Somewhere Only We Know: The bestselling laugh out loud millenial romantic comedy

“Third wheel?” she’d echoed. “Don’t be silly. What if we’re more like a tricycle, you, me and Ror?” But that was just her being sweet, of course, and it didn’t change the fact that Alex was well and truly a sad little unicycle, all on his own.

On the face of it, it should all have been so different. Lila was his friend, or she had been, back at university, anyway. Sure, they may have fallen out of touch for a couple of years, but fate had intervened in the end. It was one of those “six degrees of separation” things; she was in a house-share with someone who was casually dating a mate of Rory’s from work. If that mate hadn’t thrown a house party at exactly that point in time, in a city of eight million people, Lila Palmer may just have remained an obscure Facebook Friend. And Rory – Alex's taller, darker, richer and generally more attractive flatmate – would never have met her. But meet they did, and within two weeks she was sitting sheepishly across the breakfast table from Alex wearing Rory’s dressing gown and exchanging awkward small talk about how life had been to them since graduation. And within six weeks, Alex was painfully certain he was in love with her.

Alex remained stupidly paused in the doorframe as Lila followed her boyfriend into his bedroom, chattering away brightly as she’d just been doing in the kitchen with him; the bedroom door was kicked closed, almost like an afterthought. He guessed he wouldn’t be getting to hear what else Lila thought about David Beckham, not that night anyway.

Alex jumped as his saucepan of veg finally boiled dry on the hob, hissing loudly as if it was as pissed off with Alex as he was with himself.

Nadia

Nadia was home from her shift at the shop a little later than usual for a Thursday evening; she’d stopped off at Tesco to buy herself a cheap (but probably not that nutritious) dinner of value-brand instant noodles (supposedly “chicken flavour” but ominously suitable for vegans). Holly was already home when she got there, sitting awkwardly on the very edge of the sofa cushions, knees and ankles together, shoes still on. An impossibly crisp white envelope sat on the coffee table in front of her.

“It came, then?” Nadia asked, in a ridiculously calm voice.

“It came,” Holly confirmed, pressing her palms to her knees, as if she was physically stopping herself ripping open the letter herself.

“Hmmm.” Instead of pouncing on the piece of paper that pronounced her future, Nadia walked into the kitchen and began methodically unpacking her shopping into the cupboards. Holly came to stand in the doorway.

“Well, aren’t you going to open it?” she asked, incredulously.

“In a minute,” Nadia replied.

“How can you wait?”

Nadia turned and rested her hands behind her on the kitchen counter. “I just need a minute, Hol, okay?”

“But…"

“That letter quite possibly tells me that I need to pack up and leave everything I know.” Nadia tried for a light tone but failed miserably. “Let me just have a few more minutes in blissful ignorance, please.”

“Oh, hun.” Holly crossed the kitchen and pulled her friend into a hug. “You haven’t been thinking that, have you? They’re not going to deport you. You’ve lived here since you were a little kid. You’ve paid taxes here. You probably speak better English than me – and definitely better English than Ledge!” Nadia gave a weak little smile. “Everything’s going to be fine,” Holly promised. “Let’s open the letter.”

Nadia could barely open the envelope, her finger clumsily sticking as she used it to try and rip the seal. She shook the contents into her lap. A shiny folded booklet fell out first: a multi-ethnic group of people smiling out at her from under dark turbans and brightly coloured hijabs. It was followed by one piece of A4 paper, just one. Nadia tried to read every word at once; the print just swam before her eyes. She swallowed and cleared her throat, focusing on the familiarity of her name at the head of the letter and slowly fragments started to make sense.

Dear Miss Osipova… regret to inform you… application has been denied on the grounds that you have spent more than 450 days out of the country during your residency here… vacate the country within three months…

Nadia couldn’t read any further. She let the piece of paper fall to her lap on top of the leaflet and pressed the hands that had been holding it against her temples. Vacate the country. In three months she would be back living with her parents, something she hadn't done since before she was a teenager. She’d have to go and live in a country that she barely knew. She may not have ever been totally accepted as British – her surname and her international school accent and her constant visa issues had never allowed for that – but it was even worse when she was back in Russia.

