Toothless Tattoo Man shot the barman a nervous glance.
‘Never mind!’ Lizzy said brightly. ‘Where were we? Ah yes, the man I was in love with, who has just run back to his beautiful fashion-designer fiancée.’ She took another slurp of her lager. ‘So now
I’m
falling apart,’ she announced. ‘With no idea how to proceed with my life from now on, or even how to get in the shower in the morning and get dressed and go about my business like a normal person. Look!’ She stuck a bare foot out of her UGG boot. ‘I’ve even stopped shaving my toes!’
Tattoo Man’s face dropped. ‘Sorry, babe, I’ve just remembered I’ve gotta go and meet a man about a dog.’
Lizzy watched him leave with a morbid self-satisfaction. So now she even repulsed men who looked like they’d just escaped from the lifer’s wing at a high-security prison.
An hour and two more halves of lager later she trudged back to the flat.
You will get through this
, she told herself.
You just don’t know how yet.
There was a strange trilling noise as Lizzy let herself in. Did Poppet have a burglar alarm that she hadn’t told Lizzy about? A few moments later Lizzy realized it was a landline phone ringing. Good Lord, did anyone under the age of sixty even own one of these any more?
She located the phone next to the cabinet of vintage teacups. It had to be one of those old-fashioned ones with the round dial that took about two days to call a number. Lizzy lifted the receiver to her ear. ‘Hello?’
It wasn’t someone trying to sell Lizzy life insurance. ‘I told you to take your phone off silent!’ Poppet exclaimed.
‘Sorry, my mum keeps calling and I just can’t face telling her anything yet.’ Lizzy eyed up the bottle of amaretto on the top of the cabinet.
‘Do you follow Tiana Dawson on Twitter?’
The supermodel with the crying baby Lizzy had gone up to? It seemed like another lifetime ago. ‘Yeah, why?’
‘She’s just tweeted about Night Night Baby!’
‘What?’ Lizzy ran over to her bag and pulled out her phone. Bypassing the missed calls, she went straight on to her Twitter account. There it was, Tiana Dawson tweeting to her 1.7 million followers.
Happy baby means happy mummy! Can’t say how much this product has saved my life!
There was a shot of a bottle of Night Night Baby lavender oil next to an adorable sleeping child.
‘The
MailOnline
have already picked up on the story and are calling it a miracle for stressed-out babies and mothers!’ Poppet said excitedly. ‘This is really good, isn’t it?’
It was better than good. Lizzy rang off and listened to her voicemails. There were three from Karen, each one increasingly more excited.
‘Phone ringing off the hook … orders flooding in … can’t keep up … Oh Lizzy, this has saved us!’
There was another voicemail by the time she had finished listening, this time from a very contrite-sounding Antonia. ‘Bianca mentioned about your chance meeting with Tiana Dawson. Maybe I’ve been a little hasty about the … situation. I’d very much appreciate it, Lizzy, if you could give me a call about coming back in.’ Antonia emitted an over-hearty laugh. ‘The sooner the better! The place isn’t the same without you.’
More like she hadn’t got anyone to do her donkey-work for her, but Lizzy couldn’t stop grinning. They’d only gone and got the PR miracle she’d been praying for! Now she could balance the books at Haven, and Karen wouldn’t lose her house after all.
Her phone buzzed again. ‘Karen?’ Lizzy said joyfully. ‘I can’t believe it! Didn’t I tell you it would all come good?’
‘It’s me.’ The voice was so husky it took a moment for Lizzy to realize who it was.
Her temporary high drained away. ‘What do you want, Elliot?’ she asked coldly.
‘I need to see you. Please, Lizzy.’
‘Well, I don’t want to see you! Just leave me alone!’
Before he could say another word Lizzy hurled the phone across the room. Narrowly missing Poppet’s
Home Sweet Home
tapestry, it hit the wall and bounced off with an ominous crack.
Lizzy stood there breathing heavily, shocked at what she’d just done.
I’ve turned into the woman who throws things across rooms.
If that’s what it took to get Elliot Anderson out of her life, so be it.
Worried about Lizzy’s state of mind, Poppet had offered to take the day off work, but Lizzy had insisted it wasn’t necessary. She was still wandering round the flat wearing three-day-old knickers and spending hours staring out of the window. It wasn’t fair to inflict that on another person.
