Chapter 7 – Under Other People’s Eyes

The morning after the first kiss, Liz discovered that a flat could change without anything in it having moved.

The coffee table was still cluttered with books. The two cups of cold tea had been washed and put away. The grey blanket was folded over the sofa with almost military precision. The mirror in the hallway still reflected the same narrow corridor, the same pale light, the same brown-haired face whenever Liz passed in front of it.

And yet, everything seemed different.

The biscuits Lelliana had forgotten were still there.

Liz had placed them on the kitchen shelf like material evidence. An official excuse to come back. A promise wrapped in plastic.

At 8:12, her phone vibrated.

Lelliana: Official report: I am alive, but I thought about the biscuits all night.

Liz stood in the middle of her kitchen, phone in hand, unable to keep herself from smiling.

Liz: Only the biscuits?

She stared at her own message in horror.

She had written that.

She had sent it.

For a brief moment, she considered leaving London, changing her name, and opening a bookshop in a Scottish village where no one would know her digital past.

The answer arrived.

Lelliana: Elizabeth. Is this an attempt at flirting before nine in the morning?

Liz covered her face with one hand.

Liz: I deny everything.

Lelliana: Too late. I am keeping the evidence.

Liz: You were supposed to be thinking about the biscuits.

Lelliana: I lied.

Liz read those three words again.

Her heart made that new movement, both tender and painful, as though it was still learning how to beat with a little more space inside it.

She typed:

Liz: Me too.

This time, Lelliana did not answer at once.

Then:

Lelliana: So… will the biscuits need to be collected tonight?

Liz looked at the shelf.

Liz: They are becoming aggressive. I recommend swift intervention.

Lelliana: I will come by after my shift. For humanitarian reasons.

Liz: Naturally.

She pressed the phone against her chest.

Then she saw her reflection in the dark glass of the microwave and found herself ridiculous.

“You are nineteen,” she murmured. “Not thirteen.”

But part of her was thirteen.

Part of her was discovering everything for the first time.

Desire that did not feel like taking.

Tenderness that asked permission.

Missing someone after only one evening.

At the library, Margaret did not even need to ask the question.

Liz came in, hung up her coat, sat down behind the counter, and Margaret simply looked up from her computer.

“Well?”

Liz froze.

“Well what?”

“Do not insult me.”

“I have not said anything.”

“Your face is screaming.”

Liz put her bag beneath the counter.

“My face should learn discretion.”

Margaret smiled.

“Did she come over?”

Liz lowered her eyes to the books waiting to be checked in.

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And we talked.”

“Of course.”

“We really did talk.”

“I do not doubt it.”

Liz felt heat rise in her cheeks.

Margaret approached with a stack of crime novels.

“Liz, I have worked with you long enough to know the difference between you simply ‘talking’ with someone and your entire world changing temperature.”

Liz said nothing.

Then, very quietly:

“I kissed her.”

Margaret did not squeal. She did not make a grand gesture. She did not turn the confession into a performance. She only set the books down on the counter with care.

“And how do you feel?”

Liz thought about it.

It was the question people should have asked more often in life.

Not what does it mean?

Not are you sure?

Not since when?

Only: how do you feel?

“Frightened,” she said. “But not unhappy.”

Margaret nodded.

“That is already a great deal.”

“I do not want to hurt her.”

“Then do not pretend.”

Liz looked up.

Margaret went on:

“You can be afraid. You can be lost. You can search for the words. But do not hide her behind your uncertainty. Not if she matters.”

Liz thought of Lelliana’s face in the mirror the night before. Of her sentence: I do not want to be your experiment.

“She matters,” Liz said.

Margaret smiled softly.

“Then begin there.”

For her part, Lelliana had an appallingly long day.

The hospital seemed determined to stretch every hour. The corridors were too white, the alarms too frequent, the patients too many, and her mind kept returning to the same image: Liz in front of the mirror, her hand on Lelliana’s cheek, the question before the kiss.

