Chapter 32
Now
It’s a few days later and the weather is frigid in Waterloo, the sky wet, cold and hard. Me and my fourteen-year-old expectations stand by the stairs leading up to the South Bank, with puppet string legs. It’s so early. Early is good. Coffee, and then I’ll pretend I’ve got somewhere to be. I’m wearing a bright-pink flowery dress with a matching coat, and sandals. What was I thinking? I was so flustered getting dressed. I hold onto the silver rail of the staircase to steady myself, to take it all in. Ella, you have a fiancé. Go home and make pasta bake. I swallow. My adrenaline is making me shiver. Wait, are my knees knocking? My teeth, chattering. It’s not that cold. I use the little mirrored apple-logo on the back of my phone to make sure my mascara isn’t leaking. I hate so bad the idea of being just another girl in a pretty dress in Lowe’s jumble-sale pile of broken hearts. The foolish way I was always so sure that I was different from the rest.
I read the note back that I emailed myself on the train.
Ella, everything has changed; you won’t still feel the same after all this time. It would be very weird to love someone you barely know any more, strange to love someone based on the past. Grow up and get your fucking shit together. You’re getting married to Jackson now. Lovely Jackson.
I look at my engagement ring. The opal, a spy. I’ve got my eye on you.
I need a song. Headphones in so I can keep my stride cool and steady, feel like I’m on a catwalk. I have to remember this moment. But it can’t be a song I’d catch Jackson whistling whilst he takes a piss.
J.Lo’s ‘Waiting For Tonight’.
I’m nervous. Exam nervous. Doctor’s appointment nervous. Submission nervous. I should turn back. This feels wrong. I’m making it all up in my head. But I’m still walking.
The riverbank is almost empty. I linger. Don’t rush. I take my time to see the boats and birds. I let the new morning take me. The South Bank buffers the wind with its boxy concrete and blank blocks. And just across the river, a skyline waits like a tray of chocolates. The emptiness and opportunity of the new day gives me the freedom to be in my favourite place: the music video of my life. My Co-Star: Lowe.
This will be the first time in more than ten years we’ve been alone.
I imagine us spending the entire day together, falling through a trap door in the universe where nobody can find us. Do you want to run away together?
And then I feel stupid about that thought, insecure, like a fan lurking outside the gates of an actor’s hotel.
This Titan from my past stands before me, a figure in the distance, unzipping through the clearing like it’s nothing. A pair of scissors gliding through wrapping paper. The coolest guy you’ve ever seen in your whole life – Lowe Archer shark-finning his way up the riverbank where, for him, everything gives way. His stride, swinging, with intention but not arrogant. He grins – you can’t fake a smile like that – and I turn to goo on command. I do a stubby excitable wave, ridged, an Action Man greeting, like somebody wearing a too-small jacket afraid to tear the seams.
I smile. He smiles. I fight the urge to run to get to him faster.
Lowe looks older. A whole-the-distance-we’ve-been-apart older. I wasn’t expecting that. I thought he’d stay young forever. His thick hair is longer, long enough to fold behind his ears but I know that – I’ve seen the press photos. His moss eyes. His face thinner and sculpted, clean shaven, jaw squarer, nose, wider. Lowe is a man. Of course, he’s a man. But he’s still all there. Preserved, like he never lost a drop. He wears black skinny jeans and pointy boots, an expensive-looking mac with the collar starched up. He’s so refined. I still wear the same cheap perfume I did when we were nineteen. The one that triggers people our age because it reminds them of their first finger. Only now I’ve got grey hairs sprouting out my scalp like resurrecting skeletons from the dead.
Should I instigate the handshake? No, he won’t remember that surely? Don’t make it weird.
We hug. And time seems to halt. It’s been ten minutes and a hundred years at the same time. We’re just like riding a bike – muscle memory; we can’t forget. We pedal along, finding our balance.
I want to fall into him. To buckle my legs and collapse, to let him carry me, like the last ten years of hunting and wishing have taken their toll and, finally, I’m home. Mission complete.
I’ve got to stop telling myself these stories, that he’s too cool for me now, that he’d rather be out with someone else, got every one of our idols’ phone number on speed dial these days, seen the lively, jerky boobs of a thousand girls. Trashed the best hotel rooms. Got original cowboy boots from Texas. Eaten black cod in Japan. Climbed a mountain. Killed all his brain cells with cocaine. Been to wild parties that I’ve only seen in films where they drink from Red Cups. I probably can’t talk to him about music any more because all music now belongs to him. That’s just his thing now, his industry; he’ll have opinions on it all. That whilst we’re out he’ll get spotted by fans.
