Long Time No Sea, page 26
‘We should be having a blast here today,’ Mikey points out. ‘Our big, final blowout before uni. It’s not fair.’
‘There’s always next summer,’ I say with a sigh. ‘At least we know the fair is here every year.’
‘Unless DJ’s parents are still on the rampage,’ Clarky jokes.
‘Not funny,’ DJ replies. ‘They might well be.’
‘Okay, okay, well, why don’t we all go somewhere else next summer?’ Maxi suggests. ‘We could all go on holiday together – what can our parents do, if we’re in another country?’
I laugh.
‘That’s a great idea,’ I say.
‘We’ll have a lot of making up to do, though,’ DJ adds. ‘Clarky, bring the drugs.’
‘Yeah, very funny,’ he replies. ‘But I’d definitely be up for a wild summer holiday.’
‘Me too,’ Mikey says. ‘Just give me plenty of warning so I can book the time off work.’
‘Oh, and it begins, the chickening out,’ Clarky moans.
‘No one is chickening out,’ Maxi ticks him off. ‘We’ll do it, next summer, no matter what. We’ll all go on holiday together.’
The slow turning of the ride stops and we slowly start descending back towards the fair, back to reality.
‘I can’t believe this is it for now,’ says Maxi. ‘That we’re all going off in our own directions, starting our lives on our own. How are we going to do it without each other?’
‘Because we’ll always have each other, no matter where we are,’ I reassure her. ‘Even if we go off on our separate ways, it’s hard to imagine us not coming back together at some point.’
Cam switches from holding my hand to intertwining his fingers with mine, locking our hands together tightly. I don’t want to let go either, but it’s the right thing to do – for now, at least.
‘They can’t stop us hanging out when we’re grown-ups,’ Clarky says, sounding very much like a child, and we all laugh.
Yeah, if we ever grow up, which, for some reason, I can’t quite see us ever really doing. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my editor, Nia, and to the brilliant team at Boldwood HQ for all their hard work on our fourteenth book together.
Massive thanks to everyone who takes the time to read and review my books. Your lovely messages mean so much to me.
Thank you to my family and friends for all their support. Thanks to Kim for everything she does for me (and for the best publication day presents ever), to Pino, and to the amazing Aud who might just be my biggest fan. Huge thanks to Joey for always having time for me and answers to my questions, to James for all his (most often tech) support, and to Darcy for being my wingwoman.
Finally, as always, thanks to my husband, Joe, for holding my hand through such a challenging time. I couldn’t do this without you.
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Chapter One
You only get one chance to make a first impression. Absolutely nailing it, the first time you meet someone, is all that matters. The details, the long story, the truth – all of that can be figured out later.
‘Olivia Knight?’ a tall, skinny man with longish blonde hair and dark blue eyes asks me.
‘Yes?’ I reply, with enough (but not too much) enthusiasm. ‘Scott Mason?’
I instantly feel stupid for saying his last name, but he did say my full name. Wow, I’m overthinking things already.
‘The one and only,’ he replies unenthusiastically. ‘Take a seat.’
I sit down at the table opposite him. The butterflies in my stomach are going berserk.
‘So, how are—’
‘Listen, I’m a busy man, I’m sure you’re a busy woman, so I’m thinking why don’t we skip the pleasantries and cut to the chase?’ Scott suggests.
Scott has seriously pronounced smile lines, which is ironic, given how immediately unfriendly he seems. His light auburn hair is receding, but only from the sides, so he has this sort of vampirical peak of hair in the middle of his forehead, only made worse by the way he quite literally is looking down his nose at me. Oh, this is going so well.
‘Oh, right, yeah, okay,’ I babble. ‘Sure, let’s skip the formalities.’
‘Why are you still single?’ he asks me.
Oh, boy, that really is cutting to the chase.
‘You’re, what? Thirty-five? Thirty-six?’ he presses.
‘I’m thirty-one,’ I reply.
Yikes. I hope he’s read my profile wrong, as opposed to getting a much older read from my face in real life. I don’t feel like anyone looks thirty-six. Either you can still pass for your twenties, you’re wrongfully assumed to be in your forties, or you simply look ‘in your thirties’. No one can pinpoint thirty-six. At least, I’m hoping not, anyway. I’ll be fiercely maintaining that I’m in my ‘early’ thirties until I hit thirty-five. After that, I imagine I’ll style out ‘mid-thirties’ for as long as I possibly can. It’s not so much that I’m bothered about my age – it’s just a number, and one you can’t do much about anyway – but when you’re in the position I’m in, you have to think about these things.
‘Thirty-one?’ he replies.
God, don’t say it like that, whatever that is.
‘Thirty-one,’ I say again.
‘Okay, why do you think you’re still single at thirty-one?’ he asks. He awaits an answer with a furrowed brow and a curious stare.
Wow, he makes it sound even worse when he puts it like that.
‘Well, I do think it’s worth noting that thirty-one isn’t really the sort of age where you’re still single,’ I point out. ‘I guess single is just single these days. Some people are “still” single, I suppose, but lots of people are single again. And it’s a tough world to figure out when you’re thrown back in the deep end – especially with dating apps.’
