In the back of Dad’s van as we head home to Marygreen and the flat where I was born, above the bakery where I grew up, I dissolve in a heap of tears and regret on Daniel’s shoulder and surrender my dreams of having a tiny slice of a life I can call my own after graduation.
Chapter Two
Daniel’s being an angel, of course. He brought round his duvet and we’ve settled in for some serious comfort eating and snuggling – easy when he still lives next door. He’s yet another of the millions of singletons like me living in our family homes as our thirties approach with little hope of affording a place of our own. Nurses aren’t paid a tenth of what they’re worth so moving out isn’t exactly likely for him any time soon. His parents have long since retired from running their Borders clothes shop empire and now they spend their summers at their holiday home near Land’s End while he takes care of things at home.
He’d made a few detours on the way round to my place too, God love him: to Marcia’s chippy at the end of the high street (tiny Marygreen’sonlyshopping street) for our Mackageddon Celebration Supper (the name was Daniel’s idea – I’m not ready to laugh about it yet, and I seriously doubt I ever will be) and he’s bought a bottle of cheap plonk from the corner shop. Ten out of ten for best-friending.
I made sure Gran had everything she needed for the evening (she was busy on a Zoom call to her craft circle, talking about their latest yarn-bombing project, so she was happy enough) and me and Daniel burrowed into our duvets on my bed and made short work of all the carbs and booze.
He didn’t even ask which DVD I wanted picking from the shelf; he went straight for my trusty copy of84 Charing Cross Roadand after scoffing our chips, we tore into a bag of Cadbury’s giant chocolate buttons and the comfortingly familiar opening titles rolled.
If you haven’t seen this movie, or indeed read the book it’s based on, you’re missing a treat. Who wouldn’t love a story about a real-life antiquarian bookshop and a correspondence between an American book-lover and an English bookseller that spans a lifetime?Ah!It really is lovely and speaks to my love affair with books.
I don’t just mean the storiesinsidebooks, I mean the books themselves and the unfathomable loveliness of holding them in your hands, poring over the handwritten inscriptions and pretty bookplates, sniffing the pages and wondering who owned them before you.
If I wasn’t needed at home – and if I had endless money, as opposed to next to no money – I’d do nothing but tour the world’s bookstores and treat myself to treasured first editions and scruffy, well-thumbed, neglected paperbacks from years gone by. I’d have to take Gran with me of course. She’d love that. We’re pretty much inseparable.
Anyway, me and Daniel have stayed in our nest watching bookish movies and eating rubbish all evening and now I’m feeling vaguely human again. Mum felt sorry for me and helped Gran with her bath and then I brought her usual nightcap (ice-cold Baileys – double measure – and a big wodge of our bakery’s fruitcake) and now me and Daniel can drink tea and speculate on who the girl Mack was practically humping in broad daylight might have been.
I had a ticklish notion at the back of my brain that I’d seen her somewhere before, and around the bottom of the second bag of chocolate buttons it strikes me.
‘She’s the girl from the coffee shop on campus! I’m sure of it. I can picture her in her little brown apron and everything.’ This discovery gives way to a wave of disgust. ‘She’s only a first year. I’m sure she told me back in the autumn that she was doing English like I was.’
She must be only eighteen or nineteen, I reckon, and ever so sweet and smiley. Too sweet for Mack, that’s for sure, that serpent in leather elbow-pads. He hasn’t called, by the way, and I don’t think he’s going to either.
‘So much for Dr Mack and hisgravitas! Grab-an-arse more like,’ Daniel says grimly, hoping I’ll laugh. ‘Wonder what the uni bosses would think about him shagging Freshers?’
All I’ve got in response is a wry smile and a shrug. That student’s just a kid really. It’s not her fault she’s been swept off her feet by a gorgeous, powerful man. What excuse do I have for getting swept away at twenty-nine?