And how he’s probably told himself stories about me too. That it never happened for me. Sad little bubbly Ella.
We walk side by side. He’s quiet, sometimes laughing, sometimes responding, clearing his throat. Side by side is good because it gives me a second to catch my breath because I’m motor-mouthing my way along the river, panting. Can you pass out from walking and talking at the same time? Lowe has always been comfortable with silence. I am not. I’m rattling around like a pinball machine, lighting up and firing off memories and stories and total rubbish.
I talk my way past the spray-painted colourful Mexican food truck. Past the second-hand bookstalls under the bridge, trestle tables already smelling of damp and spiders’ eggs and others’ hands. We talk about TV. Books next. Hop-scotching along. It feels like everything I mention he’s not into or has never heard of. It’s miss after miss. ‘Have you really not seen that?’ and ‘How did you miss that? Gosh, you really do live under a rock, don’t you?’ Of course, ironically, I’m the one who lives under a rock of fiction and Lowe’s been touring the world, witnessing his magnificent dreams come true.
We see an early-riser kid skateboarding, echoing on concrete. He’s probably seventeen but I feel the same age as him. And, in the distance, I see her: the sitting, waiting, wanting girl on the sidelines. A cheerleader, watching the boy as though he’s as impressive as the Northern Lights.
We find a plump, squashy purple velvet sofa in the corner of a cinema café that is empty except for one waiter unloading the dishwasher. The high ceilings shrink us and every move we make feels spot-lit and gargantuan. The sofa eats us up.
‘We’re like The Borrowers,’ Lowe jokes.
I laugh and he does too.
Our knees knock; our legs touch. CHING. I obliterate.
We look at the menu.
Lowe reaches inside his jacket pocket and puts on a pair of glasses. GLASSES? I can’t even bring myself to look at him in them. Just keep looking at the menu. But my eyes aren’t looking, not really; I’m simply trying to steady my heart, stop my mouth from being so dry, trying not to gulp – lots. He’s all tentacled up with his bag and I long to be the strap of that bag, twisted up with him, close to his chest.
I spot his jewellery: his chain, his rings. And I find myself sitting on my hand, squashing my week-old engagement ring in-between the sofa and my bum cheeks, like how I might hide a blade if I was trying to escape a hostage situation. I won’t keep it there for-like-you-know-ever. Just until I calm down. Then I’ll relax and tell him my great news.
Well… NEWS … I’m engaged.
Hey, so, Lowe… My boyfriend, Jackson and I are engaged.
So, guess who’s getting married… ?
Once I say it. That’s it. It’s done. It’s all over.
I thought if maybe I don’t say Jackson’s name it might not come up. Don’t worry, I know that’s not good. I know that’s bad. It’s a bit like a challenge, a game, to see if I can tell every story I’ve experienced in the past few years and casually leave my partner’s name out, but I must get the pronouns right, remember to say I instead of we. I know I can’t keep it up forever. I know that Lowe will know the truth eventually; I just want to keep the hope alive, somehow, just for this one sweet coffee – just today – to live out the dream, make it a possibility, that I’m free and then go back to my life. I know nothing is going to happen, I just don’t want to give it up. Not yet. Not when I’m sitting here imagining what our baby would look like.
And what about him? What about Heather? Or someone else? He could be married; he could have a kid?!
‘Where are you living?’
‘Peckham.’
Aoife was right! What’s so bloody good about Peckham?
‘Just renting, temporarily.’
WITH WHO?
‘Still South then?’
‘Course.’
Don’t course me when you were the one off recording albums in LA– but I’m careful what I say because then he’ll know I’ve been searching his socials and I don’t want to slip up.
We have to order at the counter so up we go. The bar is lined with jewels of coloured bottles like the windows of a church, a sobering reminder that we’re meeting before 10 a.m. That this is definitely not a date. It’s hard coffee in the morning. I order and the waiter smiles at us like, you guys make a cute couple, or maybe I just made that up. Or maybe it’s because even the waiter knows how in love I am with Lowe; he can smell it, it’s that obvious. My vulnerability, my weak spot – Lowe is what would get me killed in the wild – and the waiter pities me. Where’s my personal growth? My development? My progress? What do I have to show for myself? Maybe he just recognizes Lowe and can’t wait until he’s made the coffee so he can run off and text his mates: GUESS WHO I JUST MADE A FLAT WHITE FOR?
