I clear my throat. “Not exactly. It’s loosely based on my parents, actually.”
He looks faintly disappointed and not at all convinced. “So, what were you doing before this? Tash said something about advertising.”
“Figaro,” I say, the word sticking unexpectedly in my throat as I trynot to picture the expression on Georgia’s face as I told her I was leaving. No matter what had gone down between us, I’d always considered her a friend. “Do you know it?”
“Sorry, never heard of it. Right. Punch in this code here to log in. And then we’ll do a few dummy scans using the alpaca-wool bedsocks.”
—
When I get back to Tash’s around lunchtime, the house is empty and utterly still, shrouded in the type of silence I’ve only ever really encountered this deep in the countryside. If the house is full, I’m usually able to tune it out, but whenever I’m alone, it hits me like a waterfall. At new year, when Tash, Simon, and Dylan went skiing to Chamonix for a week, I had to turn the sound system on in every room—exactly as I’m doing now—just to feel a bit less like an apocalypse survivor. To drown out that all-too-familiar drumming in my chest.
The job at Pebbles & Paper looks like it will work out. Ivan seems okay, if a bit ridiculous. He’s asked me to start a week from Saturday. But for the whole bus ride home, I couldn’t stop wondering if I’ve made the right decision, staying in Shoreley.
I mean, really—who do I think I am? I’m actually nothing more than a wannabe writer who’s never even had so much as a paragraph of fiction published professionally. Maybe I should have gone to London, moved in with Jools, got a job at that Soho agency. Maybe I still can.
But as I’m tipping Worcester sauce all over my cheese on toast, a message from Jools flashes up on my phone. She says Cara’s room has been taken by someone called Nigel, who works in financial auditing. Apparently, he brought an actualbasket of muffinswith him when he turned up to view it.
Well, I could never have competed with that.
I look again at the flyer Tash showed me last week, pinned up nowon the kitchen corkboard, and feel a fresh and unfamiliar rush of conviction.Come on. You can make this work.
I just need to take a breath, and put my trust in the universe. It’s an approach that’s worked pretty well for me in the past: I got the job at Figaro because Georgia happened to drop a bag full of shopping in front of me on the street and, as I helped her pick it up, I cracked a joke about the poorly written pack copy on her box of granola. A mere twenty-four hours before I met Max for the first time, I opened a fortune cookie that saidLove is on its way. I have an excellent track record with four-leaf clovers and double-yolk eggs.
My faith in all this stuff is partly hereditary—my mum and dad met on holiday when they were twenty after the travel agent messed up and sent my dad to Menorca, not Mallorca. They even have the wordsWhat’s meant for you won’t pass you bystenciled onto the wall of their kitchen. I’m willing to let the cringe factor slide, because I’m so onboard with the sentiment.
Once I’ve finished eating, I head up to my bedroom and take another look at the only item I brought home from my travels nine winters ago. A single notebook, bound in leather. I’d bought it specially before I left the UK, intending to fill it and return with at least something to show for the disaster that had been the preceding three months.
Flipping through it again now, I’m transported back to every place I was sitting while I was scribbling across its pages—a beachside café in Morocco, a park in Singapore, a bar in Kuala Lumpur. And then I’m confronted once more with what happened in Australia, the sour and uncomfortable reality that just a few hours after writing this last paragraph—I finger the page now in regret—a man would flash a double-take smile at me in a bar, and tell me his name was Nate.
And what about Max? Reacquainting myself with this book has reminded me just how much I loved him back then, how he hovered inmy mind as I wrote. I remember how long it took me to get over him. How many times I’ve thought of him in the intervening years, wondering if I’ve missed out on being with my soulmate.
Have I been monumentally stupid in opting to stay here? Should I message him—or is the fact he’s now on holiday a sign to forget him? Might I have missed a second shot at lifelong happiness?
As I’m shutting the notebook with a sigh, my gaze alights on something else, something that startled me when I happened across it this morning.
A beer mat, with Caleb’s number scribbled on it.
Unsurprisingly, he hadn’t hung around in The Smugglers last week, after I sprinted off to chase after Max. I felt bad about it—just up and leaving, abandoning our conversation like that—but I never got the chance to apologize.
It was only today, as I got ready to meet Ivan and put my work coat on for the first time since quitting, that I discovered Caleb had slipped a beer mat with his number into the pocket.
I flip the beer mat now between my fingers a couple of times, recalling with a smile the gentle probe of his eyes, his friendliness, how his laughter made my stomach fizz. And before I’ve even really thought about what I’m doing, I find myself dialing his number.
He takes me by surprise when he answers, somewhat curtly. I’d assumed he’d let an unknown caller go to voice mail. “Yep?”
I feel my stomach plunge. “It’s... It’s Lucy. From the pub. The Smugglers, last week? You wrote your number on a beer mat?”
His gruffness turns instantly to brightness. “Lucy. Hello. I did. Nice to hear from you.”
“I only found it this morning. The beer mat.” I falter, wondering if perhaps I should have messaged him instead of calling. Nobody calls anybody these days, unless they’re the wrong side of fifty, or a member of the emergency services.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” he says, with a hint of abashment. “I think that might be just about the cheesiest thing I’ve ever done.”
Oh God. He’s changed his mind. He regrets giving me his number. I knew I shouldn’t have called.
“I’m really pleased you called,” he continues.
“You... You are?”
