Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
The next week passes on autopilot. Sophie and Marcy successfully make it to Crete, where they are having a wonderful time lounging on inflatable flamingos in their swimming pool and sipping cocktails beneath the stars. James and Miranda have gone on a little trip to Cornwall with baby Evan, making the most of their time together before James heads back to Jersey. Dan is in Surrey, visiting his film student girlfriend, Julia. Basically, they’re all busy and I’m on my own again.
I have made a little deal with myself not to care about that – not to sink into a blue mood, or let it get me down. My children are all healthy, happy and moving on with their lives, which makes me far luckier than some. It is the way it is meant to be, and all is right with the world.
I have been keeping myself as busy as possible, helping Ella organise the annual breast screening van visit, sorting out a programme of activities for the next few months in the community centre, and signing up to help Archie and Rose with their fruit and veg delivery project. I’ve taken George out for dinner, painted my downstairs loo a nice shade of blush, and made a head start on the menu for the Summer Feast event. I’ve also opened the café every single day, and kept it open until six instead of three. Sam’s been delighted with the extra hours.
All of this frantic activity has gone some way towards keeping me out of trouble, and has certainly been very effective at making me tired. The days have passed relatively easily in a blur of busy-ness. The nights, though, as ever, have been a different matter. I try to ban Zack from my mind, to pull up the mental drawbridge as soon as I think about him – to hold up a giant “Stop!” sign whenever he starts to creep in there. I try, but I don’t always manage. Sitting on the sofa watching TV in particular makes me sad, which is utterly pathetic. He was here for less than a fortnight, and I have no right to miss him, especially when he behaved like he did.
Despite the surface reassurance of the words on the postcard, I still feel hurt and disappointed that he didn’t say goodbye in person. Sexy fun times aside, I genuinely thought we had become friends. I have considered calling him, but my final shred of self respect always stops me as my fingers hover above his name in my contacts. He is obviously fine, or Marcy would have mentioned something. He is back in his real life, and I am here in mine, and never the twain shall meet. I suppose I’ll get used to it again.
Tonight, I decide to do a spot of spring cleaning in the kitchen. This seems to involve taking every single item I own out of a cupboard, and piling it somewhere on the floor, the counter or the table. It starts well enough, and I rediscover a really nice marble pestle and mortar I’d forgotten existed. I also find out that I own four colanders, way too many saucepans, and approximately seventeen thousand slotted spoons.
I try to sort the piles out ready to get rid of some. We have an event here every year called the Spring Greening, where we all set up trestle tables and arrange our unwanted stuff on them. Essentially it’s like a giant swap shop. The idea is to declutter, but I usually end up coming home with more crap than I got rid of. Sometimes, as was the case with my lovely singing fish, I get rid of things one year, miss them, and get them back the next. I am never going to be a minimalist.
By the time a knock comes at the door, I am sitting on the parquet surrounded by pots, pans, mismatched lids, serving plates, cheese graters, Kilner jars, casserole dishes and baking trays.
“Come in!” I yell. “I can’t let you in, I’m trapped!”
It’s just after eight in the evening, which is a little late for house callers in Starshine Cove, but I assume it’s someone I know and not an axe murderer. They only hang out on dating apps after all.
The door opens, and Ella makes her way through the hall and towards me. She’s carrying a bottle of wine, and stops dead in her tracks when she sees me. Her little dog Larry trails behind her, and jumps over a forlorn toastie maker to come and lick my face.
“Oh,” she says, stepping carefully over a teetering pile of tea towels. “What happened? Was there an explosion?”
“No. My kitchen is trying to eat me. It started as a spring clean but it’s all taken a very dark turn. I see you come bearing gifts.”
“I do indeed. I realised I haven’t seen you on your own for ages. Plus Kitty is teething and I really wanted to get out for an hour.”
I push some of the pans away, and she holds out her hands to help me up. I pick a careful path through the detritus, knowing that I need to sort it all out at some point but also knowing that I won’t be doing it tonight.
Instead, I grab two glasses, and Ella and I decamp to the living room, where she pours us both a generous glug of something red and fruity that most definitely isn’t Ribena. I bring a tin of home-made macadamia nut and white chocolate cookies with me, just in case either of us is at risk of starvation.
“So,” she says, kicking off her trainers and curling her legs up beneath her on the sofa, “how are you?”
“I’m great. Apart from the messy kitchen.”
“You’re lying.”
“No I’m not. The kitchen really is messy.”
She sighs, and shakes her head. I suspect she is a little bit exasperated with me.
“Connie, you know how when I first arrived here, you grilled me at every possible opportunity? And eventually you broke me down and turned me into a blubbering wreck who discusses her feelings all the time?”
“You’re welcome,” I say, raising my glass.
“Well, how come you expect everyone else to do that, but you won’t talk about your own feelings at all?”
I take my time swallowing the wine, and try to come up with an acceptable answer. I completely fail, and end up just shrugging. “Not sure. Maybe I’ve just got huge double standards? Or maybe I don’t have any feelings worth discussing at the moment?”
“That’s not true. I know you’re unhappy. And I know you’ve been like that since Zack left. Why won’t you admit it?”
“Because, my darling friend, I don’t want to. If I admit it, I make it real. Whereas if I ignore it all for long enough, I’m pretty sure it’ll go away.”
She picks a cookie up out of the tin, and throws it at me. It bounces off my head and lands in a crumby mass on the sofa cushions.
“That’s not healthy, Connie – and I’m a doctor. I know about these things.”
“Right. So what do you prescribe then, Dr Farrell?”
“Drinking this wine, and telling me what’s going on. You’ve been working all hours, running yourself ragged, and I’ve never seen you so down.”
