Chapter 3 – The Bridge Between Them

For three days, the unlikely friendship lived inside Liz’s phone.

It began each morning with a message from Lelliana, often absurd, sometimes accompanied by a blurry photo of her coffee, her shoes, a hospital corridor, or a packet of biscuits eaten at three in the morning during a break.

Lelliana: Proof that I am a responsible adult: I am having breakfast.

Below the message was a photo of coffee far too black and a chocolate bar.

Liz had replied:

Liz: I am going to report this to your nursing school.

Lelliana: They already know. They gave up.

Liz read those messages behind the library counter, between registrations, between returned books, between silences that lasted a little too long. She read them with a smile she believed was discreet and which was not discreet enough.

Margaret said nothing.

She simply drifted past sometimes with an air of excessive innocence.

“Are you smiling at a late fee, Elizabeth?”

“I am checking a professional notification.”

“Of course.”

“You are unbearable.”

“That is because I am happy for you.”

Liz had looked up, surprised by the softness of the sentence.

“There is nothing to be happy about.”

Margaret had placed a book on the trolley.

“Then I am happy for this nothing.”

Liz had not answered.

She did not like it when people saw things before she did.

Especially when she herself was still refusing to look.

Because it was only messages.

Funny messages.

Easy messages.

Messages that made her days a little less grey.

Nothing else.

Only a girl she had met at a Halloween party. A girl too bright, too loud, too different from her. A girl who called her my elegant crow and turned every ordinary thing into theatre.

A friend.

An unlikely friend.

That was the word.

Liz repeated it often in her head, like a protective spell.

A friend.

Just a friend.

On the fourth day, a Friday, Lelliana sent a message late in the afternoon.

Lelliana: Diplomatic question: does your unlikely friendship accept expeditions into hostile territory?

Liz was putting a Daphne du Maurier novel back on a shelf.

Liz: Define hostile territory.

Lelliana: Pub. Average music. Mutual friends. Risk of happy people.

Liz stared at the screen.

She should have refused.

A pub on a Friday night was almost an organised assault. Too many people, too much noise, too many conversations in which she never knew what to do with her hands.

But she imagined Lelliana sitting somewhere, her dress too short for the weather, her laugh rising above the bass, her eyes perhaps searching for the door now and then.

She answered before she could reason with herself.

Liz: What time?

The answer came immediately.

Lelliana: 8 p.m. I knew you were brave.

Liz: I am reckless. Important distinction.

Lelliana: Even better.

At ten past eight, Liz found herself outside a pub in Soho with the distinct feeling that she had made a ridiculous decision.

The front was painted dark green, the windows misted by the heat inside. Laughter spilled onto the pavement every time the door opened. Rain threatened without falling. London held its breath above her.

Liz wore black jeans, a thin jumper, and a long dark coat. Nothing remarkable. She had tried on three outfits before choosing one that allowed her to pretend she had not tried.

She pushed the door open.

The heat hit her at once.

The pub was full. The air smelled of beer, damp wood, and perfume too sweet to be entirely innocent. Groups laughed around tables, glasses clinked, and an old rock song played too loudly.

Liz looked for Noah.

Then she saw Lelliana.

And, for one second, the rest of the pub disappeared.

The redhead was near the bar, surrounded by three people. She wore a very short green dress, black boots, and a leather jacket slung over one shoulder. Her red hair caught copper in the yellow light. She was laughing, head tipped back slightly, one hand resting on the counter.

She was beautiful.

Not pretty.

Not merely seductive.

Beautiful in an almost insolent way, as though she were reminding the world that light still existed, even in smoky places.

Liz hated the thought immediately.

She put it away quickly.

Too quickly.

Lelliana turned her head.

Their eyes met.

Her smile changed.

It became less public. Less offered to the room. More precise.

“Elizabeth!”

She crossed the group without hesitation, as though Liz were the only person she had truly been waiting for.

“You came.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I am. I thought you were going to text me that your library had caught fire.”

“I considered setting it on fire myself for an excuse.”

“Touching. You chose me over arson.”

“Do not take it too personally.”

Lelliana laughed and, without warning, briefly put her arms around her.

