Chapter 18.

“That wasn’t just a kiss.” The thought had filled Jess's head ever since leaving Anna’s flat. She’d walked away like she glided a foot in the air.

She bounced her knees up and down, hidden away on a fold-down seat in the end carriage of a train with bikes, buggies and one other person for company. It definitely wasn’t travelling movie star style, but she didn’t want to relent and have Femi order her a private car all the way from London to Birmingham, and he knew better than to offer. “I know, your green principles,” he’d said.

So the none-too-salubrious carriage for bulky items and the loo was her choice and that of very few others, which was the point. Nervous energy charged through her veins, wary of recognition and now doubly anxious after caving into her urges and sending that message to Anna.

Jess wore the glasses and hat which so far had proved effective as a disguise. She hunched over listening to her favourite playlist on headphones, periodically shoulder bumping the guy next to her as the train swayed along the tracks. She let a string of beads flow from one hand into the palm of the other and back again, something that was pleasing and usually calmed her, while she tried not to think about exactly how long it had been since she’d sent the text to Anna.

She peeked at her phone in her jacket pocket. Still no reply.

She’d tried to resist sending it. But that kiss. It had filled her mind, body and soul and it was all she could think of as she’d floated along the streets to the train station, hardly taking in her surroundings in a daze and with a giant grin on her face.

She’d been kissed, by someone who knew her only as Jess, and who enjoyed her company and found her a little bit sexy. It made Jess as giddy as a teen and she let her mind savour the memory of Anna’s soft fingertips trailing across her cheeks and circling her eyelids with a feather-light touch in a way that had surprised Jess with its intimacy. It was a delicate area of the face often neglected and it had sent a signal to everywhere else, leaving a glow inside. Then Anna’s lips had delicately slipped over Jess's and her body flooded even at the memory. She’d breathed out with heady exhilaration and dashed off the text while high on the reminiscence, saying exactly what was on her mind.

And now she waited.

She wouldn’t call Anna though.

Talking on the phone to her manager or agent or anyone from the set was as natural as the sun coming up in the morning and she would answer their calls without thinking. With anyone else it was an unnatural event of catastrophic order, which would cause her to regard her phone with horror. Whatever they needed, they could say it to her answer phone or text, unless they were Mom or Nan who would ring incessantly until Jess answered. You didn’t say no to them, or pretend to be out, or busy, because they just knew.

Still no message.

“Hey, bro.” The young bloke next to her, with shoulders three feet wide, gave her a nudge. “What you listening to?”

“Sorry?” Jess pulled out a headphone and sat up straighter. “Do you want me to turn it down?”

“Whoa,” the guy said checking her up and down. “Sorry, thought you was a dude.” And he raised his hands in apology.

Jess shrugged, not particularly bothered by the mistake. “No worries.”

“It’s that tune,” he carried on, “I’ve heard it before. Wanted to know what it was like.”

“It’s just a Dua Lipa track.” Jess scrolled down her screen to show him the song title.

“That’s it. Knew it was something like that. My girlfriend loves it.”

Jess looked up at him and smiled.

“Hey, what?” His face fell and he leaned away. “You look just like Jessica Lambert! Like mirror image.”

“Sssh,” Jess said, frantic, and held her finger to her lips. “Keep it down, please.”

“What? No way!” he said in the loudest whisper Jess had ever heard. “You serious? Are you really like, the Jessica Lambert?”

Jess put her hands up. “Please.”

“Oh, right,” he said, lowering his voice. He leant in conspiratorially. “You don’t want no-one to know, right? Travel quiet?”

Jess nodded and her heart rate settled as the man checked around for people listening with a comical lack of subtlety. “I think we’re all right”. He might not be the most discrete but he seemed a decent guy.

He turned back and whispered. “I’ll leave you in peace, but I have got to thank you first.”

Jess crinkled her nose in confusion.

