‘Because I’m slowly dying every day I have to spend here? Because I feel cold, and tired, and unhappy, and I want to feel the sun on my face again?’
I look at her sadly. She does look tired. She has dark circles under her eyes and her cheeks are pale and sunken. Is this what love is supposed to do to you? I feel the anger welling up inside me once more. This is Helen! She’s the strongest woman I’ve ever met; the woman who’s always told
me
not to give up my life for a man! She doesn’t believe in romance! How can this have happened? How do we
allow
this to happen to ourselves?
‘Please don’t go!’ I say again, quietly. ‘You can get through this, Helen. We can help each other. We’ll
both
leave Bookshelf. We can look for a new job together. I need you! I need you to talk sense to me – to make me strong.’
‘Sorry, Katie.’ She shakes her head. ‘I’m not even strong enough for
me
any more. I’ve just told Greg I’m taking extended leave for the moment. I’m not completely stupid. I won’t rush into anything. I’ll stay with my brother, get a job, see how things go. But I don’t think I’ll be coming back.’
We pay for our drinks and carry them, in silence, to a table by the window where I pick up the sandwich menu and study it with a shaky hand.
‘You’ll be fine,’ she says at length. ‘You’re tougher than you think you are. You’re designed to bounce back – like one of those children’s balls on a bit of elastic!’
She’s smiling, gently, trying to make me laugh.
‘Until the elastic snaps.’
‘It doesn’t; it stretches. Better than a tough old bit of string that hasn’t got any give in it, eh? That just tears itself to shreds, in the end.’
I’m a bit slow. It’s not till much later, when we’re back in the office, that I realise she’s referring to herself.
Emily and Sean are being lovely. They won’t let me be on my own.
‘I don’t actually think I mind,’ I tell Emily tonight when she calls. ‘I’m tired. I’m going to have a bath, curl up on the sofa in my jamas, watch TV and pig out on chocolate.’
‘I’ll come and join you, then. In case you eat all the chocolate and get fat.’
‘OK. As long as we can watch
EastEnders
.’
‘Absolutely. If I stay at home, Sean will have the football on.’
And I suddenly realise something. If Matt was here, he’d have the football on, too. He wouldn’t even have asked me what I wanted to watch. And inside, I’d have been pissed off, but I’d have pretended not to mind. And then I’d have shared the chocolate with him, but he’d have eaten most of it – and I’d still have pretended not to mind. And I wouldn’t have been able to chat to him about his day, or have a giggle and a laugh with him the way I will with Emily, because he takes the football so seriously I’d have to be quiet and pretend to not mind that, either.
Suddenly, I’m not having to pretend anything to anyone any more. And I think, eventually, I could get to like it.
Everyone says it, and it’s true: the night times are the worst. The double bed feels big, and Matt’s side is cold and empty. I’ve tried moving onto the other side, or lying bang slap in the middle, but it doesn’t seem natural. I like my own side. In the end I’ve put a pillow in his side, so that when I roll over and reach out, like I keep doing, automatically, to feel the comfort of a warm body lying next to mine, I feel the softness of the pillow instead of the heart-wrenching bare flatness of the cold sheet. It’s a little thing, but it helps. I feel better, stronger, for having thought of it. Another week, another month, and I won’t even be finding it strange any more. I’m going to get over this. I’m going to bloody well survive. I’m not going to pieces. Am I?
And another thing: in the night, when I reach out for someone, it isn’t always Matt I’ve been dreaming about anyway. That’s one of the reasons I’m so cross with myself. I’ve erased Harry’s number from my phone. I’ve erased him, permanently, from my life, but how do you erase someone from your dreams? What’s the matter with me? Haven’t I got enough problems in my life without dreaming about some guy I hardly even know? Why did I ever even give him a second look? He was just a ship passing in the night, for God’s sake! I must be in a really bad way if I’m so desperate for sexual excitement that my subconscious mind allows me to dream myself into bed (naked and gagging for it) with some guy we just picked up as part of a hen party game.
