Somewhere Only We Know: The bestselling laugh out loud millenial romantic comedy. Erin Lawless
Budgens, though. I think I’ve got a few quid somewhere.”
Holly cocked her head to one side and looked at her friend with exaggerated pity. “Oh, stop it, you’re breaking my heart,” she said, sarcastically. “Go and put some slap on, already. I've been cooped up in that office all week; I'm definitely up to stretching to a few drinks tonight."
Nadia laughed, easily persuaded. “Okay, sounds good. But I will still go and spend my few precious pounds on that bottle; we can drink it while we’re getting ready.”
“Sounds good. But I think I’m on the Mojitos later. I just really fancy a Mojito. Must be the weather.”
“Okay, but please, let’s not wind up in that dive bar again, drinking double-strength Mojitos at four in the morning. You know I had to throw away that top after last time? I loved that top!”
“I make no promises!” Holly laughed. “At four in the morning the liver wants what the liver wants.”
“I guess it wouldn’t do to mess with tradition,” Nadia said thoughtfully; “especially as I am ‘constantly mindful and respectful of historic and cultural traditions’,” she laughed, quoting her recent visa application essay. Holly herself had come up with that particular piece of crap.
“Agreed. A night where we hit Clapham High Street and didn’t over-indulge just wouldn’t be the same. Right! Do you think I'll be way too hot in my skinny jeans?” The cheap Ikea bureau in her bedroom groaned as Holly yanked open one of the drawers.
And Nadia thought it, but didn't say it: this could be one of the last nights that she and Holly ever drank Mojitos together.
Alex
Alex had never had much of a life plan. He had an average grade in a broad subject, which – if anything – opened up too much choice, but the Home Office recruitment booth, decked out in Union Jack bunting, had immediately drawn his attention at that first careers fair. Seduced by aspirations of martinis – shaken, not stirred, naturally – and daydreams of parkouring across Middle Eastern rooftops after bad guys, Alex immediately signed up for their fast-track graduate scheme. Of course, it was just a desk job, the same as any other, and – with the recession double-dipping away – one that turned out to have no career progression, bonuses or benefits. Every year staff were reminded that their relatively low salary should be bolstered by a sense of accomplishment in knowing that they were working for the good of their country, which in the case of Alex’s role seemed to primarily consist of preventing people’s access to it.
Monday morning meant a whole new batch of applications. Almost all of them would be the usual – EU citizens looking for student, or sometimes spousal, visas. All Alex had to do at this point was read through them, making sure the applicant had ticked the right boxes – both literally and figuratively – before sending those who’d got everything right up the management chain.
It was all achingly repetitive – the insincere protestations of patriotism, the stiff Google-translated English, the bored-sounding formal references from companies who’d had the person in for an internship years ago…
“One time, Nadia and I were watching University Challenge; the round was politics and she got every question but one absolutely right. How many natural British citizens do you think know that much about their country?”
Alex blinked and re-read the opening line of the letter he’d just picked up. He felt his mouth twitch into a smile; it was a fair point. He skimmed through the rest of the wonderfully effusive letter, particularly affectionate sentences jumping out from the long, rambling paragraphs.
“Nadia knows and excels at all the dance moves to Steps’ ‘Tragedy’ and ‘5-6-7-8’. Her ‘Macarena’ isn’t great, though.”
“She ran a half-marathon dressed in a hot pink bra with me to raise money for breast cancer after my aunt died of it.”
“I honestly think that were Prince Harry to meet Nadia, he’d probably want to marry her. How can you deny a potential future princess of this great nation the leave to remain in it?”
“If Nadia is removed from the country, you will be breaking up an epic pub quiz team. We win the Bellevue’s quiz almost every week and would have serious trouble finding a replacement with Nadia’s niche knowledge.”
Alex felt his smile grow wider as he read on; this was mildly insane.
The concluding paragraph was neat and controlled and out of place in the general sprawl of the letter as a whole – as if the writer had belatedly remembered that she was writing a formal letter to the government.
“You will know ‘Nadezhda Osipova’ from all your forms, papers and records. I hope, however, that I have been able to introduce you to ‘Nadia’ – the very best person I will ever know. I hope this slightly irreverent – but heartfelt! – letter has gone some way towards convincing you that she should have the right to remain in the UK on the grounds that she has an established private life due to her long residency here. Losing her would be like losing an arm. Please grant Nadia Osipova Indefinite Leave to Remain.”
Alex lingered on the last sentence, his smile fading, awkwardness returning. Like it was that easy! Especially not for Russian nationals. He flicked back to the personal details form on the front of the application pack and took a more interested look. The twenty-six-year-old Nadezhda Osipova had been resident in the UK since she was eleven, when she’d enrolled in a prestigious boarding school just outside London. After graduating she’d clung on to her residency here by jumping from one temporary visa to another. But that particular cat was now out of lives.
Nadezhda ‘Nadia’ Osipova’s immigration history was an absolute headache. Each year when her school had closed for the summer break she’d been shunted back across to her parents in Russia. She’d gone budget backpacking during her student years, taken typical beach holidays with mates, skied in the spring, returned to her family each Christmas. He wondered what the girl’s immigration lawyer was thinking. There was no way she was going to get Indefinite Leave to Remain with all of these random, elongated absences from the country.
Feeling a little heavy, he read the rest of Nadezhda's supporting letters, which were all focusing on the same theme. He returned to the first and re-read it. It had got to be one of the stupidest letters he'd seen in his long years at the Home Office – and this made it strangely fascinating. He couldn't deny it had hit its mark, though, because he found that he really was seeing Nadia, the charity-marathon running, pub quiz-winning, cheesy-dancing friend, rather than Nadezhda, the foreign national, who he knew wasn’t going to make the cut.
And so that’s probably why, despite knowing that his manager would most likely toss the application out, Alex wished Nadezhda Osipova well and passed her up the chain.
Nadia
Ten weeks after her work visa had been taken away from her, Nadia had finished reading every book in the flat and given it two spring-cleans. Ledge had kindly given her access to his Netflix account and she’d racked up hundreds of hours of watching questionable American drama. She wandered up and down the high street, window-shopping for things she couldn’t have afforded even before she lost her salary. She was bored, bored, bored.
So the three-days-a-week volunteer position at the local Oxfam shop was a godsend. It didn’t pay her, so it didn’t contravene the conditions of her immigration status, but it kept her busy and out of her own head, where these days she did almost nothing but obsess. Unfortunately, people weren’t really knocking down the door lately – to donate or to buy – and so Nadia spent a large proportion of each day needlessly rearranging the musty stock, or picking a book off the shelf to leaf through as she perched on the wobbly stool behind the ancient till.
On Tuesdays, though, Caro had no classes and usually came into the shop for an hour or two’s chat. It was, she cheerfully admitted, the only time in her life she ever contemplated setting foot in a charity shop.