by Nancy Peach
“How very useful.”
“Surprisingly so. It’s like the medical equivalent of The Knowledge for London cabbies. I expect she had to sit an extra exam.”
“No doubt. She must be the very pinnacle of lit or savage, or indeed both.” He gave her a sardonic smile, his eyebrow still raised in amusement.
“I see what you’ve done there,” she returned his look, “but sadly we both need to recognise that we’re massively past it. Any attempt from either of us to enter into this type of conversation unironically is likely to trigger off some kind of alarm.”
He laughed. “And we’ll be whisked back to the 90s where we belong.”
“Indeed. I expect it’s only Deirdre who thinks either of us might have a clue about the zeitgeist, what with her having watched The Wolf of Wall Street and all.”
“You’re right. She’s probably the best qualified of any of us.”
“Probably.”
Edward turned back to his screen still smiling. “Just read your paper,” he said. “And do let me know if there are any articles you need help interpreting, particularly regarding popular culture, teen slang, youth-speak, whatevs.”
“I’ll be sure to do so,” she said. “And likewise, with your report. Any long words you want explaining, I’m right here.”
He shook his head, chuckling appreciatively.
She took another sip of her drink, watching him out of the corner of her eye as she read through the crossword clues. He was evidently capable of cutting out the distractions of the café and focussing on his work, and as she sat quietly she was able to continue her covert study. He seemed entirely disciplined, sitting with his elbows resting on the table, his tall frame and long limbs cramped by the rigid plastic chair and his tanned forearms laid flat either side of the screen in front of him, the extensor muscles flexing and contracting beneath the skin as he jotted notes or drummed his fingers. Again, she remembered holding his hand that night, arms stretched across the woollen rug, her on the sofa, him on the floor. What was it that had made him reach for her? What had they been talking about at that point? She couldn’t remember, but she knew that his touch had soothed her somehow and that they had drifted into an hour or two of sleep with their fingers still intertwined.
Tess continued to stare at Edward whilst pretending to look at her newspaper. She took in his profile, which was just as she’d remembered: the slight bump at the bridge of his nose, the firm jaw, the lower lip occasionally chewed in concentration. There was a pulse beating at his temple and she wanted to reach out and touch it, feel it throb under her fingertip. Without any conscious intent she found her hand moving fractionally towards him and he became aware of her gaze, sliding his eyes in her direction, catching her stare. The hint of a smile flickered across his mouth as she blushed and looked away, pretending to be engrossed in a difficult section of the crossword. He leant across and looked at the clue.
“Embarrassment,” he said confidently, tapping Eight Down with his finger.
“How very apposite,” said Jane Austen.
Chapter Eight
As the weeks passed, Mrs Russell continued to attend the wellness sessions, and Edward continued to drop her off at the designated time, waiting in the café until she returned. There developed a routine of sorts whereby Tess would often happen to be wandering through the café for what was becoming a fairly regular mid-morning break at about the same time as Edward was laying out his paperwork or scrolling through a case report on his computer. She never questioned herself about her timing on these occasions, but the television host usually had a lot to say about it.
Edward was similarly casual, often barely looking up to acknowledge her presence. Instead he would continue to focus on his screen whilst wordlessly clearing a space for her and sometimes they would merely sit together in companionable silence, each occupied with their own activities. Despite the apparently chance nature of their meetings, it seemed that he was as much a creature of habit as her because one evening when Tess arrived for her night shift, Dave was in the kitchen eager to impart information.
“That nice-mannered chap you sit with, Mary’s lad?” he said leaning his considerable bulk through the serving hatch, “Well, he looked proper confused this morning with you not pitching up. Kept looking at his watch and then at the empty chair. I was going to tell him you were on nights but I says to myself, ‘Dave,’ I says, ‘you mind your own business.’” He regarded Tess with obvious glee. “I’ve even caught him checking how many flapjacks there are left on the counter some mornings before you get here. I want to say to him, ‘Don’t worry, sir, I’ll make sure there’s one for her,’ but I stay quiet and he sees me put one in a bag and tuck it under the shelf and we smile at each other. You’d be surprised the things you pick up by just going about your business, watching the world.” He looked shy for a moment, lost in his own thoughts as he wiped the surfaces down with disinfectant. “I do love this job,” he said, handing Tess her sandwich. “You meet all sorts.”
