Chapter Thirty-Seven
Jess
Jess is grabbing her phone on the way out of the door to head to Alex’s for a writing session when it lights up with a call from her grandparents.
They know she prefers texts; they only call when they’re flustered, or desperate.
Her heart sinks. Much as she’d like to think they’ll both live forever, she knows that it’s unlikely; one day the phone will ring and it will be for the very worst of reasons.
Her knees buckle, and she leans against the wall.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi, sweetheart. Nothing to worry about.’ Jess has explained that this caveat is necessary at the beginning of phone calls to get her heart rate back down to an acceptable rate.
‘But your grandpa’s had a bit of a fall, and he’s okay, but the doctor wants to just give him a bit of a checkup.
The thing is, we’ve got Ivy with us today, and we’re not sure—’
Jess doesn’t hesitate. She’ll have to cancel or re-arrange with Alex, but it’s a no-brainer. ‘I’ll come and get her, and she can hang out with me for a while.’
‘Are you sure?’
Jess can hear the relief in her nana’s voice, a weight lifted from her shoulders.
‘Of course. I’m glad you caught me while I’m still at home. I’ll come over now.’
She fires off a quick text to Alex. I’m really sorry, but it turns out I’m emergency babysitting my little cousin. Any chance you could come over here for our session today?
She’d been looking forward to going to Alex’s flat.
She’d wanted to thank him – with words, and then in other ways – for being so warm and kind with her mum.
He’d been the exemplary boyfriend, despite the B word not actually being used.
Really, she couldn’t have asked for it to have gone better.
A lovely boy, Ellen had texted later. You’ve done well for yourself, Jess.
The stamp of approval from her mother had meant almost as much as Alex being up for the dinner meeting in the first place: it seems that whatever reservations he may have had about commitment, he has got over them now.
But they’ve got time, she supposes, for all that.
Right now, her grandparents need her; and isn’t that exactly why she agreed to this writing lark in the first place – to travel less for work, to be more available, to put some money aside in case they need her, as well as to treat them to a cruise and to anything else they’ve been wanting to do but have had to forgo for Ivy’s sake.
They’ve spent so much of their lives caring for others – for her, for her little cousin, for people in their church who’ve needed a lift to the shops, or a hand with the garden, or a few home-cooked meals delivered after the birth of a baby or the grief of losing a loved one.
Someone needs to look after them, and it’s definitely her turn.
No problem, Alex texts. I’ll be there in an hour or so, if that’s okay?
That gives Jess time to collect Ivy and sit her down in front of Bluey or whatever else is on YouTube, while she quickly does a little bit of tidying.
Alex coming to her house regularly has meant that the flat has been in better shape than previously, but this level of tidiness requires constant maintenance, and there’s always something more fun, more important, or more worthy of Jess’s attention.
And she may have pivoted to writing, but that doesn’t mean she can neglect her Instagram or her TikTok or her Substack.
She’s behind on all of those, never mind the state of her email – publicists just checking if she got their last message, just following up about the book, just letting her know about the opportunity to interview some exciting debut author.
She’s barely had time to catch up with Lily lately, or stay on top of her favourite Netflix shows or the latest series of Would I Lie to You? or Only Connect.
Given all of that, tidiness is low on the priority list, except when Alex is coming over.
She knows from the state of his flat, his always carefully combed hair and tucked-in shirt and immaculate grammar, that tidiness matters to him.
And she might as well get used to not leaving her stuff lying around, because if they ever share a home, he probably won’t find it endearing that she leaves a half-read book on every surface, a graveyard of used tea mugs on her bedside table, and a bag of recycling next to the door because she can’t quite be bothered to go outside every time she finishes rinsing out a yoghurt pot.
‘My friend Alex is coming over in a little bit,’ she tells Ivy as they walk across Vauxhall Bridge Road hand in hand, the zebra crossing beeping in the background.
‘We’re going to do some writing together.
But I’ve got some colouring books and some dot-to-dot puzzles for you so you can sit at the table with us if you like. ’
‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Maybe I can do some writing too.’
‘Maybe.’
Jess is just getting out the felt tips and puzzle books when the doorbell rings. Ivy follows her to the door. ‘You’re a boy,’ she says to Alex, by way of greeting, her brow furrowed as if with wisdom beyond her years.