Lizzy spent the morning watching a special edition of
The Jeremy Kyle Show
ironically called ‘Xmas Cheats!’ She had briefly pondered whether to ring up the show to ask if they had any episodes planned for the future called ‘Hairy-toed and Alone – Girls Left on Love’s Scrapheap,’ before deciding it was probably too niche.
As well as having no company, she now also had no phone. The two times Lizzy had been phoneless before (both, embarrassingly, when she’d dropped said phones in glasses of wine – try passing
that
off as water damage), it had felt like her right arm had been ripped off, but now it was a blessed relief. At least she could put off explaining to her family that she’d messed up her love life again. More importantly, Elliot couldn’t get hold of her and Lizzy could be left alone to grieve.
She still had contact with the outside world through email at least, on Poppet’s ancient old Dell computer that weighed about three stone. Ironically, at a time when Lizzy didn’t want to speak to anyone, everyone wanted to speak to her. Her inbox was full of requests from journalists for samples of Night Night Baby products and interviews with Karen Jones. Lizzy had forwarded them all on to Bianca to take care of. Even her ditzy colleague couldn’t balls up this one.
She’d also had a message from her mother, who used email so rarely that Lizzy had forgotten she had a Hotmail account. It read like a wartime telegram with imaginary STOPS.
Your father and I are worried. Robbie can’t get hold of you either. Please call home. Love Mum.
Lizzy had just forwarded another glut of emails to Bianca when a name popped up in her inbox that made her heart lurch. It was from a member of the Anderson family, but it wasn’t Elliot. It was Cassandra.
My dear Lizzy, I hope you don’t mind me emailing. I feel so dreadful about this whole business. Elliot has explained to me briefly what has happened. I know you must be feeling terribly hurt and betrayed right now, but please, won’t you consider meeting up with him so he can tell you what really happened? I know he’s hurting terribly as well.
Lizzy deleted the message. Anger burned in her belly. He was getting his
mother
to email on his behalf? Did the man have no dignity? Why didn’t he stop prolonging the agony and just concede that he was a duplicitous, lying, cheating bastard?
That afternoon she swung wildly between brief moments of cynical defiance and longer periods of black despair. She retired back to the sofa with the amaretto bottle to watch
The Polar Express
in the hope that if she gorged herself on Christmas films a little of the goodwill would transfer over, but all she could think about were the presents she hadn’t bought and the job she didn’t want to go back to and, surpassing all of that, the huge void Elliot had left in her life.
I’ll be OK tomorrow
, she kept telling herself desperately.
I’ll dust myself off and get on with things. Tomorrow I’ll wake up and feel better.
Except she didn’t feel better. Every time she thought about Elliot’s stocking fillers, wrapped at home in three-pound-a-sheet paper from Paperchase, the knife twisted in Lizzy’s heart a little further. Or the hard-won tickets she’d got to the Young Vic to see the play Elliot had been raving about, followed by dinner at the new Ottolenghi place. The night would have cost her a fortune, but Lizzy had been flush with love, and money had meant nothing. Now she’d been left with tickets to a three-hour Chekhov performance, and a redundant table booking at the hottest restaurant in town. Christmas had always been her favourite time of year. Now it loomed before her, joyless and empty.
Day turned into night without Lizzy even being aware of it. She was sobbing at the John Lewis advert for the umpteenth time (she’d hit a new low when she’d welled up at the Iceland one earlier), when she thought she heard a knock on the front door.
Lizzy didn’t pay much attention, but then she heard it again. She sat up and a half-eaten mince pie fell off her chest. Had it been the wind? A more disgusting thought: had it been
her
wind? There was another knock this time, louder. There was definitely someone there.
Poppet
’
s dad again, perhaps?
Lizzy got up and wrapped the blanket protectively around her. At least she knew it couldn’t be Elliot because he didn’t know where Poppet lived.
As she ventured into the hallway a shadow was clearly visible through the frosted-glass door panel. Oh God, it wasn’t Poppet’s pervy neighbour who always came round to ask her to put suncream on his back in the summer, was it?
Lizzy pulled the door open, ready to blast any amorous advances off with her dishevelled appearance, or failing that her unwashed odours, but it wasn’t a seventy-plus pensioner waving a piece of mistletoe with a hopeful look on his face. It was Nic.
She stood on the doorstep in a new green duffle coat that Lizzy hadn’t seen before, clutching a Tesco bag that looked full of wine.
‘Hello,’ she said in a small voice.
