Chapter 35
35
On a crowded Victoria line train, I vibrated with nerves the whole way to King’s Cross. But they were good nerves—anticipation, not dread. I was starting my new job at last. When I walked through the library’s revolving door, I couldn’t hold back my smile while the security guard did his usual cursory bag check.
But of course, there’s nothing like a morning of IT credentialing and HR paperwork and unflattering employee ID mug shots to bring you down to earth. I went where I was told, signed and initialed and dated. By lunchtime, I had everything I needed and, as a bonus, knew the full layout of the internal office maze. This secret part of the library I’d never been allowed to see.
Shari was very busy, always in and out of our shared open-plan office. She disappeared at regular intervals to pump, and people were always stopping by to see her, since she’d just returned from maternity leave.
Shari and I had really hit it off at our first meeting. She’d asked me about my dissertation, and we ended up talking at length about E. M. Forster, since Howards End was one of her favorite books.
When I got back from lunch, Shari waved me over to her desk and picked up that conversation like we’d had it that morning. “People generally feel that Forster is Austen’s natural heir, don’t you think? I wonder what we have in the collection of them, what we could get on loan. You know for Austen we have the Persuasion manuscript, two volumes of juvenilia, some notes.”
“Forster’s papers are all at Cambridge,” I offered.
“Yes, but they’ll loan a few things. I think you could start to put something together,” Shari said. “What did you call them? Fish-out-of-water stories? Clashes of class and culture? See what’s in the collection that feels relevant.”
“For a series online?”
She shrugged. “Just to start with. The apprentices can digitize the materials for it. Gather some historical pieces for context, write the connective tissue, put it all together. But I think it could work for the main gallery, too. Don’t you think?”
“An exhibit? Here?” I said, trying to play it cool and completely failing. And then someone was knocking on the office doorframe, looking for Shari, and she was off again.
I’d made plans to meet Andre and Liv for after-work drinks, to celebrate my first day. The library was just a ten-minute walk from them at UCL, and the student union there had two cozy pubs and dirt-cheap drinks.
I was putting on my scarf when I came down the stone steps onto the library plaza, thinking about telling my two best friends about the possible exhibit I was, somehow, already working on for the gallery. That’s when I saw him pacing by the outdoor café. Callum.
My confusion was so complete that I stopped in my tracks. It was all too much—him, inexplicably here in front of me, this face I had imagined too often, and now his thick hair perfectly tousled by the Euston Road wind tunnel, like a romance-novel cover god—I could not be expected to make sense of it. Finally, he looked up, saw me, grimaced.
“Not exactly what I had in mind,” he said, laughing almost to himself when we met in the middle. “But how was your first day?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Sorry, what are you doing here?”
Callum looked down at his hands. “Theo told me about your job here. First of October, right?” He shrugged his shoulders and the perfect dun-colored coat he wore shifted up and down with them. I remembered these clothes: these beautiful people, their beautiful things, their beautiful homes. I had exited their world, and the separation had been a good one, for me. It had helped me to land here.
But there it was again, the burn I’d felt in front of the Hardy ash, hoping he’d kiss me: this time, a slow blush climbing up my neck, under the scarf. Of course I wanted him to be here, but I didn’t want to be crushed again. I put both hands in my pockets. “I can’t stay, I have plans with my friends,” I said, barely above a whisper.
“Wait,” he said, reaching out with both hands. Reaching for mine, which were in my pockets. And so, he hooked his long delicate fingers into my coat pockets. He wasn’t pulling me toward him; he was anchoring me there. “I have something to tell you. Can we sit for a minute?” He tugged lightly on the pockets.
The feeling of his fingers there, the light pressure on my coat, the hook and pull that was connecting us—it was familiar. A tug inside my chest, a knot of need I’d been pushing away since Lisbon. Maybe even since that first night at Bar Sube, his warm hand putting the cold oyster fork in my palm, under the table.
