“It’s OK. I knew the book was out.”
I knew because it was everywhere I sodding looked: glowing reviews in all the newspapers, an interview on Radio 4—I’d even walked past a giant poster in Camden Town Tube station. “The voice of a generation,” it had smugly declared, with quotes from Ian McEwan and George Saunders. I’d started taking the bus to avoid it.
“If it’s any consolation, the book launch looked shit,” Bianca said. “Also, I saw photos on Instagram, and he’s grown this stupid little goatee that makes his mouth look like a vulva.”
I snorted into my wine. “Oh God, I can just imagine it. I supposeshewas at the launch too?”
Shewas Petra, the woman Crispin had started dating shortly after he’d dumped me. I’d never met her, having completely cut Crispin and his friends out of my life, but I may or may not have done some drunken late-night googling, and from what I could tell, Petra had supermodel good looks and strong manic-pixie-dream-girl energy.
“I think she was there,” B said, reaching across the table and squeezing my hand. “You OK?”
I sighed. “Yeah, fine. I mean, as much as it pains me to say it, Crispin deserves this success. His book may be the dictionary definition of naval-gazing dick lit, but at least it’s well written.”
“It’s only well written because of everythingyoudid to help it. Jesus, if it hadn’t been for you, Crispin would still be sitting in his ratty dressing gown, sobbing over his stupid typewriter.”
“Well, I’m sure he’ll mention me in his Booker Prize acceptance speech,” I said, the bitterness thick in my voice. Because Bianca was right: Ihadhelped Crispin write that book. I’d spent hundreds of hours talking through the plot with him, reading his endless drafts, and massaging his fragile ego when he got yet another agent rejection. But when I asked him for feedback on my own writing, all Crispin had ever given me was blunt, derisive criticism, until eventually my confidence had been worn down so low that I stopped writing altogether. And the thanks I got for it all? A week after Crispin finally signed with an agent, he dumped me and threw me out of his flat.
“Fuck him!” I said graciously. “I hope his book bombs spectacularly and he’s destined to spend the rest of his life going to book signings where only one person attends, and they turn out to be there by accident and drink the free wine but don’t buy a copy of his stupid novel.”
“That’s my girl!” Bianca clinked my glass again, and we downed our drinks.
* * *
We spent the next few hours discussing Bianca’s upcoming engagement party and generally putting the world to rights, and by the time we hugged good night and set off to our respective homes, the streetsof Soho were looking pleasantly fuzzy. I caught the 88 bus at Oxford Circus, took my usual favorite seat at the front of the top deck, and watched the city spin by. But as the bus wound its way north along the edge of Regent’s Park, I found my thoughts swaying back to what Bianca had said about book boyfriends and unrealistic expectations.
It was true that I had a track record of falling for fictional characters. My first love was Percy Jackson, who I developed an embarrassingly intense crush on at age nine. During my awkward teenage years, I spent hours locked in my bedroom, mooning over moody, emotionally stunted types like Heathcliff and Rhysand, and at university, I went through a pretentious phase of only dating men born before 1900 (although, in secret, I had a passionate months-long affair with Atlas fromIt Ends With Us). By the time I graduated and moved back to London seven years ago, my tastes had broadened, and since then I’d been wooed by everyone from Anthony Bridgerton to Alex Volkov. But through it all, there had been one man who stood out above all others. Someone I’d first been introduced to by my mum, and who’d stuck by me through the good times and the bad, through triumph, tragedy, and heartbreak.Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy.
At the thought of him, I retrieved the stolen copy ofPride and Prejudicefrom my bag. The spine was cracked, and multiple page corners were turned down, as if someone had read and reread it many times before, but the dust on the edges suggested the book had been abandoned long ago. I flicked to a random page and tried to read the top line, although the letters were slightly blurry, thanks to all the wine I’d consumed tonight. Still, I recognized the passage and smiled as I started to read about Darcy asking Elizabeth to dance. It was from chapter ten, the scene at Netherfield where Elizabeth and Darcy verbally spar with each other, and one of my and Mum’s favorites.
“Elizabeth, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at his gallantry…”I read, possibly aloud because, well, wine. “Darcy had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by her.”
God, Darcy was wonderful. Yes, he was proud and judgmental at the start, but he was also honorable and kind, willing to admit when he was wrong and steadfast in his commitment to the woman he loved. Here was a man who wouldn’t abandon his sick wife and distraught teenage daughter the second life got messy, like my arsehole father had. And he definitely wouldn’t tell Elizabeth her writing was oversimplistic and unrealistic, then dump her and shack up with a trust-fund-enabled spoken word poet, like Crispin had. I closed my eyes and wished, for the thousandth time in my life, that Mr. Darcy was real and would save me from the awful, underwhelming, romance-hating men of London.
At which point, I must have dozed off to sleep, because the next thing I knew, I was at Parliament Hill Fields, being shaken awake by the driver complaining about piss-heads on her bus.
Chapter Three
The following morning, I woke up with a banging headache and Mr. Wickham sitting on my face.
