Chapter 20 Panic!
PANIC!
PRESENT DAY
After the emotional whiplash of discovering the gorgeous woman in red was her new neighbour, Jules, then meeting her annoyingly handsome husband, Will, Catherine spent the rest of the day in a sour mood.
It was a mercy she had no plans with anyone else; she was getting on her own nerves, which felt like a new personal low.
She considered returning to bed to sleep it off and reset, but she didn’t indulge the notion for long. It seemed a lot like wallowing, and that was something she warned her clients against. Besides, she couldn’t bear the possibility of hearing Jules and Will in the bedroom.
Catherine breathed through the squirming discomfort in her stomach, rolled out her jigsaw mat on the coffee table, and tried to immerse herself in the puzzle for a while. Progress was slow. She bristled at every bang and scrape from above.
Occasionally, muffled laughter travelled through the walls, and she wondered whether they were laughing about her; the withered old woman downstairs, whom they’d tricked into looking after their cat and building their furniture. What a mug!
She didn’t have to like them, but she needed to learn to live with a happy couple upstairs, serving as a constant reminder that she hadn’t just missed the boat; she’d belly-flopped off the dock while trying to catch it. Oh, stop being so melodramatic.
After slotting an elusive piece into Sappho’s face, Catherine stretched up off the floor and decided to reward herself with a drink.
Her mood declined further when she discovered she’d finished the last of the Scotch yesterday evening.
She’d been so involved with the flatpack she’d forgotten to make a mental note to get another bottle.
With a big sigh, she tugged on her long Puffa coat and set out on the familiar route, hunching against the chill that had crept in with dusk.
A bell rang over the door when she entered the corner shop.
She smiled at the usual man behind the counter and walked the aisles to the chilled section to contemplate the ready meals, none of which sounded appealing.
She should’ve gone grocery shopping earlier, filled her fridge, and planned a nice evening for herself instead of fuming in her flat.
How on earth was she qualified to help other people when she couldn’t even help herself?
That was a question for another day. She settled on macaroni cheese and grabbed an extra-large bar of Dairy Milk on the way to the till, where she pointed to a bottle of Scotch from the limited range and paid, berating herself that she had forgotten her reusable bag (it wasn’t the ten pence charge, it was the principle).
Thankfully, the main door was still locked when she returned, which meant she could postpone the difficult conversation, at least until it happened again.
As she pushed inside, the smell of something delicious and savoury wafted out.
Catherine stilled at the sight of Jules standing by her front door.
“Ah, that’s why you’re not answering.” Jules spun around and beamed. She looked elegantly casual, wearing an oversized Oxford shirt and figure-hugging jeans. Jules was the sort of woman who’d look good in anything… or nothing at all.
Catherine tore her eyes away and glanced down at her carrier bag, the thin white plastic doing little to hide the sad contents it contained. Microwave meal-for-one, comfort calories and sorrow-drowning booze. Christ. “I nipped out for a few essentials.”
“I popped down to give you this.” Jules held up a gift bag. “It’s just a little something to say thank you. And to apologise for all the noise we’ve made today.”
“You shouldn’t have. Really, it’s fine.” Catherine pursed her lips.
“Almost unpacked now though,” Jules said through a breathy laugh. “It’s starting to feel a bit like home.”
Catherine flashed a flat smile and muttered her thanks as she took the proffered gift. She moved past Jules to unlock her door. The other woman stepped aside but didn’t leave.
Hovering in her doorway, Catherine turned to look at her again. Jules stood with a hand resting on the dark-wood newel post. “Um, if you’re not busy this evening, you’re welcome to join us for Chinese. Will’s just plating up. He ordered way more than we can eat.”
“Oh. Thanks, but I have dinner all sorted.”
“Right, okay. Yeah, that’s—” Jules scuffed a socked foot on the bottom stair, like she was wrestling with indecision about saying something else. “Would you like to come over for dinner next week? I can cook. I love cooking, so it’d be…”
Catherine frowned. “Have you got more flatpack you need building?”
Jules let out a laugh. “No, it’s all done, thank you. I just thought it might be nice for us to get to know each other.” Her hazel eyes looked so warm and inviting, Catherine relented; she really had no reason to be unkind.
“Okay, well, maybe when you and your husband are a bit more settled in, perhaps—”
“My what?”
