What Might Have Been

by Holly Miller

  Max and I have FaceTimed a few times since he’s been in Leeds. He’s walked me to his hotel window, showed me the skyline of the city at night as the promise of Friday burned between us.

  That part—the view, and the tour he gave me of his hotel room—actually made me feel a little queasy, brought back unwelcome memories. But I didn’t let it show. I just focused on his face, the balm of his voice.

  I’ve met some interesting guys in the two weeks I’ve been here—friends of Jools, acquaintances of Sal or Reuben. But being with Max again has reignited that certainty I felt for so long—a certainty I still feel, deep down—that he and I were meant to be. I’ve not been able to stop replaying our three incredible nights together—the chemistry, the fun we had, the mind-blowing sex—after which I scroll further back in my mind to how it felt when we were together at uni. To the kinetic pleasure of kissing him, the drug of feeling his hands on me. But that inevitably leads to the sharp thunderclap of our split, a shock close to hitting black ice on a road and waiting to strike a tree.

  * * *

  —

  On Friday afternoon, the day Max is back from Leeds, Jools knocks on my bedroom door as I’m watering the potted plant on my windowsill with a rinsed-out milk carton.

  I’ve spent most of today trying to spruce up this room, because I’m vaguely aware that at some point, I might have no choice but to invite Max back to it. I headed out early this morning to buy fresh white bed linen, a couple of cheap framed abstract prints, three potted plants, a thick gray rug for the floorboards, and some throw cushions. I dithered over tea lights too, before deciding they were probably second only to joss sticks in the student bedroom stakes.

  “Looks great in here,” Jools says, coming over to the window. She’s wearing a pair of tiny denim shorts and a peach-colored spaghetti-strap top, sunglasses pushed back into her wild hair.

  “Not a patch on yours.” Jools spends time and money curating her possessions: she wouldn’t need to panic-buy half of Wilko in an attempt to impress a new boyfriend.

  “Is this for Max’s benefit?”

  I nod. “His flat is the kind of place that should have its own concierge.”

  “He wasn’t exactly born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Luce.”

  “I know,” I say guiltily, because I do. “I know that.”

  She gives my elbow a consolatory squeeze. “Anyway, just came to say bye. Wish me luck.”

  Jools is off to Shoreley for a couple of days, to celebrate her dad’s sixtieth. Her trips back there are rarely without drama—past visits have involved fistfights, bombshell revelations about affairs and illegitimate kids, and a permanent family-wide barring from one of Shoreley’s major hospitality chains.

  “As long as no one ends up in A&E, I’ll be back on Sunday night,” she says, “so I’ll see you before you go.”

  For a moment I can’t think what she means, before remembering it’s my first day at Supernova on Monday—otherwise known as the opportunity of a lifetime. Get your priorities straight, Lucy, for God’s sake.

  Jools laughs, climbing onto my bed and pulling her legs into a yoga pose. “Do you actually need me to call you on Monday morning to remind you?”

  “Ha, no. I’m coming back here on Sunday night.” A pause, then a thought occurs to me. “Jools. Have I been a crappy friend?”

  “What?”

  I sit down next to her. “I mean, I move in here with you and then . . . I don’t know . . . I promptly disappear for days on end with Max.”

  Jools places a hand on either side of my face, kisses my forehead. “I work shifts. We were always going to be ships in the night, a bit. I’m happy for you, Luce. You deserve some good karma right now.”

  In the aftermath of my breakup with Max, Jools—unlike Tash, and many of my other friends—never disparaged or criticized him, or declared she hadn’t liked him all along. She helped me through my heartbreak without once running him down, something I realized afterward must have taken the self-restraint of an alcoholic at an open bar. I’m not sure I could have done the same, in her position.

  We sit quietly together for a couple of moments, our skin scored with shards of afternoon sunlight. Then Jools smiles and says, “I actually always thought you’d get back together at some point. You were made for each other. Everyone could see it.”

