Nick paused, waiting for her to say something else. When she didn’t, he said, ‘But how long ago did all that happen? Ten, twelve years? It shouldn’t still matter now, surely.’
Gina took a sip from her wine glass. It was good wine, nicer than any she’d had before. She thought about asking Nick what it was, then decided not to bother, in case it was so expensive she’d never buy it. ‘You know when you trip over something, and you stumble to get your balance, and you do a sort of I’m-not-falling-over-honest run, in case people are watching? That’s how I feel like my life’s been. Ever since I didn’t quite get the life I’d thought I would I’ve been staggering forward but . . . not neatly. Everything’s just a reaction, to try to catch up with where I think I should be. I shouldn’t have married Stuart, for a start.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because that was a classic stagger.’
Nick sighed. ‘You know, it might be the wine, or it might be because it’s been a long day, but I’m going to have to ask you to explain that. I mean, not if you don’t want to, but . . .’
Gina drew a deep breath. ‘Stuart and I were fine together as boyfriend and girlfriend. Everyone kept telling us what a great couple we made, but there was always a sort of . . . gap between us. The sort of gap you can fill with lots of holidays and projects? I kept meaning to break it off so we could both find people to make us properly happy, and then I got cancer, and we were engaged already, and he felt obliged to bring the wedding forward so no one would think he was abandoning the sick woman.’
Or in case I died.
‘You do tend to project quite a lot in your relationships, don’t you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, does your ex think he married you because you had cancer?’
‘I don’t know. But he’s very polite, Stuart. He’d never tell me if he did.’
‘Look.’ Nick put his glass down on the arm of the sofa and gazed at her. ‘There’s no point reviewing decisions you made at the time from the perspective of where you are now. We’d never do anything. If marrying Stuart had been such a mistake, someone would have stopped you. Naomi or your mum. Or someone.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Gina scoffed. ‘Do you know anyone who’s stopped a wedding? Apart from in The Graduate.’
‘Well, no. OK. But no one gets married thinking they’ll split up.’ Nick picked up his wine glass and topped it up. He was drinking faster than she was. ‘You get married because it’s right at the time. For the people you are at the time. You hope that you’ll grow at the same rate, and you’ll have your lives in common but . . .’
‘But?’
‘But it doesn’t always work like that. Sometimes you grow apart, not in the same direction. But when you come to make a decision about whether to get out or not, you stop thinking about the moments, whether you’re happy in the moments, and start looking at it as if your entire marriage is some kind of precious tapestry you have to preserve at all costs. It really isn’t. That nice holiday you had in Hawaii in 2009 isn’t going to keep you warm if you’re not talking and haven’t had sex for all of 2013, is it?’
Gina had a sudden mental picture of her relationship with Stuart embroidered into the Bayeux Tapestry. A lot of boring trips to the big Sainsbury’s, their annual holidays to sunny places, then the drama of her cancer, the medics, stitched like Norman soldiers, rushing about her prone form, Stuart presiding over them. It made her giggle.
‘What’s funny?’
‘You,’ said Gina. ‘I’ve got you so involved in bloody renovation work that you’re even thinking about relationships in historic conservation terms.’
He smiled crookedly. ‘I’m not sure renovation’s always an option.’
She reached out for her glass. It was empty.
‘Oh, God,’ she said, staring at it. ‘How did that happen?’
Nick looked at her from the other side of the sofa. His face was even more handsome in half-darkness, the downward slope of his eyes emphasised by the pearly candlelight. He didn’t speak, but carried on reading her face with a familiar hint of a smile in his expression.
Gina felt something stirring in the middle of her chest. Wine always made her feel wistful and a bit flirty, and even though there were several cushions between her and Nick on the sofa, she was suddenly very aware of his solid form near her, the warmth of his bare feet, the dark traces of hair at the base of his ankle.
The silence grew, and the atmosphere changed with it, more than if they’d been speaking.
