Page 99 of One Night With You

We’ve been trying to talk at least once a week since we made up, and with Jackson still in recovery he’s been way more active on the group text, so it feels like the band is back together – or at the very least, have weathered their stormiest clouds yet.

‘The doc sounds great, getting closure with Nic sounds great. All you need now is a plan for once the course finishes. What is it, a few more months? Wait. Sorry. Should I know better than to ask?’

‘No, no,’ I say. ‘You can ask. I think I’m going to stick around here, actually. Just for a term, anyway, before I know next projects and whatnot. Janet, my supervisor, has asked if I might be interested in continuing to do some associate lecturer stuff for the undergrads, and I like it up here. I feel like I’ve got space to make things. Harry is going to stay too so … yeah. That’s the option. I need to submit coursework for the other modules, but it all feels doable – to think about what’s next whilst finishing stuff here. We’re submittedAlmost Doesn’t Countto a few festivals and things, so I know I talked about travelling, perhaps, but in actuality I think some roots up here would be nice.’

‘I just like to prepare myself for what’s to come,’ Candice says. ‘If there was even one iota of a chance you’d be coming back down this way …’

I know she’s going to tell me that they wouldn’t leave Maple Avenue if I was, that I could have my old room and this past seven months would have served as a lovely musical interlude before returning to everything I knew and loved.

‘Nah,’ I say. ‘But make sure you keep a blow-up mattress nearby for me, won’t you? I intend to visita lot.’

‘Well, I do have somebody down here I’d like you to meet,’ she says, and I swear to God she’s almost coy. Candice acting coy is like the Queen doing a striptease – an impossible feat of imagination. It’s so rare, so unheard of, that …

‘Candice. Is this about a man?’

‘I asked out Sterling.’

‘The postman?’ I cry. ‘You did it?! Oh my God, tell me everything.’

She goes into forensic detail about him dropping off a package for Jackson one morning, and how they laughed and chatted but he had to get on with his rounds, and something in her made her ask if he wanted company. So she did his round with him, talking non-stop for hours, and by the end of it they’d agreed to drinks at the local.

‘I’m pretty nuts about him,’ Candice says, and I grin approvingly.

‘Well, well, well …’ I say. ‘Who’s the old romantic now?’

‘Still you,’ she says, but she’s beaming, obviously very much in the early flushes of falling. ‘But I’m trying.’

‘I see that,’ I say. ‘I applaud it.’

‘And you?’ she asks. ‘You think this dinner really will be closure?’

I nod, slowly.

She sighs. ‘That man.’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘But it was so great to hang out as friends throughout the whole Jackson thing, and the baby comes any day now, I think, so I honestly don’t think we’ll see each other after that. Tonight feels like a nice goodbye. Again. Our second goodbye.’

‘Sounds like a second break-up,’ says Candice. ‘But you do you.’

‘I do feel for him – itisa less than ideal situation. I think he wants to draw a line under everything so he can enter this next …’

I say ‘chapter’ and Candice rolls her eyes and makes a gagging sound.

‘Well, what else should I call it?’

‘I don’t know, but it sounds like you’re about to dissect his “journey” over an instrumental version of a Westlife single any moment now, and that’s taking ittoofar.’ She smiles.

‘You’re impossible,’ I say.

‘I am,’ she replies. ‘What’s your point?’

‘My point is that I’m okay. If the documentary taught me anything, it’s that being brave with my heart makes me a superhero, not a needy wet cabbage or somehow less feminist or empowered. Talking to all these people, seeing myself on camera – God forbid – I just feel … stronger, I suppose.’

‘But … the love,’ she says. ‘What are you going to do with the love?’

‘Feel it,’ I say. ‘Love him as a friend, maybe, or love him from afar. I don’t know. That’s the beauty of it. I don’t need to know.’

‘I come bearing gifts,’ Nic says that night, waving a couple of carrier bags from the corner shop at me after I open the door. He’d sent a follow-up text asking what he should bring, and we ended up deciding that since I’m hosting, he’d happily cook for everyone.

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