‘Hello,’ Lizzy said in a small voice back.
There was an awkward silence. ‘Poppet’s not in,’ Lizzy said.
‘I know, I came to see you.’ Nic held up the carrier bag and grinned briefly, a flash of her old self back. ‘I don’t know about you, but I need a drink.’
Back inside they stood in the middle of the living room like two long-lost exes. ‘I’m sorry the place is such a mess,’ Lizzy said. ‘I would have tidied up if I had known you were coming round.’
Nic made a small gesture, as if to say
that’s the least of our worries
. ‘Poppet told me. About you and Elliot. Are you OK?’
‘Not really,’ Lizzy admitted. And then: ‘Are
you
OK?’
Nic shook her head wordlessly and burst into tears. ‘Oh Lizzy! I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch!’
They sat on the sofa together, arms round each other. Nic was inconsolable, her chest heaving with great gulping sobs. Lizzy had never seen her like this before.
‘I’ve g-got something to tell you. You’re g-going to think I’m a really bad p-p-person.’
‘Nothing you could do would make me think you’re a bad person,’ Lizzy said tearfully. ‘You haven’t murdered anyone, have you?’ she added, half-joking.
‘It’s only just below that.’ Nic blew loudly into a tissue. ‘I’ve been having an affair with Simon.’
It took a moment to digest the news. ‘As in your boss Simon Hargreaves?’
‘As in married Simon Hargreaves, who has two young kids and a lovely wife called Marcelle who lent me her lip gloss in the toilet at a work party.’ Nic burst into floods of tears again. ‘And I’m the home-wrecking cold-hearted career bitch!’
‘Nic, you’re not.’ Lizzy looked at her distraught friend. ‘Don’t say that.’
‘I never thought I’d be the girl who had the affair with her married boss. It just
happened
,’ she said helplessly. ‘How pathetic does that sound? Can you imagine me saying that to Simon’s wife? “Sorry for breaking up your marriage, but these things just
happen
, yeah?”’
‘What
did
happen?’ Lizzy asked softly.
Nic started to cry again. ‘We just spent loads of time together. It wasn’t anything to do with him being powerful, or being a replacement father figure or anything, but because he was kind and funny and he listened to me. Stuff I
never
thought I’d wanted – he had moobs and a paunch for Christ’s sake, but there was just this connection between us. He was my
friend
more than anything; the sex wasn’t even that great. I just felt like I could tell him anything and he’d understand.’
‘Pops and I are your friends, Nic. You could have told us.’
‘I couldn’t. I felt so ashamed. And then you had all that stuff going on with Elliot and it just brought out this misplaced guilt and rage in me, and for some reason I put it all on to you. I’m so sorry, Lizzy,’ she said wretchedly. ‘I cut you off because I knew I couldn’t keep on pretending everything was fine, and I didn’t want to face up to myself.’
Lizzy took the soggy tissue out of Nic’s hands and gave her a new one.
‘I did try to break it off a few times,’ Nic said between sniffles. ‘Simon said he loved me and that he wanted to be with me, but he couldn’t leave until the kids were older. Jesus, listen to me! I’ve always thought I was so bloody clever and I ended up falling for the oldest lines in the book.’
A drip of snot fell off the end of her nose. ‘The worse thing of all is that I think Simon really does love me, the dickhead.’
‘
Do
you want to make a go of things with him?’ Lizzy asked tentatively.
Nic shook her head. ‘I mean it this time. How could I ever look at myself again? How could I look at him, knowing what we’d done? S-s-so there you go,’ she stammered. ‘My dirty secret is out in the open. I don’t blame you if you hate me. I’d feel the same.’
Lizzy gazed at the distraught, puffy-faced mess sitting beside her. ‘I don’t hate you,’ she said simply. ‘You’re my friend, Nic, and I love you. That’s never going to change.’
Nic stared up at Lizzy through reddened eyes. ‘You really mean that?’
‘Of course I mean it. Don’t start crying again. Oh come here, you idiot, I’ve missed you so much!’
And that was it in a nutshell. Who was Lizzy to make a moral judgement? Could she one hundred per cent categorically state that she wouldn’t have done the same thing if she’d been in Nic’s position, and Elliot had still been going out with Amber? Until you were standing in a person’s shoes, you never really knew what you would do. All Lizzy knew was that Nic was her friend, and she’d always been there for Lizzy. That was all that mattered.