“Your husband.”
“I don’t have a husband.”
“Oh, I thought…”
“Oh my God!” Jules clapped her hand over her mouth to hold in her laughter. “You thought… me and Will were…?”
Heat burned in Catherine’s cheeks.
“Will’s my best friend. He’s the one with the husband, not me.”
“Oh, right!” Catherine laughed too as an irrational flood of relief coursed through her.
At that moment, the door upstairs cracked open, and Will yelled through the gap. “Dinner’s getting cold and I’m bloody starving!”
“Keep your knickers on, Wilma, I’m on my way!” Jules rolled her eyes. “I mean, you actually met him earlier, right? He’s camper than a row of diamond-encrusted tents.”
“I don’t like to make assumptions about people.” Catherine chewed her lip because all she’d done so far was make assumptions, and how wrong she’d been. She really should know better.
Jules tilted her head. “Are you sure you don’t want to join us?”
“You’re kind, but really, I’m all set.” Catherine’s chest clenched. She needed to compose herself, but in the moment, Penny’s words about bravery bounced through her mind, so she took a leap. “If the invitation’s still open, I could come over for dinner next week. How about Friday?”
Jules grinned. “It’s a date.”
Catherine lingered in her doorway watching as Jules climbed the stairs, but just before she was out of sight, she leaned over the banister.
“Oh, and just to put the record straight… I’m not.”
Catherine angled her head. “You’re not what?”
“Straight.” Jules winked and disappeared.
In the kitchen, Catherine was still smiling like an idiot as she unpacked her ‘essentials’ and popped the macaroni cheese in the oven.
After staring at it for a long moment, she opened the gift bag from Jules and pulled out a cylindrical tube wrapped in tissue paper.
Her eyebrows shot up as she peeled back the paper to reveal an eighteen-year-old bottle of Scotch.
The woman’s timing was terrible, but this was the perfect gift.
It was almost like Jules knew her, and perhaps she did.
Bridie must have been more in touch with her daughter than she’d let on because otherwise how could Jules have known?
Whisky isn’t for everyone. But then again, she’s Scottish — it’s in their blood.
Catherine poured herself a measure of the less fancy Scotch she’d just bought. The eighteen-year-old deserved an occasion. Perhaps she’d crack it open with Jules.
Her day had started brilliantly, gone terribly downhill, and now here she was standing in her kitchen, elated because she had a date. A date!
Catherine fell asleep with a silly grin plastered across her lips, but woke in the thick of night with cold sweat prickling her skin.
She threw off the duvet and gulped down some water, then lay awake blinking in the swirling blackness of her bedroom, willing sleep to return but doing nothing to slow her runaway thoughts.
The relentless self-doubt that plagued her seemed to be amplified in the small hours; her chaotic mind swung from the mundane to the catastrophic in a matter of seconds.
Just because she was a mental health professional, people assumed her own mental state was in tip-top condition.
If they could actually see the jumble of thoughts that tumbled around inside her head on a daily basis, she was sure she’d be struck off.
Date panic set in… what to wear, what to bring, what to talk about.
There were so many things to consider. Should she buy new underwear?
Should she shave her armpits? Her legs? Her nether regions?
The thought of being unprepared for anything, even the most basic of intimate encounters, sent a fresh wave of anxiety crashing over her.
She imagined Jules, the object of her current, slightly obsessive affections, and a knot of apprehension tightened in her stomach.
What if they had nothing in common? What if they had too much in common?
What if it all went horribly wrong and then they were stuck living in this proximity?
Jules would move on and date other women.
Younger, more attractive women, who, with effortless elegance, would sport lacy lingerie like the ones she’d seen draped over the airer in Jules’s bedroom.
Then she’d have to lie here listening to them having noisy sex right above her bed.
She’d be even lonelier than before, and she’d have to move out and leave her lovely home…
What had she been thinking? A dinner date with Jules is a truly terrible idea.
The sane voice of Penny crept in with words she hadn’t yet said, but no doubt would when Catherine put all this to her. But what if it all works out?
She took a slow, calming breath, and then another and another until sleep found her again and she woke to the chiming of her alarm clock.
With a swift lap around the park, Catherine shook the lethargy from her legs before returning home to refuel with muesli and a refreshing shower.