‘But I’ve noticed,’ she says, and thebutis his sign to brace himself, to roll himself up into a ball like a hedgehog, spikes out, to protect himself, ‘that all the characters with the most interesting backstories are men. I also wonder if third person omniscient is the way to go with this one. Have you considered multiple-point-of-view?’
Has he considered . .. As if he doesn’t think of every possible option before putting pen to paper.
She is looking at him as if expecting a response. As if this isn’t a writing workshop in Iowa but a collaboration between two people who don’t need to abide by esoteric and slightly brutal rules devised in the Forties by some random academic.
‘I didn’t want to write from the point of view of women. Get accused of – you know. Coopting an identity not my own. Et cetera.’
‘Yeah, I can see that. Lucky you’ve got me, then.’
‘Got you?’
‘To help write the women.’
‘Help write the women?’
‘Is it me, or is there an echo in here?’
Alex makes a show of looking around the room. Then, despite himself, wanting in on Jess’s pathetic attempt at a joke, ‘Is it me, or is there an echo in here?’
She shakes her head in despair at him as you might at an unruly four-year-old. Which, as far as Jess is concerned, is perfectly fair: his childish joke deserves it.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I just thought – I saw your role as more editing, not actually writing,per se.’
He knows that bringing out the Latin is borderline insufferable. It’s a move he learned a long time ago in an attempt to assert intellectual and educational dominance. It’s also one that Elodie, his first serious post-university girlfriend, called him out on more than once. It wasn’t what led to their breakup, but it also wasn’tnotwhat led to their breakup.
Jess tilts her head and widens her eyes.
‘My role?’ she repeats.
‘There really is an echo in here.’
She presses her lips together, as if attempting to keep herself from saying something she’ll regret later. Not that he is looking at her lips or has any interest in them. She doesn’t break eye contact; she is daring him to speak. To say more. But he knows better than to do that.
‘Nathan seemed to think,’ she says eventually, and he is disproportionately glad of this small victory, of Jess being the one to give into the urge of filling the silence, ‘that I should have considerable input into the crafting of this book.’
She waits for him to respond. When he doesn’t, she shuffles in her chair, rearranges her ankle slightly, winces. If he didn’t know better, he might suspect this to be a ploy for sympathy, or at least for him to back down in deference to her pain. And though hedoesknow better, something twists in his insides again.
‘Fine,’ he says, reluctantly. He knows he is being played, but he has no more control over the situation than a pawn on a chess board does.
‘Fine, as in, you’ll let me help write the women?’
‘Fine as in I’ll let you try and help me writesomething.’ He knows he doesn’t really have a choice; Nathan has made that much abundantly clear. He is just having trouble letting go of the illusion of control. ‘We can discuss the finer points later.’
He looks at her expectantly, nodding at the manuscript. He can’t bring himself to ask for more of her ‘constructive criticism’, but he knows there is more, and he might as well get it out of the way now.
‘I also think …’ She takes a deep breath, a sign perhaps that she is expecting him to push back on what she going to say. Or maybe she is expecting him to push back on everything. Which would not be entirely unreasonable, as expectations go. ‘I think they should all survive the plane crash.’
‘All of them?’
Jess nods, her blonde hair bobbing on her shoulders, which increases the earnestness of the moment, somehow.
‘That’s very romance-ending, happily-ever-after, Jess.’
He has never used her name out loud before. He likes the way it sounds, likes the way it feels, theslanding softly on his tongue.
She doesn’t rise to the obvious bait. ‘Just because they all survive doesn’t mean they don’t have issues,’ she says. And then she says some other things, but he doesn’t really hear them, because the sentence has landed, somehow, deep in his gut, the way a punch might. His ears ring; he feels, inexplicably, as if he were underwater.
When he emerges, she is drawing her substantial remarks to a close.