Mr. Wickham, I should make clear, was not my cat. I’d had no desire to own a pet—why would I want to fall in love with something that would die in ten years’ time and break my heart?—yet one day Mr. Wickham had climbed in through my window and simply refused to leave. I tried everything: I took him to the vet and asked them to trace his owner, I didn’t encourage him with food, I put him outside and locked all my windows. Yet for some reason, the wretched animal kept coming back, until he wore me down so much that I admitted defeat and started to feed him. I eventually named him Mr. Wickham because, like his namesake, he was a massive sex pest.
“Get off!” I muffled into his backside, a request that was met with a hiss and a sharp scratch on my shoulder.
He jumped off my face, landing with an inelegant thud, and I groaned as sunlight streamed through the broken blinds and hit my eyes. I lived in a small, makeshift apartment in the eaves of a ricketyold Victorian town house in Kentish Town. If that sounds romantic, like something out of an E. M. Forster novel, let me quickly disavow you of that notion. The building was owned by Mrs. Atallah, a tiny, fierce Lebanese pensioner who moved to the UK with her husband in the 1980s and had lived here alone since he died fifteen years ago. To help cover the bills, Mrs. Atallah converted the top floor into a self-contained flat, with little thought for planning regulations or health and safety. As a result, the apartment was tiny and badly designed, with dodgy plumbing and nonexistent soundproofing. But on the plus side, it was close to where I’d grown up with my mum in Camden, and most importantly, it was cheap. And given that was my primary requirement after Crispin unceremoniously made me homeless two and a half years ago, I’d chosen to turn a blind eye to the flat’s many, many faults.
That morning, the hot water was on the blink, so I had an ice-cold shower, fed Mr. Wickham the ridiculously expensive tinned tuna he liked, then ate my own breakfast of cereal and coffee (I tried not to do much cooking because I never knew when the wiring might finally give up and the building burst into flames). The weather forecast was for another warm day, so I pulled on a pair of denim shorts and my “I Like Big Books and I Cannot Lie” T-shirt, and set off for work.
When I first graduated and moved back to London, I had grand plans. I was going to become a bestselling romance author before my twenty-eighth birthday, be in a loving and mutually respectful relationship, and own a chic flat with no IKEA furniture in sight. Things got off to a promising start when I got accepted into a prestigious novel-writing course—the same course where I met Crispin “Voice of a Generation” Carter. We quickly moved in together, but unlike Crispin, who was financially supported by his parents, I couldn’t afford to write full-time. So when I saw an advert for a waitressing job in “London’s premierliterary-themed café,” I applied the very same day. I had images of a cozy, bookish place, a low hum of conversation under the background classical music, where writers would drink endless cups of strong black coffee while they worked, occasionally stopping to share nuggets of creative wisdom with me.
Fast-forward seven years, and I was now twenty-eight, single, and living in the aforementioned death trap, and not only was I not a bestselling romance author, but I’d also finally admitted I was never going to write a happy-ever-after worthy of publication and had stopped writing altogether. I did, however, still work at Cake Expectations, though I had yet to see one writer in there, and customers were more likely to share complaints than creative wisdom.
I arrived just before ten, greeted my colleagues, Dana and Enzo, and headed to the staff room to change into my uniform. Cake Expectations was “London’s premier literary-themed café” because a) we were London’sonlyliterary-themed café and b) our owner, Gerald, heavily promoted the fact that Charles Dickens might have written part ofGreat Expectationson the site, although there was no evidence to back this up. Still, Gerald had never been one to let the truth get in the way of a good profit, so he opened the café, furnished it with a few old books he got from a charity shop, and then came up with the highly impractical idea of making his staff dress up as famous fictional characters. Today, Enzo had opted for the Hamlet uniform (baggy trousers, a frayed black jacket, and a stupid plastic skull he was supposed to carry at all times) and Dana had gone Juliet (a once-white dress that was now stained from the many gallons of tea spilled on it over the years). That left me with the choice of Gandalf (sweaty beard), Miss Havisham (uncomfortably heavy dress with fake cobwebs), Mary Poppins (big hat and handbag), or Elizabeth Bennet (empire-line dress that was two sizestoo big for me). Still, the latter was preferable to the hat or the cobwebs, so I pulled on the dress, pinned up my wavy brown hair into something vaguely resembling a Regency hairstyle, and headed out to start work.
It was a busy shift, with most of the tables booked for lunch and afternoon tea, and it wasn’t until three o’clock that I got to take a break. My head was still thumping, so I grabbed a sandwich and a Diet Coke and ate them in the staff room while Enzo regaled me with his latest Grindr exploits. Cake Expectations had a high staff turnover, but Enzo had worked there for two years, making him the second-longest-serving employee after me. As such, we’d gotten to know each other fairly well, and although I wouldn’t call him a friend (I wouldn’t really call anyone a friend except Bianca), I enjoyed living vicariously through Enzo’s hilarious dating stories. But as he was trying to explain something that sounded gravitationally impossible, I heard a raised voice coming from the café floor.
“I will not be silenced. This is intolerable!”
I looked at Enzo, who shook his head. “No way, his energy is all off.”