Tess was finding herself looking forward to her encounters with Edward with a level of enthusiasm that she couldn’t really justify. It wasn’t that they discussed anything of enormous significance, and it wasn’t just that he was devastatingly handsome – although this helped, obviously. Being with him, simply being in his presence, was exhilarating in a way she couldn’t really put her finger on, although she was sure it felt similar to the night they’d met, all those years ago. She anticipated their chats with a degree of excitement that one might better associate with a child waiting for Christmas, checking her watch repeatedly as the hour approached, nipping into the ladies’ toilets for a quick look in the mirror and perhaps to add a touch of lip gloss. Even Kath had noticed that she seemed to take more care with her appearance on a Tuesdays and Thursdays. She would subconsciously make a note of things during the week that might amuse him – films she’d seen or books she’d read – and one day, just as she was about to return her mug to the counter and get back to work, he reached into a bag and pulled out a paperback.
“I thought you might want to read this,” he said. “It was recommended by a friend of mine. He’s an ENT doctor.”
“You mean Dan?” She said it without thinking. He looked confused and she realised her mistake.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “How did…?”
“Umm…” She tried to style it out. Made a dismissive gesture with her hands. “I think maybe you mentioned him a few weeks ago. Said you had a friend in ENT, used to work in Bristol, I think you said?”
She looked at him closely, aware that she was shamelessly fishing; hoping desperately that he would respond in a sudden flash of clarity, Yes Dan, I went to visit him once, stayed over at his after a party, met this amazing woman… Oh my God, it was you…
He didn’t say that. He just looked back down at the paperback in his hands and nodded and said, “Yeah, well, anyway. This book…” He held it out to her.
She looked at the cover, reading the title, “This is Going to Hurt. Oh! That’s the Adam Kaye one, isn’t it? I’ve been dying to read it. Thank you.”
“No problem. It’s absolutely hilarious. You’ll love it. My girlfriend, Clara, got it me for Christmas.”
“Oh!” There was a pause as Tess looked back at the book to mask some of her surprise and, in all honesty, crushing disappointment. “Will she mind? Your girlfriend? Would she mind you lending her present to someone else?”
Unaware of this inner turmoil, Edward replied, “No, she won’t be fussed. She’s not much of a reader. I mean, she can read, obviously. She’s just not really into fiction, or medical memoirs for that matter. She only got it for me because I’d been going on about it since Dan recommended it. And as you can see, I’ve read it a few times now.” He pointed to the slightly dog-eared corners.
“Oh, I’m much worse,” she said, composure recovered, at least superficially. “Books I read always look like they’ve been run over by an HGV or survived some sort of nuclear apocalypse,
but then I think it’s nice to see they’ve been well loved. I never trust someone who claims to have read and enjoyed a pristine-looking paperback. And I just can’t get my head around downloading them. I like to hold a book in my hands, read it in the bath, fold the corners of the pages down...”
“I bet you break the spines as well,” he said, shuddering comically. “And frankly it’s that kind of cavalier attitude to rules that leads to anarchy and chaos, which would be nothing more than I’d expect from you. But as vices go, it could be worse.” He tapped its cover. “Feel free to abuse it any way you wish, but I think you’ll enjoy it.”
He started to tell her about another book he was now reading, and no further mention was made of Clara. Tess tried not to analyse her own response too closely. She shouldn’t have been surprised. The fact that Edward hadn’t remembered her from their first meeting had been disappointment enough – deep down she had probably known that he was already attached. Why wouldn’t he be? He was handsome and, when he put his mind to it, utterly charming: “A most eligible match” as Jane Austen kept putting it, no matter how many times Tess asked her to be quiet or mentioned that these opinions were extremely unhelpful.
