Chapter 22
‘My boyfriend Milhouse isn’t into food,’ I said. ‘He thinks of it as fuel. I know he’s not interested in going out for dinner. I mean, we do, but he always just has steak and potatoes. Nothing spicy or interesting or challenging.’
‘Does food have to be challenging?’ Henry laughed. ‘I prefer for it to just be nice to eat.’
I laughed as well. ‘Yeah, you have a point.’ I felt a little disloyal to Milhouse, but I hadn’t thought about him much.
My life in Boston seemed almost a distant memory and if it wasn’t for the work Tara was sending me, it was as though I’d left it all behind.
‘Mil is adventurous in other ways,’ I said.
‘He…’ I stopped, trying to think. Milhouse wasn’t even adventurous in his choice of socks or ties or any of the other ways some people used to suggest they had personalities.
‘Why are you marrying him?’
I paused for a second. ‘Not sure…’
He laughed. ‘Not sure?’
‘He’s got a list…’
‘A list?’
‘Stipulations…’
His eyes widened. ‘Go on.’
‘Oh, things like me taking his name, not being in each other’s pockets. Space. He wants space. His own house.’ I sighed. ‘They sound reasonable enough, don’t they?’
Henry looked a little aghast. ‘Is this a business deal?’
‘Well, isn’t that what marriage is? A contract?
People fall in love and then ratify it. We’re just divorce-proofing our marriage.
No nasty surprises down the line. And he’s been having an affair and that’s the only thing I’m not sure about.
I mean, I have to be one of those cool girls and get over it, right? ’
‘He’s been having an affair?’
‘We’re not married yet, so it’s not technically an affair. And we’re quite casual.’
He shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.
‘It’s normal,’ I assured him. ‘It’s like a verbal prenup.’
‘It sounds awful. Truly. I mean, where is the love? I mean, I know some people aren’t into romance, which is fine. Pragmatism is essential, but there has to be love and mutual regard and wanting to be there for someone.’
‘Oh, that’s there,’ I said, hoping I sounded convincing.
But I wished I hadn’t told him about Milhouse because when you said it out loud, it made Milhouse sound like an asshole and me like a weakling.
I did want to be married. I needed something, anything, to look forward to.
I needed my life to change and this was the best thing I had.
We looked at each other for a moment and it was strange, but I felt safe with him, like I did with Lucy and Mary, as though I could be my true self, even a bit vulnerable. And Henry had such kind eyes, brown and velvety, and he was looking at me as though he completely understood me.
‘And is that why you’re on holiday, to give you time to think about this verbal prenup?’
‘Kind of. I mean, I was upset about the woman he was seeing. Perhaps is still seeing…’
Henry’s jaw dropped. ‘Still seeing?’
‘Maybe.’ I was really feeling foolish now. ‘Can we change the subject? What about you? Are you interested in meeting anyone?’
‘Yes, but it’s a jungle out there.’ He smiled at me.
‘Tell me about it!’ I said with feeling.
‘And not a nice jungle like the one Tarzan lived in, where you swing through the trees and have a great time. This is like hacking through dense, mosquito-infested undergrowth.’
‘No wonder we all cling to the first person who comes along,’ I said, thinking that if Henry was in Boston, he would have been snapped up a long time ago. Men like Henry didn’t grow on trees. Or vines. ‘Surely you’re not finding it hard?’
He pulled a face. ‘I just haven’t met my Jane, yet.’ I laughed, as he continued, ‘Lucy’s friend has someone she’s going to set me up with. She’s a yoga instructor and she’s coming back this week from some retreat up… I don’t know… some mountain. Anyway. She obviously likes mountains.’
‘I couldn’t like someone who didn’t like mountains,’ I said.
He laughed. ‘See, you have a rule already. It’s not just Milhouse.’
‘I’ll come up with a few more,’ I said. ‘I think I like work more than anything. It’s so less complicated than trying to have a personal life.’
‘I would have said the opposite. I hated the corporate world. I’m busy making my professional life more personal and personalising my work.’
‘Sometimes I worry I have no personal life,’ I admitted.
‘I did have one, squeezed in between my work. But my best friend died.’ I hadn’t meant to tell him, but for some reason I wanted to, as though I needed him to know who I was.
Having the thought of Caitlin in the back of my mind all the time was a burden.
I needed to get her to the front of my mind, and hopefully it wouldn’t shock people too much.
But all he looked was concerned and interested.
‘I’m so sorry. You poor thing. What a terrible thing to happen.’ He held my gaze for a moment.