Callum followed me across the plaza to a low granite wall, encircling a cluster of shrubs. We sat on the wall, side by side. The sun was behind the buildings now, a cold fall breeze replacing it.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Callum said, leaning forward slightly, trying to catch my eye. “I know I’ve been sort of silent. I didn’t want to see you until I had good news. And I have it now.”
“No,” I said, disbelief erasing every other feeling.
He beamed. “They’re not going to press charges.”
My face felt frozen. My last hurdle, finally gone. The real relief would come later, I knew—a deep physical letting-go in my lungs, ribs, when I lay down tonight to sleep—but right now I wanted to jump up and dance around and scream. Instead, I threw my arms around Callum, hugging him to me. “Thank you,” I said into the shoulder of his beautiful coat. “You’re amazing.”
Inside the hug, he laughed against me, his voice drifting over my head. “It was always fairly weak tea, their case—Faye got them started, but their solicitor whipped them up to think it was solid. Blagged the whole thing. I just made them see sense. Though it took a while.”
We separated, shifted back to our side-by-side places on the cold stone. “But why couldn’t you tell me you were going to Saint-Tropez?” I asked. “That you’d been talking to the Wilders?” It was all very Pride and Prejudice : Darcy working behind the scenes in London, saving Elizabeth’s family from ruin, but never telling her about it.
He shook his head apologetically. “If I gave you updates every week, you’d never stop thinking about it, you’d be worrying nonstop. I knew you had enough to worry about. And then Theo said he’d told you.” Callum looked down at me with a funny sideways smile. “He said you were absolutely, officially, completely done with all of us.”
“I was done with him , that’s what I said.”
“Yes, he said you’d been pretty definitive on that point. Though I might add, he wasn’t immediately forthcoming with that information. He held onto it until last week.”
Callum paused, looking down at me, looking for something. But for what? I watched his hesitation, a physical tension: a nervous hand reaching up, smoothing across the back of his hair. Finally, he said, “I think he knew it would make me hope.”
“For what?” I asked, breathless now.
His smile quirked to the side. “I think you know.”
It was all the invitation I needed. I leaned in, tipped my face up, and brushed my lips against his, lightly, just as he’d done to me in Lisbon. Instantly it was electric—his lips pushing back, parting slightly, easing open. I pressed into him and put my arms around his neck, pulling his face down to me. Closer, more. His arms went around my back, squeezing out the cold evening air between our bodies. My whole being hummed with him, his warmth, his arms, his mouth soft and opening to me. Finally, finally.
When Callum pulled back, even his eyes were smiling. “I’ve wanted that for a long time,” he said with a nervous laugh.
“Me too,” I said.
He put his arm around my shoulders, his coat flapping open. I tucked myself into his side, sliding into the warmth there. It felt incredible to be close to him, after resisting the urge for so long. “I suppose you had to wait till I stopped being a complete idiot.”
“No, I just got in my own way,” he said. “The first few times we met—and you were so great, that day the car overheated—but then, well, let’s just say girls who like Theo, I’m not generally their type. Or, really, they’re not my type. So, when I came back that day and saw you two hitting it off, I tried to just let it go.” He shook his head. “Tried not to be a jealous arsehole. Mixed results there.”
“To be fair, I didn’t make it easy for you.”
“But you know, when no one else was around, I could tell you were still the same, the girl who’d stayed with me on the side of the road, helped fix my car. Or even”—he smiled, raising his eyebrows like a question—“the girl I’d seen on Parliament Hill, last summer.”
“Wait, you still haven’t explained that,” I said, nudging him with my shoulder, feeling the minute pleasure of being able to touch him. “Or do you just have a photographic memory?”
He grinned and put a hand in my hair. “For really beautiful girls, yes, maybe I do.”
“No, that can’t be it,” I said. Glowing with the compliment, of course, but beautiful girls were everywhere in London.
“Well, it was a big part of it. The dog and I were up there, just people-watching. And you were so lovely, windblown, maybe a little sad, just soaking up the view. Or trying to—tourists kept asking you to take their photos. You know, with the skyline behind them.”
