‘A boat?’ Alex is standing in the kitchen in his socks and a crumpled, faded grey T-shirt. His jeans are slung low on his waist and when he clasps his hands together and raises them above his head in a stretch that turns into a yawn, I see a faint trail of dark hair that travels from his navel downwards to …
I look away and pick up a cloth, wiping the kitchen sink, which is already clean. ‘Yeah,’ I say, rinsing the cloth and folding it and hanging it up to dry on the tap. ‘Me and you and Becky. Emma’s away this weekend.’
‘Come on,’ Becky says, appearing in her dressing gown. ‘It’ll be fun.’
‘It’s all fun until someone drowns in a hideous boating accident,’ says Alex, grimly. But his mouth lifts in a smile and he nods, slowly.
‘All right. I think you two are insane. But all right.’
‘Excellent,’ says Becky, giving him a high five.
As he’s leaving the kitchen he turns, a hand on the door, his early-morning hair rumpled. He scratches his beard and looks from Becky to me, a slow smile stretching across his face. ‘Thanks, guys. I appreciate it.’
‘I told you he’d think it was a good idea,’ Becky says in a whisper, as we hear his feet on the last – squeaky – stair.
‘What are you two brewing up?’
I look at Rob, who has walked into the room and headed straight for the fridge. ‘Oh hello,’ I say. ‘It’s the scarlet pimpernel.’ Our anticipated cheese night didn’t happen in the end, because Rob was called in to work to cover someone else’s shift.
‘One of these days I’m going to have a week off,’ he says, in his deep Glasgow accent. ‘And you’ll be complaining ah’m under your feet.’
‘I think it’s a myth. You basically work 365 days a year as far as I can see,’ teases Becky.
‘I’ll have you know I’ve got today off to make up for going in on Monday, and I’ve got no plans.’
‘Ooh,’ Becky says, glancing at me. ‘Do you want some?’
‘Depends what they are.’ Rob grins. ‘You’re no’ wanting me to do DIY or something like that?’
She beckons him over. Looking pleased to be included, he comes and sits down, and listens while we explain that we’re on a mission to keep Alex’s mind off what today should have been.
‘I’d love that. And then mebbe when we get back I could make something nice for dinner. What about a curry? Alex likes curry, doesn’t he?’
‘Definitely.’
‘Right. What time are we leaving?’
Becky looks at the clock. ‘Oh God, not for ages yet. About half twelve?’
‘Great.’ Rob rubs his hands together. ‘I’m away to the shop to get some bits and pieces for dinner. I’ll make a feast that’ll blow his socks off. He won’t have a chance to think about whatshername when I’m done.’
In the time it takes me and Becky to get showered, find something to wear, and bumble around the house in a Saturday-morning sort of way, Rob has been out to the market on Portobello Road, picked up huge bagfuls of meat and the freshest of veg, and he’s standing at the kitchen worktop chopping onions and garlic with lightning precision. Despite his huge hands, the knife moves so quickly I can’t quite take it in.
‘I thought you were making dinner later?’ I pinch a piece of chopped red pepper.
‘Aye,’ he says, slapping my hand and laughing. ‘I’m just leaving this lot to marinate for a few hours.’
I peer inside the fridge and it’s stuffed full of various dishes, covered over with cling film, and smelling delicious already.
‘Right.’ He scrapes a heap of chopped-up stuff into a Pyrex dish, mixes it with what looks like some chunks of fish, and covers them over.
‘Can I help?’ I feel a bit useless standing there when the master is at work. He shakes his head.
‘Nah, that’s it all done.’ He runs the tap and washes his hands, shoving the prep stuff in the dishwasher and turning it on. ‘You guys ready?’
We walk down to Paddington where the boats are moored. There’s a little queue – families and tourists all waiting to get on board their boats. Everyone seems to be feeling the same as we are – slightly nervous and a bit giggly. I’m trying very hard not to worry about all the six million things that could go wrong. I’m not really a boat person. I’m surprised to discover that Becky knows exactly what she’s doing. She ushers us all onto a boat and we sit down. I’m peering around, looking for oars.
‘It’s electric,’ she says, laughing. She sits down at the back, and expertly steers us away from Merchant Square and the throngs of tourists who are milling around. There are loads of boats on the water, and yet somehow Becky manages to smoothly dodge out of the way, and before we know it we’re sailing along, the sun reflecting on the water. I’m glad I’ve brought my sunglasses. Alex is wearing his, too, and Rob – his pale freckled arms covered in sun cream – is wearing a baseball cap, and sitting at the steering end of the boat – I think it’s the stern, or maybe it’s the bow; one of those, anyway – with Becky. It’s clear he’s dying to have a turn.
I sit sideways on, my knees almost brushing against Alex’s jeans. He’s gazing out at the water, lost in thought.
‘It’s so quiet,’ he says, after a while.
Rob and Becky are chatting away about cooking stuff. I’m watching the way the long arms of the weeping willow branches reach down, their leaves swishing gently in the breeze. Families with dogs and pushchairs are walking along the canal-side and I think about Sophie and her trying-to-get-pregnant headstand and it makes me laugh.
Alex pulls his glasses off and looks at me suspiciously, his mouth turning up in amusement. ‘What’s the joke?’
I put a hand up to my mouth, hiding my smile. ‘Don’t ask.’
