Chapter Thirty-Two
Despite her vow to strive for happiness and self-improvement, Tess had been in a very dark and desperate place after the Darcy date.
Instead of going back to her old bed-rotting ways, Tess had resolved to keep the darkness and desperation at bay with more action and decision.
She’d become a doer, a disruptor, a make-it-happen.
Or rather, she’d bed-rotted for one day then turned up the next morning at the allotted time at the allotted coffee shop, with receipts, and the sincere hope that her colleagues would turn up.
Jovan was already there. Faith arrived a minute later and just as they were fearing that Uzma had dobbed them into Claire, she came through the door … with their union rep in tow.
It had been a very productive half hour.
Once she was at her desk, Tess emailed the head of HR for the entire Sentinel news group, cc-ing in the MD, the editor, deputy editor and head of advertising of The Sunday Sentinel to make a formal and detailed complaint about Claire’s behaviour, attaching the infamous receipts, and countersigned by Jovan, Faith and Uzma.
It might have been the greatest piece Tess had ever written. Wielding phrases like ‘hostile work environment’, ‘weaponised micromanaging’ and ‘deliberately contravening company policy in respect of internal job applications more than fifteen times’ as if they were instruments of war.
Midway through the afternoon after an urgent meeting with the head of HR, Tess found the first reply to her job search waiting in her inbox.
It was from the lifestyle editor of The Sunday Courier, asking if Tess fancied meeting for a coffee and a chat.
A week later, she was offered a short-term contract to cover the senior writer’s maternity leave.
The next day, she was also offered the position of head of Creative Solutions for The Sunday Sentinel, as Claire, who’d been sequestered in her office with the blinds drawn all week, was taking early retirement, effective immediately.
It would mean a huge salary bump and a very attractive benefits package.
Instead of agonising over the decision, Tess went with her gut. And all her instincts. Even though it paid a lot less and might only be temporary, she’d now been at The Sunday Courier for five weeks. The best five weeks of her career. While also being some of the worst weeks of her actual life.
She’d been with Sean for ten years and when he’d dumped her, there’d been so many tears, so much wallowing, so many questions unanswered that Tess had felt swollen with misery.
She’d taken to her bed, or rather the bed in the spare room, as grief had rendered her immobile, apart from frequent trips to the kitchen to eat her feelings.
Tess hadn’t been with Gabe at all. Apart from that one hour in the library, which she’d remember at the most inappropriate times and have to catch her breath, her body suddenly hot and quivery.
She’d known the man a mere matter of weeks.
If she added up all the time they’d spent together, on library business, it probably wouldn’t even amount to a whole day.
Less than twenty-four hours. So why did she feel grief-stricken all over again?
A different kind of grief this time, that left her feeling hollowed out.
Maybe it was because she’d sworn off romantic novels and so she was without the false comfort they’d brought her.
Or maybe it was because even though they’d known each other such a short time, Gabe’s presence in her life had been so overwhelming.
He’d challenged her. Encouraged her. Listened to her.
Fed her. And, oh God, done such delicious, devastating things to her on a table that she’d remember them with her very last breath.
No! Tess wasn’t going to think about the table sex, instead she was going to think about how Gabe had betrayed and used her and ultimately thought that she was a ridiculous woman whose feelings didn’t really matter.
It was odd that Tess could be so happy in her work and feel that she was taking giant strides in life but also feel emotionally devastated.
That two opposing states of being could co-exist. There was probably a whole school of philosophy devoted to it, but it wasn’t as if Tess could call Gabe up and ask him about it.
Just like she couldn’t ask him if they had a fragment of something that Hypatia had written in the library so Tess could summon her from a book in a shower of gold dust.
She certainly couldn’t ask him if he thought about her as much as she thought about him.
Tess still had a lot of work to do to fix herself and find inner happiness, but she was off to a strong start.
Getting a job as a writer, an actual writer, had validated her in a way that she hadn’t even thought possible.
She was sad to leave Jay, even sad to leave Chiara and Zara, but now they could be just friends, instead of work friends.
