50 Ways to Find a Lover (48 page)

‘Si, I think I might be falling in love with you. I mean I’ve always loved you but now I think I’m
in
love. I think we could take on the world together.’

But what if I said something like this and he looked kindly at me and shook his head. ‘Oh, Sare! We’re mates. I don’t think of you in
that
way.’

A tear stings my eye at the thought.

Simon’s nose is up against the wall. He’s asleep. It’s silent. You never hear this in London, the sound of absolutely nothing. Oh God, I can’t hear Simon breathing.

‘Si, are you dead?’ I whisper.

‘Ur,’ he mumbles.

‘Sorry, go back to sleep. I just couldn’t hear you breathe, that’s all,’ I tell him.

‘I’m breathing into the wall.’ To speak he has to turn his head as though he’s taking a breath doing the front crawl.

Silence again.

‘Maybe you should face the other way,’ I counsel. ‘For oxygen, you know.’

He turns his body over, opening an oven door of his warmth as he does.

‘Shall we have a cuddle,’ I say nervously, ‘like we did last night? God, last night feels like months ago.’

I wait to feel an arm around me or an ‘All right, Sare.’ But the only answer is the silence. He’s asleep again. At least I can hear him breathe now. I can even feel it on the back of my neck.

Simon and Sarah. Even our names sound right. They both start with S and have two syllables. Simon and Sarah, or is Sarah and Simon better? They both sound good. Although I don’t want his surname. Sarah Gussett! Please. Everyone would call me Sweaty Gussett. He’d have to take mine. If we got married that is. If he wanted to. If he asked me.

I know that Simon would always make me laugh and be there to protect me and help me. But what can I offer him? I’m largely out of work and I’m scatty. He needs some beautiful fit Amazonian woman who runs yoga retreats. Why would he want me? I can’t think of a single reason. Maybe I’m just destined to be his friend and I’ll die never having told him how I feel. I’ll wear a big hat to his wedding.

‘Congratulations, Si, she’s lovely,’ I’ll say, and I’ll be a friend to his wife and I’ll be godmother to one of their children.

He’s snoring now like a friendly sleeping beast. I roll over very slowly. Our foreheads are nearly touching. I’ve never noticed that our faces are nearly the same size. Our eyes and noses and mouths are level. I watch him sleeping. His lips are parted a tiny bit. I’d like to pop a little kiss on them. If I did it super softly he wouldn’t wake. I worry briefly about infringing his civil liberties but decide to kiss him anyway. I hold my breath and lean in. I’m almost there. He opens his eyes.

‘Sare.’

‘Yes.’ I feel like a necrophile caught in a compromising position in a morgue.

‘I’m going to head back tomorrow. I need to get sorted for the trip.’

‘Course. Thank you so, so much for coming here and being amazing.’

‘Fuck off,’ he says bashfully.

We’re so close and talking so quietly it could be post-coital. I wish it was.

‘I mean it. You’ve been an angel. We’ll have to have our
Sopranos
day when you get back. Yeah, when you get back. I think that’ll be good for jet-lag.’

I smile at Simon. But he’s not smiling at me. He looks in pain.

‘Am I squashing you?’ I ask, concerned.

‘No, Sare. I don’t know how to tell you this: I’m moving out. I don’t know how long I’ll stay in Brazil. I’m going to stay out after the kids come back. So I’ll have to let the room go.’

‘Oh, that’s great, Si,’ I say. I know this is the same voice I’ll use when his future wife tells me she’s carrying his twins.

‘I’ll keep paying rent till you find someone else to move in.’

‘Fantastic, Si.’

‘I’ve really liked living with you though, Sare.’

‘Yeah, it’s been great.’

I roll over and bite my lip and try to control my breathing. I don’t sleep.

sixty-seven

I arrive in my living room wearing the clothes I’d put on almost a week ago. I call my dad.

‘How is she?’ I ask quickly.

‘I think they forgot to cut the umbilical cord between you and your mum.’ My dad laughs softly.

