Chapter Twenty-Five #2
All in all, Jess should probably not be surprised when there’s a knock on the door on that Thursday afternoon, just as she and Alex have sat down to a writing session in her flat.
They both seem to be pretending that the plan has worked, that the weekend has got their attraction out of their system and now they can return to being professional.
They’ve exchanged a polite kiss in Jess’s doorway; she’s made tea; they’ve got their notebooks and pens and laptops and manuscripts out.
They’ve barely had time to say, Now, where were we? when they were interrupted by a knock.
‘I was just passing,’ Lily says, hugging Jess in the doorway. ‘Thought I’d pop in for a cup of tea.’
‘You were just passing Pimlico?’ Jess is not fooled. ‘On your way from West Dulwich to where, exactly?’
Lily’s grin confirms Jess’s suspicions. ‘Nowhere in particular.’
‘Uh-huh.’
Poking her head around the corner into the living room, Lily pretends to be surprised that Jess is not alone. ‘Oh,’ she says, nodding at Alex. ‘Hello.’
Alex does a friendly little wave, a smile at the corner of his lips.
He’s apparently not any more fooled by this accidental drop-in than Jess is.
Nonetheless, Lily makes a show of looking around at the flat – the table strewn with paper and highlighters, the stack of novels Jess has pulled out for reference – pretending to slowly piece the information together and figure it out.
‘You must be the famous Alex Maxwell,’ she says. ‘Jess mentioned that the two of you were working together.’
Jess bites her lip hard to avoid sniggering. That certainly isn’t all she’s mentioned.
‘I don’t know about famous,’ he says. The humility doesn’t quite ring true, but Jess appreciates the effort in that direction.
‘He got recognised in a pub in Godalming, of all places,’ she points out. ‘And if that’s not fame, I don’t know what is.’
‘Well, to be fair,’ he says, ‘that’s probably the most excitement they’ve had there in some time.’
‘Since Cameron Diaz and Jude Law came to film, in fact.’
‘The Holiday! I love that film.’ Lily clasps her hands in a prayer pose beneath her chin. ‘So romantic.’
Jess watches, amused, as a blush creeps up Alex’s neck. He clears his throat. ‘Yes, well.’
‘Shall I put the kettle on?’ Lily asks. She’s clearly planning on staying for a while to suss out the situation.
‘I’ll do it,’ Jess says. She’s just fishing out the teabags when her phone buzzes in her pocket.
She’d ignore just about anyone at this crucial moment – she trusts Lily, of course, mostly, but does she trust her not to playfully embarrass her in front of Alex, the way she imagines a sister might?
She isn’t 100 per cent sure, and it feels like it might be too much of a risk to take for the sake of a phone call.
But she checks, just in case, and when she sees Mum flashing up on her screen, it’s a no-brainer.
It’s so rare that she calls. Poking her head around the kitchen door, she checks that Lily and Alex aren’t sitting in awkward silence.
In fact, Lily is throwing her head back, laughing.
That is probably worrying in a different way, but at least Jess can assume that the two of them won’t just stare at each other in awkward silence for as long as this call lasts, which, knowing Jess’s mum, won’t be very long at all.
‘Hi, Mum,’ she says, flicking the kettle on.
‘How are you, love?’
How is she? That is an excellent question.
Two of her favourite people are hanging out in the living room, their laughter filling the small flat.
She’s recently had the best sex of her life.
And she has, basically, a book deal. Things are, in the main, looking great.
It feels good to be able to say that – especially to her mum, who, much like her grandparents, has always been somewhat baffled by her chosen career, albeit ever-encouraging.
‘Actually, things are going well at the moment,’ she says, preparing to take a breath to say more, while at the same time wondering how much of it she should share.
Her instinct is to talk about all of it, but so much of it feels precarious, and she feels protective of her new relationship-or-whatever-it-is with a hot, famous author.
She feels, too, oddly protective of what she now thinks of as their book.
She hadn’t expected to have to decide how much to share just yet, so she stalls for time while her brain processes it. ‘How are you?’
‘Oh, good, good.’ In the background, waves roll over pebbles.
What sounds like a football is kicked. ‘I’m having fun,’ her mum says, which Jess has always assumed was code for, I’ve got a new man.
But she’s never asked further questions.
She’s always felt it’s up to her mum to offer up the information, rather than have it dragged out of her. ‘Off to Gibraltar tomorrow.’
‘That sounds fun,’ Jess says.
‘I can’t talk long,’ her mum says, and why does Jess’s stomach always sink when she says this? It’s not as if a part of her doesn’t expect it, every single time. ‘I just wanted to see if you wanted anything brought back from Spain?’
The single Spanish thing Jess can think of in this moment is chorizo. But you can get some pretty good stuff round the corner these days, and there’s only so much chorizo she can eat.
‘I think I’m good,’ she says. Lily’s laughter rings out, and a thought occurs to Jess. ‘Lily always likes a Spanish magazine, to keep up her skills.’
If Jess had met a man at Spanish evening class, she would have assumed that had been the whole purpose behind her going, that the gods of romance had sent her there not to learn a language but to meet a man.
She would have immediately stopped going, relieved not to have to keep testing herself on obscure verb conjugations and on vocab she would, let’s be real, never use.
But Lily really had wanted to learn Spanish – so much so, that Jess has sometimes worried she would one day move to Andalusia or the Costa Blanca.
She took a GCSE last summer and is considering an A Level.
Gareth has lost interest, but that doesn’t stop her soldiering on.
Jess applauds her for that. Aside from all things books, Jess has dabbled in a million hobbies, never really sticking at them.
She’s been to a pottery class; she’s tried wine tasting a couple of times; somewhere she’s still got an Italian textbook.
Every Christmas she proudly digs out the one decoration she taught herself to crochet – a snowman, copies of which she made for all of her friends that year – and wishes she’d kept at it, though she isn’t sure how many lovingly home-made blankets the world really needs.
‘No problemo,’ her mum says on the other end of the phone. ‘I’ll pick a couple up at the airport for her. Must whizz, darling. Lots of love.’
And just like that, she’s gone, leaving Jess with the usual mix of post-maternal-check-in, pit-in-her-stomach feelings.
She’s glad her mum calls regularly and seems to think of her often.
But she also wishes she’d slow down long enough to really hear what’s going on in Jess’s life.
There have been times when the subtext has been so obvious – when Jess needed a shoulder to cry on after a bad breakup, or in the aftermath of Lily moving out and the lonely silence that followed – but her mum has never taken the time to really hear it.
Jess suspects, or maybe likes to think, that she’d be mortified if she knew that Jess needed her and she hadn’t been there.
She can hear her protests now, covering up her guilt: But you said you were fine!
And, true, Jess hadn’t decided if she was ready to tell her mum about Alex yet.
Maybe she’s glad she hasn’t, in case it turns out to be nothing, though even just considering that possibility makes her feel sick.
But it would have been nice to have the choice, that’s all.
She sighs, then shakes her head to rid herself of these frustrating feelings.
She wants to stay here, in her bubble of joy: a bubble where Alex and Lily are laughing together in her flat, probably about to mercilessly tease her over her lovingly made tea.
A bubble where she and Alex are creating his next bestseller together and she is learning enough from him to write her own one day.
It’s a good place to be. Better, probably, than sun-drenched Gibraltar, no matter how plentiful the chorizo.