10
I woke up the next morning with a heavy sense of dread. It didn’t take long for it all to come flooding back – Jackson turning up at my office, the news that I was married to him – God, I couldn’t even think it without feeling sick – our crazy dinner. And tonight, I had to do it all over again. I rolled over and shoved my face in the pillow.
‘Get up, sleepyhead!’ Christopher leaned over the bed and pulled the covers off me. I groaned and buried my head more deeply into the pillow. Christopher climbed into bed next to me and kissed the back of my head. ‘Come on, you’ll be late.’
I rolled over and shielded my eyes from the sunlight currently streaming through the bay window. Just my luck – of all the days, this would be the one that London chose to be sunny. ‘What time is it?’
‘Half seven,’ he said.
‘Shit,’ I muttered.
‘Told you. I’ll put the kettle on.’
I rolled out of bed and poured myself into the shower, studiously avoiding my reflection in the bathroom mirror. The truly heroic amount of spiced meat I’d consumed the night before had caught up with me, and I felt bloated and heady.
I was toweling off my hair when Christopher appeared with a cup of coffee. ‘How was Ben?’ he asked, setting the mug on the dresser.
It took me a minute to figure out what he was talking about. ‘Oh, fine!’ I said eventually. ‘It was just a stupid little thing.’
‘Good.’ He leaned down and kissed the top of my head. ‘I’ve got to shoot off. Are you in tonight?’
‘Yep,’ I said automatically. I took a sip of coffee and felt the gears in my head grind slowly into motion. ‘I mean, maybe. I might not be. I might be late.’
He tilted his head. ‘What are you up to?’
‘Spin class!’ I blurted out. ‘I said I’d try this new spin class with this woman from work. It doesn’t start until eight, and then we might get a drink after, so …’
‘Hey, that’s great! I’ve been trying to get you on a bike for ages – maybe this will convince you.’
‘Maybe,’ I said weakly. Oh God. Now I was going to have to ride a bike, too. And it wouldn’t be just a leisurely pedal up to Hampstead Heath. Christopher was a ‘cyclist’, which meant he wore a spandex onesie and owned a bike that cost almost as much as a compact car. This goddamn Vegas nightmare was going to result in me careening down a hill in a spandex onesie too. I could just feel it.
‘Just make sure you drink plenty of water afterwards,’ he continued. ‘Spinning can seriously dehydrate you.’
He was so nice. Look at him standing there, hair still damp from the shower, tie knotted around his neck, jacket slung over his shoulder. He was gorgeous. Even in a spandex onesie, he was cute. And so, so nice. And me? What was I? I was a monster. A married, lying, almost-certainly-crazy monster.
I plastered a smile across my face. ‘Will do!’
I heard the door shut behind him and stood deflated in front of the mirror. ‘You stupid, stupid woman,’ I hissed at my reflection. How was I supposed to get through a whole week of lying to him like this? The guilt was already chewing me up inside, and besides, I was a terrible liar. Always have been.
In tenth grade, my friend Tara decided to throw a party. Her dad worked night shifts and her mom let kids drink in her house and even offered to buy it for them – one of those ‘they’re going to do it anyway so I’d rather it be under my supervision’ moms who actually just wanted some company while she sank two bottles of white Zinfandel at her kitchen table. I knew my mother would never let me go to a party at Tara’s house because she once saw Tara’s mom offer Tara a drag from her cigarette, but I had to be there, because Jimmy Sangillo was going to be there, and I’d decided that he was going to help me achieve Number 8 on my life list (fling with a bad boy) because he wore a leather jacket and kept a pack of Camels tucked up the arm of his T-shirt.
Anyway, I told my mother that I was going to stay at Isla’s house, knowing that she wouldn’t call there because she was convinced that Isla’s mother hated her and gossiped about her behind her back. (She didn’t.) Of course, no more than ten minutes after leaving the house, my mother discovered that I’d left my retainer behind and – in one of her moods – called Isla’s house to tell me to come get it, which led to Isla’s mom telling her that she thought Isla was staying at ours that night, which led my mother to spin out, go through my emails, find out about the party, and show up at Tara’s house in her nightdress holding my retainer, the police trailing close behind. The party was broken up, and Jimmy Sangillo called me brace face for the rest of the year, even though technically a retainer and braces are two entirely different things. (We still ended up making out during a field trip to an apple orchard in my senior year, so I got to cross Number 8 off the list, even though by that point I suspected that he wasn’t so much a bad boy as a kid who’d watched Rebel Without a Cause too many times.)