‘Any news?’

‘Sarah, she’s been asleep since you left.’

‘That’s good. Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine, Sarah. Fine.’

‘Good,’ I sigh, relieved. ‘I’ll call in a few hours. Love you lots.’

I didn’t want to come back to London. It was Dad who insisted. I wish I hadn’t. The flat is empty and disappointing, like a Kinder egg without a toy. There are no Cockaladas, no random gym equipment or gargantuan tubs of protein powder, no Simon doing squats or yoga, no Simon attempting to sing, no Simon forgetting to close the door when he goes to the toilet, no Simon offering me wit and wisdom. Just no Simon.

I check the post. I even open the formal letters. There’s a hand-delivered envelope with the name
SARAH SARGEANT
on it. It doesn’t even feel like my name any more. I feel so different. Please be from Simon. Please. I open it.

‘Well, you’re wrong, Paul. Simon’s left me,’ I whisper to the letter as I scrunch it up and throw it in the bin.

I walk slowly and sombrely through the space as though I’m at an art exhibition. I gaze at Simon’s bedroom door like it’s an exhibit I don’t understand. I don’t go in. I don’t want to, yet. I wander into my room instead. There is floor space again now the Cockaladas are gone. But I wish they were still here bruising my shins. There’s the double bed he bought me. My computer is still open on my desk. The last page I read was Jasmine’s comment on my blog. I close the computer and hide it under my bed. I find the quiet vibrator Julia bought me under there. I turn it on and watch it judder. I don’t want to blog any more. I shall take a blogging sabbatical. Perhaps I’ll take up furious masturbation instead. It’ll burn more calories. Or maybe I’ll join a gym. I have three weeks before I go to LA. I turn the vibrator off and stow it in a drawer. I walk out of the room and across the hallway to Simon’s room. But I stop in front of the closed door. He’d beeen here all along. It takes two and a half steps to get from Simon’s door to my door. I was two and a half steps from the man I love. Now he’s gone.

‘I’m such a knob,’ I sigh.

The only sign that Simon was ever here is our self-help-wisdom board. I’ll leave it up like a shrine. If the next person who lives here so much as touches it I’ll put needles in their bed. There’s an envelope with my name written by Simon’s hand on it. It dangles by a pin from the corner of the board. It looks at me. I ignore it. It might contain information such as ‘You know how I didn’t tell you that I was moving out? Well, there’s something else I didn’t tell you and that is I’m getting married, to an Amazonian yoga teacher.’ I’m obsessed by the Amazonian woman that Simon will meet. I have named her Bella. The worst thing about Bella is she’s really nice. She even does free yoga classes for under-privileged children. I hate her.

‘Read the bloody note, Sare,’ I sigh, snatching the envelope from the wall and opening Simon’s door.

‘Fuck me,’ I say quietly.

All Simon’s old furniture has been removed. In its place stands a cross-trainer in fantastic working order, a pink exercise bike and some dumb-bells. A large mirror has been placed on the wall with a Blu-tacked sign upon it saying
AS

YOU DON’T GO TO THE GYM I BOUGHT THE GYM TOO YOU
.

I smile sadly. I sit on the exercise bike and look at the letter in my hand. I smell the envelope. This must look weirder than a cat-food commercial. Unsurprisingly, the envelope smells of paper. I open it quickly. It’s shorter than I hoped.

I’ve had more romantic experiences reading a tax return. One day I’ll tell him. I’ll say, ‘You’ll never guess what. You know throughout that whole period when my mum was ill I wanted to tell you I loved you! Funny eh?’ And we’ll laugh and he’ll pick up one of the twins he had with Bella and I’ll vomit in the child’s cot.

‘Sweat it out, Sare,’ I hear myself say and I go into my room and put on a pair of shorts, a T-shirt and trainers. I do eight minutes on the cross-trainer. Then I hobble to my room and lie on my bed and cry.

sixty-eight