“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 sayLucy 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 aK. 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 litup 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 signifysomething? 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.
