Chapter Nine
Jess
It’s hard to stay frustrated with someone so good-looking, someone who has so tenderly cradled your ankle and produced peas from the freezer to reduce the swelling. But Jess is giving it a good go, nonetheless.
As she talks about Alex’s book, she can see him physically retreating, his shoulders slumping.
Shouldn’t he be used to having his work closely examined?
From what she understands of weird writing courses like the one he went on in America, you’re supposed to sit there and take it while a room full of people lob their feedback at you, then graciously thank them for stamping on a piece of your soul, and then go away and incorporate their suggestions into another draft of your piece of writing.
Isn’t that exactly what they’re doing here?
And she is just one person. One person, whose criticisms he should surely be able to easily dismiss, since he seems to think she knows so little about what constitutes good writing.
She knows writers can be tender-hearted and sensitive – although she’s seen no evidence of either trait in Alex so far – but she would have expected him to have grown a thicker skin by now.
And she is being honest, but not unkind.
She’s even looked up how to do the compliment sandwich!
‘Sorry,’ she says, and he looks up, startled.
‘About what?’
What she really means is that she’s sorry in the general British sense of wanting desperately to clear the air and not being exactly sure how.
She’s sorry if she’s made things awkward.
But mostly, she’s sorry they’re in this position, the two of them.
Sorry she ever opened Nathan’s email and took his offer seriously.
But she can’t really say any of that – not without making things even more awkward and weird, so she goes with a true sorry, an apology sorry.
‘I’m pretty sure I sounded snarky back then, but I know I don’t enjoy hearing other people pick apart my work, either. You’ve poured a lot into writing this book, and it is good! A lot of it is working really well.’
‘Working really well,’ he repeats. ‘Working. People used that word a lot on my MFA course.’ He does air quotes with his fingers and puts on what is a truly terrible American accent. ‘The present tense is not working for me. That character’s motivations are not working for me.’
Jess can’t figure out what his tone means. Is he sad? Bitter? Nostalgic for the days when he was the golden boy with a whole literary future ahead of him, rather than stuck in the mire of trying to sustain his career? She also can’t work out why she cares. Or whether she should care.
But if they’re going to work together – if she’s going to be, essentially, his voice – she should probably take some time to get to know him. Understand how he ticks. Understand … well, the character’s motivations. Whether or not they ‘work for her’.
‘Did you enjoy your course?’
It’s such a bland question; she hears that as soon as it’s out of her mouth. But she’s got to start somewhere.
‘Enjoy is an interesting word,’ he says. She waits for more, but he clearly enjoys being a man of mystery. She waits a little bit longer. Then she gets tired of waiting.
‘Say more about that,’ she says.
He laughs. ‘You sound like my therapist.’
She would definitely like him to say more about that.
A therapist? What does Alex have to be in therapy for?
Writer’s block, perhaps? It did take him forever to write that not-exactly-brilliant first draft.
And she’s also, despite herself, a little impressed.
In her admittedly limited experience, it’s pretty unusual for a man not only to take responsibility for his mental health and go to therapy, but also not to be afraid to admit it to a near-stranger, even if – as Jess suspects – it did slip out accidentally.
If Alex was anyone else, she might even find it a little bit attractive.
But if she did, that would make this whole situation very awkward indeed, so it’s just as well it’s not the case.
‘The course was good,’ Alex says at last, probably realising Jess isn’t just going to drop this and move on.
‘I learned a lot, including more about literary theory than I ever wanted to. I made some good friends. And I loved living in DC. It’s a really beautiful place.
So much history, and beautiful architecture.
The restaurant scene is incredible. Lots of amazing bookshops, even if my favourite one did close, because the guy who owned it decided to be a piano teacher instead. ’
He’s the happiest she’s seen him yet, when he talks about DC. His face opens up; his dimple pops. She’d like to ask him more about that. But she’s curious about something else, too.
‘You didn’t want to go to Iowa?’ She’s showing off.
Letting him know that she, too, knows about American MFAs.
She knows that Iowa is the birthplace of the writing workshop that the Publishing Industrial Complex has come to accept as normal, when it seems to Jess that it’s really, really not.
She knows that Iowa is the Harvard of writing courses, still the place for aspiring literary writers of a certain type. Exactly Alex’s type, in fact.
And just like that, the light has gone from his face again. ‘That was the plan.’
‘Or, you know … somewhere closer to home. I’ve heard that the Creative Writing MA in Norwich is good. The Iowa of the UK, I think someone called it.’
‘Norwich?’ His tone suggests Jess might as well have mentioned the moon as a suitable place to study creative writing.
Her tortoiseshell glasses have slid down her nose a little, which is perfect for looking at Alex over the top of them in the manner of a stern schoolteacher wanting to correct a mistake.
‘What, is the University of East Anglia not good enough for you? You know, the place that trained Kazuo Ishiguro?’
To be honest, she’d live in Norwich now if she could.
London is convenient for getting to all the places she wants to go to.
It’s been home forever. It’s also where Lily lives, where a lot of her university friends have ended up.
And, of course, where her beloved grandparents still have the flat she spent so many nights in as a child, just down the road from her tiny Pimlico flat.
But she prefers the pace of life in Norwich.
It’s slower; it gives you time to appreciate things.
Between the UEA’s prestigious writing course, the National Centre for Writing, and the brilliant independent bookshops, there’s all the literary culture anyone could ever want – and it’s all within easy walkable distance.
She loves getting around on foot, rather than faffing around with Tubes and buses and trains.
