Chapter 61
Josh
Andrea and I are in Valencia, where she’s attending a literary festival. I’ve tagged along for a few of her work events now. Book fairs and signings, trips abroad to meet publishers.
We are eating dinner at an oyster bar. This was Andrea’s suggestion – I’ve never exactly been an oyster kind of guy. Rachel and I tried them once, on one of our semi-ironic Valentine’s Day outings, and all I can remember is Rachel crying with laughter as I repeatedly gagged.
It’s the kind of place where you have to bray to be heard, all chandeliers and vintage champagne and crustaceans on plates.
I wish I could have been brave enough to suggest we give it a swerve in favour of the scruffy tapas joint up the road, which looked far more fun.
But Andrea is sophisticated, and this is her trip, at the end of the day.
Okay, so oysters aren’t my thing. But maybe they could be.
And my girlfriend is nothing if not a fan of living life outside your comfort zone.
‘Love that people assume you’re my toy-boy,’ she says, running her foot up my leg beneath the table.
She introduced me this way to her friends, when we first met. She likes pretending we’re kind of kinky, teasing me about looking aeons younger than her.
‘Very funny,’ I say, poker-faced. ‘You’re thirty-five. We look entirely normal together.’
But, in reality, I enjoy that we can joke about it.
I like that she feels comfortable enough to rib me, remind me not to take myself so seriously.
I like that joining her for events and dressy dinners and hours-long writing sessions means I have so much less time now to dwell on the future, or how jarring it feels to see a twenty-something when I look in the mirror.
I like that I’m constantly thinking about crafting a paragraph she will deem to be perfect, or picking her bunches of snowdrops from the garden, or unearthing old recipes for soups and muffins and soda bread she might enjoy.
And I like it when she seeks me out at my desk, kissing and caressing me for what seems like hours before eventually sinking on to me, dress bunched around her waist, fingers raking my skin, face flushed and glimmering as she bites back my name.
She squeezes a lemon segment over an oyster before sipping it from the shell. ‘Thought I’d lost you this morning.’
‘Had a sudden burst of inspiration at three a.m.’
‘Lucky you. What are those like?’
I throw her a sceptical look. She’s always complaining of having creative block, yet she’s the one selling out literary festivals, not me.
Still. Meeting her appears to have hot-wired my brain, creatively speaking.
Maybe Rachel wasn’t wrong, all those years ago.
Maybe I really did need a muse. For the first time in a long while I’ve been feeling reinvigorated by writing, pouring words on to the page, unable to stop, as if I’m crafting my debut all over again.
This new novel is different from anything I’ve written before, though.
Genre, subject matter, form. Which feels like a risk, in many ways.
Then again, I can probably afford to take one now.
The idea I discussed with my publisher a few years back went nowhere; I promised myself I would give it my best shot, but the whole project was canned before I’d even written a word.
‘I’d love to read what you’ve got so far,’ Andrea says, sipping her champagne.
To most writers, even a single sentence of feedback from Andrea Bewley would be literary gold.
And I include myself in that: since we met, we’ve spent countless evenings debating narrative convention and technique, voice and characterisation, genre, drive, intention.
She is, to be frank, the hottest teacher I’ve ever had.
In fact, it’s started to make me question what I ever thought I was doing, masquerading as a college lecturer and imparting what I now know to be my distinct lack of expertise.
Being with her has focused my mind to an entirely new degree.
Because I am keen to impress her? Or maybe it’s because we are not so different.
We both want to write books that other people admire.
I find myself talking to her about writing more than anything else, in the hope of absorbing even a smudge of the creative energy that propelled her to the top of the bestseller lists.
That said, I’m not quite ready to share what I’ve been writing yet.
‘It’s really just brain vomit right now,’ I tell her.
‘Mmm, that is a good stage. I do love a good creative puke.’ She nods down at the oyster platter. ‘Go on, then.’
Gingerly, I take one and raise it to my lips, bypassing the lemon and black pepper, because no amount of garnishing is going to make a dead mollusc taste good. I want to get it over with as quickly as possible. So I tip back my head and down it in one, the way I’ve read you’re supposed to.
Andrea smiles, leans towards me and whispers, ‘Swallowing whole is kind of a giveaway, you know.’
‘Of what?’ My mouth tastes of fish and seawater. Why the hell do people eat this stuff?
‘Amateur oyster-eater,’ she says, but with a fond smile, as if she thinks it’s cute.
I was already feeling faintly self-conscious next to Andrea, in her waft of dark blue silk and vault’s worth of silver jewellery.
I just packed my usual uniform of plain dark T-shirts, jeans and trainers to come out here.
I guess it’s my way of trying not to attract attention, to blend in, do my best to avoid eye contact with anyone I don’t know.
