Chapter Thirty-Two #3
Even half an hour ago, the last thing Tess would have wanted was to spend any time with Wilde, other than the most perfunctory of greetings.
But a lot could happen in half an hour, like letting go of the resentments and the what-ifs that she’d carried on her back, like a haversack full of boulders, for the last three years.
She watched Sean walk away, again, without a single pang, then turned to the woman who seemed to make him genuinely happy.
‘Tell me to mind my own business if you want, but Wilde? Is that your real name? Or is it Will?’ she asked.
‘Oh my God, it’s Wilhemina.’ Wilde/Will/Wilhemina covered her face with her hands.
‘My mother’s German. She insisted that it was never to be abbreviated.
I was Wilhemina for the first seventeen years of my life and then as soon as I was eighteen, I changed it by deed poll to Wilde. She didn’t speak to me for six months.’
‘Wow, that’s harsh. She sounds like she’d get on really well with my mother,’ Tess said with a shudder that wasn’t entirely faked.
There was no connection more immediate or more absolute than the trauma bond between the daughters of women who prided themselves on saying it like it is.
Tess had recently learned about the grey rock method, she’d even written a feature about it, and now no longer engaged with her mother’s frequent and hectoring message chains.
Instead, she responded with either the thumbs up or the blank face emoji; knowledge which she was happy to share with Wilde.
Then they also bonded over how Sean assumed that little magic fairies replaced loo roll, toothpaste and other sundry household items when they ran out.
Wilde was just explaining the psychology behind the nail (which was fascinating; there was definitely an article waiting to be written about that) and giving Tess a clacking tutorial on the bottle of Cava, which they’d now drained, when Tess saw another familiar figure heading in her direction.
He was tall and lean. You could tell he worked out, but unlike Sean, who always wore his clothes just a half size too small to highlight his buffdom, this man had no need of such affectations.
Even though the invite had said, ‘Cocktail attire’, he was wearing jeans and a t-shirt but had thrown a shapeless tweed jacket on to try and match the dress code.
Wilde put a concerned hand on Tess’s arm. ‘Are you all right? You’ve gone very pale.’
‘I’m fine. Well, not fine. God, I don’t know how I feel.’
Halfway to her, caught between two tables, the man took off his glasses and polished them furiously, blinking as he did so. Then he put them on again, the blemish-free lenses now giving him a laser focus, as he continued on his path.
Straight to Tess.
Then he simply stood there, staring at her.
‘Gabe! What the hell? You don’t even go here!’ Tess said, her tone more confused than angry.
It was as if her secret longing had summoned him because she couldn’t think of any other reason why he might be there.
‘I know the dean of Philosophy,’ he said hoarsely because of course he did. ‘I called in a favour.’
‘Hardly a favour if you’re forced to attend reunions that you really don’t have to,’ Tess said, as Will stood up, murmured something, then melted away.
Tess risked glancing up at him to see Gabe still gazing down at her. He looked stern, but then he always looked stern.
‘I haven’t been forced,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m here of my own free will.
‘But why are you here?’ Tess asked. All the hard work of the last few weeks felt as if it had been for nothing when seeing Gabe made her feel not good enough all over again.
And yet, a part of her was still glad to see him.
‘In vain have I struggled, it will not do …’ he muttered.
‘Are you daring to quote Pride and Prejudice at me?’ Maybe Tess wasn’t that glad to see him after all. ‘Are you for bloody real?’
Gabe didn’t answer. Instead, he reached into the inner pocket of his jacket to produce an envelope, which he placed on the table in front of her.
‘If you wouldn’t mind … I need you to read this.’ Then he backed away, to be swallowed up by the frenetic bodies on the dancefloor who were going absolutely crazy to ‘Mr Brightside’.
Tess stared down at the envelope, her name written on it in a heavy capitalised scrawl, then underlined.
Was he suing her for saying mean things about the library? Even if they were true things? Even if she’d been really angry when she’d written them and then regretted them once she’d seen them in print? Had she been served? Except, being served with papers, didn’t that only happen in America?
There was only one way to find out why Gabe had come all the way to Bristol to give her a letter.
She turned the envelope over to open it and saw more words written in Gabe’s truly appalling handwriting, its reputation well earned, because even in caps lock, it was practically illegible.
IMAGINE HUGH GRANT READING OUT THIS ENTIRELY INADEQUATE DECLARATION OF MY FEELINGS WHILE THE BEACH BOYS’ ‘GOD ONLY KNOWS’ PLAYS IN THE BACKGROUND.
What the actual fuck?