Chapter 18
18
JESSE
Now
‘Hey, do you need me for the GrowPots thing tomorrow?’ Jesse leaned back on his chair and interlocked his fingers behind his head as Max turned around. ‘Because I might be out of the office. But if you need me…’
Max tried to measure Jesse’s face. He didn’t usually tiptoe around her about meetings.
‘No I think I’m good to go with it all – if you wanted to look at it before I…?’ Max sounded unsure of herself, and leaned over to her in-tray where her drawings for a new brand of healthy children’s ready meals were sitting on top of the brief.
‘No, no you’re way better than me on this!’ Jesse released his fingers and waved a hand. ‘I was just thinking of going to Paris tomorrow, that’s all. Wondered if you needed me here.’
‘Paris? Wow, how come?’
‘But not if you need back-up.’
Max looked at him, puzzled. Jesse was a good boss; they worked beautifully independently, and comfortably together on the clients they did coincide on. He was supportive, no nonsense and didn’t play games, so it was unlike him to sound so uncertain about something.
If the boss of a sports brand was ever shitty with Jesse, he’d politely stand his ground and remind them of the brief. If another designer got a little too close to Jesse’s style with a new typograph or design, he’d send a courteous but strongly worded letter, as if to say I’m onto you mate . Jesse wasn’t shy to speak his mind when it came to work, or take a day to do something if he needed to. It was only in his marriage that he had been woefully voiceless. His indecision now confused Max.
‘I don’t need back-up, I feel ready and the client is lovely. What’s Paris for? More fashion?’ Maybe that’s why Jesse was looking for an excuse.
‘No, no,’ Jesse said, with some relief. The fashion work was Jesse’s least favourite because the clients were the most precious. Jesse preferred the numbers, the football teams, shaping the look for a generation of footballers and their fans, in clothing that would hopefully go down in history as the greatest in their club’s era.
One of Jesse’s earliest memories was of Manchester United winning the treble in 1999. He was six. He wasn’t a Manchester United fan, but that shirt: the piping, the collar, the font. One look at it would capture a moment in time and a moment of glory. Like the Dutch national kit of 1988 (faded orange chevrons). The France kit of 1998 (classic stripes). AC Milan’s invincibli kit of 1992 (simple and chic). Juventus 2015 (away; classic salmon pink and red clash). Club America 1995 (triangles that looked like feathering on the shoulders, giving the Mexican team an indigenous, Aztec vibe). Those kits would go down in history for their style and their beauty; they were the kits that inspired Jesse to study typography and design. And although there was nothing Jesse could do about a sponsor’s ugly branding on the front of the shirt (although the Italian sponsors did do it better), this was the part of his Lightning Designs work he loved most. He didn’t love FMCG or fashion packaging. He was only hoping to get into children’s books for the sake of his dad. To fulfil a promise.
‘It’s not work – it’s a research trip,’ he said. ‘Sketching at Paris Zoo, but I sort of need to go tomorrow. Deadline,’ he half lied.
Jesse was the boss, he didn’t need to justify his movements.
‘Oh Remy! How’s he coming along?’
Jesse looked guilty.
‘He isn’t really. The agent is expecting drafts before the school holidays, so I’m running out of time.’
Jesse always felt a bit bad talking about the rhythm of his life in respect of term time, half terms and holidays. He had a feeling Max didn’t feel comfortable when he spoke like that. He’d see her glaze over when he talked about parents’ consultation evenings and soft-play parties, although Max always smiled and tried to look interested.
Jesse didn’t know whether Max and Liam wanted kids, or whether parenthood sounded like the dullest prospect in the world to them. He knew Max was a loving aunt to her nieces. He also knew she was probably being pushed to the edge by Liam’s drinking, his benders, his going AWOL until 2a.m. She’d stopped the parlance of justification she had parroted in recent years. Blaming herself for being na?ve; saying actually lots of people do coke. She’d started coming into the office at 6a.m., as soon as the shared space building opened, going home via the West End to pick up a birthday present for a niece or meet a friend for mezze. She seemed to be in no man’s land, and Jesse wasn’t sure how to get past the superficial walls of their weekend chat any more. To see if she really was OK.
He did keep checking that he wasn’t overloading Max with clients and commissions when she worked such long hours, but she’d smile serenely and say she was just finishing up, or had life admin to do.
