Normal people would probably take advantage of the first Saturday night off in what felt like forever to go out and get hammered. Normal people – I think, as I stretch luxuriously, revelling in the fact that I’ve got the entire sitting room to myself and the house is empty – don’t work the sort of week I’ve just worked. I put my feet up on the coffee table and sink into the battered pink sofa. This is exactly what I need.
‘There’s been an explosion in the Heart Surgery ward,’ says a voice, urgently. No, I have no idea why watching a hospital drama on a Saturday night is my idea of relaxation but it’s the kind of mindless thing I need right now. It bears precisely no relation to my experiences so far of hospital life, but I quite like it for that. For one thing, they’re always using their phones in the ward. Everyone knows there’s generally only one spot in the entire hospital where you can get 4G service, and it’s usually down a corridor near a supplies cupboard. You can always find them if you’re in a hospital – just look for the spot where a disparate collection of NHS Trust staff are hovering, fingers tapping furiously, catching up on group chats or making plans for the end of their shift. Take it from me. It’s the most useful information I’ve learned so far.
So, the plan is this: Sunday off, after six days working on the trot. Lie-in, lazy, scrambled eggs and toast sort of morning, followed by a walk around Hyde Park with Jess. The blossom’s gorgeous this time of year, and we can have a wander up to look at Buckingham Palace, maybe do the Royal Mews, and be tourists for the day. That’s assuming she comes home, of course. When she’d headed out earlier she looked – well. I’d had a moment when I’d had to remind myself sharply that just because I was used to hanging out with her in jeans, a hoody and her Converse, didn’t mean she couldn’t scrub up and look frankly amazing for a date. I’d made a bit of a joke out of it, and to be honest I was still feeling a bit guilty that I hadn’t been generous enough to just tell her how great she’d looked. Emma had done Jess’s hair, and her eyes were huge and smoky with dark shadow all around them. She’d looked amazing.
Thinking of Emma reminds me of what had happened next. I had nipped upstairs to get my phone charger and overheard Emma talking on the phone, her door ajar.
‘Yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing now. I think this evening I’m having a night in.’
There was a pause, and Emma had laughed. ‘I suppose, yes. Boyfriend … no.’
I knew I shouldn’t be listening, but that didn’t stop me. It was as if time stood still for a second.
A tinkly laugh. ‘Yeah. Yes. You’ll meet him eventually, I promise. I’m working on it. Playing it cool.’
I don’t know what made me listen. Some sort of weird sixth sense she was talking about me – or us, not that there was an us. At least, I hadn’t thought there was. We’d had several this is nothing serious, definitely just a bit of fun type conversations.
‘Yeah, I’d love you to meet him. I might see if he fancies dinner next week – I mean that might be a bit soon, but—’
There was a silence and then Emma laughed, and I realised that no, hang on, she was clearly talking about someone else. She must’ve met someone. I puffed out a breath, which was half a sigh of relief and half – well, nobody wants to feel like they’ve just been given the silent heave-ho without even being consulted, do they? Emma said something else I couldn’t catch, and then laughed again.
‘Yes, he’s cute. Used to be a lawyer. He’s training to be a nurse.’
I looked down at the skin on my knuckles, which was turning white as I gripped the stair wall. Who was Emma talking to? And – God. I felt my face invert in a grimace. The deal we’d both agreed was that it was nothing more than a friends with benefits sort of thing. Nobody getting too involved, nobody getting hurt.
I’d crept back downstairs, keen to make sure she didn’t realise I’d overheard.
In the end, half an hour later, Emma had popped her head around the kitchen door and said she was off out for last-minute drinks with a friend, and that maybe she’d see me later, if I was still up.
We’d slept together for the first time on New Year’s Eve, and now it’s April. I suppose it was naïve of me to think something could stay so casual for that long. It’s not Emma. She’s lovely. But after Alice – no way. Signing up for my new career meant walking away from a relationship I thought was for life, and I’m not taking that sort of risk again, not now, with years of training to do. I’m just starting to feel that, actually, I’m okay on my own, and I’m getting over the whole Alice thing.
I let myself think about Alice, which is something I don’t often do. I’m over her – but I don’t want to leap into anything else and end up in the same place all over again. If Emma is starting to think there’s something more to this, I’m going to have to knock it on the head, gently. But – I rub my face in confusion – how the hell do I do that without causing ructions in the house-share?
This is exactly what Becky had meant with her no-relationships rule. It wasn’t the being in a relationship that was the problem, it’s the end of them when it all gets messy. And Emma’s the sort of girl who likes things done her way.
Just as the credits begin to roll on my overdramatic hospital drama, I hear a commotion at the door. I figure it’s probably someone at the wrong house. I get to the door and pull it open and there’s a moment when Jess sort of falls through and crashes against me with a little ‘oomph’ noise of surprise. Her hair is damp and curling round her face in little strands, and all the dark eye make-up she’d had on is smudged. She takes a step back. Her coat’s splattered with huge raindrops.