It was quick.

A light hug.

Almost ordinary.

But Liz froze one second too long.

She caught Lelliana’s perfume, something warm and floral. She felt her hair brush her cheek. She felt her own body respond with a confusion that made her want to step back and stay exactly where she was at the same time.

Lelliana drew away at once.

“Come on,” she said. “The others are here.”

The others.

There was Noah, of course. A girl called Priya whom Liz had already met twice. A boy named Ben, a medical student, who spoke quickly and laughed at his own sentences. Two other people whose names Liz forgot the very moment she was told them.

And then there was Clara.

Clara had long blonde hair, perfectly straightened, dark lipstick, and a gaze that assessed Liz in less than two seconds. She kissed Lelliana on the cheek with pointed familiarity, then said:

“So you’re the mysterious librarian.”

Liz did not like her voice.

Not because it was unpleasant.

Because it was too sweet to be honest.

“Liz,” she answered simply.

“Lelliana has told us about you.”

Liz looked at Lelliana.

The redhead raised both hands.

“Good things. Almost exclusively good things.”

“Almost?”

“I mentioned your criminal potential.”

“Justified.”

Clara smiled without really smiling.

“That’s cute.”

The word landed on the table with an invisible barb.

Liz sat beside Noah. Lelliana naturally took the seat next to her, so close their knees brushed once beneath the table. Liz pulled her leg away slightly, then regretted it at once.

The evening began.

Or rather, it continued around her.

Noah told an absurd story about his neighbour being convinced pigeons were spying on him. Priya laughed with genuine warmth. Ben tried to insert hospital anecdotes whenever he could. Clara commented on passers-by’s outfits, cocktails, one person’s ex and another person’s disaster of a date.

Lelliana shone.

She answered everything, revived the jokes, turned silences into laughter. She put a hand on someone’s arm while speaking, tossed her hair back, imitated an especially dramatic patient, pretended to faint when someone criticised her drink.

Everyone watched her.

Liz too.

She did not want to.

But she watched.

She noticed the way Lelliana smiled before she had even decided whether something was funny. The way her eyes checked the reactions around her. The way her laughter sometimes rose too quickly, like a curtain drawn before anyone could glimpse the inside.

At one point, Ben leaned towards Lelliana.

“You should come to Jamie’s party tomorrow. He keeps asking whether you’ll be there.”

Lelliana turned her glass between her fingers.

“Jamie asks that about every girl who breathes.”

“Maybe, but with you he insists.”

Clara snorted softly.

“Of course he insists.”

The silence was light.

Almost nothing.

But Liz felt it.

Lelliana smiled.

“I am in very high demand, what can I say.”

Clara took a sip.

“That’s one way to put it.”

This time, the silence was heavier.

Noah immediately threw in a joke to change the subject, but Liz saw Lelliana’s jaw tighten. Just for one second. Then the smile returned, brighter than necessary.

Liz felt a familiar anger heat her ribs.

Not an explosive anger.

A cold one.

The kind that came when someone damaged a fragile thing while pretending it was solid.

“What do you mean?” Liz asked.

The table stiffened slightly.

Clara turned her eyes to her.

“Excuse me?”

“You said, ‘That’s one way to put it.’ I was wondering what you meant.”

Lelliana placed a discreet hand on the edge of the table.

“Liz…”

But Liz did not look at her.

Clara gave a small laugh.

“Nothing. It was a joke.”

“I did not understand it.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Explain.”

Noah looked down at his drink with the expression of someone watching a train come too fast around a bend.

Clara lost a little of her sweetness.

“We all know Lelli likes to have fun. It isn’t an insult.”

“No,” Liz said. “It is only convenient to start like that before turning it into one.”

Lelliana’s face became unreadable.

Clara shrugged.

“I don’t see why you’re getting upset. It isn’t as if she hides it.”

“Hides what, exactly?”

“Liz,” Lelliana breathed.

This time there was something harder in her voice.

A warning.

Liz understood too late.

Clara looked from Lelliana to Liz, and a thin smile appeared on her lips.

“Oh. I see. You’re new to the fan club.”

Liz stood up.