All of this is a long-winded way of saying I’m a terrible liar and would never last a whole week. But somehow, I had to.
I flicked on a little mascara, scraped my hair back into a ponytail, and took one last sip of my now-tepid coffee before heading out the door and down to the Tube. After a half hour contorted like a circus performer (head lodged in armpit of middle-aged cyclist, leg twisted awkwardly to avoid his fold-up bicycle, back in spasm after holding it at a 45 degree angle to avoid the newspaper he consistently flapped in my face), I emerged at Green Park to find a glorious spring day. The sky was a faultless bright blue, the daffodils sprouted in riotous bursts of yellow, the air sun-warmed and sweet. It all felt like an affront to my fraught nerves and cottony brain.
Ben was waiting for me when I got in, coiled like a snake in his ergonomic chair. He sprang on me as soon as I tossed my bag on the floor.
‘Thank God you’re here. I need your help.’
I looked at him closely. His hair, normally pomaded into submission, was unruly and wild, one particular lock standing straight in the air from his forehead like an antenna. His eyes were red-rimmed, and his face was pale. But the really worrying thing was his shoes. He was wearing sneakers. And not trendy sneakers, either. Big, clunky sneakers that dads wear to go running on Sundays. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked, alarmed.
‘I think I’m having a nervous breakdown,’ he said, chewing at a cuticle.
‘Jesus. Why?’
‘I can’t think straight, my heart is racing … Maybe I’m having a heart attack.’ He looked up at me, eyes filled with panic. ‘Do you think I’m having a heart attack?’
‘I don’t think you’re having a heart attack, but I do think you need to slow down. Just breathe for a minute.’ I waited as he inhaled and exhaled deeply. ‘Now walk me through what’s happening.’
He exhaled one last time and stared up at the ceiling. ‘I met a girl last night.’
‘Okay …’
‘We went to a bar, and then we went to dinner—’
‘On the first date? You never eat on a first date!’ I was well-versed in Ben’s three golden rules for first dates, the first of which was ‘no dinner’. He thought it signified too much commitment.
‘I know! But we were having a good time, and she said she was hungry, so we went for dinner.’
I shook my head in disbelief. ‘Incredible.’
‘And then after dinner, I told her there was this great bar near my place, so—’
‘Wait, what?’
He nodded. The look of shock on his face mirrored mine. ‘After we went for a drink, I took her back to my flat.’
I threw myself into my chair. ‘But you never—’
‘I know!’ Ben’s second golden rule was ‘never tell them where you live’. If he took a girl home on the first date – and he did, often – it was always to her place, not his. He hid his flat like Bruce Wayne hid the Batcave, only his flat contained a PlayStation 4 and several pairs of limited edition Adidas trainers rather than a butler and the Batmobile. As far as I knew, at least. I’d never been to Ben’s flat. Or the Batcave, for that matter.
I shook my head. ‘This is unbelievable.’
‘It gets worse. In the morning, I didn’t want her to leave. She said she was hungry, so I …’
‘You didn’t.’ Rule number three: no shared morning-after breakfast food or beverage of any kind.
‘Scrambled eggs on toast,’ he said gravely. ‘I even let her use my Italian espresso machine!’ He put his head in his hands. ‘All three golden rules, out the window in one night.’
We sat there in silence for a minute, letting the enormity of the situation sink in. ‘And now you think you’re having a nervous breakdown?’ I said finally.
‘I can’t think of any other explanation.’ A wave of realization washed across his face. ‘Unless she’s drugged me. Come to think of it, this does remind me of the time I ate half a tin of hash brownies at college …’
I rolled my eyes. ‘I don’t think she drugged you. You know what I do think happened?’