Jesse’s book agent, Maddie Feynman, on the other hand, was a mother. She spoke in that parent patois that becomes all-encompassing. So when she said she wanted Jesse’s first draft drawings to her ‘by summer’, ready for submitting to publishers in September, Jesse knew that she meant by the third Friday in July. ‘By summer’ always meant by the end of the third week of July.
‘Well Paris sounds like a great idea. Will you stay over?’
‘No just a day trip, I need to be back here to draw all weekend.’
It had taken Jesse weeks of sleeping on the sofa before he’d confessed to Max that he was having marriage problems, that February morning Max had found him curled up in a sleeping bag in the space between their desks.
‘Are you OK?’ Max asked calmly when she saw him on the floor. Her first instinct was to think that he had got trashed like Liam, so she was so relieved he was sober, she wanted to cry. She almost did cry when Jesse told her that Hannah wanted to cool things off for a bit. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her about the FaceTime call.
Max was kind and compassionate and asked if there was anything she could do to help, but she still didn’t feel able to ask exactly what had happened. There was definitely more to this than Jesse was letting on. Nor did she feel able to tell Jesse about her marriage woes. How Liam would pace the flat all morning while he waited for the kitchen clock to whirr at midday, when the a.m. flap turned to p.m. and he got his own personal signal to start drinking again. A self-imposed rule that was both ridiculous and futile. Max was glad to be out of the flat for five of those seven days a week. The sound of the whirr at the weekend made her feel sick.
When Jesse started sleeping in his mates’ spare room, and ended up staying longer than just the three weeks of housesitting he said it was, he told Max it was more serious: Hannah had had an affair. Max was horrified, she felt wretched. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to tell Jesse how unhappy she was with Liam. She felt a pang of guilt; a flash and a reminder of when she hadn’t stood up for him in college, when he had spoken up for her. If only she could speak up now, Jesse might not feel so alone.
Jesse played with a pot of cloud-shaped paperclips on his desk, a Paperchase relic he had pinched from Ida.
‘I might be going with a friend actually,’ he said vaguely.
‘Oh, right?’ Max replied, trying to sound just as cool.
‘Yeah, an actor.’ Jesse tried to avoid Max’s eye. ‘Has an audition in Paris tomorrow, so we’re both going out on a field trip, if you will.’
Max felt a frisson of joy. The deliberate omission of a pronoun, the lack of a name, made her raise a keen eyebrow. Jesse usually spoke about his friends by name. Max knew many of them. She hoped this meant something. Max had never liked Hannah, since the first time she’d met her. She was stroppy and entitled. She had everything Max wanted and didn’t appreciate any of it. And now she had been caught cheating. Right after Jesse had lost his lovely dad.
How could she?
‘Well have a brilliant time, if you do go…’ Max said warmly. ‘And bring me back some madeleines, yeah?’
Max had a penchant for madeleines, the cheaper the supermarket brand, and usually the drier, the better. Jesse always brought a big bag back for her whenever he went to visit his mum, although he wasn’t sure where the big Carrefour stores were in Paris.
‘Will do.’
Max went to meet a potential new printer while Jesse spent all afternoon finishing the typography of the football club that had just been promoted from the Championship to the Premier League – a total kit redesign from the best in the business. This font meant a lot. It wasn’t one that was going to sell a million shirts in Southeast Asia, but it was one that would mean the world to fans of the club. It needed to look beautiful against the sky-blue kit. Classic. Modern. Clean. No nonsense. It was due to be signed off on Friday.
Fuck.
Jesse couldn’t think.
He hovered on the Eurostar tab he had open on his computer. It would be really handy if he could speak to Minnie before he booked a return ticket to Paris for tomorrow. Was she still going? Which train was it again? Had she booked seats?
At 6p.m. Max texted him to say the meeting with the printer had gone well and that she was going to pop to Westfield. Jesse replied to say good luck with GrowPots. They’d talk when he was back on Friday.
It was quiet in the shared space building beyond Lightning Designs. Jesse tried to focus on his finishing touches but couldn’t stop thinking about Paris. The ticket prices had gone up twice since he’d first looked at lunchtime. He clicked on his thirtieth birthday playlist to ease the silence and set it through the Bose speaker on his desk. He remembered the gathering in a pub in Tufnell Park two summers ago. Max and Liam were there. Will and his then-boyfriend Mikey. Andrew and Elena. His forever-single friend Kenji. Ida. Hannah arranged a cake. Friends from all facets of his life. His mum and dad were in London for a few days, so they popped in early but left to take Ida home and babysit. Jesse remembered being happy. His dad was alive; he didn’t know about Hannah’s affair. Or affairs. Was she having them then? Might her lover have been at his party? Daft Punk, Blondie, Beyoncé.
