‘No, no,’ he says. ‘It is.’
For the second time this evening, Jess fights the urge to roll her eyes.
‘Oh good,’ the brunette giggles. ‘Because that would have been embarrassing.’
Not unlike this moment, in fact. Jess can feel her body curling with the cringe of it all. And then it gets worse: the brunette produces a book from behind her back. Jess wants to ask whether she carries it around with her all the time in the hopes of bumping into him and getting it autographed. I mean, what are the chances?
‘I thought I recognised you from when you spoke at Hay for your first book. Would you sign this for me?’
‘I’d be honoured.’ He feels in his pocket for a pen, but unlike Jess, who is always prepared, he doesn’t have one.
‘Here,’ Jess says, fishing in her handbag then handing a biro to Alex. The brunette turns to her, seemingly becoming aware for the first time that he is not dining alone.
‘Hello,’ Jess says.
‘Hi,’ she says. ‘Sorry. How rude of me.’ She puts out her hand for Jess to shake it. ‘I’m Cassandra.’
‘Jessica,’ Jess says, shaking her hand. When people have long names, it always spurs her on to deploy hers. In her peripheral vision, she sees Alex mouth it back –Jessica– as if it had never occurred to him thatJessmight be short for anything.
‘Cassandra,’ Alex repeats now. ‘That’s a beautiful name. Should I make it out to you?’
‘You’re too nice,’ she says, her hand on his forearm. ‘Yes, please.’
‘And are you a writer too?’
She gasps, her hand to her mouth. That same hand removed now, Jess notes, from Alex’s arm. ‘How did you know?’
‘Sometimes you can just tell,’ he says.Oh please, Jess wishes she could say.I bet he asks everyone that.
Keep writing, Alex scribbles, just above the signature that’s more or less illegible apart from the two prominent Xs – the one inAlexand the one inMaxwell, interlocking in a way that’s more artful than it has anyright to be. After multiple thank yous, Cassandra leaves to go back to her table and, presumably, dig out her phone and tell the world what has just happened to her.
‘You should ask for her number,’ Jess says, teasing. Mostly.
‘Stop it,’ Alex says.
But she can tell he’s enjoying himself.
Chapter Twenty
Alex
If he’s honest, Alex would have to say that he isn’t sure how they each make it to their own beds that night without so much as a kiss. They linger in the kitchen, making unnecessary post-dinner tea. Jess teases him about Cassandra, seemingly as reluctant as he is to go their separate ways. But they get there, eventually. He lies awake for a while, thinking of her on the other side of the house, wondering what she wears to bed, whether she sleeps on her side or her back, if she always reads or journals before she falls asleep. He imagines she has a whole night-time routine, imagines her going through it – mildly distracted, he hopes, by thoughts of the day they’ve spent together, by thoughts, perhaps, of his own bedtime routine. Eventually, he falls asleep, dreams the kind of dreams he will never admit to in public.
When he wakes up, he throws on his trusty Durham University Boat Club sweatshirt and some socks and pads through to the kitchen. Jess is up already, swinging in the dark wooden rocking chair, sipping a tea and looking out of the window into thedepressing British greyness, seemingly mesmerised by a squirrel jumping from branch to branch. Her mind is a mystery to him – and he is enjoying exploring it, though so far, he realises, he is only paddling in its shallowest edges.
‘Morning,’ she says, but she doesn’t turn her head. It’s as if she doesn’t want to miss a second of the squirrel’s dance.
‘Morning. I take it you’re a squirrel fan?’
‘Of course,’ she says, and this time she does turn to him, her smile lighting up her whole face, the whole room. ‘How could you not be?’
‘Indeed,’ he says, despite his bafflement. He does not say,Aren’t they just rats with fluffy tails and good PR?He does not say,You know there are squirrels in London, too?She is having what seems to be almost a sacred moment, with the squirrel, and he doesn’t want to ruin it for her.
‘I made a pot of tea,’ she says. ‘There’s enough for you too.’
There’s a crocheted tea cosy on the pot. He hasn’t seen one of those in a long time. It strikes him as incongruous that Nathan would have one at all, let alone a spare one for this Airbnb. All these years being friends, and he didn’t know Nathan was the type to have a tea cosy. Then again, he also wouldn’t have had him pegged as a matchmaker. Surely that can’t be what this whole co-authorship is about? Surely Jess has it wrong about Nathan sending the two of them to Godalming to – what were her words … her exact phrase – tofall in love?
‘That’s thoughtful of you,’ he says. ‘Thank you.’
