Five
Stay
In the week since our—what would I even call it—date?—I’ve been indulging in some light virtual stalking of Caleb. There’s not much in the way of personal stuff online—his social media is all set to private—but I do learn he’s won a lot of accolades for his photography.
I unearthed a photo of him at some awards ceremony last year, his arm around the waist of a dazzling, sylphlike woman with olive skin and glistening dark hair. Magazine editor Helen Jones joined her husband Caleb on the red carpet, the caption said.
Of course, this then kicked off a frenzied search for “Helen Jones + magazine editor,” which revealed she edits an achingly cool interiors magazine called Four Walls, based in London. It’s one of those inexplicable coffee-table bibles exclusively for cutting-edge people—more book than magazine—that recommends things like concrete floors and replacing all your internal walls with glass. Google Images also confirms that Helen Jones does not take a bad photo. This is unsurprising, really, for a woman who’s been with a man as handsome as Caleb, with whose own image I am now worryingly familiar.
“Maybe him being recently separated is a bad sign,” I said to Tash, as we watched Dylan go berserk at soft play on Sunday morning, two days after Caleb and I met up again.
Tash rolled her eyes. “Please, will you just stop with your signs? People are allowed to be married and then separate, Lucy. It’s really old-fashioned to think that means he’s damaged goods.”
“Who said anything about damaged goods?”
“You, with that expression on your face. Listen, half the dads at Dylan’s school are divorced, or separated. And most of them are really nice.”
“Everybody has to be nice at school. It’s hardly the done thing to air all your deep-seated commitment issues at PTA meetings, is it?”
Tash smiled and sipped her green tea. “I’m only saying, just because his marriage didn’t work out doesn’t mean he’s fundamentally dysfunctional.”
I sipped my coffee and trained my eyes on Dylan, who was currently wrestling his way heroically through a ball pool.
She turned to face me, eyes suddenly greedy for juicy details. “So, come on. What happened the other night? Did you kiss? Did you—”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “We just hung out at his studio, then we went for a drink, then he pecked me on the cheek and I got the bus.”
“Oh,” she said, crestfallen. “So, what—you don’t think there’s any chemistry?”
Oh, there was definitely chemistry. I could feel my stomach leap whenever I so much as pictured Caleb’s face. “There is,” I said slowly. “It’s just . . . he walked me to the bus stop, and there was a big queue, and it didn’t seem quite right to start snogging in front of it like teenagers. You know?”
She looked relieved. “Oh, yeah. Makes sense.”
A beat passed.
“You’re sure you don’t recognize his name?” I asked, even though we’d already been over this. “You didn’t go to school with anyone called Caleb?”
She shook her head slowly. “Nope. Definitely not.”
“Weird. I could swear I know him from somewhere.”
“So, are you seeing him again?”
I nodded. “He’s got a few things on this week, so we said Friday.”
I caught Dylan’s eye as he beamed at us, clapping enthusiastically against my thigh with my free hand.
“I’ve got a good feeling about this one,” Tash said warmly. “I mean, he wrote down his number on the only thing he could find and slipped it into your coat. I think that’s so romantic.”
I smiled. I suspected there was another reason why Tash was so keen on Caleb: because she was even more keen for me to forget about Max Gardner. I could tell it had been playing on her mind ever since I told her I’d run into him outside The Smugglers; she’d even idly asked me a couple of times if I’d heard from him since.
But I haven’t, and I’m increasingly thinking about that moment outside the pub as nothing more than a brief flashback in time. That maybe the person I was meant to meet that night was Caleb, who I can already tell is so different to Max. I’m excited to see where it goes, and determined to keep anything to do with Max Gardner firmly in the past.
On Friday morning, Caleb messages to ask what I fancy doing later. I suggest making the most of the warm evening with a walk on the beach and fish and chips, which we can eat on the wall of the promenade overlooking the sea.
It’s sort of a Shoreley tradition, to get chips from Dave at the Shoreley Fryer and then eat them on the wall, legs swinging, watching the waves sneak up to kiss the shingle. We all did it as kids with our families, then as teenagers with our friends, and now we’re doing it as adults with our dates.
We share a can of Fanta, and a large cod and chips between us, because Dave’s portions are famously grotesque. We sit on the wall, our feet dangling above the beach. Caleb’s height means that, side by side, my feet only reach halfway down his calves.
