The Timeline

32.

February 5th, 2016:

"I HATE this fucking app!" - Claire exclaimed, frustratingly shoving her phone back inside of her purse, startling Jack out of his quiet contemplation of the building in front of them.

It was a Friday afternoon and the two of them were on a mission: to find out what had been bugging Katie ever since the night of the play, making her so sad and gloomy, something that was so distant from her daily personality it had alarmed the both of them.

It had been something they had had in mind of doing ever since that night, actually, but real life had been kicking their asses lately and the two of them had never found a free time slot that was alright for them both to finally hop on the damn tube and hold an intervention at Katie's house.

For starters, exams had started the week after the play and even though the play did hold 50% of their mark, the remaining 50% had to be earned through hard study, and Claire and Jack (and Katie, obviously) had been tasked and submerged with things to study, When they weren't studying, they were at uni taking exams, and when they weren't doing any of those things, they were sleeping. Or caring for a toddler, in Claire's case.

Once exams were done, Claire had been hit by another crisis regarding Theodore, who had caught his first ever sickness and, wholeheartedly, she hadn't felt like leaving the house while she knew he was sick, even if her friends told her she needed to go outside from time to time and be on her own, because they were there to take care of the baby. Claire's heart suffered so much in seeing tiny Theodore in pain that she needed to be close to him and soothe him. The only times when she paused and actually rested were when Theodore finally fell asleep, because she collapsed as well.

During Theodore's sickness, on top of it all, while crying because her baby was crying, Claire had been called by a recording company that, impressed by her growing curriculum of audiobooks - the period porn expert, her friends had started calling her - had offered her a meeting to discuss the possibilities of a collaboration for a series of books she could've recorded for them. When Claire had asked if it would've been harlequin books, the person on the other side of the phone had laughed so hard she had almost dropped the device, startled by such a noise in the quiet and stuffy room. No, it was not going to be harlequin books, he had assured her.

Now, February 5th, Theodore was fine and was peacefully sleeping after she had fussed over him and cuddled him all morning just to make sure he was his usual self (he was, he had hugged her back all the time), her appointment with that man who had called her was scheduled for the first days of the month of March and Jack had also told her he was free that early afternoon to go and visit Katie and force the reason why she was sad out of her mouth.

They had met outside of the tube station closest to Katie's house in Fulham Road and had walked the distance together, Jack asking after Theodore's wellbeing and Claire being distracted by the arrival outside of Katie's house by a notification on her phone. When she had gotten the infernal thing out of her pocket she had seen the highly hated Tinder logo blinking at her from the middle of the screen. Hence the exclamation that had left her mouth, startling Jack from the contemplation of the building Katie's apartment was in.

He looked at her, one eyebrow raised in question. - "Huh? What app?"

Now, Claire hadn't told anyone she had downloaded Tinder when she had done it, nor had she even attempted to have such a conversation with her friends about it, because she thought it could be something she kept a secret, something she could do on her down time. Once it would've worked itself out and Claire had finally a date to show her friends, she would've said she had met the other person like God intended: while looking confused inside of a record store, so she would've looked incredibly cool and worthy of being cast in an indie movie.