Lucy in the Sky

opens the door.
    ‘Nathan?’ she queries, in a sleepy Aussie accent. She’s wearing pale pink pyjamas.
    ‘Yeah.’ He grins. Uh-oh, I think.
    She opens the door wide and lets us pass. I introduce myself and discover that her name is Ally.
    ‘Your room’s up here,’ she says to Nathan, leading the way up two flights of stairs, and pointing out the bathroom on the way.
    ‘The kitchen and living room are on the ground floor. Help yourself to milk or anything and I’ll show you which shelf is yours later for when you go to the supermarket. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go back to bed.’
    Nathan’s room is a box room with a single bed, small wardrobe and bedside table. There’s barely enough room to lie his suitcase on the floor so he leaves it standing up and props his guitar case against the wall.
    We catch each other’s eyes and grin. I squeeze past him and go over to the window. It looks out over the overgrown back garden; at least he’s not facing the busy main road. A large barbeque sits to one side of the long grass. The Aussies would have made good use of that this summer.
    I turn back and look at him. He’s watching me, smiling.
    ‘Let’s go and get some breakfast,’ I suggest.
    Thank goodness. Highgate is lovely. Fruit and flowers spill out onto the pavement of the old grocer’s and quaint village shops line the rest of the high street. We take a left and go into Café Rouge for a continental breakfast. It’s not quite nine in the morning.
    Neither of us have proper appetites yet, so we order lattes anda basket of French bread, pastries and conserves. Nathan leans back in his chair and surveys me.
    ‘You look different,’ he tells me.
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Yeah. Can’t work it out.’
    Probably a bit slimmer, I’m thinking, but I don’t really want to point that out.
    ‘When does Richard arrive?’ I ask.
    ‘Tomorrow, I think.’
    ‘So, who else are you sharing with? Do you know anything about them?’
    ‘No, not really. Rich sorted the pad out. I think there are two girls and a guy.’
    So Ally has a friend. I hope she’s not a stunner too.
    ‘Have you got anything planned today?’ I ask, as our bread, pastries and lattes arrive.
    ‘Sleep, I reckon,’ he says.
    ‘Poor thing, you must be knackered.’
    He nods.
    I resist a sudden impulse to reach over and touch his face. Even though his bluey-grey eyes are tinged with redness from the twenty-four-hour flight, I’d still happily sit here for hours and stare into them. Then I think of James waking up alone at home this morning. He claimed he’d forgotten I was going to the airport and was hoping we could do something together today. I don’t believe he forgot for a minute but, knowing Nathan would probably be jet-lagged, I promised him I wouldn’t be away too long.
    ‘Are you warm enough?’ I ask Nathan, as he puts his hands in the pockets of his hooded top and scrunches up his shoulders.We’re heading back through the park we spotted on our way here.
    ‘Yeah, I’ll be alright,’ he tells me bravely.
    We walk side by side, close to each other so we’re occasionally touching, and head past the tennis courts and down the path. We take a left and wind our way across to the other side of the hill, then suddenly there’s a break in the leafy green trees and we have the most dazzling view of London.
    ‘Wow!’ he says, and even I’m amazed. This view easily rivals the one you get from Primrose Hill.
    ‘What’s that thing?’ he asks, pointing at a tall, cylindrical building in the City.
    ‘That’s the Gherkin,’ I tell him, remembering he’s interested in architecture. ‘And the Millennium Wheel is over there. We should go on it sometime.’
    ‘That’d be cool.’
    ‘Shall we sit down?’ I ask, and we take a seat on one of the many benches which have been dedicated to loved ones who’ve passed away.
    ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if you could buy a bench while you were alive and had time to enjoy it?’ Nathan muses.
    ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘This bench is dedicated to Lucy McCarthy and Nathan Wilson, who love this park and will be mightily pissed off if they come here and find you sitting in their seats.’
    He chuckles and I turn to him. ‘I haven’t heard a joke from you in a while?’
    ‘Mmm, we haven’t really spoken much recently, have we?’ he says.
    ‘No,’ I agree. I don’t think that there’s another ‘Amy’ on the scene back in Australia. But I don’t know for sure.
    ‘So, do you or