Chapter Six #2
Somebody told me this dating app is about finding true love through artistic choices and WTAF THIS IS GOING TO BURN MONEY, THE QUESTION BEING WHOSE MONEY.
LIZZY: Let’s not panic yet, this is just Day One. Am sure things will settle.
JACOB: I can smell it.
LIZZY: ?
JACOB: Burning money. It’s an acrid smell. The kind of smell you can’t get out of your clothes, like cigarette smoke back in the day. Only WORSE.
He really was on a roll.
LIZZY: Breathe, take a dip in your cold plunge tub, we will confer tomorrow.
Jacob left me on read and, glad he had settled, I sat back and thought about how we would bring the two companies together.
Esme’s airy statement that everything could wait until after the wedding hadn’t reassured me.
The two leadership teams at least would have to meet and work out things together, surely?
And had Olly said he would be moving into The Hexagon?
It made my head ache. Even buttered toast, my drug of choice, couldn’t fix it.
I FaceTimed my brother, Alex – or rather, I FaceTimed his carer, Jenna, who enables our calls because Alex is pretty much non-verbal.
They showed me the painting Alex had been working on that day with his art therapist (an extra I pay for, which keeps him on an even keel): an impressionistic, na?ve depiction of a bowl of roses.
Alex loves arts and crafts with a kind of gleeful ferocity; there’s something about the process which tunnels through the need for sensation in him, that quietens everything.
When I had started working for Esme, I had brought with me that sense that art could truly change lives in the way it had changed Alex’s.
Esme had been passionate about the reach and impact of art; it was why she’d set up the charity.
I made lots of positive comments about the picture as Alex looked at me, then he disappeared abruptly and Jenna gently explained that his favourite TV programme was coming on.
After we’d said goodbye, I went to run a bath. The water never got properly hot, so I was just adding a boiling kettle of water to the tub when my phone vibrated. It was my newest colleague.
OLLY: I mean, just look at the wee thing.
Attached was a picture of a tiny, snub-nosed puppy, cinnamon coloured and fluffy. I smiled against my will.
LIZZY: I’m more of a cat person.
OLLY: But dogs are so charming.
LIZZY: What’s his name?
OLLY: Pank.
LIZZY:?
OLLY: My niece named him. The rescue charity told us he was found outside St Pancras station. Matilda shouted PANCRAS all the way home. Actually, she shouted PANCREAS all the way home. Shortened to Pank, which sounds better, right?
I felt a little stab of sadness in my chest. It was a sweet story; a story that said a lot about how happy Olly’s family life must be.
I remembered the list I’d made about him: minted, married, mansplainy.
LIZZY: It’s a great name. See you at work.
As I lay in the bath, inhaling the sweet fumes, I wondered what Olly’s house was like.
Looked around, at my turquoise bathroom suite I’d never got round to replacing.
Most studio flats just have a shower, so my bath had seemed to be the epitome of luxury when I’d viewed the place, outweighing the fact that the living space was tiny and distinctly lacking in light.
There was hardly room to swing a cat (as I said threateningly to Pebble, sometimes).
As a result, I discouraged friends from visiting me.
My social life was conducted in cafés, pubs and restaurants and – more recently – in the lovely homes my friends were setting up.
But this place, which I’d always intended to be a stopgap, had become my permanent home.
I didn’t think much about the dreams that were gradually fading away.
I’d just been getting on with life: firefighting for Dad and Alex, progressing at work.
Yes, I had quiet hopes of the life I might have – a partner, a couple of kids, a home and garden.
In my twenties this had all seemed supremely doable, once I got other things off my to-do list. I’d dated here and there over the years but never found someone I’d really clicked with – and if I was honest, I hadn’t put a lot of effort into it because I was so focused on work.
One day, I thought, I’ll find someone for me. Everything was fine.
But there were moments, places, people, that occasionally flipped that view on its head.
And smart, good-looking, clean-cut Olly was one of them.
With his happy life, probably a wife, house and garden and access to a puppy.
He had those things in the bag. And I didn’t know why, but somehow his example was bothering me.
Like a magic eye picture, my life suddenly looked different.
Could it be that I’d sleepwalked into a situation where the life I wanted was retreating from me, rather than getting closer?
Receding, perhaps never to be reached, like the vision of an oasis in a desert?
Because the firefighting never ended; and my to-do list never got shorter, magically regenerating itself as I ticked things off it.
Shivering, I climbed out of the now cool bath, wrapping myself in a towel and trying to push my sadness aside. I was still young, yes? There were lots of possibilities, personal and professional, yes?
Yes, I told myself. I travelled the few steps from bath to bed, where I lay, thinking about downloading some dating apps, inspired by Sasha’s bravery, but somehow not doing it.
Instead, I fell asleep and was woken by Pebble licking my eyelids at 2am.
For a moment, on waking, I thought I heard a puppy bark.
Then I lay there, in the darkness. Took in the wail of a distant siren; the sound of the night bus passing at the end of the road; the column of light falling across the floor from the streetlamp outside. I listened to Pebble’s soft breathing beside me, and drifted off into a patchy, broken sleep.