May I?

Lelliana had known harsher kisses.

Quicker kisses.

Kisses that wanted to prove something, win something, erase something.

Liz’s kiss had erased nothing.

It had written a new sentence over a page Lelliana had believed condemned.

During her break, Nadia found her sitting in a corner, smiling at her phone like a teenager in a romantic comedy.

“Oh no,” Nadia said.

Lelliana looked up.

“What?”

“It is worse than expected.”

“I work in a hospital. Be more precise about your disasters.”

Nadia sat opposite her.

“You have the look of someone who has been kissed properly.”

Lelliana nearly choked on her coffee.

“Nadia!”

“Am I right?”

“I refuse to answer that question inside a healthcare establishment.”

“So yes.”

Lelliana tried to keep a dignified expression.

She failed.

A smile escaped her, soft and almost shy.

Nadia’s face softened at once.

“Did it go well?”

Lelliana lowered her eyes to her paper cup.

“Yes.”

Then, after a silence:

“It was very gentle.”

She almost hated the fragility of her own voice.

Nadia did not tease her.

“You needed gentleness.”

Lelliana turned the cup between her hands.

“It frightens me.”

“Gentleness?”

“Yes. Because you get used to it quickly.”

Nadia did not answer right away.

“Then get used to it slowly.”

Lelliana smiled.

“That is what we said.”

“Good.”

“But there is another problem.”

“What problem?”

Lelliana glanced towards the break-room door, as if someone might overhear the confession.

“I do not know how to be with her outside.”

Nadia frowned slightly.

“Outside?”

“Under other people’s eyes. I know how to be desired by men who do not know me. I know how to laugh when people judge me. I know how to pretend the rumours do not touch me. But holding a girl’s hand in the street? Kissing her, maybe? Seeing the looks?”

She breathed in.

“I do not know if I will be brave.”

Nadia looked at her with a firm kind of tenderness.

“You do not have to be brave everywhere, all the time. But do not let other people’s shame decide the shape of your happiness.”

Lelliana remained silent.

The sentence was beautiful.

It was also terribly difficult to apply.

That evening, she arrived at Liz’s flat twenty minutes late, with a bag of pastries in addition to the biscuits she had come to reclaim, and her heart in disorder.

Liz opened the door.

This time, there was a second of silence before the words. A second in which they looked at each other with that new awareness: they had kissed. They knew the taste of each other. They could no longer pretend nothing had changed.

“Hi,” Liz said.

“Hi.”

Lelliana raised the bag.

“I bring an offering to negotiate the biscuits’ release.”

Liz stepped aside to let her in.

“They may be difficult to convince. They have developed an attachment to the shelf.”

“I understand. Your flat makes one want to become attached to things.”

Liz looked at her.

The compliment hung in the air.

Lelliana bit the inside of her cheek.

“I am nervous,” she announced.

Liz looked almost relieved.

“Me too.”

“Good. Then we are ridiculous together.”

“That is our specialty.”

They went into the living room. For a few minutes, they busied themselves with simple things: tea, plates, biscuits, cups. Useful gestures, because standing still with everything they felt would have been impossible.

When they sat on the sofa, closer than the night before but not quite touching, Lelliana looked down at her hands.

“I want to suggest something.”

Liz tensed slightly.

“All right.”

“Not dramatic.”

“You say that in a dramatic tone.”

“That is because my existence is theatrical.”

Liz smiled.

Lelliana inhaled.

“I would like us to go out tomorrow. Properly. Not just see each other here because it is easier not to have witnesses.”

Liz fell silent.

Lelliana hurried on:

“Not necessarily anything huge. Not necessarily with a name. But something outside. A walk. A coffee. A market. Somewhere we can be together without hiding in your living room.”

Liz looked at her for a long time.

“You want a date.”

The word landed gently.

Lelliana opened her mouth.

Closed it.

“I did not want to say it first.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to seem detached.”

“You failed.”

