The Timeline

25.

May 23rd, 2015:

Harry was back in London.

Just like he had said he would be, on the phone: his plane had touched down at the Heathrow airport on the 21st of May (a picture had been posted online by a fan who had met him).

And just like he had promised at the end of their phone call, on May 13th, Harry had wasted no time in arranging for Claire to pay him a visit to his house.

Obviously, it hadn't been arranged for his first day back, to allow him to sleep off the jet lag. Nor had it been arranged for his second day back, to allow him to run some errands and get his bearings back, having been absent from his London home for more than two months at that point.

Claire had been ready to wait a week or even two, knowing that she must've been the very last thing on Harry's mind once he would've been back, considering all the things he had to do. Instead, he had surprised her by texting her a very simple worded text on Whatsapp - effectively ending their one-sided conversations - and asking her if she was free on the afternoon and evening of May 23rd.

Had it been the Claire from before everything had happened, she wouldn't have had much on her plate, wouldn't have needed to check her agenda to see if she was, indeed, available. But she wasn't that Claire anymore - many things had changed - and she was so busy with things to do, both because she kept herself busy and because she truly had things to do - which she was so glad about.

But, truth be told, Claire knew that she would've done whatever she could've to clear her schedule and see Harry. After all, she had been begging on her knees for a chance to talk to him, and now that she had finally gathered the courage to answer his phone call, it would've been sort of hypocritical if she had drew back from the opportunity he was presenting her with on a silver platter.

So, Claire hadn't drawn back.

She had checked her schedule, had seen that she had a shooting appointment with Simon & How and had quickly come up with an excuse to not go: something about her not feeling extremely well with her pregnancy, nausea, bloating, dizziness and whatever other gross thing she could think about connected to a pregnancy. People at Simon & How were treating her so well that they had almost talked her ear off about taking care of herself and not endanger the unborn child. No one had said so, but Claire knew they were still thinking about the possibility of handing her off to some pregnancy products company that was looking for young models to star in some type of campaign. Which Claire wasn't too fond of, and wouldn't have grown fond of in the near future, she was sure.

For the moment, they were editing her barely noticeable baby bump out of the picture: she would be entering her fourth month of pregnancy soon, and her gynecologist had told her that she would've started showing soon (science said that women started showing between the 16th and the 20th week). Claire wasn't very big per se, so the doctor had told her that she wouldn't have gotten extremely big; according to her, some women might start showing at the end of the second trimester, or even during the third trimester. However, Claire was seeing the differences in her body: her boobs were bigger and firmer (and sometimes hurt when she touched them or pressed her finger into the skin), her libido was reaching new peaks everyday, her emotions were all over the place and - mostly - she was eating whatever it was that she craved. So, obviously, she was starting to gain back both the weight she had lost during the months she had spent with Robert and also adding some of her own, because her cheeks were starting to look a big fuller and her hips were filling out. Claire didn't mind, also because she truly didn't want to resist the many cravings she felt.

Anyways, Claire had cleared her schedule, ate one giant Nutella muffin as her body told her she wanted to do, then started both anticipating and dreading the afternoon and evening of the 23rd of March. In her mind, the encounter could've gone in two very different ways: in the first version of the little reel that unfolded itself inside of her head whenever she thought about it, Harry was still very mad at her, and when she showed up at his house he laughed in her face, mocking her for thinking that he wanted to hear what she had to say, Claire cried and she felt humiliated, although she knew that was what she deserved; in the second version of the reel, the shortest one because Claire didn't dare to imagine how things would've unfolded, Harry was still mad at her, but he didn't laugh in her face, he just made her enter his home and listened to what she had to say. And then the movie stopped.