‘Surely the good thing about dating apps is that it shows you that there’s plenty more fish in the sea, though?’ Scott replies. I feel like he’s making a point, rather than asking a question.
‘I mean, yeah, there’s plenty more fish in the sea, but do you know what else there is in there? Loads of rubbish, and a whole host of terrifying creatures that would murder you in a heartbeat.’
Scott smiles.
‘Do you think women especially are embracing single life?’ he asks curiously.
I glance across the table at Scott as I sip the glass of water in front of me. God, I feel like some sort of experiment, some scientific sample he’s curiously trying to figure out, except I’m nothing fancy like a cell or a blood sample (as you can tell, I’m not a scientist, I don’t even remember how I secured that impressive GCSE C grade), I’m more like a bit of dung being pawed through, to try to work out what some animal ate to kill it.
‘I don’t think women feel like they need a man to be happy,’ I point out. ‘I think plenty of women live very happy, full, contented lives without a man or a woman – I think lots of us are doing it without cats these days too.’
I narrow my eyes ever so slightly as I try to work out whether or not my jokes are landing.
‘You think women are single by choice then?’ he persists.
‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘Either by their own choice or the choice of all the people who meet them.’
‘At least you have Galentine’s Day now,’ he reminds me, as though it’s some sort of big win for women’s rights.
‘Yes, we’d been waiting for that one, since we bagged the right to vote,’ I reply, deadpan.
‘Do you find Valentine’s Day hard?’ He continues his line of questioning.
‘I keep myself busy,’ I reply. ‘If I’m not touring the restaurants near my apartment, walking up to random couples and pointing at perfect strangers, screeching, “Oh my god, I knew you were cheating on me,” then I stay at home and enjoy the free time. I clean, I binge shows on Netflix. I sit, staring at the wall, wondering if it’s possible to forget how to have sex because it’s been so long…’
Okay, I definitely got an amused snigger out of him for that one.
‘Sleeping alone doesn’t bother you?’ Scott asks. ‘That other half of the bed doesn’t feel empty during the cold winter months?’
‘Oh, the other half of my bed is never empty,’ I reply. ‘If not because I’m sleeping diagonally across the bed then because I usually pile up clothes on the other half as I routinely try on everything I wear before going back to the first outfit I chose. I suppose, if I were ever that lonely, I could form some sort of man-shaped pile out of it all. Of course, in the rare event I did bring someone home with me, I’d have to make sure I moved it all first – that would look pretty tragic.’
‘One-night stand?’ Scott asks, shuffling in his seat, briefly far more interested than he has been thus far.
‘Nope, I have two,’ I joke proudly. ‘One on each side of the bed. One is full of condoms, the other is full of flat AA batteries, so make of that what you will.’
Scott tilts his head curiously. There’s a look in his eyes, something that suggests he believes that he knows exactly why I’m single. I guess I’m lucky that this is a job interview, and not a date, or it would be a definite non-starter.
‘Well, I can tell that you can make jokes,’ Scott says – which is not the same thing as telling me I’m funny, but never mind. ‘We have several comedians up for the role. What do you believe makes you the best person for the job? Why are you a relatable host for a dating show?’
Welcome to Singledom is a new reality TV show where sexy single twenty-somethings all live together in a made-for-TV compound for a number of weeks. It’s like a cross between Love Island, I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! and Married at First Sight (if you can imagine such a thing) where people who aren’t just looking for love but specifically are unable to find it live together and complete crazy challenges – all with a view to figuring out why they’re single and helping them improve. I suppose the winners will be the newly formed couple who, I don’t know, seem the most in love? Win the public vote? Something like that. I read in the brief that they have to get married live on air, if they want to win the prize money – imagine that.
At this stage, show bosses are looking for a male–female duo to host it – they specifically want comedians for the tone of the show which, roughly translated, I think means they want to try to come across as something light-hearted, rather than something harshly judging people for not finding love yet and subsequently trying to fix them in a way that makes good TV. Yes, of course I’m pretty cynical about the whole thing, but when you work from job to job, project to project, doing something like comedy, you have to take what you can get. It’s one of those jobs that, when you haven’t quite been able to show that you’ve ‘made it’ yet, people find quite funny (not in the way you want them to, though). My bank balance is no laughing matter – I need this shitty job, in the hope that it leads to other less shitty jobs, which eventually result in me getting a good one.
‘I think I’m someone who understands what it’s like to be single,’ I reply. ‘I know all about the good, the bad and the ugly – and most of my routines are on love and dating, so I feel like I could bring exactly what you need to the presenting.’
‘And you would be okay with potentially long filming days – say, in the middle of a forest, even in horrible weather conditions?’
‘Oh, yes, definitely,’ I reply. I knew that farms and forests were going to be the potential filming locations. ‘An old boyfriend once told me he was taking me on a weekend break to Nottingham Forest – you can imagine my disappointment when it turned out to be an away game. Crystal Palace was another place that sounded like it was going to be a lot cooler than it was. The only time I was ever truly excited was when he sent me a message saying, “Reading tonight?” and I assumed he meant books, rather than a trip up the M4 to watch the footie.’