In the days following the revelation, she succumbed once more to the ritual binging that had characterised her winter months. It wasn’t simply that her blossoming friendship with Edward had bolstered her confidence. She had started to feel attractive again, and had made the mistake of paying renewed attention to her appearance. As always, the television host was on hand and eager to point out her error.
“You should have known better really, shouldn’t you, Tess? I honestly don’t know what you were thinking.”
He sighed, waiting until she had assembled the biscuits and chocolate in front of her before he resumed.
“The sad truth is that fat, ugly girls are simply not appealing to attractive men like that.”
Tess felt a single tear trickle down her cheek and angrily brushed it away.
“And in addition to your physical disadvantages, consider your background,” he said, using his patient, explaining-to-a-small-child voice. “Girls from broken homes where paternity is questionable, money is tight, and aspirations are narrow, well, girls like that, girls like you, don’t end up with wealthy men. Not classy ones like your posh Edward Russell anyway.”
He paused as she unwrapped her second Twix.
“It doesn’t matter how clever you think you are, how many books you’ve read, or how much you’ve shrugged off that coal-miner accent, sweetheart. Men don’t like clever, dumpy, boring girls and they don’t like working-class trash.”
His voice continued to drip the litany of abuse into Tess’s ear, filling her up with poison faster than she could stuff in the carbohydrate antidote.
“It’s for your own good, Tess. I’m only telling you what you need to hear. Aiming too high is dangerous. Let’s face it. Don’t make the same mistake again.”
She wouldn’t, she told herself. She wouldn’t aim anywhere; high, low, subterranean. In fact, she convinced herself that, in a way, it was something of a relief to learn about Edward’s girlfriend. It meant that whatever was happening (“Um, there’s literally nothing happening,” said the host, who was bored now) was entirely and absolutely platonic. Maybe it took the pressure off. She had, after all, sworn herself off men for a while and Miss Austen had made her views clear in the late hours of the evening when Tess lay on her bed feeling bloated and ugly.
“I do not wish to appear indelicate,” she said. “But after the unfortunate episode with your previous match, the indiscretions and unpleasantness and so forth… I do wonder if it may be advisable to guard your heart a little more carefully, my dear? Perhaps such a maelstrom of emotions is best avoided for the immediate future, and instead of tormenting oneself with missed opportunities, one might instead draw a veil across the experience and focus on the companionship of friends, the pleasures of the mind, and the rigours of academic study?”
“You sound like my mother,” Tess had grumbled, but she knew that Jane Austen was right. The episode with Scott had left her bruised to say the least. She was reluctant to invite someone else into her life, and if she did, she’d have to be pretty certain that they were a safe bet. And Edward, with the charged atmosphere that surrounded him and the giddy excitement he induced, did not seem like a safe bet. News of the girlfriend acted as the perfect deterrent, patrolling her emotions like a guard dog, forcing her to acknowledge that what she had with Edward was nothing more than platonic conversation with someone she bumped into now and again.
Their meetings continued with the same regularity and frequency but Tess’s guard, which had been melting away as she basked in Edward’s attention, had now returned. The television host kept her in check if she started to daydream, constantly reminding her that Edward was way out of her league, that he had no recollection of ever meeting her before, and that she was still probably too fat, too ugly, and too common to get a boyfriend anyway. Such pronouncements were generally accompanied by replayed footage of discovering Scott in bed with Luke and a great deal of signposting towards various confectionery items. Jane Austen gave up on forcing a match that had no real future and instead devoted her time to gentle rebuttal of the television host’s more unpleasant commentary, averting her eyes when Tess scoffed an entire tray of mini-muffins, whispering faintly, “I’m sure this unhealthy obsession with sustenance was not ‘a thing’ back in my day.” Tess didn’t feel able to point out to her that Georgian ladies of quality had had even more elaborate means with which to torment themselves.