‘Good night, was it?’ I can’t help smiling at her. She looks so cross.
‘Hardly.’
‘You coming in then?’ She wipes her feet on the mat. ‘So the date didn’t go well?’
‘Not exactly. I’m bloody freezing. If this was an April shower, I don’t like it.’
She steps past me and shrugs off her coat, revealing the bluey-green dress she’s got on underneath. I avert my eyes, as if she’s undressing, not pulling off a pair of black heeled boots. And then she’s Jess-sized again, standing in a pair of black tights on the carpet.
‘Want me to put the kettle on?’ I ask when I notice she’s shivering.
‘Give it five minutes. I’m going to run up and get out of this—’ she motions to the dress ‘—have a quick shower to defrost, and put on something that doesn’t make me feel like I’m dressing up.’
While Jess changes, I put the kettle on for tea, then make toast, buttering it thickly and spreading it with her favourite marmalade. And then I put it all on a tray, and take it into the sitting room. A moment later, Jess reappears, looking more like her usual self in a pair of checked flannel pyjama bottoms, and a light grey teddy-bear fleece top. Her hair and make-up are still in place, so she looks incongruous – like an actress after a performance on the West End stage.
‘Oh my God. I think I love you,’ she says, seeing the tea and toast. ‘You’re a mind reader.’
I hand her a mug. ‘I figured you might be cold even after the shower.’
I watch as she creates the little nest she always makes when she sits watching television, wrapping her fingers around the mug and curling up on the sofa like a cat. She pulls a fluffy blanket down and wraps it over her legs, building a cushion fort around her, and almost purrs with happiness.
Then she takes a sip of tea, and pulls a face of absolute horror.
‘Are you all right?’ I ask, thinking maybe I’ve put salt in her tea instead of sugar.
‘I am never, ever going on a Tinder date again,’ she says.
I’m not sure why I feel something that is suspiciously like relief. She’s my friend, nothing more. And I need to get a grip. It’s nothing to do with me what – or how – she dates.
‘What happened?’ I say, carefully.
‘Oh God,’ Jess says, then regales me with the tale of Theo turning up plastered, dumping her in a corner, then getting off with someone else – making me roar with laughter.
‘I honestly think dating is some sort of torture,’ I say.
‘You’re not joking.’ Jess pulls the blanket up towards her nose and turns to face me, laughing. She wipes a smudge of black mascara stuff from underneath her eye.
‘I bet you can’t beat that, though?’
‘Mine’s quite tame compared to that,’ I say. ‘I went on a blind date organised by a friend from uni once, when I’d just started working at the law firm. We were working such long hours, it was impossible to meet anyone.’
‘Go on. So what happened?’ Jess shuffles slightly on the sofa, so a cushion drops onto the floor. I pick it up and hand it back, and she hugs it, looking at me expectantly.
‘Well, you know how everyone always has the old made-up emergency call thing?’
‘You mean when you tell your friends to ring up and invent a disaster so you can make a quick exit?’
I nod.
‘I was sitting in a bar in Clerkenwell, waiting for this girl to turn up. She walked up to the window, looked in, spotted me, picked up her phone and pretended to take a call.’
‘What happened then?’
‘She never came back.’
‘Oh, Alex, you poor thing.’ Jess reaches out and pats me on the thigh. ‘I wouldn’t have left you sitting there like a lemon, I promise.’ Her eyes are soulful. ‘So what did you do?’
‘Waited an hour, ate my entire body weight in olives, then went home.’
‘And she definitely wasn’t coming back? It wasn’t an actual emergency or anything?’
I shake my head. ‘Apparently she took one look and decided no thanks.’
‘Brutal.’ Jess gives a low whistle.
‘Yeah, not great for the self-esteem.’
‘That’s dating in London for you,’ Jess says, picking up the remote control and fiddling with it. ‘But then you met Alice, and it all worked out okay in the end.’
‘Well, okay until she dumped me, yeah. I mean basically great, apart from the whole thanks but no thanks element.’
I look at her with a dubious expression and she claps a hand to her mouth, realising what she’s said.
‘Oh my God, Alex.’ Jess is laughing in horror. ‘I am so sorry.’
We end up staying up for hours, watching a rom com that Jess has found on Netflix, drinking gallons of tea and eating toast. At one point Emma comes home, looks into the sitting room and says hi. I feel like a bit of a shit because I give her a quick wave of hello and Jess carries on talking. I don’t know what to do about the whole Emma thing, and I don’t want to think about it this evening. I just shove it to the back of my mind, and decide I’ll leave it there until tomorrow.