I thought Ben the caretaker might have busted us, but when I follow James’s finger, I see his car, dusted in snow, and on the roof of it a fox, moving its paws along to the melody.
Memory’s a bastard, I think.
I glance over at perma-paunch who is talking to a thin woman of around sixty, dressed in tight white jeans and a white Ralph Lauren shirt.
‘I recognise you,’ he says, ‘I’m Stefan, I own Zarimkadeh, the jeweller’s in the high street.’ He leans forward, hairy hands on knees spread wide.
‘Oh yes!’ she says, ‘I was in at Christmas, you had those divine yellow diamonds!’
‘Next time you come in, I’ll do you a deal,’ he says. ‘You’re looking very well, very very good.’
‘Thank you,’ she says, stroking her collarbone with an elegant, bangled arm.
‘You keep yourself well maintained, I can see you take care of yourself,’ he says.
She nods energetically.
‘A lot of women let themselves go … get fat … horrible.’
I stare at his shiny, pointed cowboy boots, then up past a huge gut hugged by a hot pink Lacoste t-shirt, spilling over an Hermès belt, then up to his Versace shades that sit on a bonnet of thickly sprayed hair.
‘My wife, she does an hour on the treadmill every morning and an hour in the pool every night. She has the body she had when she was sixteen, terrific.’
Long marriage! She must be tolerant to put up with such a creep.
‘How old is your wife?’ asks the woman.
‘Twenty-five,’ says Stefan. I chuckle, but from the look he flashes it appears he isn’t joking at all.
My name is called and as I walk past him I consider saying various things:
‘Your shop is less than one mile away. If you walked to the surgery rather than drove your Porsch-ah, you wouldn’t be such a fat douchebag, and you wouldn’t get parking tickets.’
‘It is OKAY not to be thin when you’re sixty, or even when you’re sixteen. How dare you talk about how “horrible” it is for an older woman to “get fat” when
you are fat
.’
‘You do realise there’s no point wasting £600 on an Hermès belt when your tummy’s just going to cover it up, don’t you?’
‘And another thing! I haven’t seen boots that try-hard, worn by someone who couldn’t look less like a cowboy, since I last went down the Kings Road in 1988.’
Instead when I walk past, I mutter ‘arsehole’ just loud enough so that he can hear.
Watch me. Any day now my passive-aggression is going to morph into aggressive-aggression.
I hope Devron’s around when it does.
‘Sadie Klein, date of birth 1953?’ says Dr Salter.
‘No, we’re no relation. Sophie Klein, 1976,’ I say.
She looks at me with a touch of suspicion.
‘How can I help?’ she asks.
I start crying uncontrollably. BORING! I think, as I rapidly grab one tissue after another from the box on her desk, like a depressed magician.
I tell her the one-minute version of the story. I now have multiple formats: a five minute cut-down for strangers on the bus, the twenty-minute version for friends I haven’t seen since the break-up and the screenplay, in case Harvey Weinstein comes calling.
Dr Salter chews the end of her pen. ‘You don’t actually believe any of the things this man said to you, do you?’
I snivel and nod.
‘Clearly his behaviour says far more about him than you, there’s nothing wrong with your body. And this man must have plenty of his own issues that he’s projecting outwards. Was he very body-conscious himself?’
‘Only about women …’
‘Do you ever think about harming yourself?’ she asks, looking at a shopping list on her computer screen.
‘No, I would never do that, my mother would kill me,’ I say, and she laughs, although I’m now the one not joking.
‘Okay, well, anti-depressants are not a long-term solution.’
‘I don’t want to be on them, but I’m worried about losing my job.’
I hate the thought of anti-depressants. I don’t like the fact that as a 34-year-old woman I should need them to help get me through a break-up, and I don’t want to be anaesthetised against life’s ups and downs. Actually, I do want to be anaesthetised against the downs, that’s the whole point.
‘There are plenty more fish in the sea,’ she says, leaning her chin on her hands and her elbows on her knees: two parallel bars blocking my path to the narcs. ‘Have you got many friends?’ she asks.
‘Yes, I’m lucky. I have lots of people who care about me and who I can talk to.’
‘Well, if I were you I’d go to a gallery or a museum. Distract yourself, get on with your life. It sounds like you’re better off without this man.’
The tears are on a roll, but I am now irritated.