‘You’re stuck with me for life, babes. I’ll still be sliding into your DMs and sending you dank memes when we’re in our nineties,’ Jay had said at Tess’s leaving do.
He’d even offered to be her plus one for the university reunion.
‘It will be just like My Best Friend’s Wedding,’ he’d said.
‘I’ll be the Rupert Everett to your Julia Roberts.
’ As Jay was currently Intermittent Fasting from 6 p.m. to 10 a.m. every day and wasn’t drinking either, Tess had kindly refused his generous offer.
That wasn’t the only reason. Once the possibility of being accompanied by Darcy had been unequivocally ruled out, she had decided that she was going to rescind her RSVP.
Then her old university house share group chat, The Bedford Road Babes, which had been dormant for years, kicked back into life.
There was a flurry of activity about booking accommodation, outfit options and wondering if their old arch nemesis, Stingy Steph (who’d labelled all her food, even individual cherry tomatoes, then done a flit owing a month’s rent and bill money), might be attending.
It was another brave decision – she’d been making a lot of them lately – but Tess had decided that she would attend the reunion, even if she was on her lonesome.
So on a sultry August evening, she was sitting in a marquee in the grounds of her old alma mater, drinking Cava with the three women she’d shared a house with in her second and third years. Mandy was with her husband, Belinda with her wife and, like Tess, Femi was solo.
‘Because we’re strong, independent woman,’ Femi said as they cheersed each other.
Tess had always worried that people thought she was ridiculous, silly, ineffectual because that was how she saw herself.
But even if those things were true, she was also a strong, independent woman or was trying hard to be.
It had been a day of catching up with old friends, and as they swapped stories about glittering careers and milestones met, Tess realised that her usual criteria for measuring her own success against the successes of her peers needed adjusting.
Her old friend Anton might do something baffling and very well paid in finance and own a penthouse apartment with river views in Chelsea, but he’d just been signed off for three months with stress.
Then there was Luo, her old study partner, now married to Henry, who she’d met at university.
In fact, Tess and Sean had often double dated with them.
Tess waited for the pang of regret, because by rights, she and Sean should have been married too.
The pang wasn’t as pangy as Tess had expected, especially when Luo confided that she was pregnant after five long, difficult years of trying to conceive.
A bittersweet victory, because happiness often walked hand in hand with heartbreak.
It was another lesson that comparing your own triumphs and tragedies with other people was futile. Everyone was on their own journey, with their own unique travel itinerary.
Tess quickly scribbled down that thought in her Notes app, because she could definitely get a column out of that. As her beloved Nora Ephron had famously said, everything was copy.
Honestly, who even was this calm, considered woman?
Tess took another sip of Cava and savoured her self-actualisation until she saw two people, a man and a woman, wending their way through the tables.
As if they were heading in her direction.
The man caught Tess’s eye and waved at her, nudged the woman who beamed and yes, they were definitely coming for Tess, who wasn’t feeling quite so self-actualised anymore.
Not when she was wondering if it was too late to slide off her chair, crawl under the table and hide.
The festivities were winding down and not even ten minutes earlier, Tess had been congratulating herself on managing to avoid them. Even wondering if they were a no-show due to a nail-clacking-related injury.
But the universe was never that kind. Now she had no other option but to smile weakly as Sean and Wilde took their sweet time to reach her.
It took every last gram of moral fibre that she possessed not to down the rest of her Cava in one.
Or grab the half-full bottle and swig straight from the source.
Over the sound of ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’, Sean shouted, ‘Tess! We were hoping to see you here!’ and held out his arms.
Tess was forced to stand up and let Sean give her a hug. A hearty sort of hug with three very firm pats on the back. Not the kind of hug you’d give to someone that you were still pining for.
It took even more personal strength not to say, ‘You still have my number. You could have messaged me to ask if I was coming. Or have you deleted my number? I bet you have!’
‘Have you two met?’ Sean asked, releasing Tess from his buff hold, so he could pull the woman he was with forward. ‘This is Will, my girlfriend.’