Chapter three #2
‘Yes! And while you’re trying to will him to change his mind by liking his sister’s Instagram stories, you’re just wasting your own time. You could be dating! You could be joining clubs or volunteering, doing things where you’ll meet someone better than Fraser Henderson!’
‘I have done dating!’
‘You’ve talked to people online and then bailed out of meeting them. That’s not the same.’
I stared mutinously at the large box marked BETH BOOKS.
It was all right for Ashley. In the beginning, we’d been comrades in low-maintenance sofawear, but about a year ago her mum and sister had dragged her to a personal shopper for her birthday.
She’d left the house in a stained hoodie, and returned with highlights, better eyebrows, and a booklet of ‘Clear Winter’ fabric swatches.
Though we sniggered about it at the time, something had changed.
Ashley resembled her security pass again.
I wasn’t just jealous of the transformation, my entire being ached for the family who loved her enough to boss her into action.
I didn’t know where these dark, negative thoughts were coming from. They were flying at me like bats out of a cartoon cave.
‘Beth! I’m trying to help you,’ Ashley insisted. ‘There’s a life out there that is literally waiting to get going, and you’re hiding from it, pretending that everything’s OK when it’s not.’
I stayed silent. I knew if I opened my mouth I’d start crying. Yesterday that wouldn’t have bothered me – God knows Ash and I had cried rivers and rivers of ugly tears in front of each other, without a single word spoken – but today I was on my own again.
The warm dead weight on my foot shifted, as if to say, Not quite on your own.
‘I know what you’re thinking, and you’re so wrong.’ Ashley continued. ‘You don’t need some big transformation, you just need to get out there. You’re absolutely fine the way you are.’
‘The way I am?’ I squeaked, without even wanting to.
She raised her hands, then dropped them in despair. ‘Yeah, the way you are.’
I looked up at her, my eyes swimming with tears.
The blurry Ashley sighed.
‘Look, I’m not going to apologise for what I’ve just said. I genuinely want you to be happy. In a year’s time – maybe less! – you’ll look back at this cock-up with the flat and think, thank God that happened.’
I summoned up my remaining dignity. ‘Well, let’s hope so.’
Ashley met my gaze. ‘Stop being so dramatic. The universe has spoken and it says, Move. On.’
When I sat down at my desk the next morning, not even a second, proper coffee and the comforting presence of Tomsk at my feet could lift the gloomy cloud hanging over me.
I knew, in the logical, accounting side of my brain, that this was hardly a monumental task. I’d dealt with way worse than this.
I’d had to organise my mother’s funeral, a task so awful I’d already blanked half the details and locked the rest in a box at the back of my head.
It wasn’t even just that: growing up with two parents who hated each other hadn’t been fun, Dad leaving was a whole other psychologist’s dream, and then there was the break-up with Fraser.
And I was lucky enough to have savings: I’d squirrelled away a decent deposit for the house I assumed I’d be buying with Fraser.
But after our break-up I’d attempted to fill the hole in my heart with shopping (you never had to diet into shoes or table lamps) and I’d horrified myself so badly by how quickly I could blow through months of diligent budgeting that I’d locked the entire lot into a super-high-interest account, which I couldn’t touch for another two years.
OK, so that wasn’t necessarily the greatest idea, but it wasn’t as if I could afford somewhere on my own now either.
I could work anywhere, I just had to find a rental for me and my dog.
So why did it feel so overwhelming?
Because it wasn’t the house, was it? I stared unhappily at the lukewarm cafetiere.
What I hated most was feeling so stupid – again.
I’d thought I was happily moving on, to a new place with a friend.
Just like I’d thought that Fraser only needed a sign I’d say yes to a proposal.
Was I so bad at reading situations? What else was I missing?
I shook myself. What I needed was a plan, the sort of simple, emotionless plan I encouraged my more hysterical clients to make when the savings account they thought they’d been putting their tax money into turned out to be empty because they’d accidentally set up their household direct debits from it.
‘Estate agent,’ I said to Tomsk. ‘Let’s start with her.’
Zara from Foxley’s wasn’t as embarrassed by her mistake as I felt she ought to be. And, as Ashley had predicted, she didn’t have much to offer beyond apologies for what she called ‘the little mix-up’.
I acknowledged her unconvincing apologies, then insisted that she look – right now – for a solution to the pressing issue of my homelessness.
There was a lot of clicking and sighing.
‘Um, no . . . oh, no pets. You couldn’t . . . ?’