She spoke the language perfectly, of course – she had to, as neither of her parents spoke English – but she never managed to be quite au fait with things like the current slang or the latest fad, always earmarking her out as a foreigner in the country of her birth. She may never have fully belonged in England, but then she’d never quite felt as though she’d ever belonged in Russia, either. And at least here she had her flat, her friends – and a collection of close-to-useless degrees and qualifications sitting atop a mountain of student debt, none of which had mattered to the Home Office, or were any bloody good to her now. She felt sick to her core.

It took Nadia a moment to realise that Holly was speaking.

“We’ll all be behind you, Nads; it’ll come off. You’ll see,” she was finishing, her face hopeful. She’d taken the discarded letter from Nadia’s knees and was holding it against her own.

“What’ll come off?”

“The appeal.” Nadia stared at her friend vacantly. “The appeal they’re suggesting you do?” When Nadia continued to look blank Holly began to read aloud from the paragraph Nadia had given up before getting to.

“'However, we do accept that you may exhibit appropriate grounds for claiming ‘private life’ here in the UK under the Article 8 Law. You have not been a UK resident for the 20 years that is required in your case, but – due to your comparatively young age – a Court of Appeals judge may be able to arbitrate on this further. Please find enclosed a leaflet on how to progress your appeal should you not be satisfied with our decision to deny you Indefinite Leave to Remain in the United Kingdom. Please note, however, that there will only be scope for one appeal and that the decision of which is final and binding. Costs will not be awarded'.”

Wordlessly Nadia took the letter back from Holly and read the concluding paragraph for herself.

“This is good news,” Holly beamed, getting to her feet. “Let’s celebrate.”

By the time Holly returned from the kitchen with two gently steaming mugs of milky tea, Nadia had re-read the entire letter three times and still wasn’t sure how she felt about it.

“Do you want to get a takeaway in tonight?” Holly asked, setting the drink down in front of her silent flatmate. "The cupboards are a bit bare for a celebratory meal."

“Oh, Hols. Thanks. I’m just… not so sure that we should be celebrating as such, at least not yet,” Nadia admitted, her eyes drawn back to the letter again.

“What do you mean? Okay, I know it’s not exactly what we were hoping, but at least it’s not a ‘no’.”

Nadia stared at her. “It is a no. It’s quite clearly a no.”

“I think it's a strong ‘maybe’,” Holly argued. “They wouldn’t bother suggesting that you appeal if they didn’t think you had a good chance.”

“I know, I know. It’s just…” Nadia sighed. “It’s just who knows how much longer I won’t know where I stand, you know? How much longer am I going to be driving my parents into debt in order to get my rent paid?” She considered the letter closely again. “I reckon it might just be stall tactics; they’re hoping I give up and leave the country of my own accord.”

“Nadia, it’s just typical government red tape, not some sort of plot against you personally,” Holly frowned. “I think they’re being quite decent, actually, flagging up that you have the right of appeal rather than burying it in the small print.”

“You’re right. I just thought – either way – that this would all be sorted out today. I hate the not knowing.”

“Isn’t it better that you’re still in the dark, but still here?” Holly asked, quietly. “Rather than having to turn on your laptop to book a plane ticket right now?”

“Of course it is.” Nadia looked at her friend. They’d been inseparable since their school days. She noticed how white Holly’s fingers were as she held her mug of tea and remembered how pale her face had looked before the letter had been opened. She forgot sometimes that the not knowing was hard on her friends, too.

“I think I want… Chinese for dinner, then,” Nadia grinned, folding up the Home Office letter and slipping it safely back into its envelope, along with the appeals leaflet.

“I could go for some Chinese,” Holly agreed, thoughtfully. “The usual?”

“Of course.”

