The bar laughed. She didn't.

The bar laughed. She didn't. That's the whole night in two votes.

Cara — Manchester via Camden, bottle-blonde, very direct. Three times she's seen the hour. I wanted to ask what the third viewing added. I didn't. I let her hand stay on my forearm because Yara was ninety seconds from the door and some private part of me wanted to be caught. That's a bit I'll never write. It wouldn't land anyway.

Yara's face did a thing it doesn't usually do. New entry in the catalogue. The one that means she's already written the scene and is just watching me confirm it. I tried to confirm it wrong. The bar thought the joke was audience research. The bar was wrong. Yara knew the bar was wrong. That's why nobody important laughed.

She said don't on the walk up the hill. One word. I still don't know what it was preventing — an apology, a text, a knock, a confession. I didn't do the thing. I don't know what the thing was.

The kitchen. Shirt still on. Kettle boiled, no tea. The Scotsman review folded in the back pocket of my jeans on the chair across the room. More in him than he's letting show. Everyone keeps saying that from different doors — the podcast, the review, Kate would. They're all knocking on the same room and I'm the locked bit.

Manchester keeps finding me. Yesterday a bloke, today a woman, same accent, same question I keep dodging. Manchester is where I learned to go first so I'd never find out what I'd have said if I'd shut up.

Phone face down on the duvet. Yara's last text says goodnight. With the period that means it isn't.

Not texting Cara. Not texting anyone. Lying here with the review in my jeans like a letter I keep meaning to open properly and never do.