“Do you mind if I ask why you split up with your wife?” I ask, once we’ve talked about school, and our childhood homes, and the best place to get good coffee in town. In front of us on the beach, couples are walking arm in arm, kids and dogs careering across the pebbles, grasping kites and footballs and strings of seaweed. The hue of the evening sky is slowly softening from blue to lilac, the clotted-cream clouds gradually blushing pink.
Caleb prongs a chip from the tray we’ve balanced on the wall between us. “Not sure I can really boil it down.”
“Did you marry young?”
He waits for a couple of moments, then nods. “She was my second-ever girlfriend. We met when I was twenty-one, married two years later. But by last year, we were fundamentally just . . . different people.”
I nod, take a swig from the Fanta can.
“Actually, you know, I’m making it sound a lot simpler than it was. When we met, we had this five-year plan to move back here, to Shoreley.”
“Is Helen from Shoreley too?” I say without thinking, before feeling myself swiftly turn purple with embarrassment.
Caleb enjoys the moment, which I can’t really blame him for. “Well stalked,” he says, laughing.
I dab a chip fiercely into ketchup. “Okay, okay. I might have had a quick look for you online.”
“Just teasing. I’d definitely have stalked you if I’d known your surname.” He pauses. “Which is?”
“Lambert,” I say, coyly.
“Okay, Lucy Lambert. No, Helen’s not from round here, but she is a country girl. She’s from Dorset. Anyway, we had this plan to spend a couple of years traveling, then move back to Shoreley, buy a cottage, and . . . I don’t know, grow our own potatoes, or something. Get a goat and some chickens. After ‘finding ourselves’ halfway up Machu Picchu, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
He smiles, but it cracks a little, and I suddenly wonder if it’s a bit insensitive of me, asking him to rake over all this a mere six months after it ended.
We stare out at the view. The tide is low now, the shingle a pale flurry of pebbles hemmed by a shimmering stripe of sea. As the sun sinks through ribbons of cloud and sky, long shadows spring from beneath the feet of the beachgoers, and for a few minutes, everything appears dipped in liquid gold.
Caleb starts talking again. “Anyway, I guess . . . just as I was starting to feel uncomfortable in London, Helen was settling in. She’d made lots of friends, she had this big high-powered magazine job, and she was getting a bit obsessed with . . . you know, status and stuff like that.”
“Which you’re not?”
Caleb laughs and rubs a hand through his hair. “Do I look like I worry about status? Please say no.”
“You’re doing well for yourself.”
“I get by. I don’t drive a Mercedes, I can tell you that much.”
Unexpectedly, an image of Max in his crisp suit jetting off to the Seychelles floats into my mind. And—not for the first time since spending time with Caleb—I feel sure I’m enjoying myself more with him than I might have done seeing Max again.
“We were just different people, in the end,” Caleb concludes.
“Was it amicable? When you separated.”
He looks across at me. “Not really.”
“And are you . . . ?” I break off, the words planning to divorce dissolving in my throat. Because really, is that any of my business? “Sorry. It’s probably a bit weird to be talking about this stuff on a—”
“On a what?” he whispers, but before I can reply, he is leaning across and kissing me. It’s a kiss so good it makes my heart thump—full and intense, undercut by the sea breeze and the tang of salt and vinegar. A kiss that makes me forget everything else, that makes the whole world drop away, until there’s just the two of us, getting lost in each other, set on fire by this incredible sunset.
As dusk descends, Caleb invites me back to the fisherman’s cottage he rents a couple of streets back from the seafront. We walk there along the cobblestones, our hands and shoulders occasionally colliding and sending a tingle of anticipation all the way to my toes.
It’s been a long while since I went back to someone’s house, and I’m trying very hard not to overthink the idea of being in an unfamiliar space with a man I barely know.
But as Jools often reminds me, I can’t let my history hold me back forever. And despite the belly-deep anxiety threatening to override my craving to kiss Caleb again, what we’re doing feels strangely right.
As we walk, I distract myself by telling him about my sister, that I was saving up to buy my own place before I walked out of my job.
“Why?” he says.
I inhale the scent of salt and seaweed for a couple of seconds. The coast always feels so much more alive than Tash’s farmland fortress in the middle of nowhere. “Why what?”
“Why do you want to buy somewhere?”
I glance across at him. “That’s just . . . what everybody does, isn’t it? Renting’s a nightmare.”
“Depends on the landlord, I suppose. I kind of like the idea that I can just up and leave whenever I like.”
“Did you own your place in London?”
“Sort of. I mean, Helen did. She inherited it. Which meant . . . it never felt fully mine, I guess.”
