Eating a delicious curry and shying away from questions I don’t really know how to answer. What am I meant to say? I’m still being bullied by my parents at the age of thirty-one, out of work, desperate, andreallygrateful you bought food.
‘I’ve just finishedThe Winter’s Tale.’ I smile across at him, my mouth can’t help it when I say this.
‘Spinach.’ He nods at said mouth. Of course there is. I wriggle my tongue into where I think I can feel it and try to extract it as subtly as I can. ‘You’ve just read it?’
I laugh. ‘No! I mean I’ve finished all my work on it. For this project I do. Alphabetically,The Winter’s Taleis the last of the plays. I didn’t know whether to do them in date order or alphabet, but I thought date would make it tricky for those not so familiar with them whereas everybody knows the alpha— Never mind. It’s a project I do.’ Do not ramble. He is just being polite.
‘Wasn’t your dissertation on Shakespeare?’
‘Yes, my nana instilled the love when I was little. How did you remember that?’
He smiles and shrugs. That’s cute. No. No, it isn’t cute, it is Rory Walters, he is all high-powered these days, do not get carried away.
‘Actually, it was accidental but I overheard you on a call yesterday, talking about your project and I guessed it might be something about the Bard. I was interested.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. Have you got anything I could look at?’
‘Really?’
‘Really!’ He laughs again. It changes the shape of his face, opens him up, makes me want to trust him. King Duncan’s words fromMacbethcome to me in that moment, a reminder I wish I had heeded many times before: You can’t read the mind by looking at the face. Rory may be all handsome these days, and when he was young he was known to be a nice guy, but now he’s working with Dad, and that speaks volumes.
Beware that handsome face, I tell myself. Resist. Is he just being polite? People are and I can never call it for sure. But someone wanting to listen to me as I talk about this, that never happens. Never. I suppose I can indulge myself for five minutes and then stop. Definitely do it for no more than five minutes.
I pull my chair closer and open my laptop.
‘Oh my God. Are all these files ones you’ve written?’
‘Yep. All mine. I started by taking each play and writing really easy-to-follow guides.’
‘All the plays?’ he asks, eyebrows raised.
‘Yep and the sonnets too.’
‘I remember the sonnets from uni. I used to think there was no greater love letter than someone writing a sonnet.’ He looks embarrassed after he speaks. ‘Anyway, back to the plays. Show me what you’ve done.’
‘Okay, here, look.’ I glide past what he said about sonnets to save his discomfort, although it’s a pretty cute thing to say, and click open theMidsummer Night’sDreamfolder. ‘Every play has scene-by-scene breakdowns, as well as summaries of the action in each act, literal modern-day translations for each line – proper translations that kids understand, not dated English-teacher waffle – and notes on themes and character, all of which can be cross-referenced. They’re not that different from Cliff notes or such…’
I watch his eyes gallop across and down, across and down. ‘I think they are. Your tone is a lot more inviting, conversational. You’re definitely not dry. I love these literal line translations. They’re funny in places, engaging…’ His eyes don’t leave the page. ‘May I?’ He reaches across to the trackpad.
‘Of course.’ As he scrolls down I find myself watching his face, his lips move at super speed as he reads. ‘This is great …Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,… I always loved that.’
‘And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.’ I quote back. ‘Me too. It’s what I need to remember, not to be a sucker for a pretty face, it’s the mind that’s important, character. See, he’s always wise.’
Rory lifts his eyes from the laptop and looks at me. I feel the tingle of something fritz up my spine, whizzing past every bump of every vertebra. His hair falling slightly forward, a solitary curl dancing, his face lit as it was when he laughed. I feel myself glow; is this what winning X-Factor feels like? I gave up seeking extrinsic validation for the things I care about years ago. I am learning to be happy and to judge me myself, bar my little dips post-parental interaction. But honestly I never thought someone else’s opinion would make me this happy. This is insane. I need to stop staring at him as if he has just brought me all my Christmases at once.
‘You’ve got so much content here, I can’t believe it. Is it all this good?’ His eyes run down the files again. ‘You’ve got maps of all of his settings, fictional and real?’
‘Yep, all the ones it’s possible to have.’ I know I sound like I have just found penicillin, run the four-minute mile and landed on the moon all in the same second, but this is awesome. I shouldn’t brag but I can’t help myself. ‘And there are loads of different levels of knowledge, so whether you come at it as a complete novice, say Key Stage Two in primary school, or someone who wants to really ease into these things like the everyday sayings that Shakespeare came up with…’
‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be.’
‘Exactly, that’s a really famous one anddead as a doornail.Oh, andbated breath.’
‘Refuse to budge an inch, that’s one, isn’t it?’
‘Yep, andbrevity is the soul of wit.’
