Chapter 17
FRANKIE
That evening, Simon and I do a big cash-and-carry run to restock the fridge and freezer and then eat delicious curry together in his kitchen.
(He made too much and sent me an extremely welcome come-and-eat-with-me message at the exact moment I was unenthusiastically about to start cooking for myself.)
‘So you’re seeing Marcus a lot,’ he says as we sit at his table cradling glasses of red after we’ve finished eating.
‘Yes I am. We have to maintain our aura of we’re-in-a-relationship. Also, I feel like he’s becoming a good friend. Which is really nice.’
‘That is nice,’ Simon agrees.
Our conversation moves on and then out of nowhere – I’m sure that twenty seconds ago we were discussing fabrics for his new client’s bedroom curtains – he says, ‘When’s the last time you thought about Rick?’
‘Yesterday,’ I say. ‘Or the day before. When he sent me a message asking me where he keeps his lightbulbs.’
‘When’s the last time you thought about him without being prompted and felt sad about him?’
‘Erm.’ I ponder. ‘I’m not really sure. I’m kind of more sad about myself, as in I feel absolutely ridiculous for being such an idiot. I should never have dated him and I certainly shouldn’t have moved in with him or convinced myself that I was in love with him.’
‘Good,’ says Simon. ‘How often do you think about… your other friends?’
‘I mean…’ That’s a silly question. ‘It varies?’ Obviously.
‘Like… your other London friends?’
‘I mean… quite a lot? Because I’m still very much in touch with them and we message each other a lot.’
‘Do you miss them?’
‘I do, actually. I love it here. I love my friends here. I love being here. And at times I’m tempted just to stay long-term—’ I pause while Simon hugs me and tells me he would be incredibly happy if I did that ‘—but yes I do miss them. Like I miss my friends and family from here when I’m not here.
You miss people you know well when you haven’t seen them for a while.
In fact, I’ll probably go to London for the weekend soon. ’
‘Yeah, so just so you know, you are hugely over Rick. And that is good. Are you thinking you’re ready to date anyone else yet?’
‘So, so not.’ I don’t need to think about that one. ‘Currently I feel like I never want to date again. As in ever. I make such stupid decisions. I know there are people out there who love me.’
Simon nods, like duh. ‘Me,’ he says. ‘Rose. Ellie. Miranda. All your London friends. So many people.’
‘Yep. I do know that, and I love you all back, very much, and I feel incredibly lucky to have you all. But when it comes to certain relationships, specifically my parents and every single boyfriend I’ve ever had, not so much.
My parents did not love me enough to stay in my life, and I end up with the wrong people boyfriend-wise, and they don’t love me either. ’
Simon frowns. ‘Do you think… you subconsciously choose people you haven’t hugely fallen in love with yourself because you assume in advance they’re going to dump you?’
‘I don’t know. But I do know that I don’t want to do it any more because I really, really do not enjoy rejection. Obviously.’
‘Hmm.’ Simon looks for a moment like he’s going to say something else but then very suddenly switches to talking about tiles and taps.
I definitely prefer unchallenging bathroom chat to wherever he was going with our conversation, so I join in very enthusiastically, and, happily, the psychoanalysis-of-me moment has passed.
* * *
Marcus texts during the day on Friday to suggest that he pick me up at around six thirty, after he’s dropped Ruby and Sam at their sleepovers, and that we get some food before our film starts at eight thirty.
I tell him that sounds perfect, which it does: I’m looking forward to this evening, because Marcus is a very easy companion.
I’m ready and waiting when he arrives.
‘Good evening.’ He has the car windows rolled down and is speaking a little more loudly than normal. ‘You look gorgeous. Love that top.’
I ignore the silly feeling of pleasure I get from his compliment – it’s clearly actually just for show – and, when I’m sitting inside the car and have the windows rolled up, say, ‘Nicely complimented for grapevine purposes.’
‘You do look lovely and that is a nice top. But also, yes.’ He does an ironic I’m-so-clever tap on the side of his head and then grins at me. ‘Mrs Bittern’s probably watching. Another drive round the village?’