“I know.”

Liz let out a small laugh.

Then she set her cup on the coffee table.

“Yes.”

Lelliana blinked.

“Yes?”

“Yes, I want a date.”

The word made Liz blush at once, but she did not take it back.

Lelliana felt an immense warmth rise into her chest.

“All right,” she said.

“All right.”

They smiled at each other like two people who had just signed a dangerous pact with far too little caution.

The next day, they chose Columbia Road.

Lelliana had said flowers were a good idea because, unlike ice rinks, they did not generally try to kill people. Liz had answered that she did not trust plants that were too decorative.

But she came.

The flower market spilled over with colour, voices, and enormous bouquets carried like trophies. Sellers shouted prices, passers-by pushed between stalls, petals fell onto the wet paving stones. For once, London did not seem grey. It smelled of earth, rain, and cut stems.

Liz walked beside Lelliana, hands buried in the pockets of her dark coat. She had chosen a deep blue jumper, plain jeans, and ankle boots. Nothing very special. At least, that was what she had told herself after trying four outfits and hating each of them for different reasons.

Lelliana, of course, seemed to have stepped out of a painting about dangerous spring. A short black skirt, tights, boots, a fitted coat, her red hair loose over her shoulders. She drew glances without even trying.

Liz noticed them.

She also noticed the way Lelliana pretended not to notice them.

“So,” Lelliana said, stopping in front of a stall overflowing with tulips. “What is your official opinion on flowers?”

“They are suspicious.”

“Suspicious?”

“Beautiful for a few days, then they die dramatically in your kitchen.”

“Elizabeth, that is called poetry.”

“It is called poor life expectancy.”

Lelliana laughed.

The sound loosened something in Liz.

They moved between the stalls. Lelliana touched everything with her eyes first: peonies, roses, eucalyptus, little pots of herbs, branches of something white and delicate whose name Liz forgot immediately. Liz listened to her comment on colours, invent personalities for plants, accuse an orchid of arrogance.

It should have been easy.

It almost was.

Then Lelliana’s fingers brushed hers.

By accident, perhaps.

Or not.

Liz looked down.

Their hands were close between them, in the narrow space left by the crowd. Lelliana’s knuckles were pale from the cold. Liz felt the old instinct to retreat, to put both hands back in her pockets and pretend not to have noticed.

Instead, she left her hand where it was.

Lelliana glanced at her.

There was a question in her eyes.

Liz answered by opening her fingers slightly.

Lelliana took her hand.

It was a small gesture.

Absurdly small.

No music swelled. No one applauded. The market continued around them: shouting sellers, laughing couples, impatient cyclists, a dog wearing a yellow raincoat.

And yet, Liz felt as if she had just stepped onto a bridge with no guarantee it would hold.

Lelliana’s hand was warm.

Her thumb moved once against Liz’s skin, almost without meaning to.

“Still alive?” Lelliana asked lightly.

Liz kept her eyes on a bucket of daffodils.

“For now.”

“Excellent. A promising beginning.”

They walked like that for several minutes.

At first, Liz counted the looks.

A man in a wool hat glanced, then looked away. Two girls with coffee cups smiled at each other before passing them. An older woman stared a little too long. Someone’s gaze slid over their joined hands and continued on.

Nothing happened.

Everything happened.

Liz became aware of her body in a new way. Not with shame, exactly. With exposure. As if a private sentence had been written on her skin and the street was learning to read it.

Lelliana’s fingers tightened around hers.

“Too much?” she asked quietly.

Liz swallowed.

“A little.”

“Do you want me to let go?”

The question was simple.

The question mattered.

Liz looked at their hands.

“No.”

Lelliana did not answer, but her smile changed. It became smaller. Truer.

They stopped in front of a stall full of wild-looking flowers. The bouquets were imperfect, almost messy, with purple, white, yellow and green spilling out in every direction.

“Those,” Liz said.

Lelliana turned towards her.

“Those?”