He looked at me beseechingly. ‘Please, tell me.’
‘I think you might be in love.’
He scoffed. ‘Are you mad? I am absolutely not in love. I’ve only just met the girl!’
‘You only just met her, and yet you broke all three of your rules for her, and now you’re sitting here like a heartsick puppy. I’d say you’re in love.’ I couldn’t believe it. The day after I lie to Christopher about Ben having some sort of romantic entanglement, and here he was, entangled.
‘Honestly, I came to you for genuine help and assistance, and this is what you offer me.’
I shrugged. ‘I call them like I see them. What’s her name, anyway?’
‘Lucy,’ he said, slightly dreamily. ‘Lucy Claremont.’
‘Ooh, good name. Show me a photo!’
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘I don’t know that I can find one.’
‘Ben, we live in the age of Google. You can find a picture of anything, anytime, anywhere. Right now, if I wanted, I could show you a picture of my fourth-grade teacher’s beagle. That’s part of technology’s terrifying charm.’
‘Maybe in a bit,’ he said shiftily. ‘I should really get back to work.’
He spun around and hit the space bar on his keyboard, and his formerly dark computer screen lit up. I peered around his shoulder and saw a photo of a pretty, pixie-ish blonde with a dimple on one cheek. ‘That’s her, isn’t it? Aha! You’ve already looked her up!’ I crowed.
He looked mortified, as if I’d just caught him looking at Furby porn. ‘I just wanted to see if I remember what she looked like!’ he cried.
‘You only saw her an hour ago!’
I could see the blush surging up past his collar. ‘I wanted to double-check, that’s all!’
‘She’s very pretty,’ I said gently.
He turned around and gave me a shy smile. ‘Isn’t she?’ He turned back and gazed at her for another moment. ‘She’s lovely.’ He paused for a moment and cleared his throat. ‘Who was that bloke you were with last night?’
My heart lodged in my windpipe. ‘What guy?’ I asked.
‘I saw you meet him outside the office. Tall guy, blond. Looked a bit like a sort of cowboy Captain America.’
‘Oh, him? He’s just an old friend from home.’ I wondered, briefly, whether I was going to be sick.
‘Here for a visit?’
God, who was this guy? Perry Mason? ‘Yep! Just for a week!’ My voice went up by an octave – always a telltale sign that I was lying.
‘That’s nice,’ he said. He peered at me closely. ‘He doesn’t have anything to do with your fight with Christopher, does he?’
Columbo, I thought to myself. He’s like Columbo. He even owns a trench coat. ‘I told you, I didn’t have a fight with Christopher!’ I snapped.
He held his hands up. ‘Forget I said anything!’
I spun around without saying another word and started clearing my inbox with thunderous speed, the keys clacking beneath my fingers. I felt bad about shutting Ben down like that, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk about what was really going on. Not only was I worried about another person knowing about Jackson – I trusted Ben, but another mouth was another mouth – but I needed work to be a place where I didn’t think about it. Until Jackson showed up again, that is.
There was a message from Isla waiting for me in my inbox. I double-clicked and it flashed up on my screen.
Soooooo how was your first date with your husband?
I let out a shriek of horror.
‘And I thought I was the one having the breakdown,’ Ben said over his shoulder. ‘What’s wrong now?’
‘Nothing!’
I hit reply:
1. It wasn’t a date 2. Don’t use the h-word over email!!!
I hit send and leaned back in my chair. What was wrong with everyone? Had the entire world gone insane?
Isla’s response flashed up.
Sorry! From now on will refer to him as Agent Albatross. So how was your date with Agent Albatross?
My fingers flew across the keyboard.
Why Agent Albatross? Also, I hate you.
Agent because it’s a secret, Albatross because you can’t get rid of him. Aren’t I goddamn hilarious? Soooooo …? Are you in LOOOOOVE?
GOD NO. He’s just some dumb hick from Texas.
I felt mildly disloyal as I typed out the message, but I couldn’t risk her writing stuff like that to me, not even as a joke.
Well, don’t rule him out without giving him a fair shot. You know what they say … they grow them big in Texas.
FFS ISLA!