“Whereabouts in London did you live?”
“Islington.” He smiles. “It was nice and everything, lifestyle-wise . . . but that doesn’t really mean anything, if there’s more important stuff missing.”
“True,” I say, thoughtfully.
We come to a pause outside Spyglass Cottage, a narrow-fronted whitewashed end-of-terrace, where the air is perfumed by a blush-pink clematis winding skyward up the wall facing the street. All the houses on the row have things propped up against them, like buoys and ancient lifebelts and old crabbing pots. The evening has cooled now, and there’s a coastal quickness to the breeze.
As Caleb lifts his key to the bright blue front door, he hesitates. “You know, we don’t have to . . . I mean, we can just talk. This doesn’t have to be . . .”
He trails off then, but I know what he means, so I just nod and say, “I know. Thanks.”
Inside there is a tiny living room, with only just enough space for a two-seater sofa and single armchair. A wood burner is set into the chimney breast, and there’s a faint lingering smell of essential oils, or perhaps it’s scented candles.
He cranks open the living room window, the one that looks directly onto the street. We’re so close to the beach, I can hear the gentle crush of waves on the shoreline as the tide rolls in.
“Can I get you a coffee?” he asks.
I say yes, then follow him over to the doorway to the kitchen. He fetches mugs from a cupboard, starts boiling the water on an Aga that looks like it’s seen better days. I realize I am trying not to stare too hard at his hand gripping the kettle, the broad set of his shoulders.
“How do you take it?” he asks, once he’s poured out the hot water.
“Just a splash of milk, thanks.”
As he retrieves the milk from the fridge, he starts talking about his love affair with the Aga, which came with the cottage. I tell him I’ve always wanted one, ever since my parents got theirs, and he says, “Me too. My kitchen in London was horrible. Like, properly space-age. You couldn’t tell where any of the cupboards were. There wasn’t a single handle in there. I had to push in ten different places just to get to my cereal in the morning.”
I glance at the design on the mug Caleb’s handed me. It’s faded, like it’s been through a dishwasher a few too many times, but I can still just about make out the I HEART LONDON motif on the front.
He notices me looking. “Stocking filler from Helen, once she’d worked out I was itching to leave.”
“Ouch.”
“That’s what I said.”
We head back into the living room. It’s pretty sparsely decorated, with walls in that shade of magnolia that nudges toward peach, and a well-trodden beige carpet. There’s hardly anything personal in the room, aside from a few framed photographs, a potted plant, a tripod with some lenses, and a handful of books. One’s a National Geographic publication; another’s about the natural wonders of the world. There are some crime novels too with creased spines, a Nick Hornby, a Ben Elton.
We cozy up together on the tiny sofa, which smells very faintly musty—but in the sense of being cherished and well-used, like a beloved grandmother’s armchair, or the perfect find in an antiques shop.
“So,” Caleb says, sipping his coffee. “Tell me more about your novel. I mean, I know you said girl-meets-boy . . . but what girl? And what boy? And how do they meet?”
I’ve fully drafted the novel’s opening now—a loose reimagining of my parents’ meeting, but with an interwar twist, in that my two protagonists fall for each other on holiday in Margate, in the fabulous Roaring Twenties. I’ve decided that their subsequent marriage should be cut cruelly short by war—though everything will come together to give them a happy ending eventually. Beyond this vague plot, though, I still have no real idea what I’m doing. I haven’t a clue about structure, or pacing, or characterization, or anything, really. I’m just writing what I feel. What’s in my heart.
The Shoreley Gazette once ran a story about my parents for its Valentine’s Day edition—a splashy feature about the serendipity of Mum and Dad’s meeting, their whirlwind romance, their happy-ever-after. Dad had it framed—it still hangs in their spare room, albeit in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way. I remember being so starstruck, seeing my parents’ love story making the paper—the actual newspaper!—and perhaps that’s where it started, the idea that I might one day immortalize their fairy tale even further. That maybe I could do even more for it than a spread in the Shoreley Gazette.
Because while my school friends’ parents were divorcing and bickering and slinging pints of cider at each other at summer barbecues, mine were taking ballroom dancing lessons and learning Italian together and holding hands on the sofa in front of Blind Date. They fully bought into Valentine’s Day, and loved nothing better than big romantic gestures—like the hot-air balloon ride Mum bought Dad for his fortieth, or that trip to Paris Dad arranged to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.
