Chapter Forty-Two
Alex
The journey from Alex’s flat to Nathan’s office is becoming a little too familiar for Alex’s liking.
Not that he minds seeing his old university friend – in fact, he’d like to see more of him, but preferably over some bottles of wine and a cheese plate rather than in a sterile office, with the stress of a looming deadline hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles.
He probably should have figured out ahead of time that mixing work and play, friendship and business, would come back to bite him, but here we are.
Specifically, here we are at the exit to the Northern Line, having carefully avoided the dirty seats by standing all the way from Hampstead to London Bridge.
Alex promises himself a browse of Borough Market on the way back, a stop at Monmouth Coffee to pick up a bag of their Ethiopian blend, and a chorizo roll from Brindisa.
The thought of these things fortifies him.
This isn’t necessarily going to be an easy meeting, and he needs to know a reward awaits him when it’s over.
‘So,’ Nathan says, indicating the armchairs in the corner. The armchairs that Alex has spent far too much time sitting in these past few months. Perhaps more time than he has spent in his therapist’s office, which is saying something. The hours there have felt interminable. The hours here, too.
‘So,’ Alex says back. ‘You summoned me?’
‘I did. Because you’re not replying to my emails.’
‘I must have missed them in my inbox.’
‘You’re a terrible liar.’
‘I’m a fiction writer, Nathan. Lying’s what I do for a living.’
Nathan sighs. He clearly has no patience for this today.
‘So, anyway. I summoned you, yes. Because Jess has sent me what she says is a finished copy of the novel. But I thought it was a little odd that she sent it to me without reference to you, especially as she’d previously indicated that she’d taken it as far as she could.
It sounded like maybe you’d washed your hands of the book and left her to finish it. ’
‘That’s not the case at all.’
‘Glad to hear it.’ Nathan catches Alex’s eye and refuses to look away.
Alex considers it a challenge – one in the face of which he refuses to back down – and holds Nathan’s gaze.
He can tell Nathan is waiting for him to say more, but Alex has always outdone his friend in stubbornness.
He’s always outdone most people in stubbornness.
‘So I take it you’ve seen the ending she’s written, then?’
‘Why are you so sure Jess was the one to write it?’
Nathan twirls his wedding ring one way, and then the other. ‘Because it’s my job to scrutinise writers’ styles? And also because … Well, if you haven’t read it, I don’t want to spoil it.’
‘What makes you think I haven’t read it?’
‘Because if you had, you wouldn’t be so nonchalant about the whole thing.’
Alex readies his air quotes. ‘I’m not nonchalant about her having sent it to you without checking with me first, I’ll tell you that much.’
‘When was the last time you had a conversation with her?’
Alex does the mental maths. ‘Oh, a few weeks ago.’
‘As I suspected.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I think you should read her ending and then judge for yourself.’
Nathan opens his drawer and places a thick wad of paper on the desk. He takes a few sheets from the top of the pile and slides them over to Alex. ‘I’ll wait,’ he says.
This all sounds very ominous.
Alex feels self-conscious; it’s one thing having people listen to you read out loud – something he is used to – but it’s quite another to have someone watch you as you silently take something in, trying to keep your features under control so that they don’t betray the stomach-clenching emotions passing through you.
Because Jess’s ending is … not subtle.
As a book’s conclusion goes, it is not great. Too obvious. Too unnuanced.
But as a message to him, it is loud and clear, and that’s what he needs. Jess has obviously figured out that subtlety would be pointless, lost on him.
We have to figure out how to talk about difficult things, says one character to another.
Life is full of difficult things. Hopefully not as difficult as this plane crash, but still.
I know I paper over the cracks by putting on a brave face and looking for the bright side and the fun.
And I know conflict makes you anxious. But you’re more resilient than you give yourself credit for.
And we have to figure this out if we want it to work. And I want it to work. Do you?
Alex swallows hard. He turns the page for the response.
I do. Of course I do.
Alex has read enough. He clears his throat. ‘Well, anyway. I’ve got my own version of the ending, as it turns out. If you would like to see it.’
‘Of course,’ Nathan says, not bothering to hide his grin. ‘I’d love to. I imagine it will be very enlightening. Email it to me, would you?’
‘No problem,’ Alex says. And then he says some other things, and so does Nathan, but he won’t be able to recall, later, what any of those things are.
He needs to get out of there, drink some water, count to ten and do his grounding exercises so that he can bring his pulse down and think clearly enough to get himself back on the Northern Line.
Maybe he won’t get any coffee from Borough Market after all.
Caffeine seems like the last thing he needs right now. He is perfectly stimulated as it is.
Outside the door, he slumps against it. His knees feel as weak as they did when he was a teenager, in the grip of his first crush.
‘I’d move, if I were you,’ Nathan calls from inside the room, his grin obviously still there, audible in his voice. ‘Health and safety, and all that.’
He’s not wrong. If this were a cartoon, and Nathan were to open his office door – something which is not exactly beyond the realms of possibility – Alex would end up flattened against the opposite wall, a pancake that would gently slide down until it landed in a crumpled heap on the floor.
Not that Alex landing in a crumpled heap is an unlikely scenario, after this turn of events.