There was a knock at the door of the cubicle. I quickly x’ed out of our email conversation and turned to find my boss leaning against the flimsy plastic wall, hand tucked rakishly in one pocket of an expensive wool blazer. Jeremy was in his late fifties, but was still clinging to the last vestiges of youth almost as tightly as the last few strands of hair artfully combed across top of his head.
‘Knock knock,’ he said, even though he’d already knocked and I’d already responded by turning around to face him. ‘How’s my favorite duo doing in here?’
Ben and I beamed up at him like a pair of schoolchildren. ‘Good!’ we chorused.
Jeremy hitched up his pants and cracked his neck. The sound made a shiver run up my spine. It wasn’t that Jeremy was a bad guy. He was actually a nice guy, and a decent boss, too. But there was something about him that was slightly off-putting. His shoes were too shiny. His teeth suspiciously white and even. His skin an unnatural shade of mahogany, despite us just emerging from the long, dark months of an English winter. In short, he looked like he’d been assembled in a factory before being discarded for being slightly irregular.
‘I’ve got a big case coming up,’ he said, pointing a pair of finger guns at me.
I sat up straighter in my chair. I relished big cases. ‘Really? What is it?’
‘An old East End gangster is trying to pull the wool over our eyes with a phony claim.’ Whenever Jeremy talked about a case, he sounded as if he was in a Chandler novel. I secretly loved it.
‘Ooh! That sounds exciting!’ Christopher and I had just watched that Tom Hardy movie about the Krays, so I felt I was up to speed on the whole East End gangster thing. It seemed to involve a lot of mumbling and mindless violence.
‘You bet it’s exciting. We’re talking major property fraud.’ He rocked back on his heels. ‘And I need my best investigator on the case.’
‘Me?’ I feigned surprise. The truth was, I knew I was his best investigator, not least because he said as much every time he got a few sherries into him at the Christmas party. Plus, nobody enjoyed snooping around as much as I did. Speaking of which, why hadn’t I looked up Jackson yet? I zoned out as Jeremy spoke. He’d told me his last name, hadn’t he? What was it again … Grant? Gray? Gaines! I had his name and his home town – that should be plenty to dig up some dirt on the guy. Maybe enough so he’d agree to just give me the divorce without all the forced hospitality.
‘So you’re up for it then?’ I momentarily drew a blank. Jeremy stared at me expectantly.
‘Jenny, the case …’ Ben prompted.
‘Yes! Sorry! Of course!’ I practically shouted.
‘Love your enthusiasm, Sparrow. I’ll send the details over tomorrow. I can’t wait for you to nab this bum!’
He swooped out of the office, leaving a cloud of Aramis behind. Ben and I exchanged a look. ‘Christ, I haven’t seen old Jezza worked up that much in ages,’ Ben said. He cleared his throat and put on a cheesy American accent. ‘Looks like you’re about to hit the big time, kid.’
‘Promise me you will never, ever talk like that again,’ I said, dissolving into giggles.
‘Hey, what’s the idea? Can’t a guy talk straight to his dame?’
‘God, stop!’ I cried. ‘It’s genuinely painful for me to hear!’
He shrugged and shot me a grin. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said, spinning back around to his desk. ‘Some people can’t appreciate talent even when it’s being wafted under their nose.’
I rolled my eyes and turned towards my computer. Okay, now to find out who this Jackson guy really was. I opened a new browser, typed his name into Google, and hit return.
I scrolled through the results and my heart sank.
Nada. Zip. Zilch. Not a single match.
Sure, there were a few Jackson Gaines out there. One was a teenager from Southern Florida who seemed to have an unhealthy interest in Call of Duty. Another was a man in his sixties whose Facebook feed was peppered with photos of small, intricate wooden animals he’d whittled. Another still was a bearded orthopedist from Seattle. Absolutely none of them was the man who was now my husband. He was completely off the grid.
A text flashed up on my phone. It was Jackson.
Have you got gym gear with you?
I stared at the duffel bag under my desk.
Why?
I thought we’d do something a little different tonight. If you don’t have anything with you, I can run by the shop and grab you something. What size are you?