When she studied there, she would look forward to wandering through the market, picking out flowers, a different kind every week, though she secretly always wanted tulips.
‘It’s not that. It’s—’
His phone lights up on the table next to him. He glances at it. Georgina, it says. A sister, or stepsister, or maybe half-sister, Jess knows. Nothing suspicious. ‘Sorry,’ he says, once. And then again, ‘Sorry. I have to take this.’
Jess tries not to let her irritation show on her face. How convenient, she thinks, for him to get out of that conversation.
While he’s gone, she lets herself stew a little bit.
There have to be easier ways to write a book.
Easier than repeatedly meeting up with someone who clearly thinks she’s his intellectual inferior and trying to get him to understand that a little bit of lightness improves a book, that the darkness is only beautiful by contrast.
Jess read Alex’s book through once, with the critical eye of a reviewer.
She liked it. A solid four out of five stars.
But not one that would have Bookstagrammers reaching for the usual complaint that Goodreads won’t let them have half stars, which is a shame because this one is really a four and a half.
No: this one is firmly a four. Which is fine!
It’s more than fine. But she knows Alex can do better. Nathan clearly knows it, too.
So she reads it again, paying particular attention to the female characters she was intrigued by. Thinking of new characters she could write into the story. Colour coding, underlining, scribbling, mind mapping. And then she got to work, with her own scenes.
Or tried to.
Everything that came out was … blah.
Which is infuriating, because she knows she can do this.
She knows she can write, be funny, inject humour into serious thoughts.
Maybe the pressure to prove herself is getting to her.
Not that she cares about proving herself to Alex.
Clearly, nothing she writes for him will ever be good enough, ‘strike the right tone’, ‘blend with his writing’.
Et cetera, as he would no doubt say, with his pompous Latin.
But she does care about proving herself to Nathan. Proving herself to herself.
All of this feels incredibly fraught. She has a job she loves.
She loves touring bookshops to review them on her newsletter and post pictures to her social media.
She loves interviewing authors for her podcast. She loves tracking her affiliate links, noticing them getting clicked, people buying books she’s recommended – books that deserve to be better known, books that aren’t just the ones that everyone is talking about, the ones with the posters on the Tube.
Does she really need to get involved in the writing of one?
Enjoying other people’s books – getting paid to enjoy them, no less – seems so much easier.
Maybe some dreams are meant to stay that. Just dreams.
If only she didn’t have Lily’s voice in her head: It’s not like you to shy away from a challenge.
Jess has always loved her own sense of adventure, of get-up-and-go, the thing that propelled her to start her own business as a bookish influencer when her friends were getting worthy or well-paid, but slightly dull-sounding, jobs as teachers or management consultants or investment bankers.
She wants every day to be different, every week to be slightly unpredictable.
The emails that come from nowhere, asking her to jump on a train to chair an interview panel at a romance readers’ retreat.
The publicists sliding into her DMs to offer her an early copy of the hottest debut novel of the moment.
The endorphin rush of hitting post on social media and watching the likes come in.
When she graduated, she figured that if it didn’t work out, she’d have the rest of her life to choose something worthy or well-paid instead.
But it’s worked out so far. And now here she is, in the home of a super successful, if marginally annoying, bestselling author.
Not just to interview him or bask in reflected glory, but to help him.
Twenty-one-year-old Jess would have squealed in glee.
Twenty-eight-year-old Jess is less sure, however.
Behind her, Alex clears his throat, his phone call finished.
‘Sorry about that,’ he says. ‘Just my sister arranging babysitting.’
Jess does her best to smile less tightly than she naturally might. He made it seem so urgent. Was he so desperate to get out of the conversation? Or just unable to say no to his siblings? ‘No worries,’ she says.
‘So what were we saying?’ he asks, sitting opposite her this time.
She shuffles her foot on the chair, rearranges the packet of by-now-entirely-defrosted peas. ‘You were telling me that Norwich is inferior.’
‘I don’t believe those were my actual words.’
‘It was in your tone, though.’
He rolls his eyes. Actually rolls his eyes. Jess can’t believe the rudeness, the condescension. But with her ankle the way it is, it’s not like she could make a dramatic exit, even if she wanted to.
‘Maybe we should go back to the book,’ Alex says.
‘Probably best.’
He makes eye contact and holds it for a long time, in a bizarre kind of power play. She focusses on the deep chocolate of his eyes (Lindt 85 per cent, if she had to pick), resisting the urge to look away. Whatever is happening right now, it feels important that she not be the first to flinch.
‘You’ve made a lot of great notes for me here,’ he says, pulling his gaze from hers and looking down at the stack of paper. ‘I think probably the best thing is for me to have some time to digest them, and then I’ll be in touch?’
Jess can’t tell if he is fobbing her off.
But it doesn’t matter, in this moment, because it means one thing: she gets to leave this flat, hobble down the stairs and back to Pimlico, back to her rainbow bookshelves and her Instagram props and her makeshift podcast studio – safe, solid ground, where she doesn’t need to prove herself or justify her existence or sit around being condescended to.
‘Sure,’ she says. She hands him back the defrosted peas with a smile she hopes is both apologetic and thankful.
Alex offers her his arm to lean on as she makes her way to the stairs.
She does her best to ignore the jolt of electricity that shoots up her hand when she leans on him.
She is starting to wonder if he is, in fact, radioactive, and that’s why there seems to be so much electricity around him? If those two things are even related.
She’s never been much for the sciences. Probably best not to think about it too hard.