‘Sure,’ Seb says. ‘Sure.’
‘Can we stop talking about my lips?’
Seb laughs self-consciously. Then he goes to fetch another round of drinks from the bar. In his absence, Clara catches the eye of the woman at the next table. They share a short, polite smile. But Seb is already back, and this time, he’s talking first.
‘What do you want to do?’
Clara looks a little surprised. ‘Tonight?’
‘You said you’re not doing what you want to do.’ He takes a sip of his Guinness, foam gathering on his top lip. ‘What do you want to do?’
Clara looks even more surprised, as if no one has ever asked her. ‘Funnily enough,’ she says. ‘I want to make films.’
And suddenly, it’s like he’s wound her up and let her go, like she couldn’t stop talking even if she wanted to. She talks about the kinds of film she loves, the kinds of film she wants to emulate, the worlds she’s one day going to create. Not an if, but a when. Her voice is not exactly low, but pleasantly throaty, like she spends her nights shouting from rooftops, like she’s paying the price of every conversation featuring a barrage like this. She’s talking, now, about the next short film she wants to make, and Seb is listening intently, his dark eyes betraying nothing. He doesn’t interrupt her. Clara closes her own eyes, peels them open to look at him. It’s like she’s worried she’ll have put him off.
‘You don’t think it’s self-indulgent?’ she says, when it’s clear that she hasn’t.
‘The greatest films of all time are black and white,’ Seb replies.
‘Because they had to be,’ she says. ‘Then they invented colour.’
‘Colour isn’t just colour, though, is it?’ he says, with the confidence of a second pint. ‘You put the colour into it. Whether it’s black and white or not.’
When Seb speaks, his voice is deep and coarse, with an actor’s resonance. And though what he’s said doesn’t strictly make sense, Clara doesn’t seem to mind. It’s clear that he’s not what she’d expected. That she hadn’t expected to feel like this.
‘You could be in it,’ she says, quickly, into her drink. She looks up just as quickly, tries to read his expression.
Seb thinks about this. ‘You deserve better,’ he says. ‘I should have been born in the silent era. I’m best when I’m not talking.’
‘You don’t want to be in it?’
‘I’d be honoured, if you’d have me,’ he says. ‘If not, I’ll just be happy to watch.’
‘You’ll never be famous with that attitude.’
‘That suits me just fine.’ He studies her. ‘You want to be famous?
‘I want to make people happy,’ she says. ‘Or sad. Angry. Elated. The emotion doesn’t matter, really. If you make people anything, you’ve made something that matters.’ A pause. ‘Isn’t that what it’s all about?’ she says. ‘Making something great?’
Seb considers this carefully. ‘I think life is about more than making great things.’
He sits back in his chair, one arm outstretched, his fingers drumming lightly on the table. Clara looks at his hand, at the divide between them.
‘I can’t wait to see what you make,’ Seb says.
He offers to buy another round, but Clara rejects his suggestion in the name of equality. While she’s gone, Seb clasps his hands together on the tabletop. Behind him, Clara stands at the bar, staring back in his direction. The woman at the next table casts her eye over the constellation of stick-and-poke tattoos on his forearms. Then she heads for the toilet, balances her bag on her lap in the stall. She checks her Plenty of Fish page. She checks that the date they’d decided is, indeed, today. She considers messaging. She doesn’t message. Instead, she rakes her hands quickly through her hair, staring at her reflection in the speckled mirror above the sink. She returns to her table.
‘I can’t place your accent,’ Clara is saying.
‘Leicester,’ Seb replies, through his first sip. ‘The Midlands.’
‘I know where Leicester is,’ she says. ‘I mean, I couldn’t point to it on a map.’
‘Of course you couldn’t,’ he replies, smirking into his pint glass. ‘You’re from London.’
‘I’m not from London.’
‘It’s all London.’ A pause. ‘How long have you been here?’