We find the sofa again. Flashes of cinema surround us – images of other lives of lovers and families. How I wish we could just press pause on today like a film, rewind back to the beginning, to when we first met, and this time not fuck it up. This time I would play it out to the end. I imagine Jackson walking in right now, how quickly I would spring up, and that’s how I know that I still have feelings. Oh. This is awful. I should probably make an excuse and leave. JUST BE HIS FRIEND.
Our coffees arrive on a silver tray; mine is basically frothy milk and tiger lines of chocolate. I reach for the sugar pot, stuffed with coloured paper sachets. And that’s when I see him spot my ring. BULLSEYE. Glinting like a bullet. A gold filling at the back of the devil’s mouth. I quickly hide it underneath my bum again. But I know he’s seen it. I should have left it in the little soap dish by the side of the sink and pretended I’d forgotten to put it back on but that would have been deliberately deceptive. That, I couldn’t live with.
I change the subject. ‘I’m sorry to hear about the band splitting up.’ Has his mood changed since he’s seen it? I can’t tell.
‘Thanks, yeah, it’s shit but it was time.’ Cucumber cool.
‘Think back to when we were young, when you first picked up the guitar. If someone told you that making music would be your job! That you’d go on to achieve all you have? Can you imagine? I mean – it’s incredible, Lowe.’
He goes shy.
‘Your mum would be so proud of you.’ I want to put my hand on his leg when I say that bit, but I don’t.
‘Thank you, Ella.’ He takes a breath, brushes crumbs off him that aren’t there. ‘I just don’t know what I’m gonna do with my life now; we’ve been playing since we were kids – I don’t even have a CV,’ he jokes. ‘Got any jobs going?’ he says to the empty room and I laugh. ‘We’re still so young anyway. We’ve got time.’
‘How did you feel about turning thirty?’
‘Fine,’ he says. ‘Another trip around the sun?’
I guess thirty is perfectly pleasant if you’ve achieved all your life dreams already. He must be pretty happy then.
‘Did you have a party?’ (Like the one I conjured up in my head with all the cool people and me not being invited.)
‘Well, I don’t drink, do I, so … ?’
‘You don’t drink?’ This surprises me; I thought he’d be living some hedonistic lifestyle. ‘Why? Sorry, I didn’t mean that – I mean how? I’ve tried so many times to quit and just can’t seem to do it.’
‘Yeah, it’s hard – it’s everywhere, all the time, especially on tour and it was just getting in my way. Not helping. So I stopped.’
‘That’s incredible. Well done.’
‘Once you start seeing drinking for what it is, it’s easy – but you’re right – that first bit is tough.’
He changes the subject to me.
‘So what have you been up to?’
What a question; we laugh awkwardly because it’s been so long.
‘Where to start … ?’ I joke. ‘Well, other than letting my hair grow wildly long, spontaneously lobbing it off into a bob, regretting it and repeating the cycle endlessly for the rest of my days, not a lot.’
He smiles at me how he used to. ‘Are you still writing?’
Ouch. There goes my favourite question.
‘Still, you know?! That’s the sort of question a great-uncle asks at Christmas.’
‘Sorry!’ he corrects. ‘I really didn’t mean it like that.’
I pretend to be a great-uncle. ‘Do you still do gymnastics and listen to NSYNC?’
‘I still ride my bike!’ he defends.
‘That’s your hobby! Yes, Lowe, I still write.’
‘Music’s my hobby too, though.’
I didn’t want to talk about my writing with Lowe. He’s achieved – a million times over – the dream of making a hobby a job – which I know is more of my problem than his – but still, it doesn’t make it any less hard to accept that he’s reached the top of the mountain enjoying the view, whilst my career hasn’t even rolled out of bed and brushed its teeth yet. But the main reason I don’t want to talk about my work with Lowe is because of my first book of poems; that was all about him. I don’t know if he read it; I’m not sure if he even knows it exists.