“See, my girlfriend watches soppy films, which I don’t mind, like, but it was all the time. Until,” he paused for effect “the Atlassia movies. She’s nuts about them. In fact she’s going to be so pissed off when she hears I’ve met you.”

“Thanks,” Jess said.

“In fact….” He was suddenly coy as he realised he was getting ahead of himself. “Sorry, I’ll leave you be.”

He sat straight, attempted to act casually, slapped out a beat on his knees with his hands, looked determinedly in every direction but at Jess and opened his mouth periodically as if to speak before snapping it shut again.

Jess smiled. “Do you want a selfie?”

“Yeah,” he said, breaking out into a huge grin.

Jess took off her hat and glasses and swept her hair into a style that more resembled her character’s. The guy took out his phone and leaned in shoulder to shoulder with Jess.

“Kit’s going to go mad when she sees this,” he said.

A grin took up permanent residence on his face for the rest of the journey and he left Jess to her music. From time to time, another passenger might pass by and stare at Jess, until her companion made a show of being her friend or said “What you looking at?” dropping his voice an octave and the words booming from his considerable chest. At Jess's stop they exchanged a fist bump and she left a very happy man in the carriage. If only all her encounters in public were like that. At least it had taken her mind off Anna, and what that wonderful woman was thinking.

Jess plunged her hands into her denim jacket pockets and wandered through the village. The air was cool and her breath billowed in clouds. The village green was peppered with yellow and brown leaves, although the group of oak trees in the centre still retained theirs. The church beyond peaked above its perimeter of yew trees, a pale limestone anomaly in the village of old red brick cottages that surrounded the green.

The family had moved here when Jess was seven after her grandad had died. It was perhaps a few months after his funeral that Nan had thrown a wobbly and it was only now that Jess realised that Nan had channelled her grief into frustration and changing her life and that of her family’s.

“I can’t be doing with the city no more,” Jess remembered Nan announcing in their tiny terrace front room. “I’ve had enough of tarmac and tower blocks. I want to see green again. I want to see trees not pylons and telegraph poles. I’m sick of the smog and fumes.”

Jess's mother had rolled her eyes. “Mom. This is Acocks Green, not flipping Victorian London.” Jess had tucked away the mild swear word for future reference. It was rare her mother let one slip.

“I don’t belong in this urban sprawl. I grew up with mountains, palm trees and blue sea.”

Mum had glanced at Jess and muttered. “She grew up in Kingston, Jamaica, the capital, which has about as many people as Manchester.”

“I heard that. And I could see mountains. It wasn’t like this endless grey.” And Jess distinctly remembered her Nan with her hands on her hips staring out into a day that was indeed very grey.

“I’m moving,” Nan said, which meant they all did.

It was with Nan’s sheer force of personality that she settled the entire family in a small village to the south of Birmingham, which may not have been the most welcoming of places at first, but Nan’s conviction had enough momentum to steamroller any uptight second looks from the residents, for which Jess was eternally grateful. She wished she had her Nan’s determination and confidence. Any bigotry aimed at Jess personally made her want to crumble.

Jess started at the tiny local primary school with the best ever teacher of Miss Powell, who had time and a kind word for every child. Jess sat between Maisie Green and Sandeep Mehta – a girl with white skin and freckles who eschewed pink and preferred her brother’s hand-me-downs and a boy with straight black hair and brown skin who was obsessed with superhero comics. They became school-long friends and Jess was established in this village locale.

Jess smiled at the memory and approached the white wooden door of a cottage overlooking the green. She raised the lion’s head iron knocker and let the sound reverberate inside the house.

“I’ll get it,” she heard muffled inside. Her Nan. Jess couldn’t help grinning. “If it’s one of those window sales people I’m going to give them what for,” came louder towards Jess.

The door opened and a grey-haired lady of modest height scowled over little half-moon glasses with a ferocity that would have sent any door-to-door salesperson running.

The expression soon changed.

“Oh. My. God!” Nan screamed, and her mouth and eyes expanded wide and her arms shot into the air.