Chapter Nineteen
Jess
It is possible she may have overreacted.
Jess sees that now. But in her defence, she was starving, and not thinking straight.
Now, with her stomach full of toad in the hole and her second glass of Merlot in her hand, she feels she should apologise.
Although it’s difficult to know how to do that without admitting some things she isn’t ready to admit yet.
‘Alex …’ she says, at a suitable pause in the conversation. He has told her about his complicated family: four siblings whose parents divorced and each remarried partners who already had kids, then had two more of their own. He’s the eldest of a tribe of biblical proportions.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says, seemingly guessing what she’s going to say before she’s even formulated her sentence. ‘You were hangry.’
‘I know, but—’
‘It’s okay.’
‘Okay,’ she says, mirroring him. She’ll leave it there for now, grateful that he’s being so gracious.
She didn’t really want to have this conversation anyway.
Not now, not with Alex. Maybe later, with Nathan.
A part of her likes to imagine she’ll have the guts and gumption to march into his office and demand to know what he was playing at, sending them to the centre of a romantic fairytale.
A part of her, though, wonders if before this weekend is over, she’ll be grateful; if she’ll instead be planning a sheepish, loaded thank you to Nathan.
A Fortnum perhaps that’s how he knew.
‘It is.’
Jess, too, loves the sea, the sound of waves over pebbles, walks on the long promenade with the wind in her hair, the fresh sea water on the occasional hot day.
She doesn’t get to go as often as she’d like.
Her mum, even when she’s there, is busy.
Knitting groups, walking groups, Scrabble club.
When Jess was a teenager, she worried that her mum would bring home a boyfriend one day.
But it seems that these days she’s too busy having fun to think about such things; maybe that was always true.
Maybe, when Jess slept over at her grandparents’ or they came over to babysit, her mum really was at book club or meeting with friends to go to the theatre, as she claimed.
It was easier to believe that then, but maybe it was also true.
Jess is enjoying talking to Alex. He’s a good listener, tilting his head slightly when she talks, looking at her intently, all of his attention on her.
Asking good questions, like the one about her A Level Latin, which she deftly deflected, not wanting to go into the whole thing.
Her dad was French, and part of her couldn’t help wanting to connect with him.
French itself felt too much, though, too fraught.
Too emotionally dangerous. What if she wasn’t any good at it?
That would have been awkward and weird, like a denial of her birthright, a reminder of all she could have had: someone and something to grieve, when she’s never actually felt any need or desire to grieve – even if the absence of her father has shaped a large part of her personality.
The dad-shaped hole – half of her genetics – is a fire, raging, dangerous.
She has to keep it at arm’s length. Latin is that arm.
Alex shows the kind of thoughtfulness and emotional depth that she probably should have expected from someone who writes books like his, but she’s still pleasantly surprised.
It makes her want to tell him everything.
About her mum, how Jess wishes she were more of a priority in her life.
About her grandparents, how watching them get older and frailer breaks her heart and makes her worry about what life will be like without them; how she might need to be around a little more to care for them and for her cousin Ivy, whose dad is away a lot on business and whose mum has chronic fatigue and needs a lot of help.
How, if she’s honest, the thought of being tied down, of not being able to jet off to adventures at will, scares her a little.
She wants to tell Alex about Lily, and how Jess knows she’ll have to drum up enthusiasm when the day inevitably comes when Lily announces she’s pregnant – when, really, she wants them both to be young forever, free to stay up all night talking and eat a little too much cheese at their local wine bar and sunbathe on Greek island beaches and slide down mountains on their bums after attempting snowboarding.
Usually, she’d prefer not to think about any of that; she’d rather talk about books and how much she loves her job, her plans for future book clubs and podcast interviews.
But with Alex, she feels like she wants to talk about life in all its messiness.
It’s a surprising feeling, especially after such a short time knowing him – like he’s home, like he’s a safe place.
But just as Jess is thinking this thought, she notices Alex’s attention wane, his eye flickering over her shoulder.
There’s probably someone prettier than her on another table.
She should have known this moment was too good to last or to be real at all, that the bubble she’s been in with Alex would pop eventually.
