Chapter Three
The following morning, I woke up with a banging headache and Mr. Wickham sitting on my face.
Mr. Wickham, I should make clear, was not my cat.
I’d had no desire to own a pet—why would I want to fall in love with something that would die in ten years’ time and break my heart?
—yet one day Mr. Wickham had climbed in through my window and simply refused to leave.
I tried everything: I took him to the vet and asked them to trace his owner, I didn’t encourage him with food, I put him outside and locked all my windows.
Yet for some reason, the wretched animal kept coming back, until he wore me down so much that I admitted defeat and started to feed him.
I eventually named him Mr. Wickham because, like his namesake, he was a massive sex pest.
“Get off!” I muffled into his backside, a request that was met with a hiss and a sharp scratch on my shoulder.
That morning, the hot water was on the blink, so I had an ice-cold shower, fed Mr. Wickham the ridiculously expensive tinned tuna he liked, then ate my own breakfast of cereal and coffee (I tried not to do much cooking because I never knew when the wiring might finally give up and the building burst into flames).
The weather forecast was for another warm day, so I pulled on a pair of denim shorts and my “I Like Big Books and I Cannot Lie” T-shirt, and set off for work.
When I first graduated and moved back to London, I had grand plans.
I was going to become a bestselling romance author before my twenty-eighth birthday, be in a loving and mutually respectful relationship, and own a chic flat with no IKEA furniture in sight.
Things got off to a promising start when I got accepted into a prestigious novel-writing course—the same course where I met Crispin “Voice of a Generation” Carter.
We quickly moved in together, but unlike Crispin, who was financially supported by his parents, I couldn’t afford to write full-time.
So when I saw an advert for a waitressing job in “London’s premier literary-themed café,” I applied the very same day.
I had images of a cozy, bookish place, a low hum of conversation under the background classical music, where writers would drink endless cups of strong black coffee while they worked, occasionally stopping to share nuggets of creative wisdom with me.
Fast-forward seven years, and I was now twenty-eight, single, and living in the aforementioned death trap, and not only was I not a bestselling romance author, but I’d also finally admitted I was never going to write a happy-ever-after worthy of publication and had stopped writing altogether.
I did, however, still work at Cake Expectations, though I had yet to see one writer in there, and customers were more likely to share complaints than creative wisdom.
I arrived just before ten, greeted my colleagues, Dana and Enzo, and headed to the staff room to change into my uniform.
Cake Expectations was “London’s premier literary-themed café” because a) we were London’s only literary-themed café and b) our owner, Gerald, heavily promoted the fact that Charles Dickens might have written part of Great Expectations on the site, although there was no evidence to back this up.
Still, Gerald had never been one to let the truth get in the way of a good profit, so he opened the café, furnished it with a few old books he got from a charity shop, and then came up with the highly impractical idea of making his staff dress up as famous fictional characters.
Today, Enzo had opted for the Hamlet uniform (baggy trousers, a frayed black jacket, and a stupid plastic skull he was supposed to carry at all times) and Dana had gone Juliet (a once-white dress that was now stained from the many gallons of tea spilled on it over the years).
That left me with the choice of Gandalf (sweaty beard), Miss Havisham (uncomfortably heavy dress with fake cobwebs), Mary Poppins (big hat and handbag), or Elizabeth Bennet (empire-line dress that was two sizes too big for me).
Still, the latter was preferable to the hat or the cobwebs, so I pulled on the dress, pinned up my wavy brown hair into something vaguely resembling a Regency hairstyle, and headed out to start work.
It was a busy shift, with most of the tables booked for lunch and afternoon tea, and it wasn’t until three o’clock that I got to take a break.
My head was still thumping, so I grabbed a sandwich and a Diet Coke and ate them in the staff room while Enzo regaled me with his latest Grindr exploits.
Cake Expectations had a high staff turnover, but Enzo had worked there for two years, making him the second-longest-serving employee after me.
As such, we’d gotten to know each other fairly well, and although I wouldn’t call him a friend (I wouldn’t really call anyone a friend except Bianca), I enjoyed living vicariously through Enzo’s hilarious dating stories.
But as he was trying to explain something that sounded gravitationally impossible, I heard a raised voice coming from the café floor.
“I will not be silenced. This is intolerable!”
I looked at Enzo, who shook his head. “No way, his energy is all off.”
I stifled a snort. Enzo was a self-proclaimed spirit-channeler and clairvoyant, skills that mainly seemed to manifest themselves when deciding which customers he didn’t want to serve.
But he’d been the one to deal with the unfortunate toilet incident that morning, so I threw my empty Coke can in the recycling bin and walked out to the main floor.
