‘The point is fashion, Alex. The point is that it’s fun and I like the way they look.’
‘I like them too,’ he says, smiling.
Gently, he removes them from her face. Respectfully, he folds them and places them on the table. Tenderly, he traces the side of her face with one finger, and then at last, he leans in, close enough that his breath tickles when he speaks.
‘I love your mind,’ he says softly. ‘I love the joy you take in things.’
He doesn’t give her a chance to respond. If he did, she would say,I love how deeply you think about things. I used to think being serious was about being boring, but now I realise it means you have substance and depth, and I want to get to know those depths.But he is kissing her before she gets anywhere close to formulating those thoughts in anything like a coherent way, and then, with his warm lips on hers, coherence seems like it might take a backseat to all other considerations for a while.
As they come up for air, slightly dishevelled, Jess’s phone lights up again, this time with a WhatsApp notification.
So when do I get to meet this ‘Alex’?
‘My mum wants to meet you,’ she tells him. She’s not sure why she shares this straight away, without thinking through the ramifications. Maybe to test his loyalty. Maybe to emphasise that yes, in fact, shedoeshave a relationship with her mum, thank you very much. The sting might have been taken out of his words nowthat he’s explained why he was lashing out – now that they seem to have moved on to other things – but that doesn’t mean she’s forgotten them entirely.
He wiggles his eyebrows. ‘Doesn’t everybody?’
It makes Jess smile, but it feels like a deflection, and she isn’t going to let him get away with it quite that easily.
‘Nice try. So what do you say? Day out in Brighton sometime?’
Chapter Thirty-Six
Alex
As it turns out, they don’t have to go to Brighton, which is just as well, because this way, Alex doesn’t have to admit how much he dislikes the beach. From everything he has learned about Jess, he suspects she won’t approve of this. The way she speaks of the seaside with nothing but joy – the sound of the waves over the pebbles, the smell of suncream, even the squawking of seagulls – is at odds with how he’s always felt about it. Pesky, persistent sand which finds its way into every crevice of your shoe, even on a rocky beach like Brighton’s. Children running around with no regard for anything or anyone but their own fun. Ice cream which always seems like it’s a good idea until it’s stickily dripping down your wrist and inner arm. Fish and chips, too – admittedly delicious, but impractical to eat in any other place than at a dining-room table with a plate and a proper knife and fork. Alex suspects that if Jess were to write a list of desirable qualities in a suitor, ‘loving the beach’ would be near the top – or perhaps not even on it, under the assumption that it was a given thateveryone loves the beach, just as she would never write ‘has a pulse’ and ‘breathes’ on such a list.
One day, he will have to come clean. But this, thankfully, is not that day.
Jess’s mum comes up to London every year for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum, and they arrange to meet up for dinner in South Kensington.
‘My mum studied French at uni,’ Jess explains to him, and of course Alex remembers that’s how she met Jess’s French dad. ‘So any chance she gets, she likes to eat French food. Show off her accent a little bit. Bask in some nostalgia.’ Jess mentions all of this off-handedly, glancing past the topic of her dad without landing on it, and Alex takes his cue from her. This clearly isn’t the time to open up that particular can of emotional worms, especially not once Jess’s mum joins them.
‘I see,’ he says, leaving it at that.
He isn’t sure what to expect of Jess’s mother. Jess hasn’t shown him a photo, and he hasn’t spotted any in her flat, although it’s possible that they are on display in her bedroom, an inner sanctum he has not yet been invited into. Alex has stalked Jess on Facebook, even scrolled quite far back, and didn’t come across anything. He’s curious to see what her mum is like, and if she is flighty and easily distracted, the way he imagined Jess to be before he really knew her.
Jess’s mum, as it turns out, is more glamorous than Alex expected: her blonde hair in the same kind of messy bun that Jess seems to instinctively prefer, her nails immaculately painted a cherry-bright shade ofred, perfectly matched to her high-fashion branded handbag. As for Jess herself, she looks more stylish in yellow dungarees than anyone has the right to, especially yellow dungarees that are patterned with bees.
To Alex’s slight horror, her mum holds out her arms for a hug.No, thank you, he wants to say, but he ignores his churning stomach and obliges. She smells of bergamot and citrus, a pleasant scent that brings back memories of his own mother, younger and carefree, before the arguments with his dad started, or at least before Alex was aware of them.
‘I’m Ellen,’ she says into his hair before she lets him go. ‘It’s great to meet you.’
‘You too,’ Alex says. ‘I’ve heard so much about you.’ Which isn’t true, of course. Mostly, what he’s heard about is her absence, even if Jess brushes it off as no big deal.
‘All good, I hope,’ she responds, standing back and appraising him with not a hint of subtlety.
‘Of course.’
He can’t help noticing that Ellen doesn’t say she’s heard a lot about him, too. This could be for one of several reasons: maybe she hasn’t let any calls with Jess be long enough to find out about him. Or maybe shedoesknow about him, but she’s trying to protect Jess. Or maybe whatshe’sheard is not, in fact, all good, and she can’t bring herself to lie about it. But he is practised at this kind of social situation. He’ll squash down his anxieties and make polite chit-chat. It’s not his favourite thing, but he has learned to be good at it. With a family the size of his, there are a lot of in-laws to get to know; and in his more successful days as an author, there were a lot ofbook launches to attend – warm white wine sipped from plastic cups in too-hot bookshops while making polite conversation calculated to raise a smile and not offend anyone. He learned, then, to observe or remember a detail about the person he is talking to, using it to flatter slightly and as a way into the required small talk.
And here, the menu they pick up at the crêperie table, with words likegaletteandratatouille, provides him with the perfect way in.
‘Jess mentioned you speak beautiful French.’ Jess hasn’t, of course; but that’s not really the point.
Ellen beams, pink in her cheeks, batting away the compliment with her right hand. ‘I enjoy it,’ she says. Is it possible she picked theratatouillejust to have a chance to show off her accent? Let’s just say it’s not impossible.
‘This one was never interested, were you, love?’
