Page 21 of The Book Swap
“Bottle of champagne please, mate,” he says with his brightest smile when the waiter races over.
“Lush as ever,” Helena says, looking across at me and grinning. “I forgot to say I saw your mum and dad at The Griffin having a proper romantic meal. This band started playing and they were dancing together, right up at the front.”
“The definition of true love, those two,” Joel says and it’s like a breeze of cold air washes over me. If that’s love, I don’t want it. It’s why I’ve never had it.
Helena saw one good moment sandwiched between calling doctors, quitting jobs, delivering pizzas and losing out on a record deal. One moment where they were equals, having a meal together. Where Dad wasn’t a carer, unable to focus on anything except his wife.
I look over for the waiter bringing our drinks. My throat feels tight. He takes longer than seems possible to pop the cork and fill our glasses. I down most of the glass in one, as Joel takes a sip, frowning over at me.
“It was so lovely,” Helena says. “I hope I’m that way at their age.”
She doesn’t say “we.” She might not even mean with me, but I reach back out for my glass, drinking the rest down. I feel awful. Really awful, for having said yes to her staying, because this is a mistake. I can’t do it. I already know I can’t.
“All right there, mate?” Joel asks, smiling across at me.
“All good,” I say back, and Helena reaches across and squeezes my hand, briefly, before letting it go.
“James tells me you’re sickeningly successful and will definitely be picking up the bill tonight, so I’ll be going for the fillet steak,” Helena says, reaching for her own glass, a smile playing on her lips.
I freeze, unsure how Joel will take it, but he leans back on his chair and tips his head back, laughing so loud it bounces around the room. That’s all this is, James. All it has to be. Just a fun evening with friends. Stop overthinking it.
We finish the champagne over dinner and move on to a red with the steak, which costs the amount I’d spend on an entire meal if it were just the two of us. Joel’s avoiding any school chat, but fires questions at Helena about her job and what she likes to do in her free time. It feels less like a catch-up and more of an interrogation, but she handles it in good grace and throws just as many questions back. Soon they’re laughing and that isn’t really what I intended. I don’t need for this to go well. For them to become mates.
“Who were your best friends at school again?” I ask Helena, picking up the glass of red and drinking some.
It’s a question I’ve never asked before because I haven’t wanted to be reminded of it, but now I do. Now I think it might be the only way out of this.
Helena frowns, but answers, “Jess, Benita, Felix, Zoe... Zoe’s the only one I properly still speak to.”
There it was. Just one name, sandwiched between others, that I knew I’d hear. Felix. Felix who was fine at first. Who actually used to speak to me in the first couple of years of school. Three years later, he was one of them—and being reminded that Helena could have actually liked him confirms what I’ve always known. That having anything more serious with her would be impossible.
“Anyone fancy dessert?” Joel asks. He’s got a tiny spot of red wine on the collar of his crisp white shirt. If I tell him, I know for a fact it’ll go straight in the bin when he gets home, and he’ll buy another. He probably has twenty, brand-new, still in their packets, in his walk-in wardrobe waiting for him. If I’m selling my soul to earn money, then so is Joel. The thing is that he doesn’t care—and I’m starting to think maybe I do.
“All good for dessert, thanks.”
“Same. Although... I should take a look, just in case,” Helena says.
In the morning, I walk Helena back toward the train station. It’s like the farther we get from my flat, the more I can breathe.
“How come you don’t come back to Frome much when your mum’s well?” she asks suddenly as we walk through the park.
“It’s just the only way it works for me,” I say, too hungover to be dishonest. “I have to split my life in two. Frome and London. When Mum’s ill, I’m there. When she’s well, I’m here.”
“Why do you have to split it though? Who says?”
A group of people walk past, laughing at some silly voice one of them is doing.
“I do.” I bend down for a stick and pick it up, throwing it ahead of me. “To be happy in one place, I can’t think about the other.”
“Wouldn’t you say that just makes you unhappy in both?”
I look across at her, smiling. Maybe she’s right, but if I admit that, nothing makes sense anymore. “I’d say it makes me happier.”
“Because you don’t have to commit to anything, full term. That’s why.”
She nudges me on the shoulder with her own and then walks slightly ahead of me, before turning back.
When we reach the bridge, she stops at the library.