Chapter 37
After Cian leaves, I take a trip to Barcelona to prove to myself that I’m still capable of enjoying life.
This is completely foolish, because Barcelona is simply not that beautiful in winter, and not that fun when you’re alone.
I walk along the beachfront, being whipped by wind, and feel as if I’ve arrived at a party that finished hours ago.
I stay in a studio in a block filled with other travellers.
The median age is probably only a few years younger than me, but there’s something about their bouncy optimism that makes me feel ancient.
This used to be me, I think, as I hear their loud shouts and music through the walls, as I see them dressed up to go out for the night or hungover in the stairwells the next morning.
Mostly, I sit in cafés eating carrot cake and drinking hot chocolates so thick they make my stomach hurt.
I refuse to scroll my phone so instead take a notepad and try to explore my feelings like I’m a teenager with aspirations of being a poet.
I eavesdrop and doodle and do tarsia puzzles, matching Chinese characters to pinyin until the rain stops or my toes thaw then I walk the streets again.
On my way back one evening I slip and come down hard on the wet cobblestones.
It doesn’t hurt at first, though once upstairs I cry about the stinging grazes on my palms and purple smudges blooming under my knees.
How is it I spent most of my adult life upright in footwear designed for posing in, yet when I switch to walking shoes I’m brought down?
I sit with wet tissues on my legs, sobbing about how much it hurts and how alone I feel and how I can’t justify the cost of flying back early.
On the third day, when the weather clears, it becomes a different place.
Still cold, yet the skies are blue, and everyone is suddenly in sunglasses and taking drinks on the terrace.
I do the same, the whole time reminding myself, it’s a privilege to be here, to be able to do this, to have this freedom.
I send photos to my family group chat, cheerful images of the sea, paellas and pastry-filled windows.
When Mum asks how I’m spending my time, I tell her I’m exploring culture, rather than what I’m really doing, which is becoming obsessed with hunting down increasingly random statues around the city. A bulbous cat, a giant smiling lobster, a flirty giraffe.
One evening I put on a coat and eat a small portion of average Catalan-style squid at a piazza restaurant. Despite the prices, the tables are pushed close enough to see what’s on everyone’s else’s plate.
A blonde American woman leans over and purrs, ‘What’s a pretty girl like you doing dining alone?’
‘Are you hitting on me?’ I ask, and her two friends, equally blonde, cackle rapturously.
‘No, honey, you’re far too young for me.’
The women are from a small town in the Midwest where I learn there are no good men. They turn their chairs and entertain me with stories of how brutal they find midlife dating, how weird they find European showers, and how liberating it is to no longer give a fuck about anything anymore.
When I tell them I’m recently single they obsess over showing me a social media hashtag called #TravellingWhileHeartbroken, which makes me think of Kasie’s obsession with #TravellingWhileBlack.
‘It’s all very Eat, Pray, Love,’ one explains.
‘The book,’ another woman supplies when I miss the reference.
I don’t think specifically of Cian, though I do think of us and what we could have been.
Especially when I see couples. The ones with matching rucksacks, the ones silently sitting opposite each other in restaurants, the ones calling their grandchildren across the square.
Couples, in every guise, are everywhere and impossible to unsee.
Towards the end of the week, I need something to block the thoughts, so I take myself to a quiet bar where I plan to sit alone and drink without drawing attention.
But Marc, the barman – tall, confident and dark-haired – begins to chat to me in English.
He tells me he’s a city person with aspirations of being a farmer and that he walks through life feeling as if he’s wearing a suit that’s perfectly pleasant yet tailored to someone else’s body.
We talk for hours, all while holding the kind of eye contact I could trick myself into believing was something special.
It’s not lost on me how easy it is to tell this stranger everything; even with intrusions from other customers, I spill my heart to him over beers.
My internal voice mocks me about how obvious this all is. A barman. Really?
‘You have a boyfriend back in London?’ he asks.
‘Would I be talking to you if I did?’
Marc grins, though appears as if he doesn’t care either way.
We’re interrupted by the need for service and when he slides back, he picks up on the same point.
‘No boyfriend,’ I tell him. ‘And you, do you have a girlfriend?’
‘I have many girlfriends.’ While I don’t know if he’s joking or not, I also don’t care, because this is what I want, to be unimportant and share intimacy with someone incapable of splitting my heart open.
