We Met in December

‘Everyone except Rob.’

I watch Emma, who has helped herself to another drink, but she’s added a mixer this time and she’s actually drinking it, not downing it in one. She’s sitting on the edge of the table, her long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. ‘Ah, yes. The mysterious Rob,’ she says, arching an eyebrow and smiling. She reaches over and takes a handful of tortilla chips. ‘Have you met him, Jess? I’m beginning to think maybe he’s a figment of Becky’s imagination.’

‘Yeah, Becky,’ says Alex. He shoves the bottle on the wonky wooden shelf over the kitchen sink and grabs a plate, turning to look at her, jokingly. ‘What’s the story with Rob?’

‘He is real, I promise you.’ Becky shakes her head, laughing.

‘Of course. Man of few words and many knives.’ Emma points to the kitchen counter. ‘Where are they, Becky? They were there the other day when I had breakfast then they disappeared.’

But Becky has her head in the freezer, trying to find a bag of ice, and doesn’t reply.

I take a look at Emma while she’s occupied with assembling a fajita wrap. She’s properly beautiful. She has a very attractive, angular face, with an aquiline nose and huge doe eyes. She looks like she’s made to swan about in Notting Hill, hanging out in expensive restaurants, being treated to expensive lunches. I pull up a chair at the big table and have a moment of feeling scruffy, freckled, and very suburban. Almost like someone who’s been living with their grandparents and working in an office in a seaside town a million miles from London, which isn’t surprising.

‘So what we know is this: Rob’s a chef, which means he works really long hours and we never see him because he’s home when we’re all out at work, and then out when we get back,’ Emma begins. ‘He turned up the other day, dumped all this expensive-looking kitchen kit on the table, then looked at his watch and said he had to run.’

‘Then I put his stuff in the big larder cupboard,’ Becky continues, banging a bag of ice against the edge of the table until the cubes separate. ‘Because three blocks of intimidating kitchen knives sitting out on the work surface was going to give me nightmares and I had visions of a serial killer turning up and murdering us all in our beds.’

‘I think a serial killer would probably have their own kit, don’t you?’ Alex says, looking thoughtful.

The three of them look at each other and laugh and I do too, but a split second behind. It’s weird – like being back at school or when you start a new job and you have that new-girl feeling when you’ve missed the boat a little bit. I watch as Alex, Emma and Becky make themselves fajitas from the food laid out on the table.

‘Dig in, Jess,’ Becky says, shoving the bowl of guacamole towards me.

I’m still reeling a bit from the unexpected handsomeness of Alex, and trying not to look at him. Except I can’t help taking a sneaky look when I think he won’t notice, and he glances in my direction and our eyes meet and I think that there’s a very strong possibility that I might inadvertently shout ‘PHWOAR’ by mistake because really he is very handsome indeed and the other two seem to be completely oblivious.

Becky’s telling a story about something that happened at work and the two of them are listening and laughing. Becky’s always been the most sociable of my university friends. We met in fresher’s week and we’ve been friends ever since. I studied English lit, she studied law, but whereas I left and found myself back in Bournemouth working for a perfectly nice, safe little marketing company, and ensconced in a relationship with Neil, Becks headed to London where she got a job with a law firm and started working her way up the ladder. And then it all went slightly pear-shaped for me back home, and it turned out to be a (mostly) good thing and now, I still can’t believe that this – I look out the window at the rainy street below, cars splashing past and the streetlights lighting everything with an orange glow – is my new life.

I let the evening wash over me for a while, and because they’re all so chatty, nobody really notices that I’m not saying much. Emma hands me a drink. She’s still in work clothes – very neat in expensive-looking boots and a shirt dress printed all over with tiny foxes.

‘So. When are you joining us?’ she asks.

She’s very formal, I think, watching her as I take a sip. Alex and Becky have whizzed up some sort of pomegranate cocktail with the ice and tequila he brought. It tastes like something you’d drink by the pool, instead of on a rainy December evening in London.

‘Not until after New Year. I’ve got a holiday booked with friends – we’re going skiing.’

‘Ooh, lovely. Christmas skiing.’ She looks impressed.

‘It’s not quite as fancy as it sounds. My friend Gen got a last-minute deal through a contact of hers, so we’re going to Val d’Isère on a coach.’

