Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
Nate’s face floated into Lucy’s mind – it had blurred over time, and was now a strange composite of the beautiful, anxious Nate she remembered from Zermatt, the hurt version from Lee and Zoe’s wedding, and the glow-up version she’d seen at Glastonbury.
Like an AI-generated Nate that was wispy and insubstantial and impossible to hold on to.
‘I don’t really know. I met someone a little while back, and that felt like something amazing. A connection, you know. Something I never felt with Kristoff. But it wasn’t the right time.’
‘If you have chemistry, the only other thing you need is timing, right?’
Lucy’s brow furrowed as she looked up at her mum. ‘Where does that come from?’ she asked.
‘It’s a thing your father used to say, when we first starting going out. “Love is just a matter of chemistry and timing.” ’
‘I’d forgotten that,’ said Lucy. ‘I remember him saying it to me when I got dumped by my first boyfriend. You remember Dan? His family moved to Reading, and my heart was broken.’
‘I remember,’ said Shirley. ‘Leo didn’t like him much, as I recall.’
‘We were fifteen,’ said Lucy. ‘Leo didn’t like anyone much.’
‘He’d have liked Kristoff, I think.’
Lucy let out a barking laugh. ‘Mum, come on. We wouldn’t have made it through pre-dinner drinks without him kicking off about the CO2 emissions rating on Kristoff’s car. He’d have probably keyed it down the side.’
‘Was he bringing the Aston Martin? Your father had told all the neighbours. They’ll be terribly disappointed.’
‘No, it was the Range Rover.’
‘Well, I don’t think Leo would have done anything bad,’ said Shirley indignantly, plucking another non-existent bit of fluff from Lucy’s duvet cover.
Lucy waited, until Shirley realised that their new, more honest mother–daughter relationship was expected to start now.
‘Well, perhaps he might not have approved entirely. Anyway, what about this man you liked?’
‘There was definitely chemistry,’ said Lucy. ‘But as I said, the timing wasn’t right.’
‘Well, you know the other thing your father would say. He’d tell you to reset the experiment and try again.’
‘I haven’t really seen this man in months,’ said Lucy. ‘A lot has changed since then, for both of us.’
‘Chemistry is just another word for love, Lucy,’ said Shirley earnestly. ‘If the bond between you was strong enough, it will still be there. What’s his name? The man you like?’
‘Nate,’ said Lucy.
‘That’s a nice name,’ said Shirley breezily. ‘I was listening to Nate Lambert earlier, while I was cooking dinner. He’s got a lovely singing voice.’
‘Mmm,’ muttered Lucy, definitely not keen to let her know she’d dumped a millionaire and was now setting her sights on a pop star. They may have begun to build bridges, but this would definitely test Shirley’s tolerance for Lucy’s drama.
‘Maybe we’ll play some of his songs over dinner,’ said Shirley.
‘Isn’t it all love songs, though?’ said Lucy quickly. ‘I’m not sure I can handle that right now.’
‘All right, we’ll find something else. Just don’t ask your dad for his choice, he’ll put on the Bee Gees.’
Lucy resisted the urge to laugh, wondering how life was for Andrea and Felix these days. She’d watched a bit of one of their sets on YouTube a couple of months ago, and they’d definitely diversified their repertoire a little.
‘Come on, then,’ she said, holding out her hand to help her mum up. ‘Let’s eat this bloody dinner, I’m starving.’
‘Miso bananas,’ said Shirley. ‘Who’d have thought I’d cook something like that? Do you think Kristoff would have liked them?’
‘I’m sure he’d have loved them, Mum,’ said Lucy, feeling suddenly exhausted. ‘But he’s not here. It’s just me.’
By 10 p.m. Lucy was back in her room, having eaten a meal that tasted like a science experiment conducted by someone who had sniffed too much glue, talked her dad into a family therapy session, and taken a two-hour photo journey through her childhood.
Lucy’s father had been a keen amateur photographer, and the first sixteen years of her and Leo’s lives had been captured and printed and carefully catalogued in sixteen leather-bound photo albums, each one labelled with the year and lined up on the bookshelf like a set of encyclopaedias.
School photos, birthday parties, holidays, school plays – every moment was there, and in every photo she and Leo were together.
