What Might Have Been

by Holly Miller

  * * *

  —

  As dusk descends, Caleb invites me back to the fisherman’s cottage he rents a couple of streets back from the seafront. We walk there along the cobblestones, our hands and shoulders occasionally colliding and sending a tingle of anticipation all the way to my toes.

  It’s been a long while since I went back to someone’s house, and I’m trying very hard not to overthink the idea of being in an unfamiliar space with a man I barely know.

  But as Jools often reminds me, I can’t let my history hold me back forever. And despite the belly-deep anxiety threatening to override my craving to kiss Caleb again, what we’re doing feels strangely right.

  As we walk, I distract myself by telling him about my sister, that I was saving up to buy my own place before I walked out of my job.

  “Why?” he says.

  I inhale the scent of salt and seaweed for a couple of seconds. The coast always feels so much more alive than Tash’s farmland fortress in the middle of nowhere. “Why what?”

  “Why do you want to buy somewhere?”

  I glance across at him. “That’s just . . . what everybody does, isn’t it? Renting’s a nightmare.”

  “Depends on the landlord, I suppose. I kind of like the idea that I can just up and leave whenever I like.”

  “Did you own your place in London?”

  “Sort of. I mean, Helen did. She inherited it. Which meant . . . it never felt fully mine, I guess.”

  “Whereabouts in London did you live?”

  “Islington.” He smiles. “It was nice and everything, lifestyle-wise . . . but that doesn’t really mean anything, if there’s more important stuff missing.”

  “True,” I say, thoughtfully.

  We come to a pause outside Spyglass Cottage, a narrow-fronted whitewashed end-of-terrace, where the air is perfumed by a blush-pink clematis winding skyward up the wall facing the street. All the houses on the row have things propped up against them, like buoys and ancient lifebelts and old crabbing pots. The evening has cooled now, and there’s a coastal quickness to the breeze.

  As Caleb lifts his key to the bright blue front door, he hesitates. “You know, we don’t have to . . . I mean, we can just talk. This doesn’t have to be . . .”

  He trails off then, but I know what he means, so I just nod and say, “I know. Thanks.”

  Inside there is a tiny living room, with only just enough space for a two-seater sofa and single armchair. A wood burner is set into the chimney breast, and there’s a faint lingering smell of essential oils, or perhaps it’s scented candles.

  He cranks open the living room window, the one that looks directly onto the street. We’re so close to the beach, I can hear the gentle crush of waves on the shoreline as the tide rolls in.

  “Can I get you a coffee?” he asks.

  I say yes, then follow him over to the doorway to the kitchen. He fetches mugs from a cupboard, starts boiling the water on an Aga that looks like it’s seen better days. I realize I am trying not to stare too hard at his hand gripping the kettle, the broad set of his shoulders.

  “How do you take it?” he asks, once he’s poured out the hot water.

  “Just a splash of milk, thanks.”

  As he retrieves the milk from the fridge, he starts talking about his love affair with the Aga, which came with the cottage. I tell him I’ve always wanted one, ever since my parents got theirs, and he says, “Me too. My kitchen in London was horrible. Like, properly space-age. You couldn’t tell where any of the cupboards were. There wasn’t a single handle in there. I had to push in ten different places just to get to my cereal in the morning.”

  I glance at the design on the mug Caleb’s handed me. It’s faded, like it’s been through a dishwasher a few too many times, but I can still just about make out the I HEART LONDON motif on the front.

  He notices me looking. “Stocking filler from Helen, once she’d worked out I was itching to leave.”

  “Ouch.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  We head back into the living room. It’s pretty sparsely decorated, with walls in that shade of magnolia that nudges toward peach, and a well-trodden beige carpet. There’s hardly anything personal in the room, aside from a few framed photographs, a potted plant, a tripod with some lenses, and a handful of books. One’s a National Geographic publication; another’s about the natural wonders of the world. There are some crime novels too with creased spines, a Nick Hornby, a Ben Elton.

  We cozy up together on the tiny sofa, which smells very faintly musty—but in the sense of being cherished and well-used, like a beloved grandmother’s armchair, or the perfect find in an antiques shop.

  “So,” Caleb says, sipping his coffee. “Tell me more about your novel. I mean, I know you said girl-meets-boy . . . but what girl? And what boy? And how do they meet?”

  I’ve fully drafted the novel’s opening now—a loose reimagining of my parents’ meeting, but with an interwar twist, in that my two protagonists fall for each other on holiday in Margate, in the fabulous Roaring Twenties. I’ve decided that their subsequent marriage should be cut cruelly short by war—though everything will come together to give them a happy ending eventually. Beyond this vague plot, though, I still have no real idea what I’m doing. I haven’t a clue about structure, or pacing, or characterization, or anything, really. I’m just writing what I feel. What’s in my heart.

  The Shoreley Gazette once ran a story about my parents for its Valentine’s Day edition—a splashy feature about the serendipity of Mum and Dad’s meeting, their whirlwind romance, their happy-ever-after. Dad had it framed—it still hangs in their spare room, albeit in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way. I remember being so starstruck, seeing my parents’ love story making the paper—the actual newspaper!—and perhaps that’s where it started, the idea that I might one day immortalize their fairy tale even further. That maybe I could do even more for it than a spread in the Shoreley Gazette.

