The Unspoken Arrangement

From the armchair, its floral pattern worn smooth in the places they both always sat, Kyra watched Sophie. The book in her lap was open to page forty-seven, but her eyes were fixed over the top of it, focused on the way the evening light from the window caught the fine hairs at Sophie’s temple.

Sophie was curled into the far corner of the sofa, her body arranged in a familiar posture of digital anxiety. Her thumb moved in a short, repetitive swipe across the phone’s screen. It was a gesture Kyra knew meant she was reading something she did not want to be reading. A moment later, Sophie’s free hand came up to push a strand of hair back behind her ear. It was a movement so practiced and unconscious, so fundamentally Sophie, that seeing it felt like an echo of a thousand other evenings, stretching back through the six years they had lived together in this flat.

A low noise of frustration vibrated in Sophie’s throat. “I am going to commit a murder.”

Kyra kept a finger pressed to her page, a pretense of being interrupted. “Your mother?” she asked. It was, statistically, the most likely option.

“Worse,” Sophie said, her voice flat. “Aunt Carol.” She tossed the phone onto the cushion beside her as if it had personally offended her. It landed with a soft thud. “She’s sent a follow-up email.”

“A follow-up to the invitation you’ve been using as a coaster?”

“That’s the one.” Sophie let her head fall back against the sofa, her gaze landing on the faint, brownish water stain on the ceiling they’d been meaning to paint over for a year. “My cousin Sarah’s wedding. In Wexford.”

“The barn-dance wedding,” Kyra said, recalling the details.

“The very same.” Sophie closed her eyes, a flicker of pain crossing her face. “But the forced folk-dancing isn’t the issue. The issue is that my aunt has decided this is the perfect, unmissable opportunity to introduce me to the son of one of her bridge friends. A ‘lovely, stable young man who works in finance’.” She said the last part in a high, simpering imitation of her aunt’s voice.

Kyra felt a smile form. “Sounds promising. What’s his name?”

“I have no idea. Probably something aggressively normal like ‘Mark’ or ‘David’.” Sophie sat up, grabbing a cushion and hugging it to her chest like a shield. “She says he’s ‘very handsome’ and that we’ll have ‘so much in common,’ which is her code for he’s breathing and owns a tie. She’s already planned our first three children in her head. I can feel her projecting it at me through the internet.”

Kyra watched the agitated energy radiating from her. Sophie’s cheeks were flushed with a familiar, righteous indignation that made her look younger, more like she had when they first met at university. Kyra found she enjoyed seeing her like this, wound up over something so mundane it became monumental.

“You could just say no to the setup,” Kyra suggested, knowing the suggestion was useless.

“And endure the phone call? ‘But why, Sophie? You’re not getting any younger, you know. Is there a reason you don’t want to meet a nice man?’ She’ll do the sad, concerned head-tilt, I know she will. It’s emotionally violent.”

“Emotionally violent,” Kyra repeated, testing the weight of the phrase.

“Yes. It is.” Sophie’s expression was deadly serious. “It makes me want to show up with some completely unsuitable person just to watch her face implode. Or just not go. Claim I have a sudden case of… I don’t know, scurvy.”

“You used ‘imminent nervous breakdown’ for your cousin Paul’s christening,” Kyra reminded her gently.

“Did I?” Sophie frowned. “Right. Well. I need a new strategy.”

She fell silent then, her fingers picking at a loose thread on the cushion. The problem had been presented, inflated with dramatic language, and now it hung in the quiet air of their living room, waiting to dissipate. It was a routine they knew well. Kyra looked down at her book, at the dense, unread paragraph where her finger was still resting. She thought about the ‘lovely, stable young man’ in finance and felt a strange, sour knot form low in her stomach. It was an unpleasant and unwelcome sensation, one she chose not to examine too closely. She just knew she did not like the idea of him at all.

The following Saturday, Kyra found herself in a bookshop near the canal, running a finger along the spines of modern poetry collections she had no intention of buying. It was a way to pass the afternoon, to feel like a person who did things like browse for poetry on a Saturday. The air smelled of paper and dust and brewed coffee from the small café at the back. It was quiet, the kind of quiet that felt purposeful.

Then she saw him. Liam. He was standing two aisles over, in the history section, his back to her. Even from a distance, she recognized the shape of his shoulders, the way he tilted his head when he was concentrating. A cold, heavy feeling dropped through her stomach, the way it does when you miss a step in the dark. Her first instinct was to turn and walk out, but she was frozen in place, trapped by the social convention that would make a sudden exit seem strange and significant.

He wasn’t alone. A woman stood beside him, her head angled towards his. She was laughing softly at something he’d said, a low, private sound. She was tall, with a curtain of dark, glossy hair that fell perfectly straight to her shoulders. She wore a camel-coloured coat that looked expensive and soft, draped over a cream-coloured knit jumper. Everything about her seemed deliberate and clean. Kyra looked down at her own jeans, which had a faint, pale stain of indeterminate origin near the knee, and her scuffed trainers.

