This isn’t exactly a shock. Should she go there – ask him about it? Chide him gently? She’d probably need something stronger than coffee if she was going to do that.
But then he goes there for her. ‘The ulterior motive hasn’t worked out, I take it?’
‘It did,’ she says, looking away, thoughts of what they had done in Nathan’s Godalming house feeling surprisingly fresh and tender. ‘And then it didn’t.’
‘Ah.’
‘You mentioned he can be impossible, so … Yes. That.’
‘I see.’
He doesn’t ask for specifics, which makes Jess wonder if he already knows; if Alex has already told him what happened.
‘So basically,’ she says quickly, in an effort to move on from this particular topic, ‘I was wondering if we have done enough on the book together. We’ve worked really hard, and I think the draft is in really good shape. And maybe, given – everything – I can leave Alex to finish off our work. Maybe I’ve taken it as far as I can go. You know, without murdering him.’ She’s going for a joke, a lightening of the mood, but it doesn’t quite land that way. Sometimes Jess wishes it were acceptable to putlolorhahaon the end of a spoken sentence the way people do with texts. She takes a deep breath and says the next part really quickly, the part that matters most to her. ‘And I hope I’ve proved my worth as a writer and my potential for future projects.’
Nathan nods, almost imperceptibly. She’ll take it.
‘What does Alex think?’ he asks.
‘I haven’t asked him.’ She leaves out the part where they’re not speaking; it feels juvenile and immature, and unnecessary for Nathan to know about. ‘I was hoping maybeyoucould,’ she adds.
She forces herself to meet Nathan’s gaze. He seems to be weighing up the pros and cons. Maybe he’s wondering if he should punish her for giving up so close to the finishing line – punish her by making her speak to Alex again, rather than walking away forever, which is what she’d really like to do. At least for now; at least until the book is published and they have to grin andbear each other’s company for the sake of book events and publicity photos. By then, she imagines she will be less angry. All of what’s happened will be water which has long ago flowed under the proverbial bridge.
‘Okay,’ Nathan says, obviously deciding that Jess has suffered enough. ‘I’ll talk to him.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
Alex
‘Right,’ Alex’s counsellor says when he’s heard the whole story of Jess, ending with the WhatsApp message she still hasn’t replied to and the email he got from Nathan this morning, asking if he felt like their writing partnership had accomplished what it needed to. He twiddles his grey moustache and leaves his customary silence, waiting, probably, for Alex to piece together all the clues and come up with a theory. But if Alex were capable of doing that, he probably wouldn’t be in therapy in the first place. ‘So why do you think you reacted so strongly to her suggestion that you put better boundaries in place with your family?’
That word again.Boundaries. Therapy-speak for not being there for people when they need you.
‘I don’t know,’ he says.
‘How did you feel when she said it?’
He thinks back to the punch in his stomach, to the adrenaline surge. His breathing accelerates. ‘I suppose anger is probably how I’d describe it.’
The therapist crosses and uncrosses his legs, nods vigorously. ‘Right. But anger is a secondary emotion –it’s usually a sign of other emotions under it. Hurt, or sadness, or a feeling of betrayal, for example. Was it any of that?’
Alex rubs the back of his neck and considers this. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘How does it feel when I suggest that you should put boundaries in place with your family?’
Tedious. It feels tedious.
‘Baffling. Because I don’t know where to start. Or, really, what boundaries actually are.’
‘Hold that thought, we’ll get back to that. When you said you felt angry, do you think your anger was really aimed at Jess, or were you misdirecting it?’
Alex closes his eyes and tries to locate the anger, the way he sometimes tries to locate the source of a tension headache. Usually, he is unsuccessful at both.
‘Because …’ the therapist prompts. ‘It seems she spoke really gently, and not unkindly, and that your response was maybe out of proportion to what she’d said. Which suggests that your anger was there, bubbling under the surface, and just needed a small trigger to come to the fore. You lashed out. Which suggests that Jess wasn’t the cause at all. Are you angry with your family?’
The answer comes to him straight away:yes. But he checks himself, because that seems odd. He loves his big, messy family. He can’t think of anything any of them have directly done to make him angry. His parents were – are – loving, as were, and are, his step-parents. And even now, they come to his launches; they buy his books and review them on the websites that matter. They pick up the phone when he calls them.He laughs with them, plays board games with them, cuddles his nieces and nephews. He doesn’t feel uneasy around them.
‘Why would I be angry with them?’