“Yes. They look like they grew without asking anyone’s permission.”

The seller smiled, either because he had heard her or because he had long ago learned to smile at people who talked to flowers.

Lelliana looked at the bouquet.

Then at Liz.

“Are you buying me flowers, Elizabeth?”

Liz felt herself blush.

“Only because they are unruly and therefore remind me of you.”

“I am touched by this botanical insult.”

“You should be. It is expensive.”

Lelliana’s laughter made the seller wrap the bouquet with a grin.

When Liz paid, her hands were a little unsteady. She told herself it was because of the cold.

No one believed her, not even internally.

She handed the bouquet to Lelliana.

For a second, Lelliana did not take it.

Her eyes had gone too bright.

“What?” Liz asked, suddenly worried.

“Nothing.”

“You look like it is not nothing.”

Lelliana took the flowers slowly.

“No one has ever bought me flowers on a date before.”

The word date passed between them again.

This time, neither of them corrected it.

Liz’s throat tightened.

“That is unfortunate for everyone who came before me.”

Lelliana laughed, but the sound was damp around the edges.

“Very severe.”

“I am a librarian. We are trained in judgment.”

“I thought you did not judge me.”

Liz looked at her over the flowers.

“Not you. Everyone else.”

Lelliana’s expression softened so suddenly that Liz had to look away.

They continued down the street, flowers in Lelliana’s arms, hands no longer joined because the bouquet occupied her. That should have made things easier.

It did not.

Because just as they turned towards a quieter side street, Liz heard a voice.

“Lelli?”

Lelliana stopped.

Liz saw the change before she saw the person.

The shoulders tightening.

The smile appearing too quickly.

The light rearranging itself into armour.

Clara stood a few steps away, wrapped in a beige coat, a coffee in one hand, her blond hair falling perfectly over her shoulder. She looked from Lelliana to the bouquet, then to Liz.

Her eyes sharpened with interest.

“Well,” Clara said. “This is unexpected.”

Liz felt Lelliana’s hand vanish from the space near hers, though they had not been touching anymore. It was the absence that hurt.

“Clara,” Lelliana said brightly. Too brightly. “Hi.”

“Flower shopping?”

“Apparently. I am becoming a woman of taste. Terrifying for everyone.”

Clara’s gaze rested on the bouquet.

“Someone bought you flowers?”

The question was almost innocent.

Almost.

Lelliana lifted the bouquet slightly.

“Yes. They are emotionally unstable, so they suited the occasion.”

Liz stood beside her, cold spreading through her chest.

Clara looked at her.

“Liz, right?”

“Yes.”

“Nice to see you again.”

“You too.”

It was a lie, but a polite one.

Clara’s smile deepened.

“I did not know you two were… close.”

There it was.

The small pause.

The little open space in which Lelliana could have placed the truth.

Liz waited.

Lelliana laughed.

“We are walking. She is forcing me to do civilised activities because she thinks I was badly raised.”

“Brave of her,” Clara replied.

Her gaze returned to Liz.

“You have patience.”

Liz could have answered coldly.

She could have defended Lelliana again, like she had at the pub.

But this time, she remembered.

I hate being saved.

So she only looked at Lelliana.

The red-haired girl was still smiling, but her face looked pulled tight, as if every joke were carrying her farther from herself.

“We should go,” Liz said calmly.

Lelliana turned her head towards her.

“Yes. Of course.”

Clara waved.

“See you, Lelli.”

They walked away.

For several metres, neither of them spoke.

The bouquet trembled slightly in Lelliana’s hands.

Liz walked beside her with empty fingers and a tight throat. She hated what she felt: the wound, the shame of being wounded, the jealousy of Clara, the fear that Lelliana had regretted being seen with her.

At last, Lelliana stopped in front of a closed shop window.

“I am sorry.”

Liz did not look at her.

“Why?”

“Do not do that.”

“Do what?”

“Make me guess whether I hurt you when I know I did.”