‘Yeah… it was.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Caitlin. She was the one who made me meet her for cocktails or Sunday evening trips to the movies or for dinner at hers or brunch, whatever. Without her, there would have been no fun whatsoever. She’d ring me up and order me to a bar near my office and we’d drink all evening and then fall out of the bar, or we’d go for pizza and…
’ I was smiling at the memory. ‘God, she loved this one place, a proper Italian, throwing the dough up in the air kind of place, everyone shouting in Italian, and she would order a Hawaiian…’
‘A pizza with pineapple?’ Henry was smiling too.
‘She’d had it once, years before, and claimed it was delicious, so she would always ask for it, and in the beginning they would flat-out refuse, and then they began making it for her, and as soon as they saw Caitlin walking in, they would call her L’ananas, the pineapple.
’ I began to laugh. ‘And she loved it. Played up to it, would call over, “Extra pineapple, please!”’
Henry was smiling back at me.
‘And then, at the end, when they heard she was so ill, they sent in a pizza every night for the last few weeks. They sent ten of them, and so everyone on our floor had them, all the nurses and everyone picking off the pineapple, except for Caitlin.’ I had to stop talking.
My throat wouldn’t let me say any more. ‘Anyway, so that’s that. ’
‘Yeah…’ He spoke softly, his eyes on mine.
‘I don’t normally talk about it,’ I said. ‘Well, not back at home. Here, I’ve started talking about her all the time.’
‘So that’s the real reason you’re here.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘You needed time. You need time.’
‘Yes. I suppose.’ I rallied myself. ‘I’ll be all right though. I mean, I was all right. But it doesn’t get easier.’
‘It’s the process. You have to go through it.
There’s no other way. Lucy and I lost our father when we were teenagers and I learned then that the only way is to lock in and brace yourself.
You have to go through the whole grief trajectory and if you put it off, it will just wait and wait until you’re ready.
’ He paused. ‘Perhaps you’re ready now.’
‘Perhaps. Work helped me through,’ I went on.
‘All that time she was ill and getting worse. And then after she’d died…
well, work was the one thing I could rely on.
I mean, I haven’t been as productive as I have been before, but I will be, once I get back home.
One night, when I was in the hospice with Caitlin, she asked me to talk.
“Just talk about normal things. Nothing about treatment plans or prognoses or medication.” And I would have to just keep talking and talking, and telling her gossip I’d heard, or what Johnny was up to, or a TV show I’d watched or about this deal I was trying to strike for this young woman who wanted to start a houseplant subscription service.
It was called Fancy Plants and I couldn’t get it off the ground, not one investor would bite. ’
‘You know things go wrong, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I’m aware of that,’ I said, sounding more sarcastic than I felt.
‘I mean that when they do, you need to acknowledge the fact, not try to pretend it didn’t happen. We grow more from failure than anything else.’
‘You mean Fancy Plants?’
‘Yes… you need to think about it, what went wrong, why it didn’t work. Was it the product or something else?’
‘It was me, I was the problem.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t you. Maybe it was something you couldn’t quite see.’
‘Actually, I think Caitlin knew what it was and she understood the issue immediately. “The investors don’t get plants. They don’t understand their power.
They don’t know joy. You have to sell the idea of joy.
” And joy was the last thing on my mind then, so perhaps that was why I couldn’t make it work.
The next day, I ordered loads of plants for Caitlin’s room in the hospice, and then everyone who came in brought one, big things, small tumbling plants, it was like a jungle, and we had a path from the door to the bed, so the nurses could get through.
And I brought in a big standing lamp, and a rug for the floor, and I hung up her old Jules et Jim poster which she’d had on her wall since we were students.
’ I was in danger of losing my voice again so I stopped.
For some reason, it was so much easier talking to two strangers such as Lucy and Henry than anyone in Boston, but I still changed the subject.
‘I still feel so bad that I let Fancy Plants down, though.’
‘You were busy minding Caitlin. Of course you weren’t focused on your business as much as you had been before. It must have been really difficult.’
‘Well, it was more so for Caitlin. Obviously. I mean, I was able to leave hospital. She couldn’t.’
Henry was unlike many men I knew, who never asked questions or were remotely interested in anything other than their work or their gym programmes or whatever eating plan they were currently following.
He walked me to the warehouse to meet Finnuala and the gang. ‘See you at the marina tomorrow evening at around 6 p.m.?’ He smiled at me. ‘It’s one of my other rules…’ He looked at me as though to check if it was okay to tease me about Milhouse’s stupid rules.
‘Oh God,’ I said, with a laugh, ‘you’re all at it! So, what is it?’
‘Oh, it’s simple. You have to like sailing.’
‘So, if I don’t like sailing, you won’t like me?’
He blushed slightly but was still smiling. ‘I can compromise. I meant just that… No, nothing.’ He collected himself. ‘Sailing tomorrow evening, 6 p.m.’
‘I can’t wait.’ And I couldn’t. The thought of being out on the water again was wonderful.