Chapter Thirty-One
It was late July. It was a heatwave that had London in its sweltering and monstrous grip, every patch of grass bleached and straw-like, the tarmac sticky underfoot, the heat so unbearable that the thought of winter, of ever being cold again, seemed impossible.
For Gabe Sharma, life also seemed impossible.
As a tenured professor, he was meant to be enjoying the almost three months until the new term doing as he pleased.
He could write his paper on AI and philosophy in a leisurely fashion.
Read all the peer-reviewed papers, articles and books that he hadn’t had time to read during the academic year.
He could even take a week’s holiday. Swap the stifling heat of London for the balmier heat of somewhere abroad and while away the days lotus-eating, seeing some local history, eating the local cuisine.
None of that had come to pass.
For six weeks Gabe hadn’t left his flat, only opening the door to take in deliveries. His curtains were drawn. His face was unshaven. His heart … it was still beating in a steady rhythm, still pumping blood around his body, but also it felt a lot like it was broken.
He hadn’t written one single word. Hadn’t read a single academic paper. Hadn’t visited any travel websites to see if he could pick up a last-minute flight and an Airbnb with a sudden cancellation.
That wasn’t to say that those few weeks had been unproductive. On the contrary. Gabe had reread the Collected Works of Jane Austen. He’d read the Brontes, a lot of George Eliot. He’d even, drum roll, read Anna Karenina, including the boring bits about farming and religion.
After all this reading about people falling in and out of love and living for love and dying for love and a lot of Austen fangirling, Gabe knew that he was forever a changed man.
The change could be summed up by a meme that Mona had sent him – she was now sending him a lot of Jane Austen-themed memes – in between asking if he was going to grace the library with his presence ever again.
It was a one-star review of Pride and Prejudice, which complained that the book was ‘posh old time people hanging out in each other’s houses and chatting shit with other posh old time people’.
But wasn’t that the whole point? For all his lofty ideals, his arrogance, his superiority, Gabe now realised that beauty and truth and meaning weren’t found on Spartan battlefields or the symposiums of Ancient Rome.
Not in university lecture halls in nineteenth-century Germany, not even in his own tutorials and seminars.
Beauty, truth and meaning were to be found in houses.
In rooms in those houses. Rooms where people lived and had their dinner and ran baths and laughed and cried.
If they were really lucky, it was in those rooms that they fell in love.
And if they were really unlucky, it was in those same rooms where love left them without even saying goodbye.
Gabe finally understood that, because as Tess had told him the first time they met, technically a ‘meet cute’ as he now understood it, all the answers to the eternal questions that he’d made his life’s work could be found in Pride and Prejudice and in the pages of other romantic novels so it was just as well that his local bookshop delivered.
He’d been so convinced that his head ruled his heart. That he was ruled by reason and rationality and that romance, romantic love, had no place in his life.
He’d been, he was, a fool. How could he have so many degrees and yet be a complete idiot?
Revisiting again and again that first time that he’d met Tess, he’d thought that the tension between them had been irritation.
An incompatibility of thought and feeling, when actually it had been a spark that grew brighter every time they met.
How he’d looked forward to each meeting though he hadn’t dared admit that to himself.
Until he’d taken petrol and a box of matches to that spark and now it was nothing but cinders and ash.
He couldn’t help reliving that last hour in the library. Simultaneously the best and worst hour of Gabe’s life. Tess had been magnificent. A goddess that he’d wanted to worship. A woman that he’d wanted to fuck. Raw animal passion obliterating all logical thoughts from his head.
Now he’d screwed everything up. Tess thought that he was a villain. Another Rochester. Much worse than Daniel Cleaver. Maybe even worse than Wickham, though surely nobody was worse than Wickham.
He had no one to turn to either. Ella was furious with him for gatecrashing Tess’s date with Darcy, and convinced that he was still trying to sabotage The Love Library.
Gabe could hardly explain why he’d done it.
His motivations, his behaviour concerning Tess were so out of character that even Ella, his twin, who knew him best wouldn’t believe it.
He wasn’t actually banned him from the library – the joint head librarian couldn’t be banned – but also the joint head librarian couldn’t bear to revisit the scene of his crimes.
So, he stayed festering in his flat. It wasn’t as if he was lonely or idle.
He had Georgette Heyer and Marian Keyes to keep him company.
Katie from his local bookshop had also recommended Emily Henry and some more contemporary romances, which had been so steamy that Gabe had been shocked.
He was a man of the world, also a man who’d read the works of the Marquis de Sade, but the Marquis de Sade had certainly never written about reverse harems or Ice Planet Barbarians.