Not violently.

But quickly enough for her chair to scrape against the floor.

“I need some air.”

She left before anyone could stop her.

Outside, the night was cold.

The rain had begun. A fine rain, almost invisible, but enough to wet her hair and make the pavements shine. Liz breathed in deeply. Her heart was beating too fast. She did not know whether she was furious with Clara, with herself, or with that absurd feeling that had pushed her to intervene as though Lelliana belonged to her.

She did not.

Of course she did not.

She was not her girlfriend.

Liz was not even sure she had the right to be jealous.

Jealous.

The word almost made her sick.

She took a few steps under the pub awning, then moved away into the street so she could breathe without the noise.

The door opened behind her.

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

Liz turned.

Lelliana was there, without her coat, arms folded against the cold. Her clear eyes held none of their light.

“I was defending you.”

“I don’t need to be defended as if I were some poor fragile thing.”

“That is not what I did.”

“Yes, it is.”

Liz felt the anger return.

“She was insulting you.”

“So what? Do you think she is the first? Do you think I don’t know how to deal with it?”

“I think you smile when it hurts you.”

Lelliana went still.

The sentence had touched her.

It was visible.

And because it had touched her, it made her harder.

“You don’t know me well enough to say that.”

Liz clenched her teeth.

“Maybe not.”

“Then don’t act as if you can read me because I told you two jokes in a cafe.”

Silence fell between them.

Rain slid over Lelliana’s hair, over her lashes, over her dress that was far too thin. Liz wanted to tell her to go back inside, to put on her jacket, not to stand there trembling out of pride.

Instead, she said:

“All right.”

Lelliana seemed surprised.

“All right?”

“You are right. I don’t know you well enough.”

Lelliana’s anger flickered.

“Elizabeth…”

“I’m going home.”

Liz turned away.

She heard Lelliana call after her, but she kept walking.

She did not want to cry in front of her.

She did not want to feel that strange shame that came from the same place as her concern. She had wanted to help. Maybe. Or maybe she had wanted to prove something. Maybe some part of her had been hurt to see the world lay its hands on Lelliana, judge her, claim her, as though Liz had no part in the story.

But she had no part.

Not yet.

Maybe never.

She walked quickly, not thinking about the direction.

London passed around her in stains of light and rain. Taxis went by. People laughed beneath umbrellas. An ambulance wailed somewhere in the distance.

Then Liz stopped.

In front of her, there was a bridge.

Not the same one.

Of course it was not the same one.

There were dozens of bridges in London. This one crossed the Thames with its lined-up lamps, its wet railings, its trembling reflections in the black water. Cars crossed it. Pedestrians walked over it without thinking.

But Liz did not see that bridge.

She saw the other one.

The one from when she was twelve.

The grey sky.

The cold railing.

Victoria’s hand slipping.

The scream.

Her scream.

Or her sister’s.

She had never managed to remember exactly.

Her breath broke.

She stepped back.

Then another step.

The world became too large and too narrow at the same time. She put one hand against a wall, searching for support. Her heart struck so hard she thought she might be sick.

Not here.

Not now.

Not again.

“Liz!”

The voice came through the fog.

She wanted to answer, but no sound came out.

Lelliana appeared in front of her, breathless, hair soaked, her jacket finally over her shoulders. She must have run.

“Liz, look at me.”

Liz shook her head.

She could not.

If she looked at Lelliana, she would fall. If she looked at the bridge, she would fall too.

“I can’t,” she whispered.

The anger had disappeared from Lelliana’s face.

Only concern remained.

But not the loud, panicked kind of concern that crushes. Something precise. Almost professional. Gentle.

“All right. You don’t have to look at the bridge. Look at my shoes.”

Liz blinked.

“What?”

“My shoes. They are magnificent, wildly expensive, and completely unsuited to rain. Focus on them.”

Despite the panic, some absurd part of Liz obeyed.

She looked down.

Lelliana’s black boots shone with water.

“Good,” Lelliana said. “Now breathe with me. Not deeply; that never helps when the body is panicking. Just a little. Like this.”

She inhaled slowly.

Exhaled.

Liz tried.

