‘Norwich?’ His tone suggests Jess might as well have mentioned the moon as a suitable place to study creative writing.
Her tortoiseshell glasses have slid down her nose a little, which is perfect for looking at Alex over the top of them in the manner of a stern schoolteacher wanting to correct a mistake.
‘What, is the University of East Anglia not good enough for you? You know, the place that trained Kazuo Ishiguro?’
To be honest, she’d live in Norwich now if she could. London is convenient for getting to all the places she wants to go to. It’s been home forever. It’s also where Lily lives, where a lot of her university friends have ended up. And, of course, where her beloved grandparents still have the flat she spent so many nights in as a child, just down the road from her tiny Pimlico flat. But she prefers the pace of life in Norwich. It’s slower; it gives you time to appreciate things. Between the UEA’s prestigious writing course, the National Centre for Writing, and the brilliant independent bookshops, there’s all the literary culture anyone could ever want – and it’s all within easy walkable distance. She loves getting around on foot, rather than faffing around with Tubes and buses and trains. When she studied there, she would look forward to wandering through the market, picking out flowers, a different kind every week, though she secretly always wanted tulips.
‘It’s not that. It’s—’
His phone lights up on the table next to him. He glances at it.Georgina, it says. A sister, or stepsister, or maybe half-sister, Jess knows. Nothing suspicious. ‘Sorry,’ he says, once. And then again, ‘Sorry. I have to take this.’
Jess tries not to let her irritation show on her face.How convenient,she thinks,for him to get out of that conversation.
While he’s gone, she lets herself stew a little bit. There have to be easier ways to write a book. Easier than repeatedly meeting up with someone who clearly thinks she’s his intellectual inferior and trying to gethim to understand that a little bit of lightness improves a book, that the darkness is only beautiful by contrast.
Jess read Alex’s book through once, with the critical eye of a reviewer. She liked it. A solid four out of five stars. But not one that would have Bookstagrammers reaching for the usual complaint that Goodreads won’t let them have half stars, which is a shame because this one is really a four and a half. No: this one is firmly a four. Which is fine! It’s more than fine. But she knows Alex can do better. Nathan clearly knows it, too.
So she reads it again, paying particular attention to the female characters she was intrigued by. Thinking of new characters she could write into the story. Colour coding, underlining, scribbling, mind mapping. And then she got to work, with her own scenes.
Or tried to.
Everything that came out was … blah.
Which is infuriating, because she knows she can do this. She knows she can write, be funny, inject humour into serious thoughts. Maybe the pressure to prove herself is getting to her. Not that she cares about proving herself to Alex. Clearly, nothing she writes for him will ever be good enough, ‘strike the right tone’, ‘blend with his writing’.Et cetera, as he would no doubt say, with his pompous Latin. But she does care about proving herself to Nathan. Proving herself toherself.
All of this feels incredibly fraught. She has a job she loves. She loves touring bookshops to review them on her newsletter and post pictures to her social media. She loves interviewing authors for her podcast. She loves tracking her affiliate links, noticing them gettingclicked, people buying books she’s recommended – books that deserve to be better known, books that aren’t just the ones that everyone is talking about, the ones with the posters on the Tube. Does she really need to get involved in the writing of one? Enjoying other people’s books – getting paid to enjoy them, no less – seems so much easier. Maybe some dreams are meant to stay that. Just dreams.
If only she didn’t have Lily’s voice in her head:It’s not like you to shy away from a challenge.Jess has always loved her own sense of adventure, of get-up-and-go, the thing that propelled her to start her own business as a bookish influencer when her friends were getting worthy or well-paid, but slightly dull-sounding, jobs as teachers or management consultants or investment bankers. She wants every day to be different, every week to be slightly unpredictable. The emails that come from nowhere, asking her to jump on a train to chair an interview panel at a romance readers’ retreat. The publicists sliding into her DMs to offer her an early copy of the hottest debut novel of the moment. The endorphin rush of hittingposton social media and watching the likes come in. When she graduated, she figured that if it didn’t work out, she’d have the rest of her life to choose something worthy or well-paid instead. But it’s worked out so far. And now here she is, in the home of a super successful, if marginally annoying, bestselling author. Not just to interview him or bask in reflected glory, but tohelphim. Twenty-one-year-old Jess would have squealed in glee.
Twenty-eight-year-old Jess is less sure, however.
Behind her, Alex clears his throat, his phone call finished.
‘Sorry about that,’ he says. ‘Just my sister arranging babysitting.’
Jess does her best to smile less tightly than she naturally might. He made it seem so urgent. Was he so desperate to get out of the conversation? Or just unable to say no to his siblings? ‘No worries,’ she says.
‘So what were we saying?’ he asks, sitting opposite her this time.
She shuffles her foot on the chair, rearranges the packet of by-now-entirely-defrosted peas. ‘You were telling me that Norwich is inferior.’
‘I don’t believe those were my actual words.’
‘It was in your tone, though.’
He rolls his eyes. Actually rolls his eyes. Jess can’t believe the rudeness, the condescension. But with her ankle the way it is, it’s not like she could make a dramatic exit, even if she wanted to.
‘Maybe we should go back to the book,’ Alex says.
‘Probably best.’
He makes eye contact and holds it for a long time, in a bizarre kind of power play. She focusses on the deep chocolate of his eyes (Lindt 85 per cent, if she had to pick), resisting the urge to look away. Whatever is happening right now, it feels important that she not be the first to flinch.
‘You’ve made a lot of great notes for me here,’ he says, pulling his gaze from hers and looking down at the stack of paper. ‘I think probably the best thing isfor me to have some time to digest them, and then I’ll be in touch?’
Jess can’t tell if he is fobbing her off. But it doesn’t matter, in this moment, because it means one thing: she gets to leave this flat, hobble down the stairs and back to Pimlico, back to her rainbow bookshelves and her Instagram props and her makeshift podcast studio – safe, solid ground, where she doesn’t need to prove herself or justify her existence or sit around being condescended to.
‘Sure,’ she says. She hands him back the defrosted peas with a smile she hopes is both apologetic and thankful.