My fingers flew across the keypad.
No! I have my gym stuff!
Great! Meet me in your finest Richard Simmons gear at the Rose and Crown in Stoke Newington at 6:30.
A loud gurgle emerged from my gut.
‘You all right over there?’ Ben asked, snickering.
‘I think I’m going to make myself a cup of tea,’ I said. ‘Do you want one?’
‘Yes please. Not too much milk!’
The tiny alcove that served as the company kitchen was, as ever, covered in the detritus of fifty people’s lunches, teas, snacks and coffees. Half a loaf of a sad-looking fruit cake languished on the side table, and I picked at the crumbs as I waited for the kettle to boil.
There was a health and safety poster tacked up to the wall, and I read it for the hundredth time. At the bottom corner was a drawing of a man demonstrating the correct technique for using a fire blanket. Something about him – the smoothness of his brown hair, the straightness of his nose – reminded me of Christopher.
Christopher. The thought of him made my heart ache, and my stomach gave out another plaintive gurgle.
The switch on the kettle flicked up. I stuffed teabags into a pair of mugs and poured hot water over them, watching as it turned a murky brown. I sloshed in some milk and carried the mugs back to our cube.
Ben assessed his tea with a critical eye. ‘How long have you lived in this country?’
‘Three years,’ I said, knowing what was coming next.
‘Three years, and you still don’t know how to make a decent cup of tea. Honestly, they should make tea-making lessons compulsory for all Americans who move here.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘That, and queueing etiquette, I know, I know. I genuinely don’t know why I still offer to make you tea.’
He batted his eyelashes at me and smiled. ‘Because you love me?’
I sighed. ‘Because I’m a glutton for punishment.’
It turns out, Stoke Newington is one of those pretty, leafy parts of London that is virtually impossible to get to. I lost count of the number of transfers I had to make, but by the time the 73 chuntered up to Church Street and deposited me unceremoniously on the doorstep of the Rose and Crown, I was twenty minutes late and in a decidedly terrible mood.
Jackson was leaning against the bar chatting with the scruffy bartender when I pushed through the door. He gave me a wave, ordered me a beer, and then stood back to take in my outfit. ‘Now that is some high performance gear,’ he said, taking in the oversized T-shirt I’d got free with a magazine six years ago and the pair of H&M leggings I’d washed so many times they were practically translucent. ‘Are you sponsored by Nike or something?’
‘Shut up,’ I said, swatting him on the arm. ‘You don’t exactly look like Usain Bolt.’ Jackson was wearing a pair of paint-flecked cargo shorts and a marl-gray T-shirt with a ripped neck. ‘What is up with you and cargo pants, anyway? Who needs that many pockets?’
‘Always be prepared,’ he said, giving me the three-fingered Boy Scout salute. The scruffy bartender clocked it as he set my pint down on the drip mat and shot him a quizzical look.
‘So what are we doing here, anyway? Why are we having a drink in our gym stuff in the middle of nowhere?’
‘Dutch courage,’ he said, eyes twinkling irritatingly.
I paused, my pint halfway to my lips. ‘Why do we need Dutch courage?’
‘You’ll see!’ He tapped the side of his nose with his finger and I fought the urge to slug him.
We finished our drinks and headed out to whatever fresh hell Jackson had waiting for us. We threaded our way through a park still full of post-work picnickers sipping warm Prosecco and tucking into Whole Foods bags. Joggers huffed past people walking their dogs, and little kids pedalling their first bicycles. ‘Where are we going?’ I kept asking, but Jackson would just ignore me and point out another cute dog. Distraction tactics.
Finally, we spilled out of the park and onto a main road. ‘There,’ Jackson said, pointing ahead. ‘That’s where we’re going.’
I followed his finger and found myself staring at what looked very much like a castle. It was a squat, hulking, medieval-looking thing, built in red brick and topped with what was indisputably a turret. All that was missing was a moat and a drawbridge. My geography wasn’t great, but even I knew that it was a little odd to find a castle in the middle of North London. ‘What the hell is that?’ I asked, eyes wide.
‘Crazy, right? I think it used to be a pumping station.’
