He came to my table and introduced himself. ‘Noah Pine, like the tree.’
There was paint on his hands. Clay. ‘I’ve seen you in here every day for nearly a week,’ he said. His voice was deep and rich, the kind that led you through a sleep meditation. ‘You sit at this table, order a hot drink and you write.’
‘So, you’ve been watching me?’
‘Well, that sounds terrible. I’ve just … noticed you.’ And the way he looked at me, with heat and intrigue, sent a thrill through my body and colour across my cheeks. ‘The other day, this man comes in here with his dog off the lead. The thing shoots off, knocks some poor waitress over. It was a disaster. Coffee and cutlery everywhere. You didn’t even glance up. Just kept on writing and I thought, I have to know this woman. Read whatever she’s working on.’
I was right about his smile. It was devastating.
We sat and talked until closing. The easy conversation you only find between lifelong friends.
On our first official date, we went hiking up the Surrey Hills. At the top, we drank Prosecco and watched the sun set. When it grew dark, Noah built a little fire, and pulled marshmallows from his backpack. We roasted them on an open flame and the conversation flowed like warm water. He asked endless questions about my life and hung off my every word. He was attractive and kind and insightful and creative. I remember thinking the entire day was like something from a movie or the pages of a book, and I felt so lucky. With the embers smouldering before us and the night sky stretching above and the summer evening warming our skin, we kissed.
The first time Noah told me to quit my job, we were at a flea market. ‘You’re so alive when we talk about your book.’
‘I can’t just leave my career.’
‘Why not? I did. I walked out of the bank, took a pottery course, fell in love and started teaching at the college. Best decision I ever made. Besides sending that coffee to your table.’ We stopped at a stall selling second-hand books. ‘You’re born to write, Elodie. This marketing job is slowly killing you. You want to die having never done what you love?’ He picked up a book from the stall and said to the little old man behind it, ‘One day, you’ll be selling my girlfriend’s book.’
‘Noah!’ Laughing, I grabbed his hand and pulled him away.
He kissed me and said, ‘If you’re not going to do it for yourself, do it for me.’
I lean my head against the train window as I remember cleaning out our apartment after the hit and run, boxing up our lives together. He died a few days before my twenty-eighth birthday; I found my present a month after he was gone, wrapped in white and yellow paper. Inside was a dark green ceramic vase. I turned it over in my hands. On the bottom, carved into the clay in Noah’s script was, ‘Elodie Fray, author.’
You want to die having never done what you love?
That day, I took my phone from my pocket and typed out an email to ACH Marketing.
If you’re not going to do it for yourself, do it for me.
And handed in my resignation.
I arrive at Paddington just before eleven thirty and blow the memories of Noah from my mind like dandelion clocks.
It’s jarring to come from the quaint, Georgian charm of Crosshaven where the West Country accent is smooth like butter sliding down hot toast, to the brash, bustling grey of London where it’s so loud, you can’t pick one accent out from another.
Commuter crowds move like a swarm of ants across the platform. I haven’t been to the city since Christmas, and it takes me a moment to gather my bearings. I lived in a four-bedroom house-share in Catford for almost four years before I moved into Noah’s flat in Acton. I used to bitch about the forty-minute commute to work, crammed in like sardines, pressed up against strangers with bagel breath and barely having enough room to turn my head, and although my fifteen-minute walk from my front door to Mugs is less hassle, it’s not as exciting.
After I quit my job, I used all my savings to move back to Crosshaven, exchanging the fancy office with its floor-to-ceiling windows and park view for the pokey little staff room above Mugs, with its ripped upholstered chairs and mini-fridge that hasn’t worked in the year I’ve been there. All to write this book. For me. For him. Once this meeting with my agent is done, I’ll know if that decision was the right one.
Lara asked me to come prepared with more pitches for a second novel, which I think is a great sign. If Harriers has offered us a deal, maybe they want more than one book, and Lara wants to tell me in person so we can sign the contract and celebrate with champagne. I shouldn’t get carried away, but I have a really good feeling, and I can’t help but imagine my book launches. I’d have two: one at Tippies, my favourite bookshop in Crosshaven, and one in the Piccadilly Waterstones. I’ll serve cocktails and little cupcakes with my cover art printed on them. I’ll do a speech and thank Jack and Margot and Lara. Mum will cry, and Dad will beam at me like he does every time my sister pulls up in her new Audi.
By the time I reach the underground, that London buzz is back in my blood, but by the time I near the Botanical Café where I’m meeting Lara, my mum’s disappointed voice and the resulting crush of panic has returned. I feel it pressing on me from all directions, squeezing the breath out of me.
I stop and call Jack. ‘I’m so nervous I might actually vomit,’ I tell him as soon as he answers.
‘Not the best perfume for an important meeting.’
‘I don’t think I can go in there. I—’
‘Got your pitches ready?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Then you’re prepared. Great. And I’ll tell you again, Elodie Fray, you are talented, and ambitious, and brave.’
I cling to this. I want to be that girl, so I push the panic down, down into my gut, until all that’s left is a fluttery nervousness.
‘What time are you back in Crosshaven?’ he asks. ‘I’ll pick you up from the station.’
‘It’s, like, a ten-minute walk from my house. No point in you driving across town to come get me.’
‘What if that guy is still lurking? Jesus, Fray, he followed you home.’
‘I don’t know that he followed me home. Like I said, maybe it’s all in my head.’ Even as I say it, I know it’s not true, but I haven’t seen him in days. Until now, I’ve managed to stop dwelling; out of sight, out of mind. But Jack’s pulled him to the forefront again. Not helpful when I have a meeting in five minutes.
‘I don’t want to end up on one of those Channel 4 documentaries about your untimely kidnap and murder. Though, if you escape, I guess you could write about it. Sell millions of copies.’
I laugh.
‘What will I tell people?’ he says. ‘Oh yeah, Elodie mentioned she was being stalked but we decided to risk the late walk back from the station on the off chance he wasn’t a psychopath. You know what they say, better to be sorry than safe …’