‘Of course.’
Marcus’s car is quite a fancy one, with a retractable roof – ‘Ruby made me buy it,’ he tells me apologetically and I say, ‘Spies really shouldn’t draw too much attention to themselves’ – and he opens it up, because it’s quite a balmy evening, and changes radio stations until we get a love ballad, turning the radio down so that we aren’t actually blaring music out of the car.
‘Gran will be hearing about this within minutes,’ I say.
‘I know. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.’
‘So how was your day?’
We have a lot to tell each other – it’s like the more you see someone the more you have to say to them because you go more and more micro and you know more and more about each other – so I describe the new mugs I had delivered today from John Lewis for my flat and how much I love them and Marcus is (or appears to be) genuinely interested, and he then tells me all about the game of padel he played at 8 a.m. this morning with Rob and another couple of friends from the village.
And it’s nice. It feels like we’re becoming really, properly friends.
Like something good has come out of our fake relationship.
In fact, when we do fizzle it out, we’ll still be able to see each other, because I can tell Gran we’re still very good friends, we’re just binning the romance side of things. And she won’t be worried about me being upset because she’ll be able to see us still getting along. Perfect, actually.
We go for Japanese this time for dinner, my choice; it’s a restaurant Ellie and I took Jack to a few years ago. Marcus has been before, so many times that they actually recognise him, it turns out. And the owner comes out and greets him in Japanese, and he replies sounding very fluent.
‘Wow,’ I say. ‘I’m impressed.’
‘My ex-wife is German but her mother is Japanese, so she grew up speaking it, and in the dying stages of our relationship I thought learning it myself might help. I was willing to try anything. So I did an intensive course. It did help me impress a lot of people, it turns out, and with business, but it did not impress her or help our relationship.’ And then he says, ‘So do you have a go-to on this menu or are you going to be adventurous?’ He very clearly doesn’t want to say any more about the ex-wife.
I join in with a detailed discussion of the menu, and soon we’re back on normal, safe, non-personal-life-discussing ground.
Dinner whizzes past in the way that it does when you’re with someone whose company you love.
We make each other laugh, we have a lot to say on a wide variety of topics, big (geopolitics, on which luckily we broadly agree) and small (including when you should and should not wear socks – literally), and the food is good.
And then it’s time for us to hurry to the cinema for the start of the film. We’re slightly late, but that’s ideal, it turns out, because we arrive just as the ads are coming to an end and the trailers are starting.
‘So pensioners and the Pope,’ Marcus says as we settle into our seats with a glass of red wine each (it’s a fancy cinema, with velvet seats and its own bar) and toffee popcorn (me) and mixed sweet and salted (him). ‘How good do we think this film is going to be?’
‘Better than post-apocalyptic erotica.’ I take a sip of my wine and snuggle into my chair. ‘I love posh cinemas like this.’
The trailers are very PG and mainly pure schmaltz.
‘There’s no way there’s going to be any sex in this film, weird or otherwise,’ I say happily.
‘Yeah, going by the trailers it’s going to be amazing.’
‘Excuse me. That sarcasm was unnecessary,’ I say mock sternly. ‘Compared to last weekend’s one it will be.’
‘True. The bar is very, very low.’
Halfway in, it turns out that pensioners stealing the Pope can get really scary. I’m clutching Marcus’s arm all over again.
‘I’ve fallen in love with them,’ I whisper to him. ‘I don’t want anything bad to happen to them.’
‘Well thank goodness for that,’ Marcus says at the end, very sarcastic again. ‘A happy ending. Who’d have thought. Also, who would have thought the actual Pope would turn his back on the papacy in order to marry a seventy-six-year-old sweet-shop-owner from Brighton? So plausible.’
‘I loved it. Don’t ruin it with unnecessary focus on realisticness,’ I admonish him (a little hypocritically given that I usually insist on things being realistic).
He smiles at me, and I think about how I’ve had a truly lovely evening. A fake relationship is so much better than a real one.