For God’s sake, Gina! yelled a voice inside her. Stop it! Get up! Go home! Call a cab!
But it didn’t feel inappropriate. It felt relaxing and right, as if she’d just opened her head to someone for the first time in years and they’d understood.
Nick could be a good friend, if nothing else, she told herself. They had lots in common. He didn’t sound too happy about his relationship tapestry either. That Hawaiian holiday sounded quite specific. Not that it was any of her business.
‘You know what I think?’ he said, with a tentative smile.
‘Do tell, Dr Freud.’
‘I think you’re waiting for someone to forgive you, and it’s pointless, because the only person who can do that is yourself. It’s done. Go back to Oxford, and go to all those places and see how everything is exactly the same, and the world didn’t end because you made a mistake. And you should see this love of your life, who laid a guilt trip on you at the worst possible time, and tell him—’ Nick stopped.
‘Tell him what?’
‘Tell him that you’re—’
Gina’s ears twitched. There was a noise, coming from downstairs, an old-fashioned American telephone noise.
‘Is that your mobile ringing downstairs?’ she asked, even though they both knew it was.
It rang. And rang.
The mood shifted and changed, like a flimsy soap bubble. One wrong word and it would burst. Nick’s eyes didn’t leave her face; she couldn’t tear her gaze from his.
Gina summoned up all her self-control, imagining it rising like a twister inside herself. ‘I think you should get that,’ she said.
Nick held her gaze for a second longer, then said, ‘You’re right. I’d kick myself if it was the council phoning about the listed building consent.’ And he levered himself off the sofa and put his glass on the table.
Gina closed her eyes and sank back into the cushions as he left the room. She was tired, and the wine had gone straight to her head. Half a glass more would have tipped her over into tipsiness.
There’s no way I can drive, she thought, fighting back sleep. He’ll have to call me a minicab. It’s not late. I’ll just close my eyes for a second.
Downstairs, she could hear Nick’s voice rising and falling. He wasn’t shouting but there was no laughter in his voice. Was it Amanda?
It could be anyone. Nick probably had hundreds of friends, journalists, photographers, London media types; he lived in a different world when he wasn’t here. She didn’t know him outside this house. And yet she felt as if she did.
Maybe I should go back to Oxford, she thought. It wasn’t so much about giving Kit the letters back as . . . what? Letting that door close properly this time? Like seeing Stuart with Bryony, it would be painful but it would mean an end to the imaginary scenarios.
Buzz got up, came a little closer to her, then grunted as he settled back down. Gina dropped her hand to feel his velvet ears, hot and soft. His biscuity smell drifted up, a sign that he too was falling asleep.
This is nice, she thought, and drifted off.
Gina was woken the next morning by sharp sunlight flooding in through the uncurtained sash windows. It was so bright she felt as if she was on stage, under the full barrage of spotlights.
She blinked and sat up, screwing up her eyes against it. Nick had thoughtfully covered her with a duvet and removed her shoes, but otherwise she was fully dressed and, apart from a slight muzziness around the eyes, not even hung-over.
&nb
sp; I must have been tired, she thought. Two glasses of wine and I pass out on someone’s sofa?
The pile of technology opposite her was blinking with a selection of red and blue lights, which suggested that the power had come back on in the night.
What time was it in New York? Was there a chance Amanda might Skype at any moment to pick up where she’d left off? What time was it here?
Gina reached down for her phone, and checked it with a groan: it was half past seven. Lorcan and the workmen were early starters, and if she didn’t get a move on, there was a chance they might catch her here. She didn’t want that. She wasn’t even sure she wanted Nick to see her this morning.
The only thing Gina hated about being drunk was not quite knowing how she was coming across to other people. It hadn’t mattered when she drank as a student because everyone else had been as out of it as she was, and they were all just trying to look ‘fun’. But it was different now. Through her rosy red-wine haze, she’d seen something in Nick’s face the previous night, when he examined her with those grey eyes that saw things she didn’t know she was showing.