‘I can’t actually move at the weekends,’ I say. ‘I tried to see a film the other day and I had to leave the cinema because I was crying so loudly.’
‘What was the film?’ she asks.
What? ‘A French film, about a guy in prison.’
‘Try something more upbeat. I hear
Avatar
’s excellent.’
Dr Barry fucking Norman.
‘Come on, stiff upper lip,’ she says. This is not my approach at all. ‘Go and splash some cold water on your face, no one likes to see panda eyes.’
I am rigid with indignation. I’d heard the NHS doled out anti-depressants like sweeties. Now that I can’t have them, there’s nothing I want more.
‘Will you ask me the question on your screen again, please?’ I say.
‘Sorry?’
‘I wasn’t concentrating the first time. Ask me again, please.’
‘
Do you ever think about harming yourself?
’
‘Yes. Sometimes.’
‘
Do you? Really?
’
I nod, James-style.
She takes a deep breath. ‘Okay. We’ll start you on 20mg of Citalopram and let’s see how you get on. They take at least a month to kick in …’
On my way back to work, my winning green prescription clasped tight, I realise the bottom line: I can’t change what James said, what he did, what he thinks, who he’s chosen or who he is.
And I find these facts unbearable.
I return to my desk and an email from Devron.
‘Sophie.
Tried to find you after our chat but you’d disappeared. So: big ‘Change of Direction’ from the Board re: your custard project. New objective for next financial year: budget slashing.
Tell suppliers to pull plug on work-in-progress. Updates next week.’
I phone Maggie.
‘Help! Devron’s just asked me to cancel my whole new range.’
‘How far are you from launch?’
‘Two weeks.’
‘His reason?’
‘The Board. Budget cutting?’
‘Not a chance, if it’s the Board and it’s money, he won’t fight for you.’
‘Appletree have been working on it for a year! Will’s
due here any minute to go through the final product specs …’
‘Shareholders, Sophie. You’re not going to win. I’m sorry.’
Will is totally gracious about it even though it’s one of the worst things we could do to a supplier.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. ‘I think Devron’s got another angle in mind, hopefully I’ll rebrief next week …’
‘Don’t worry Soph, these things happen. It’ll all work out.’
‘– Do you want to grab a cup of tea in the canteen?’
He looks at his watch. ‘How about that Shake Away?’
I shouldn’t really. I need to email all the ops guys to tell them the new range is cancelled …
‘It’s Islington – only twenty minutes in a cab,’ says Will.
Besides, I’m weeks behind on purchase orders.
‘Hundreds of different milkshakes …’ he says.
And I really should collect my pills from the chemist.
‘You shook on it, remember?’ he says.
Or I could escape my life for one hour.
‘I’ll grab my coat.’
‘This place is dangerous,’ I say, surveying the menu.
‘You could have a different milkshake every day for a year and still have some left to try,’ says Will, with a look on his face suggesting he’s done just that.
‘What do you recommend?’
‘I’m having a Hot Norah – chocolate muffin, dime bar and bits of Malteser.’
‘That’s a drink?’
‘Not for the faint hearted,’ he says, a hint of pride creeping into his smile.
‘I’ll go Chunky Kit Kat if I can try this Norah thing.’
‘Verdict?’ says Will. ‘You think it’s too full on?’
‘Not full on enough!’ I say, taking another sip. Who needs anti-depressants when you’ve got hot milkshakes with muffins and chocolate bars for croutons?
‘What do you reckon? Anything we could do with it from a development point of view?’
I consider for a minute. Yes. You could definitely take the concept and look at it in another format – translate it into a cake or a biscuit. ‘Potentially. I’ll give it some thought.’
‘Great,’ he says, smiling broadly. ‘You finish the rest – I’ve got to catch my train.’
‘Take this with you,’ I say, shoving the drink back in his hand. ‘This slope’s too slippery for me.’
‘What do you mean?’ he says.
‘Too fattening.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I mean it’s full of sugar and fat.’
‘No, I know what’s in it, I mean why are you saying that? You’ve got nothing to worry about.’
‘I’ve been eating too much.’
‘Are you fishing for a compliment?’ He smiles at me. ‘You’re not serious?’ he says, his smile faltering.
‘Let’s start walking to the tube, you’ll miss your train,’ I say. The sky has turned slate and the wind has picked up. ‘I’m freezing.’
‘Here. Why don’t you borrow this?’ He takes off his scarf and places it round my neck.
