Chapter 7
The sums don’t lie
“We need proper food,” I call to Connor from the kitchen. “I’ll go shopping this morning.”
I’ve been worrying since I woke up about how I would handle the food situation.
Connor’s kitchen is surprisingly full of processed, high-fat, high-sugar, delicious crap that I don’t want to be tempted to eat.
You’d think a sous-chef from one of the most highly celebrated restaurants in the country would have a better selection of ingredients in the house.
Maybe he doesn’t like to bring the job home with him?
Regardless, I’m determined to get back on the diet and finally shift the weight that caused a rift in my marriage, and for that I need a fridge full of rabbit food, not beer and several open packets of cheese.
“I’m not doing anything this morning. I’ll come with you,” Connor says, walking into the kitchen.
“You don’t have to. If you need anything in particular, you can just text me a list and I’ll grab it for you.”
“Nah, I’ll come and help you. Let me just get my keys.” He disappears into the hall and comes back with his keys and a confused look on his face. “I can’t find your jacket on the hook, do you keep it in your room?”
“I don’t have a jacket, I’ll just grab a hoodie.”
It’s a chilly day for July, so my T-shirt won’t be enough. Besides, I rarely show my arms in public, so I would have thrown on a hoodie anyway.
“Do you only own hoodies and leggings?” There’s no judgement in his tone, just a genuine curiosity.
“Pretty much. I do have one pair of jeans and a top for if I go out to the pub or something, and I have my school clothes too.”
Saying this out loud makes me wonder if Rhys had a point about making more of an effort for him.
I just don’t feel comfortable in any other types of clothes.
There’s a certain sense of safety I get when I wear loose hoodies, knowing that no one has any idea what shape I am underneath.
No one can tell if I’m bloated or wobbling when I walk if I’m in a hoodie.
But regular clothes show everything, and none of them really look right on me.
“Well, if you ever need a shopping buddy to help you choose some actual clothes, I’m up for it,” he says kindly.
“Thank you.” I smile.
“No worries. We could stop in the lingerie shop while we’re there—”
I slap Connor’s arm before he can finish his sentence, but I can’t help but laugh. “Let’s just start with food shopping and see how we go, shall we?”
We hop into Connor’s car and drive the twenty minutes to the supermarket.
We would have gone to one closer to home, but I remind Connor that I’m supposed to be off work sick, and it would be typical for me to run into a parent in one too near to school.
When we get there, Connor expertly parks in the shade of a tree, and we head inside, grabbing a trolley on our way.
As promised, Connor pushes, leaving my hands free to fidget.
We shop together like we’ve done it a thousand times before. I grab half the salad shelf, while Connor peruses the exotic vegetables.
“What are you looking for?” I ask him as he fondles the avocados.
“I’m looking for the best ones.” He takes a sniff of the fruit before placing it back with the rest. Seeing my confused expression, he continues. “When you work in a professional kitchen, you get pretty good at discerning quality food from crap.”
“How eloquent,” I quip, earning a broad smile from my shopping partner.
It’s jarring to see him take something so seriously – especially something as trivial as the ripeness of an avocado. But it suits him. I wonder if Connor has any other sides that I’ve been missing out on all this time?
When Connor heads to the butcher’s counter, I pick up some packs of chicken breast. It’s all surprisingly easy until we find ourselves walking down the snack aisle and Connor asks which I’m getting for weekend treats.
“I don’t want anything,” I say, trying to sound casual.
“Oh, come on. You can’t live off lettuce all the time!”
“I won’t be living off lettuce, actually. I have cucumber and tomatoes in that trolley too.” I smile sweetly and walk towards the cosmetic aisle to get some shampoo.
When we meet at the tills ten minutes later, there’s a bag of my favourite hazelnut chocolates hiding among the broccoli.
Connor pays for the shopping, despite my protests, and we pack everything into his car. On the drive back home, I promise to pay him back for my half of the shopping.
“And you’ll need to let me know how much I owe you for rent and stuff.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He slows down as we approach a roundabout and glances towards me with a frown. “You know me and Ivy inherited the house, so there’s no mortgage to pay.”
“But there’s still electricity, water, council tax…”
“Which I’d be paying whether you were there or not.” He pulls onto the roundabout and turns towards his street. “Look, your money will probably be tied up in your own house for a while. Just leave it until you’re sorted, it’s not a big deal.”
“It is a big deal, and I’ll be paying you. If you don’t let me know how much I owe, I’ll be forced to send you everything I have, to make sure it’s enough.”
“Okay,” Connor sighs as he pulls into the drive.
He turns off the engine and makes a big show of doing calculations in his head, biting his lip in thought and using his index finger to write down invisible sums on the palm of his other hand. I patiently wait for him to finish his theatrics and try to hold back my grin.
He eventually nods. “One hundred pounds a month.”
“That barely covers today’s shopping!”
“Are you doubting my maths skills, Til? Do you want to check my work?” He shows me the palm he’d been pretending to write on. “See – the sums don’t lie.” He gets out of the car and walks to the boot. Apparently, this is not up for discussion.
I decide not to press the issue, and give up for now.
I’ve known Connor long enough to know how stubborn he can be.
But it occurs to me that I’m now living (temporarily) with a different Connor to the one I grew up with.