The air caught in her throat.

“Again,” Lelliana murmured. “I’m here.”

The sentence hurt.

Not because it was false.

Because it was exactly what Liz had wanted to say to Victoria.

I’m here.

I’m here.

I’m here.

But she had not been there enough.

Her legs trembled.

Lelliana reached out, then stopped before touching her.

“Can I take your hand?”

The question passed through Liz.

Simple.

Respectful.

She nodded.

Lelliana’s fingers closed around hers.

Her hand was cold from the rain.

Alive.

Present.

Liz clung to it more tightly than she would have liked.

“Is it because of the bridge?” Lelliana asked softly.

Liz closed her eyes.

“My sister.”

Lelliana did not answer at once.

She did not ask.

She waited.

So Liz spoke, in pieces.

“Victoria. My twin. She… she fell. We were twelve.”

Lelliana’s hand tightened very slightly.

“I’m sorry.”

Liz usually hated that phrase.

But in Lelliana’s mouth, it did not sound empty.

It sounded like a hand resting in front of a closed door, not forcing it open.

“I don’t like bridges,” Liz breathed.

“All right. Then we won’t cross.”

“I have to get home.”

“There are other ways.”

Liz opened her eyes again.

Lelliana was in front of her, soaked, pale, serious. No jokes. No performance. Just her.

“You are going to catch cold,” Liz murmured.

A small smile crossed Lelliana’s lips.

“You are having a panic attack and worrying about my weather forecast?”

“It is a stupid dress for November.”

“It is a magnificent dress.”

“Both can be true.”

Lelliana’s smile widened, but her eyes stayed soft.

“There. You’re coming back.”

Liz looked down at their hands.

They were still holding on.

She should have let go.

She did not.

Not immediately.

“I’m sorry,” Lelliana said.

“Why?”

“For what I said. At the pub. You were right. Clara was being cruel.”

Liz shook her head.

“No. You were right too. I defended you as if I knew what you needed. That wasn’t fair.”

Lelliana looked towards the wet street, the headlights, the silhouettes passing without seeing them.

“I hate being saved,” she said quietly.

Liz heard everything the sentence did not say.

Because no one saved me when it mattered.

She did not ask.

Rule number three.

We do not force questions.

“Then I won’t save you,” Liz said. “But I can stay beside you.”

Lelliana turned her head towards her.

For one second, something trembled between them.

Something with no safe name.

Not yet.

The kind of thing one calls friendship because it is less frightening. The kind of thing that makes the heart beat too hard in the rain, on a London pavement, a few metres from a bridge they will not cross.

“I can do the same,” Lelliana said. “Stay beside you.”

Liz nodded.

She felt tears return, but this time they did not carry the same violence. They did not destroy her. They only fell, warm over her cold cheeks.

Lelliana saw them.

She did not pretend not to.

But she did not comment.

“Come on,” she said. “We’ll find another way. One with fewer bridges and more hot chocolate.”

“Do you put whipped cream on everything?”

“When the situation is serious, yes.”

They walked in the opposite direction.

Lelliana kept her hand in Liz’s for the first few minutes, officially to make sure she did not stumble. Liz accepted that reason. She accepted it with silent gratitude, while knowing that part of her wished the reason were something else.

They found a cafe still open near an Underground station.

An almost empty place, lit with neon, without any particular charm. But it was warm. And there was no bridge in the window.

Lelliana ordered two hot chocolates.

“No cream for me,” Liz said.

Lelliana looked at her as if she had insulted an ancestor.

“You are in a fragile state, so I am going to pretend I heard nothing.”

They sat at a table in the back.

Rain drew lines down the window. Liz wrapped her hands around the burning cup.

The silence between them was no longer the silence from the pub.

It was tired.

Honest.

“Do you look like her?” Lelliana asked after a while.

Liz understood at once.

“Victoria?”

Lelliana nodded.

“You don’t have to answer.”

Liz looked at her blurred reflection in the glass.

“Yes. We were identical.”

“That must be difficult.”

“Sometimes I think I see her in mirrors.”

She did not know why she said it.

She had almost never said it that way. Not to Noah. Not to Margaret. Not even to the few therapists she had agreed to see before running away from them.

