‘I’ll pay it,’ Jess says. ‘It can be my treat.’
‘But the original booking’s only six quid a day,’ I point out. ‘This doubles it.’
‘I don’t care!’ Jess says, her eyes glinting like a toddler’s at Christmas. ‘It’s a convertible! Imagine how cool it will be.’
‘It’s January, Jess,’ I say. ‘It’s minus five out. It’ll be cold, not cool.’ But I’ve already taken on board the fact that I’ve lost this battle.
‘I want it,’ Jess says.
‘You know what?’ I laugh. ‘I spotted that!’
‘Gosh, it’s brand new!’ Jess comments. We’re out on the car park loading our bags into the boot of the Peugeot. ‘It even has that new-car smell.’
‘It really is,’ I say, as I slide into the driver’s seat and turn on the ignition. ‘It’s brand new. Seven hundred miles on the clock.’
‘You make that sound like a bad thing,’ Jess says, pulling her seatbelt on.
‘Well, yeah,’ I explain as I adjust my seat and fiddle with the mirror. ‘One tiny scratch anywhere on it and I’ll lose my deposit. I prefer it when they give me a wreck, to be honest. I like my rental cars to be so fucked-up that no one can tell if these are new dents or old ones.’
We navigate our way out of the airport and merge on to the M23. ‘This is back towards home, isn’t it?’ Jess asks.
‘Just for a bit,’ I tell her. ‘And then we head off west, round the M25. It was cheaper to rent from Gatwick, that’s all. Well, it was until you shelled out for a convertible.’
‘It was a fiver a day,’ Jess says. ‘Let it go.’
‘You’re right,’ I say. ‘And I have, officially, now let it go.’
‘Did you bring the printout?’ Jess asks.
‘Of course,’ I tell her, patting my breast pocket.
‘God!’ Jess says. ‘How exciting! Are you excited?’
‘I’m nervous,’ I reply. ‘Does that count?’
I wonder, as I drive, if I’m going to be able to stand Jess’s enthusiasm and I have to stifle a sigh – Jess is very good at picking up on sighs. I wonder if this trip together isn’t going to turn out to be a huge mistake.
Our relationship, since we met six months ago, has been very on and off. Very up and down, too.
Most of this is my fault, of course. I’m the one ‘with issues’, as they say. I’m the one who wakes up at 3 a.m. unable to breathe just because Jess is there beside me. I’m the one who feels trapped as soon as we spend an entire weekend together.
So this trip is something of a test, really. And I feel more scared than excited.
I met the lovely Jessica through work, during one of my first-ever assignments.
I’d finished uni in 2018. Some of my friends were taking a year out to travel, and I’d hoped momentarily that Dad would sub me so that I could do so, too. But in the end, after pretending to consider it, he’d said, ‘No.’ He and his new wife were buying a house, and he simply didn’t have any spare cash, he said. Mum had never had any spare cash, so I didn’t even bother asking her. Instead, I grieved a bit for my lost gap year and then started applying for jobs.
The first month at AMP had been training. It had taken place in an overheated windowless office where I struggled to even stay awake, let alone learn anything. There had been a dead spider plant in one corner and even the trainer looked at death’s door. He had grey hair and grey skin to match his grey suit, shirt and tie. He rarely modulated his tone of voice in any way.
But I had somehow survived it, and then was out on my own, travelling around London and going to fix software programs on clients’ computers. I bought a couple of off-the-rack suits and some flashy ties and considered myself quite the man. Now I was working, I wanted to look a bit more like Dad, maybe. Dad’s always been a bit of a dandy, so perhaps it’s a way of feeling like we have at least that in common.
Just a week after the training ended, they sent me to Haringey social services. I was to move ten people’s software from their ancient PCs on to new laptops. More and more of their staff were working from home, apparently. The third install was on Jessica’s computer, and as soon as I walked into her office, I thought, Wow.
I’d had a few girlfriends at college but none of my relationships had been that successful. Perhaps, deep down, the whole Zoe business had affected me more than I cared to admit. Mum had gone a bit crazy for a while, and maybe that, plus my sister’s unpredictability, had created some core beliefs about women. They’re perhaps what made me run away whenever my own relationships with girls started to get serious. Women weren’t to be trusted, I suspected, and I’m sure a shrink would link that somehow to my sister disappearing or my mum’s dodgy relationships, or both.
Anyway, Jessica struck me immediately as gorgeous. She’s from a multi-ethnic family, with deep olive skin, nice legs and a great figure. She’s got huge brown eyes peeping out from beneath a Pulp Fiction fringe (she actually irons her hair, if you can believe that), and the result is that she looks a little dangerous and more than a little cool, sort of Alesha Dixon, only with a secret-agent Villanelle edge to her. She has a unique style of her own, largely because she makes a lot of her own clothes, mixing and matching style #1, which is kind of punky, and style #2 which has a sort of K-pop vibe – candy colours and stripes galore. Anyway, she was working when I arrived, and said she had to finish what she was doing. So I sat and watched her work.
‘You’re not allowed to see any of this,’ she explained, pointing a fluorescent green fingernail at the screen. ‘So you’d probably better look away.’
I asked what the data onscreen that I wasn’t allowed to look at represented, and she explained how the software she was using worked, and even pulled up some very detailed information on what she called the ‘chaotic trajectory’ of one of the women she was helping. I thought of my sister immediately.
So even though I’d only known her for three minutes, I told Jessica a few details about Zoe and asked if her story might be in the computer, too. But Jessica, who it seemed took client confidentiality seriously, told me she couldn’t look and wouldn’t look and quickly shut down the program when I tried again to persuade her.
At the end of the week I asked her out. I’d had lunch with her and her colleagues a couple of times, accidentally on purpose (I suppose you could say that I stalked her) and it had been fun. I was pretty sure she was into me – she’d complimented me on my clothes a couple of times, after all.
Day after day I’d failed to ask her out, but by Friday I knew I needed to make a move because otherwise the probability was that I’d never see her again.
‘I don’t suppose you fancy getting a drink after work, do you?’ I finally spat out, at 5.25 p.m. I was in the process of packing up my laptop.
‘No,’ Jessica said. ‘Sorry, I don’t think so.’
‘Right,’ I muttered, throwing a bit of fake laughter into the mix. I zipped up my laptop case and swung it over my shoulder. ‘Well, at least that’s clear. You, um, have a good one.’