Chapter 19.
A full working week has passed since that dynamite kiss with Ash. We both have crazy work schedules: Ash is deep in securing planning and building control consent on a split residential plot in the city, and I’m pitching to win a hefty design contract for a set of holiday lodges in Suffolk. He has some sort of pool league thing going on too, and on his only free night – and mine – I’m seeing the new Greta Gerwig film with an old work friend.
Maybe, on some level, I’ve resisted making time for him because of what I think I know. That on the night of Ash’s accident, Jamie took over his body somehow.
Every time I contemplate it, it sets my mind spinning. It makes me feel out of control.
And I can’t imagine continuing to think all this as Ash remains oblivious.
But we agree to meet on Saturday morning. Ash picks me up. I invite him inside, and give him a tour of the house. He takes time to admire the pristine paintwork, the moulding and cornicing, the waxed floorboards, the flow of the rooms.
‘I’m getting proper show-home vibes here,’ he says, with a smile.
I return his smile and tell him I’m not really here enough to mess it up, which is only partly true, but I don’t want to major on the fact that I like to clean as a way to unwind. It’s my dirty secret, I guess. It’s definitely the least cool thing about me.
In the living room, he peers forward to examine the framed photos on my mantelpiece, and I curse myself for not having thought to take them down.
He turns to look at me, asking the question without words.
‘A friend,’ I say. ‘He died.’
‘I’m sorry.’
I smile. ‘Thank you. Shall we go?’
I can’t help but hope he felt a flicker of recognition when he looked at the photos. Or at the bronze N and J bookends nearby. Or at any of Jamie’s old possessions I still keep around my home.
But if he did, he doesn’t let on.
As we reach the front door to head out, we both pause, and then he leans forward and kisses me. It hits as fiercely as a flame leaping to life.
It was my suggestion to go to Wells. It’s a perfect June morning. The air is warm, heat rising from the sun-baked sand. The beach is busy, but not heaving. Seagulls soar through a blue-domed sky, riding a breeze scented with saltwater and seaweed.
We didn’t stop talking the whole way here, about houses, and work, and how badly we are both aching for promotion. Ash wants to be made an associate at his firm within the next couple of years; I’m aiming for head designer, a position Kelley’s been threatening and failing to create for years. But this year, with all the hours I’ve put in and the positive press and winning feedback from clients, I’ve never felt so close.
‘Neve,’ Ash says now, as we start to walk. I don’t know where we’re heading. Just the open mouth of the horizon, I guess. ‘I should probably tell you, I... Googled Jamie Fraser.’
My stomach pitches sharply. Did he have a sense, somehow, of what I’ve been thinking this past week? Or did Jamie’s name sound inexplicably familiar?
‘It was after you asked me about him. I was just curious, I guess.’
I nod. It’s fair enough: I idly searched for Tabitha the other day while I was waiting for a client. She’s beautiful, of course, works as a personal trainer. Has nearly fifty thousand followers on Instagram. Though a part of me felt slightly sorry for Ash, because even watching a couple of her reels left me feeling like I needed a lie-down.
We keep walking.
‘Jamie Fraser is the same guy that’s in the photos on your mantelpiece.’
I swallow, feeling suddenly hot, despite the coastal air. In any other situation, I’d get up and walk away, escape the sensation of scrutiny. But I can’t walk away from this.
‘A friend?’ he says gently, because that’s what I told him an hour ago, but I suspect he knows it was a lie.
I exhale. Ash has been completely open with me. The least I can do is answer him truthfully. ‘No. He was... my boyfriend. A long time ago. Sorry I lied before, I just...’
‘I caught you off guard,’ he guesses. ‘It’s okay, Neve. And I’m really sorry. I can’t imagine.’ He reaches for my hand and squeezes it.
‘Thank you,’ I say.
We walk in silence for a minute or so. A pair of Labradors barrels past us, their owner a mere fleck in the distance.
‘Do you think... Do you think you’re completely over him?’
I feel him glance at me as he says this. I fix my eyes on the long crease in the view where sea meets sky.
My mind has been on Jamie constantly over the past couple of weeks, which feels so strange. On the one hand, it’s lovely and extraordinary, to think he might – somehow – be back. But I haven’t thought about him this intensely in so long. I’ve built a different life now, and it’s a bizarre sensation to unexpectedly be making room for him in my head again.
‘I understand if you’re not,’ Ash says, after a few moments. ‘Grief... It’s the most complicated thing about being human. I’m not going to be all... weird and jealous if you still love your ex. It makes total sense.’
I look over at him. I think he might be one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. Especially given what happened with Tabitha. Being cheated on, made to feel second-best.
I know I owe him my honesty. But I also want to see how he reacts if I start to confide in him about what I suspect may be going on.
‘You actually... remind me of Jamie, in lots of ways.’
He looks surprised. ‘I do?’
‘Well,’ I say, carefully, ‘he was an architect too. Or studying to be one.’
A slow nod, then he waits for more, because he knows – he must know – that there is more.
I try to think how I can elaborate in a way that doesn’t sound completely ridiculous and trivial. ‘And... you have... exactly the same handwriting.’
But, of course, this does sound ridiculous and trivial. And perhaps it goes to show that I really have been losing the plot.
Maybe I just needed to say it out loud. To expose it to the light, so I can see it for what it really is.
But Ash, being kind, doesn’t laugh. ‘I have appalling handwriting.’
‘So did he.’
He smiles. We pause next to some sand dunes, then sit down together. Our knees touch as we stare out at the streak of beach, the grey-blue stripe of sea.
‘And . . . Nighthawks .’
‘Sorry?’
I turn to face him. His cheeks are flushed pink from the sea breeze. ‘It was Jamie’s favourite painting, and... you have it in your apartment.’
After he died, his father took Jamie’s print from the house. It broke my heart to be without it, so I bought my own, which still hangs above my bed.
‘I was thinking, you know,’ I say, as if I’m changing the subject, though really I’m not at all. ‘About your accident, the way you changed personality—’
‘Priorities.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I tend to think of it more like... my priorities changed. I just wanted to take myself, and my life, more seriously. I really don’t think it goes much deeper than just... growing up.’ He keeps his eyes on me. ‘Neve, can I ask you something?’
‘Of course.’
‘Will you answer me truthfully?’
And then it happens. The abrupt, mournful wail of an air-raid siren.
I feel cold suddenly, like someone is trickling iced water down the back of my neck.
‘Do you... know what that is?’ I say.
He nods. ‘The high-tide warning. They sound it when the tide turns. To let you know to get to dry ground, or you might get swept out to sea.’
I’ve fully got plans to haunt you, if I go first.
I blink at him. Come on, Jamie. This isn’t funny any more. Stop messing with me.
‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ Ash says, misinterpreting the shift in my expression. ‘We just have to stay on this side of the channel.’
I swallow. ‘Yeah. Right. Okay.’
He gets to his feet, reaches out and pulls me up. Without saying anything further, I slip a hand into his.
I feel sure he’d been going to ask if my attraction to him is down to how much he resembles Jamie. But he doesn’t bring the question up again once we start walking, maybe because he’s not quite ready to hear the answer. And I am thankful, because I’m not sure I can be one hundred per cent honest with him yet. I don’t want him to think I’m mad. I like him so much.
Anyway. Maybe that is all we need to say for now. It’s not the whole story, but it’s a start.
But as we walk, I have to keep glancing over at him, to check whose hand it is I am really holding.