Anyway. Over the past week I’ve spent my days immersed in all things 1920s, lost in P. G. Wodehouse and Nancy Mitford, absorbed by images of flapper dresses and cigarette holders and women showing off newly bobbed hair, of Coco Chanel and Marlene Dietrich, of cocktail bars ringing out with ragtime and jazz. I’ve become happily reacquainted with all the great love stories I admire too, dipping into them as I go. And I’ve already found myself tearing up at the prospect of sending Jack, my main character, off to war.
I explain all this to Caleb, describing my parents and how the way they met has loosely inspired what I’m writing.
“So why the twenties?” he asks me, leaning forward, his expression attentive and keen. “Why not the present day?”
I hesitate. “I think it was just such an intoxicating time on some levels, you know? I like stories about hope, and the start of the twenties were so optimistic, and glamorous, and even frivolous.”
“Sort of Great Gatsby–esque?”
“Yes,” I say, getting more animated now. “Like, there was that mood of escapism and hedonism and empowerment . . .”
“Before it all came crashing down.”
“Well, that’s sort of the point. I want what’s happening in society to mirror what’s going on in their marriage, with the Depression and then the war, and everything.”
“It sounds brilliant,” he says, sipping his coffee again. “I’d read it.”
“You would? Do you read much?”
“When I get the time.”
“What kind of thing?”
“Whatever catches my eye. I’m a sucker for a decent cover. Couple of times a month I go into a charity shop and just buy whatever looks good.”
I smile. “Incredible.”
“What?”
“You’ve not even tried to pretend you’re reading Ulysses.”
A bark of laughter slips free. “Should I?”
“Definitely not.” I tell him about the two guys in my course at uni—one of whom was nicknamed Ulysses and the other War and Peace, on account of the answers they gave when our tutor asked everyone to name their favorite books in our very first seminar.
“So, will you let me read it? Your novel, I mean.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling briefly flustered.
Caleb waits for a couple of moments, which is fair enough, given I haven’t actually answered his question. Then: “I’d love to take a look. If it doesn’t feel too personal to show me.”
A few seconds’ silence. It’s not that it feels too personal—more that I’d like to get to know Caleb better, and if he hates my writing . . . might that change what he thinks of me? What if he reads it and he decides I’m a talentless fantasist?
“I mean, I’ve only written about thirty pages,” I confess, half expecting him to laugh and say, Hardly a novel.
He leans back against the sofa, his eyes steady against me. “So . . . tease me with ten.”
I laugh. “Fine. Okay. All right. Ten pages.”
“You’ll e-mail them to me?”
I nod.
“Promise?”
I tilt my head playfully. “Why are you so keen to see them, anyway?”
He shrugs softly. “Because I have a sneaky feeling they’re going to be really good.”
His gaze sweeps over me now, lighting up little touchpoints inside me I didn’t know I had, making me draw breath. We’re sitting pretty close together—near enough for me to detect citrusy drifts of his shampoo whenever he turns his head, to see every dip and crease of his skin when he smiles, to count his crow’s-feet when he laughs. I can’t deny I’ve been hoping he might make a move, because the memory of our kiss on the wall earlier is like a glitterball in my mind, beautiful and glorious and impossible to ignore.
I feel a sudden urge to lean forward and press my lips against his. So I do, and he responds instantly, his hands on each side of my face. I am suddenly flushed with heat and hunger and urgency.
And it would be easy, I know, to turn the kiss into more, into something frantic and fast. But as the moment lengthens, there seems to be a hesitancy in both of us to do more. We seem to be saying, without saying it at all, that we’d both like to linger here for just a little while longer, because it would be a shame not to drink in every last second of something that tastes so good.
Go
It turns out that Supernova Agency of Soho, London, England, is one of those places where the recruitment approach is less interview, more ritual humiliation. They ask me to name ten uses for a brown carpet tile (they have one to hand) and what the name of my debut album would be (I panic and say Lucy Lambert Goes Pop, which gets a laugh, at least). They give me fifteen minutes to design my own ad agency (what?), then another twenty to write a pitch for their team introducing staff uniforms (thankfully, this one’s easy—I just tell them they’re all going to be the next Matilda Kahl).