  Because while my school friends’ parents were divorcing and bickering and slinging pints of cider at each other at summer barbecues, mine were taking ballroom dancing lessons and learning Italian together and holding hands on the sofa in front of Blind Date. They fully bought into Valentine’s Day, and loved nothing better than big romantic gestures—like the hot-air balloon ride Mum bought Dad for his fortieth, or that trip to Paris Dad arranged to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

  Anyway. Over the past week I’ve spent my days immersed in all things 1920s, lost in P. G. Wodehouse and Nancy Mitford, absorbed by images of flapper dresses and cigarette holders and women showing off newly bobbed hair, of Coco Chanel and Marlene Dietrich, of cocktail bars ringing out with ragtime and jazz. I’ve become happily reacquainted with all the great love stories I admire too, dipping into them as I go. And I’ve already found myself tearing up at the prospect of sending Jack, my main character, off to war.

  I explain all this to Caleb, describing my parents and how the way they met has loosely inspired what I’m writing.

  “So why the twenties?” he asks me, leaning forward, his expression attentive and keen. “Why not the present day?”

  I hesitate. “I think it was just such an intoxicating time on some levels, you know? I like stories about hope, and the start of the twenties were so optimistic, and glamorous, and even frivolous.”

  “Sort of Great Gatsby–esque?”

  “Yes,” I say, getting more animated now. “Like, there was that mood of escapism and hedonism and empowerment . . .”

  “Before it all came crashing down.”

  “Well, that’s sort of the point. I want what’s happening in society to mirror what’s going on in their marriage, with the Depression and then the war, and everything.”

  “It sounds brilliant,” he says, sipping his coffee again. “I’d read it.”

  “You would
? Do you read much?”

  “When I get the time.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “Whatever catches my eye. I’m a sucker for a decent cover. Couple of times a month I go into a charity shop and just buy whatever looks good.”

  I smile. “Incredible.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve not even tried to pretend you’re reading Ulysses.”

  A bark of laughter slips free. “Should I?”

  “Definitely not.” I tell him about the two guys in my course at uni—one of whom was nicknamed Ulysses and the other War and Peace, on account of the answers they gave when our tutor asked everyone to name their favorite books in our very first seminar.

  “So, will you let me read it? Your novel, I mean.”

  “Oh,” I say, feeling briefly flustered.

  Caleb waits for a couple of moments, which is fair enough, given I haven’t actually answered his question. Then: “I’d love to take a look. If it doesn’t feel too personal to show me.”

  A few seconds’ silence. It’s not that it feels too personal—more that I’d like to get to know Caleb better, and if he hates my writing . . . might that change what he thinks of me? What if he reads it and he decides I’m a talentless fantasist?

  “I mean, I’ve only written about thirty pages,” I confess, half expecting him to laugh and say, Hardly a novel.

  He leans back against the sofa, his eyes steady against me. “So . . . tease me with ten.”

  I laugh. “Fine. Okay. All right. Ten pages.”

  “You’ll e-mail them to me?”

  I nod.

  “Promise?”

  I tilt my head playfully. “Why are you so keen to see them, anyway?”

  He shrugs softly. “Because I have a sneaky feeling they’re going to be really good.”

  His gaze sweeps over me now, lighting up little touchpoints inside me I didn’t know I had, making me draw breath. We’re sitting pretty close together—near enough for me to detect citrusy drifts of his shampoo whenever he turns his head, to see every dip and crease of his skin when he smiles, to count his crow’s-feet when he laughs. I can’t deny I’ve been hoping he might make a move, because the memory of our kiss on the wall earlier is like a glitterball in my mind, beautiful and glorious and impossible to ignore.

  I feel a sudden urge to lean forward and press my lips against his. So I do, and he responds instantly, his hands on each side of my face. I am suddenly flushed with heat and hunger and urgency.

  And it would be easy, I know, to turn the kiss into more, into something frantic and fast. But as the moment lengthens, there seems to be a hesitancy in both of us to do more. We seem to be saying, without saying it at all, that we’d both like to linger here for just a little while longer, because it would be a shame not to drink in every last second of something that tastes so good.

  Go

  It turns out that Supernova Agency of Soho, London, England, is one of those places where the recruitment approach is less interview, more ritual humiliation. They ask me to name ten uses for a brown carpet tile (they have one to hand) and what the name of my debut album would be (I panic and say Lucy Lambert Goes Pop, which gets a laugh, at least). They give me fifteen minutes to design my own ad agency (what?), then another twenty to write a pitch for their team introducing staff uniforms (thankfully, this one’s easy—I just tell them they’re all going to be the next Matilda Kahl).