‘Yes, I am,’ he says. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Ivy.’
‘I’ve got a friend called Alex,’ Ivy explains. ‘But she’s a girl.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Alex says, seemingly not in the least flustered. ‘She’s probably called Alexandra. But I’m Alexander. The boy version. Does that make sense?’
Ivy nods more gravely than the situation seems to demand.
‘Shall we let him come in, Ivy?’
Biting her lip, she nods again and moves to the side, letting Alex through. There’s something earnest about this little girl that Jess is particularly drawn to. She’s all thought and intensity, in the most endearing of ways.
On the living-room table, where Alex and Jess usually work, there’s not a lot of space left. The puzzles and colouring books sit in the middle, surrounded by felt-tip pens. Next to them: a chess set.
This is new.
‘I didn’t know you played chess,’ Jess says.
Another earnest nod. ‘We have a club at school. And do you want to know a secret?’
‘Always.’
Ivy leans into Jess’s ear and whispers loudly enough for anyone so much as passing the flat to hear.
‘I’m the best player.’
‘Wow, that’s cool.’
Alex plays along, pretending not to have heard. ‘Are you good at it?’ he asks.
‘Yes.’
Jess envies this ability to state facts as they are.
Ivy hasn’t learned to be self-conscious yet, to worry that it doesn’t do to be too confident, or too open about your achievements.
Jess hopes that Ivy never learns this. That she gets to go through life with self-assurance, stating her strengths openly.
Is that too much to wish for this far into the twenty-first century? Jess hopes not.
‘Want to show me how good you are?’ Alex asks. ‘We can play, if you like.’
‘Aren’t you and Jess supposed to be writing, though?’
Alex looks at Jess for permission.
‘It can wait,’ she says. She feels guilty about making Ivy mostly sit quietly and look after herself while she and Alex work.
Jess loved staying at her grandparents’ as a child, but she also remembers a feeling of being shunted around from grown-up to grown-up, trying to find her footing and different things to keep her busy in different homes.
It’s how she discovered books, and probably why she’s always loved them.
A uniquely portable magic, Stephen King called them once, and for Jess they were that, but also something else: a uniquely portable home.
Something she could easily put in her pocket on her way to her grandparents’, and it didn’t really matter where she was, because where she actually was – the only place that mattered – was between the pages of her book, in Narnia or Amsterdam or a bygone London.
The continuity of that was comforting, and it was why she especially loved long series whose stories unfolded in one place: a particular boarding school, a magical land, outer space.
It assuages Jess’s guilt to allow Ivy and Alex to play chess together for a while. Besides, how good can Ivy possibly be? She’s seven. The game won’t last long.
‘The King’s Pawn opening,’ Alex says, scratching his chin in a thoughtful-grandpa kind of way that makes Jess smile. ‘I see. You’re not going to get me with the four-move checkmate, I’m afraid.’
Ivy wrinkles her nose. ‘Oh.’
Chess isn’t one of the many hobbies Jess has dabbled in over the years. Whenever anyone has tried to explain it to her, her eyes have glazed over. She can tell, objectively, that it’s an elegant game. She wants to want to learn. But she doesn’t actually want to learn.
She can, however, admire the concentration of two supposedly wildly mismatched players biting their lips and puffing out air as they concentrate; Ivy is holding her own against Alex, who has not taken the easy way out and let her win within minutes, even when he surely must have had the opportunity to.
She admires this about him: this treating Ivy like an equal, with the respect she deserves.
Since Jess doesn’t understand chess, she can’t possibly know how good Alex is, or whether he’s faking being terrible when in fact he was a world champion in a past life.
In her head, she runs through the synopses of his novels: no main character who is a chess grandmaster, so perhaps that’s a clue that it’s not something he excels at in any noteworthy way.
Ivy and Alex seem to be settled in for the duration, each one taking turns to groan at the other’s brilliant moves.
They’ve entered their alternate universe, one that Jess is not a part of.
So she pulls out her laptop and works on adding affiliate links to her latest Substack post – something mindless she can do while still half-watching Ivy holding her own, and Alex unpatronisingly praising her.
It’s inevitable, and she hates the cliché, but it goes through her head nonetheless: What a great dad he’d make.