“Oh. That’s disappointing. I thought I’d fooled everyone.”
“You might have fooled people who don’t know you that well, but not me. Or Archie, or George – we’re all a bit worried.”
I hate the idea that the people closest to me – the people I love – are fretting about my emotional state. I hate being a worry to anyone, or imagining that I’m upsetting them.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly, for once all out of jokey comments.
“Don’t be sorry, Connie – just be honest. Talk to me.”
I pause for a few moments, pretending to be chewing a cookie. No, actually, I am chewing a cookie – but I don’t even taste it. It’s just a way to stall for time. I am scared of opening up to Ella. I am scared of being honest with her, and honest with myself. I am scared that if I open those floodgates, I will be washed away in a river of tears. Larry jumps up onto my lap and curls up in a ball, which definitely helps.
“I miss him,” I say simply. Best to start with the easy stuff I suppose.
“I can imagine. You spent a lot of time together. You were friends.”
I nod, and force myself to meet her eyes. She takes in my expression, and adds: “Ah. I see. You were more than friends?”
I nod miserably. This whole talking about your feelings business is so much harder from the other side.
“So why did he leave? You seemed to get on so well!”
“I know. I thought so too. But it’s not just that he left, Ella, it’s that he didn’t even say goodbye. We’d arranged to see each other the next day so we could continue being… more than friends… and I never saw him again. He just left, without a word. Left me a lame note saying he was sorry but he had to go.”
She takes this in, and I see her turning over the words in her mind. Ella is a logical and fair person. She will try and see it all from both sides before she responds.
“Well. That makes him a complete prick in my opinion.”
Oh. Maybe not. I laugh out loud, because that pronouncement is very much not what I expected.
“Yes! It does, doesn’t it? I mean, he could have popped into the café, couldn’t he? It wouldn’t have killed him! It’s just that I was so looking forward to seeing him again, and then I felt like such a fool when I realised he’d run away. It’s not nice, getting all hot and heavy with a guy one night, and him doing a runner the next morning. Not good for the ego, that’s for sure.”
“Well, he’s not only a prick, he’s rude. And an idiot. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry that happened – you don’t deserve it. Did he give you the impression that he was, you know, into you?”
I suppress a smile at her rom-com turn of phrase, and answer: “Ella, I don’t mean to be crude…”
“Why spoil the habit of a lifetime?”
“Fair enough. Okay, to be crude – yes, he was into me. It’s been a long time since I’ve been intimate with a man, but I still recognise the signs. Some of them are really pretty hard to ignore – especially when you’re sitting on them.”
It’s her turn to laugh now, and I realise that I am feeling a little better. A problem laughed at is a problem halved.
“And now I miss him. But I’m also upset with him. I’m going from angry to hurt to sad, all in the space of five minutes. Is this menopause again?”
“Maybe. But I think it’s also a symptom of being a woman who is suffering from a bad case of the Three Ls. You remember those, don’t you? I seem to remember you diagnosed me with them almost two years ago…”
I stare at her and pull an ‘as if’ face. The Three Ls are sacred. The Three Ls that Ella was very much suffering from were Love, Lust and Like, all for the man who is now her husband and the father of her child. The Three Ls are often found singly or in pairs, but rarely found together.
“I don’t think so, Ella. I mean, I barely know him really… I know I first met him decades ago, but it’s only really been weeks in the real world.”
“Except you do know him. Except time has nothing to do with these things, does it? The Three Ls have a mind of their own. They don’t care how long you’ve known someone, or what you should be feeling, or why it could all be a terrible mistake to feel anything at all… they just exist. And they aren’t often wrong.”
I examine what she’s saying a bit more closely, determined to decide that there is no possible way it could be true. Yes, I like Zack. Yes, I lust after Zack – I was doing that even before our night of curtailed passion. But love? Isn’t that a bit too dramatic? Isn’t that a bit too big for what this is? I’m still half convinced that if I ignore it, it will all go away.
“Look,” Ella continues, “I didn’t know you when Simon was around. But the way you seemed when you were with Zack… well, you were happy, Connie. And not just in your normal way. You seemed happy in a way I’ve never seen you. I know you’re probably struggling acknowledging that final L exists, but at least consider it.”
“I’m fifty-five, Ella – not fifteen! I’m way too old to fall in love – I was lucky to have that once, and I’ve never expected to have it again!”
“Fifty-five is young these days. You’ll be here till you’re at least a hundred. You’re barely halfway through, Connie – are you sure you want to give up on that last L for the rest of your life? Isn’t that why you went on your dates?”
I nod, because I can’t deny it. Against my better judgement, almost, I have allowed that part of myself to open up again – I’d allowed myself to hope, I’d allowed myself to move on, even though I felt guilty for doing so.
“But look how it all turned out, Ella! Two failed dates, and then a spectacular rejection from Zack – the only man who I’ve really been interested in for years. The only man who triggered even two of the Ls, never mind the third… he walked out, without even explaining why.”
“That must hurt, and I know you said you’re angry. Would you feel better if you had a proper explanation?”
“Yes, I would – because anything’s better than ‘it’s not you it’s me’, isn’t it?”
She cringes and nods.
“It really is. So, then, Connie – I suppose the next thing to figure out is, what are you going to do about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, ask yourself your usual question – what would Dolly do?”
I’m not at all sure what Dolly would do. It’s pretty hard to imagine a man dumping Dolly in the first place, never mind how she’d react to it. I drink some more wine, and think it over.
I might not know what Dolly would do, I decide – but I do know she wouldn’t sit around feeling sorry for herself. And neither will I.