What Might Have Been

by Holly Miller

  My own voice is by now an embarrassing hoot-gasp hybrid. “It’s worse than that!”

  But I know he’s probably right, so I take a breath, then launch myself inelegantly forward like some sort of hefty sea creature. In an instant the water is up to my chin and my heart is hopping, my breaths rapid and shallow. By my side, Caleb reaches for my hand, then releases a whoop that startles me so much I start laughing. He sounds so buzzed you’d think we were skydiving, or surfing some undiscovered reef in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

  It takes me thirty seconds or so to rein in my breathing, my flailing limbs, my galloping heart. But once I do, I start to relax, and I can finally begin to appreciate the tight, chilly pleasure of the sea gripping my body, the sensation of being surrounded by nothing but salt water and stars.

  We tread water side by side, as it laps gently between us.

  “That is . . . an excellent moon,” Caleb whispers.

  I look up, taking in the bold, creamy face of it. “It is. It’s beautiful.”

  “Are you okay? Cold?” he asks.

  I turn my gaze to where he’s bobbing up and down next to me, and smile. “No, I’m fine,” I say, even as my breath is jerking in my chest. “This is amazing.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  I nod toward the beach. “Just hope nobody sees us.”

  “Ah, isn’t that half the fun?”

  I laugh, narrowing my eyes. “You’re not about to tell me you’re a closet nudist, are you?”

  He laughs too, spins round to face me. “Er, no. Despite all appearances to the contrary, I’m not some kind of needy exhibitionist.” Beneath the water, his hands find my hips, the words leaving his mouth in gasps. “But the point is, no one can actually see us right now, Lambert. Well, only our heads. Hardly indecent.”

  “Until the police turn up and order us out with a megaphone.”

  “If they do, I’ll be demanding a foil blanket.”

  “So,” I say, continuing to pedal my feet, my lips starting to swell now with the cold, “do you do this a lot?”

  “Not as much as I’d like. And I have to say, it’s really nice to have someone to do it with.” He moves his hands up and down my hips. “It’s supposed to be good for immunity and your skin and have all these crazy health benefits, but . . . I don’t know. I just like the feeling of it, being out here, just me and the sea and the sky and the elements.” He delivers a salty kiss to my lips. “Don’t think I’m a nutter, do you?”

  I shudder through a smile as my teeth start to chatter. “Well, if you are, then I guess I must be, too.”

  * * *

  —

  Back at the beach hut a few minutes later, once we’ve toweled off and got dressed, Caleb lights the gas fire, then whips up some hot chocolate on the little stove.

  “I think this might be the most romantic thing I’ve ever done,” I say, as we huddle together under blankets on the banquette, sipping our hot chocolate and looking out to sea. Next to our toes, the gas fire roars like a furnace.

  Caleb leans over, sets his lips to my neck. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Fancy making it even more romantic?”

  “Yes.” I shiver, turning my head to kiss him. And in the next moment, our still-chilly fingers are seeking out warm skin, eliciting laughter, then quiet shocks of pleasure. Outside, the sea twitches and glimmers like a mirror tilted to the moonlight, the blackness above it festooned with a finery of stars.

  Go

  “Hello,” the photographer says. “Sorry I’m late. I’m—”

  “Oh my God. Hello.”

  I’m halfway through my first day at Supernova. So far, I’ve attended a brainstorming session on a new business pitch for a major cosmetics brand and presented my portfolio—such as it is—to the entire creative team in a breakout area so they could “get to know me,” which also involved random people pausing unnervingly to watch as they passed. I’ve been shown around the office by Phoebe, my deskmate and fellow creative, who is five years younger than me and was named as the industry’s “one to watch” two years ago by a broadsheet newspaper. She also happens to be a well-known influencer as a side hustle. My line manager is Zara, who’s super-smart, with a vast and intimidating talent. She’s seemingly come up with every famous strapline UK commerce has ever known. I was convinced at my interview that she’d instantly weed out my inferior creativity with the ruthless cool of a neurosurgeon. Her dark hair is cropped close to her head, and she has the kind of face that looks like she’s giving you permanent side-eye. She’s wearing a black knee-length dress that appears so effortless and comfortable, I can’t stop staring at it. Or her. Zara is just the kind of person who draws you in, makes you desperate to occupy her orbit. A little like Max.