Tomsk had quietly slunk away to his favourite chair, and was curled up with his long nose tucked into his shaggy haunches, as if he didn’t want to hear. ‘Absolutely not,’ I said.
‘Tsk. Shame.’ More clicking. ‘Or there’s . . . no. Ah!’ Finally. ‘There’s a one-bed flat in Hedley Linton that’s coming up, the tenants are waiting on a house sale. We haven’t marketed it yet, but I could put you on the waiting list.’
‘The waiting list?’
‘We’ve had some early inquiries before yourself. It’s mad right now. People are bidding for properties.’
I channelled Martine. She was un-fob-off-able. ‘I’m well aware of that, Zara. I had to bid for the property I would be moving into – if you hadn’t made the mistake with the contract.’
Grudgingly, Zara conceded I could go to the top of the list, and I tried not to let the relief show in my voice. The only problem was, it wouldn’t be available for another two months.
‘And where am I supposed to go until then?’ I demanded.
‘There are a couple of short-term properties you could have a look at this afternoon.’ Zara sounded distracted already. ‘We’ve got a lovely one-bed just outside Ludlow. Cottage garden, secure parking. No pets, but can’t you just leave the dog with a friend for a few months? Stick it in kennels?’
I glanced over at Tomsk, curled up so tightly he was just a shaggy mass. I knew he was listening; he could pick up on the tension in the air like a radio.
There was no way I was putting Tomsk in kennels. Something about the fearful hunch of his spine reminded me how submissive he’d been when I’d first met him, how desperate he was to make himself invisible in that concrete run. I couldn’t bear to let him think he’d been abandoned again.
‘No,’ I said, firmly. ‘He can’t go into kennels.’
Zara was losing patience. ‘Friends? Family? Surely there’s someone you could ask.’
I bristled. Why did everyone assume everyone else had an army of friends and family to turn to?
‘No,’ I said abruptly.
‘In that case all I can do is keep you in the loop about this flat in Hedley Linton.’ Zara felt she’d done her bit. ‘Who knows? It might be sooner than two months.’
I bit my lip. ‘Let’s hope so.’
That done, I should have started some tax returns, but my mind refused to focus on the numbers in front of me. Instead, with every breath, the knot in my stomach began to move slowly up my body, until it filled my chest with a dark, frantic panic.
Without thinking, unable to bear it, I pushed myself away from the table and ripped the packing tape off the box of crockery I’d packed the previous day.
I pulled out my big cake cup, and tore open the box marked ‘store cupboard ingredients’, lining up the usual suspects packet by packet on the scrubbed and empty worktop.
Pale-blue self-raising flour, custard-yellow caster sugar, earth-brown cocoa: old friends.
On autopilot, blanking the pain building in my heart, I added four spoons of sugar, three spoons of flour, two spoons of cocoa to the mug, and stirred it together.
One egg, two spoons of oil. Three spoons of full fat milk. The pale sand slowly vanished into a thick sludge of rich, chocolately mud that clung to the sides of the cup, and the smell of cocoa rose like an aromatic hug. So comforting.
I looked down at the mixture, hesitated for a second, then opened the cupboard box again.
I tipped in the last half-packet of chocolate chips, then put the mug in the microwave, set it to ninety seconds and stood, hypnotised and impatient, as the mug went round and round in the light.
Working its magic. In thirty seconds, twenty seconds . . .
The thick chocolatey crust of the mug cake, speckled with flecks of cocoa, pushed every sad, scary thought out of my head for a few blissful moments, and with a teaspoon I carved a neat hole in the middle and poured a generous slug of cream straight into the molten heart.
I admired it for a long second. Then I started eating.
Ashley’s words kept coming back to me, but kinder now.
Chocolate made everything feel kinder. Maybe the universe didn’t want me to move into that house because something better was in the offing?
It was a comforting theory – that everything happened for a reason – and one that she and I had repeated to ourselves like a mantra in the early days.
Something great is just about to happen. The next step in my life is already unfolding. I’m one day closer to the most amazing development.
When my phone rang, I had the insane thought that the mug cake had worked some proper magic this time, and it might be Zara calling back with a flat.
But it wasn’t.
It was Fraser’s sister, Jackie.
‘Hello, Beth!’ she said, in that confident Henderson voice that reminded me of parties and happier times. ‘It’s Jackie, Jackie Dent. Fraser’s sister? Is this a good moment?’
I put down the half-eaten mug cake. Well, half-eaten. There was maybe one spoon left.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is a good moment.’