‘Yes, I suppose that’s quite far with a suitcase …’ He’s not trying to be judgemental or difficult. Just statingfacts. A twenty-minute walk in the out-of-London fresh air honestly sounds delightful after that cramped train journey full of hazards, like trying not to get too close to Jess despite noticing how good she smells; trying not to overthink what it means that she allowed herself to be jostled into him; trying to concentrate on his book without being too obvious about the cover.
‘Oh, no,’ she says. ‘It’s not that. It’s just …’ She’s blushing now, and he’s wondering if, as is so often the case, he would have been better keeping his mouth shut. ‘I could really do with the loo. I had an ill-advised cup of tea just before leaving home.’
He tries not to smile at the coyness of her blush. But it also takes every bit of the self-control he has carefully cultivated over the years not to ask the kind of question he spent his teenage years asking his younger siblings:Why didn’t you go when you had the chance?The train toilet had been literally footsteps from their standing space. In fact, they’d occasionally caught less than delightful wafts of odour from it.
‘Ah,’ he says, handing over the key. ‘I see. Well, in that case, why don’t you call an Uber, and I’ll see you at the house? I’d quite like a walk.’
Jess looks relieved at his suggestion. He chooses to believe it is the imminence of the toilet, rather than the twenty minutes away from him, that has this effect.
‘It’s a plan, Stan,’ she says. He hasn’t heard that particular turn of phrase in a decade, and it makes him smile.
Alex has never been to Godalming before, but it feels oddly familiar – perhaps because it’s the platonic ideal of a small British town, the kind of place Postman Pat might have driven around in his red van, with, of course, his black and white cat. Alex takes his time walking to the cottage: thirty-two minutes, to be exact. The introvert in him is mildly terrified at the idea of spending an entire weekend in someone else’s company – someone talkative, someone with opinions, someone whom he very much suspects is the opposite of an introvert. Writing, more than anything, is an activity he likes to undertake in complete silence and solitude. He’s never understood people who take their laptops to cafés and expect inspiration to strike with all that background noise, all those interruptions. He’s also never understood the idea of co-writing – another reason this entire project seems doomed. Writing is one man – or one woman – and their notebook and favourite pen, in silence, utterly concentrated.
Alex loves the feeling of fountain pen on smooth paper, gliding along, carrying his thoughts from left to right along the page. He loves the smell of ink. The sense that these rituals link him back through time to generations – centuries! – of writers that came before him and on whose shoulders he stands. (He’d like to think that it links him forwards to the generations to come, too, but he is not so naive. They write two-thumbed on their phones; they tap away at their keyboards, easily and happily and regularly distracted by the supposed delights of the internet. If looking down on such ways of working makes him a curmudgeon, then so be it. He’llgladly be called a Luddite in exchange for knowing the joys of a quality fountain pen.)
Cafés, however, have their uses: namely, the use they were created for – the provision of quality hot beverages. Though he invested part of his advance for his last novel in his own machine, he is yet to master the art of the perfect flat white. On the way to the cottage – and only partially to delay his inevitable arrival and the onslaught of Jess’s ideas and sunny enthusiasm – he stops at Gail’s to pick one up. And while ordering it, he remembers that during that first work meeting – the one in the coffee shop, where she let down her hair – her order was a flat white, too. With one sugar, if he remembers correctly (which he does, but only because he has a good memory for random facts). So while he’s here, buying one, he might as well buy two. If nothing else, to make up for the fact that he’s never acknowledged that he remembers her as the girl from the bookshop, remembers their brief flirtation. He’d only flirted like that because he’d thought there was nothing at stake, since he’d never see her again. Flexing his chat-up muscles so that they didn’t entirely atrophy. He knows he’s in no fit state for a girlfriend at the moment. The way he’s writing – or not writing – is not so much a signal to him that he’s not doing brilliantly, as much as a giant red flag flapping in the wind and declaring that he’s got some things to sort out in his mind, and probably his heart, and the few therapy appointments he’s had so far have confirmed as much. He didn’t expect the interaction with the blonde to have such an impact on him; he didn’t expect to stillbe thinking about the girl from the bookshop when he arrived at Nathan’s office; he certainly didn’t expect her to turn up at the meeting. And he wouldn’t have expected himself to behave so appallingly when she did – a spoiled brat, achild– but he was embarrassed, and confused, and flustered, and that combination has never worked well for him.
All in all, better late than never: Jess more than deserves an apologetic flat white. Rounding the final corner as he makes his way to Ethan’s cottage, Alex hopes against unlikely hope that it will buy enough of her approval to at least start the weekend together on something like the right foot.