I’m given an office tour by a spindly lad called Kris, who seems overly keen to impress on me that his name starts with a K. The premises are a striking mix of steel, bricks, and concrete spread over three floors; oversized, retro-style signage; and long, open-plan areas filled with low seating, rugs, and cushions matched to employees’ preferred Pantones. There’s a vast canteen with its famous free snacks and drinks, plus a bar, gym, and salon, as well as the “Supernova” itself—a cavernous room lit up to imitate, according to Kris, the nucleus of a stellar explosion. It’s warm and soundproofed, the walls and ceiling like a firework in freeze-frame, reportedly designed to tap into certain areas of the brain. Or maybe Kris is just getting a little free and easy with the brand story.
Anyway, it’s a world apart from Figaro, where the trendiest office feature was a boiling-water tap in the kitchen so encrusted with limescale that it spat like a snake in fifteen different directions whenever anyone tried to use it.
But the most surreal part of the whole experience is being called back in to see the head of creative, creative director, and senior copywriter before I leave, whereupon they offer me the job of junior copywriter, with a salary I could only have dreamed of and unfathomable perks. I start in just over a week.
Stunned, I exit the offices, stumbling into the heart of Soho at midday. I look around and blink like I’ve just fallen out of a time machine, before getting shouldered into a parking meter by a tutting suit-and-tie.
I tip back my head, letting my eyes settle on the slice of sky between the building tops. It looks like an upturned swimming pool, prophetically blue. I draw in a breath.
I’m going to be a writer. An actual, paid writer. Someone who earns their living from what they can do with words.
It’s all I’ve ever wanted my whole life, and now—unbelievably—I’m actually going to be doing it.
Later that night, Jools looks me up and down, shakes her head. “Don’t suppose there’s any point in me telling you to be careful, is there?”
“This is Max we’re talking about.”
My oldest friend’s expression turns almost pitying, like she’s lost me already. “I meant your heart, not your . . .”
I finish her sentence in my head. Personal safety.
It’s Friday night, exactly two weeks since I bumped into Max outside the pub in Shoreley. After talking to Jools and Tash the following morning, and making my decision to move to London, I spent the afternoon coming down from the chemical rush of having seen him again, growing increasingly dejected at the idea that he was currently en route to the Seychelles, where surely he’d spend his time hanging out with a lithe, long-haired diving instructor named Celeste, who’d look good in a wetsuit and know how to flirt underwater. I was convinced he’d return to London shagged out and refreshed, wondering what that moment of madness revisiting Shoreley was all about, when he thought it would be a good idea to raise the hopes of an ex-girlfriend he’d long since left in the past.
But after a few days, I started to think about the fortuity of having seen him on the street that night. I mean, what were the chances? Didn’t it signify something? Wasn’t it a nudge from fate, one that shouldn’t be ignored?
So I sent him a message. Just a couple of sentences, casual and light. And if he didn’t want to reply, then so be it.
Was so nice bumping into you the other day. Hope you’re having a great time. L.
He replied almost instantly.
Was nice bumping into you too.
A pause. Typing.
I’m thinking about you way more than I should.
My stomach flipped, and a familiar longing began to churn inside me.
Why shouldn’t you be thinking about me?
The pause between my message and Max’s reply was mere moments.
Because I know I don’t deserve a second chance.
And now, he’s back. So we’re meeting for dinner at a posh restaurant near his flat in Clapham Old Town. I looked up the restaurant online first, was horrified to discover it’s the kind of place with tablecloths and taster menus and a sommelier for pairing the wine.
I haven’t gone as far as to buy a new outfit for the occasion, but I have unearthed the most beautiful dress I own—wrap-style in blue and gold, with a pair of midnight-blue suede Jimmy Choos (Reuben, of course, launched into an Elvis impression when I entered the living room earlier). Jools did my hair and makeup, and we decided I should get a cab, whereupon I started to panic that we were turning this into far more of an event than it actually was. But then we looked at the restaurant website again, and decided it was definitely worth the effort, all Max-related complications aside.
The nicest place Max and I ever went while we were dating was a midrange pasta chain, where three courses and two glasses of wine apiece always felt highly indulgent. I dwell again on how much time has passed, the different worlds we’re now inhabiting. The idea that maybe Max isn’t the person he was before. That maybe I’m not, either.
Still. I guess there’s only one way to find out.
I spot him straightaway—is he really that striking, or is my mind just sharp with lust?—already at our table, eyes on the door, waiting for me. My stomach spins. He has the radiant demeanor of the recently holidayed, his skin a couple of shades browner than it was two weeks ago.
The restaurant is warm and mood-lit, the décor mostly charcoal, but accented with bright colors by the art on the walls. The waiters are in black, the linen is starch white, and I can just make out the trickle of piano music beneath the ringing of glassware and cutlery.
