Chapter Twenty-Five
Jess
Alex feels suddenly distant, but Jess is probably imagining that.
She was hoping to spend the train journey with her head on his shoulder, making plans with him for their next working session, which she hopes will be soon.
She suspects that, otherwise, she will miss him in a way she has no business missing someone she only met a few weeks ago.
But instead, he spends most of the journey in the corridor, on the phone to Nathan.
She slides her headphones on and finds her Main Character Energy playlist, but looking out of the window at the English countryside doesn’t quite hit the same when it’s getting dark and all she can really see is her own slightly deflated reflection.
And then, at last, his reflection too, when he finally slides into the seat next to her.
‘What did you tell Nathan?’
His hand is on her leg, claiming her. See, she tells herself. He likes you. You have nothing to worry about.
‘That we had a very productive time, and he’ll be happy with what we’ve achieved. And also that his roof leaks and he should probably fix it. He asked if it interfered with our sleep. I said we figured it out.’
Jess covers her face with her hands. Nathan knows. Even with such vague information, there is no way he doesn’t know.
Alex leans into her, his head now on her shoulder. ‘We have nothing to be embarrassed about,’ he whispers, his breath tickling her cheek. ‘And if Nathan did send us there to fall in love, then, well … mission accomplished, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Please tell me you did not use those words on the phone to him.’
His silence is her answer.
But once she processes what he’s just said, it’s hard to be angry with him.
He’s fallen in love with her.
This journey could not be more different than the journey just two days ago, before everything. They’re sitting in a more or less empty train carriage. There’s nobody across from them, nobody opposite. Jess doesn’t have to worry about being ‘that person’, about them being ‘that couple’.
‘It’s mutual,’ she says. ‘In case you were wondering.’ She turns to kiss his cheek, then his mouth.
It’s an awkward angle and her neck will ache tomorrow, but she doesn’t care.
She can’t quite believe she is snogging a hot man on a train.
A famous author, no less. Her teenage self would be so proud of her.
Lily will be, too – she can already hear her low whistle.
Good for you, she’ll say, switching the wine for prosecco to toast the success of Jess’s writing retreat.
Now this, she thinks to herself in the meantime, self-congratulating … Noting once again Alex’s skill with his lips, with his tongue, trying somewhat in vain to keep her body and her vocal chords under control. This is Main Character Energy.
The days drag interminably until Thursday, when Jess and Alex have agreed to meet again, to work on the book and, she suspects, their kissing techniques. Not that Alex needs to work on his. It’s pretty much perfect as it is. Just thinking about it raises her body temperature a few degrees.
The book, however, is a different story.
They’ve worked hard already and got a lot done, but the planning is just the beginning.
The essential foundation, but not the visible house of words they are building.
It’s better, they’ve reluctantly agreed over WhatsApp, to spend some time apart, working separately.
Without distractions, Alex had specified, as if it needed to be spelled out.
But now he’s here, on her doorstep. She has spent the last day and a half not so much working on the book as doing an emergency deep clean, rearranging her furniture, buying flowers and artfully arranging them in vases, tinkering with her bookshelf so that the colour coordination is as visually pleasing as possible.
It needed to be done anyway, for the sake of Instagram.
Alex’s impending visit is just an added motivation.
At least, that’s what she tells herself.
And now he’s standing in front of her. She’d somehow forgotten how much she fancied him.
‘Hello,’ she says, her voice wobbling between the syllables.
Her knees are weak, like those of the teenager she once was, waiting in the sixth-form common room for the boy she liked to come in and play pool so she could watch him from the corner of the room.
She hates being a cliché, and yet here we are.
‘Hello,’ he says. He leans over and kisses her cheek, in a swoonworthy and gentlemanly manner. Chaste and respectful. She probably should not be disappointed by this. Other people would no doubt find it delightful.
‘Nice flat,’ he says, almost too quickly – almost before he’s had the chance to notice her freshly hoovered carpet, her newly dusted bookshelves.