I do like Beyoncé , he thought .
It was still light outside. There was a midsummer optimism in the air as Jesse glanced out of the window above Max’s desk and saw the couriers, taxis and buses hurtling down Gray’s Inn Road, sunlight in drivers’ eyes, people with places to go and purpose. Jesse thought of Ida and what she would be doing right now. Whether she was watching TV, and if so, with who. Daisy, Janey, or new au pair Henrike? The conversation about custody rights had been a disaster.
Don’t do it to yourself.
He looked back at his desk, which was usually neat but right now covered in designs.
Focus. Work.
Jesse couldn’t focus but he didn’t want to go back to Andrew and Elena’s yet. He was torn between working on the club shirt and his dad’s book. MC Solaar came on his playlist . ‘ La Belle et le Bad Boy’. He remembered dancing with Max to it at his birthday party while Liam clung to the bar, drinking his way through Jesse’s tab as best he could. Now he thought about it, Jesse couldn’t even picture Hannah there after the cake. He couldn’t remember what she wore, whether she had danced. Maybe she’d been sneaking off to make calls or have dalliances in a dark side street; maybe he had erased the memory of her being there.
Fuck it.
He clicked back on the Eurostar tab, a return to Paris, and hovered over seats for the first train out and the last train back. If Minnie had changed her plan, he could still have a productive day. He wasn’t dependent on anyone else.
Standard or first?
Jesse’s phone rang. A number he didn’t recognise. A shrill glimmer of hope that Minnie had tracked him down, that he could ask her if her plan to go to Paris tomorrow was still on. Whether he was still invited, or was she just drunk when she’d suggested it. Might she have forgotten?
‘Hello?’
‘It’s me.’
Oh.
‘Everything OK? Is Ida OK?’
‘Yes she’s fine – she’s with Henrike.’
Henrike. The person who had been spending more time with Jesse’s daughter than Jesse had. Henrike spent more time with Ida than Hannah did. The whole thing was ridiculous.
Jesse couldn’t speak. It had gone so badly when he’d suggested last week that he move back in; when he said it could work if he had full custody and Hannah got a second home. Or that they move further out of London, so they could get two flats for the value of their one. It could work.
Hannah was furious. She said he couldn’t evict her. He was bullying her. Gaslighting her. That he had no chance of custody, especially not when he couch-surfed at friends’ houses. She realised as she said it that her words only made him more determined. To get on an even keel and then the courts could decide.
‘She’s happy with Henrike, they get on like a house on fire!’
‘She’d be happier with me. She doesn’t need an au pair, I’m her dad. I can work from home. I can do everything you?—’
‘DON’T tell me I can’t, Jesse,’ Hannah shot back.
He wasn’t going to say that. He was sure Hannah was capable of anything. What he was going to say was I can do everything you don’t want to. But he didn’t. This all seemed so unfair. How did it get to this?
Jesse paused the Spotify playlist so he could hear Hannah clearly. Perhaps she had thought his suggestion over.
Deep breath.
‘I didn’t recognise the number.’
‘It’s a new work phone.’
Jesse thought of the tracks and trails Hannah had blazed with her old work phone and what she might use this number for. Who was privy to it.
‘I wanted to talk to you.’
It had been almost a week since Jesse’s proposal that he move back in. Maybe Hannah had come round to it; her tone certainly sounded softer than when they’d last spoken, when Jesse had dropped an exhausted Ida home after another day milling around London, trying to avoid both West Hampstead and Kentish Town. She hadn’t met his eye after his suggestion on Friday night. On Sunday night she’d told him to go fuck himself. After a working week of plate spinning, maybe she realised they could do this like grown-ups. Maybe Hannah could see they didn’t need Henrike. Maybe the thought of the freedom she could have as a weekend parent would actually fit her life better. Jesse just had to walk the tightrope very carefully for the next few minutes. Make her see this could work, and it could work amicably.
‘What’s up?’ he asked, as lightly as he could. ‘What do you want?’
‘You, Jesse. I want you.’