by Holly Miller
I can’t lie—there’ve been moments when I’ve wondered if I should have been braver, taken a risk and agreed to join Caleb for part of his trip. But then I remind myself this is Caleb’s adventure, not mine. We’ll have plenty of time for making memories of our own when he gets back.
“Fancy coming for a drink?” I ask Ryan now.
“No, I . . .” He jerks his head, like there’s somewhere he needs to be. “Got plans.”
I nod, then hesitate. “You know . . . even if this book never sees the light of day, I’ll always be so grateful for how much you’ve all supported me. You and Emma, and the group.”
Ryan bats the sentiment away with his eyes. “We can’t take any of the credit here. You’re a writer, Luce. It’s in your blood.”
I smile bravely, remind myself not to assume that the rejection from Ryan’s agent is terminal. It’s just a bump in the road, I think. What’s meant for you won’t pass you by.
* * *
—
Emma’s messaged to say she’s already in the pub, getting in our usual postsession drinks. She left me and Ryan alone earlier, sensing he had bad news to impart. I said I’d catch her up.
But I can’t see her anywhere when I arrive, even though the place is half-empty. The bar smells of beer and bodies and hot chips. As I’m opening WhatsApp to find out where she is, I feel a tap on my shoulder.
“Lucy?”
Turning around, I come face-to-face with Georgia, my old boss from Figaro.
It’s almost two years since I walked out, and though I haven’t thought about Figaro much over the past twelve months or so, in the immediate aftermath it was all I could think about. Whether I’d overreacted. Whether I’d done the right thing. Whether Georgia would find another planner to take my place, and whether the business would be okay.
Georgia draws a breath, breaks the awkward pause. “Lucy, I just wanted to say . . . I’m sorry. For everything that happened when you left. I treated you really badly. I know how much I took you for granted.”
She seems almost as surprised to be admitting this as I am to hear it, but her green eyes are wide and sincere. She looks slightly less groomed than she used to, casual in jeans and a gray cable-knit sweater, and trainers instead of the vertiginous heels she always wore to the office. She’s pulled her dark hair into a messy ponytail, her whole demeanor far more chilled than I remember. “I still feel terrible about it,” she continues. “I should have messaged you afterward, or e-mailed, but . . . I convinced myself I’d bump into you at some point, so I could say it to your face, and now . . . here we are.”
I shake my head. “No, it’s . . . I shouldn’t have just walked out the way I did. It was selfish, leaving you in the lurch like that.”
“I deserved to be left in the lurch. I treated you horribly. No wonder you felt like I’d betrayed our friendship—because I had.”
We pause for a few moments, eyeing each other reflectively.
“So . . . how’s everything going?” I ask, cautiously.
“Well, that’s sort of what I wanted to say, as well. I sold the business about nine months ago, and honestly . . . it was the best thing I’ve ever done. I’m actually retraining to be a teacher.”
Without even really intending to, I step forward and hug her. “Georgia, that’s amazing. Congratulations.”
“And I met my boyfriend Adam on the course too, so . . .” Her eyes are bright—brighter than I ever remember them being while she was mired in the day-to-day stresses of running her own business. “What I’m saying is, none of this would have happened if you hadn’t walked out that day, Lucy. I’m convinced of it. After you left, I couldn’t stop going over everything you’d said, and it really got me thinking about making a change. I needed a shock to wake me up. I needed someone to call me a selfish cow.”
I feel myself color slightly. “Yeah, sorry about that.”
“No!” She grasps both my hands between hers. “Do not apologize. You had every right to do that. I had it coming to me. Really.”
I let my face soften into a smile. “So, what will you teach, when you qualify?”
“Hopefully A-level business studies.”
“That’s really brilliant, Georgia.”
“And what are you up to these days?” She’s looking at me hopefully, like I’m a lover she once dumped and she’s praying I’ll say I’m married with two kids, never been happier.
