The Two Lives of Lydia Bird(104)

He’s tall, his shoulders bunched into his coat and scarf, but even from this distance I recognize him. Jonah Jones looks my way and I see the precise moment he knows it’s me under all these stripes; he slows for a moment and then speeds up until we meet in the middle.

‘What are you doing here?’ I reach out and clutch him by the arms, incredulous, blindsided by the sight of him in person after seeing him so often on the small screen. ‘You’re in LA!’

He laughs, pulling his navy woollen hat off. He needs a haircut, as usual, but my God, his unguarded smile is a sight for my sore eyes. I don’t think I’d gauged from the iPad screen quite how much he’d caught the sun or how much LA has given him his spark back. He’s not the same man who boarded the plane all those months ago. He isn’t the Jonah I remember as Freddie’s sidekick, either. He looks older, more grown-up, as if he’s stepped into bigger shoes and found them a better fit.

‘Evidently I’m not,’ he grins. ‘All that wall-to-wall sunshine, Lyds, it drives you nuts.’

‘You’ve come to the right place then.’ I can’t stop looking at him. ‘I’m just so glad to see you, Jonah.’ I shake my head, still in shock.

‘You too,’ he says. ‘Come here.’

He pulls me into his arms, and honestly, it’s like a dam bursting. It’s not a polite hug. It’s a ‘you matter to me, I can’t believe you’re here, let me look at you, you’ve just brightened my world’ hug. We rock and we laugh, and eventually I step backwards, thrilled to my bones.

He reaches out and pulls my bobble hat off.

‘Wow,’ he says. ‘It’s like feathers. I love it.’

He’s seen my haircut countless times on-screen but this is the first time in person.

I run my hand over it, self-conscious. ‘I miss my long hair in this weather,’ I say.

He pulls my hat back on over my ears. ‘Better?’

I nod. ‘Better.’

‘Were you going somewhere?’ he asks.

I blink, trying to remember. ‘Not really. Just blowing away the cobwebs, making sure my legs still work, that kind of thing.’

‘That kind of New Year?’ he says.

‘Lunch at Mum’s got a bit out of hand yesterday,’ I laugh. ‘Headache today.’

He rubs his cold hands together. ‘I was coming to see you,’ he says. ‘I can come back later though, if you like? Or tomorrow?’

‘No,’ I jump in. ‘God, no. Come on, let’s go inside, it’s too cold out here anyway. I don’t know what I was thinking.’

I slide my arm through his as we turn towards mine. ‘Shawshank Redemption or Bond?’ I say. ‘You can choose.’

He screws his nose up. ‘Which Bond?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘James?’

Jonah shakes his head, laughing as I slide the key into the lock. ‘Happy New Year, Lyds.’

I turn back and smile.

‘You too, Jonah.’

In the background, Roger Moore messes around with a guy with metal teeth, and in the foreground, Jonah and I sit either end of the sofa and trade news as we work our way through a pile of turkey sandwiches.

I tell him silly work stories about Flo and Mary and show him pictures of Charlotte on my phone, and he tells me he spent last night at The Prince catching up with Deckers and co, who haven’t changed at all. Which is odd really, because Jonah and I are barely recognizable as the people we were a couple of years ago. I listen and nod in the right places, building up to asking him the things I really want the answers to.

‘Lion King?’ he says, flicking through the TV guide. ‘Or some shite about midwives?’

‘Er, hello?’ I say. ‘Who in this room delivered a baby with her bare hands last summer?’

Jonah lays the guide down. ‘God, I’d forgotten you did that,’ he says. ‘And with your bare hands too. You’re an everyday miracle worker, Lyds.’ He laughs as he tilts the neck of his beer towards me in salute.

‘I’ll take that,’ I say, gracious.

‘Good,’ he says. ‘It’s true.’

‘So …’ I sit up straighter, cross-legged on the sofa facing him. ‘What’s really brought you home, Jonah?’

He picks at the corner of the label on his beer bottle. ‘I just needed to clear my head.’

I take an educated guess. ‘Script woes again?’

‘Yeah,’ he sighs. I know he’s sometimes found it difficult to walk the line between staying true to his story and accepting the studio’s vision for the script, but he hadn’t mentioned anything about this lately.

‘I thought you’d ironed all that out?’

He twists his head until his neck cricks, a giveaway of his anxiety to me because I know him so well.

‘We did,’ he says. ‘We had. Or at least I thought we had.’

I reach for my wine glass without interrupting.

‘But then we broke for Christmas and they must have all watched too much of the Hallmark Channel or something, because they’ve decided the ending needs to change. Again.’

Ah. ‘And you don’t agree?’

He casts his eyes to the ceiling as if the answer to his problems might be hidden somewhere up there. ‘No.’