I meet Jess after lunch. She’s still in work clothes – a pair of dark grey trousers, black boots and a soft red jumper, which is an improvement on my work uniform. I’ve been living in scrubs for the last week on a placement in the paeds ward, and it wasn’t until I got home last night that I realised I had a teddy bear sticker stuck to the side of my beard. I’d like to think nobody noticed, but knowing the staff of Paddington Ward, I suspect they thought it was amusing.
‘You okay?’
‘Yes,’ she says, but it’s in that sort of brittle, not very convincing kind of way.
‘What’s up?’
‘Just one of those days. Loads of work stuff.’
‘We don’t have to do this if you’d rather get on?’
She shakes her head. ‘No, I need the fresh air. Just that first week of work thing. I feel like I haven’t a clue what I’m doing.’
We start walking.
‘So how did you end up knowing your way round London so well?’ Jess asks as she pulls her hat down a bit further on her head. It’s weird that January’s often colder than December – even though December is the month most associated with winter and snow. It feels a bit like it might snow now – the sky’s a funny sort of yellow-grey colour.
‘My dad worked here for years. He used to get the train up, and when I was old enough I’d come up with him in the holidays and just sort of wander around.’
Jess looks at me sideways like I’m a weirdo. ‘On your own?’
I pull a face. ‘Yeah.’
‘That is a bit weird. What did you do?’
‘I wanted to be an architect like him. So I’d wander about and look at stuff. I always had a Travelcard, so I could go wherever I wanted – within reason. Plus I wasn’t a baby – I was fifteen, sixteen.’ I tail off a bit. It does sound a bit weird, come to think of it. ‘Anyway. The good thing is that I didn’t become an architect, because it turns out I’m pretty hopeless at precision stuff.’
‘That’s good to know. I’ll avoid you if you’re wielding a scalpel in future.’
‘You know what I mean. Architecture’s all about the detail. I’m more slapdash and that’ll do.’
She grins at me. ‘All right. So how did you go from wannabe architect to lawyer to student nurse?’ she asks.
‘Ah.’ We pause and wait for the lights to change at a crossing. There’s a coffee shop opposite. ‘I’m dying for a coffee. Shall we get one to take out?’
‘Sure.’
Two takeaway lattes later, we set off again. I’m explaining how I fell into studying law because it seemed like a sensible thing to do, and Jess is nodding vigorously.
‘That’s like me with the marketing job. I finished my degree and went back home to work out what to do, and I saw the advert and the next thing I knew I’d applied.’
‘And then you got the job and the next thing you knew the rest of your life was all mapped out?’
She nods again. ‘Exactly!’
‘That’s what happened to me. I thought I’d do law, then maybe do a postgrad in something else, do a job that made a difference. But I kind of got caught up in the whole job thing by mistake, and of course I’d met Alice by then …’
‘Your girlfriend?’
‘Ex.’
‘Sorry. That’s what I meant.’
‘And it just all sort of slotted together. And it would’ve been fine, except then my dad got sick, and then he died.’
‘Oh.’ Jess puts a hand on my arm as we stop at another crossing. She squeezes it gently. ‘I’m sorry.’
I shake my head. It’s taken me time to be able to talk about it so calmly. There were times when someone being kind would bring tears springing to my eyes. Grief is weird like that. But now I feel like – well, I guess I’ve made my peace with it. And somehow, I feel like Dad would be quite impressed that I’d decided to do something I felt passionate about, just like he did.
‘It’s okay. But the thing was, watching him, it made me realise I’d always wanted to do something that was going to make a difference and sitting in an office doing corporate law shit wasn’t going to do that. The nurses in the oncology unit – they were amazing when my dad was in their care.’
We’ve stopped now, and somehow we’re sitting on a wooden bench that looks down Elgin Avenue. Buses trundle past and heave to a halt at the stop a few metres away, spilling out a sea of people who scatter in different directions in the late afternoon greyness. It’s so cold I can see Jess’s breath as she looks at me over the top of her coffee cup.
‘So, that’s what made you want to do it?’ she asks.
‘Yeah.’ I take a sip of almost-cold coffee, make a face and lower it again. ‘Only it turned out that unravelling the life I’d made wasn’t as easy as all that.’
‘Tell me about it. So, what happened?’
‘Well, I got talking to one of the Macmillan nurses after Dad died when she was picking up some of the stuff we’d had at the house – equipment, and things like that. I thought she’d think I was crazy, but it turned out she’d only done her training a few years before herself – and she was almost forty.’
‘So you jacked in your high-flying career and got a place at uni.’
‘And now here I am. I mean, it wasn’t that much of a high-flying career, to be fair. And I had some savings and some money that Dad left me, so I thought I might as well just go for it.’
‘Exactly.’ I notice Jess is sitting with her hands inside her sleeves. It’s cold, and sitting still makes it seem even more so. ‘Shall we keep going?’ Jess stands up.
‘Where are we going? The suspense is killing me,’ Jess says.
We turn the corner and I nod my head towards the sign on the edge of the road. It’s a second before she gets it.
‘Abbey Road? Like the Beatles’ Abbey Road?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘I didn’t even know it was a real thing.’ She laughs.
‘Ah, my dad would be turning in his grave at that.’ I stop and point to the building opposite, and the famous doorway. ‘He took me here when I was little. He was a massive Beatles fan.’
Jess has her phone out and she’s taking a photo for Instagram (of course).
‘Oh look, there’s loads of pictures of a wall with writing on it somewhere round here.’ She shows me her phone, and under #abbeyroad on Instagram, there they are. I spin round and point to the wall behind us. ‘This one?’
‘Oh, that’s amazing.’ She bends down and starts taking photographs. I watch her, thinking about the first time my dad brought me here. He was a massive music fan. Not just the Beatles. He loved all kinds of music. When he died, Mum passed his entire vinyl collection on to me. It’s all still stacked on shelves back home in Kent, though – there’s so much of it it’d take up half my room in Notting Hill, and Alice wasn’t ever that keen on it. I dream of getting an old record player and having them all with me one day.
‘It wasn’t just the Beatles that recorded here,’ I say.
‘No?’ Jess says, straightening up.
‘Loads of others. Amy Winehouse, Oasis, Radio-head …’
‘Ooh, let’s cross over and have a look. We might see someone famous.’
We join a group of frozen-looking Japanese tourists who are taking photographs of the outside of the building. There’s a buzz of excitement when the door opens, but we all give a deflated sigh when a middle-aged bloke with a bomber jacket walks out.
‘You can take my photo if you like,’ he says, chuckling as he strides off towards his car.
Jess heads off out when we get home. I’m at the too-tired-to-sleep stage, and end up sitting up watching crap on television until I doze off. It’s half two in the morning when I wake up and stagger into the hallway to find Emma pulling off a pair of vertiginous heels and throwing them on the floor.
‘Hi,’ she says. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’ She arches an eyebrow, and – it’s ridiculous – there’s something about her complete lack of artifice and the fact that there are precisely no strings attached that make it just too easy.