‘He’ll pick you up around eight, but if that’s no good you’re to text him and let him know.’
Pip picked up her phone and sent a quick message confirming the plan. Already she was looking forward to the evening, even if Jez was down in the dumps and so wouldn’t be on top form. She’d forgotten how well they got on, lost sight of it somehow. Spending time with him over the last few weeks had been like rediscovering a long-forgotten treasure. It was such a joy to be with someone whose company was so effortless. There was so much history between them and consequently so much that didn’t need to be spoken. Their conversations worked using a type of shorthand that she just didn’t have with her newer friends, and had never got anywhere close to with Dominic.
An hour later, she and Jez were in the pub again, their drinks on the table in front of them, but this time the vibe was very different. Whilst her mood had risen steadily since they had last been together, Jez’s had fallen into a deep, black pit and appeared to be irretrievable.
‘How’s it going?’ Pip asked him, deciding it would be best to start with a nice wide question that he could answer as he wished, and that would give her an idea of which way the conversation was going to flow.
‘I’ve had better times,’ he said without looking up. ‘Being single is crap.’
Pip touched his shoulder gently, her palm feeling his warmth through his T-shirt.
‘I’m so sorry, Jez,’ she said gently. ‘It’s shit. Have you seen her at all?’
He shook his head. ‘She came to get her stuff, but I was at the farm. She knew I’d be out, arrived then on purpose.’
Pip shrugged sympathetically, although she would probably have done the same herself.
‘I went to the hotel,’ Jez continued, ‘to see if we could talk things through again, but they told me she was in a meeting. They were probably lying.’
‘Maybe it’s for the best that you haven’t seen her,’ suggested Pip, aware of how much she sounded like her mother. It was hard to know what to say without sounding trite or patronising. This must be what it had been like talking to her recently, not being able to find the words, worried that you would accidentally say the wrong thing and make matters worse.
He took a deep breath, sat back in his chair and looked straight at her. ‘Let’s just get pissed,’ he said. ‘Horribly, disgustingly pissed.’
Pip couldn’t remember the last time she had been even tipsy, let alone the level of drunk that Jez seemed to have in mind. She had avoided alcohol since the accident, worried that if she started drinking, she might never stop, but what harm could one evening do? It wasn’t as if she would be driving anywhere.
‘Go on then,’ she said, a broad grin creeping across her face. ‘But if you puke or you start doing that stupid dance you used to do, then I’m out of here.’
With a new sense of purpose, Jez’s mood seemed to improve, and by the time he began his third pint he seemed to have forgotten he had been miserable. Pip had no hope of matching him drink for drink – she was out of practice and she could never drink as much as him anyway – but she held her own. As the alcohol seeped into her bloodstream she felt an uncoupling inside her, as if someone had taken away the burden of her body and left her with just her mind, and she knew at once that she had been right not to drink her way through the last dark months.
By the time they had got to their sixth drink they had begun to play a rather raucous game of ‘who would you do’。 It wasn’t something Pip had thought about in years, but now she remembered how much fun it was to consider a room full of people and rank them in terms of sexual attractiveness. Jez’s choices didn’t surprise her in the least, but her own were not what she would have predicted. Dominic was broad and dark with a patrician profile, but the men who caught her eye in the pub were quirkier, less alpha male and more cheeky-looking. In fact, they were a lot like Jez.
The second this thought crossed her mind, she knew exactly where the evening would be heading unless she did something to prevent it. It seemed as if the thought had crossed Jez’s mind at almost the same moment, because he focused his slightly glazed eyes on her and said, ‘And, of course, I’d always do you, Pip.’
Not having had time to work out what she felt, Pip tried to fend him off with jokes. ‘Oh, you always did know how to flatter a girl, Jez. Just how far down that list did I come?’ She grinned at him to show she knew he was joking and that she was, too, but instead of returning her smile he was now just staring at her as if he was seeing her for the first time.