Chapter Fifteen
Jess
Jess is excited despite herself to discover the place for their writing retreat – the birthplace, perhaps, of a great authorial partnership. The Uber drive over to the house allowed her to clear her head and get hold of her runaway emotions – what hadthatbeen about, on the train? It was probably just that her penchant for Main Character Energy had run away with her. They hadn’t come here for some kind of forced-proximity misadventure. They’d come to work, to be creatively productive, to talk about books and writing and plotline and characters. It would be fun! And then, at the end of it – not the end of this weekend, but the end of the whole, well,thing– they would have a book. Something they could both be proud of.
Something with her name on it, out on the tables at Waterstones. Something she could show to her grandparents, who had never quite understood what it was exactly that she did. They were proud of her in a nebulous kind of way – their go-getter granddaughter, whose intelligence and brilliance it was possible they overestimated – and that was lovely. But her grandpakept gettingconfluenceandinfluencemixed up and her grandma kept promising she’d ‘watch her little videos one day’. Jess had no doubt she fully intended to; she imagined her opening her computer, clicking around, baffled, and then giving up and telling herself she’d try again the next day. But a book on a table at Waterstones:that, they would understand. Her name linked with the name of an author described in one review asperhaps the greatest of his generation.
The key is a little stiff in the lock, but once she pushes open the door, she gasps. The house is all wooden beams and low ceilings, cosy rugs and lamps for subtle lighting. In the corner of the living room, an open fireplace, with wood neatly stacked ready for use and instructions as to how to build a fire with maximum safety and efficiency. Jess finds herself rubbing her hands in glee, like a cartoon character in a moment of excitement. She has a good feeling about this place, about its potential over the next few days. Wandering around, she finds a cupboard full of board games – noting, happily, that they include Scrabble. She identifies the bedrooms, trying not to pre-empt a decision about who would get to sleep where, trying to set herself up for diplomacy and magnanimousness.No, no,she would say to Alex,you pick. She does like this one that she is standing in, though, with its view of the garden, the hint of blossom on some branches of the magnolia tree. Maybe they could come back in a few weeks’ time, when they’re in full bloom; maybe even every season, to see the changing landscape of what seems like a very pretty town and to brainstorm, novel after novel, becoming aliterary power couple as leaves turn and snow falls and trees bud again.
It is possible she is getting ahead of herself.
It is also possible that she has unintentionally used the wordcouple. Only to herself, and not out loud. It is recoverable. Better to make the mistake in the privacy of her own mind and then shake her head clear of such thoughts.
It is also possible that she is still blushing at where her thoughts have gone, when Alex knocks on the door. She attempts the deep breathing again, though it hasn’t been particularly effective so far today.
‘Hang on,’ she says, yanking the handle this way and that. There’s a knack and eventually she finds it, though she couldn’t say how.
‘I come bearing coffee,’ he says, nodding at his full hands. He must have knocked with his elbows.
Instant brownie points. She beams at him. Maybe this weekend won’t be so bad. Maybe it will be great.
‘That’s thoughtful,’ she says, taking both the cups from him so that he can remove his backpack, kick off his shoes, shrug off the journey, make himself at home. ‘Thank you.’
‘Flat white,’ he says. ‘One sugar.’
This does not feel like a coincidence. The blush that had possibly receded creeps back up Jess’s chest.
‘You remembered,’ she says. Her voice is probably giving too much away – too much wonder, too much gratitude. Because he has, after all, only remembered her order, as any thoughtful friend or colleague might.
‘Of course,’ he says. ‘Same order as me, but withsugar.’ He pauses, which Jess suspects is for effect. She suspects, from the twinkle in his eye, that a bad joke is coming, and she braces herself. ‘I don’t need it,’ he says. ‘I’m sweet enough already.’
She’s tempted to roll her eyes. But he’s just brought her coffee, so he deserves better.
Besides, she remembers how kind and gentle he’d been with her ridiculous sprained ankle that time. He may be a little prickly, a little porcupine-like, but it isn’t impossible there is some sweetness there, too. Remembering her order, bringing her a drink – those are indications, too.
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ she says, with what she hopes is a hint of playful teasing in her voice.
Jess is beginning to relax into this whole endeavour. This is someone she can work with. And this is a place she can work in – away from the distractions of London, fresh air coming through the windows along with birdsong (or perhaps that is still the angelic choir) and not the slightest distant roar of a motorway carrying commuters to and from their various grindstones. Away from everything – this feels like a great place to write. She doesn’t know much about the process, but when she’s imagined herself actually making progress on a novel beyond the first couple of chapters, she’s pictured long sessions in coffee shops with her laptop, taking time and care over sentences, shutting out the world. She knows from the authors she’s interviewed and from occasionally having witnessed it that many writers snatch time in the car, waiting for their kids after school, or squeeze a tablet onto their knees onthe train on their morning commute. She admires what that says about their determination, their dedication to their craft. But she can’t help thinking it’s not the platonic ideal of Being a Writer. This cottage – this is far more like that platonic ideal. Just her and her book. And a tall, handsome man who brings her coffee.