  “He might hurt me again.” It’s the first time I’ve voiced it out loud: that Max could just up and leave one day, exactly as he did before. Maybe he’s still scared of commitment. For a wild, crazy moment, I wonder if I could get in touch with his ex, ask if any of this sounds familiar.

  Jools nods. “Maybe. So, take it slow.”

  “It’s a bit late for that.”

  A smile. “I meant emotionally.”

  “So did I.”

  * * *

  —

  A few hours later, I meet Max at his flat, this time with a packed bag (he messaged earlier: Stay the weekend?). We’re heading to the house party of a friend of his tonight, in Balham.

  He’s waiting just inside the front door when I arrive. Straightaway I drop my bag and we stumble toward the bedroom, our kisses wild and frantic as our clothes come off, no other thought than to be together.

  “I have something to confess,” he says through the gap in the en suite door as I towel off from showering afterward, the peppery scent of his posh body wash infusing the steam.

  “What’s that?” I say lightly, though—irrationally—my mind is barking, Girlfriend? Wife? Kids?

  “The party we’re going to. It’s at Olly and Joanna’s.”

  I put my head around the door. Max is in front of the mirror, freshly dressed in dark blue jeans and a black long-sleeved sweater.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” He apologizes with his eyes. “Thought you might not agree to come if I told you.”

  The idea of it does feel slightly awkward: we were at uni with Olly and Joanna, childhood sweethearts from the same town in the Midlands, who were both studying chemistry. They were part of our wider circle, but we all thought they were slightly co-dependent, and already I’m struggling to remember a single thing about who they really were—like what music they were into, or which films they enjoyed, or what drinks they would order at the bar.

  “Are you . . . friends, now?”

  Max nods. “Bumped into Olly in Balham one night a couple of years back. He was hammered, so I walked him home. He sent me a crate of wine the next day to say thanks.”

  “A crate?” I say, thinking, What’s wrong with a bottle?

  “They’re nice, I promise.”

  “Is that because they’ve got more exciting, or you’ve got more—”

  He cuts me off with a laugh. “I’ll let you be the judge of that.”

  * * *

  —

  Olly and Joanna’s house is halfway down one of those long, tree-lined streets where every second property is home to a young family, all with identical side-return extensions, bi-fold doors off their kitchen-diners and a particular style of Berber rug in the living room. Max tells me Olly is an analytical chemist now, and that Joanna works as a scientific writer for—get this—the same pharmaceutical company.

  “They work together now, too? That can’t be healthy,” I say, as we climb out of the cab.

  “Don’t drop that,” Max says, smiling down at the bottle of champagne I am gripping by the neck. “This isn’t a broken-glass kind of street.”

  “Do you think they know they’re two separate people?”

  Max laughs and takes my hand, and we walk up to the front door together and ring the bell like we’ve been a couple attending house parties for years.

  I feel mean, of course, as soon as Joanna answers. She’s exactly as I remember—pin-thin in a slightly pinched way, with strawberry-blond hair and unnervingly pale skin, made even paler by the darkness of her n
avy silk dress. “Hello, you,” she says to Max, leaning forward to kiss him, before standing back and taking me in, shaking her head proudly like I’m her firstborn child on day one of primary school. “Lucy! Haven’t seen you since your famous disappearing act.” And before I can wonder if she’s being deliberately snarky, she’s pulling me into a kind of long-lost-friends hug, all musky perfume and strands of wayward hair.

  Inside, Olly is similarly effusive—Took you guys long enough!—and soon we find ourselves with drinks in hand, drifting between groups of Olly and Joanna’s neighbors, colleagues, and friends, many of whom Max seems to know.