  And though it’s been hectic, all morning I’ve been unable to wipe the smile off my face, to the point where I started to worry people might think I’m a bit odd. I just can’t quite believe I’m here, at one of the country’s biggest ad agencies, and that this time, I’m actually a proper creative, getting paid not for my research and organizational skills but for my ability to write. The job Georgia kept promising but never delivering. I’m here. I’ve made it.

  I’m getting these headshots done just before lunch, after which I’ve got a sit-down with Seb, who’s the designer I’ll be paired with for the majority of my initial projects. I want to make a good impression: I know how much emphasis they put here on creative chemistry.

  But first . . . the strangest thing. The photographer taking my headshots is Caleb—the guy I abandoned in the pub, the night I saw Max in Shoreley. Who slipped a beer mat into my coat pocket with his number on it.

  It’s clear he’s recognized me too, and for a couple of mortifying moments, we stand face-to-face without saying anything further.

  Eventually, I find my voice, feeling my face flare with color. “I’m so sorry. You gave me your number, and you—”

  “No, please,” he says, laughing, as if he couldn’t feel more awkward. “That was the cheesiest move I’ve ever made. It didn’t deserve a response.”

  “It wasn’t anything . . . against you, I promise. It’s just that that guy I saw out of the window . . . It was my ex, Max, and . . .”

  He smiles. “You absolutely don’t owe me an explanation of any kind, Lucy. It was always going to be a long shot.”

  I release a breath to try to soothe my embarrassment, as I attempt to work out whether he remembers my name from that night or if he’s been told it in advance of today. “Still. I should have messaged you, to explain.”

  “Hey, not at all. We talked for a sum total of what—two minutes?”

  I smile, thinking a change of subject might help. “So . . . what are you doing here?”

  “Supernova’s one of my corporate clients. I’m based in Shoreley, though. Hence my tardiness, sorry. Trains were a nightmare.”

  It turns out we went to different schools, on opposite sides of town. As he’s setting up, we chat about our lives in Shoreley—he describes a childhood mostly spent on the beach, then gaining a place at art college despite flunking his exams, before promptly dropping out of his course.

  We must have talked for nearly twenty minutes before he checks the time with a grimace. “Sorry. Better get cracking. I’ve only been given half an hour.”

  “They are pretty hot on timing here,” I say with a smile, recalling the lecture I was given by Zara earlier about billable hours.

  “Let’s try over here first,” Caleb says, motioning behind me to a hot-pink wall. “They want a pop of color in the picture.”

  “Do you want me to look serious, or . . . ?”

  Caleb leans down to shunt a table out of shot, flush against the nearest wall. As he does, his T-shirt falls forward to reveal his toned stomach.

  “Just completely relax,” he says, as he straightens up.
I can feel myself trying not to blush about his patch of taut skin catching my eye.

  In the next moment, the flash goes off, startling me. “Sorry. Think I blinked.”

  He smiles. “No worries. Would it help if I counted down?”

  Oh, he’s so nice. I try to keep my eyes off his body, remembering afresh how attractive I thought he was in The Smugglers that night. “Maybe. Although then I might overthink it.”

  “I’ll count to three,” he says. “Blink on two.”

  We try it, and of course I blink on two and three. It’s a sodding photo, Lucy, it can’t be that hard. And now I am starting to feel self-conscious and stiffening up, but Caleb quickly distracts me with a story about the time he shot nearly an entire wedding reception before realizing he’d been taking photo after photo of the groom’s identical twin brother. And it’s only as I’m laughing—properly laughing—that I realize Caleb’s been snapping away the whole time.

