Jess: Mine, originally. And believe me, I am regretting that.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jess
It floors Jess that Alex has so quickly been able to put his finger on something that has long bothered her. Of course, it makes sense for Jess’s mum to escape her life and her grief, to run off and have fun as much as she can. That’s what Jess does, too: she doesn’t dwell on hard things. Instead, she reads books, hangs out with Lily, watches something fun on Netflix, plans her next holiday. She knows, at some level, that buried deep in her gut are things that will need to be dealt with sometime. She can’t read books about grief or sit very long in anyone else’s pain. She’s there for her friends, but being there means taking them out to eat good food and drink good wine, or at least plentiful wine, to book holidays for them and buy them thoughtful gifts for self-care. (Never underestimate the power of luxury bubble bath, she has written on many a card.) She feels herself tense up when they want to talk, and now, even when she wishes she could be that friend, she knows they no longer expect it from her. She knows, at some level, that Lily and Gareth are trying for a baby – why else would you move to West Dulwich in your latetwenties, favouring a quiet inner suburb with a village feel, good schools, and a bookshop with weekly story times, over the bustle of Balham, the lively chaos of Clapham, or even just proximity to a Tube so you can easily get in and out of central London to brunch, to happy hours, to galleries and cinemas and theatres?
Jess suspects, though, that the trying maybe isn’t going as planned. But she hasn’t asked about it, and Lily hasn’t offered up any information. It’s a tricky subject, and Jess doesn’t want to pry. And also, she’s never understood this longing to settle, to tie yourself down to nights in at home and school catchment areas and child-friendly holidays at pre-defined times of the year, when there are so many adventures to be had outside those arbitrary parameters. Part of her hopes that one day shewillunderstand it, will want it herself – and thiswanting to want itis new and, Jess has to admit, a little surprising. But really, the main reason why she and Lily have never talked about this might be that they both know Jess isn’t good at sadness and pain – managing her own or anyone else’s. Escape is all she knows, and she learned that from her mum.
She doesn’t want to cry in front of Alex – she hates crying anyway, in any context – so it’s important to keep going with this book. Besides, as he keeps reminding her, they have a deadline. The quicker they finish the book, the quicker they can resume other activities.
Somehow, they get through the rest of the afternoon without any tricky talk. They keep it thoroughly professional. Maybe the weekend in Godalming really was just about getting it out of their systems. Maybe itwas too soon to use phrases likefalling in love. She’s done this before, let’s be real – thought she was in love with someone she barely knew. Most recently, with a publicist she kept crossing paths with at author events, the imagined reciprocity of her feelings probably helped along by multiple glasses of mediocre warm white wine in paper cups at the back of bookshops.
But she isn’t imagining the chemistry between her and Alex, the way his eyes keep flicking to her face and then away, as if he’s afraid of getting burned by the sight of her. She catches herself doing the same thing, too. Sparks fly off his fingers when they reach for the same Post-It notes, the same index cards, the same biro or highlighter.
‘This is a lot of index cards,’ Alex says, when they’ve written the outline of each scene on one and spread them all out in front of them so that they fill the whole table. He’s not wrong: there are ninety-three of them. Jess knows, because as they’ve been standing there, surveying, she’s counted them.
‘I guess it’s an epic book, in more ways than one.’
‘It really is.’
‘We have to be prepared that Nathan might want to cut some of it,’ he says.
Jess shudders. She has spent so long thinking so intensely about these characters. She could no more cut them than she could kill them off in the fictional plane crash. The B-list actor who was afraid of flying anyway and will now never go near another plane. The middle-aged lapsed Christian woman who prayed that everybody would survive as the plane went down andis more surprised than anyone else when it seems to have worked. The couple who broke up in the line to check in, now bonded by trauma and a realisation that maybe, given how precarious life is, it doesn’t matter precisely how somebody loads a dishwasher.
Jess can see them all, clear as day, before her – just as real as anybody else in her life. In her mind, she has cast some of her favourite actors in the movie that plays when she thinks of the plot of the book. She has written character sketches, given them each Myers Briggs personality types, even though Alex rolled his eyes at the idea of any kind of categorisation. Which is ridiculous, as he’s the clearest example of an INFJ she’s ever met: idealistic, sensitive, definitely a perfectionist. She’s learned to translate each personality type into a fictional character of a TV series he likes –The West Wing,The Simpsons,Friends. (Has he watched anything made in the last twenty years? Doubtful.) She uses those to make her point, to argue that Character A would never behave in a particular way, or that Character B would never have that criticism of Character C. Alex doesn’t like the reductionism of that, either, but he tolerates the notion of a personality type better when it’s linked to a character he is attached to.
Jess is particularly fond of the characters she’s created, or fleshed out from nothing or from the merest shadow that had previously existed in Alex’s manuscript. The lapsed Christian, for example, whose only role in the previous draft had been to monotonously repeat a prayer until the other passengers wanted to, and then did, scream at her. Now she has a fully realisedbackstory, a reason she slipped away from faith, a path back to God. The possibility of losing any of that to Nathan’s red pen (or, more likely, his delete button) feels unthinkable.
‘Maybe he’ll cut your descriptions,’ she says. Teasing, but also hoping that this will be the way it goes. Descriptions, she can live with being cut. If she’s totally honest, she skims them, at best, when she reads.
‘I doubt that,’ Alex says, all earnestness. Not taking it as the joke it’s intended as. ‘My readers love those.’
‘My readers,’ she repeats. There’s something odd about that phrase.My readers, like they belong to him, like they’re on his team. The way a political party might sayour voters, as if they don’t need to do anything to keep those voters, as if their allegiance is a foregone conclusion.
‘My fans, if you prefer.’
‘Wow.’ She’s not sure how else to react. But she looks at him, and he’s grinning. He knows how ridiculous this sounds. His fans. His devoted groupies. But then she remembers Cassandra – perhaps not so ridiculous.
‘What?’ he says, bumping her hip with his. ‘You don’t believe I have fans?’
‘I believe it,’ she says, half of her body on fire. ‘I’ve seen it in action, remember?’
‘Ah, yes.’
Digging into his pocket, he finds his iPhone, unlocks it, opens his Instagram direct messages, then wordlessly passes the device over to Jess. In his inbox, there is line after line of the beginnings of adoring messages, hardly any of them with bot-like pictures or usernames. It’s impressive, honestly. Idly, she taps on one of them:
Hi Alex! Big fan of your novels. I see a lot of my own family in the way you write about siblings – it’s been really cathartic, actually. I gave your last book to my sister for her birthday and we ended up having a long overdue chat about our childhood and our parents – I honestly think it healed some things in our family. And of course it’s also a great read. So thank you! Looking forward to the next novel.
If all of them are like this, it’s no wonder he comes across initially as having an inflated ego. Isn’t that the dream for a writer? Entertaining people but also changing their lives in some positive way?
She taps on another.
Love your novels. When’s the next one?
And another.
Can’t wait for your next book!