‘Won’t you be cold?’ I say, blushing as I feel the warmth from his skin on mine.
‘I’m fine. You look like you need it – your cheeks have gone all pink …’
‘Just cold, that’s all,’ I say, turning in embarrassment and heading towards the station.
He rushes to catch up. ‘Did I say something wrong before? I didn’t mean to make you feel awkward,’ he says, looking perplexed.
‘No, ignore me, it’s nothing. Anyway, what are you up to this weekend, anything fun?’
‘Absolutely! My mum’s broken her wrist so I’m driving her to Homebase to help her choose grouting.’
‘Rock and roll …’
He laughs. ‘It gets better. Then I’m going round to my ex-wife’s to help her pack up her flat …’
His ex-wife who cheated on him? ‘You two are still friends?’
‘No, not really. But she’s moving to Glasgow and she asked me to help.’
‘Will, you’re a saint!’
‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, if you’d spoken to me a few years back I wasn’t her number one fan … but … well, time heals and all that.’
‘So they say. How long were you married for?’
‘Just under three years. But we’d been together for eight before that.’
‘You must have got together young,’ I say, trying to do the maths – Will’s about my age, maybe a year older.
‘Youngish. Twenty-two. I think that was part of the problem. I don’t know if either of us knew ourselves properly, let alone each other. Anyway, she did what she did and that was quite hard to get my head around.’
‘It must have been awful,’ I say, remembering with a deep ache in my chest that first sight of Noushka’s legs coming down the kitchen stairs.
He shakes his head. ‘The weird thing was,’ he says, looking momentarily confused, ‘I almost felt like it was
my
fault, if that makes any sense?’
I nod.
‘But it wasn’t my fault. Fault isn’t even a helpful way of looking at it, anyway.’
‘You make it sound so logical …’
He laughs gently. ‘It took me a year and a half to get to logical. The way I see it now, she did me a massive favour. We could have had kids and that would have been far messier. Anyway, I don’t know why I’m boring you
with my life story – all a bit heavy for a Tuesday afternoon!’ he says, looking suddenly self-conscious as we enter the dull yellow light of the tube station. ‘So … I guess this is me. I’ll see you soon, Soph,’ he says, giving me a peck on the cheek. ‘Glad you liked the shake.’
As he heads through the barrier I feel a compulsion to follow him down the long escalator, to keep talking to him. I want to discover his secrets. How can he be so gracious? I want to be like that. Magnanimous. Calm. Storm-free.
Instead, I turn and walk slowly back out to Upper Street.
The minute I reach the bus stop I realise I still have his scarf.
On the way home I wrap it tightly around me. It smells of clean laundry and limes: two of my favourite things.
This road to recovery’s a bit bumpy for my liking. The following evening, Pete brings round a curry. I’m already in pyjamas at 7pm, and after I’ve scraped the last of the chicken dhansak out of the carton I ask him to go round to Tesco’s and buy me some bread and hummus.
‘You can’t still be hungry, Soph,’ he says. ‘Just give it five minutes and you’ll feel full.’
‘And some Ben and Jerry’s too … Phish Food,’ I say, giving him a twenty pound note.
While he’s gone I make a half-hearted attempt to tidy up. Mail lies unopened on my doormat. My clothes form mole hills throughout the flat. For some reason the Marmite is in the fridge, along with my driving licence.
Pete comes back with a small baguette, hummus and a small tub of Phish Food. We exchange glances.
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I meant a big baguette.’
‘I’m looking out for you, Soph.’
‘I can look out for myself,’ I say, ripping into the bread. ‘How’s it going with that girl then, Carla, was it? That’s been a while, must be getting serious.’
‘She’s fun, but … you know, she’s not the one.’
‘Does she know that?’
‘What?’
‘That you’re wasting her time?’
‘I’m not going to propose to her.’
‘But if you know it’s not right, why carry on?’
‘We’ve just booked a holiday in June, I’ll finish it after that probably.’
‘But if you feel that way before the holiday, why lead her on? Why don’t you just finish it now? That’d be kinder to her.’
‘Stop comparing me to James.’
‘No, seriously, are you just waiting for someone better to come along, so you don’t have to be on your own?’
‘Soph. I’m your friend.’
I start to weep. ‘Then please say something that will help me move on. I can’t seem to shake this sadness.’