Chapter Twenty-Three #2
Tess didn’t know what to make of this strange turn of events. She hurried to put her ice cream away. She’d have to forgo her long soak – they only had one bathroom – and stay confined to her quarters. But she didn’t mind.
Saskia looked happy. Not even happy, but a quiet kind of pleased that Tess hadn’t seen on her face for a long time. Maybe not since Saskia had A-starred all her A-levels and knew that her place at Durham University was guaranteed.
With a vague smile and another wave, Tess left Saskia and Yuki to it, whatever it was, and realised that it had been a while since she’d seen Saskia’s usually tense expression.
She’d started having Botox a couple of years ago when her elevens had become a permanent feature and she’d had a constant pain in her jaw from grinding her teeth even in her sleep.
But now, in this moment, Saskia looked softer, rumpled.
Like she’d been thoroughly kissed and had enjoyed it immensely.
As Tess had the quickest shower that she possibly could, she realised that it had also been quite some time since she’d had to retrieve any parcels for Saskia.
Which could reach double figures on a single day, if Saskia was involved in a particularly tricky quarter at work and needed to self-gift as part of her selfcare.
They clearly had a lot to catch up on, but it wasn’t until Sunday evening that Saskia knocked gently on Tess’s bedroom door.
‘Are you decent?’
‘Never, but you can come in!’
Like Tess was ever indecent. Chance would be a fine thing.
Tess had actually had the very productive forty-eight hours that she’d planning on having.
Wonders would never cease. She’d tried to keep out of Saskia and Yuki’s way because he’d stayed the entire weekend, but she hadn’t been entirely squirrelled away in her room.
On Saturday, she’d had brunch with her book group then gone shopping with her bestest book group friend, Maryam.
Maryam needed dresses for the upcoming wedding season and Tess still needed a dress for her Darcy date and an absolute knockout of a dress for her university reunion.
Tess hadn’t managed to achieve knockout status.
The changing room mirrors in Zara, and the blankly contemptuous stares of Zara’s sales staff, had completely dented her ego and she’d come home dressless.
But not undaunted. Saturday night and most of Sunday had been occupied in updating her CV, composing what she hoped was a compelling cover letter and compiling a list of people to send them to.
Tess was currently trying to shop her own wardrobe. A lot of her summer clothes were vacuum sealed in plastic bags under her bed but as she unsealed them, she realised that she hadn’t really missed any of them.
The first dress she’d tried on was a floaty blue number which almost exactly matched the colour of her eyes.
Tess had got it for half price and had never worn it because it was a size too small.
She’d planned to lose an unspecified amount of weight at some unspecified time in the future as if it had been her first day on earth and she wasn’t a grown woman who really should have known better.
A year later and she was exactly the same size as when she’d bought it, which was why it pinched under her arms and her breasts spilled over the neckline in a way that was less comely tavern wench and more like she needed a better-fitting bra.
To make sure that the self-loathing had really taken hold, when Saskia opened the bedroom door it was to find Tess spooning mostly melted ice cream into her mouth as she watched Wilde’s latest TikTok.
‘Oh, Tess, no!’ Saskia said, shoving Tess out of the way so she could sit down. ‘I thought we agreed you were going cold turkey on hate-watching.’
‘You agreed,’ Tess mumbled with her mouth full of double-salted caramel ice cream. ‘I said that I’d try. And I’m not hate-watching Wilde. The only person I’m hating right now is myself.’
‘Hey, guys! Even though I never got a degree, I’m more brains than beauty; I’m going with my sexy Sean to some fancy party at his old uni.
So help me pick an outfit,’ Wilde chirruped from Tess’s laptop screen.
She didn’t really have anything to clack her nails against, so she had to make do with the padded hanger on which her first outfit, a slinky mushroom-coloured bodycon dress, was hanging.
They watched Wilde pull it down over her lithe, toned, always tanned, body. The dress looked amazing. Sexy. Classy.
‘No.’ Saskia said, closing the laptop. ‘No, we’re not doing this. You are not doing this. Comparison is the thief of joy. You know this.’
‘I do know it but I’m also powerless to stop,’ Tess said sadly.
Saskia prised the almost-empty tub of ice cream out of Tess’s hand, and with a frown, because there was no coaster available, put it down on Tess’s bedside table.
‘Try harder,’ she said, because out of all of Tess’s friends, Saskia wasn’t there just for the good times. She was also there for the tough love.
Time to change the subject. ‘Well, Yuki seems nice,’ Tess said a little slyly but also very sincerely, because she’d had several encounters with him over the weekend.
Once coming out of Saskia’s bedroom with her dressing gown wrapped around him.
And that morning, he’d gone to get bagels and had brought back an everything bagel with cream cheese and extra capers for Tess.
‘He is nice,’ Saskia said in a voice as neutral as her wardrobe, but there was that soft rumpled look to her again. ‘It’s complicated though. My bank and his firm are at daggers drawn over a merger so we have to keep things on the downlow …’
‘But your eyes met across a crowded conference room …’
‘It was actually in a breakout session at a coffee shop in Seoul. He tried to claim the matcha latte I’d ordered …’
Tess glared at her friend for ruining the romantic vibe with an unwelcome dose of reality. ‘Your eyes met, two households both alike in dignity. In fair Verona, or Seoul whatever, where we lay our scene …’
‘I am always in awe of your ability to have huge chunks of English literature memorised,’ Saskia said, as she lay down on the bed and tried to tug Tess down with her. ‘You are so smart.’
‘Not smart. Just good at remembering stuff.’ Tess sat up long enough to shove the pile of last year’s summer dresses off the bed. Out of sight. Out of mind.
‘You always do this, Tess. You have so much going for you. You’re clever, talented, the kindest, most loyal mate and you have the greatest pair of boobs I’ve ever seen …’
‘But I’m not getting any younger. I bet they’ll be hanging down to my knees come Christmas.’
‘You’re also infuriating,’ Saskia said with a huff. ‘You have to issue an immediate disclaimer whenever somebody compliments you. Look, I get why, I’ve met your mother, but you need to work on your self-esteem.’
‘I know that my esteem should be more selfy, I do know that.’ Tess rolled on her side and propped herself up on one elbow so she could see Saskia’s concerned face.
‘It’s just I’m thirty-three and there’s hardly anything that I feel excited about.
The thought of going into work tomorrow fills me with dread, so do the dating apps …
and this university do, having to see everyone again, fifteen years on from when we were optimistic undergraduates and they’ll all have amazing careers, amazing partners, amazing homes and I have … none of that.’
‘You have amazing friends, you are an amazing writer …’
‘I’m hardly a writer …’
‘You might not like writing about walking shoes with extra firm arch support but you’re still writing and those features you did for The Sunday Sentinel were so funny and I bet they resonated with a lot of other women,’ Saskia said, which was very sweet of her but it wasn’t even her thwarted creative and professional ambitions that were really bothering Tess.
‘Sean will be at the reunion with Wilde and I’ll be there on my own …
except, you know what? If I can’t go with Darcy, then …
then … I’m going to bail. I won’t go.’ There!
She’d said it. Tess waited to feel the relief.
The weight lifted off her shoulders. Except all she could hear was a little voice, that sounded alarmingly like her mother, tell her that she was a quitter.
Saskia also looked far from impressed. ‘Darcy? Is that really going to happen?’
‘It is. I’ve been fast-tracked up the waitlist.’ This was something that Tess should feel genuinely excited about. It was all she’d ever wanted, even before she’d had that first email from Ella, even before she realised that it could be a possibility, a date with Darcy. A date with destiny.