Chapter Thirteen
Jess
It’s been a few days since Jess called in to see her grandparents, and that seems like a worthy excuse to delay boarding the train for a weekend away with the man whom the universe had tantalisingly dangled in front of her as her potential soulmate and then cruelly whipped away.
Or perhaps it was a mercy. Who can tell?
It was back in the Eighties that Grandpa Alan and Grandma Val bought their flat on the Lillington Gardens Estate, mere footsteps from Pimlico Tube station, in the Eighties, and they’ve lived there ever since.
(If Jess’s mum is to be believed, they had briefly, in gratitude, hung a portrait of Margaret Thatcher in the hall above the shoe rack, but quickly and quietly removed it when the miners’ strike began.) Jess often calls in on her way to or from the Tube, whether for mundane daily travel or various adventures for work or play, or the many things that blur the boundary between them – like trips to Bath, one of her favourite places: once she’s chaired an author event at Topping she now realises she doesn’t.
All she has to do is survive a weekend without killing him.
And then, maybe, what she gets paid will mean she won’t need to say yes to as many events and can be around more for Val and Alan and Ivy.
‘I see,’ Val says, her smile more evident than the earlier one. This smile tells Jess that her grandma has already drawn her own conclusions.
‘We’re just writing together. And I wasn’t joking about one of us killing the other by the end of the weekend. He’s pretty annoying.’
‘I see,’ Val says again, her smile broadening. She will clearly not be talked down from the conclusions she has drawn. And Jess does not want to fall into the category of She Who Protests Too Much.
So she doesn’t protest. Instead, she throws her grandma a crumb. ‘I’m not saying he’s not good-looking.’
‘Just … not your type?’
‘Something like that.’ Something very unlike that, actually, the voice in her head rebukes her.
You know you can’t resist a man with a dimple.
It’s not nice to lie to your grandmother.
‘There’s more to life than looks,’ she says eventually.
Not a lie. Not the whole truth. This is the best she can manage right now.
‘I see,’ Val repeats. Her lifelong trick: say as little as possible and leave silence for Jess to fill. It usually works. ‘Well,’ she adds, when nothing else is forthcoming. ‘Keep me posted, okay? And be careful.’
‘I’ll make sure he stays away from sharp knives.’
‘With your heart, I mean.’
Jess slurps the last of her tea, hiding her face in the mug for as long as she can get away with.
‘I’d probably better be going,’ she says, jumping up.
Her grandma is kind, caring – as she always has been.
But Jess feels squirmy and uncomfortable at the thought that there is anything to be careful about.
It’s fine. It’s all fine. Alex has shown himself to be utterly unattractive as a person, whatever the outside packaging might imply.
She’s surely not so easily swayed as to go back on this realisation.
‘Wait,’ Val says, as Jess is already halfway out the door with her wheelie suitcase. ‘I’ve got some flapjacks for you.’
It’s a sign of how flustered Jess is that she had almost forgotten about the Tupperware in the kitchen. She needs to snap out of this, and fast.
Jess knows it’s churlish to have planned to catch a train later than Alex’s.
There’s no reason she needs to, and it would be easier to arrive together, jump in a cab together, dig around together for Nathan’s spare key.
It’s just that it feels important to take control of this – the one thing that’s in her power – and to grab a tiny amount of space and time to herself before she is forced to share a house with her inconveniently attractive nemesis for an entire weekend.
There’ll be nowhere to get away from him, not without good reason.
She feels claustrophobic just thinking about it.
But she’s always loved taking the train, watching the bustle of London recede and give way to sparser houses and then farmland, rivers, and expanses of sky.
She puts on a swelling classical music playlist or the soundtrack from the 2005 Pride and Prejudice film and lets herself feel the weight and excitement of starring in her own film. It’s all very Main Character Energy.
Somehow, she imagines Alex wouldn’t let her do any of this, any more than he’d let her get lost in the pages of her book or concentrate on flicking through the magazine she always carefully chooses before a journey.
(Godalming might only be half an hour away, but it’s still a journey, damn it, and she’s still going to enjoy it.) Even if he didn’t actually say anything, even if he, too, dug a book out of his bag – a thick biography of a worthy white man of Britain past, perhaps, like a Cadbury or a Colman – his, well, just being there would unnerve her.
She’d imagine him silently judging her as she sat, quietly daydreaming or paging through the advance copy of the latest book by one of her favourite authors that had flopped onto her doormat just that morning, with most fortuitous timing.
All of this plan, though, does not account for the current state of British railways.
She always, somehow, forgets the essential detail that trains get delayed and trains get cancelled, and there’s rarely a seat anymore, let alone a window seat from which she can daydream and wave at the occasional sheep.
She should not have been surprised to see Alex waiting for her by the ticket gate, looking forlorn. But she always forgets this part, the part where you can’t rely on anything going according to plan. Her stomach, confused, drops, and then leaps.
‘My train has been cancelled,’ he announces, though she’s figured it out all by herself.
Alex wouldn’t miss a train. He’d be half an hour early to allow for any small mishaps, and probably because he is always hoping that, this time, the platform announcement will come a decent amount of time in advance.
Then, with the smug leisureliness of the unnecessarily organised, he’d be able to stroll to the platform and onto one of the many still-available seats.