Liz inhaled.

The glass in front of them reflected their silhouettes. Two young women standing side by side, a bouquet between them like an awkward apology.

“You dropped my hand.”

Lelliana closed her eyes.

“I know.”

“You acted as if we were… nothing.”

Liz’s voice almost broke on the last word.

Lelliana opened her eyes.

“It is not because I am ashamed of you.”

Liz finally looked at her.

“Then why?”

Lelliana gave a humourless laugh.

“Because I am ashamed of myself, perhaps.”

Liz said nothing.

The street was quieter here. The noises of the market still reached them from a distance, muffled.

Lelliana hugged the bouquet to her.

“When Clara saw me with you, I immediately imagined what she would think. What she would tell the others. That now I do this too. That I am looking for attention. That I am playing with a serious girl because men are no longer enough for my reputation.”

Liz felt her anger change shape.

It did not disappear.

But it became sadder.

“And me?” she asked. “Did you imagine what I might feel?”

The question was gentle.

That was worse.

Lelliana lowered her head.

“Not quickly enough.”

Liz looked back at the window.

In the reflection, for a second, her face overlapped with a memory of Victoria. Not an apparition. Not really. Only that old idea: someone you love can disappear between two gestures.

A hand released.

A hand withdrawn.

Liz drew a difficult breath.

“I cannot be hidden,” she said. “Not after spending years living halfway with ghosts.”

Lelliana looked up.

Her eyes were shining.

“I do not want to hide you.”

“But you were afraid.”

“Yes.”

“So was I.”

The silence tightened.

Liz went on:

“I do not know yet which word to use for myself. For us. I do not know how to walk down the street without noticing every look. But I know I do not want what we are to become a joke the moment someone sees us.”

Lelliana wiped a tear away quickly with the tip of her finger, furious with herself.

“I am sorry.”

Liz looked at her.

Lelliana was no longer smiling.

She was no longer performing.

“I do not want to be a coward with you,” she said. “But sometimes I may be before I understand that I am. I learned to survive by turning everything into a joke. Even what hurt. Especially what hurt.”

Liz remained silent.

Then she held out her hand.

Not to take.

To offer.

The way they had begun to learn.

Lelliana looked at that hand with an almost painful emotion.

“Are you still angry?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And you are letting me take it anyway?”

“Yes.”

Lelliana placed her fingers in hers.

Liz squeezed gently.

“I can be angry and stay,” she said.

Lelliana closed her eyes for a second.

“All right.”

The word seemed to learn how to breathe between them.

All right.

Not perfect.

Not repaired.

But possible.

They stayed there, hand in hand in front of the shop window, until the tension eased a little.

Then Lelliana raised the bouquet.

“These flowers deserve better than our first semi-public crisis.”

“That was our first semi-public crisis?”

“Yes. I keep a register.”

Liz’s mouth tilted into a small smile.

“And the argument at the pub?”

“That was a founding crisis. Different category.”

“You categorise our arguments?”

“I am trying to give my emotions an administrative structure.”

“I should be proud.”

“You inspire me.”

They laughed softly.

Not to avoid the pain.

To come back from it.

They walked on, this time without trying to prove anything. After a few minutes, Lelliana took Liz’s hand again. Not at once. Not as a forced repair. As a renewed choice.

Liz let her.

They found a small cafe at the end of a side street, almost empty. They sat near the window. The bouquet was placed in a glass of water the waiter brought them, in the middle of the table, between their cups.

“We should add a rule,” Liz said.

Lelliana ran a hand through her hair.

“About flowers?”

“About jokes.”

Lelliana grimaced.

“Ouch.”

“Not all jokes. I do not want to destroy your entire identity.”

“Thank you for preserving my cultural heritage.”

Liz smiled, then grew serious again.

“But if one of us jokes to deny something important, the other gets to point it out.”

Lelliana thought for a moment.

“With a code word?”

“A code word?”

