“I don’t think so,” Jess says, cutting into these memories. “He wouldn’t do that . . . not knowing I was coming.” But she doesn’t sound all that certain. She sounds almost as though she’s asking a question. “Anyway, you seem to know him pretty well?”
“We hadn’t seen much of each other until recently.” That much, at least, is true. “You know how it is. But he got in touch with me when he moved to Paris. And meeting back up . . . it felt like it had been no time at all, really.”
I’m drawn back to that reunion nearly three months ago. My surprise—shock—at finding the email from him after so long, after everything. A sports bar in Saint-Germain. A sticky floor and sticky bar, signed French rugby shirts tacked to the wall, moldy-looking chunks of charcuterie with your beer and French club rugby playing on about fifteen different screens. But it felt nostalgic; almost like the kind of place we would have gone to as students nursing pints and pretending to be real men.
We caught up on the missed decade between us: my time in Palo Alto; his journalism. He got out his phone to show me his work.
“It’s not exactly . . . hard-hitting stuff,” he said, with a shrug. “Not what I said I wanted to do. It’s fluff, let’s be honest. But it’s tough right now. Should have gone the tech route like you.”
I coughed, awkwardly. “Mate, I haven’t exactly conquered the tech world.” That was putting it mildly. But I was almost more disappointed by his lack of success than my own. I’d have expected him to have written his prize-winning novel by now. We’d met on a student paper but fiction always seemed more his thing, not the factual rigors of journalism. And if anyone was going to make it I’d been so sure it would be Ben Daniels. If he couldn’t, what hope was there for the rest of us?
“I feel like I’m really hunting around for scraps,” he said. “I get to eat in some nice restaurants, a free night out once in a while. But it’s not exactly what I thought I’d end up doing. You need a big story to break into that, make your name. A real coup. I’m sick and tired of London, the old boys’ club. Thought I’d try my luck here.”
Well, we both had our big plans, back when we’d last seen each other. Even if mine didn’t involve much more than getting the fuck away from my old man and being as far away from home as possible.
A sudden clatter brings me back into the room. Jess, on the prowl again, has knocked a photograph off the bookshelf: one of the rare few I’ve got up there.
She picks it up. “Sorry. That’s a cool boat, though. In the photo.”
“It’s my dad’s yacht.”
“And this is you, with him?”
“Yes.” I’m about fifteen in that one. His hand on my shoulder, both of us smiling into the camera. I’d actually managed to impress him that day, taking the helm for a while. It might have been one of the only times I’ve ever felt his pride in me.
A sudden shout of laughter. “And this one looks like something out of Harry Potter,” she says. “These black cloaks. Is this—”
“Cambridge.” A group of us after a formal, standing on Jesus Green by the River Cam in the evening light, wearing our gowns and clutching half-drunk bottles of wine. Looking at it I can almost smell that green, green scent of the fresh-cut grass: the essence of an English summer.
“That’s where you met Ben?”
“Yup, we worked on Varsity together: him in editorial, me on the website. And we both went to Jesus.”
She rolls her eyes. “The names they give those places.” She squints at it. “He’s not in this photo, is he?”
“No. He was taking it.” Laughing, getting us all to pose. Just like Ben to be the one behind the camera, not in front of it: telling the story rather than a part of it.
She moves over to the bookcases. Paces up and down, reading the titles. It’s hard to imagine she ever stops moving. “So many of your books are in French. That’s what Ben was doing there, wasn’t it? French studies or something.”
“Well, he was doing Modern Languages at first, yes. He switched to English Literature later.”
“Really?” Something clouds her face. “I didn’t—I didn’t know that about him. He never told me.”
I recall the fragments that Ben told me about her while we were traveling. How she had it so much harder than him. No one around to pick up the pieces for her. Bounced around the care system, couldn’t be placed.
“So you’re the friend that helped him out with this place?” she asks.
“That’s me.”
“It sounds incredible,” he’d said, when I suggested it the day we met up again. “And you’re sure about that, the rent? You reckon it would really be that low? I have to tell you I’m pretty strapped for cash at the moment.”
“Let me find out,” I told him. “But I’m pretty sure, yes. I mean, it’s not in the best shape. As long as you don’t mind some slightly . . . antique details.”
He grinned. “Not at all. You know me. I like a place with character. And I tell you, it’s a hell of a lot better than crashing on people’s sofas. Can I bring my cat?”
I laughed. “I’m sure you can bring your cat.” I told him I’d make my inquiries. “But I think it’s probably yours if you want it.”
“Well . . . thanks mate. I mean . . . seriously, that sounds absolutely amazing.”
“No problem. Happy to help. So that’s a yes, you’re interested?”
“It’s a hell yes.” He laughed. “Let me buy you another drink, to celebrate.”
We sat there for hours with more beers. And suddenly it was like we were back in Cambridge with no time having passed between us.
He moved in a couple of days later. That quick. I stood there with him in the apartment as he looked around.
“I know it’s a little retro,” I told him.
“It’s certainly . . . got character,” he said. “You know what? I think I’ll keep it like this. I like it. Gothic.”
And I thought how great it was, having my old buddy back. He grinned at me and for some reason I suddenly felt like everything might be OK. Maybe more than OK. Like it might help me find that guy I had been, once upon a time.
“Can I use your computer?”
“What?” I’m jolted out of the memory. I see Jess has wandered over to my iMac.
“Those bloody roaming charges are a killer. I just thought I could check Ben’s Instagram again, in case something’s happened to his phone and he’s messaged me back.”
“Er—I could give you my Wifi code?” But she’s already sitting down, her hand on the mouse. I don’t seem to have any choice in the matter.
She moves the mouse and the screen lights up. “Wait—” she leans forward, peering at the screensaver, then turns around to me. “This is you and Ben, isn’t it? Jeez, he looks so young. So do you.”
I haven’t switched on my computer in several days. I force myself to look. “I suppose we were. Not much more than kids.” How strange, to think it. I felt so adult at the time. Like all the mysteries of the world had suddenly been unlocked to me. And yet we were still children, really. I glance out of the windows. I don’t need to look at the photo; I can see it with my eyes shut. The light golden and slanting: both of us squinting against the sun.
“Where were you, here?”
“A group of us went interrailing, the whole summer after our finals.”