As if sensing her gaze, Liam turned. His eyes met hers over the top of a display of biographies. For a second, his expression was blank with non-recognition, and then it sharpened. “Kyra,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

He walked towards her, the woman following a half-step behind. Kyra forced her mouth into a shape that she hoped resembled a casual smile.

“Liam. Hi.” Her own voice sounded thin.

“How are you?” he asked. It was the universal, meaningless opening.

“Good, yeah. You?”

“Good,” he said. He gestured to the woman beside him, who was offering Kyra a polite, closed-lip smile. Her teeth were probably perfect. “This is Amelia.”

“Hi,” Kyra said to her. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” Amelia said. Her voice was as smooth and placid as her expression. She looked from Kyra to Liam, her eyes asking a silent question that Kyra could not read. She seemed entirely untroubled.

An awful silence stretched between the three of them. Kyra could feel the effort of her smile straining the muscles in her face. She tried to think of something to say, something normal and breezy, but her mind was a frantic, empty space. She was intensely aware of the poetry book she was still holding, as if it were a prop in a poorly rehearsed play.

“Well,” Liam said, breaking the quiet. He shifted his weight. “We were just heading off.”

“Right,” Kyra said. “Okay.”

“Good to see you,” he said. The words were automatic, drained of any real meaning.

“You too.”

He gave her a final, small nod, and then he and Amelia turned. Kyra watched them walk towards the front of the shop. Just before they reached the door, Liam reached out and took Amelia’s hand. His fingers laced through hers easily, a simple, fluid gesture of ownership and belonging. Kyra watched their joined hands until they disappeared through the glass door and out onto the street.

She stood there for another full minute, staring at the space they had just occupied. The air felt thin. She felt small, like a footnote in someone else’s story. The book in her hand, a collection by a poet she admired, now felt heavy and absurd. She placed it back on the shelf, not caring if it was in the right place, and the only thing she could think about was the bottle of cheap red wine waiting for her back at the flat.

Back at the flat, Kyra dropped her keys into the ceramic bowl by the door with a clatter that sounded too loud in the quiet hallway. She went straight to the kitchen, her movements stiff. She pulled the corkscrew from the drawer and twisted it into the neck of the wine bottle with more force than was necessary. The cork came out with a sad, sucking sound.

Sophie appeared in the kitchen doorway, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed. “Bad poetry?” she asked.

Kyra didn’t look at her. She poured a large measure of wine into a tumbler, then another. “Saw Liam,” she said.

She pushed a glass across the counter towards Sophie. Sophie took it but didn’t move from the doorway. “Oh,” she said. “Was he alone?”

“No.” Kyra took a long swallow of her wine. It was thin and acidic. “He was with his new girlfriend. Amelia.” She said the name as if it were a foreign object in her mouth. “She’s exactly what you’d expect. Tall, perfect hair. Looks like she smells of expensive soap and quiet satisfaction.”

Sophie was quiet for a moment. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Kyra said, her voice a little too bright. “It was just… awkward. He looked so surprised to see me, like I was a tax bill he’d forgotten to pay.” She swirled the wine in her glass, watching the dark red liquid climb the sides. “She was very polite. The kind of polite that makes you want to set fire to something.”

Sophie came into the kitchen and sat on one of the stools at the small breakfast bar. She nudged Kyra’s elbow with her own. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That sounds awful.”

“It wasn’t awful,” Kyra insisted, though the word felt right. “It was nothing. It was just… pathetic. The whole tableau. Him looking smug, her looking placid, me standing there in the poetry section holding a book I wasn’t going to buy. It just made me feel… irrelevant.”

“You’re not irrelevant,” Sophie said, her voice firm. She took a sip of her wine. “He’s an idiot. And she probably has no personality.”

Kyra managed a small laugh. “She probably has a very well-managed, aesthetically pleasing personality.” She leaned her elbows on the counter, the cold of the laminate seeping through her sleeves. “They held hands when they left. It was so seamless. Like they’d been doing it forever.”

The image was there again, sharp and clear behind her eyes: his hand closing over hers. The simple, public declaration of it.

Sophie sighed, a long, weary sound that seemed to carry the weight of her own frustrations. “It’s that, isn’t it? The public part. The performance of it all.” She stared into her glass. “It’s like my aunt Carol. This whole wedding charade is just about me performing the role of the single girl who needs to be fixed. It’s a public statement that I’m lacking something.” She looked up at Kyra, her eyes dark. “I wish I could just show up with someone and shut her up. Just for one weekend.”

A silence settled over the kitchen, thick with the smell of cheap wine and unspoken feelings. Kyra thought of Liam’s surprised face. She thought of the smug satisfaction she imagined he felt, walking away with his perfect, new life.