‘But … why is it built like a castle?’ Another, more pressing question occurred to me. ‘And why are we here?’
‘It’s a climbing center!’ he announced gleefully.
I stopped dead in my tracks. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘Come on!’ He laughed and tugged on my arm.
I leaned back on my heels. ‘There is no way I’m climbing anything. Period.’
He turned and looked at me. He must have seen the fear on my face because he stopped laughing. ‘Hey. What’s the matter?’
‘I’m scared of heights,’ I admitted. That was an understatement. I held my breath when I crossed a bridge. I refused to climb past the first rung of a ladder. Even step stools made me a little nervous.
‘Hell, most people are scared of heights,’ he said.
‘Not like me.’
‘I promise you this is totally safe. You’re strapped in the whole time, and it’s not even that high up.’
‘I’m not doing it.’
‘All right,’ he sighed. ‘I can’t force you. But now that we’ve come all the way here, do you mind if I have a quick climb? There are sofas inside, so you can just sit there and read your book or whatever. I’ll even buy you a flapjack.’
‘Fine,’ I grumbled. Really, though, I was just relieved that I was off the hook.
I followed him in and watched him pay admission for the two of us. ‘Just in case you change your mind,’ he said as he handed me my ticket.
The inside of the castle smelled like chalk dust and sweaty feet and testosterone, but not in an entirely negative way. Jackson sat me down on one of the beat-up sofas upstairs that faced the tall climbing wall, got me the promised flapjack, squeezed his feet into a pair of what looked like skin-tight galoshes, clipped into a harness that put a little more emphasis on his groin than I was strictly comfortably with, and promptly skittered up the wall like a squirrel.
He’d clearly done this before.
He belayed back down and landed elegantly. ‘You sure you’re not tempted?’ he asked, nodding up towards the top.
I shook my head and held up my half-eaten flapjack. ‘I’m good, thanks.’
He shrugged as he clapped a little more chalk dust onto his hands. ‘Suit yourself.’
He did a couple more runs up the wall before hefting himself down on the sofa next to me. I could smell the sweat on his skin mixing with his aftershave. ‘I’m about ready to go,’ he said, wiping his hands down the front of his T-shirt. ‘Unless you want to give it a try?’
I shook my head and folded my arms across my chest. ‘I told you already. No.’
‘What’s got you so scared, anyway?’
My heart pounded just thinking about it. I could still remember it so clearly. My fingers losing their grip. The breeze lifting the hair around my face. The feeling of weightlessness. The sickening thud. ‘Nothing,’ I said quietly.
He sighed and leaned back into the cushions. ‘I know about the tree.’
He said it so quietly that at first I thought I’d misheard him. ‘What did you say?’
‘I know you fell out of that tree when you were little.’
That was impossible. No one knew about that other than my mom and Isla, and I’d sworn Isla to secrecy at the time. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Come on, Jenny. Cut the crap. You told me about it that night in Vegas – about how you were climbing that big tree in your front yard, and your mother—’
‘Stop.’ I didn’t want to hear it. I already knew the rest. We were silent for a moment. ‘I told you that?’ I asked finally.
‘Yeah, you did. That’s why I brought you here. I thought …’ He shook his head. ‘It was stupid.’
‘What did you think?’
‘I thought I could help you get over your fear. Show you there’s nothing to be afraid of.’
‘There’s always something to be afraid of,’ I snapped. Then, more softly, ‘When it comes to heights, I mean. You could fall. Break something.’ My hand went instinctively to my wrist. I could still feel the little spur of bone sticking up from where it had healed badly.
‘That’s the thing,’ he said. ‘You can’t break anything here. You’d be strapped into a harness, and I’d be spotting you the whole time. If you fall, I’ll catch you.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘No offense, but I can’t say you’re the most trustworthy guy I’ve ever met.’
He looked genuinely offended. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I mean …’ I struggled to find the words and failed. What did I mean? How did I know the guy wasn’t trustworthy? I’d told him about the tree. That had to count for something, even if I’d been ninety-five sheets to the wind at the time. And he had made climbing up that wall look kind of fun. Maybe I could do it. Maybe I could at least try. ‘Be brave for me, Jenny.’ That’s what my mom had said to me. Maybe it was time I tried to be brave for myself. I looked him in the eye. ‘You promise I won’t kill myself up there?’