As we walk back through the streets, passing graffiti-covered shut-up shops, I recall one of Kasie’s ground rules when we moved in together was that I wouldn’t bring random men home.
I was offended, not that she assumed I had one-night stands, because I did; I just didn’t have them with complete strangers.
‘I’m not looking to get murdered,’ I explained to her, and she seemed relieved.
What would she think now, as I pull a man whose last name I don’t know, to where I’m staying alone, in a foreign country.
Marc kisses and touches me as soon as we’re on the other side of the door. There’s no stalling, no build-up, no talking, just bodies, just us.
I try not to get hung up on how misplaced the kisses are, how each touch lands wrongly, how it doesn’t feel how I want it to, because he’s not who I want him to be.
This is what I want, I keep telling myself. I want to be part of an us that doesn’t consist of me and my broken heart.
This is what I want.
This is what I want.
After we have sex, he adjusts the pillow and falls asleep, and I sit for a few moments, annoyed at how everything was archetypical up until this point.
When I attempt to nudge him awake, he pulls me towards his chest as if by reflex.
And for at least an hour I lie in the arms of this too tall man, who loves animals and the countryside but is trapped in the city running his family’s bar.
A man whose skin smells like alcohol and detergent, a man I don’t want.
‘That sounds bad,’ Nicole says as I tell her the story over lunch the following week.
‘It wasn’t terrible. He was nice. He was fine.’ I pick at my pasta salad and watch as she selects the best doughnuts left on the meeting-room table. ‘Perhaps I should be celibate for a bit.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘It might help,’ I say emptily, because I can’t imagine anything ever helping.
‘Speculoos?’ she says, handing a doughnut over. ‘What’s the budget for these ad agency meetings? I swear when we have to sit in here for hours, we never get fed.’
‘No,’ I agree, ‘we don’t.’
We fall into silence, sitting across from each other at a table for sixteen. In the corner a flipchart is scrawled with a bunch of phrases in green pen.
Take your imagination for a twirl, chat around the world
Boy meets girl, when you chat around the world
‘Those are awful,’ she says. ‘I could do better.’ She mutters variations of the slogan before tutting and giving up.
‘By the way,’ I begin, ‘did you hear there’s a new product marketing role?’
Nicole screws up her nose. ‘Product marketing? Urgh. So dull. It’s basically what we do without the fun part.’
‘No. It’s the fun part of what we do without the tedious social media part. I’m so bored of creating reels about binge-worthy Spanish TV shows or ensuring the mascots are doing spunky stuff online.’
Through a mouthful of doughnut, Nicole asks, ‘Are you considering applying?’
‘Jimmy told me it was coming up and that I should go for it. I said I’d let him know when I came back from annual leave. I’ve been avoiding him.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I have a master’s in linguistics. My childhood dream was to work at the UN and then I fell into this and now I’m worried I’m about to fall into something else. I’m not sure what I want.’
‘If you’re this bored, I don’t think switching departments will be enough for you. Why not make a bigger move?’
‘A bigger move?’ I repeat. ‘That’s not subtle at all.’
She stares me down. ‘I didn’t mean anything by that.’
‘Of course not.’
‘Seriously, hon. I love you but I’m done getting involved with your life.’
I nod sadly, because I deserve this.
Eventually Nicole sighs and asks, ‘Have you considered any other jobs, or is it just this job, which Jimmy has conveniently presented to you?’
‘I’ve looked a bit,’ I say, completely ignoring the hours I’ve spent crying over jobs in Singapore. It’s Ikenna’s fault; ever since he sent me that job, I easily find myself on lonely nights searching international career boards, before shutting my browser and feeling I’ve done something sordid.
‘You said you wanted to move into designing language programmes, not marketing them.’
‘I do. Though I’ve been in marketing for years; I’m not sure I can start something completely new.’
‘Fine,’ she says with a shrug, ‘then product marketing it is. I’m sure it’ll be great.’
‘Yes. And you know, one day, you can leave too.’
‘No, no, it’s too late for me. I’ll stay here forever, watching all my hot, young friends leave to go on to bigger and better things.’
‘You have other hot, young friends?’
Right then, Jimmy saunters past and smiles at us through the window.
I make an effort to smile back, rather than wince, only exhaling when he carries on.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I groan.
‘Got it.’ Nicole snaps her fingers and, assuming she’s about to offer me some excellent advice or encouragement, I sit straighter. Then she says, ‘Let your dreams unfurl, chat around the world.’