Sophie’s expression shifted. A small, almost mischievous light appeared in her eyes. She leaned forward slightly. “You know,” she said, her voice low and conspiratorial. “We could solve both our problems.”

Kyra looked at her, confused. “How?”

“Come to the wedding with me,” Sophie said. She smiled, but it was a thoughtful, calculating kind of smile. “As my date. My new girlfriend.” She said the word ‘girlfriend’ with a deliberate, testing emphasis. “Think about it. I get to avoid the finance bro and a weekend of pitying looks from my entire extended family. And you…” she paused, letting the idea build. “You get to show up somewhere with someone. We could take a photo. A nice one. You could post it. Nothing aggressive. Just… a soft launch.”

The suggestion was absurd. It was a joke. But it landed in the quiet space between them and did not dissolve into laughter. It hung there, shimmering with a strange, compelling logic. Kyra pictured it: a photograph of the two of them, smiling, at a wedding. Her arm around Sophie’s waist. The kind of casual, happy photo that Amelia would probably post. The kind of photo Liam would see. She thought of the look on his face, not of surprise this time, but of something else. Something she couldn’t quite name, but desperately wanted to see.

The kitchen felt very still, the only sound the faint hum of the refrigerator. The idea was utterly insane. It was something characters did in a film, a plot device that real people didn't actually employ. Kyra’s first instinct was to laugh and dismiss it, to pour more wine and change the subject. But the words didn't come.

Instead, the scene Sophie had painted began to form in her mind, detailed and vivid. A photograph. Not one taken in their cluttered living room, but somewhere else. Somewhere with soft lighting, maybe a garden. Kyra’s arm around Sophie’s waist. Sophie leaning into her, smiling a real smile, the kind Kyra knew how to provoke. It would look effortless. It would look real. She thought of Liam scrolling through his phone, perhaps sitting on a sofa next to Amelia, and seeing it. His thumb would stop. He would look closer. The image was so satisfying, so potent, that it made her feel a little dizzy.

“You’re serious,” Kyra said. It wasn’t a question.

“I’m serious about not wanting to spend forty-eight hours fending off my cousin’s creepy husband and being told by my aunt that my biological clock is ticking,” Sophie said calmly. She took another sip of wine, her eyes steady on Kyra over the rim of the glass. “And I’m serious that you looked miserable when you came in here. This is a practical solution. A temporary alliance.”

A temporary alliance. The phrase made it sound strategic, almost military. It stripped the idea of its sentimentality, which made it easier to consider. Kyra thought of the bookshop. The feeling of being looked through, of being a person from a past life that was no longer relevant. The seamlessness of his hand finding Amelia’s. It had been a performance of a kind, too. A public display of a private fact. All they would be doing was the same, just in reverse.

“People would have to believe it,” Kyra said, testing the structure of the idea, looking for the weak points. “Our friends. They’d know we weren’t… together.”

“Would they?” Sophie countered. She set her glass down. “We live together. We spend most of our time together. We know everything about each other. Honestly, the groundwork is pretty solid. It’s not that much of a leap. We just add… holding hands. And you, looking at me admiringly.” She smiled then, a flash of her usual humour. “You might have to work on that part.”

Kyra felt a smile pull at her own mouth, in spite of herself. “I think I can manage.”

The plan was taking on a solid shape in her mind. It was no longer an absurd joke, but a project. Something to focus on. A distraction from the hollow feeling the encounter with Liam had left. It was a way to take control of the narrative, to edit her own story. It was petty, yes. She knew it was petty. But the thought of it gave her a jolt of energy, a feeling of purpose that had been absent all afternoon.

“Okay,” Kyra said, the word coming out more firmly than she expected. “Okay, let’s do it.”

Sophie’s expression didn’t change, but Kyra saw a flicker of relief in her eyes. “Really?”

“Yes,” Kyra said, a new confidence settling in her chest. “It’s a perfect plan. Mutually beneficial.” She liked the sound of those words. They made the whole thing feel like a business transaction, clean and unemotional.

Sophie grinned, a wide, genuine smile that reached her eyes. “Excellent.” She pushed her stool back and stood up, extending a hand across the counter. “Deal?”

Kyra looked at her outstretched hand. It seemed overly formal, a gesture from another era. It was silly. They were in their own kitchen, half-drunk on cheap wine, agreeing to a ridiculous lie. She reached out and took Sophie’s hand. Her palm was warm and dry. They shook on it, a single, firm up-and-down motion.

The contact was brief, but it lingered after they let go. It felt different from all the other casual ways they had touched over the years—the nudges on the sofa, the arms linked walking home from a pub. This touch had an intention behind it, a shared secret. It was the seal on their arrangement. Kyra looked at Sophie, who was still smiling, and felt a strange flutter in her stomach. It was silly, the whole thing. But as she picked up her wine glass, her hand felt steadier than it had all day.