Chapter 17.
Then
The summer of our first year, Jamie’s dad arranged work experience for him. It was in London, a top architectural firm, his contact a friend-of-a-friend. Jamie would stay in the Soho flat. The lodger had just moved out, so it was free for the summer (and also, I suspected, indefinitely).
I knew I couldn’t go with him. Mostly because of Jamie’s dad, but also because I had to earn some money. I already had a part-time job at a pub down the road – the decent one that had recently gone gastro – and my big plan for the summer was simply to increase my hours.
‘What are you going to do?’ Lara asked me one night. We were in her bedroom, listening to Bombay Bicycle Club, and she was French-plaiting my hair, because I could never do it neatly myself.
‘About what?’
‘Your career. Your future. What are you doing with your summer?’
‘I’m working at the pub.’
‘You should get proper work experience. Something you actually want to do. What about that company you designed those curtains for?’
Kelley Lane Interiors. Kelley had given us the brief herself, singling me out for praise after our final presentation, complimenting my creative use of pattern and texture. Her company’s Instagram was job porn for students, popping with pictures of incredible projects – swish hotel lobbies and Georgian manor-house kitchens and bathrooms-to-die-for in new-builds with panoramic coastal views. I salivated over photos of their offices, too – the manicured hands clutching coffee cups, the flatlays of fabric palettes, the swish 3D renderings on giant computer screens.
But I still wavered, overwhelmed by imposter syndrome. Jamie had always been my benchmark for ambition and drive, and whenever I compared myself to him, I felt as though I fell way short.
‘The pub’s easy money,’ I told Lara.
‘Neve. I’m going to say something to you now, and I need you to listen. Sit up.’
My plait was only half finished, but I sat up.
‘Easy money doesn’t exist. Not in the real world. Not after we graduate and our loans are gone. Are you going to work at the pub your whole life? How will you make ends meet?’
‘I’ll have Jamie.’
Her eyes widened. ‘You did not just say that.’
‘Not like that . I just mean, everything’s cheaper if there’s two of you.’
‘What if Jamie got run over by a bus tomorrow?’
I blinked at her. ‘Lara.’
‘I’m serious. You’ve got to look after yourself. You need to start thinking about how you’re going to make money and have a fulfilling life and dreams and ambitions of your own .’ She looked at me. I’d never seen her so stern the whole time I’d known her. ‘Your life can’t just be about Jamie. You know that, don’t you?’
It was the first time anyone had really said it to me. Not once had I wanted to picture my life without Jamie in it – partly because he’d always felt like family to me. The family I’d never had.
‘You don’t want to turn into your mum, do you?’
‘What? No. What?’
‘I mean, you don’t want a life that revolves around a man.’
I thought about my dad, who for the past few weeks had been in receipt of a series of increasingly hostile phone calls from my mother, each made from a different phone like she was a drugs baron on the run.
I felt a tingle of indignation. ‘I’m nothing like my mum.’
‘Then create your own life and your own dreams. A career you’re proud of. A home of your own. Don’t rely on Jamie for anything .’
I swallowed. ‘All right. I know. I won’t. You don’t need to tell me all this.’
‘Yes, I do. Do you want to know why?’
‘Go on,’ I said cautiously.
‘Because... you’re brilliant, Neve, and you deserve for the world to realise it, okay?’ She gestured for me to lie back down. ‘I just wish you would realise it too.’
I stretched out next to her so she could finish my hair, trying not to think about how hard my mother would scoff if she had overheard this conversation. I decided to change the subject, because for the time being at least, I knew Lara’s life plans were far more interesting than my own. ‘What about you? Any luck with the work experience?’ She had been trying for weeks to arrange shadowing or even just a coffee with someone in TV set design, and had so far got nowhere.
She started combing the other side of my head for the second braid. I liked having my hair done by Lara. Her touch was gentle, so unlike my mother’s, who – on the rare occasions she’d done my hair as a child – would yank forcefully through my dark waves with a comb as though her intention was to render me completely bald.
‘Actually, yeah. I got a call today from a production designer who does heaps of stuff for the BBC. We’re having coffee tomorrow.’