  I’m given an office tour by a spindly lad called Kris, who seems overly keen to impress on me that his name starts with a K. The premises are a striking mix of steel, bricks, and concrete spread over three floors; oversized, retro-style signage; and long, open-plan areas filled with low seating, rugs, and cushions matched to employees’ preferred Pantones. There’s a vast canteen with its famous free snacks and drinks, plus a bar, gym, and salon, as well as the “Supernova” itself—a cavernous room lit up to imitate, according to Kris, the nucleus of a stellar explosion. It’s warm and soundproofed, the walls and ceiling like a firework in freeze-frame, reportedly designed to tap into certain areas of the brain. Or maybe Kris is just getting a little free and easy with the brand story.

  Anyway, it’s a world apart from Figaro, where the trendiest office feature was a boiling-water tap in the kitchen so encrusted with limescale that it spat like a snake in fifteen different directions whenever anyone tried to use it.

  But the most surreal part of the whole experience is being called back in to see the head of creative, creative director, and senior copywriter before I leave, whereupon they offer me the job of junior copywriter, with a salary I could only have dreamed of and unfathomable perks. I start in just over a week.

  Stunned, I exit the offices, stumbling into the heart of Soho at midday. I look around and blink like I’ve just fallen out of a time machine, before getting shouldered into a parking meter by a tutting suit-and-tie.

  I tip back my head, letting my eyes settle on the slice of sky between the building tops. It looks like an upturned swimming pool, prophetically blue. I draw in a breath.

  I’m going to be a writer. An actual, paid writer. Someone who earns their living from what they can do with words.

  It’s all I’ve ever wanted my whole life, and now—unbelievably—I’m actually going to be doing it.

  * * *

  —

  Later that night, Jools looks me up and down, shakes her head. “Don’t suppose there’s any point in me telling you to be careful, is there?”

  “This is Max we’re talking about.”

  My oldest friend’s expression turns almost pitying, like she’s lost me already. “I meant your heart, not your . . .”

  I finish her sentence in my head. Personal safety.

  It’s Friday night, exactly two weeks since I bumped into Max outside the pub in Shoreley. After talking to Jools and Tash the following morning, and making my decision to move to London, I spent the afternoon coming down from the chemical rush of having seen him again, growing increasingly dejected at the idea that he was currently en route to the Seychelles, where surely he’d spend his time hanging out with a lithe, long-haired diving instructor named Celeste, who’d look good in a wetsuit and know how to flirt underwater. I was convinced he’d return to London shagged out and refreshed, wondering what that moment of madness revisiting Shoreley was all about, when he thought it would be a good idea to raise the hopes of an ex-girlfriend he’d long since left in the past.

  But after a few days, I started to think about the fortuity of having seen him on the street that night. I mean, what were the chances? Didn’t it signify something? Wasn’t it a nudge from fate, one that shouldn’t be ignored?

  So I sent him a message. Just a couple of sentences, casual and light. And if he didn’t want to reply, then so be it.

  Was so nice bumping into you the other day. Hope you’re having a great time. L.

  He replied almost instantly.

  Was nice bumping into you too.

  A pause. Typing.

  I’m thinking about you way more than I should.

  My stomach flipped, and a familiar longing began to churn inside me.

  Why shouldn’t you be thinking about me?

  The pause between my message and Max’s reply was mere moments.

  Because I know I don’t deserve a second chance.

  * * *

  —

  And now, he’s back. So we’re meeting for dinner at a posh restaurant near his flat in Clapham Old Town. I looked up the restaurant online first, was horrified to discover it’s the kind of place with tablecloths and taster menus and a sommelier for pairing the wine.

  I haven’t gone as far as to buy a new outfit for the occasion, but I have unearthed the most beautiful dress I own—wrap-style in blue and gold, with a pair of midnight-blue suede Jimmy Choos (Reuben, of course, launched into an Elvis impression when I ente
red the living room earlier). Jools did my hair and makeup, and we decided I should get a cab, whereupon I started to panic that we were turning this into far more of an event than it actually was. But then we looked at the restaurant website again, and decided it was definitely worth the effort, all Max-related complications aside.

  The nicest place Max and I ever went while we were dating was a midrange pasta chain, where three courses and two glasses of wine apiece always felt highly indulgent. I dwell again on how much time has passed, the different worlds we’re now inhabiting. The idea that maybe Max isn’t the person he was before. That maybe I’m not, either.

  Still. I guess there’s only one way to find out.

  * * *

  —

  I spot him straightaway—is he really that striking, or is my mind just sharp with lust?—already at our table, eyes on the door, waiting for me. My stomach spins. He has the radiant demeanor of the recently holidayed, his skin a couple of shades browner than it was two weeks ago.

  The restaurant is warm and mood-lit, the décor mostly charcoal, but accented with bright colors by the art on the walls. The waiters are in black, the linen is starch white, and I can just make out the trickle of piano music beneath the ringing of glassware and cutlery.

  I swallow as I cross the room, trying not to think of that imaginary—though real to me—long-limbed diving instructor. After our initial exchange of messages, he was in contact every day, and I almost felt bad that he was thinking of me while he was on holiday somewhere so magical. But as Sal pointed out, we were indulging in some A-grade flirting, and what could be more magical than that?

  He stands up when I reach the table. “You look incredible.” Leaning forward, he kisses me on the cheek, and I peck him politely back, which feels so weirdly formal.