Dana was standing by the front door, talking to a tall man dressed from head to toe in a Regency costume, like something out of Hamilton.
This in itself wasn’t as weird as it sounds—we sometimes got customers coming dressed up as their favorite fictional characters—but this man’s clothes were next level.
He was wearing a beautiful navy tailcoat, tight beige trousers, and a white shirt with a high collar and elaborate cravat.
He had chocolate-brown hair, worn long so it sat against his collar at the back, and his muttonchops were clearly real, as opposed to the silly stick-on ones you could buy online.
To top it all off, he had chiseled cheekbones and a sharp, angular nose, which he was glaring down at Dana.
“I’m sorry, but as I explained, we’re a café not a taxi office,” she was saying.
“Then pray explain why the word Hackney is displayed outside if you do not offer hackney carriages? Is this some deliberate and pernicious attempt to confound your customers?”
“It says Hackney because that’s the brand of gelato we serve,” Dana said. “Why don’t you call an Uber if you’re in such a hurry?”
“I have never heard of that which you speak. This is insupportable!” The man was speaking so loudly that several customers had stopped talking to listen. “I demand to converse with the proprietor of this establishment.”
I cleared my throat. “The owner’s not here, but can I help?”
The man turned to look at me, and as his gaze met mine, I felt the air being sucked out of my lungs.
His eyes were large and dark hazel, and I watched as they widened in something like recognition.
I’d never seen him before, but there was something so familiar about his face, so absolutely right, that I suddenly felt a bit dizzy.
“This guy thinks we’re a taxi office,” Dana said flatly.
“That’s OK, I’ll deal with it.”
I walked across the café toward him, not entirely confident that my legs wouldn’t give way and leave me in a heap on the floor.
“How can I help?” My voice came out as a weird, high-pitched squeak, and I winced.
“Madam.” He gave a formal bow. “My sincerest apologies for the untimely disruption, but I am in urgent need of a carriage.”
I swallowed. If this was some role-play thing, then it was very convincing.
Maybe he was one of those method actors who fully immersed themselves in a role, like that guy who played Kendall in Succession?
Which was all very well (and, if I’m honest, pretty sexy), but he was disturbing our customers, and my colleagues and I needed the tips.
“I’m afraid, as Dana explained, we’re a café. You might have better luck trying the taxi rank around the corner.”
The man furrowed his brow. “Upon my word, I do not comprehend; I have seen no horses on the roads of this wretched place.”
“Are your mates secretly filming this for some TikTok prank?” I asked. “Because this is very funny and everything, but you need to leave now so we can get on with our jobs.”
I turned to walk back to the counter, and then I heard the man’s voice again, quieter this time. “Lord, wake me from this interminable nightmare and return me to Netherfield Park, I pray, for I cannot abide this torment a moment longer.”
Netherfield Park. I turned back to see the man’s face contorted with concern.
Oh God, what if this wasn’t some silly stunt?
One of Bianca’s aunts worked as a mental health nurse, and she’d told me about patients of hers who had full-blown delusions where they thought they were someone else, like Elvis Presley or Joan of Arc.
What if this guy was in the middle of a mental health crisis?
He’d started to pace now, moving back and forth across the floor with his hands clasped behind his back. I took a deep breath.
“Can I ask your name?”
He stopped and pulled his shoulders back proudly. “Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, at your service.”
My stomach gave an involuntary lurch. Of all the characters in all of fiction for this man to believe he was…
“Do you have any medication on you? Any pills that you might have forgotten to take?”
He scowled. “I assure you that I have an exemplary constitution, madam.”
“And do you know where you live?”
“My estate is Pemberley in Derbyshire.”
OK. “And do you know where you are now?”
The man’s scowl deepened. “A nightmare? I have no sense of where or what this abominable purgatory is, only that I must escape it before I am driven to despair. I feared I should never see a familiar face again, until I happened upon this establishment and came upon you.”
I was about to ask what he meant, and then the penny dropped. My uniform. He must have mistaken me for someone else from Regency England. Wow, he really was deep into this delusion.
“Is there anyone I can call for you?” I asked.
“Call?”
“Telephone. A family member or a social worker, maybe?”
He looked at me as if I’d just spoken in Dutch.
“OK, well, in that case, how about you sit down and have a nice cup of tea, and I’ll see if I can get you some help. How does that sound?”
For a moment I thought he was going to argue, but then his shoulders sagged. “I would be most grateful for sustenance, for I have not dined since Netherfield this past evening.”
“Great. Why don’t you sit here, and I’ll get you the menu.”
I ushered him over to a table in the corner—as far away from the other customers as possible—gave him a menu, and then retreated to the staff room to call Bianca’s aunt, leaving the man staring around the café as if he’d never set foot in one before.