But, lately, I admit I have been wondering if I need to up my game. To begin dressing more smartly, perhaps learn about things like fine food and opera, watch more films that come with subtitles.
‘Hey, I’ve been thinking.’ She is gazing at me now, chin resting on cupped hands. Her red hair drapes in waves down the front of one shoulder. ‘Tomorrow, you should get out there and network. I can introduce you to whoever you want.’
I always feel vaguely uncomfortable about being professionally associated with Andrea.
I’d hate anyone to think I’m trying to piggyback off her talent.
Me, the unknown nobody; her, the literary giant.
Andrea always scoffs at this, tells me that everyone networks, that refusing on principle is senseless and short-sighted.
And, realistically, I can’t disagree. If I’m going to get to where she is, I need to start taking her advice on all this stuff.
That said, I have been wanting to suggest an alternative way to spend some of our free time while we’re here.
Google tells me Torrevieja is only a couple of hours away by car, which has made me wonder if we could find the time to try to see Wilf. We could take a trip there together. Hire a convertible, grab coffees, drive the coast road.
But Andrea is still unaware that Wilf was the pill’s inventor, and I haven’t quite squared yet what I’d say if it came up.
So perhaps that’s why the suggestion eventually stalls in my throat.
Andrea and I have disagreed over Wilf before: she insists I’m too sentimental about him, this friend who purportedly left the country for no reason and abandoned all his friends.
She tells me I should cut him off for good.
I both admire her ability to jettison anyone who has crossed her, and deeply fear it.
So, instead of proposing a road trip, I suggest doing something else. Something I’ve been thinking about for a while.
‘Move in with me. When we get home.’
In the eighteen months we’ve been together, Andrea and I haven’t discussed the future much. She’s really a here-and-now type of person, which so far has suited me fine.
I did take off my wedding ring just two days after we met, though. This might sound long overdue, especially since Rachel and I were already divorced. But, to me, it was a big deal. I’d never wanted to do that for anyone other than Andrea.
If she’s surprised by what I’ve just suggested, her face doesn’t betray even a flicker of it. She lifts her champagne glass, silver jewellery sparking in the candlelight. ‘You know I said I’d never live with anyone again.’
True – she has told me this before. She’s written entire magazine articles about how badly her divorce burned her. But, if I know one thing about Andrea, it’s that she’s a risk-taker. So why shouldn’t she roll the dice on me, too?
‘For the rest of your life?’ I say. ‘For fifty-plus years, you’re not going to live with anyone again?’
She tilts her head. ‘What’s so radical about that? And more to the point, why are you killing me off in my eighties?’
She’s playing for time. ‘Is it my age?’
‘What?’
‘Does the eternal youth thing bother you?’
‘No. You know I find it fascinating. The never-ageing man.’
She calls me this occasionally, and it makes me flinch every time.
Andrea leans towards me, tapping a fingernail on the table as if we’re resuming the debate we had last night on metafiction – which I lost, obviously.
‘I’m actually looking forward to spending a lot of time with you, Josh.
Especially if I’m going to get older while you’re keeping fresh as a peach.
But I just don’t want a conventional life.
Cohabiting. Marriage. Kids. All that stuff. ’
Most of the women in Andrea’s novels rail against the patriarchy, any kind of traditional existence. So I already know I’d have to be an idiot to attempt to talk her into any of that.
But the truth is, that isn’t what I’m trying to do.
For a long while, I agonised over what Darren and Giles said to me two and a half years ago. You always wanted a family. You’ve got time. Infinite time.
In theory, that remains true. But I think, for me, the dream of fatherhood is probably over now.
Maybe because my brain is still wired to believe that, even for someone with a limitless lifespan, the window for having kids – maybe twenty-five years or so – eventually closes.
I’m just not sure humans are supposed to hanker after procreation indefinitely.
Anyway. The only girl I ever really wanted to do that with is gone.
But can’t living with Andrea just be about wanting more of each other?
My flat feels empty whenever I’m in it without the company of her rolling laugh, her salty wit.
Time seems to tick by a little slower. I love listening to her chatting to friends as she cooks, humming as she emerges from the shower, even arguing with her agent over the phone.
On the nights we spend apart, I miss kissing her and craving her, the take-charge way she fucks.
She rests her feline eyes against me now, affects a small pout. ‘Were you expecting an answer straight away?’
‘Well, maybe a holding response, at least.’
A smile feathers her lips. ‘All right. I’ll consider it. But in the meantime I think we should go and find out if oysters really are an aphrodisiac.’
‘You must already know the answer to that.’
She knocks back the last of her champagne, cool as you like, then brushes my ankle with the toe of her kitten heel, raises a hand for the waiter. ‘Why do you think I suggested it?’