Gen’s friend – an actor, like her – was working in a call centre for a travel company when the deal had come through. We’d been making promises to each other for years that we’d go skiing again, after a school trip to Andorra a million years ago, and when this came up it felt like the perfect time. As soon as I’d said yes, the prospect of living every moment on a twenty-one-hour-long coach ride had started to pall slightly, but that was a minor detail.

‘Ouch.’ Emma looked sympathetic. ‘That’s a whole day on a coach. Still, it’ll be worth it for all the apres-ski and the gorgeous posh ski totty. You might meet a millionaire.’

I steal a quick look in Alex’s direction, thinking that actually, I’d be quite happy with someone like him, thank you very much, but give Emma a smile of agreement. ‘You never know.’

Becky fiddles with her phone, changing the music. She’s wrapped some silvery Christmas ribbon around her head like a halo, and starts singing along as Michael Bublé begins crooning from the speaker on the shelf above the sink.

‘Oh God, Becks,’ I groan. ‘Do we have to have Bublé again?’

‘It’s Christmas,’ she says, pulling me up by the waist and waltzing me out of the kitchen door and into the hall. She puts a finger to her lips, shushing me before I can protest. The hall is painted an odd shade, somewhere between violet and grey, and hung with a collection of floral paintings that must’ve belonged to Becky’s grandparents. There’s a huge spiky-leaved plant towering over us in the corner by the stairs. I dodge sideways before Becky waltzes me straight into it.

‘What d’you reckon?’ Her voice is an urgent whisper.

‘They seem nice.’ I try to sound non-committal when what I want to know is why on earth she’d omitted to mention that one of our flatmates was ridiculously gorgeous. ‘How’d you know Emma again?’ I ask.

‘Oh, she’s one of those friend-of-a-friend people. You know, you’re in the same pubs, vaguely know each other through a WhatsApp group, that sort of thing. I can’t remember how we met in the first place. But she was looking for somewhere because the girl she was flat-sharing was moving her boyfriend in, and I had one room left. I’d already sorted you and Alex—’ my stomach does a disobedient sort of swooping thing ‘—and it just seemed like she’d be a nice addition. Everyone’s pretty chilled out, so it should be quite a nice laid-back sort of house.’

‘She seems nice,’ I say, lamely.

‘God, I must pee,’ says Becky, and leaves me standing in the hallway.

I hadn’t noticed, but the carpet looks like someone threw up on a giraffe – it’s yellow and brown with greenish swirls and it clashes so badly with the lilac walls that it must have been the height of fashion at some point in the 1970s. Nobody could choose that colour scheme just randomly, surely?

I head back to the kitchen, realising that I’m feeling a bit fuzzy round the edges. Emma’s kicked off her boots now, and she’s sitting at the table chatting animatedly to Alex, who is sitting opposite. He pushes out the dining chair next to him, beckoning me to join them.

‘Come and get something else to eat.’

He passes me a plate stacked high with tortillas. I think perhaps it’ll soak up some of the alcohol.

‘So how do you know Becky?’ He stretches across the table for the cheese, placing it between me and Emma.

I take a tortilla and spread it with sour cream. ‘I feel like I should make something up that doesn’t make me sound as tragic as this will.’

Alex raises an eyebrow. He really does have a very nice face. Emma gets up and goes and throws a load of ice and stuff in the blender, shouting, ‘Sorry,’ as she turns it on, drowning out my words as I’m about to start explaining.

Emma tips a pink slush into our glasses and Alex tastes it, pulling a face. ‘Bloody hell, that’s like rocket fuel. I’ll make the next one, or we’ll all end up with alcohol poisoning.’

‘We met at uni,’ I say, starting again. ‘I was crying in the loos because I’d just dumped my boyfriend back home for someone who’d promptly cheated on me a week later.’

Emma laughs, but not unkindly. ‘Oh God, we’ve all been there.’ She picks at some slices of red pepper while I’m stacking a tortilla wrap with chicken and cheese and more sour cream, just for good measure. I roll it up and realise there’s no way of eating it that doesn’t involve half of it falling down the front of my top and the other half spilling all over my chin, so I end up sort of dangling it in mid-air.

‘So I took her out, bought her three vodka and limes, and told her the secret was to go out and lay his ghost,’ Becky chimes in. I hadn’t even noticed her coming back.