He grinned. ‘Scouts’ honour.’
The process of putting on a harness was mildly humiliating, and the new climbing shoes Jackson had produced from his backpack pinched my pinky toes, but I still felt a flutter of excitement as I placed my hand on the first hold. ‘Like this?’ I asked, looking back at Jackson.
‘That’s right,’ he said, nodding encouragingly. ‘Just go for it. Do whatever feels comfortable. I got you.’
It was hard. Jesus Christ, it was hard. By the time I’d grabbed onto the fifth hold, my fingers were screaming and my left foot was lodged precariously into a crack on the ledge. But there was something beautiful about it, too. It was like trying to solve a logic puzzle with your body. There wasn’t room to think about anything other than where you were going to next place your hands.
I made it three-quarters of the way up when it happened. My hand reached up for the hold, but I couldn’t get a grip on it, and suddenly I was falling. That same sickening feeling of weightlessness from all those years ago. I opened my mouth to scream, but before I could, I felt a tug on my harness. I stopped mid-flight and started soaring instead. ‘I got you,’ Jackson hollered up at me. ‘Don’t worry, I got you.’ I looked down to see him holding the rope. He started lowering me down slowly.
‘You okay?’ he asked, when my feet finally touched the ground.
I was a little shaky, but elation quickly overtook my nerves. ‘I did it!’ I beamed. ‘I can’t believe it, but I did it!’
Jackson winked at me and smiled. ‘I knew you would. Now, what do you say we go back to the Rose and Crown and have a celebratory drink?’ He saw me hesitate. ‘Unless you want to call it a night? I can order you a cab from here …’
‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I think we deserve a drink. But do you mind if I do another run up the wall first?’
His laugh echoed around the room, and a few of the more solemn-looking climbers shot us disapproving looks. ‘Lady,’ he said, clipping me back into the harness, ‘you can climb that wall as many times as you like.’
I crept into the darkened flat, wincing as the floorboards creaked beneath my weight. My head felt fuzzy from all the post-climbing celebratory beer, and I wanted, very badly, to crawl into bed, close my eyes, and lose myself to sleep.
‘Jenny? Is that you?’ I heard the sound of a light being switched on in the other room and then Christopher’s footsteps as he padded out to the hall. He appeared in the doorway, squinty and rumpled from sleep. He was wearing a pair of boxer shorts and an old Arsenal top he’d had since he was a kid. I knew that because he’d told me the story of his grandfather buying it for him before a match one day, the same day that his grandfather allowed Christopher to try a pint. More importantly, I knew that because it was the sort of thing you knew about someone you’d shared six years of your life with and lived with for the past three. The guilt made my stomach clench, and I wondered whether Jackson wouldn’t lose yesterday’s bet after all.
‘Hi!’ I said brightly. I could feel the strain in my voice.
‘You’re home late,’ he said, leaning in to kiss me. His chin was sandpapery with stubble and he tasted of toothpaste.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.’
He made a face. ‘You stink.’
I pulled away from him. ‘I told you I was sorry.’
‘No, I mean you actually, literally stink.’ He leaned in and took a sniff. ‘Is this from spinning?’
‘Spinning?’ Shit. I’d told him I was going to a spin class. ‘Oh, spinning! Yeah, probably. We really worked up a sweat.’ I wiped a hand across my metaphorical brow.
He frowned. ‘You smell like something else, too. Like old cheese or something.’
‘Gee, thanks.’
He leaned in for another sniff. The man was a lawyer. He would not be deterred when he sniffed something funny. Even, apparently, in the most literal sense. ‘Why do you smell like a blackboard?’
‘Let’s go to bed!’ I shouted. We both started at the sound. ‘Sorry,’ I said, more quietly this time. ‘I’m just totally wiped out.’
‘From all the spinning,’ he said, arching an eyebrow.
‘Exactly.’