  “See what you did there,” I say, tipping my index finger toward him.

  “Well, I do have all the tricks.” He smiles at me and winks, one of the few men I’ve met who can do so without seeming creepy. “So, anyway, what brought you to Supernova? The night I met you, you’d just quit your job, and now . . .”

  “I know. Actually, that was also part of the reason I didn’t call you. My friend had a room going free in London, so I thought . . . why not move here, make a fresh start?”

  He meets my eye, and for a moment I think he’s about to ask me about Max. But he just smiles and nods. “Why not indeed. Well, it was great to meet you again. Good luck with everything.”

  * * *

  —

  They didn’t scare you off, then? You’re going back tomorrow?”

  Max and I are sitting against opposite arms of his expansive mustard-yellow sofa, our legs and feet intertwined, awaiting a delivery of sushi—an order, I noticed in horror, that cost as much as my weekly food bill.

  Sushi, I’ve recently discovered, is Max’s all-time-favorite food. Getting to know him again has been such a strange hybrid of the old and the new, a combination of the familiar (his sense of humor, that ever-present thoughtfulness, his kisses) and the new (his tastes having evolved from instant noodles, Britpop, and beer to sushi, electronica, and top-quality wine).

  Though my head is still hazy with first-day fog, I smile and nod. “I’m going to work there till I retire. Or die. Seriously. They’ll have to prize that job out of my cold, dead hands.”

  Max laughs. “Wow. I could use someone like you in my team.”

  “Honestly. I can’t believe I’m actually being paid to write.”

  “Why not? You’ve always been a great writer. Why shouldn’t it be you?”

  “Writing’s different to the law, though. I mean, you have a vocation. You train for five years—”

  “Six.”

  “Sorry, six. And then you’re qualified. I mean, don’t get me wrong,” I add, with a prickle of guilt, because I know how hard Max worked to get to where he is, especially at a prestigious firm like HWW. “Obviously you had to put the graft in. But with writing . . . there’s no clear path. It’s not like you do a course, then, bam—you’re a qualified writer. There’s no such thing.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You’re doing it now.”

  “Took me long enough.”

  “Well, don’t they say the best things in life come to those who wait?”

  “They do, yeah.” Our eyes meet, and I smile. “Hey, the strangest thing happened this morning.”

  “Yeah?” He pushes a little bowl of wasabi peas toward me.

  I wrinkle my nose, shake my head. “I’m more of a . . . Scampi Fries kind of girl.”

  He laughs. “God, haven’t had those for years. Do they still make them?”

  “Not sure. We should go to a proper pub and hunt some down.”

  “Is it weird that I think I’d prefer wasabi peas now anyway?”

  “Yes. That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  He grins and throws a couple into his mouth. “Sorry. You were saying.”

  “Yeah—the photographer taking my pictures, for my headshot . . . It was the guy I got chatting to in the pub in Shoreley, that night I saw you on the street, remember?”

  “In The Smugglers?”

  “Yep.”

  “Didn’t you say he gave you his number?”

  “Yeah, he did.” I laugh a little stiffly.

  “That must have been awkward.”

  “It was a bit, at first.”

  “Didn’t it feel weird, him taking your picture?”

  “No, he was super-professional.”

  I’m not really sure why I’m telling Max this. I’m not trying to make him jealous. He’s never been a jealous kind of person. Maybe it’s just because bumping into Caleb was an odd little coincidence, and that’s the kind of thing I want to share with Max.

  I tell him more about my day—the morning’s meetings and my afternoon with Seb, who showed me some of his recent work: an animation for a high street bank, a social media campaign for a recipe box delivery service, and a series of billboard posters for a big-brand lingerie company.