‘I’ve just finished my first novel, actually.’ It sounds aloof and pretentious. To compensate, I put myself down. ‘It’s just … a bit of fun.’ CRINGE. (And perhaps there lies the answer as to why it comes across as a hobby.)
Lowe nods. He wouldn’t call his band fun.
‘That’s great. I remember your letters. They were always so, what’s the word? … Alive.’
Alive. We hold eye contact. I go back there through the portal of his eyes. Whhooossshhhh. ZAP!
‘I do other writing bits and pieces, to pay the bills.’ LIKE MY MORTGAGE. WITH MY FIANCé.
He nods, like bills are something he doesn’t have to understand.
I bring it back to him. ‘So what about you? Are you still making music?’ I take the piss.
‘Yeah, that does hurt actually. Sorry,’ he says, rubbing his hand over his heart. ‘We still have the studio, so I’ll be in there pretending to write music, although I’m not sure how much the world is begging for my depressing solo album to be honest. But I’m sure at some point I’ll find the misfired confidence to inflict a release of some kind upon the world.’
‘That’ll be good,’ I say. Awkward silence. Have we run out of things to say?
Our arms kiss.
Time for a round-up. ‘So, Ronke has had a baby – Shreya has settled down with four kids but we haven’t spoken in years. The Twins are in Suffolk apparently. Aoife’s got some high-flying corporate job in the City where she gets paid to eat sushi,’ I tell him. ‘We’re still close.’ He likes that, loyalty. ‘Bianca is Bianca. She’s just got a new job actually; she’s doing great.’
I think of her beaming face in the swimming pool at the KTPLT party and I’m finally able to see the funny side.
‘—and Mia – just got married actually,’ I say. ‘I caught the bouquet at the wedding.’
WHY DID I SAY THAT?
‘What does that mean? That you’ll be getting married next then?’
He saw the ring. I’m sure he saw the ring.
‘I’m not superstitious.’ I blush. ‘Also me, not stepping over three drains on the way here.’
‘I still do that too. And I have to get to the bottom of the stairs before the toilet stops flushing or something bad will happen.’
‘Like what?’
He looks like he wants to say something but doesn’t. We’ve spent so much of our relationship not saying things, it just seems normal to us now.
Lowe gives himself into the chair. I catch the elasticated waistband of his Calvin Klein boxers and nod to myself like I’ve seen too much. I realize I’ve been gazing.
‘I like your chain.’ CRINGE.
‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘It was my mum’s.’
I nod. ‘It’s really beautiful.’
So are you.
And the coffee is done.
‘I’m just gonna wee and then … ’ I excuse myself.
I wonder if he’s watching me walk away? What do I even look like walking away? Then I remember that what I look like from behind is none of my business. Is that it? Ten years of waiting for that, throwing out stagnant small talk, tepid touch. Was that the very best we could do? I don’t know what I was hoping for, expecting, but it’s sad that he’ll go back to his life and I’ll go back to mine.
Good,I think. Good. That’s where I belong. With Jackson.
So why do I want to cry? The toilet mirrors are unflattering in this horrible bright-red light and they ping everywhere like a house of mirrors. And when I sit down I notice that I’ve sat on my hand for the entire time. My engagement ring has crushed a red crimped line into my small finger and it’s actually quite painful. It serves me right. Poor Jackson. How would I like it if he avoided talking about me? I love him – why would I do this to him? To us.
Just go home, love.
By the basin I check my eyes to make sure there’s no reveal of regret. Or pain. Or longing. Or clear as daylight desperation. I head back upstairs where Lowe is leaning against the bar how only pro models lean. I suppose he has done a lot of those photo shoots. He’s waiting for me. I almost can’t believe that for this one sweet second, Lowe Archer is waiting for me. How right that feels. He’s chatting to the waiter, nothing too much but it already feels like an in-joke. He gets on with everyone. He always has a cheeky face like he’s up to something. But he never is; he’s too honest.
‘What?’
‘What?’ Lowe says back, smiling.
‘What?’
His face spills into a massive laugh. He tunes into the music faintly pattering away in the background, his head bouncing from side to side mockingly. I bashfully reach for my card to pay, shyly, as the waiter hands Lowe his receipt, smoothly, like he’s in on some gag. Lowe slides it into the back pocket of his jeans. The younger me would have scrapbooked the hell out of that receipt.
‘I wanted to get it,’ I offer.
‘You can get the next one.’