I swallow as I cross the room, trying not to think of that imaginary—though real to me—long-limbed diving instructor. After our initial exchange of messages, he was in contact every day, and I almost felt bad that he was thinking of me while he was on holiday somewhere so magical. But as Sal pointed out, we were indulging in some A-grade flirting, and what could be more magical than that?
He stands up when I reach the table. “You look incredible.” Leaning forward, he kisses me on the cheek, and I peck him politely back, which feels so weirdly formal.
We sit, and for a moment I just enjoy the sight of him across the table from me, newly tanned, fair hair brightened by the sun. He’s wearing a shirt in a flattering shade of blue, and has that particular kind of watch on his wrist most commonly seen advertised by Hollywood actors. I suddenly worry that this man I once loved has soared completely out of my league.
“You look great,” I say. “Very . . . relaxed.”
He laughs. “Thank you. Though that really only lasted till I checked my e-mails.”
“When did you get back?”
“Last night.”
“You’re not jet-lagged? What’s the flight time?”
“Ten hours. I’ve been asleep most of today.”
I smile. “So that’s why you look so ridiculously—” I break off, feel my face warm a little.
Max smiles too, lifts an eyebrow. “So ridiculously . . . ?”
“Well-rested.”
As he laughs, I remember how much I love the sound of it: completely natural and unaffected, the kind of laugh that slips free while you’re watching live comedy, or your favorite sitcom.
“Champagne?” he asks, nodding down at the drinks menu, and I notice a waiter approaching.
We’ve never drunk champagne together before. The most we could ever stretch to as students was bargain bin cava.
“Actually,” I say (I’ve practiced this bit), “I’m kind of taking a break from alcohol at the moment.”
He looks surprised for a split second before blinking it away. “No worries. What do you fancy instead?”
We don’t talk too much more until our mocktails have arrived and we’ve ordered courses one to three of a total of five. And then Max lifts his glass and says, “I loved getting messages from you. I’ve missed you being in my life, Luce.”
The abbreviation of my name feels flattering and intimate—like we’re right back in his room at halls, making out on his single bed, sharing a bottle of red wine so cheap it made us wince. Half-undressed, laughing into each other’s necks as friends knocked on his door, trying to track us down. We did a lot of that at uni: sneaking off together, hiding in darkened lecture theaters, behind buildings, in bathrooms with the lights off. I love you, Luce, he’d whisper, his mouth on mine, and I’d feel so frenzied I could barely say it back.
I smile and sip from my glass, hoping my face isn’t flushing with nostalgia.
“Hey, how was your interview?” he asks.
I fill him in, tell him I got the job.
“That’s incredible, Luce. Congratulations.” Max locks eyes with me, shaking his head, because he knows—he knows what this means to me, the chance to get to write for a living. It’s all I ever talked about the whole time I knew him at uni.
“Thank you.” I realize I’m fighting the urge to well up.
He raises his glass to mine. “Well, here’s to you. And your new life in London.” We both take a sip. “How are you finding it so far? Must feel pretty different to Shoreley.”
I lied a little when he called, told him my move had been in the works for a while. I couldn’t bear for him to think our meeting had influenced my decision at all.
Max visited me back home in Shoreley on just three occasions during university holidays, because the rest of the time he was either studying or doing internships. Max’s degree was one of those where the breaks were really just another form of study leave.
“I think different is what I need right now.” I mean, Max is right—London is a world away from Shoreley and particularly Tash’s place, where the stillness was so loud it sometimes buzzed. Here, silence is only a concept—it can’t be found, I’ve learned, because the rumble of the city is a stereo you can’t switch off, even at night. Rattling train tracks, sharp blasts of music, the commotion of voices. The city is a restless creature, but I’ve taken pleasure from its fitfulness. It has stirred me up, switched me on.
“Luce.” Max meets my eye. “Did you ever make it back to uni, to finish your degree?”
I shake my head. And then I find myself hesitating, because—despite everything—I want to tell him all about what happened after I left, including what went on with Nate. I feel as though he would understand, because he was always compassionate to a fault. It was Max who’d insist we demonstrate in support of good causes at uni, who volunteered to make peace with our unreasonable neighbors on Dover Street, who stood up for someone in a law seminar if they expressed an unpopular opinion.
But as quickly as the right moment comes, it passes. And now, across the table, Max is grabbing my free hand with his.
