‘It was my own act of rebellion. I wanted to write, and I didn’t want to keep getting interrupted by my family needing something from me. The older of my siblings were always calling in babysitting favours, and my younger ones always needed driving around or helping with homework. When you have a family as big as mine, there’s always someone having an emergency, and there’s only so much your parents can handle on top of busy, responsible jobs and new families and marriages they’re determined to make a success of, the second time around. So nine times out of ten, I was the one who dealt with that emergency. And I was happy to, you know? I love my family. Until suddenly I wasn’t. I wanted time to myself. I wanted to be able to get into the creative zone and not worry about getting yanked out of it by a desperate text from one of my siblings asking for advice or whatever. So I left. Hardest thing I’ve ever done. None of them understood, because of course I didn’t give them the real reason. My sister Jen did some research and presented Norwich to me as an option. I was gutted that Iowa rejected me. Thankfully, American University saved me by giving me a scholarship, and that was as good an excuse as any. And I think DC was a lot more fun than a middle-of-nowhere city would have been, anyway. The fly-over states, they call that part of the country. I guess there’s a reason for that.’
He takes a breath. Phew. He hadn’t meant to be so honest all at once, to tell her all of that. He feels vulnerable now. He closes his eyes and waits for Jess’s response.
‘Well,’ she says. ‘That explains a lot.’
‘Like what, exactly?’
‘You. Being the way you are.’
He isn’t sure if this is a compliment, but it feels dangerous to ask.
‘Okay,’ he says uncertainly. Now that he’s been so open, so frighteningly vulnerable, he feels emboldened to ask the same of Jess. He’d like her to open up, if she wants to. He won’t push. He’ll just nudge the door ajar.
He runs a hand through his hair, aware as he’s doing it that his therapist has picked up on this anxious gesture of his. ‘What about you, Jess? What do you think explains you?’
She bites her lower lip and exhales slowly. He doesn’t know, of course, what’s going through her head. But if he had to guess, he’d say she’s wondering whether to deflect. Back to him, or back to something lighter, something more fun. But to her credit, she does neither of those things.
‘I suppose,’ she says, her voice likely as light as she can make it in this moment. ‘A therapist would probably say that my never knowing my dad explains a lot about me.’
He lets the moment land, lets her hear her own words. And then he asks, gently, ‘And do you think that’s true?’
She shakes her head. ‘I honestly don’t think about it that much. My childhood was just normal to me.’
Of course you don’t think about it that much, Alex wants to say.You escape, rather than facingup to difficult feelings. Into books and romance and adventure. Nothing too difficult, nothing too sad.But he doesn’t go there. Not yet. There’ll be a time for that, probably. He wants to lead her there gently.
‘Do you think,’ he begins instead, aware that he might be poking a bruise, ‘that it might be a good idea if you did?’
Jess visibly flinches; her sharp intake of breath is audible. He wonders if he’s gone too far; he curses himself inwardly when he can see in her face that she’d like nothing more than to run away.
‘Too many feelings,’ she says, her voice on the edge of trembling.
‘Easier to put them in a tightly shut-up box and never open it?’
She nods. But Alex is learning in therapy that it isn’t, in fact, easier. It might seem it at the time, but you might not have any control over when the box springs open, its contents leaking all over your life and your relationships. He considers whether to say any of this and opts for a middle ground instead, a creaking open of that box.
‘Is there anything you know about your dad that you’d be willing to share with me?’
He watches as her face changes, moving through a variety of expressions to reflect no doubt, a multitude of emotions. Even her eyes seem to cycle through different combinations of colours, but he is probably imagining that.
She settles on something at last. ‘He was French,’ she says. ‘My mum met him on her year abroad in Nîmes.’
This is a start. He can work with this. Then something occurs to him. ‘Jess … Martin?’
‘It’s not really Martin,’ she admits. ‘It’s pronounced the French way. It rhymes withvin.’
‘Martin,’ he says, taking care with the nasal vowel at the end. He thinks, briefly, of Hyacinth Bucket and her insistence on theBouquetpronunciation. But now isn’t the time to bring it up – it feels like the wrong moment to gear-shift into humour. Not to mention that she would probably tease him for being an old man with a working knowledge of Nineties culture, even if that was technically before his time. ‘That’s beautiful.’
But then it’s her turn to gear-shift. ‘Yeah, I find that guttural Frenchrto be the height of beauty.’
He knows her well enough by now, though, to know what she is doing: deflecting from difficult emotions. ‘Do you speak French?’ he asks, knowing the answer before he’s even formulated the question.
She shakes her head. ‘Latin’s as close as I got.’
‘Post hoc ergo propter hoc.’After it, therefore because of it. A phrase known and beloved by fans ofThe West Wingthe world over, for too long and complicated a reason to bring into this conversation. He is testing her, gently – will she rise to the challenge, respond with a quote from this favourite TV show, or stare at him blankly instead?
She pushes her glasses up her nose, counters with her own random Latin expression. ‘In vino veritas.’
‘Veni, vidi, vici,’ he says, and then they’re both out of stock Latin.I came; I saw; I conquered. And it feels oddly apt, this phrase. It feels as if he has, in someway, conquered – won – by getting Jess to talk about her dad, to crack open that box a tiny bit. They are friends with benefits, after all, and those benefits should include being able to talk to each other about the hard stuff. Even though, if he’s perfectly honest, he finds it as terrifying as she does.