Of course, I can’t help my dreams, but I never think about him when I’m awake. That would
really
be pathetic. The only little scenario that occasionally flits through my mind, just when I’m sitting at home quietly on my own you know, is the memory of him looking after me that night in Jude’s flat – covering me up and bringing me water and a cold flannel and stroking my hair back from my face and letting me cry on his shoulder … well, OK, it’s a nice memory if you like that sort of thing. But obviously it’s not something I want to waste too much time on. When you think about it, most guys would probably have been reasonably kind to someone who was crying her eyes out and hanging onto a sick-bucket, so it’s no big deal. No big deal at all.
Lisa comes to see me at the weekend.
‘Mum’s joined a group,’ she says, sitting down next to me with a steaming mug of coffee.
‘A group?’
I’m thinking amateur dramatics, flower arranging – I don’t know.
‘AA.’
‘Oh!’
Shock hits me somewhere mid-chest. I’ve talked to Lisa once or twice, since the hen weekend, about Mum’s drinking and whether we should worry about it or not. I thought the consensus of our opinion had been pretty much that we shouldn’t. Lisa hadn’t even seemed as shocked or as upset as me, when I told her Mum’s revelations about our dad.
‘I’ve always suspected something like that,’ she said fairly calmly.
‘Have you?’
‘Yes. I’ve even asked Mum once or twice whether there was more to it than she admitted – but she obviously wasn’t ready to talk to us about it.’
‘Why didn’t
I
suspect anything? Am I thick, or what?’
‘No, Katie. You’re just the baby of the family. Everyone probably tried to protect you,’ she said with a smile.
‘Up till my hen weekend. Then they chucked it all at me at once!’
‘I’m sorry,’ she says now, seeing the look on my face. ‘I didn’t think this would come as a shock to you, Katie. It was you that brought it to my attention, in the first place.’
‘Yes, but Jesus, I didn’t think she was actually – well, you know,
really
…’
‘What? She drinks when she’s on her own.’ Lisa’s counting off on her fingers. ‘She drinks to stop herself from crying; from thinking her life’s a mess. She hides her drinking from her family. She pretends she drinks less than she really does. She says she’s stopped, but she hasn’t. She makes excuses for needing just one more. You don’t think she’s an alcoholic?’
‘I suppose…. God, Lisa, I wish we’d known. We should have realised. We could have helped her.’
‘No, we couldn’t. You know what they say. They have to want to help themselves. In the event, your hen weekend did the trick – it all came out and she had to confront it, herself. She’s determined now. She’s seems so much stronger after just one AA meeting.’
Strong, stronger, strongest. It’s all I seem to hear about, these days. I wish we didn’t all have to go on and on about being strong. It reminds me of cartoons of Popeye with his tins of spinach. To be quite honest I’d like nothing better than to collapse in a heap of weakness, like a melted jelly, and let someone else get on with being strong for me. And for Mum, and for Lisa too.
Where are you, Dad?
Shame you turned out to be just another bastard. A tin of spinach would actually be more use to us all than you were. No wonder I’ve wasted half my life searching for some non-existent perfect man. I never even had one as a father.
Where has the time gone? It’s nearly the end of May already. The weather’s beginning to feel like summer; the trees are wearing their new summer clothes and as I walk to the bus-stop in the mornings, I’ve seen pink and red and lilac coloured flowers on shrubs in the suburban front gardens. I ought to learn their names. I’m going to move – somewhere with a garden. I want a patch of grass to call my own. I’ll plant things, and talk about perennials and climbers and herbaceous borders with my mum and my sister. All I’ve ever grown, up till now, was a cactus in a flowerpot – and that’s beginning to look a bit yellowy.
Matt and I are selling the flat. We’ve found a buyer already because flats in this area are snapped up as soon as they go on the market. He’s moved in with his mate Rory – presumably until he and Bitch Claire decide where to build their love nest. I’ve only been round there once and it reminded me of when I was a student. At least three days’ worth of washing-up piled next to the sink; an assortment of mugs, plates, socks, and beer cans scattered artistically around the living room, and the kitchen floor so sticky I had to wipe my shoes when I came
out
. I wonder if Claire will still want him when she sees him in his new habitat. She might think twice about any dreams she may have of deep pile pale beige carpets or white leather sofas.
‘Why do men revert to such disgusting habits without a woman around?’ I asked Helen idly the next morning at work.
‘Because, dear, that’s their natural state. They’re not actually civilised. They only pretend to be, to please us.’