“Well, I work mornings at Pebbles & Paper. You know, the gift shop in town?”
“Oh yes? Adam gave me one of their salt lamps for my birthday.”
I smile without telling her those damn salt lamps are the bane of my life. Ever since Ivan made the questionable decision to stock them, customers have been queueing up to tell me they’ve broken, or haven’t cured their insomnia, or have failed to resolve their many allergies.
“And . . . I’ve been writing a novel,” I say quickly, to move on from the sodding salt lamps. “Which I probably wouldn’t ever have done if I was still at Figaro. All I ever wanted was to be a writer, so—”
“Wow, that’s . . . Are you published?”
“Not yet.” I think of Ryan’s agent, the disappointment still churning in my chest.
Behind us, someone wins on the fruit machine, the coins paying out with a clatter that resembles applause.
“Have you finished it? What’s it about?”
I nod. “I have. And, I guess . . . love, at its heart.”
“Well, look,” Georgia says, “since you’ve written a novel, maybe I can do something to finally make amends for having been such a crappy boss.”
I frown. “How do you—”
“Adam’s sister is a literary agent. If you’re up for it, I’d love to send it to her. Her name’s Naomi Banks. E-mail me the manuscript—I’ll happily forward it on and ask her to take a look.”
Naomi Banks? Naomi is my Secret Dream Agent. She represents several authors I love, and—according to her website—is on the hunt for exactly the kind of book I’ve written.
Georgia gives me her e-mail address. “But,” I falter, as I’m tapping it into my phone, “you haven’t even read it yet.”
She smiles at me. “Happy to take a chance on that. I know how good your writing is. I should have recognized that while you were working for me. You deserved someone to recognize it.”
I smile, then reach forward again, pull her into a hug. She smells impeccable, of perfume and fabric conditioner. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I’m so happy I’ve seen you again, after all this time.”
* * *
—
After she’s left, I stand where I am for a few moments, trying to remember what I’ve come here to do. Finally, I check my phone, which is still on silent after the writing session, and see a string of messages and missed calls from Emma.
I ring her. “Where are you?”
“The White Hart. Waiting for you, two glasses of wine later. Why—where are you?”
“Ah. The White Horse.”
“You’re in the wrong pub.”
“I’m in the wrong pub.”
* * *
—
When I get back to the cottage a couple of hours later, I e-mail my manuscript to Georgia before nerves can get the better of me. Then I slip on my coat and hat and head down to the beach.
The end of winter is tantalizingly close. The days are getting longer and warmer. Greenery is bursting from the trees and hedges, pushing up through the pavement cracks. I’m still swimming occasionally, and every time I do, the sea feels slightly less like taking a dip at the South Pole. That tingle of risk has started to ebb away.
In the early hours, I video-call Caleb from the beach hut, warming my hands around a cup of sugary tea. We try to talk a few times a week, but it can be hard to coordinate, because of the time difference, the p
atchy Wi-Fi, and our conflicting schedules.
Though it’s just after breakfast in Myanmar, Caleb’s still in bed, propped up bare-chested against the headboard. He gave me a little virtual tour when they first arrived a few weeks ago—his room is wood-paneled, with a view of the hotel swimming pool, the tips of the temple spires just visible over the treetops beyond. I like to imagine him there sometimes, as I’m falling asleep—going over his photographs, updating his blog, sending messages to friends and loved ones.
“Hey,” I say. “I miss you.”
“Hello, you.” He seems to get more handsome every time we speak. His eyes are sparkling with the thrill of adventure. Even his teeth look brighter than I remember, whitened by the depth of his new tan. I want to reach into my phone, touch his skin, kiss his face. “Miss you, too. What’s the weather like there?”
I smile. “Still pretty cold. You?”
He laughs. “Roasting.” His hotel is basic, no air conditioning, so he relies on a ceiling fan, which he tells me has a highly lackadaisical approach to whirring.