Comfort-eating aside, life continued much as usual and she still enjoyed seeing Edward – probably a little too much. They avoided discussions regarding Mary’s health or prognosis and Tess was initially cautious about revealing too much regarding her own family, feeling that there were enough chinks in her armour already. However, one morning she did mention a trip back to Sheffield she had planned for the weekend and Edward looked up from his laptop. “You going to see your parents?” he asked.
“My mum,” she corrected him, “and my brother. Well, half-brother strictly speaking, but we never say that. It’s always felt like we were peas in a pod, other than the fact that we look very different.”
“Oh?”
“Jake’s dad was Jamaican,” she explained. “Mum was completely bowled over. Thought he was the man of her dreams. She fell pregnant at nineteen, ruined all her plans, but she didn’t see that at the time. Not until he buggered off a year later.” She sat back in her chair. “So, we’re a variety of shades in our house, flying the melanin tricolour for multi-cultural Britain. Mum’s white, Jake’s half Afro-Caribbean, and I’m half Italian. She obviously had a thing for exotic blokes, at least by Yorkshire standards.”
“And your father’s not around either?”
“No. I mean it’s no big deal. Same for a lot of families I knew growing up. Mum clearly had a thing not just for exotic-looking men but ones with a tendency to leg it as soon as the babies arrived. To be fair, Marco, my dad, stayed until I was five. I do have some memories of him, and he sent presents for a while after he left. He ran off with a girl from Barnsley called Jolene. Mum still can’t listen to Dolly Parton.”
“That must have been tough.”
“Well, yes. Everyone should have a bit of Dolly in their lives now and again.”
“No. Obviously, I meant your mum, being on her own, with two small children. You’re right; it’s not an uncommon scenario but still, doesn’t mean it’s easy?”
“Oh, it was fine. I imagine it was a bit different to your pampered existence. But no, we managed to eke out a living, Jake narrowly escaped being sent down t’pit for coal, I avoided a life of servitude and prostitution—”
“You don’t need to be flippant about it. I’m interested.” He leaned in towards her.
“I’m not being flippant.” She cleared her throat and looked away.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”<
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“I’m not upset. Really, I’m not. It’s just, sometimes I wish… I don’t know. I wish I’d got to know him just a little better before he left. It’s hard not to take it personally when your own father runs out on you and never makes contact again. I mean, it’s one thing to walk out on your partner and some other bloke’s child, but to abandon your own flesh and blood without a word of explanation? It’s a bit pathetic but I’d like to have the opportunity to ask him what I did wrong.”
“If it’s any consolation, growing up with a father who is emotionally unavailable can be just as damaging as not having one at all,” Edward said.
Tess raised her eyebrows, glad to have had the attention shifted away from her own mixed feelings about Marco. “D’you mean in general or…?”
Edward shrugged. “My father was never what you would describe as a ‘hands-on’ dad,” he said. “He wasn’t cruel, and it’s not like he was some kind of tyrant or anything. He was just… never there. Physically or emotionally. He wasn’t part of my life. I feel like I never knew him and then suddenly, bam, it’s too late. He keeled over with a heart attack and that opportunity for anything approaching a father–son relationship died with him.”
“I’m sorry,” said Tess. “That must have been really tough. And you’re right. My idea of what it might have been like to have my dad around is optimistic at best…” Her voice trailed off as Mrs Russell entered the café, leaning on the arm of an athletic but concerned-looking physiotherapist.
“We couldn’t quite get there today,” James the physio explained to Edward as Tess stood to offer her seat to her patient. Mrs Russell looked shattered. “It’s. Nothing. Just. Pain.”
Edward reached out to clasp her arm, “Where Mum? Where’s the pain? Is it in your back again?” He picked up his phone. “We’ll talk to them about some more radiotherapy, see if we can book it in for tomorrow.” He swiped across the screen, still holding onto his mum’s shoulder as he stood above her waiting for someone to answer.