  Every flawless room of this house is aglow with lamplight, platters of M&S nibbles on surfaces where we once might have balanced ashtrays and plastic pint glasses. It’s all very middle-class and urbane, with most of the conversation seeming to revolve around the much-admired renovation of Olly and Joanna’s house, and swapping contact details for builders, plumbers, and electricians, as well as the usual debates on the council’s approach to policing, schooling, parking. There’s a lot of underplayed wealth going on here—the kind nobody admits to but that slips out in offhand references to second homes, nannies, postcodes. I start to feel conscious of my cheap sundress, green-and-white cotton in a bold print—perfect for the weather, I’d thought. I hadn’t even worried too much about the creases, thinking, How posh can a house party be? But I know a pair of Louboutins and a hundred-quid manicure when I see them.

  “Sure you don’t want one of these cocktails?” Max asks me, after we’ve been here an hour or so. “They’re insanely good.”

  I smile. “I don’t think drinking in public after ten years dry is a very good idea.”

  “Ten years?” Max says, but fortunately as he does, he’s clapped on the back by a tall, sandy-haired guy with high cheekbones and glinting blue eyes, who turns almost straightaway to me.

  “Lucy Lambert. Well, well.”

  Beneath the chatter of the room, a Mumford & Sons bass line is galloping away. It strikes me that the frantic beat seems to suit this guy’s entrance, somehow.

  I know those eyes, I think, my mind scrambling to place them. But in the end, it takes me too long. “Sorry, I—”

  “It’s Dean,” Max says, at the same time as his friend says, “Dean Farraday.”

  “Oh,” I say, my eyes readjusting to the slimmer, sharper, more self-possessed version of Max’s friend from his law course. One of the guys he went to live with, after he graduated. I always used to wonder if Dean—or Rob—had persuaded Max to finish with me, in order that they could be three single lawyers in London together. But I eventually concluded that had to be rubbish, because Max was always someone who knew his own mind. “Sorry—I didn’t recognize you.”

  “Imagine me several stone heavier.” Dean winks. “Max finally talked me into the gym.”

  I laugh. “I didn’t mean that.” And I didn’t, really—my confusion was far more about the poise, the gravitas, that never really existed in the Dean I knew back then.

  I ask what he’s up to these days. He tells me he’s living in Chiswick with his wife and young daughter, that he’s a criminal barrister at a chambers on Chancery Lane. “Unlike your man here—the ultimate sellout.” He shakes his head, eyes alive with mischief. “All that potential, wasted behind a desk.”

  “Couldn’t do what you do, mate,” Max fires back, tongue-in-cheek. “Too many five a.m. starts and nightmare clients and trains to the arse end of nowhere.”

  Smiling, Dean swigs back some champagne, then turns to me again. “And what are you doing these days, Lucy? Don’t tell me,” he cuts in, before I can reply. “You’re a best-selling novelist.”

  I smile. “Not exactly.”

  Dean affects mock shock. “What? You mean the rumors weren’t true?”

  “What rumors?” But I know, of course, because I’d been the one to spread them.

  “That you’d quit uni to go and write a novel on a beach in Thailand or somewhere.”

  My only option is to style this out. “Actually, I’m starting a new job on Monday. In advertising.”

  “Ah,” Dean says knowingly. “Well then. Welcome to the club.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Of professions people love to hate. Estate agents, lawyers, ad men. Or women.”

  “Ignore him,” Max says. “He’s only trying to justify his nonexistent social life.”

  But the barrister in Dean starts to dig deeper. “So, come on, Lucy. What’s your story? One minute you’re at uni with the rest of us, the next . . .” He makes a motion with his fist, which I assume is supposed to represent a puff of smoke.

  I smile, even as I feel my body grow warm with discomfort. “Am I being cross-examined?”

  He smiles too, though not unkindly. “Sorry. Force of habit.”

  Back then, I told everyone I was off traveling, that I planned to write a novel. I cringe when I think about it now—how confidently I informed them I’d be writing in hotels, on beaches, from hammocks, and in bars.

  But the truth was, Max ending it at the start of that final autumn term had floored me—to the point where I hadn’t been sleeping; had missed deadlines, seminars, and tutorials; had handed in coursework that was sloppy and badly thought through. After a week back in Shoreley trying to pull myself together, I’d attempted to struggle on through to the end of term, avoiding Max completely, who’d moved out of our flat and into a temporary room in town.