“Right, well I’ll get the order in. You” – Holly pointed mock-seriously at Nadia – “Go and call your parents and tell them the good news, right now.”

Alex

Thursday was Alex’s weekly “keeping up appearances” session at the gym. When he got home Rory was sitting on the sofa with a PlayStation controller in hand, besocked-feet up on the coffee table next to the remnants of a ready-meal curry, the neon-bright sauce already congealing on the white plate.

“No Lila this evening, then?” Alex asked, as he dropped his satchel onto a nearby chair.

Rory called up the menu to pause the game. “Nah. Good day? Kill any terrorists?”

Alex was never sure if this was just a long-running joke or if there was a part of Rory that genuinely believed his flatmate might be the British Jack Bauer. “No, not today.”

“You need to step up your game,” Rory told him matter-of-factly, starting up his own again. Alex sat down heavily on the sofa next to him, pulling the shoe off one of his feet with the other, relaxed in a way he never quite could be when he knew Lila was in the flat. He watched Rory progress through the level with a critical eye.

“No, you need to go up to the top of the general store. There’s a weapons’ cache up there. And a window with a great vantage point for shooting from,” he ordered.

Rory shot him a quick look whilst continuing what he was doing. “You really do know this game like the back of your hand, don’t you?” Alex shrugged. “You need to get out more,” Rory frowned, only half-joking.

Alex just shrugged again. “You have a girl, I have a game,” he replied with a sigh, also only half-joking. They sat in a comfortable silence punctuated only by the repetitive gunfire emanating from the television’s speakers.

“Do you want to maybe pub it tomorrow night?” Rory asked, casually. “We can hit Clapham High Street, you know that’s where all the totty is.”

Alex rolled his eyes. “Thanks, but no thanks, at least on the totty front. Pub sounds good, though.”

Rory continued, undeterred. “This guy at work says there’s an epic pub quiz in one of the places by the Tube, loads of film-based questions and stuff, apparently. And people stay on in the place afterwards because they do a tray of Jagerbombs for, like, a tenner.”

“A tray?” Alex echoed.

“A tray,” Rory assured him.

“A tray of shots sounds a little heavy for a Friday night…” Alex said, tilting his head back against the sofa. Rory rolled his eyes and paused the video game once again.

“Look, I’m going to make this easy for you, okay? Go to Clapham Common Tube after work tomorrow. I’ll find out the name of this pub from the girl at work and text it to you. You and I will then drink beer, astound everyone present with our fantastic general knowledge, win some cash, then spend it on trays of shots. You got it?”

Alex couldn’t really argue with that. “Okay, sounds good,” he smiled, getting to his feet to go and forage in the kitchen cupboards for something for dinner.

“Cool,” Rory said, starting his game up again. “I’ll tell Lila to get there early and make sure we get a good table.”

Alex raised his eyes to the ceiling, pleading for patience. Of course Lila was going to be there. Of bloody course.

Nadia

Nadia was just trying to have one evening where she didn’t have to think or talk about her immigration status. Unfortunately, nobody seemed to have got the memo.

“I really wish you’d let me get you some legal representation,” Caro said, frowning, using one finger to delicately scroll on her iPad. “The information on the Home Office website makes the whole process seem very obtuse.”

“Yeah, but the information in this leaflet makes the whole thing look like a piece of piss,” Ledge argued, waving said leaflet for emphasis. “Don’t worry, Nads. You turn up to court, you give ‘em a big smile, you present your case and then the judge goes, cool, I see that you totally should be allowed to stay in Britain, sorry for the inconvenience love, bosh, done.”

Holly rolled her eyes over her cousin’s head and silenced herself with a substantial gulp of wine.

“Do you think that you could get one of the managers from your old company to be there in the court with you?” Caro continued, ignoring Ledge. “If this whole thing is hinging on how much of a ‘private life’ you have in the UK, the wider range of people we can get to show their face on your behalf, the better.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I’ll email them when I’ve got the court date,” Nadia replied, reaching for the wine bottle and topping up her glass, even though it was still half full. So much for having a nice night in to distract her from her visa woes.