I don’t flinch, trying not to let my mind travel back to that Friday night nearly a decade ago, when we were standing on the bridge over the river next to the railway station in Norwich. Max was heading home to Cambridge for the weekend. I can still picture him so clearly, in his favorite jeans with the scuffed knees, and oversized woolen coat. Our final autumn term had only recently begun, and it was pouring with rain.
“Please don’t go.” I was too numb at that point to even cry.
“I’m going to miss my train,” was all he said, his voice vague and watery.
I didn’t want to beg. I couldn’t. So I just watched him walk away, over the bridge and out of my life.
I take in his face now—those gray, searchlight eyes, the gentle beckon of his lips—and I am filled with sadness. For all the years we lost. For all we might have been. For everything that happened after our abrupt, inexplicable end.
“I know this is coming about ten years too late . . . but I’m so sorry, Lucy,” Max says, squeezing my hand like it’s the most natural thing in the world to do. In this moment, it would be easy to imagine we never broke up, because we’re carrying on pretty much where we left off. Which is enjoyable and confusing all at once—like reading a brilliant book with some of the pages missing. Or arriving at the cinema halfway through a really good film. “I wish things hadn’t ended the way they did.”
He loved me back then, and I knew it. Just the way my parents—only a year older than Max and I had been, when they met—felt it. They still feel it today. They’ll have been married thirty-four years this September.
Max was unlike any guy I’d known at school, or our other friends at uni. Effusive and expressive, he was vocal in his adoration of me, and eager for everyone to know it. He would flick bar snacks at the people who teased us—Married already?—before gripping my hand even tighter; would make a big show of kissing me in the middle of wherever we were. Pubs, roads, university corridors. We talked about our future all the time: moving in together, marriage, kids. We were bold enough—and sure enough—to want it all. It didn’t even feel fanciful. It just felt like . . . fact. We were meant to have met in that kitchen on our first day at uni, and we were destined not to leave each other’s side.
Until the night he ended it. Just like that.
I blamed myself at first—thought I’d demanded too much of him—but he kept saying it wasn’t that, that it wasn’t my fault.
Of course, it crossed my mind he’d met someone. Not at uni—I was fairly confident about that—but perhaps at the law firm he’d interned with over the summer. Maybe someone who’d be heading to London the following year too, to complete the LPC, the next step in qualification for aspiring lawyers.
And yet, despite everything, none of that really made sense. Max wasn’t a cheat, a liar. If he’d met someone else, he would have just told me. Wouldn’t he?
I look into his gray eyes now, heart drumming in my chest. I want to ask him again what was going through his mind when he broke it off that day in September nearly ten years ago. Was it just the classic fear of commitment he kept denying? But we’re in the middle of a nice restaurant—hardly the right setting for turning your heart inside out. Feeling tears crowd my eyes, I slide my hand out from beneath his as our starters arrive.
“Let’s talk about something else,” I say, swallowing my emotion away. “Tell me about your holiday.”
So between bites of his rabbit dish, Max describes the world-class diving, the plush resort, the beaches, the heat.
“Did you know the group?” I ask. “I mean, beforehand?”
He shakes his head. “I’ve been diving with the same company before—Egypt, Israel—but the group’s always different.”
“And did you . . . meet anyone interesting?”
Smiling, he hesitates. “Are you asking what I think you’re asking?”
“What do you think I’m asking?”
“Whether I was messaging you one minute then . . . doing something else the next.”
I smile too. The rhubarb from my pickled mackerel starter is tart on my tongue. “I mean, I wouldn’t judge. You were on holiday.”
He sets down his fork and takes my hand. “No. I meant what I said. I was thinking about you the whole time I was there.”
I’m inclined to believe him. Max was always so straight-up, so honest—the kind of guy who would never copy anyone else’s coursework, or take even a single penny in miscalculated change.
I swallow. “So, come on. Tell me about your life here. Your friends, your job. I want to know everything.”
Because actually, right now, I just want to hear Max talk, so I can simply sit back and quietly love the sound of his voice again, after all these years.
We stay in the restaurant till late. The minutes melt into hours. Time becomes a river—long and beautiful and begging to be swum through. We finish our drinks, then order more. We discuss his work, and I fill him in on my years at Figaro. He describes his flat in Clapham, and I tell him about moving in with Jools.
I’m vaguely aware that outside, dusk has become dark. I’m trying to pretend our little corner of the restaurant isn’t hot with electricity. That his hand doesn’t keep nudging mine. That beneath the table, our knees aren’t bumping.