But she notes approvingly that he takes his shoes off out of respect of her clean floors, so maybe he’s just a quick observer.
He’s wearing Mr Tickle socks. A gift, no doubt, from a beloved niece or nephew. Another very endearing thing.
She probably needs to breathe. Calm down a bit.
‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘I love living here.’
Would she like a bigger flat, with more room for her books?
Space to throw dinner parties? A spare room so her little cousin Ivy can come and stay from time to time, take the pressure off Val and Alan, give them more breathing space to put their feet up, maybe do some of that extended travelling they’ve been dreaming of for years?
Of course. But none of that erases that this is home.
That every day, still, after three years, she’s delighted to live in Pimlico – a short walk from St James’s Park, where each spring she lingers among the tulips and each summer she lazes on the grass, people-watching and trying not to drip chocolate ice-cream on her novel.
The Tachbrook Street Market, where she’s tried every kind of olive and ranked them in order of preference in one random Substack post that was linked to by London Centric, bringing her more new subscribers than a thoughtful review of the latest buzzy book ever has.
And so close to the places that tourists fly thousands of miles to see: the Houses of Parliament a twenty-minute walk away; just beyond that, Whitehall and Trafalgar Square; or, across the river, the South Bank, where she loves to linger on sunny days, taking pictures of the ever-changing skyline of the capital or browsing through the book market under Waterloo Bridge.
And besides, when this book of theirs is a bestseller, maybe she’ll be able to treat herself to a bigger flat.
She can already picture the arguments with Alex, once they’re together properly.
Hampstead is so pleasant, there’s no doubt about that: the beautiful Heath with its views of the City and its wild swimming in the Ladies’ Pond, the pub up the hill with the best fish and chips she’s ever had, the ever-present possibility – more thrilling than she’d like to admit – of bumping into any number of old white male writers of literary fiction.
But it’s not Pimlico, and it’s not close enough to her beloved grandparents.
She’ll work on Alex bit by bit, have Val bake some more of her treats, till he realises that living near them is indispensable.
She is getting ahead of herself, she knows that.
She’s not even sure if they are officially an item, or just two writers who got a little distracted, when they were supposed to be working on a book, and had a bit of a fling.
Then again, hadn’t he said he’d fallen in love with her?
That seems like more than a fling, or a distraction, or a way to pass the time in between chapter edits.
‘I’d like to kiss you,’ Alex says now, setting his bag down by the front door. ‘But I’m afraid we won’t get any work done if we start there.’
‘Would that be such a bad thing?’ She tries to keep it light, playful. Not begging and pleading, which is what she is doing in her head. It’s been four days. Four interminable days.
He chuckles. ‘Deadlines,’ he says. ‘The bane of my existence.’
‘Fair enough,’ she says, but she doesn’t think it is.
Lily, of course, was thrilled when Jess texted her to tell her what had happened.
She responded to Jess’s WhatsApps with a longer and longer string of emojis, ranging from hearts to flowers to blushing faces and ending with all the party icons – streamers, balloons, champagne.
She’s never hidden that she wants Jess to have what she has with Gareth: they met at a Spanish evening class, their attraction growing stronger as the weeks went by.
Jess would wait for Lily to return just after 10 p.m. every Tuesday night and they’d spend a delicious evening analysing every accidental brush of the hand as Lily and Gareth shared a textbook and every potential Freudian slip during conversational role play, until one night Lily texted Jess: Don’t wait up.
The stuff of romance novels; the stuff that convinced Jess that meet-cutes really can happen; the stuff she dreams of for herself.
Gareth has so far managed to be an exemplary romantic hero: flowers bought, cards written, thoughtful gifts purchased and delivered on important dates and sometimes just because.
Jess had worried that she’d never think anybody would be good enough for Lily, but she’s glad that Gareth has proved her wrong – even if part of her wishes he hadn’t materialised and disrupted the life that she and Lily shared in the Brixton flat.