‘The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else?’ Emma says, taking a drink. She’s one of those people who manages to just radiate cool. If I’d said that I’d have blushed extravagantly and probably got my words all tangled up into the bargain.

‘I think so,’ I say. ‘I wish I could remember lines like that. I never think of the right thing to say until hours later, when I’m lying in bed reliving the whole conversation.’

‘God, me too.’ Alex looks at me and does an upside-down sort of smile, and the sides of his eyes crinkle a bit as he looks directly at me. I feel like we’re on the same team for a second. It’s nice. He lifts up the tequila bottle, waving it in Emma’s direction. ‘Oh go on,’ he says. ‘Throw caution to the wind. D’you want to make another one of those – whatever it was you just made?’

I feel like the world is starting to sway gently – or maybe I am. But I’m just the right sort of happily pissed where I feel like the edges have been blurred a bit and I don’t feel as self-conscious as I usually do.

The other half a bottle of tequila later and we’ve managed to persuade Becky to put on something other than Christmas music. We’re all sitting round the table, which is scattered with empty plates. The window isn’t even open, but we can hear a gang of teenagers passing, singing Christmas carols and laughing loudly. I get up and look outside, marvelling at the idea that outside there are eight million people, all living London lives, and in just a couple of weeks I’m going to be one of them. It’s just an ordinary street, but to me it feels full of magic and promise.

I turn around to look at my new housemates. Emma’s on her phone again, absent-mindedly twirling a lock of hair around her finger. I notice she has long, manicured red nails.

Alex looks up at me and grins. ‘D’you think you can cope with living with us lot?’ He starts stacking plates.

‘No,’ says Becky, firmly, tapping him on the hand. ‘I’ll do it in the morning. This is a get-to-know-each-other evening. When we’re all in and settled, we can sort out a kitchen rota and all that boring stuff, but tonight is margaritas. The night is young. Let’s play the name game.’

‘Oh my God.’ I roll my eyes at her. There’s a point in every evening when she insists we do this. Before anyone else realises what’s happening, she’s got a packet of Post-it Notes out and she’s handing them out. ‘Everyone has to write the name of someone famous and stick it on the forehead of the person to their left.’

‘And to think Rob’s missing this,’ says Alex, pressing the Post-it Note to my forehead. ‘D’you want another drink?’

I feel distinctly head-spinny already, but I nod. This is my new London life. I can drink tequila and have avocado on toast and be cool. Well, cool-ish. Cooler than I was living back home. Not that there’s anything wrong with back home, of course. I swallow a little gulp of sadness that sneaks up on me out of nowhere – just thinking about leaving Nanna Beth back there and me being all the way up here. She’s already lost Grandpa, and now I’m going, too.

‘Oh my God,’ says Becky, seeing the name written on my forehead. She snorts with laughter.

‘Am I a woman?’ I say, when it’s my turn.

‘You’re a phenomenon, I think you’d say,’ Alex replies, grinning at me.

Emma guesses hers almost straight away (I think she’s pleased she got to be Meghan Markle) and in no time there’s just me and Alex, trying desperately to work out who we are.

‘Do I have a unique blond hairstyle?’

We snort with laughter.

‘Am I a megalomaniac? Am I the best president ever in the history of presidents? Is this the biggest Post-it Note, bigger and better than any Post-it Notes that have ever been before?’

Alex has already guessed, but he’s making us laugh so hard with his terrible Donald Trump impressions that we’re all doubled over, and mine falls off my forehead and onto the ground where I can’t help sneaking a peek.

‘Am I … Kim Kardashian?’ I sit up, triumphant, waving the Post-it Note in the air.

‘Yes.’ Becky takes it from me. ‘You’re totally cheating, but you are definitely Kim Kardashian.’

‘And I am definitely going to bed.’ Emma pushes her chair away from the table and stands up, looking at the kitchen clock. ‘It’s almost eleven, and I’ve got a killer day tomorrow. Back-to-back meetings.’

‘But how can you leave us when we’re just getting started?’ Alex is standing by the sink now, brandishing a bottle of Prosecco and some sort of pink liqueur. ‘I was going to make one of my signature cocktails.’ He rummages in the fridge. I can’t help but notice his nice arms again – I’ve always had a thing about nice arms, the kind that look like they’d wrap you up and make you feel safe. Oh, and the way that when he reaches up to get some orange juice from the top shelf his T-shirt rucks up, showing a strip of faintly tanned skin.