Maybe this Connor isn’t as stubborn as a mule?
But which Connor is the real one? Original or new model?
By the time we’ve put the food away, it’s time for lunch.
Connor offers to make me a bacon sandwich, but I decline and opt for a salad instead.
I pull out the digital scales I brought from Rhys’s, put a bowl on top and start to weigh out my ingredients.
First the lettuce, then cucumber, tomatoes and green bell pepper.
I track the weight of each one, on my app, to the gram as I go.
“You weigh your salad?”
I’ve been concentrating so hard on logging the pepper correctly I didn’t notice Connor watching me from across the kitchen.
“Yeah, I log everything I eat and drink.”
“Why?”
Here we go.
“To make sure I don’t go over my calories,” I say quickly, letting my hair fall in front of my face as a barrier between us.
“I have questions.” He runs a hand over his face like he’s bracing himself for the conversation.
“Please just one at a time, I’m trying to concentrate.”
I start chopping the vegetables I’ve already weighed. After a minute, which I assume Connor spends deciding which question to ask first, he finally speaks.
“How many calories are you allocated each day?”
Okay, not an unreasonable question. I can handle this one.
“Twelve hundred.” I continue chopping cucumber into bite-sized pieces.
“And who decided on that number?” There’s a bite to his voice that I choose to ignore.
“Rhys did some research and recommended it.” I reach for the piece of pepper and cut it up.
“Why are you restricting what you eat?”
Because I’m a disgusting fat pig and no other diets have worked for me.
“Because I’m trying to get to a healthy weight. Can you pass me the chicken, please?” I try to act casual and hope he drops the subject, but he doesn’t.
“Reducing your calories that drastically doesn’t seem to be the healthiest way to do that. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with your weight. Didn’t Rhys ever tell you that?”
Shit. I don’t want to talk about this anymore, but I doubt Connor will make it easy for me to change the topic, and outright avoid answering him.
He’s always been stubborn, even when we were kids.
Panicking, and seeing no other way out of having an uncomfortable conversation, I do something impulsive and, if I’m being honest, a little dramatic.
“Ow!” I hiss as the knife I was using to slice tomatoes nicks my ring finger.
I don’t know why it surprised me when the finger I intentionally cut with a sharp knife hurt, but there we go.
I raise it to my mouth as beads of blood drip from the cut and land, frustratingly, on my freshly chopped salad.
Connor crosses the kitchen in two strides and takes my finger from my mouth to examine it. I only made a small cut, but a pool of blood is forming on the skin around it. He frowns at the cut and gently presses a paper towel to it to stop the bleeding.
I try to pull my finger back. “It’s only tiny.”
“It still needs a plaster.”
Connor keeps holding my hand in his as he uses his other to reach for the first aid box from the kitchen windowsill.
He removes the paper towel, uses an antiseptic wipe to clean the cut and carefully covers it with a blue plaster.
His fingers pass over my wedding and engagement rings as he works.
It’s the first time I’ve thought about them since I left Rhys, and I realise I’m not sure what to do with them.
Should I take them off? Give them back? Throw them into the sea?
Or should I keep wearing them? Connor is still holding my hand, and I notice that he’s looking at my rings too.
“I had to have them resized,” I tell him. I don’t really know why. “When Rhys proposed, the ring he bought me was tiny, and he was really annoyed that I wasn’t small enough for it, but he sent it off to be made bigger anyway. Then when he bought the wedding ring, he bought the same size again.”
Connor barely breathes while he listens to me speak, his eyes still firmly on the rings. His warm hands squeeze mine slightly as I speak.
“Luckily, I tried it on one day when he was at work and realised it was too small. I had it resized without him knowing.”
“He didn’t deserve you.” Connor’s voice is unusually husky as he speaks. He twirls the diamond rings around my finger, and for a second, I think he’s going to pull them off, but then he lets go. “You should get rid of them. Sell them and get yourself something worthy of you.”
Wow. I give him a quick, embarrassed smile and turn away to busy myself with cleaning up my blood from the counter so I can avoid looking at him. He picks up on my discomfort and gives me a much-appreciated out.
“Go and sit down, I’ll clean this up and make you a fresh salad.”
I thank him quietly and make my way towards the living room. At least I’ve been successful in distracting him from my diet.
“And don’t think we’re done talking about this ridiculous diet you’re on.”
Spoke too soon.
After lunch (Connor remade my salad exactly as I’d weighed it and handed it to me with a huff and an eye-roll which weren’t included in my original recipe), I tell him I’m going to my room to read for a while.
In truth, I just have to get some space.
I pop my earbuds in, start my ‘Sad Songs’ playlist and lie back on the bed.
I look again at my ring finger. The diamond in the engagement ring shines even in the dim light, reminding me how happy Rhys and I used to be.
Or at least how happy I thought we were.
But as I lie there, I realise I can’t think of a time when we were completely happy since those first couple of years before we got married.
Not one completely happy memory in five years.
Each almost-happy memory is tainted by Rhys’s moods, his words or my own intrusive thoughts.
My gaze wanders up my finger to the bright blue plaster Connor put on so carefully earlier. I can’t help but wonder if Rhys would have taken care of me like that. I doubt it. It’s a sobering thought. Maybe Connor’s right. Maybe it’s time for the rings to come off.