Jess.
‘Hi. Just grabbing a coffee in Nero. But we should maybe hurry up because…’ I pulled my phone away from my ear to check the time, ‘we’ve only got eight minutes so our platform should be up.’
‘Amazing, I’m desperate for a coffee. Wait there and I’ll come find you,’ said Jess, ignoring my mention of the train. In the eleven years I’d known her, she’d never been early, or on time, to anything. ‘Sorry, Italian blood,’ she’d say, shrugging, and not sounding remotely sorry whenever she arrived at the pub half an hour late.
I hovered at the door of Caffè Nero, scanning the station for a familiar blonde head. There she was, not moving with any sense of urgency, rolling along in a leather jacket with a red canvas bag hanging over her shoulder. She waved as she got closer.
‘Hello, my heart. Let me get this coffee. What an adventure, I can’t wait to see your parents, it’s been FOR EVER.’
‘Could I have a cappuccino please? Large?’ she asked the Caffè Nero lady, before turning back to me, grinning.
‘Guess what?’ she said.
I narrowed my eyes at her and took a swig of my coffee. ‘Er, dunno. Give me a clue.’
‘OK. How do I look this morning?’
I scrutinized her face. It was a face I knew almost as well as my own. Unfairly small nose, wide mouth, brown eyes which were generally thick with black liner, hair, well, generally all over the place but today it was pulled over one shoulder in a plait.
I shrugged. ‘Had your eyebrows done?’
She shook her head. ‘Guess again.’
‘Cappuccino,’ grunted the coffee lady, putting Jess’s cup down at the end of the counter.
‘Come on,’ I said, checking the time on my phone again. ‘We’ve got to go. Can’t stand round playing Guess Who?. Tell me on the train.’
Since it was early Saturday morning, the train was empty. One middle-aged man in a rugby shirt sitting at a table, reading his paper.
‘This one?’ I said, gesturing at a free table opposite him.
Jess nodded and sat. ‘OK, since you’re not going to guess it, I’ll tell you,’ she said. ‘Are you listening?’
‘Yup,’ I said, sniffing my coffee. I wasn’t even sure I could drink it. I felt like swallowing anything would make me gag.
‘Lil?’
‘Mmmm,’ I said, lifting the paper cup towards my mouth.
‘Did you hear me? I just said I think I’m in love.’
‘What?’ I put the cup back down on the table and frowned at her. ‘With Walt?’
Jess quickly shook her head. ‘No. No, not Walt. I’ve had to let him go. I’m talking about Alexi.’
‘Who’s Al— Ohhhhh. That guy from the exhibition?’
‘Exactly,’ said Jess. ‘We’ve been texting ever since that night and I saw him again last night. And he’s amazing, Lil. Like, properly amazing. Funny and clever and he’s into art and—’
‘Hang on,’ I said, holding my hands up in front of me as if stopping traffic. ‘We need to go back to the start. You met him on that Friday but you only saw him again last night? And now you’re in love with him?’
‘I know, I know. It’s mad. But he was travelling after the exhibition. In America. And then he got back on Thursday so he came over last night. That’s why I was asking about my face. I only got about two hours’ sleep and I probably look like hell.’
‘No no, you don’t at all.’ She didn’t. She hadn’t bothered to remove last night’s eye make-up so it was smudged, but she looked kittenish, like a 1960s model. Whenever I slept in my make-up I woke up looking like Miss Havisham.
‘I know I’ve said this before but I think he’s maybe… well, I just have a good feeling about this, Lil. You know when you know? Or you know when people say “you know when you know”? I think I know.’
I hate that saying. I thought I’d known with Jake and then look what happened. I didn’t know at all. And then I thought about Max. Ha, Max! Another thing I was wrong about. He’d seemed a nice one on our date but then off he’d scarpered, up that mountain quicker than Ranulph fucking Fiennes on speed.
‘Lil?’
Obviously I did not say any of this to Jess, who was radiating such excitement that I felt I had to be enthusiastic.
‘Exciting! Although poor old Walt. But how come I’m only hearing about this now?’
Jess looked guilty, pulling one side of her mouth into a grimace. ‘I didn’t want to say anything until I saw you because I just thought it might be mean, given the Max thing. I’m actually still so cross with him that I don’t even like saying his name. I never want to say it again.’
I laughed. ‘Thanks, love, but never mind about him,’ I said. ‘Tell me about last night. What did you do? How was the…’ I glanced across the aisle to the table with the man reading his paper, then I lowered my voice and turned back to Jess. ‘S-e-x?’
‘Why are you spelling it?’
‘Because…’ I flicked my head towards the table.
Jess rolled her eyes. ‘You’re so paranoid. And we didn’t have sex because I’ve got my period, which was annoying.’
I heard the man rustle his papers as Jess rattled on: ‘But we did everything else, then we just lay there for hours chatting. About my work, about his work, about my family and where he comes from. He’s got an aunt who lives in Liguria too. Isn’t that spooky?’
I listened to her while holding my cup in the air. It was when she mentioned her period that my brain clicked, as if in a film scene, like a police detective who has a brainwave in his car while eating a doughnut. My period. Where was my period? Shit. I was due this week. I’d finished a packet of the pill last week, hadn’t I? I picked up my phone and scrolled through my apps for my calendar. I opened it and counted by drumming my fingers on the table. Thumb, two, three, four, five.
‘What you doing?’ said Lex.
‘Counting,’ I said, still looking down at my phone screen.
‘Counting what?’
I took a breath and paused before going on. ‘I’m late.’
‘Huh?’ Jess leant towards me to look at the calendar. ‘Ohhhhhh. You mean period late?’
‘Mmm.’
‘You should have got it when?’
‘Er, like, Tuesday. Wednesday latest.’
‘OK, Tuesday,’ went on Jess. ‘And it’s now Saturday. But you’re never normally regular, right?’
I thought back. I’d had my first period when I was thirteen. I went to the girls’ loos during lunch break and was astonished to see rust in my pants. Why was I rusting? But then I’d wiped myself, seen blood all over the tissue and nearly screamed over the cubicles that I was dying, only to realize this must be the great moment of womanhood that my mother had told me about. I’d felt so pleased with myself. A grown-up! A woman! I couldn’t wait to get home and share the news. Mum embraced me with a hug when I told her, and, later that evening, I found a box of tampons and a copy of The Female Eunuch on my bed with the corner turned down on a particular page, a sentence underlined in faint pencil: If you think you are emancipated, you might consider the idea of tasting your own menstrual blood – if it makes you sick, you’ve a long way to go, baby. That didn’t seem a very sanitary idea to me. I’d ignored it and tucked the book underneath The Worst Witch on my bedside table.
Over dinner