Chapter Three
Three
It’s vital to move quickly in these scenarios, because they don’t come along very often.
The coincidence with the date is too significant to ignore: Someone, somewhere, has given me a second chance at love, and I intend to grasp it with both hands.
I pull out my phone as my bus winds its way through the quiet streets toward home.
It doesn’t take me long to find Jack’s Facebook profile.
More than a thousand friends and not a single mutual.
A shame. A connection would have given us something else in common, but I’ll have to work with what I’ve got.
I don’t add him, obviously—I’m not a creep—but I do scroll through the photos that are publicly accessible.
He comes from money, that much is clear.
The tailored suit and clipped vowels could have told me that, but these pictures confirm it.
They go back years, depicting a painful combination of Jack Wills shirts, rolling tobacco, and gray tracksuit bottoms pulled low to accidentally on purpose reveal Calvin Klein underwear.
Evidently, he likes a party. And women. There are many of him in his teenage years, clearly tanked on booze and God knows what else, with his arm draped round girls who all look the same: back-brushed blond hair, smudged eyeliner, white smiles that must have cost thousands.
His Instagram profile, set to private, reveals even less, though the thumbnail—a picture of him standing atop a cliff wearing hiking gear—suggests he has, at least, moved on from posing with champagne girls in seedy nightclubs. No sign of the wife. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing.
I can’t remember her name. I was so distracted by his flawless introduction that it went straight over my head. It started with an “A,” I know that. Anna, maybe. Alice? That was it.
A quick search for Alice Reynolds reveals nothing, and then the bus pulls into my stop, and I have to jam my finger into the button several times and run for the exit before it pulls away again.
On the pavement, I fumble for my hand sanitizer and apply it liberally, feeling sick.
I try to block the thought of the germ-infested button.
Only once the 99.9 percent effective sanitizer has dried on my skin do I feel better and begin the walk home.
Home—for the next twelve hours only—is a flat on the ground floor of an imposing redbrick mansion block.
From the outside, you would be forgiven for thinking that I, too, had a charmed upbringing.
You would be wrong. It may have been grand once—circa the Victorian era—but on the inside, its age shows.
For the last six years, I have contended—daily—with weak water pressure from the ancient pipes, black mold in the bathroom, and my landlord, Barry, who “pops his head round the door” most days—ostensibly to complete some maintenance task, though we both know it’s in the hope of catching me in various states of undress.
It is not, therefore, a surprise to find him lurking in the entrance hall as I step through the front door. Any lingering sentimentality about my departure is quickly dispelled. Barry is one male whose gaze is not—and never will be—welcome.
When he sees me, Barry resumes what he believes to be his most casually alluring pose. He rests one hand on the doorframe to his own flat and sucks in his stomach, the furred bottom of which pokes out from beneath his stained T-shirt, which is three sizes too small.
“ ’S not too late, you know.”
I’m not close enough to catch a whiff of his unique brand of halitosis, but I take a precautionary step back anyway.
“I’m good, Barry. Thanks, though.”
“We wouldn’t have to go the whole way. We could work our way up. You can have the flat on a week-by-week basis. That’s a good deal, right? An hour of fun for a week of free accommodation?”
It pains me to admit it, but I have given serious consideration to this proposal.
Barry smells and picks his nose, and I suspect—strongly—that the last time he washed his genitalia was three months ago, when he asked if he could use my shower due to a buildup of limescale in his own.
To put it politely, the thought of his penis makes me want to projectile vomit.
So I am stuck, as you might say, between a rock and a hard place.
Because the alternative is nearly as horrifying as genital warts and three months’ worth of smegma.
I’ve always prided myself on being a careful person, even to the point of fastidiousness.
Grief blew that right out of the water. After Freddie’s death and the unfortunate loss of my job, I became quite reckless about my prospects.
I’d been working for five years by that point.
In the absence of a social life, I’d built up quite a nice little nest egg.
I’d hoped Freddie and I might use it as a deposit on a flat, but he was dead, and I was all alone.
So I didn’t immediately try for another job.
Instead, I chipped away at my egg until it was less ostrich, more quail.