But I am absolutely not looking at any of this, because I am here to work, and he is my new housemate, and there will be none of that here. I blame the tequila for making my imagination run away with me.

But if I was looking …

‘Night, all.’ Emma picks up her phone and heads off. ‘Have a great holiday, Jess. See you in the New Year.’

‘You got any more ice, Becky?’ Alex asks as he looks in the freezer.

‘Nope.’

I know she’s told us not to clear up, but I’m absent-mindedly piling plates and tipping leftover salsa into the bin. It’s a distraction. The alternative is sitting with my chin in my hands staring with undisguised admiration at Alex, and that wouldn’t be a good look.

‘God I’m dying for some chocolate. I tell you what, I’ll go get some and grab some ice from Tesco Express while I’m at it.’

‘We’ll clean up.’ Alex stands up from the freezer and turns around. ‘And then I’ll make cocktails. You don’t think Rob will mind that we’ve borrowed his blender thing to crush ice?’

I pull a face. ‘I dunno. I think it’s knives chefs are funny about. Anyway, that thing’s a monster. As long as we clean it out, I’m sure he won’t object.’

Alex pokes an experimental finger at the huge behemoth of a blender standing on the worktop. It roars into life for a second and he steps backwards.

‘Bloody hell. That thing could take your arm off.’

‘Back in a sec,’ Becky says, wrapping a scarf around her face and pulling on a bobble hat.

‘Don’t freeze,’ I say, looking out the window. ‘Oh look, the rain’s turned to snow.’

‘Really?’ Alex and Becky join me, looking out. The snow is falling in flurries, swirling in the spotlight glow of the street lamp outside the front of our new home. It’s disappearing as soon as it hits the wet pavement, but it looks gorgeously Christmassy and romantic nonetheless. For a moment we all stand in silence, watching it, all lost in our own thoughts.

Michael Blooming Bublé is playing in the background again.

It only takes me and Alex a moment to clear up the table, shoving the rubbish and recycling in the bins, and loading up the ancient dishwasher.

‘My last place didn’t have one,’ Alex says, unwrapping a dishwasher tablet and shoving it in. ‘This thing might be prehistoric, but it’s a luxury. No more waking up in the morning to last night’s dishes.’

‘Were you in a house-share before?’ I ask.

He pauses for a second. ‘Mmm, sort of.’

I get the feeling there’s more to it than he’s saying, but I don’t want to push it.

‘And you used to work with Becky?’

I am standing by the sink, rinsing my hands, aware he’s standing close beside me and putting glasses back on the shelf. I can feel the heat of his body and it makes the tiny hairs on my arms stand up. This is the tequila talking, I think. Tequila, and the fact that I have been single for a year and the only reason I fancy him is because I’ve been told there’s no relationships allowed in this house so my brain is being contrary. He is Alex, a friend of my friend Becky, and my new housemate. And he is one hundred per cent off limits. I take a step sideways, drying my hands on the dishtowel and spending an excessive amount of time hanging it back up, neatly.

‘I used to work with Becky, yeah,’ says Alex, after a long pause.

I turn around.

‘Turns out that thirty is the perfect time to have my first oh my God what am I doing with my life crisis.’

I find myself smiling. ‘Me too.’

‘So she’s found herself a houseful of strays. That’s very Becky, isn’t it? She likes to think she’s all corporate law and hard as nails, but I reckon she’s just as much of an old hippy as her mum. So what brings you here?’ he asks.

‘Oh God. It’s a long story.’

Alex takes four limes from the fridge, then passes me two and a kitchen knife. ‘Chop these, then, and tell all. It makes me feel better to know I’m not the only one making what everyone thinks is the biggest mistake of my life.’

He’s taken a lemon zester and made a stack of bright green furls of lime zest, and he’s putting them all together in a little grassy heap. I realise I’ve stopped chopping and I’m staring at his hands like some sort of weirdo.

‘So I did English literature at uni. I’ve always loved books, and I used to dream of living in London and working in a publishing house, but it just seemed like you had to know someone in the business or have enough money to get an internship and work for nothing, and I had student loans to pay off, and bills to pay, and …’ I pause, thinking of the responsibility of making sure that Nanna Beth and Grandpa were okay, because my mum was never around. I take a deep breath. ‘Anyway, so I’d pretty much given up on that idea – I did look, but the money was terrible, and there was no way I could afford anywhere in London to live that wasn’t basically a broom cupboard.’