“Was I very annoyed with them?”
“You were so nice,” he said. “Excited for them, giving them recommendations on what to see on their trip. So genuine. And obviously American.”
“Never been able to hide it, have I?”
He leaned over and kissed me slowly. “And apparently John Major remembered you, too. Went straight for you with those muddy paws, didn’t he.”
I laughed, and the feeling opened up my ribs, making space for all the grateful, joyful possibility I had now, pumping through me. “I’m not sorry he did.”
“I wasn’t sure if I should come today. Whether it might be better to just let you have a fresh start. Leave all the Highgate mess in the rearview mirror. I’d only just decided when you caught me on the plaza.”
“What made you stick around?”
“Selfishness,” he said with a laugh. “Curiosity, I guess. To see if there might be something here.”
“I think there is,” I said, suddenly shy. “If I get a vote.”
“You do,” he said, pulling me closer.
“Well, I’m glad you came. Couldn’t have caught me on a better day.” I told him about Shari, about the project I’d be working on, right out of the gate. My cheeks hurt from smiling.
“Your mum would be so proud of you,” he said when I’d finished. “You’re here, finally happy, finally where you belong.”
I didn’t need to say anything; Callum was right. I did belong here. I heard myself laughing, almost tipsy. “Is it that obvious?”
“It suits you,” he said, bending down to kiss me again, slowly. “You’re glowing.”
I snuggled back into his side, under his arm. “That’s just hypothermia setting in.”
We sat another minute like that, both inside his coat, no one talking. I could’ve stayed like that forever. But one of the local churches began to toll the Westminster chimes—half past. I leaned back, pulling out of the coat, feeling the hard rush of cold air.
“And now I have to let you get on to your friends,” Callum said.
“Come have drinks with us,” I said, not willing to give him up. “Liv and Andre won’t care.”
“Are you sure? They won’t mind me crashing?”
“Oh no, they really liked you that day on the Heath.”
“Well, I’m glad someone did,” Callum laughed. With two fingers, he brushed my hair back where the wind had thrown it forward, lingering there on my face. There was a certainty to his touch: like this was a sure thing. I leaned in, trusting the growing twilight to hide us. His face was cold when we kissed, but his mouth felt just right, warm and curious, just the right amount of hard and soft.
His fingertips ran, cold and intoxicating, up my neck, under my hair. “I hoped you might let me cook you dinner. Maybe after drinks?” he said. I could feel the shape of his smile against my lips. It felt like just what I deserved and also more than anyone, anywhere, had ever deserved.
I shook my head. “If anyone’s cooking dinner, it’s me. You’ve already done so much.”
“Sure, then. But I did get you something special.” His eyes were full of laughter as he said this, but I couldn’t find the joke. “A real delicacy.”
“I think I’ve had enough taste moments for a lifetime.”
“Not this one.”
Callum took his book bag from his shoulder, lifted the flap, and held it out to me. I could see what was inside: a bright red lid, a huge white plastic tub. Marshmallow fluff, the real American thing. The thing I’d told him my free-lunch child-brain had deemed the height of luxury.
“Where did you even find that?” I gasped.
He was beaming. “Selfridges has a little section of American food. They were out for a long time, but I kept checking back till I got it.”
“Wait, how long have you been planning this?”
“Longer than I’d admit to Theo. Do you like it? Should we find you a spoon?”
How had we spent so long not doing this? Not sitting up close to each other, laughing, running our fingers absently over each other’s hands, wrists, arms. I was laughing again, though nothing was funny. I couldn’t explain, so I just said, “This really isn’t how I thought my first day of work would end.”
“This is exactly how I hoped your first day of work would end,” Callum said, pulling my face back to his. I felt like dissolving, like I would melt there if he weren’t holding me up, holding me against him. Like everything I’d suspected had been true, all along, and this was the best right thing, after so many wrong people, wrong places, wrong turns.