Heatwave, Part 1

Amanda Vale-Stewart woke four minutes before her alarm, the way she always did, and lay still for a moment listening to the flat settle around her. The light through the floor-to-ceiling windows had that particular pearl-grey quality it took on in early summer, spilling long and pale across the Thames and pooling on the white oak floor. She slid out from under the duvet without disturbing Jeremy, who slept on his front with one arm thrown over the pillow, and padded into the kitchen to set the French press going.

The flat was small by the standards of the people they worked with, but it was theirs, and it was immaculate. She liked the quiet hum of the fridge, the smell of coffee grounds, the way the river caught the light before the rest of the city woke up. She measured the water, set the plunger, and went to the wardrobe to lay out clothes for them both: a navy shift dress and blazer for herself, a grey suit and the blue tie Jeremy always claimed was lucky, though she suspected he had several identical ones and simply liked the story.

"Morning," Jeremy said behind her, voice thick with sleep, and kissed the back of her shoulder before heading for the shower.

"Coffee's on," she said. "I laid out the blue tie."

"Good instincts as always."

It was a small exchange, the kind they'd had a thousand times over six years of marriage and two more of living together before that, and there was a comfort in its smallness. They dressed with the easy efficiency of two people who no longer needed to negotiate the bathroom or argue over cufflinks. Amanda pinned her hair back at the mirror while Jeremy knotted his tie, and between them the radio on the counter murmured through the news.

"—forecasters are warning of a possible Super El-Niño event this summer, which could bring the UK its most severe heatwave conditions in decades, with some models suggesting temperatures in London could exceed—"

"Sounds miserable," Jeremy said, not really listening, buttoning his cuffs.

"Mm," Amanda agreed, equally distracted, screwing the lid onto her travel mug. "As long as it's not another July like the one before we had air con fixed."

Neither of them thought about it again. It was just weather, the sort of thing that filled the gap between traffic updates and the sports round-up, background noise to a morning that otherwise ran like clockwork.

They left the flat together at twenty past seven, Jeremy locking the door out of habit though the estate had a concierge and cameras at every corner. The riverside path was quiet at that hour, just a few joggers and a man walking a spaniel, the Thames sliding by grey-green and indifferent. Amanda looped her arm briefly through Jeremy's as they walked, more from habit than need, and he glanced sideways at her with the small smile he still gave her sometimes, the one that made her feel, even after six years, faintly chosen.

On the DLR platform he unfolded his Financial Times, the pink of it catching the early sun, and scanned the front page while they waited. Amanda checked her diary on her phone, thumb scrolling through the week ahead.

"Listen to this," Jeremy said, tapping the paper. "'Analysts warn of tightening credit conditions across the sector, as several mid-tier firms report weaker-than-expected quarterly results.' That's the third piece like that this month."

"Everyone's always warning about something," Amanda said, though she leaned in slightly to read over his shoulder. The words sat there, dry and abstract, the kind of sentence that could mean nothing or could mean everything, and there was no way yet to tell which.

"True enough." He folded the paper under his arm as the train's lights appeared down the track. "Still. Might be worth keeping an ear out at the office."

She squeezed his arm, a small wordless thing, the gesture of a wife who trusted her husband to worry about the numbers so she didn't have to worry about them both at once. "We'll be fine," she said. "We always are."

The train pulled in and they stepped aboard, finding two seats side by side as the doors chimed shut behind them. Amanda's phone buzzed with a calendar reminder and she glanced at it, then back at Jeremy.

"Oh, I meant to say. HR's confirmed the new intake of interns starts this week. First years, LSE, the usual crowd. I've been asked to run the orientation again."

"Poor them," Jeremy said, deadpan, and she laughed properly for the first time that morning, the sound loose and easy.

"They're always terrified the first day. I just show them where the toilets are and where not to sit."

"Very glamorous life you lead, Mrs Stewart."

"Someone has to keep the finance industry's youth in line."

He smiled at that, and for a moment their hands rested together on the seat between them, fingers loosely laced, the kind of touch that had long since stopped needing a reason. Outside the window the towers of Canary Wharf rose up out of the haze, glass catching the low sun and throwing it back in long white sheets, the whole skyline looking, as it always did at that hour, like something built entirely out of promise.

Neither of them mentioned the radio warning again, nor the newspaper headline, both already tucked away into the part of the mind reserved for things that might matter later but did not need attention now. The train rattled on past Westferry, past the glinting curve of the river, carrying them both toward another ordinary working day.

When the doors opened onto the Canary Wharf concourse, the crowd surged forward around them, suits and lanyards and the smell of fresh coffee from the kiosks, and Amanda and Jeremy stepped out into it together, unhurried, certain of the ground beneath their feet. Neither of them could have known, that morning, how soon it would begin to shift.