He asks how my parents are doing. After they lobbed their breakup bombshell at us, Mum moved in with Tash and Simon while she and Dad decided what to do with their money and the cottage and their thirty-plus years’ worth of stuff. It’s so weird now, to think of them as two separate people. They were always Mum and Dad. Now they’re Mum, and Dad.
What I haven’t told anyone—not even Caleb—is that I’m harboring a private belief that they can get over this. That this isn’t the end of their story—merely a detour along the way.
“Dad had a date,” I tell Caleb.
His eyes go wide. “Wow.”
“I know.”
“Who with?”
“Didn’t ask.”
“Did it . . . go well?”
I shake my head. “Apparently she was only looking to make a friend.”
Caleb winces sympathy. “Your dad okay?”
I smile. “He’ll survive. He said she wasn’t his type anyway.”
“God, dating at their age must be brutal.”
I nod, not quite ready to share my secret theory that none of my dad’s dates—or my mum’s, come to that—will result in anything meaningful, because their love story isn’t actually over yet. I’m well aware how ridiculously naïve this sounds, and yet . . . I just can’t shake the sense that they’ll get through this somehow.
Caleb slings a hand behind his head. His chest is as tanned as his face. I miss that chest, its taut contours. I miss lying on it, kissing it, running a finger along it. I miss listening to the drum of his heartbeat.
We chat for a bit longer. He tells me he’s heading out with the team in an hour or so to photograph a local monastery. I try to conjure up the heat-laden air, the lushness of the vegetation, the gilded temples. They’re just approaching the wet season, and temperatures have been in the high thirties. They’re a long way inland, and—believe it or not—Caleb says he’s missing swimming in the Channel.
So I carry our call outside, into the inky night and onto the shingle. The air is blunt with cold. I feel the salt hit my skin and coat my lips, mingling with the sugar from my tea.
I walk him down to the shoreline so he can see the water, passing a clutch of night fishermen in pop-up tents as I go. I hold up the phone and let him listen to the sea as it shifts and heaves, its surface spangled with moonlight. I wonder if we see the same patch of sky when we look up, from our distant time zones on faraway spots of the earth.
Caleb groans thirstily. “What I’d give to jump into that.” His pupils look larger, greedy for cold water. “Swimming in a pool out here doesn’t even come close. I never feel properly refreshed.”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind a bit of sultry weather right now,” I admit. “Winter’s felt long without you. Mind you, there’s something to be said for living in a place with all four seasons. I like knowing change is always somewhere on the horizon.” I sit down on the shingle and finger some chilly pebbles, wishing his hand were holding mine.
On the screen, our eyes meet, and I am riveted with the desire to feel his skin next to my own, to be kissing him, undressing him. I breathe in, secretly hoping to catch the scent of sun cream and Caleb and frangipani flowers. But all I get is the faint pungency of fish and seaweed.
“Twelve weeks tomorrow,” I whisper.
“Twelve weeks,” he whispers back. “Can’t wait.”
“What’s the first thing we’ll do together?”
“Go back to the beach hut and I’ll tell you.”
So I do. Holding Caleb in my hand, I go back to the beach hut and close the doors and switch off the lights, and let him talk me through exactly what we’ll do together, the first night he’s home. And afterward, as we whisper about laughing and kissing and loving each other, I know there’s no other person I’d rather be thinking of as winter segues into spring. No one else I’d want to love over the longest of distances, as I dream of a future I can’t wait to begin.
Go
“How’s the conference?” Jools asks.
I’m sitting on the bed in my hotel room with Jools on speaker, wrapped in a dressing gown with a staggeringly expensive seaweed mask tacked to my face, a vain attempt to minimize my pores before tomorrow.
“It’s very . . . conferencey. I mean, everyone’s trying to pretend it’s not a conference, because we’re ‘creatives,’ but it is. There’s lukewarm coffee and custard creams and PowerPoint and breakout spaces. It’s definitely a conference.”