“So, Luce. Tell me. Are you . . . with anyone?” Max’s glass is raised to his lips, his eyes glimmering above the rim.
“Nope. Been single for about two years.” I make a face, exhale. “God, that sounds like a lifetime. You?”
“Actually, about the same. I broke up with my last girlfriend a couple of summers ago.”
I swallow. It’s still an odd and uncomfortable feeling, picturing Max with someone else. I guess when someone leaves and you’re not ready, a part of your heart will always go with them.
“And since?” I ask.
He tells me tactfully that he’s been concentrating on work. I find myself daring to wonder what he’s like in bed these days, nearly a decade on.
Once we’ve finished eating and drunk coffee, we’re almost the last people in the restaurant, so I reluctantly suggest getting the bill.
“That’s already taken care of,” Max says.
“What? When?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Max, no. It’s too much.”
“Forget it. Really.”
“No. This place is . . .” That’s irrelevant, really. “I want to pay my half.”
“Well, how about you pick up the bill next time?” His eyes brim with amusement. He’s enjoying teasing me, I realize.
I tip my head, deliberately evade the suggestion. “You don’t have to be all smooth moves, you know.”
He raises both hands. “What? I wasn’t.”
“Don’t forget . . . I know you.” Yes—the old Max, with the scruffy clothes and Pot Noodle fetish and terrible timekeeping and secret affection for Take That.
A busted smile spreads over his face. “Oh, yeah.”
“I’ll transfer you the money. Just ping me your details.”
He feigns taking me seriously with a frown. “Okay. I will.”
I kick him beneath the table with my foot. “I mean it.”
“Absolutely.”
I smile and shake my head, glance around the virtually empty restaurant. “Okay. Well, I should probably get a cab.”
Endearingly, his self-confidence sways momentarily. I watch him swallow. “Unless . . . you fancy coming back to mine? Strictly for coffee, of course.”
“Of course.”
Max’s flat is less than a five-minute walk from the restaurant. Handy for seductions, I think, before scolding myself. He’s been nothing but a gentleman tonight.
It’s a two-bed place, which I’m guessing puts it at about three-quarters of a million. Inside, it’s beautifully done out—immaculate paintwork, all the period features not only intact but gracefully showcased. Stylish prints hang in sleek frames from the picture rails—the French Riviera, a Hockney reproduction—and there are polished copper light fittings, cushions in bold geometrics, and potted plants exploding from various corners. The kitchen-diner we’re standing in smells of furniture polish and anti-bac, and I can’t spot a single item out of place. Even the tea towels look as though they were pressed prior to hanging.
“This is . . . like a show home.” I think about my scruffy bedroom back in Tooting and make a mental note to not invite Max back there for as long as I possibly can. Either that, or I’ll have to fly quickly up the ranks at Supernova so I can afford to rent somewhere as swanky as this.
“Can’t take the credit really,” he says. “I had someone come in and help with the furnishings and stuff, when I moved in.”
I sit down on the sofa I’ve been standing next to. “You mean, an interior designer?”
He wrinkles his nose, clearly slightly self-conscious about it. “Not exactly. It was just a favor really, from a friend-of-a-friend.”
He presses a button on his coffee machine, then retrieves a bottle from an Art Deco–style walnut drinks cabinet. “Mind if I have a nightcap on the side?”
“Of course not.”
He twists the cap from the bottle. “I’ve been really getting into vintage cognac lately.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. “Did you just say ‘I’ve been really getting into vintage cognac’?”
He turns to face me, clocks my expression, and smiles. “This is what you meant earlier, isn’t it?”
“About you being all smooth moves? Picking up the bill, rhapsodizing about cognac? Absolutely.”
He crosses the room, then—making his voice deep and husky—instructs Alexa to play jazz over his shoulder.
I laugh, and he laughs too, like he’s enjoying trying—and failing—to impress me. I suspect it’s probably been a while since he’s had to work very hard at the seduction game.
“Well,” he says, his eyes tracking mine as he sits down next to me, “maybe I’m just trying to win you over.”
The air seems to thicken then, the levity dropping from the room. Our gazes lock, and I reach for Max’s hand. There is a single moment in which our eyes are asking the same question, and in the next, his lips are on mine. We slide our arms around each other, and now he’s pressing against me, and in the next moment we’re horizontal on the sofa, a tangle of tongues and hands and limbs, tugging at each other’s clothes and making up for that lost decade like both our lives depend on it.