The next one. And there it is, the chink in his armour: he wants to make sure I want to see him again. He bites his bottom lip. It’s a plump lip. Succulent. And I’m slung back. Years of loving somebody isn’t just going to evaporate because of one frothy coffee.
We walk towards the station, the voltage between us sparking. Walking by his side feels normal. Like being next to him is always a touchstone, a place to start. I begin making a case in my head now, gathering the evidence up nice and neat into a big stack of why we would never work, even though absolutely nobody asked. He walks so close he almost bumps into me. See? It will never work. If our walking is like this just imagine the clunky sex we’d have. We should go back to being old friends and me secretly but not secretly at all just being in love with him. It’s so much easier this way. Or going forward, we can be like brothers? Two brothers who go on fishing trips and wear plaid shirts and sit in silence.
At the tall steps of the station, we hug. He squeezes me so wholly he’s saying it all. He smells like washing powder, the air outside, the coffee he’s just been drinking. I smell weed somewhere and this only compounds the memories. Until he brings out his vape, which is as big and as heavy as how I imagine a gun to be, and chemical sour-sweet exhalation is blasted over us.
‘Oh no, no, no.’ I blow the smoke away.
‘Sorry,’ he apologizes, fanning the air. ‘I’ve quit so – I’m addicted to this thing now.’
‘That’s good you quit, but this?’
Our eyes lock in. WE STARE. Does he have a girlfriend at home? What’s his life? How is he so mysterious? Somehow I’ve revealed all my cards and his cards are held so close.
‘See you again soon?’ Lowe asks.
‘Definitely.’
I nod, even though I’m scared he just wants me as his normal friend from his normal life, proof that he was liked before he got famous, and I’ll have to make friends with his wife and go to Winter Wonderland with them and watch him have babies and become their crazy fun Fairy Odd Mother. KILL ME NOW.
But also don’t kill me; let me live here, eternally next to him. Where I can talk to his tongue. Open his jaws. Clamber into his mouth.
And then he says, ‘Oh, hey, by the way, Ella, I read your book, your poems and … ’ He lets the words hang … AND? … ‘You should be proud of yourself too.’
The word lands like a match, strikes my heart. I do a face as if to say hardly.
‘You read books?’
‘Only yours.’
I download the sober app once again and hit Day Zero. The clock starts ticking and would you believe that from that moment on, for the next month, I am feeling so fucking good. It’s like I’ve been rebooted. I’m inspired. I don’t wear my rings when I write – I need to write hard and fast – so I can almost forget the opal ring and its diva requirements, its power and conditions. It sits in its soap dish with the others. Days turn into nights, the back and forths pick up with Lowe, like nothing ever changed, like no time or distance has passed between us. We never talk about meeting up, which is good – just song recommendations, screen grabs of my sober milestones, stupid memes. Innocent, light and friendly – maybe we can just be pen pals? I find myself laughing out loud at his messages. My heart soars every time I see his name appear on my phone. Jackson is at work more than he is home. Taking calls from Zahra and the team at weekends, past 10 p.m., before 9 a.m. – where I’d usually nag, I don’t.
Once, Zahra is on loudspeaker and I hear her call Jackson ‘Jackie’. He goes quiet when he’s stressed, insular. Burning off the racing thoughts and congestion at football, tennis, cricket and all those 10ks. When he’s distracted with work, he’s distant with me; he pulls away. Usually, I’m the one to pull us back, carve out the space to bring us together: a new TV series, dinner, a night away. But this time, I don’t. He notices the changes. You’re on Cloud Nine, he says. He thinks it’s the engagement that’s making my mood lift, not that I’m high off the dopamine of getting a text back from my favourite human.
And I’m working. Doing it, editing and fixing. I help Jackson finalize the story for his big KTPLT Christmas advert, a simple one about giving the gift of love, with hidden messaging about sustainability (got to hide those greens of goodness in the creamy mashed potato). The main character is an adorable animated carboard box with a bow of string for hair. It’s very cute. I enjoy working creatively together with Jackson in this way, our brains tessellating.
But if anybody asks, I’m writing my book. And I don’t care how ambitious or ridiculous or audacious it sounds because once again my world has been set on fire.
By November, I, finally, hover my finger over the button and press send to my agent, cross my fingers and hope for the best.
My agent replies, so fast it’s like an Out Of Office auto-response: Is this a prank?