‘I’m beginning to think all relationships are built on a load of pretence.’
‘You’re only
beginning
to think that?’
Today’s the day I was supposed to be getting married. I lie in bed until late, trying to focus my mind on the thought that I should, by now, have been getting myself into the dress that’s still hanging in Lisa’s spare room wardrobe under its plastic cover. I should have had my hair done and my nails French-polished and be getting jittery about walking down the aisle on Uncle Ron’s arm and committing myself to one man for the rest of my life.
Now, it already seems unreal and slightly ridiculous. Why did I ever think it was a good idea? Why did I ever think I was in love with Matt? I don’t miss him any more. I can hardly even remember what it was like living with him, sleeping with him, washing his socks and underpants and listening to him going on and on about Arsenal.
And instead of getting married, I’m going to a farewell party tonight – for Helen. Yes, she’s off to Australia on Monday. We’re all going to the pub – I’ve asked everyone who came on the hen weekend. Helen considers them all her friends now, and it’s sad, but she hasn’t really got many of her own. She said her goodbyes to Greg at the office yesterday. At least, she thinks she did – but I’ve invited him along tonight, too. Whether or not he turns up is a different matter. He’s such an odd guy. Beats me how he hasn’t noticed it’s tearing her up inside to leave him.
Emily and Sean pick me up at half past seven. Emily’s been round for most of the afternoon anyway. She was worried that I was going to fall apart, thinking about the wedding dress and the church and the reception and everything. At half past three – about the time that I would have been officially declared Mrs Davenport – she handed me a cup of tea and a double choc-chip muffin and told me my life was just about to start improving. Bless her. I didn’t like to tell her it’s improved already. It must be hard for her to imagine, when she’s so happy with her man. I’m not jealous. Well, only a little bit. I’m actually quite happy now.
It’s weird seeing Karen and Suze again, today of all days. They wave to me from across the pub, elbow their way through the crowds to reach me, hug me and look at me with concerned, wary faces, asking if I’m OK. I should be at my wedding reception by now. Cutting the cake. Being led onto the dance floor by my new husband for the first dance. ‘I Will Always Love You’. That was what we’d chosen. How ironic!
‘I’m fine,’ I assure them. Fine, fine, absolutely fine. ‘Lovely to see you all. Sorry about the hen weekend. About it not being… you know… a hen weekend.’
I laugh a little too hysterically. They watch me nervously. But I
am
fine. It’s not the drink. I’ve given up – really, this time. I’m on orange juice.
Helen’s arrived, looking flustered, like someone panicking in the middle of packing for a trip. Precisely.
‘I can’t stay too long,’ she says, collapsing onto the seat opposite me. ‘I’ve still got such a lot to do. I’ll be awake all night.’
‘So what?
Be
awake all night. You can sleep for twenty-three hours or whatever it is, on the flight!’ I don’t want her to leave before Greg turns up. If he turns up. ‘Come on, I’ll get you a drink. This is your last night with us! Make it memorable!’
‘Too many of these,’ she retorts as I plonk a double vodka and tonic in front of her, ‘and it won’t be memorable at all!’ Her face starts to crumple. ‘I’m going to miss you, Katie,’ she says very quietly, into her glass.
I reach across the table and grasp her hand.
‘Me too. But isn’t the Internet a wonderful thing? We can be on-line simultaneously, talking to each other from different continents on different dates. Absolutely bloody amazing!’
I’m trying to keep things light. Really, I want to tell her to cancel the flight, stop being stupid, stop running away, stay and fight. Fight for Greg, or fight for a life without him. Anything’s better than going to the other side of the world, away from everything she loves. London’s theatres, Paris’s restaurants, Florence’s art galleries, Vienna’s opera houses. What’s she going to do? I just can’t see her throwing a kangaroo steak on the barbie with a can of Foster’s in her hand.
‘I’ll come back,’ she says, jerkily. ‘If it doesn’t work out I’ll come back.’
‘Good.’
‘But if I stay…’ She looks up at me, and I think she’s going to ask me to go out and visit her. I hope so. I’ll never know, now, because as she looks up, something or rather some
one
behind me catches her eye and she turns pale, then red, and nearly drops her drink. I have to take it out of her hand and put it down on the table for her. Well, thank God for that. Greg’s turned up.