Page 97 of One Night With You

They’re nice enough, and are obviously passionate about what they’re doing.

‘The world probably doesn’t need another mental health app,’ Craig acknowledges, ‘but we’ve almost got funding for the next five years, and you can take this away with you – this is the whole plan, the full insight into what we’re trying to do. We just need somebody the investors can see knows how to keep us fiscally tight. We’re both dads, both uninterested in the hustle or the grind, but both care deeply about adding something to the world.’

John shrugs. ‘Sappy as that sounds.’

‘Sappy as that sounds,’ Craig echoes.

I take a walk around town after I’ve said goodbye, fairly certain they’re going to give me an offer. I’m not hugely bothered about what I do – I’ve done corporate, I’ve done impressive business cards, all of that. I suppose I feel like there’s been a bit of an internal shift since finding out about the baby. Ruby called it. She said I’d feel this way. How strange to know she knows me well enough to get that before I do, but we still can’t be together. My phone rings. It’s Sinead.

‘You impressed them,’ she tells me. ‘They want to make a formal offer. The question is, then, what did you think of them?’

I accept. By the time I’m back in London and ready to hand in my notice at Hoare’s, I’ve got contracts for my new mortgage and my new job lined up, both in Liverpool. I don’t waver on this next step at all. Am I ready to be a father? Fuck knows. Am I ready to try anyway? Abso-bloody-lutely. I thought I’d be in London for so much longer and experience so much more, but if I have to leave, this is the very best reason.

41

Ruby

‘I think this is it,’ Harry says, squinting at the computer screen through his glasses, which he switched to about ten hours ago – nine hours after we first sat in the editing suite together and got to work. We smell, we’re tired, and we’re also wired. We hand in the doc in the morning. I lean back in my chair and go to put my arms behind my head before I think better of it. Harry notices me change my mind. We’ve been working and working – it’s been three months since Paris, Christmas and New Year passing in a blur – our new deadline for submission mere hours away.

‘Do I stink?’ I ask.

‘I didn’t want to say anything.’ He nods to my armpits. ‘But yeah.’

‘You stink too,’ I retort. ‘But truly, this might be the smell of …’ I struggle to find the word.

‘A story pretty bloody well told?’

‘As somebody who features in this quite a lot,’ I say. ‘I feelweird saying this. But yes? Maybe? I don’t even know what my own name is and might be on the verge of tears through sheer sleep deprivation but …’

Harry reaches out a clammy hand and grabs my own. ‘It’s good,’ he says. ‘I think we can be proud of this.’

JP agrees. We submit it to the department and then drive to his house after a couple of hours’ sleep at each of our homes, not to mention showers. William stays to watch it too.

‘Wow,’ William says once it’s done. ‘Guys, this is actually really, really good.’

‘Actually?’ I say.

‘I knew you’d get all those kinks sorted through in the end,’ says JP. ‘And before I kick the bucket, too! How’s that for good work!’

‘Gramps, I do wish you’d stop saying things like that. It’s not … normal.’

‘Ah.’ I smile. ‘He’s a dead man walking. Let him have his gallows humour.’

William looks shocked, and then amused. ‘Jesus,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘I can’t believe I ever agreed to let him spend time with you fools.’

‘They’re my fools.’ JP smiles.

‘It’s a proper journey you take us on,’ William presses. ‘It’s really clever. We think it’s going to reveal one truth about love to us, and then it reveals something else that was there right in front of us all along, we just didn’t see it.’

Harry revels in the insight. ‘Say more about that,’ he goads, and William obliges.

‘Almost Doesn’t Count, you know – you’re actually saying almost absolutely counts, because it can often bring you closer to the love you’re supposed to be with. Although, Isuppose … well, it’s a shame Nic isn’t in it, really. He’s so obviously in love with you that it doesn’t make sense, now I think about it, for him not to say so on camera. Unless …’ William takes in my expression, which I assume is one of agog fly-catching. ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Sorry. Did you not know? I thought everyone knew.’

‘Howdon’tyouknow?’ Harry says to me, and I shoot him a look that prompts him to clarify: ‘Youdoknow that he’s in love with you?’

‘This is an awful lot of speculation,’ I say. ‘Come on now. Let’s not talk ill of somebody not here to defend himself.’

‘Oh, darling, he’s in Liverpool, not the ground,’ says JP, drolly. ‘Did you really not know?’

---