‘I’m glad we came out,’ Alex says, nudging my knee gently with his. ‘Thanks.’
‘It was Becky’s idea. She thought you might want to be distracted today, because …’ I tail off, taking my sunglasses off, too, and chewing on the arm of them. I look at him and push my hair back from my face.
‘I wanted to talk to you,’ Alex begins, in a low voice, changing the subject. ‘I’m really sorry if I put you on the spot the other week, asking you about Emma.’
‘It’s fine,’ I say, putting my glasses back on and tucking my hair behind my ears.
‘Look.’ Alex points over my shoulder. ‘There’s our café.’
I turn, carefully (I don’t want to fall out of the boat) and see we’ve reached Little Venice, and I can see the little pavement café where we stopped for coffee after our first walk together. It’s become a bit of a routine for us now, to end there after our walks and have a flat white and a chocolate brownie. I try to ignore the way it makes my toes go all curly inside my Converse that he called it our café.
‘Anyway,’ he carries on, and I turn around to look at him again. ‘I just wanted you to know that I really appreciated you listening. And I’ve broken things off – well, not that it was a thing, really, but you know what I mean – with Emma.’ His voice is low.
‘How did she take it?’ I ask. No wonder the house has felt a bit weird.
‘Fine.’ He clears his throat. ‘Well, fine-ish.’
‘Is that why she’s been a bit low-profile?’
He nods, and picks at a loose thread on his jeans, pulling it until it snaps and then twisting it absent-mindedly between his fingers. ‘She went back to stay with her parents.’
‘God.’ I try and think when I saw her last. ‘I knew she was going away but hadn’t realised where to.’
‘Yeah.’
A boat passes us, and we all laugh at two spaniels wearing doggy life jackets who are sitting on the table, their owners holding hands and steering the boat together.
‘D’you want a go, Jess?’ Becky motions to the tiller. Or is it the rudder? Whatever.
I shake my head. ‘I think the fact I don’t know if it’s a tiller or a rudder is probably a good reason to stay where I am.’
‘Alex?’ Becky asks.
‘Go on, then.’ He grins at me and they perform a slightly dodgy manoeuvre that makes the boat wobble alarmingly.
‘Next stop—’ he shades his eyes and peers ahead ‘—The Pirate Castle.’
‘The Pirate Castle? As in an actual castle?’ I ask.
‘Nope.’ He laughs. ‘It’s actually a charity that do stuff on boats with kids from disadvantaged backgrounds.’
‘How do you know so much about it?’ We sail past and there’s a group of kids in life jackets climbing onto a boat.
‘The company I used to work for did some fundraising for them.’
‘So they weren’t just about corporate greed?’ I tease him.
‘No, they did some good stuff.’ He pushes his hair back from his face. ‘I mean there was a fair old amount of corporate crap in there as well.’
I think about my ill-fated date with whatshisname, the investment banker. That was on a boat, too. I seem to be floating my way through my first year in London.
And then we’re back at London Zoo, the enclosure a huge geometric shape that stretches high above the trees.
‘D’you think we’ll see our giraffe again?’ Alex peers upwards.
A group of people sunbathing on the top of a houseboat raise their glasses to us as we pass them, and Becky takes out a pack of beers from the bag she’d stowed under the table.
‘Cheers,’ we say, clinking the necks of our bottles together.
We float on, lazily, up to Camden Lock, where there’s a traffic jam of boats, and back round again, heading towards home. My stomach rumbles so loudly that it makes Alex laugh.
‘Shall we go and get food after this?’ he asks. He doesn’t know that Rob’s been hard at work all morning, creating a feast for us to have when we get back. I look at Rob, raising my eyebrows in query. He nods, subtly.
‘Why don’t you two go and get a snack when we drop this back at the pontoon, and Rob and I will head back?’
If I didn’t know Becky better, I’d swear she was trying to put us in a situation where we were forced together, alone. But a) Becky’s not a matchmaking sort (she’s way too practical for that) and b) that’s not what today is about. We’re supposed to be taking Alex’s mind off his not-wedding. And she’s got absolutely no idea how I feel about him. I think I’ve done a pretty good job of hiding it. I hope I have, anyway.
We get off near Primrose Hill and meander back across the park, stopping to pick up sandwiches, which we eat, sitting on the grass, legs crossed, facing each other. The sun is still bursting out of the sky. It’s the perfect day for a wedding, I think. Alex is quiet. I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing. I lie back on the grass, looking up at the sky, soaking up the heat.
He lies down beside me, so close I can feel the fizz of my skin prickling at his proximity. My heart hasn’t got the there’s nothing going on memo and is currently banging very loudly in my ears.
‘Weird, isn’t it?’ he says, still looking at the sky. He shades his eyes against the sun.
‘What?’
He reaches out, so the side of his arm just brushes against mine. I feel a whole rainbow of butterflies burst into life in my stomach.
‘What might have been. Near misses.’
I think he’s talking about the wedding. He’s definitely talking about the wedding. Isn’t he?
I lie there, keeping very still.
And then he reaches out, and for a second his little finger touches mine. I can’t work out if it’s an accident or not. I don’t pull my hand away. I just lie there, looking up at the clouds, wondering how the tiniest bit of physical contact can leave me feeling like someone shot a bolt of electricity from my head to my feet. I’m fizzing like I’d glow in the dark.