It was at that point I realized I was in trouble.
So I did what any self-respecting young professional would do. I went to Barry with my tail between my legs, hoping he would take pity on a grieving woman. His kind “offer” was the solution he came up with.
“I’m still fine, Barry. Thanks.”
He releases the breath that’s been holding his stomach in. The T-shirt rides up another couple of inches in defeat. “Staying with your mum, are you?”
I’d rather not think about it, so I nod tightly and hope he gets the hint. He doesn’t.
“She live near here?”
If he thinks I am giving him even a clue as to my mother’s address, then he really is delusional. “No.”
“Will you come back and visit?”
“Probably not, Barry.” I deliver this in the tone of a doctor breaking the bad news to a terminally ill patient. “Look after yourself, yeah?”
He approaches me for a hug, so I do a neat little side step, close the door in his face, and stand with my back against it.
When I hear his door close—with more force than is strictly necessary—I flick on the light and turn to double-lock my own.
Once I’m sure it’s secure, I turn to survey the flat.
It is, to the casual observer, underwhelming.
More so now it’s been stripped of most of my possessions.
A deep crack runs down the hallway from the kitchen to the bedroom.
The ceiling in the living room sags ominously.
A damp stain is spreading from the corner of the bathroom and mingling almost artistically with the creeping black mold in the center of the room.
To me, though, it’s independence. Even the mold has become part of the furniture, though not through lack of trying on my part to remove it.
It doesn’t bother me as much as you might think.
The house I grew up in looked more like a pigsty than a family home by the time I left.
Perhaps because of that, I am anal to the point of obsessiveness about the cleanliness of my own flat.
I hoover daily, wash my sheets twice a week, mop the floors, and scrub the shower until the air is spiced with lemon and just a hint of bleach.
I need to be out of here in good time tomorrow, so I don’t linger in the hallway.
I’ve done most of the packing already, but I’m in a nostalgic mood, and there’s one task I’ve been putting off since I made the decision to take my chances living with my mother over the mildly less desirable threat of contracting a vicious STD.
I keep Freddie’s things in a shoebox at the bottom of the wardrobe.
He’d have laughed to see me handling it like an easily triggered bomb.
It was weeks before I could even bring myself to look at it, many more before I was able to lift the lid on all the memories it contained.
But I’m stronger now. I place it gingerly on the floor, wriggle the top free.
My chest pangs. Inside, there is a tortoiseshell comb that still has little speckles of dandruff between each tooth, a pair of red plaid pajama bottoms that I’ve never washed, the key to Freddie’s flat.
The necklace that always sends an eclectic cocktail of emotions zipping through me.
Not all of them are positive, but grief will do that to you.
I lift the pajamas to my nose, and there it is. That unique smell. Freddie’s distinct, woody musk layered through the material.
He always looked so peaceful when he slept.
Those long nights are some of my favorite memories of him.
I loved watching him sleep. His small, guttural exhales.
Sometimes, I’d place my hand on his chest and feel such an intense rush of attraction I truly thought I’d never feel that way about another person.
Tonight proved me wrong. It does happen, sometimes.
I inhale deeply one more time, then fold the pajamas and place them back in the box. I close the lid, then place the box at the top of one of the three plastic containers I’m taking with me to Mum’s. I sanitize.
And then, because the thought of my mother, and returning to that house, sends a shiver of revulsion up my spine, I distract myself by preparing Barry’s leaving gift.
I spent, admittedly, more time than was healthy pondering this particular present.
I pictured him, within two minutes of my departure, snuffling around the flat like a truffle pig, hunting for a stray pair of underwear he could bury his pockmarked nose in.
I considered, seriously, leaving a decoy pair poking out from beneath the sofa, covered in all sorts of unsanitary substances.
But my tastes run to the highbrow, and frankly, I wasn’t sure that even some of my more deplorable ideas would be enough to put him off. I settled, instead, for a book.
I leave the copy of Men Who Hate Women by Laura Bates in the kitchen, where I know he will spot it. Lest he be in any doubt over the intended recipient, I’ve written a dedication on the flyleaf.
Barry,
Thought you might get some use out of this.
Iris x