  The whole time Seb was talking, I kept trying not to stare too hard at him, because I was so fixated on this moment—that this was my new creative partner, that I was now a writer at this agency with talented people like this. Given my lack of writing experience, I wouldn’t have blamed Seb for being wary, or for worrying that he might have to carry me creatively. I know it’s down to me now to prove I deserve to be there.

  Still, self-doubt didn’t entirely stop me enjoying the moment. In fact, the longer Seb and I talked, the harder it became to resist jumping to my feet and performing a kind of victory lap around the breakout area, weaving in and out of beanbags and high-fiving passing creatives.

  “I’m kind of proudest of this one,” Seb told me, passing me the lingerie scamps to flip through. “The client wanted to go for this sleazy campaign straight out of the eighties, and eventually what we talked them into was—”

  “Classy,” I said, seriously impressed by the elegance of the design concept and copy. “Really classy.”

  Seb nodded, uncrossed his legs. He’s very thin and tall, and his trousers today were so short they rode halfway up his calves when he sat down, revealing a particularly jazzy pair of socks. “And they had this one really overbearing guy on their marketing team, so to talk him round felt like a real win.”

  “There’s always one,” I said, thinking back to my planning days at Figaro, to how many meetings I’d had with that exact same guy.

  “Isn’t there?”

  I smiled. I could already tell I was going to like Seb.

  “So why’d you leave your last place?” he asked.

  “I wanted to move to London, have a fresh start,” I replied, which although not entirely true, didn’t feel like too much of a leap.

  Seb laughed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Most people want to move out of London to do that.”

  When I describe for Max the Supernova offices, right down to the custom-printed toilet paper—designed, apparently, by an ex-intern who’s now very high up at Supernova in New York—he says, “God, a bar at work. Think I could sell that to my VP?”

  “Definitely. Is there any reason why lawyers should be more serious than anyone else?”

  “Yeah. The lawsuits when we get stuff wrong.”

  “Isn’t it quite difficult to sue a lawyer?”

  He laughs. “Nope. That’s why we have insurance.”

  I sip my ginger beer. “Now I’m picturing you all being very businesslike, taking everything super-seriously.”

  “Well, not all the time.” He describes his colleagues: some he’s worked with for years and is very close to, others are mere acquaintances, others get seriously und
er his skin.

  “I can’t imagine you getting wound up about anything. You’ve got to be one of the most patient people I’ve ever met.”

  A particular memory stands out for me—Max receiving a call, in our second year, to say his mum was seriously ill. I went with him to Norwich station, where we learned from another passenger that all trains were canceled due to leaves on the line. No staff were seemingly anywhere to help, and meanwhile the minutes ticked by, and with them the surreally terrifying possibility that Max’s mum might die before he reached her. Eventually, he found a member of staff and, given the disdain with which she spoke to him—a scruffy student whose wild-eyed worry she’d clearly interpreted as drug-induced—Max was calm, polite, and immeasurably courteous, when he had every excuse not to be. I never forgot that.

  I ask Max now how Brooke is. He always called her that—never Mum. When I first got to know him, I thought it was pretty cool. It’s only all these years later that I realize it’s actually quite sad.

  “Nothing much ever changes in the world of Brooke Gardner,” Max says. His voice carries zero affection, as though he’s narrating a slightly unkind documentary about her life.

  Max never knew his father. Brooke had always been a drinker and used to claim, in her crueler moments, that she had no memory at all of having even slept with him. She worked a variety of jobs, often several at a time, and when she wasn’t doing those, she was “unwinding with her friends,” as she liked to put it. She left Max alone at an age when it was illegal and shocking to do so, until someone pointed this out to her: after that, she would land him on various neighbors, friends of friends. He told me once he thought that was when he first learned to make conversation with anyone, even people who were very different to him.

  “Is that why you want to be a lawyer?” I asked him, the night he first confided all this to me, a couple of weeks after we’d met. I guessed his childhood must have led him to develop strong feelings about justice, about right and wrong. We weren’t together then, but I already knew there was no one else I preferred spending time with.