Lelliana did not mock her.

She did not look frightened.

She only put both hands around her cup.

“And when you see her, what does she say?”

Liz gave a tiny laugh.

“Nothing. I’m the one who speaks.”

“What do you say to her?”

The question was gentle.

Not forced.

Liz could choose not to answer.

She chose to.

“That I am angry.”

Lelliana lowered her eyes.

“At her?”

“At everyone. At her for falling. At myself for not holding on. At people who kept living. At bridges. At mirrors. At girls who look like me in shop windows when I am not expecting them.”

Her voice broke.

“It’s ridiculous.”

“No.”

Lelliana’s word came immediately.

Firmly.

Liz looked at her.

Lelliana had lost her lightness. She almost seemed angry too, but not at Liz. At something larger. At the way life damaged people and then expected them to behave.

“It isn’t ridiculous,” she repeated. “You lost half your face when you were twelve. You have the right to be angry.”

Liz drew in a difficult breath.

The sentence entered her like a key.

It repaired nothing.

But it opened something.

“I don’t know how to stop,” she admitted.

Lelliana was silent for a long time.

Then she said:

“Maybe you don’t have to stop all at once. Maybe you only need to find someone in front of whom your anger doesn’t have to wear an elegant dress.”

Liz wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

“That is very profound for someone who declared this morning that chocolate biscuits are a food group.”

“I contain multitudes.”

“I am beginning to see that.”

Lelliana’s smile returned.

Small.

Real.

They drank their hot chocolate in silence.

At one point, Lelliana shivered.

Liz took off her coat and handed it to her.

“Take it.”

“You’ll be cold.”

“You’re soaked.”

“I’ve known worse.”

The sentence came out too quickly.

Too sharply.

Lelliana stopped, as though she had dropped something on the floor.

Liz did not move.

She did not ask.

She simply placed the coat over Lelliana’s shoulders.

“I know,” she said softly. “But take it anyway.”

Lelliana lowered her eyes.

Her fingers tightened around the dark fabric.

“Thank you.”

The simplicity of the word unsettled them both.

When they left the cafe, the rain had stopped. The city looked washed, almost calm. Liz walked Lelliana to her bus stop, not far away.

This time, they were no longer holding hands.

But their shoulders brushed now and then.

And neither of them really moved away.

The bus arrived.

Lelliana stepped on, then turned as she had the last time.

“Elizabeth?”

“Yes?”

She seemed to search for a joke, a mask, an easy way to leave the scene without leaving too much of herself behind.

Then she gave up.

“Thank you for staying beside me.”

Liz felt her heart tighten.

“Thank you for finding another way.”

Lelliana smiled.

The doors closed.

Liz watched the bus disappear down the street.

That night, when she got home, she stopped in front of the mirror in the hallway.

Her face was pale, exhausted. Damp hair clung to her cheeks. Her eyes were red.

For one second, she thought she saw Victoria behind her shoulder.

Not frightening.

Not accusing.

Only there.

Liz closed her eyes.

“I didn’t cross the bridge,” she said.

The silence of the flat wrapped around her.

She opened her eyes again.

There was only herself.

She took out her phone.

A message was waiting.

Lelliana: I got home. Your coat smells like books and rain. It is almost unbearably you.

Liz smiled despite her tears.

She replied:

Liz: Keep it until it no longer smells like pub trauma.

A few seconds passed.

Lelliana: Deal. And Liz?

Liz stared at the screen.

Liz: Yes?

Lelliana: Next time, we choose somewhere without a bridge.

Liz placed a hand on the cold mirror.

Then she wrote:

Liz: Next time?

The answer came almost immediately.

Lelliana: Obviously. Unlikely alliances do not dissolve after one argument. It is in the rules.

Liz reread the message several times.

Then she smiled.

A real smile.

“Do you hear that, Victoria?” she whispered.

The mirror did not answer.

But, for the first time, Liz was not truly waiting for a response.

She turned off the light.

And in the darkness of her flat, with the memory of a cold hand in hers, she understood that something had begun to change.

Not everything.

Not yet.

But something.