‘Come on, Buzz,’ she whispered, and collected her things as quietly as she could.
Gina let herself out of the house by the kitchen door, and picked her way through the cool dew of the herb garden, the morning air smelling very green. It was refreshing, and for a second she wished she had her Polaroid with her. Then she decided it was better that she didn’t.
Chapter Twenty
ITEM: an antique silver locket with a folded fortune cookie slip inside, reading ‘It is never too late, just as it is never too early’
London, May 2001
Gina thinks she’s never seen anything as beautiful as the sun fading across the London skyline, making the pearly dots of the street lights stand out like sequins across the curled streets and roads. It’s so lovely, she almost feels like crying.
‘Happy birthday,’ says Kit behind her, his arms wrapped around her. He clinks his mini bottle of champagne against hers. ‘To the most beautiful woman in London.’
Gina glances towards the sign on the pod that specifically bans food and drink from the London Eye, then at the other four people in it, studiously ignoring each other.
‘Ignore that.’ Kit hugs her tighter, hiding her bottle from the security camera. ‘This is a special occasion. Anyway, there’s much worse we could be doing up here than toasting your twenty-first birthday.’
He turns her round, and Gina melts into Kit’s kiss, letting herself sink into this perfect moment. It’s a relief to close her eyes and just feel, after the last few hours of relentless sensory overload.
Oxford is magical, but London is something very different. Gina’s been to London many times since Kit started working here, but it still gives her a giddy sensation in the pit of her stomach. It’s like being in a film. Everything is loud and bright, new and familiar at the same time. It’s not the famous buildings that fascinate her – Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, which they passed on the bus – but the plethora of real, scabby history everywhere. Creepy Victorian alleyways, the unnoticed third-floor Juliet balconies, the remnants of neon signs and horse mounting blocks; the art deco traces under high-street fascias, and the ghosts of old Underground architecture. Ghosts of people’s lives, clinging to the buildings. Gina’s eyes can’t take it in fast enough.
Kit had sent a train ticket and a card ‘entitling the bearer to one Magical Mystery Birthday Tour of London’. Since she arrived at Paddington, he’s swept her around Fitzrovia, where he works; Chinatown, where they slurped noodles at high speed in a clattering café; Soho, for martinis in a crowded bar; and now they’re on the London Eye, hovering high above the South Bank. Below them an electrical blanket of lights and red buses and black cabs and trees and streets. London. A million possibilities. And in the centre of this spider’s web of new things, Kit is holding out his hand to show it all to her, happy to be sharing it.
He turns her back around, so she’s facing out of the glass pod towards the river, and she leans against him, wrapping his arms around her. He rests his chin on her head, and it’s nice to be able to hear what he’s saying. The cocktail bar was so loud, lined in stainless steel, full of shiny-faced people shrieking. Gina’s used to loud bars – the student union is always rammed – but the jostle was fierce, workers squeezing full value from their early evening before catching their trains home.
Here, at last, they’re alone. Ish. The brief pause before they head off to a gig at Brixton Academy, then a Persian curry from a new place Kit’s found, then bed.
‘Having a happy birthday?’ he asks, kissing her hair. His voice is hoarse from yelling.
‘It’s the happiest day of my life.’ Gina leans back. ‘You must have spent ages planning it.’
‘Not at all. The hard part was deciding what not to do. There’s so much else I wanted to fit in. Sure you can’t stay an extra day? I could pull a sickie . . .’
‘I wish I could. But I’ve really got to revise.’ Gina’s exams are looming over her, now so close that she can’t actually fit the reality of them into her head. Like a huge iceberg, or the Titanic, just a sheer face of facts and stress. She deserves one day in London with Kit but two days makes her feel sick and panicky.
‘Aw, sure? I wanted to take you to the National Gallery. There’s an amazing Holman Hunt retrospective.’ He’s talking over her head, gazing out at the city below. Then his voice drops. ‘So, do you think you could live here?’