  But the downturn in my performance had been severe enough that my seminar leader had asked to meet with me just before the Christmas break, whereupon she suggested I might want to consider repeating my final year. Twenty minutes later, on the way out of the faculty building, I’d seen a flyer tacked to a noticeboard, calling for volunteers to work on a community program in Thailand. And that was it. I’d seen enough signs by then: my mind was made up.

  After I dropped out, the texts and calls checking on me persisted for a time. But pretty soon after Boxing Day, when I boarded my flight to Paris—my first stop—they began to dry up, before more or less stopping completely as everyone returned to uni in the new year. I got a new phone, replying from then on only to the odd e-mail, assuring whoever had sent it that everything was fine. That I was reveling in my freedom, traveling and writing, having the time of my life.

  Max contacted me too, but my response to him was much less cheery: just a couple of cool sentences—perhaps to punish him—to say I wasn’t coming back. My friends ended up filling in the rest, and after that, I didn’t hear from him again.

  The music switches now to something cheesy, and a smatter of cheers goes up, a few hands lifting skyward.

  “I mean, I did go traveling,” I tell Dean.

  He nods, thoughtfully. “Well, good for you. I only seem to make it as far as ski resorts these days. And I absolutely loathe skiing.” He exhales, scans the room. “Right—better mingle. I know every single person here bar two, apparently.”

  He and Max shake hands. “Love to Chrissy,” Max says.

  “Don’t cock it up this time,” is Dean’s parting shot, though I’m not sure which of us it’s aimed at.

  By now we’re at the back of the living room, in a quiet corner next to an oversized standard lamp with a spotless glass shade like an overturned goldfish bowl.

  Max turns to me, lifts an eyebrow. “So. I’m not to cock it up, apparently.”

  “I wasn’t sure who he meant.”

  “I’m going to hazard a guess and say me.” He reaches for my free hand, his thumb skimming the inside of my wrist. “Sorry about all that.”

  “No, he’s . . .” I shake my head. “Dean’s nice. I always liked him.”

  “So,” Max says, “what did happen to that novel? You ever write it? Can I read it?”

  “Ha! No.”

  He smiles. “Not about me, is it?”

  I jab him
gently with my elbow. “Nope.”

  “Think you’ll ever pick it up again? Writing novels was all you talked about, at uni.”

  “Probably wasn’t realistic. I mean, at least at Supernova I’ll get to write on an actual salary.”

  “Well, will you at least show me your traveling photos sometime?” Max says. “Be nice to see you again . . . as I knew you back then. If you know what I mean.”

  “Oh.” I swallow. Now’s not the time or place to go into why I don’t have a single photo, no evidence at all that I was ever even there. “Yeah, okay.”

  Max smiles, sips his drink. “Luce, have you had a chance to think yet . . . about what I said?”

  Last weekend, I stayed with Max until Monday, when he was up early to catch the train to Leeds. I walked with him through the warm morning, beneath a milky sky, to the tube at Clapham Common.

  “I want you back,” he whispered, as we paused on the pavement outside. He smelled lovely, of aftershave and mouthwash. “I’ll do anything to make it work with you again.”

  I said nothing, just hugged him back and kissed him, told him I’d see him Friday. And it didn’t seem right to discuss it over the phone while he was away. We stuck to lighter topics, like Max’s big case in Leeds and my final week of freedom, Jools and the house and Reuben’s narrow escape from a psychotic van driver after the pair of them got into a slanging match as he cycled along the Holloway Road.

  I look up at Max now, into those storm-gray eyes. And I nod, just once. “I want to see where this goes. I want to give us a try.”

  And in an instant, it is as though I have been momentarily dropped into my old life, because Max is scooping me up and whirling me round, whooping and laughing, just as he would have done in the students’ union all those years ago. And people are looking over and laughing too, even though they’re not in on the joke, and I’m grinning, my face braced against his shoulder, thinking, Yes. This is our time. It’s finally come.