.
    â€˜I guess. I liked the sound of drifting. It sounded . . .’ But he baulked at the word romantic. He took a deep breath. ‘What makes you ask?’
    She shook her head. ‘Nothing—it’s not anything. It’s just, you know, we’ve been together five years now, and I’ve hardly even spoken to your mother. She must think I’m some figment of your imagination. We don’t live together, which is fine, fine—’ patting the air to stop his sentence, whatever it might have offered or defended ‘—but we don’t even talk about it. And you, you talk about your side of the world all the time—all the time, Dan—and I wonder whether that’s because you do want to be there, but something’s stopping you. And I wonder whether that something is me.’
    She paused, worrying at a thread on the edge of her skirt until it came loose. ‘You’re still such a tourist here, you know. When I first met you, I thought you must have only just arrived, the way you spoke about everything. I thought you were always comparing things because everything here was new. But it’s not that. You say you can’t piece London together, but we go anywhere else and you’ve got it memorised in a morning. Here, I don’t know, it’s like you can’t be bothered.’ She shrugged: he’d never seen her look so sad. ‘I just think you should work out where you want to be . . . Do you live here? Are you just visiting? Do you want to go home? We talk about it, and we never go . . .’
    Dan closed his eyes, trying to trace the path overland between his flat and the city, his flat and Caro’s, but there were too many blanks and elisions. It was nothing—it was only because he didn’t drive here, and hardly ever walked anywhere either. Caro was making too much of it. After all, as long as he knew where she was, he didn’t mind not knowing how the city’s other bits and pieces connected. He couldn’t imagine any sort of London without her. He wondered if she knew that.
    That look on her face—tired, and forlorn: the last thing he wanted was to be the cause of that. He glanced about, searching for something he might say or do to recover her brightness, and across the room, his answering machine blinked. Charlie—he’d missed her birthday again this year, and only remembered his mother’s because she’d reminded him. And Caro’s birthday? It was just after