It’s my second night at this four-star golfing resort in Surrey, where I’m attending the Association of UK Creatives’ annual conference, on behalf of Supernova. Today has been a mad dash between master classes, workshops and roundtables, where I’ve listened to industry experts speak about everything from behavioral data to junk food advertising to the agency-client symbiosis. The program finished about an hour ago, and I’ve got another forty minutes or so spare before networking drinks and then dinner.
I’ve been invited to deliver a presentation tomorrow on my contribution to “A Whole New World,” the now-acclaimed campaign I created with Seb over a year ago, which, unbelievably, is still getting traction. It seems that pretty much anyone who’s anyone in the advertising world is a delegate at this conference—including Zara, plus a couple of other senior Supernova executives. The room I’ll be presenting in holds up to two hundred people; Zara’s also been hinting over the past couple of months that a promotion might be in the cards for me. If I mess this up, the repercussions won’t be good.
The hotel’s pretty nice. I even managed to sleep peacefully last night. Since the new year, courtesy of Max’s medical insurance with HWW, I’ve been seeing a psychologist, Pippa, once a week. She’s been helping me explore what happened with Nate, and I’ve started taking some risks in baby steps, to overcome my tendency to panic in unfamiliar spaces. I hadn’t known how much I needed to talk to someone about it until I finally did.
I don’t talk too much about it with Max. Though he’s been nothing but supportive, I can tell he thinks psychological intervention is best left to the professionals. And maybe he’s right. I’ve said things to Pippa I would never say to Max. Your boyfriend can’t fulfill every relationship role in your life. Sometimes it’s healthier to offload onto someone else.
“What time’s your presentation?” Jools asks.
“Ten.”
“Feel ready?”
I’ve been prepping for two months now, working on the thing nonstop at evenings and weekends. It’s fair to say it’s the most pressure I’ve ever been under, professionally speaking. But it’s a good kind of stress. Like walking up the aisle, or buying a house. Seb’s been helping me out, animating parts of my presentation so there’s no risk of death-by-PowerPoint. I can recite my speech in my sleep, I’ve repeated it to myself over and over—in the shower, on the tube, in the loos on girl
s’ nights out—and I’ve even recorded it on my phone, so I can listen to it whenever I get a free moment. I’ve asked Max to film me speaking; I’ve invited friends and family to the flat and forced them to listen to me practice. This needs to be twenty minutes of gold. I have to nail this.
“Yes,” I tell Jools firmly, because at this point, exuding confidence is almost as important as the words I’ll be saying. “Yes, I’m ready.”
I ask how Nigel is, and Jools sighs dreamily. They’ve been together nearly ten months now. I suspect they’re going to be one of those couples for whom the honeymoon period never ends.
“We had this little impromptu gig at the house last night,” she says. “All these people turned up. I didn’t know most of them. But Nigel played for everyone, and they loved it. Everyone was dancing around the living room.”
I prod at the stiffened face mask with my fingertips, wiggle my mouth a bit. I really want to smile, but whoever made this mask clearly modeled it on cement.
“The finale was ‘God Only Knows’ by the Beach Boys,” Jools continues. She loves that song. “It was so beautiful, Luce. He’s so talented.”
“You’re welcome, again,” I say.
“For what?”
“Me moving out.”
She laughs. “How long am I going to be in debt to you for that?”
“As long as you and Nigel are together. So . . . forever?”
I hear her bite into an apple. “Come on then. Thrill me—what’s on the conference agenda for tonight?”
“Oh, the usual. Drinks, networking, dinner. Then a quiz, I think. All very dull.”
“But you love your job.”
“Exactly. I love my job. I don’t love pretending to get excited about the history of advertising so I can win a hamper full of jam.”
“What’s Max up to tonight?”
“Oh, working. He’s got loads on at the moment. Macavity’s helping out.”
