Page 56 of One Night With You

‘No,’ he agrees. ‘It wouldn’t.’

‘Exactly …’ I say.

He looks at me, big brown eyes like a puppy’s, all wide and wet and captivatingly cute.

‘Ruby, I don’t just want to sleep with you. I want to takeyou out, on a date, properly, because I know we’re great in bed together, but I think it’s obvious we’d be great outside of bed together too.’

I take a breath. ‘Ten out of ten for honesty,’ I say. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’

‘Well, then you’re an idiot.’

‘I love it when you talk nasty to me.’

‘Plenty more where that came from.’

He waits for my answer. I don’t know what I want to say. I’d thought about flirting with him, and snogging him, and maybe even sleeping with him again. But not aboutdatinghim. But then I think about Candice refusing to make herself vulnerable to the postman and how ridiculous it seems to me, and everything JP has said to me about staying open in matters of the heart.

‘Can I think about it?’ I ask. ‘You know my story, you know my deal. If I say yes, I want to mean it. I’m not going to mess you around.’

‘Take as long as you need,’ he decides, waving a hand. ‘Because then I’ve got even longer to plan something worthy of you.’

His words rattle around in my head for a full twenty-four hours until finally I have to talk to someone about it.

‘Houston,’ I say to JP and Harry, ‘we have a problem: I fancy the pants off of Nic. We kissed – well, a bit more than kissed to be fair – and now he wants to take me out and I’m scared.’

We’re setting up in the studio for a formal interview with JP so that we can get his take on everything that’s happened so far. We need to ask him about how it feels to have located Amelie now, and what his hopes are for moving forward.Does he want to Skype her, visit her, or is he happy just knowing she’s out there? He might not want to do anything, or choose to keep it simple with a letter. For true authenticity we haven’t asked him any of this off-camera, so that we get unrehearsed footage.

Harry and I move lights and figure out angles as JP ‘supervises’. I send William a quick message letting him know his Gramps is okay.

All Harry had idly asked as we moved tables and chairs and lighting was how my weekend had been, but because I didn’t know who else to tell – Candice isn’t speaking to me, Jackson is Nic’s friend now too – I was almost bursting to reveal the gossip about myself. Not talking about Nic is agony. I’ve thought about nothing but him for days now, and I can’t lie to myself any longer: I have a crush. A big old crush, and I need to talk about it.

JP hoots, ‘At last! She sees the light!’

I roll my eyes. ‘Don’t gloat,’ I warn him, wagging a finger. ‘It doesn’t suit you.’

‘My wife used to say the same thing,’ JP replies.

‘Shelley was a wise woman to keep you in check.’ I smile. He clucks appreciatively at my reply. Finding excuses to mention the person you were married to for seventy years is as much of a thrill as mentioning a new crush. He gets me. I get him. I issue him a wink.

Harry and I set up the boom mic and decide a wide shot from one end of the meeting room to the other works best, with the glass wall behind our subject and the rest of the co-working space in the background.

William texts back a request to make sure JP is hydrated, has had a snack, and taken his heart medication.

‘Oi, JP, where are your pills?’ I ask. He motions to his bag,and I retrieve them. Harry gives our set-up one last look-over through the viewfinder of the camera and decides he is satisfied.

‘Okay,’ says Harry. ‘You sorted, JP? Ready?’

‘As I’ll ever be,’ JP confirms, and I help him get up from the corner and into the armchair we need him in.

We decide the lighting and the angle and the sound are all good, and I settle in to talk to JP. He is on camera, and I am just off, so that he is looking to the right of the lens. We don’t know yet if we’ll keep in my questions or edit them out so that it simply seems like JP is recalling everything of his own accord. I have to be careful to leave gaps between JP answering a question and then asking my next one, to make editing easier later on.

‘JP,’ I start, once I know we’re rolling. ‘You asked us to help you find Amelie, a woman you knew seventy-eight years ago and haven’t seen in person since then. We’ve done that. Can you tell us a bit about how that makes you feel?’

JP nods, a sign that he understands what I’m asking.

‘I knew we’d find her,’ JP says, and he looks right at me as he says it, unflinching. ‘When you emailed us, it was like a sign from the heavens. Two young film-makers have questions about me and my life? You couldn’t make it up, could you? And then when you came to the house, I could tell you’d do it. I’m an old man, and William – my grandson …’ His gaze moves an inch directly to the camera then, like he’s making sure the invisible audience is up to speed on who is who. It’s quite endearing. Charming. ‘He’s my best mate in a lot of ways, but he didn’t know where to start. He’s book-smart, not street-smart. But he knew to invite you over, so I give him credit where credit is due.’

I smile.

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