I’m so pleased I got to do that bit because, last night, when I was looking up football teams, I wondered if I might be wasting my time.
Scott doesn’t seem overly amused, so perhaps I was.
‘Well, Olivia, I think we’ve covered everything we need to today,’ Scott informs me, his face giving nothing away. ‘We’ll be in touch.’
‘Great,’ I say, once again trying to maintain that cool balance between enthusiasm and aloofness. ‘Well, have a good weekend.’
‘Yep,’ he replies, picking his phone up, and punching a button. ‘Sarah… yeah… yeah… no!’
As I leave the room, I wonder what questions Sarah just asked him.
Did she seem like a single loser? Yeah.
Did she try to make jokes? Yeah.
Was she actually funny and should we give her the job? No!
As I leave the air-conditioned office and head out onto the sunny streets of Soho, the sweltering June weather is like walking into a wall. It’s that thick, hot air – the kind that almost seems as though you can reach out and grab it. Ick. I’m dressed for my interview in a smart but stylish blue body-con dress over a series of complicated underwear items all designed to give me the best advantages for bagging myself a telly job. Basically, everything either sucks something in or pulls something up, and all in a way that seemingly defies physics, and also demoralises me to my core. The thing is, I just need to secure the job, then I can let the real me turn up for the gig and the details that got me the job won’t matter. My performance will speak for itself. This is all for that stellar first impression. Here’s hoping I nailed it.
I grab my phone from my bag.
‘Hello,’ Teddy answers.
‘Hey, I’m out, is there somewhere you can stop and pick me up?’ I ask.
‘This is London, so no,’ he replies, sort-of joking, but I take his point. ‘Where are you now?’
‘I’m just strolling down the road,’ I reply. ‘I’m near Shake Shack.’
‘Hang on then, if we time this right, you can jump in,’ he says.
I feel the subtle buzz of my phone – a notification. I quickly glance at it and see that it’s an email from Scott already.
I listen to Teddy’s instructions and make sure I’m in the right spot for a drive-by pickup. He’ll be here any second. I can wait until I’m in the car before I open the email. Opening it right this second isn’t going to change what it says, is it? I wonder, if it’s good or bad news, that it’s come through so quickly – the chair I was sitting in won’t even be cold yet. Oh, I’ve got a real Schrödinger of a situation on my hands now, but whatever it says in the email is already in there.
I spot Teddy’s black Porsche pull up next to me, so I quickly jump in.
‘Go on then, Liv, how did it go?’ he asks.
‘I’ve got an email already,’ I reply.
I glance at Teddy as he drives. There’s a look on his face that doesn’t make me feel good. Well, he runs a business, and even though he works in a different industry, I imagine he knows what it means when you get an email immediately after an interview.
‘Did you pretend to be single in the end?’ he asks.
‘I did,’ I reply, suddenly feeling the slightest bit guilty to have denied the existence of my wonderful boyfriend, but we did discuss it together beforehand, and he really wasn’t bothered by it. He always says that, when it comes to work, there isn’t anything he wouldn’t do to succeed.
‘Do you think it helped?’ he asks.
I take a deep breath and open my email.
‘Oh, my god,’ I blurt.
‘What? What?’ Teddy asks, briefly glancing at me then back at the road.
‘Well, I didn’t get the job, but pretending to be single didn’t make a bit of difference in the end,’ I reply.
‘He thought you weren’t funny enough?’ Teddy replies in disbelief.
‘Worse,’ I reply. ‘He thought I was too old.’
‘You just turned thirty-one,’ he says.
‘I know,’ I reply. ‘I’m sure he’s just covering his back, but he’s basically saying that the only way they would give the role to someone my age was if they were in an established relationship, elevating them to a sort of mentorship status – and I can’t exactly go back in and tell him I lied about being single.’
I sigh.
‘See, in real business, your age is never an issue,’ Teddy reminds me. ‘In fact, the older you are, the more respected you are, it’s as simple as that.’
That might not just be in business, that’s probably in a patriarchal society generally, but I take his point.
‘Yeah, I guess show business isn’t like a normal business,’ I reply. ‘Ah, well, I tried. Back to writing funny stuff for younger, cooler people to say, I suppose.’
‘I know you hate the ghostwriting, but it pays the bills,’ he reminds me.
I mean, it doesn’t literally pay the bills, Teddy pays the bills, but I take his point on that one too. It’s income, at least.
‘Yep, those reality TV stars’ romcom novels aren’t going to write themselves,’ I say with a sigh.
‘I remember when you used to talk about writing your own,’ he says. ‘Never knowing if you could get it published. At least with household names, half the battle is won.’
‘Maybe I could write my own,’ I reply, not sounding all that sure about the idea. ‘I can write jokes, I can write things to order.’
‘But writing an entire book from only your own material… You’ve got the com down though,’ he tells me. ‘If you’ve not got enough rom in your life, maybe that’s on me.’