‘Lar, that’s amazing.’ I twisted my head to face her. ‘God, I can’t wait to see you on TV.’
‘I won’t actually be on TV.’
‘Your name, then. On the credits.’
She paused. ‘But I want to see your name up in lights, too, Neve. Not just mine, or Jamie’s. Yours too. Right up there. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Okay.’
I’d been feeling a cold drip of apprehension as Jamie’s leaving date approached. At night, I would lie awake, picturing him meeting some fellow aspiring architect with a shiny ponytail called Ginny, who’d probably gone to private school and spent her free time fine-dining and influencing from Dubai. Temptation was everywhere, I knew that. Soho was cool, and London was overrun with Ginnys.
But at the same time, Lara’s words had struck a tiny tuning fork somewhere inside me. Maybe an enforced break from Jamie was my chance to make something happen for myself. That way, I wouldn’t spend the summer missing him, but doing something positive with my life instead.
On Jamie’s last morning in Norfolk, we went to the beach. We’d stayed up late the previous night, watching a Swiss film Harry had recommended, and I felt tired and sluggish, craving fresh air.
The beach was swarming with kids dressed in expensive clothes and wellies, their parents laden down with cool boxes and beach bags and windbreaks. The sky flared with sunshine, the view an artist’s tableau of flying kites and scampering dogs and picnickers.
I could see this for me and Jamie, one day: living in North Norfolk, maybe buying one of those beautiful flint-walled coastal houses, having children, a dog.
‘What happened to your aunt’s beach hut?’ Jamie asked, as we passed the row of pastel-coloured huts nestling in the shadow of the pine trees.
I looked at him, impressed. I’d mentioned it maybe once in passing, years ago. ‘She sold it. I think she needed to buy a car, or something.’
‘Shame. Be worth a fortune now.’
It occurred to me then, that with his confident stride and hundred-pound wellies, discussing beach huts like they were legal tender, that Jamie really fitted in here. He could have been any one of these people, who all seemed to have money and the world at their feet.
I imagined Lara admonishing me for this. You don’t have to be a certain sort of person to fit in outdoors, idiot .
Just as we were finding a place to sit, on the sand just north of the beach huts, a loud noise made us both start. It filled the air, disquieting and mournful, like the wail of an old air-raid siren.
‘Are we about to be bombed, or something?’ I was only half joking. What the hell was it?
Jamie laughed. ‘It’s the high-tide warning. They sound it when the tide turns. To let you know to get to dry ground, or you might be swept out to sea.’
Even though I could feel the blaze of the sun on my face, I shivered. I couldn’t imagine a much worse way to go than being swept out to sea.
Jamie laughed and slung his arm across my shoulders. ‘Don’t worry. I wouldn’t let you get swept off anywhere.’
‘What about you?’ You’re getting swept away to London tomorrow.
‘Well, if I did... I’d just have to come back and haunt you.’
‘What?’ I laughed.
‘Yeah. I’ve fully got plans to haunt you, if I go first.’ He turned to face me, dipped his mouth to mine and kissed me. I can still remember that kiss, even now. Salty and sun-soaked and wholehearted, like we were moments before the credits rolled in a film. I could practically hear the orchestra.
‘Just so you know,’ I said, as we drew apart, ‘I’m really not a fan of ghosts.’
‘I’d be a friendly ghost. We could have fun.’ He waggled his eyebrows, brown eyes dancing with laughter.
I tilted my head, tasting sea salt on my tongue. ‘It sounds like you’re saying we could have ghost sex, which is... just about the creepiest thing anyone has ever said to me.’
‘Come on. Ghost sex with me would still be better than sex with anyone else. Right?’
Well, I wasn’t going to argue with that. It was impossible to imagine anyone being better at sex than Jamie. But still. ‘Stop saying ghost sex.’
‘Not until you agree that if I die, ghost sex with me will top any other sex you have.’
‘If I do, can we please stop talking about you being a ghost?’
‘Only if you say it.’
‘All right. Ghost sex with you, Jamie, will always be the best.’
‘Promise? No-one else will come close?’
‘I promise.’
He laughed, and kissed me, and we carried on walking.