Gina shivers with excitement. They haven’t explicitly discussed what’ll happen after her finals. Janet hopes she’ll do a law conversion course ‘because there’s always work for lawyers’; Terry is careful not to hope anything other than she’ll come home now and again, and not max out her student loan too catastrophically.
One thing Gina does know, though, is that she’s not going back to Longhampton. Not now Kit’s opened the door to a louder, faster, more colourful world. London scares her, and she’s not sure how she’ll fit in, but now she’s seen it, Longhampton seems even greyer. She’s somewhere between the two. Their pod rises higher over the river and she’s surprised not to feel more freaked out by the height. The glass feels so safe.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘But I don’t know what I’d do. Are you still going to be here?’
‘If you are, of course I will be.’ Kit is still in his venture capital job; every time he talks about leaving, he says, they give him another technology project to work on. ‘I was thinking about cashing in my savings and travelling, but I’m flexible. We can do anything we want to. No ties.’
He squeezes her as he says it, and his hug releases a little butterfly of anxiety inside her: finals next year are Gina’s last official hoop. After that, there are no more. All decisions, all choices are her own. Unlike Kit, she doesn’t really relish the thought of that. How will she know if she’s made the right choice? How will she know if she’s chosen the right job, the right flat?
At least she knows she’s got the right man. That’s something.
‘You’ve gone quiet,’ he says.
‘I’m just looking at the view.’
Millions of houses spread out beyond the thick steel ribbon of the river. Gina imagines millions of people inside them, all slotted into routines of alarm clock, bus, work, home, sleep. And those routines slotting into bigger routines of date, marry, baby, school. The cogs ticking on and on, pushing you further into your choices, only to flick you into a different channel when you least expect it. Like it did for her mum.
The prospect of real life entices and terrifies her.
‘Look,’ says Kit, suddenly. ‘We’re at the top.’
The pod stops for a moment and Gina feels weightless, teetering not on the edge of London, but the edge of the limitless world opening up to her.
Everything’s possible, good and bad, and only she can decide which way it’ll go. Can I do that? she wonders frantically. How am I supposed to know if I’ve got it right? When wil
l I know if I’m wrong? ‘I wish we could press pause on this second,’ she blurts out. ‘And be this happy for ever. Here. Just us.’
‘Why?’ says Kit, amused. ‘Everything’s just about to happen. All the amazing things out there are waiting for you to find them. This is when you’ll really start to live.’ He nuzzles her neck. ‘When we’ll start to live.’
Gina wants to believe him, but something inside her is resisting, telling her it’s not so sure it’s that simple. It would have been nicer, she thinks secretly, if he’d told her that in her cosy, shabby turret bedroom back in college, surrounded by her posters, and her vases, and her flowers. In the bed they both know so well, curled up together, breathing each other’s sleepy, familiar breath.
Here, in the glass bubble over the Thames, it feels as if there’s someone else with them – the sophisticated, complicated city that Kit fits into so smoothly and Gina’s slightly scared of. She already feels nostalgic for her university days and they’re not even over yet.
Let go, she tells herself, as the pod begins its slow descent. Have faith in yourself, and let go.
She imagines herself swallow-diving from the top, a long graceful plunge into the murky river of royal barges and police launches.
‘Gina, you can do anything you want,’ Kit whispers in her ear, as if he can hear her doubts. ‘You have no idea how incredible you are because you just see something and you do it. It’s one of the reasons why I love you.’
Gina’s whole spirit lifts as it always does when Kit tells her he loves her, and for a moment she believes him: that the world is opening to her, and the right thing will somehow rise up and make itself known, through her doubts.
This is the start of my adult life, she thinks, and kisses him until the wheel stops at the bottom for them to get out.
Gina had hoped the last box she unpacked from her old house would turn out to be symbolic, and maybe contain some mystically apt item that would sum up the past few months.