‘Well, can you at least take a shower before you get into bed? Seriously, I don’t think I can stomach a night of that smell.’
The bathroom floor was icy, and I shivered as I waited for the water to heat up. The air still carried the faint smell of Christopher’s aftershave, and I breathed it in. I stared at the contents of the open cabinet. Deodorant. The three-step Korean skincare routine I spent a fortune on and never use. The face wipes I actually use. The toothpaste. The tweezers. The floss.
The anti-fungal cream.
I checked the water temperature: finally warm. I stepped into the shower. We’d replaced the shower head a few months ago, but the water still came out at a pathetic trickle, and once I’d lathered up it took for ever to rinse the suds away.
As I waited, my mind returned to the anti-fungal cream in the cabinet. Poor Christopher and his chronic athlete’s foot. Living with someone wasn’t always glamorous. There were blenders coated with the remains of a wheatgrass smoothie, crusted socks balled up in the laundry, sly gas in bed that stank up the sheets … But there was security, too, and comfort, and that’s what I wanted more than anything. I had to remember that.
I thought about Jackson and his freewheeling lifestyle. Rootless, sure, but exciting. But I’d already had my wild years – I had to remember that, too. I’d had it marked out on my list. And from the age of nineteen to twenty-one, I’d been the party girl in short skirts and thigh-high boots doing shots with frat boys. Twenty-two through twenty-four were about frivolous dating in New York, which turned out to be slightly less fun than my thirteen-year-old self had envisioned. (Have you heard the thing about there being two single women for every single man in NYC? Have you also heard that all of those other women are basically supermodels? Because from my experience, they are.) But those years were mine to waste. That’s what my aunt and I had worked out. She could give me those years, but she couldn’t give me for ever. I had until I was twenty-five to be young, and after that I’d get serious and settle down. She needed help with my mom, and I had to give it to her.
Twenty-five was when I’d met Christopher. Like clockwork, really. There I was, standing on a street corner in the West Village trying to hail a taxi on a Saturday night, when a cab pulled up a block away. I’d bolted down the street, arms waving wildly in the hope of catching the driver’s attention, but my heel caught on a subway vent, and suddenly I was flying through the air. I landed, hard, right outside the taxi’s door, and out stepped Christopher, face etched with concern.
‘God, are you all right?’ he’d asked in that perfect accent of his, and in an instant I’d forgotten about my bloodied knees and the taxi and the blind date who was waiting for me uptown.
‘I’m fine,’ I’d said, but I knew that I was better than fine. I was on the threshold of crossing another thing off my list. Number 19: Meet the man of my dreams at twenty-five. And here he was, twinkling down at me as I lay on the sidewalk. And British, too! Number 17 on my list popped into my head: Live in a foreign country. This guy was a stone capable of taking out multiple birds. I canceled my date, and, after a quick trip to Rite Aid for band-aids, the two of us went out for drinks, and that, basically, was that.
And now, here I was, living with him and about to marry him. (Number 25: tick! Number 27: almost tick!) Forget about the goddamn anti-fungal cream – this was everything I’d wanted! Besides, it was time. I was thirty-one. It was in the plan. An unstructured life was one step away from chaos, and I’d spent my entire life avoiding chaos.
I turned off the water and toweled off. My legs goosepimpled as soon as I stepped back onto the cold bathroom floor. I wondered what time it was. Late, probably. Nearly midnight. I had to be up early, too. If I was lucky, I’d get six and a half hours of sleep that night. Really, I needed eight. Mild anxiety hummed through me as I thought about how tired I’d be tomorrow.
Jackson wouldn’t keep track of the hours he slept, counting them out and hoarding them like a miser. The thought popped into my head, unwelcome as a boil. I shook it away. Who cared what Jackson would do?
I threw my damp hair up into a bun, pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of shorts, and climbed into bed. Christopher was already fast asleep, his chest gently rising and falling, a light whistle emanating from his nose with every exhalation.
I pulled up the covers and tucked myself into his side, wrapping my arm across his chest. ‘You’re freezing,’ he murmured, taking my hand in his.
Yes, I thought, as I drifted off. This is where I’m meant to be.