Chapter 24
I finish my breakfast, then go back up to my room and force myself to open my book proposal.
I’m struggling to concentrate, however, because Dad’s in the kitchen listening to Angry White Men FM (LBC) while Mum’s arguing with Auntie Toulla on FaceTime, which means I can hear both sides of their riveting opus on Which Supermarket Stocks the Best Halloumi.
I’m distracting myself by going through a chest of drawers when I find a box of old books from my A-levels.
I search through it, and I find a reference from a text book that might be useful.
The book itself isn’t here, but it’s bound to be somewhere in the house – my parents hate throwing things away; case in point, the three broken kettles in the garage.
It buoys my mood because looking for a textbook provides me with the perfect opportunity to leave my desk but still feel like I’m working.
I skip downstairs and find Dad cleaning the inside of the cabinets while middle-aged men on the radio shout about why we need to bring back hanging.
‘Honestly, Dad, I don’t know how you can listen to this stuff.’
‘Some of it is very funny,’ he insists. ‘A caller rang in once, and all he did was moo like a cow.’ He chuckles. ‘It really annoyed the presenter.’
He wrings his sponge in the sink. ‘I’m nearly finished if you want the kitchen.’
‘No, I came to ask where my old books would be. The garage?’
‘The loft – it’s drier.’
‘Okay, great, thanks.’
I spin round and head back to the stairs.
‘Be careful,’ he calls after me. ‘The ladder is very steep. And don’t let the cat get up there. He gets stuck and attacks anyone who tries to help him.’
Ladder successfully navigated, I flick on the light and scan my surroundings.
It’s clean and organised, but the bare bulb doesn’t quite reach the recesses, and the slope of the roof leaves little room to stand.
Trying to ignore all the cobwebs – how many fat hairy spiders are up here with me? – I get to work.
The first box is full of Tig’s things and it’s only when I try the fourth unlabelled box that I find my old stuff.
But it’s not books, it’s long-forgotten souvenirs from my childhood: a snow globe from Disneyland; an ornate perfume bottle, its contents long since dried up; a miniature blue whale made of blown glass from a school trip to the Natural History Museum.
Right at the bottom is an old diary.
I recognise it as the one I was asked to keep by my first therapist, who I started seeing after Leo died. I swallow painful memories, then repack everything and close the box. Digging through that period of my life is the last thing I want to do.
In the next box, I find some other diaries from earlier, happier times, and I allow myself a peek.
The things that preoccupied eleven-year-old Nella were: a weird skin tag in my arm-pit that I was too scared to show anyone, and worrying that my legs were getting too hairy to leave unshaven.
(At eleven?? Thanks, patriarchy.) There’s an entry at the back that appears to have been written earlier.
All it says is: I’m scared Dad isn’t coming back.
I don’t remember writing it; I’m not sure I remember feeling it. Was I referring to the time Dad went to Cyprus by himself? It’s weird what painful memories you manage to forget while others never leave you.
I open a later diary from when I was fifteen, where I described my first kiss with Leo (my first kiss full stop) as Nice.
Sort of like a Sherbet Fountain. I was much more excited by my new status as ‘girlfriend’ although it wasn’t all that different from being friends because, yeah we kissed a bit, but we weren’t allowed in each other’s rooms, and staying over was out of the question.
Still, it didn’t stop me lording it over Vandi because she’d never even kissed a boy. In her defence, she was saving herself for Josh Hartnett.
We spent hours working out how we’d break the news of her inevitable engagement to her strict Hindu parents. (It involved showing them carefully selected scenes from Pearl Harbor.)
I flick forward a couple of months and find a bizarrely written entry that’s half English, half back-slang, and once I’ve deciphered it, (which anyone could have done in all of ten seconds), I find it’s about me mooning over Pierre the French exchange student, whose personality consisted entirely of scowling and smoking Gitanes.
I wrote it cryptically because I felt guilty having thoughts about another boy.
When I flick through the pages, I start to see a pattern. I felt guilty about a lot, as a teenager. Mainly about taking up too much of my parents’ time when they both worked full-time as accountants, especially once they set up on their own and had to build up the business from scratch.
I find the book I’m looking for, and because I’ve been through every box except one, I decide to open that too, curious as to what I’ll find.
A stack of old Cosmos, no doubt bought to find out what sort of kisser I was, an expired can of Coke, and a white dress I wore once, decided was too revealing, but that I couldn’t bear to throw out.
I guess the hoarding gene didn’t skip me after all.
It’s my last day in the office before we leave for Cyprus on Sunday and, even though I’m only working between eleven and five, the day drags.
Chantelle and Clive are my last patients, but at a quarter past, there’s still no sign of them. I’m about to go and check in the main waiting room when there’s a knock at my door.
I open it to find Clive alone and looking sorry for himself.
‘Is everything okay?’ I ask, ushering him in.
‘I’m sorry, Nella pet, I didn’t know whether I should come or not. It’s over between Chantelle and me.’
He sits down, and I pour him a glass of water.
‘What happened?’
He sighs. ‘What actually happened is that I didn’t notice she’d had a haircut. What really happened is that I realised I didn’t want to be with her.’
‘And how do you feel now?’
‘Relieved, mainly. Being with her felt like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. I wanted it to work with her so badly, but I never stopped to ask myself why I wanted it. I mean, what’s wrong with being single?’
I nod. ‘Has this been a pattern for you?’
‘I’m forty-seven. I wanted a wife and kids, and I know – selfishly – that I could have had those things with Chantelle or any of my last three girlfriends.
But what I really wanted was to be part of a loving family.
And that was never going to be the case with her.
She’s a lovely girl, but we’re just not right for each other.
I felt awful letting her down, but I knew if I was having these doubts now, the marriage would never be what I wanted it to be. ’
‘That sounds like quite a healthy way to look at things. Brave, too. Better to realise your mistake now than in a year or two down the line.’
On the way home, I can’t help wondering if this was how Rich felt?
That he knew the relationship wasn’t right, so he sabotaged it?
Why else leave damning evidence on his phone?
I’d assumed he was mirroring the heartless pattern he’d seen with his parents and did it unthinkingly, but he knew I couldn’t stay with someone who was unfaithful. I’d told him as much over the years.
There are better ways to end a relationship that isn’t working – obviously – but maybe this is the most efficient way of doing it. Cross the red line your partner has laid down and wait for the inevitable end.