He laughs. ‘I actually know someone who lived in a cupboard. His bed literally folded down at night, then he’d fold it up, close the door, and go off to work.’

‘Exactly.’ Our eyes meet for a second and we laugh at the idea of it. London is strange.

‘And then Becky came along?’

‘Not quite. Basically, I was helping look after my grandpa and then he died.’

‘Oh.’ He turns to look at me, his brown eyes gentle. ‘I’m sorry.’

I shake my head and curl my fingers into my palm, because I’m still at the stage where tears sneak up unexpectedly, and alcohol helps them along. ‘It’s okay. Anyway, my grandma – Nanna Beth – decided that she wanted to move into a sheltered accommodation place, and I’d been staying in their spare room.’ I smile, as I always do, thinking about her. Everyone should have a grandma like mine. ‘And then – when I’d moved back in with my mother, temporarily, Becky called and asked if I’d be interested in joining her house-share. My Nanna Beth kept telling me I should follow my dreams and do what I really wanted to because we only get one life, and I was trying to convince myself that actually, I was perfectly happy. Then I saw a job in The Bookseller – because I couldn’t help looking, even though I knew it wasn’t ever going to happen – and I thought I’d apply even though I had no chance, and I still can’t believe they’ve given me it. And—’ I stop and draw breath. It’s all come out in a huge garbled sentence, just the same way that it all happened. ‘One minute there I was thinking about it, and wondering how I was going to find somewhere to live and deal with my mother, and then next thing—’

‘Here we are. That feels like fate,’ Alex says, finishing my spoken and unspoken sentences.

‘It does, a bit,’ I say, trying to make a joke of it. ‘What about you?’

‘Oh I was all set. Law career on the up, nice – tiny – flat in Stokey, the lot. But I knew something was missing.’

I chop the limes into pieces, waiting for him to carry on.

‘Anyway, I kept going for a while, but it was nagging away at me. I went into law to make a difference, but I realised that most of my life was going to be spent behind a desk pushing paper around, and it was boring me to death. And – some stuff happened.’ He pauses for a second, and then says. ‘And here I am.’

‘So you’re not doing law now?’

He shakes his head. ‘No. That’s how I knew Becky – we worked together. But unlike most other people, she was brilliant when I told her I was giving up. You need a friend like that on your side.’

‘I agree,’ I say, thinking of her insistence that I come and stay here, and the ridiculously low rent she’d suggested. I’d looked up Rightmove to see how much it would cost to rent a place like this, and I’d almost fainted. Basically a month’s rent for a house this size was my annual publishing salary. When I’d mentioned it, Becky had just snorted and said something about redressing the balance, which had sounded suspiciously like something her mother would have said, so maybe the hippy stuff had rubbed off a bit after all.

‘So,’ I say, wincing slightly as a bit of lime juice squirts up and hits me in the face. ‘What are you doing now?’

‘Training to be a nurse,’ Alex says.

‘No way.’ I put down the knife and look at him. ‘That’s amazing.’

‘Yeah.’ Alex gives me that same lopsided smile and looks relieved. ‘That’s not quite the reaction I got when I told people. It was more like: Oh my God, why are you giving up a job that pays megabucks to be treated like crap, working for a failing NHS?’

Not only is he gorgeous, but he’s noble and ethical as well. He’s like a unicorn, or something.

‘Well I think what you’re doing is brilliant.’

Alex tips the limes into a cocktail shaker and looks at me, his face serious. ‘Thanks, Jess.’

I feel a bit wibbly. Like we’ve had a bit of a moment here together. Like we’ve bonded.

I pass him a glass, and we drink our cocktails and look out of the window at the Notting Hill street. He looks at me for a moment, just as I’m glancing at him.

For a second, our eyes meet again, and something inside me gives the sort of fizzing sensation that I’ve read about in books (oh, so many books) and never once felt in real life, not even in the four years I was with Neil, and he and I had talking about getting married.

I’m almost thirty, and I’d pretty much accepted that my secret love of terrible, brilliant, curl-up-on-the-sofa romantic movies had somehow cursed me. And yet here I was, looking directly into the chocolate-drop eyes of a man who looked like I’d ordered him online from the romantic movie store.