Chapter 76
Rachel
For our birthday, Josh invites me out to lunch. Nothing fancy, but nice enough to feel like an occasion.
Now that we live less than ten minutes apart, we’ve been seeing each other a fair bit, for coffee and brunch dates, dinner, movie nights. If Emma’s around, she tags along too. I love watching her and Josh spend time together, catching up and making each other laugh, swapping stories about me.
Today, though, it’s just the two of us. Which is equally lovely. Time and smiles shared across a table, still my favourite thing to do after nearly forty years of knowing him.
He is telling me about his holiday. He has just come back from a fortnight in the Bahamas, newly suntanned and enviably refreshed.
He invited me to go too, when he first booked the tickets.
Emma was adamant I should accept, even threatening to say yes on my behalf.
But in the end there were too many reasons not to.
The romance of the resort. The idea of people staring at us, lying on a beach together.
The myriad complications of swimsuits and alcohol and two weeks alone with Josh while still, in my heart, knowing him to be the most handsome man in any room. Or poolside cabana, come to that.
He asks after Emma now, and I tell him she’s waiting to find out if she will gain tenancy with the Gray’s Inn chambers where she’s been working as a pupil barrister.
The pressure to perform has been fierce; I don’t think she’s slept more than three hours a night for almost a full year.
But soon my baby, who was once no bigger than a blueberry, could be defending criminals in a court of law for a living.
The waiter brings over our drinks and a basket of warm rolls. I take one and smother whipped butter on to it, though I have to break it into pieces, because my dentist has ordered me to stop tearing bread apart with my teeth.
‘Do you think you could ever put weight on?’ I ask Josh.
‘Er, I don’t think so. Not in the same way as other people. Why?’
‘I don’t know. I was thinking about how you always wear the same pair of jeans.’
Yes – always the same jeans and slate-grey T-shirt, dark hair persistently shambolic. Endearingly uncomplicated, doing his best to blend in.
‘You mean, the same kind of jeans. I have more than one pair, Rach.’
‘Well, it must be nice, anyway. Not to have to worry about it.’
‘Yeah, I’ll add it to my list of minor upsides.’ A pause. ‘Hey, you know my crime series airs in a couple of months?’
‘Of course. It’s on the calendar in glitter pen,’ I say with a smile.
‘There’s a premiere in London. Will you come?’
The smile fades a little. ‘Ah, I couldn’t.’
‘What? Why not?’
‘Because, Josh.’
‘Because what?’
‘Because, everyone will assume I’m your mother.’
We both reach for the water jug, and, as we do, it’s hard not to notice the disparity between his seamless, silicone skin and mine.
On me, the passing years are unmissable, my lines and emerging liver spots like tiny time stamps.
A reminder, if we needed one, of the chasm between us now that can never be crossed.
Josh doesn’t press me further. So perhaps he is seeing it too.
I’m not self-conscious, particularly. But I am aware of my changing body, in a detached, almost fascinated, way, I suppose. Stretch marks, tits losing their bounce, glimmers of silver visible in my hair if I stand beneath bright light. My limbs starting to thicken too, perhaps, ever so slightly.
Not long ago, Josh told me he finally came clean about his true age with his new agent and publisher. Fortunately, the huge bestseller he wrote means he had the leverage to swear them all to secrecy.
‘Do you ever worry about the future?’ I ask him.
‘Sure. But at some point it’ll become meaningless, right?’
‘That’s a bit nihilistic.’
‘Well, once you’re gone, and Emma’s . . . There’ll come a time when . . .’
In my heart, a faultline begins to form. ‘There’ll come a time when what?’
He hesitates. ‘Let’s not talk about all that stuff. It’s our birthday. We’re supposed to be having fun.’
Shortly after this, I go to the toilet, where I bump into a woman who’s clearly steaming drunk. Her eyes are glazed, and her cheeks are raspberry-red. She’s about my age, possibly slightly older.
‘Tell me your secret,’ she says, laying a heavy hand on my arm.
I smile uncertainly. ‘Sorry?’
‘My lad won’t be seen dead with me. I’m lucky if I even get a birthday card from him these days.’
Her assumption rocks me. ‘Oh, that’s not—’
‘No – you should give yourself credit.’ The smile drops from her face slightly. ‘You must have been a really good mum.’
And then she leaves, bouncing off the door frame as she sways her way back to her table.
Josh walks me home, and I invite him in for coffee. Once we’re sitting on the sofa, I relate the story to him about the loo woman, at which he starts laughing.
I pick up a cushion, sling it gently into his ribs. ‘It’s exactly why I can’t go to that premiere with you. She thought you were my son. I can’t believe you don’t find that disturbing.’
The smile leaves his face in a way that looks like self-reproach. ‘Well, of course I do. Of course we couldn’t have lived with that. You’re right, Rach. You always are.’
I rest my head on his shoulder, the worn-in cotton of his T-shirt. I feel his heartbeat against my cheek, a soft strike in time with mine.
‘You know,’ he murmurs, his chin grazing my hair, ‘every morning, when I wake up, I hope – just for a second – that I dreamed this whole thing. That I’m going to see your face smiling on the pillow next to me, eighteen all over again.’
The late-afternoon light has dipped. The room is dimmer and soundless now, but in a way that feels comforting and safe. A place with no clocks, bright lights, or expectations. Where the world can be withheld, if only for a few hours.
Josh puts his arms around me, tugs me close. ‘In another life, Rach,’ he whispers.
My heart feels whole and broken all at once. ‘In another life,’ I whisper back.