“Yes. Otherwise it may become terribly solemn. I am allergic to prolonged solemnity.”

“Fine. What word?”

Lelliana looked at the bouquet.

“Chrysanthemum.”

Liz blinked.

“That is a terrible code word.”

“Exactly. Impossible to ignore.”

“You are really going to say ‘chrysanthemum’ when I run away from an emotion?”

“With absolute seriousness.”

Liz sighed.

“Accepted.”

Lelliana pulled out her phone.

“I am adding it to the rules.”

“You have a note?”

“Obviously. Our alliance deserves a digital archive.”

Liz watched her type.

“Lelliana?”

“Yes?”

“Was this a date?”

Lelliana’s fingers stopped above the screen.

She looked up.

Liz seemed calm, but her hands betrayed her anxiety around her cup.

Lelliana put her phone down.

“Yes.”

A small smile appeared on Liz’s lips.

“Even with the semi-public crisis?”

“Especially with the semi-public crisis. It proves we are not pretending to be perfect.”

Liz lowered her eyes, but the smile remained.

“Then I had my first date with a woman.”

The sentence was fragile.

Lelliana heard it.

She also heard the courage it had taken to say it.

“And I,” she said softly, “had my first date with someone who bought me flowers without expecting me to become someone else.”

Liz looked up.

The cafe around them seemed to grow quieter.

Lelliana reached across the table.

Liz took her hand.

They did not kiss there.

Not because they were ashamed.

Because the hand was enough for that moment.

Because, after the fear in the street, this public quiet felt almost enormous.

Later, when they left the cafe, night was beginning to fall. The bouquet was in Lelliana’s arms, a little tilted now, already less perfect than it had been at the market.

They reached the bus stop.

As always, there was that strange moment when the world reminded them they had to separate.

The bus was due in four minutes.

Lelliana looked at Liz.

“May I kiss you?”

The question made Liz smile before she even answered.

“Yes.”

The kiss was light.

Public.

Very brief.

A man passed without looking at them. A woman near the stop barely smiled before returning to her phone. The sky did not fall. The city did not stop.

But for Liz, something gigantic had just happened.

Lelliana rested her forehead against hers for one second.

“I was afraid,” she whispered.

“Me too.”

“But I am glad I did it.”

“Me too.”

The bus arrived.

Lelliana climbed on with the bouquet against her chest, then turned back.

“Elizabeth?”

“Yes?”

“Chrysanthemum.”

Liz frowned.

“Already?”

“Yes. Because I am about to make a joke to hide that I am very moved and want to cry on public transport.”

Warmth spread through Liz’s chest.

“Then do not make a joke.”

Lelliana breathed in.

Her eyes were shining.

“Thank you for my first real date.”

Liz smiled gently.

“Thank you for mine.”

The doors closed.

The bus moved away into the London night.

Liz stayed on the pavement, hands in her pockets, her lips still marked by that discreet kiss.

When she got home, she stopped in front of the hallway mirror.

This time, Victoria appeared.

Or perhaps she did not.

Perhaps it was only exhaustion, light, memory.

But Liz thought she saw, behind her own reflection, her sister’s face. Not sad. Not accusing. Almost amused.

As if Victoria were finally saying:

See? You do not have to stay alone with me.

Liz placed her fingers on the glass.

“I had a date,” she murmured.

The silence did not answer.

But Liz smiled anyway.

A message arrived on her phone a few minutes later.

Lelliana: I am home. The flowers are in a glass. They look less traumatised than we do.

Liz replied:

Liz: They are resilient. Like our alliance.

Three little dots appeared.

Then:

Lelliana: Our alliance has survived an ice rink, a pub, Clara, a semi-public crisis and an unpronounceable code word. I am starting to think it is serious.

Liz looked at the mirror.

Then at the screen.

She wrote slowly:

Liz: Me too.

This time, she did not correct herself.

She did not search for another name.

She let the sentence exist.

And in the silent room, the word serious did not frighten her as much as it used to.