It was quite the education. Then, while suffering from a chronic book hangover after One Day (Gabe might even have squeezed out a few manly tears), Katie insisted that he had to watch the Netflix adaptation ‘as a matter of some urgency’, and Gabe realised that romantic novels weren’t the only thing that could rip his heart in two then make him laugh all in the space of five minutes.
He’d now watched all the Bridget Jones movies. He’d watched the 2005 film of Pride and Prejudice and the 1995 BBC adaptation, which he thought was far superior.
Then, he’d discovered Nora Ephron. Now he was convinced more than ever that instead of teaching unwilling undergraduates about The Hegel Dialectic, it would be far more beneficial (and enjoyable) to make them watch When Harry Met Sally.
Gabe was on his third viewing on a sweaty Sunday afternoon when he heard a knock on the door.
It was a very peremptory knock. He didn’t even have enough time to stagger to his feet before there was the sound of a key in the lock and in walked Ella, followed by Sanjay, Gabe’s brother-in-law, who was holding Avi.
‘God, this place stinks and so do you!’ Ella cried, wrinkling her nose and flapping a hand in front of her face.
‘Rude,’ Gabe said but he said it tiredly because he wasn’t in the mood for company and certainly wasn’t in the mood for a fight. Ella was right though, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d showered; he’d been wearing the same t-shirt and pyjama bottoms for … well, for quite a while.
‘Look at this place!’ Ella continued, doing a full turn so she could take in a panoramic view of Gabe’s living room, which was indicative of his mental state. Untidy, confused and dusty. ‘Since when do you even eat ice cream?’
He didn’t generally. He’d never had much of a sweet tooth, but from all his recent reading and viewing, Gabe now understood that eating ice cream straight out of the tub was mandatory behaviour when you were heartbroken. See also: drinking wine straight out of the bottle.
One evening he’d even found himself singing ‘All By Myself’ into a rolled-up copy of Philosophy Today until Janet, his downstairs neighbour, had thumped on her ceiling with a broom.
‘I’m going through something,’ Gabe offered.
Sanjay shrugged and smiled sympathetically but Ella was made of stronger stuff. ‘The only place you’re going is to the bathroom,’ she said firmly. ‘Do you even have clean clothes?’
Gabe did, but that was only because he’d been wearing the same dirty clothes for days.
Half an hour later when he emerged from what his new knowledge also told him was an everything shower, hair washed, freshly shaven and wearing black jeans and a black shirt because as Chekhov had written, ‘I’m wearing black because I’m in mourning for my life,’ it was to find order where there had been chaos.
All the windows were open to air the place out and let in what there was of a breeze.
The takeaway containers had been disposed of.
Surfaces had been wiped down, Ella was running the vacuum around and Sanjay and Avi were heading out with a green recycling sack, on their way to the local park.
The green sack clanked guiltily from all the empty bottles.
‘We need to talk,’ Ella said, indicating the sofa, which up until an hour ago, had been practically fused to Gabe’s body.
‘If you’ve come to tell me that I’m a terrible person then believe me, it’s nothing I haven’t told myself,’ Gabe said with a sniff.
‘You are not a terrible person. Most of the time.’ Ella paused for effect. ‘I don’t know exactly what’s happened, but I know it’s to do with Tess and that it turns out that even you, Mr Rational, can be as fallible as the rest of us. Now sit down. Do you want a cup of tea?’
Soon enough Gabe had a mug of tea in front of him and his sister sitting next to him. Her expression was concerned, if a little exasperated at Gabe’s next question.
‘Have you heard from her? From Tess?’ he clarified.
Ella nodded. ‘I have.’
‘Please don’t keep me in suspense,’ Gabe begged. ‘Did she tell you … Did she mention me?’
‘I’m afraid not.’ The fact that Ella was being gentle with him did not bode well. ‘She just asked for the photos that we’d taken of her and Darcy. For a piece she was writing about The Love Library.’
Gabe shut his eyes. Despite the heat of the day, he felt a sudden clammy chill like he’d never be warm again.
‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Is it bad?’
Ella considered the question for some time. ‘It’s not good,’ she said at last. ‘Probably best if you read it for yourself.’
She rummaged in the big tote bag that she had with her and pulled out a copy of a newspaper.
Not The Sunday Sentinel but The Sunday Courier, which had a much younger, much more liberal readership. Exactly the demographic Ella had hoped would be right for The Love Library.
‘Page fifteen,’ Ella said. ‘It’s the opener of their features section.’
It was as if Gabe had lost the ability to count or to know what to do with his fingers, but eventually he turned to the right page to be confronted with a huge picture of Tess, looking like the frothiest, lightest of confections in her floaty white dress, her hair like sunbeams as she was caught gazing up at Darcy with the most besotted expression on her face.
She had never, would never, look at Gabe like that.