Surely, he can’t mean … But she searches his face, and it seems as if he does indeed mean it. He nods, points at his lap again.
‘My bark is worse than my bite,’ he says – maybe an apology of sorts? ‘I promise.’
She can’t help but smile, even as she gingerly places the offending foot on him. She thanks the gods of weather for the fact she’s wearing tights – it’s been far too long since she shaved her legs, and imagine the mortification ofthat. Unless he can feel her hairy legsthroughhertights? Oh no, he can’t, can he? She woulddie. She is pretty much dying now. She’s burning up. She’s probably caught a chill, like a heroine in an Austen novel who can’t go out for a stroll without courting death. Will she have to live in this Hampstead flat for the next month while her ankle heals? That’s probably not how these things work in the twenty-first century.
Or maybe she’s burning up for other reasons. Her foot feels electric where it is touching him.
‘May I?’ he asks.
She isn’t sure, exactly, what he is asking. But she nods, because in this moment, she’d probably say yes to anything. She is wondering if she has also somehow hit her head and concussed herself so badly that she has forgotten it happened? She is feeling oddly woozy.
He cradles her ankle with care, feeling for pain points.
‘Ouch,’ she says, when he finds one.
‘Sorry,’ he says. And then, ‘Good news. It’s not broken. Just sprained or twisted.’
As far as Jess knows, Alex doesn’t have any kind of medical training, but there’s something authoritative about his voice, and she can’t help but trust him, or at least believe he knows what he’s doing. He lifts her leg gently, stands, and places her ankle back on the chair. ‘Stay with it up like that,’ he says. ‘I’ll go and get some ice.’
He returns with a green Birds Eye packet, which for some reason makes her smile.
‘Rice,’ he says, somewhat absurdly.
‘Pretty sure those are frozen peas.’
The crease of concern between his eyebrows disappears, replaced by faint crow’s feet as he smiles. All of these, signs of age and wisdom. And experience tending to the injured, apparently. Oh, and the dimple: there it is, finally, in person. Not just a rumour or a photo on the internet. ‘No, I mean, RICE. Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation.’
‘Ah.’
He hands her the peas. ‘You have to give it time to settle.’
‘How do you know this stuff?’
He shrugs. ‘Lots of experience looking after younger siblings with minor injuries.’
And then, just like that, the moment has passed.
‘Now,’ he says. ‘About this book.’
Chapter Eight
Alex
The sight of Jess hobbling, visibly injured, has done something to Alex’s insides that he wishes it hadn’t. The fact that she was trying to hide it from him made it endearing, somehow. Why she’d insisted on impractical footwear is beyond him, though. They’re nice boots, and he has to admit that they complement her outfit, but surely, getting places efficiently and uninjured should be the main priority when it comes to what you wear on your feet.
He doesn’t, of course, convey any of this to Jess. Instead, he brings her tea, gives her some cushions to further elevate her foot, and checks multiple times that she is comfortable, until she seems almost annoyed with him for continually asking. Alex knows he can be accused of many things, but ungentlemanly behaviour is not one of them.
‘So,’ she says, reaching for her tote bag and pulling out a wad of pages that he recognises as his novel. They’d been pristine when Nathan had handed them to her – shiny and bright and full of potential – but now they’recrumpled and scribbled on. He wouldn’t be surprised if they were out of order, too. ‘Yes. Your book.’
Alex holds his breath, waiting.Is approval from others something you look for, do you think? his counsellor had asked him in their last session.Doesn’t everybody?he’d replied. He isn’t sure why Jess’s approval, in particular, matters to him, though. Perhaps for the same reason that he’d been struck dumb by the way her hair had brushed her shoulders at the coffee shop. Perhaps because she is only the second person to have read this particular book. Perhaps because she’d clearly sensed his disdain for the kinds of novels she loves, and may want, in retaliation, to express her disdain of literary fiction in general, and his writing in particular. Which would be fair enough. But probably just because what she thinks, and her suggestions, and her ideas, are going to shape not just the novel itself from here on in, but also the next few months of his work, of hislife, and determine how miserable or otherwise he is going to be.
Jess tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. There’s no sign of a pencil holding her bun up today. ‘Well, first, let me say – I really enjoyed the read. I thought it was very immersive. I sat down to have a flick through for half an hour after our meeting with Nathan, and when I next looked up, it was dark and I realised my stomach had been rumbling for ages.’
He should take a moment to savour this. After all, isn’t this what every author wants? For their audience to be so caught up in the story, or in the prose – or preferably both – that they forget they are reading, losetrack of time, miss their stop on the Underground? But he knows what she is doing: the compliment sandwich that he remembers all too well from his studies in the US. An attempt to lower his defences by starting with something positive. Any minute now, she will launch into what is, he thinks, mistakenly termedconstructive criticism. It has always felt destructive to him.
‘I also thought the premise was brilliant. It reminded me of those old epic disaster films from the Seventies – you know,The Poseidon Adventure,The Towering Inferno. You get to know people’s backstories, and you worry about them, you get emotionally invested, you want them to get out alive. Also, the best episodes ofCasualty.’
He can feel his eyebrows responding.Casualty? The trashy weekly soapified drama about a hospital? He wants to respond, but he has been trained. In writing workshops, you sit in silence while the compliment sandwich is delivered by person after person around a round table. Only at the end are you allowed a few cursory words, which must includethank you, even when you want to murder everyone for how profoundly they’ve misunderstood what you were trying to do and ruined it in your own eyes as well as everyone else’s.