The photos had dried up in the last five years of Leo’s life, prompted partly by the advent of smartphones, and partly by Leo being less inclined to let his parents shove a camera in his face.
He had a memorial Facebook page, which featured photos taken by friends at school and college, and a handful of him and Lucy together looking like moody adolescents.
Where are all my school friends? she thought, scrolling through the sparse collection of photos on her own Facebook page.
She had acquaintances now, obviously – mates from university and the gym and people who lived in neighbouring flats.
But nobody from when they were at school.
Because when they were kids, it was just her and Leo.
Twins with an unbreakable bond, always together, always a partnership.
The two of them hadn’t needed anyone else.
And now she was thirty-three years old, and could count her trusted, ride-or-die friends on one hand.
Actually, on one finger, because Jonno was it, really.
I lost a brother, and that made a tiny space for Jonno, who I love and trust like a brother, thought Lucy.
But I’ve never let anyone else get close.
And the funny thing was that Nate had instantly seen what Lucy had been blind to, even though he’d only known her for a few days. Leo was the most significant partnership of your life, and then he died. So maybe now you subconsciously can’t form meaningful relationships.
And in the end, it all came back to Nate, didn’t it? Chemistry and timing.
She sat cross-legged on the bed and took a few deep breaths, acknowledging that today had been about being open and honest – with herself, with Kristoff, with her mother .
. . and now it was time to be honest with Nate.
She clicked on WhatsApp, but weirdly he wasn’t listed in her connections any more, and their previous messages had disappeared.
Perhaps he was getting besieged by everyone in his contact list and decided to delete the app, which seemed like a reasonable course of action.
Instead she clicked on the speech bubble icon and composed an old-school text message.
Kristoff and I have split up, and I got the impression that maybe you and Sasha had too? Perhaps that’s a sign that we should talk? I know you’re busy right now, but I can’t stop thinking about you. Lucy x
She read it through a few times until she was happy that it was short, to the point and unambiguous in its intent. She clicked send before she could change her mind, then immediately received a message back that said Cannot send. Number unknown.
Shit, thought Lucy, her heart sinking. He’s changed his number.
What the hell am I supposed to do now? She could WhatsApp Sasha and ask for his new number, but the prospect of that conversation made her feel itchy, so she opted to avoid taking that plunge by looking at Nate’s TikTok instead.
She scrolled back to January and lost herself in his extraordinary journey for a while, starting with the videos from that first week after they got back from Zermatt.
Then snippets from live TV shows, walking the red carpet at the brITs in February, meeting fans, studio sessions, some public appearances, and then Glastonbury.
And most recently, a behind-the-scenes video in London, filmed just this afternoon.
Nate was currently in rehearsals for his UK and European tour, and the video showed him performing with his band.
He was wearing a white T-shirt that hugged his newly gym-honed chest, and there was a – wait, thought Lucy. What IS that?
She paused and rewound the video, then watched it again. There was something on his right arm that definitely hadn’t been there in Zermatt. A bruise, maybe? Or a scar? But however many times she watched, the video scanned across him too fast for her to see what it was.
She opened her laptop and put his name into Google Images, then started scrolling through the thousands of pictures that had been posted online in the past four months.
Lots of him in suits and shirts or his standard uniform of plaid shirts, but the sleeves were never rolled up far enough.
A couple of him papped by the Daily Mail wearing swimming shorts in Ibiza, looking tanned and fit, but none of the pictures showed the right angle of his arm, or maybe the mark hadn’t been there then.
A few pictures of him with various female celebrities, which Lucy glossed over because she definitely didn’t need to go down that pit of despair.
She kept scrolling, becoming increasingly frustrated that she couldn’t find one decent picture of his right arm.
Lucy opened YouTube and started with the most recent video. It was the same studio as the one featured on TikTok earlier, with Nate wearing the same white T-shirt, but the video was a longer version that featured a quickfire Q&A where Nate dropped a few hints about the upcoming tour.
There! thought Lucy, pausing the video and winding it back a couple of frames. The mark was intimately familiar, and entirely unmistakeable. Four letters tattooed in black ink on the inside of his forearm, just below the elbow.
WAHZ. Exactly as she’d written them in marker pen in January, with the same oversized Z and calligraphy typeface, but now permanently tattooed on his arm.
We’ll always have Zermatt.