a clue. I got back from a day out with friends, and we walked into Albany Road, and there she was.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Mel says again. She’s not exactly helping.
‘I was hoping you might have some sort of wise counsel. I can say “bloody hell” myself.’
‘All right. So, let me get this straight. She turns up, plonks herself down on a garden bench, and tells you she’s made a terrible mistake and wants to start things up again?’
‘Pretty much, yeah.’
‘And? Were you tempted?’
I shake my head. ‘Not even a bit.’
‘God, poor Alice. What a nightmare.’
‘Yeah.’
‘What d’you think brought it on?’
‘Oh God, loads of things. Well, she started off just casually saying she’d been thinking that maybe she hadn’t been fair.’
Mel gives a thoughtful nod. ‘Reasonable point.’
‘She wanted us to go out for dinner. All I could think was that I had a shitload of coursework to do before Monday morning, and Rob had cooked a meal for everyone and I didn’t want to be rude to a mate.’
‘Romance isn’t dead then,’ says Mel, drily.
‘Look I didn’t plan any of this. Anyway she insisted we go out the next day and said she’d pay. Then we had dinner and talked.’
‘How did it go?’
I shrug. ‘Not great. I mean for one thing, when she said she’d pay, she clearly didn’t actually expect me to go through with that. We had a bit of a silent standoff when the bill arrived.’
‘What did you do?’ Mel asks.
‘I paid.’
‘Alex, you’ve got sod-all money. I bet it wasn’t Pizza Hut either.’
Alice always did have expensive tastes. A bottle of red and two courses in the Grapevine in Holland Park cost me the best part of two weeks’ food budget.
‘I felt like it was the least I could do,’ I say.
‘She turned up on your doorstep.’
‘Yeah, I know, but …’
‘So what did she say? I bet she hates the beard, right?’
I laugh. ‘She did make a comment, yeah.’
‘And I’m guessing she’s still not over the whole lawyer to nurse thing?’
I shake my head. ‘Nope. I mean, she knew it was coming. It’s not like I went to work one day with a briefcase and wearing a suit and turned up the next morning dressed in scrubs and carrying a thermometer. Anyway,’ I say, fiddling with the edge of my plate, ‘She came back, said she missed me, said we could make a go of things.’
Mel makes a dubious noise.
‘I didn’t want to make her feel bad.’
‘Oh my God, so you decided to just flannel her with a load of “it’s not you it’s me” bullshit?’
‘No.’ God, sometimes talking to my sister is painful. She’s hit the mark.
‘Anyway, she went back home to her parents’ place that night. She wanted to go for a walk the next day, so we did. I talked about work, and she tried to understand what I loved about it.’
There was a point when we were wandering along through Covent Garden when it felt like Alice was really listening. But it came back round to money, and how I was willing to give up everything that mattered just for the sake of a job, and that’s when I realised that we’re just fundamentally different in the way we see life.
‘And then what happened? I’m dying to know,’ Mel says, and I shoot her a sideways look because I can’t work out if she’s being sarcastic.
‘So where have you left things?’
I rub my jaw. It was weird. When Alice had ended things, I’d been pretty crushed. It felt like the one person who was supposed to get me, and understand why I wanted to do something that would make a difference, just didn’t. I’d been pretty devastated by it. And then she came back and I felt – nothing.
‘I think she wanted to give me another chance to change my mind,’ I say.
‘About her or about the job?’
‘Both. I think she was hoping I’d got the whole thing out of my system and maybe I’d just realise I’d made a terrible mistake. She did use the words “life crisis” several times.’
‘To be fair,’ Mel says, wiping coffee off her upper lip. ‘We’ve all used those words. Normal people don’t bin off a perfectly good law career to spend their lives wip—’
‘Fuck’s sake, Mel. For the millionth time.’
‘All right, don’t get touchy,’ she says. ‘I know you don’t just wipe people’s arses.’
I let out a sigh of irritation.
‘So, how did you leave it?’
‘I saw her before I got on the train down here. We had coffee