Gem asked, “Is this a generational thing? Abandoning your elders on a literary treasure hunt?” She laughed at her own joke. I didn’t.
Mark grimaced at me. “I don’t like leaving you on your own in the dark, in a strange city.”
“That’s when the fun starts,” Gem said.
“Lily will be fine,” Langston called out from my phone. “She’ll probably have a pack of dogs following her and protecting her within minutes.”
“That’s true,” said Mark. He looked at me like he thought he was my dad or Grandpa. “You’ll be okay on your own?”
“Yes,” I sighed.
Mark said, “If you’re not back at the flat by midnight, I’ll be calling Interpol to look for you.”
Gem said, “I spent a marvelous weekend in Mallorca with them a few years ago. They so needed a break from Morrissey by that point in their tour.”
If I’d learned anything from Dash, it was that Interpol was an international police organization as well as the name of a band, and that while Morrissey was a gifted singer and delightfully macabre songwriter, he’d also become an unfortunate right-wing nutter in his later years. No wonder Interpol needed a break from him. As Dash put it about Morrissey, “There’s a light. It went out.”
“Bye, guys,” I said to Gem and Mark. I returned to my call with Langston. “Where should I go?”
“Where are you now?”
“Hampstead Heath.”
“Benny and I went to a great pub in Hampstead last summer. I’ll send you a link. Enjoy a pint for me!”
A pub in a strange country was about the last place I wanted to go. I felt anxious and unsettled. However, a pub might be just the place where everyone else felt the same, only happier, because of the beer. I’d pass on the beer but eagerly seek the jolly.
The pub Langston suggested, the Holly Bush, was about a fifteen-minute walk from Keats House, through the center of Hampstead, then up a steep side street. The pub was a series of oaken rooms with stained-glass windows, colorfully wallpapered walls hung with gold-framed artwork, and dark wood furnishings that looked lifted directly out of a Dickens novel. I immediately loved the place, but it was crowded, and I indeed felt intimidated. Then I heard a voice call to me from a cozy—sorry, cosy—corner with a fireplace. “Lily!”
I walked over. It was Azra Khatun, sitting by the hearth, drinking a hot chocolate and reading a book. She said, “Now you’ve found me in two of my favorite London places—Daunt Books and the Holly Bush. We must be fated to be friends.”
“How can you read here?” I almost shouted. “It’s so noisy!”
“I love the noise. I find it relaxing. So much jolly! Olivier hates it. Please, sit down and join me.” I sat down next to her by the fire. “Olivier left not long ago, but I wanted a hot chocolate, so I stayed.”
“I’m hungry. Is the food here good? Everything here looks so meaty.” Everyone I’d passed in the pub seemed to be eating some sort of game. “I’m vegetarian.”
“I eat only halal foods so I haven’t had most of the things on the dinner menu. But for dessert, I can recommend the sticky toffee pudding.”
I approve of people who skip dinner to go directly to dessert. “I’ve never had that. It sounds both disgusting and amazing. My favorite kind of dessert.”
“You’ll love it. I’ll get us one.” She stepped away to the bar to place our order. When she returned, she settled comfortably into her chair, like she was ready for a long fireside chat. “So how long have you and Dash been together?”
“Two years.”
“Same with me and Olivier. We met at college.”
I was confused. “How could you have met him two years ago at college if you just started at Oxford this year?”
She looked confused for a moment too. Then she said, “I forgot, I had to explain this to my cousin in America too. In England, college is where you go after GCSE exams, which are like the end of our version of high school. After GCSEs, if you want to continue on to university, you go to college for two years to prepare. It’s like Year Eleven and Year Twelve for Americans.”
That made more sense. “Did you and Olivier always plan to go to Oxford together, or did it just work out that way?”
Dash and I hadn’t really made a plan our senior year, other than that we’d both apply to schools in the NYC area. And now neither of us went to school in NYC. Maybe we should have made a better plan.
“It just worked out that way. To be honest …” Her voice trailed off.
I tried to help her out. “Maybe going to university together is a bit much?”
Azra laughed. Because her emerald-green head scarf covered her hair and neck, her pretty face appeared even more vibrant, uninterrupted. “Maybe,” she admitted. “I don’t know … My parents say—”
“You’re too young to be in a committed relationship?”
“Yes!”
“I call it the whisper campaign,” I said. “To my boyfriend’s face, my parents are warm and welcoming. Behind his back, they’re whispering to me that—”
“—You need to see other people.”
“That’s the exact whisper campaign slogan!”
Azra said, “Of course, in my parents’ case, they mean they’d prefer me to date someone Muslim.”
“But they’re okay with Olivier?”
“They don’t love me dating someone Anglican. But I think that’s more because they don’t really like Olivier than because he’s not Muslim. What about your Dash? How has it been, living so far apart?”
“Not my favorite,” I admitted. “But I’ve been so busy that in some ways, it’s nice not having the distraction of him around. I don’t think I ever would have gotten my dog crafts site going if he was around.” Then I remembered something Olivier had said at the bookstore. “Did you really not believe Dash had a girlfriend back in New York?”
“I mean …” She paused, like she was trying to think of a nice way to say what she was going to say. “He seems like a loner. Kind of morose? Not that he’s unattractive, of course. He’s quite handsome, actually.” I nodded, like, I know. “I guess we didn’t think of him as someone who wanted a relationship, except with books.”
I didn’t think she meant the observation as an insult and I didn’t take it as one. I couldn’t be sour, anyway, not when the sticky toffee pudding concoction arrived at the table between our fireside chairs. It was a sponge cake moistened with warm toffee sauce, with a heap of vanilla ice cream melting off its side. It was so good I was ready to move to England immediately.
“I want to marry this cake,” I said. “Sorry, Dash.”
“Me too. Sorry, Olivier.” I took out my phone to see if there was a message from Dash. There wasn’t. Azra must have thought I’d reached for my phone to take a photo. She asked, “Are you one of those people who posts everything they eat?”
“No. I only post dogs or dog-related items. And I’m taking a social media break while I’m here.” I felt a little drunk off the smell of everyone else’s beers and cheers and the sweetness of the pudding and the warmth of the fire and of Azra. As if I were revealing a big secret, I leaned in and said, “But I’m not going to be one of those people who announces they’re taking a social media break. I’m just doing it.”