She had hoped it would take longer than a pub meal, but she probably should have known better.
‘Sorry,’ he says, breaking into her thoughts. ‘I don’t mean to keep looking over your shoulder.’
‘But there’s a really hot redhead over in the corner?’ She meant this to come over as light-hearted, as a joke, but she hears a bitterness in her tone that is unattractive even to her.
‘I’m not really into redheads, actually,’ he says. Maybe he meant this light-heartedly too, but it comes across as surprisingly serious.
‘A really hot brunette, then?’
‘I like blondes, actually.’ He makes eye contact as he says it and her stomach, traitor that it is, somersaults. ‘But no. There is a woman over there, and she keeps looking at me in that do I know you from somewhere way.’
‘One of your army of fans?’
Alex’s cheeks instantly redden. Jess had been joking, but now that she thinks about it, it makes perfect sense that there would be an army of fans out there, with social media pages dedicated to his dimple, blog posts dreamily describing having met him at a book signing.
Godalming is close enough to London for literary types to live there, and certainly to visit – literary types and exactly the sort of industry insiders who know enough about the It books of the moment to recognise not just book covers but authors’ faces.
And then, suddenly, there she is, the brunette, materialising next to their table the way a waitress might to recite the day’s specials. But alas, this is nowhere near as exciting.
‘Excuse me,’ she says. ‘But I have to ask – I mean, you really look like Alex Maxwell. You know, the writer?’
‘Ah yes,’ he says, turning on his flashiest smile, the one with the dimple. ‘I get that a lot.’
He’s deflecting, maybe. But also, Jess wonders if he’s prolonging the moment because he’s enjoying himself.
The brunette’s face stays frozen. She evidently can’t decide if he is joking or trying to put her off the scent. If he wants to be left alone.
‘So it’s not you?’
There’s a pause. Alex might be weighing up whether he wants to welcome in this interruption to their dinner, or whether he wants to send the brunette away as quickly as possible. Or maybe the pause is just for dramatic effect. It’s difficult to tell.
‘No, no,’ he says. ‘It is.’
For the second time this evening, Jess fights the urge to roll her eyes.
‘Oh good,’ the brunette giggles. ‘Because that would have been embarrassing.’
Not unlike this moment, in fact. Jess can feel her body curling with the cringe of it all.
And then it gets worse: the brunette produces a book from behind her back.
Jess wants to ask whether she carries it around with her all the time in the hopes of bumping into him and getting it autographed. I mean, what are the chances?
‘I thought I recognised you from when you spoke at Hay for your first book. Would you sign this for me?’
‘I’d be honoured.’ He feels in his pocket for a pen, but unlike Jess, who is always prepared, he doesn’t have one.
‘Here,’ Jess says, fishing in her handbag then handing a biro to Alex. The brunette turns to her, seemingly becoming aware for the first time that he is not dining alone.
‘Hello,’ Jess says.
‘Hi,’ she says. ‘Sorry. How rude of me.’ She puts out her hand for Jess to shake it. ‘I’m Cassandra.’
‘Jessica,’ Jess says, shaking her hand. When people have long names, it always spurs her on to deploy hers. In her peripheral vision, she sees Alex mouth it back – Jessica – as if it had never occurred to him that Jess might be short for anything.
‘Cassandra,’ Alex repeats now. ‘That’s a beautiful name. Should I make it out to you?’
‘You’re too nice,’ she says, her hand on his forearm. ‘Yes, please.’
‘And are you a writer too?’
She gasps, her hand to her mouth. That same hand removed now, Jess notes, from Alex’s arm. ‘How did you know?’
‘Sometimes you can just tell,’ he says. Oh please, Jess wishes she could say. I bet he asks everyone that.
Keep writing, Alex scribbles, just above the signature that’s more or less illegible apart from the two prominent Xs – the one in Alex and the one in Maxwell, interlocking in a way that’s more artful than it has any right to be.
After multiple thank yous, Cassandra leaves to go back to her table and, presumably, dig out her phone and tell the world what has just happened to her.
‘You should ask for her number,’ Jess says, teasing. Mostly.
‘Stop it,’ Alex says.
But she can tell he’s enjoying himself.