“Hope you get it confirmed sooner rather than later,” Holly said. “It’ll definitely be a weekday, won’t it? And it’s an absolute bitch for me to get time off work at the moment.” Holly worked for a charity HQ, but her managers were the most hard-nosed, hard-arsed businessmen anyone could ever come across.

“Well, I’ll be there!” Caro said, giving Nadia a clumsy one-armed hug, causing both of their glasses to slop wine.

“Well, it’s not like you have to worry about getting your annual leave approved,” Holly remarked, her tone sweetly polite. Caro just screwed up her nose and stuck out her tongue in eloquent response before releasing Nadia and turning her attention back to her iPad. Holly and Caro had a strange relationship; they were both close to Nadia and so spent an inordinate amount of time together, but Nadia sometimes wondered if the two girls would even bother keeping in touch were she to be deported back to Russia…

Deported back to Russia. Nadia sighed and topped up her wine glass some more.

“And I’ll be there too,” Ledge said, hefting himself to his feet and shuffling towards the kitchen. At the door, he turned back. “Hey, what are you planning to do about your ‘boyfriend’?” he asked, genuinely curious.

Nadia jolted, her brimming glass of wine halfway to her mouth, sloshing chilled Pinot against her collarbones. She stared up at Ledge in horror.

“Her boyfriend?” Caro echoed, confused, looking from one to the other. “What boyfriend?”

“The one she mentions on her application form,” Ledge replied. “You know? The one I ‘play football’ with?” he clarified, with air-quotes to belie the lie he gave in his letter of support to Nadia’s application.

“Oh.” Caro settled back uncomfortably against the legs of the sofa. “That boyfriend…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Holly said immediately. “They wouldn’t necessarily be expecting him in court, and even if they are, you can always just say you two just… broke up…”

“But that doesn’t reflect that well on Nadia,” Caro said, alarmed, sitting forward once again. “Besides, having a British boyfriend has got to be a massive box-tick for these people. You can’t get much more of a private life than that!”

“Guys!” Nadia pleaded, dabbing her neck with the drier part of her top.

“Ledge, how do you feel about telling the government that you’re seeing Nadia?” Holly asked her cousin, her ‘business’ expression firmly in place.

“Hols,” Nadia tried again.

“I don’t think that would work,” Ledge replied slowly. “Didn’t I say in my letter that me and her were really good mates, and that I play football with her boyfriend? Matthew, did we call him, in the end? Yeah, we used your dad's name, didn't we? It’ll be too suspicious if we change the story now.”

“We should have thought this through,” Caro said, crossly. “We should have said that Ledge was the boyfriend from the start.”

“Come on, guys! It’s the government! They must get these sort of lies every day.” Nadia rolled her eyes. “We wouldn’t get away with it.”

“Well, we won’t get away with it now,” Caro grumbled, glaring at Ledge as if it was his own personal failing that they as a group hadn’t contrived to swindle the British government at an earlier stage. “We need to think of something.”

“Why don’t we just advertise me as a Russian bride to some sad old man on the internet?” Nadia suggested, sarcastically. “He’ll save money on the shipping, because I’m already here!”

“Well,” Caro said, winking as she reached for her wine glass. “Okay, it’s not the best idea, but in theory…”

“Seems to me we just need to find some guy called Matthew and make him fall in love with Nads,” Ledge proposed, returning to the living room with a cold beer.

Nadia spluttered again. “I'm sorry, I'm not quite sure if you guys are joking or not?"

“At the very least, we should all keep our eyes out for any eligible British citizens called Matthew,” Holly argued, ignoring Nadia's protests. “There’s no harm in that!”

“Yeah,” Ledge agreed. “There must be thousands of guys called Matthew hanging around South London.”

“Well, at least a handful of them anyway,” Caro granted.

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