bloody Make a Stir baking book, and you can really tell I was hungover and in a rush when I edited this the first-time around.
‘You’re telling me that you see Justin on a cruise ship and then he gives you an I want to fuck you stare and then you go on about your business and don’t see him again?’
‘I know,’ I say again, positively miserable.
‘Ridiculous! Why didn’t you go looking for him?’
‘I was busy with Katherin! Who, by the way, gave me an actual injury,’ I tell her, yanking my poncho out of the way to show her the angry red mark where Katherin pretty much stabbed my arm mid-demonstration.
Rachel gives it a cursory look. ‘I hope you brought her manuscript delivery date forward for that,’ she says. ‘Are you sure it was Justin? Not some other white guy with brown hair? I mean, I imagine a cruise ship is—’
‘Rachel, I know what Justin looks like.’
‘Right, well,’ she says, throwing her arms out wide and sending layouts sliding across the table. ‘I can’t believe this. It’s such an anticlimax. I really thought your story was going to end with sex in a cabin bunk! Or on the deck! Or, or, or in the middle of the ocean, on a dinghy!’
What actually happened was that I spent the rest of the session in paralysed, panicky suspense, desperately trying to look like I was listening to Katherin’s instructions – ‘Arms up, Tiffy!’ ‘Watch your hair, Tiffy!’ – and simultaneously keep my eyes on the back of the crowd. I did start to wonder if I’d imagined it. What the hell were the chances? I mean, I know the man likes a cruise, but this is a very large country. There are many cruise ships floating around the edge of it.
‘Tell me again,’ Rachel says, ‘about the look.’
‘Ughh, I can’t explain it,’ I tell her, laying my forehead down on the pages in front of me. ‘I just . . . I know that look from when we were together.’ My stomach twists. ‘It was so inappropriate. I mean – God – his girlfriend – I mean, his fiancée . . .’
‘He saw you across a crowded room, semi-unclothed, being gloriously you-like and pissing about with a middle-aged eccentric author . . . and he remembered why he used to fancy the pants off you,’ Rachel concludes. ‘That’s what happened.’
‘That’s not . . .’ But what did happen? Something, definitely. That look wasn’t nothing. I feel a little flutter of anxiety at the base of my ribs. Even after a whole night of thinking about this, I still can’t work out how I feel. One minute Justin appearing on a cruise ship and catching my eye seems like the most romantic, fateful moment, and then the next I find myself feeling a bit shivery and sick. I was all jittery on the journey home from the docks, too – it’s been a while since I’ve travelled outside London on my own to anywhere other than my parents’. Justin had a real thing about how I always ended up on the wrong train, and he was sweet about taking journeys with me just in case; as I waited alone in the darkness of Southampton station I felt categorically certain I’d end up taking a train to the Outer Hebrides or something.
I reach to check my phone – this ‘meeting’ with Rachel is only in the diary for half an hour, and then I really do need to edit Katherin’s first three chapters.
I have one new message.
So good to see you yesterday. I was there for work, and when I saw ‘Katherin Rosen and assistant’ on the programme, I thought, hey, that’s got to be Tiffy.
Only you could laugh your way through someone reading out your measurements – most girls would hate that. But I guess that’s what makes you special. J xx
Hands shaking, I stretch the phone out to show Rachel. She gasps, hands to mouth.
‘He loves you! That man is still in love with you!’
‘Calm down, Rachel,’ I tell her, though my heart is currently making an attempt at a getaway via my throat. I feel as if I’m choking and breathing too much all at the same time.
‘Can you text back and tell him that comments like that are the reason womankind cares so much about their measurements? And that by declaring that “most girls would hate that”, he is perpetuating the female body image problem, and setting women up against