‘I really thought we were destined for great things, or at least normal couple things, like this,’ I say, indicating the cosy bubble I’ve made with Daniel. We’re huddled together, clasping our mugs, close and conspiratorial. We’re confidants and utterly comfortable together, me and him, and we’ve been like this for years.
‘Oh yeah, thisreallyis couple goals,’ Daniel says with a smile and a roll of his eyes.
Will it shock you if I tell you that, apart from Mack, Daniel’s the only other person I’ve ever been with? Don’t go rolling your eyes at me for falling for my next door neighbour. You’d understand if you’d seen how adorably handsome he was at sixteen or if you’d grown up among the very slim pickings in our little Borders town. It’s not exactly a hotbed of eligible guys.
There were some other local lads, at school and in the years after, but nothing to set the world alight. It didn’t help that it was difficult for me to get out on dates, and even the sweetest ones didn’t want to wait around for me, missing out on their twenties when everyone else was out every weekend in Kelso and Peebles, or even Edinburgh and Glasgow, at clubs and parties.
Even getting out to the local pub was a rare occurrence, unless the whole family went for dinner or something. Boyfriends don’t want to put up with that sort of unavailability. Except for Mack. Or at least I thought so, while I was busy convincing myself he was the big Love of my Life that I’d been waiting for, like they tell you in the novels. Every time I felt rotten about neglecting him he’d reassure me it was fine, he understood, and he’d remind me we had the rest of our lives to go places and do couple things, and I’d think myself so lucky to have found him. Turns out we had the perfect arrangement – for him and his other clueless girlfriends, that is.
Daniel was a model boyfriend, of course, back in the day; so kind and considerate, sexy too. He looks adorable lounging beside me now in his striped pyjamas and a black sleep mask keeping his hair back. He didn’t evenaskif he was staying over, he just turned up with his toothbrush and aforementioned emergency supplies.
‘You’ll find your Captain Wentworth one day, Jude,’ he’s saying, ‘and he’ll be loyal and patient and all the other good things you deserve.’
I sigh, trying not to weep again. I’m at risk of considerably lowering my standards after Mack. I don’t need grand gestures and romance; I’d settle for someone who texted me in their lunchbreak to ask, ‘How’s your day?’ It would mean someone was interested in the little boring details of my life. It would be nice. Mack never once asked anything like that, I’m realising. Instead of admitting this to Daniel, I say, ‘Whoever he is, I hope he’s good at duvet dens and midnight feasts,’ and we both smile at that.
This was our childhood speciality long before we got together – pillow forts and sleepovers. My parents never seemed to mind Daniel staying over. He was, after all, only Derek and Jean’s dorky boy from next door.
Once things got serious at high school, Mum gently suggested that letting us share a room maybe wasn’t very responsible, and Daniel’s parents had agreed, but pretty soon after we broke off our adorable teenage love affair (all getting steamy in his bedroom and listening to My Chemical Romance on repeat) the cosy sleepovers resumed for a while – before Daniel went off to uni.
‘We haven’t done this for ages,’ I say. ‘I’ve neglected you a bit while I was studying for those finals.’ My brain pipes up to remind me it was more likely because I was saving every spare second I had for Mack and I wither a little more. ‘Sorry I’ve been a crap friend, Daniel.’
He greets this with a dismissive, ‘Meh, you’ve had a lot on your plate,’ and puts an arm out for me to snuggle into him, still cocooned in my duvet. I wrap him inside it too and reach my arms round his back and his tummy. He’s so solid and warm, it’s an instant dopamine hit, but I can’t stop thinking about the way Mack was kissing that girl, even when I screw up my eyes and try to shake the image out of my head.
‘What is it?’ Daniel wants to know.
‘Well, I… I suppose I’d got used to telling myself that Mack was just reserved and not the mad passionate type, but that’s definitely not what I saw from behind the bins this morning.’
‘It looked like he was going to eat that poor woman’s head,’ Daniel shudders dramatically. ‘Slobbery!’
