Chapter Thirty-Nine
Jess
Jess can’t believe he’s done it again – walked out in the middle of a difficult moment, rather than addressing whatever the issue is that needs addressing.
Maybe he genuinely didn’t feel well. He was pale, sweating.
Maybe she should go after him, check he is okay, not slumped in the middle of the street somewhere, gasping for breath.
It’s hard to know, though, what her responsibility should be, what she is to him.
What they are to each other, really. It’s never been explicitly defined, even during the dinner with her mum, which had seemed to be a massive step forward.
She paces her tiny living room, grabs her keys, then runs down the stairs to her front door, round the corner, a few steps up the road.
She spots Alex ahead of her, in his red shirt, his head bobbing as he turns into Pimlico Tube station.
Good – he’s made it that far. He’s not slumped in the middle of the street after all.
And even if she starts running now, she’ll likely not catch up to him before he gets on a Tube.
It’s the first time she’s felt outraged at how frequently the Victoria Line trains arrive.
Who would have thought that could be an inconvenience?
Honestly, give me strength some days, she types into WhatsApp. She double-checks she’s sending it to Lily and not anyone else. Since the email incident last year, she always double-checks.
Alex?
How did you guess?
Call me psychic.
Dots appear, disappear, reappear. Gareth is away this weekend, if you want to come over for dinner?
Jess’s shoulders relax. She feels herself taking a long exhale.
That would be great, actually. She could choose to be annoyed at the implication: I have time to see you because my husband’s away.
But she takes a deep breath and swallows the comment, because that would be unfair.
Lily has never been that kind of friend.
Jess gets through the week the only way she knows how – by ignoring every difficult emotion and squashing down every painful thought.
She plays her feel-good 90s playlists, rewatches Derry Girls, and buys way too many flat-lay props on Etsy.
She scrolls through forthcoming courses at City Lit and finds a French taster course, feeling inordinately proud of herself.
It’s a one-off, with no ongoing commitment, so it feels less scary.
And on Friday, she spends too much money on a bottle of red wine and takes herself off to Lily’s.
‘Fancy,’ Lily says, when she hands the bottle over.
‘This is not just wine,’ Jess says, wiggling her eyebrows. ‘This is M what’s the point in having M maybe Lily is still waiting for an answer, and she is letting the silence linger so that Jess will eventually squirm enough to admit that, actually, avoiding all unpleasantness and leaning into fun hasn’t always worked great.
In her first year of uni, it led to a few questionable one-night stands and a lot of hangovers – never made easier by impending essay crises.
These days, it means she’s wasted her time on more than one questionable Netflix series and more than a thousand two-and-a-half-star reads.
Anything to escape, even if the escape itself isn’t that great.
‘But you and Gareth are happy,’ Jess says.
‘You’re not going to answer my question, are you?’
‘What question?’
‘Jess.’
Lily knows her too well for this kind of crap. Still, it’s always worth a try. Her avoidance urge is powerful.
‘Now you’re not answering mine.’
Lily puts a forkful of tikka masala in her mouth and chews, making Jess endure silence the way Jess had made Lily put up with hers. It makes her itch, like an open bracket in a Word document which someone has forgotten to close.
‘We are happy, yes,’ she says eventually. ‘Broadly speaking. But there are hard patches, and there are things we have to address. This last year …’ There’s a catch in her voice. ‘It’s actually been really hard. We’ve been trying to get pregnant, and … Well.’
‘Oh, Lily. I didn’t know.’
‘I didn’t tell you, so how would you?’
Jess puts her plate down and joins Lily on the sofa, her hand on her arm. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘But it’s not. It sounds really rough. You can tell me these things, you know.’
Lily nods, hard. So hard that it’s not quite convincing.
‘Oh, I know. But you like things to be fun. And when you’re having a romance crisis, well … It never seems like the right time to tell you.’
Lily’s point earlier comes back to Jess.
Perhaps pushing away the hard stuff hasn’t always served her well.
It hasn’t served people around her well, either, because it’s stopped them coming to her, knowing she’s uncomfortable with any kind of pain, hers or theirs.
It’s stopped her being as good a friend as she could be. As good a friend as Lily deserves.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jess says. She feels guilty about taking the bigger share of the peshwari naan now.
Frustration over a man doesn’t quite compare with what Lily has no doubt been through.
Has she done IVF? Has she had miscarriages?
Is it even okay to ask? Jess doesn’t know.
And every instinct she has is to offer to do something fun to take Lily’s mind off it.
She doesn’t know how else to be a good friend.
‘It’s okay,’ Lily says, even though it’s not, not really.
‘I’m telling you this mostly because I guess what I’m saying is that even in a happy relationship, hard stuff happens.
Things you can predict, things you can’t.
And so, if you’re going to be with Alex, you need to figure out how to deal with the hard stuff.
Sounds like you’re both conflict-avoidant.
He physically runs away every time something difficult comes up.
And you just squash it down. And in the long run, that doesn’t make for a very healthy relationship. ’
Jess tears of a piece of naan and savours it while she thinks. ‘I guess you’re right.’
‘I’m definitely right.’
‘This is not just advice,’ Jess says. ‘This is M&S advice.’
Lily rolls her eyes. ‘Drink your wine,’ she says.