Chapter 5
Emmy
By the weekend, the shock and adrenaline have worn off and I’m feeling less and less like an independent woman and more like a pool of rainwater slowly going stagnant.
On Sunday, I was fuelled by rage as I threw Colin and Stacey out.
On Wednesday, I was channelling my most optimistic self.
I know I put on a bit of a brave face in front of Nick and Luke but I couldn’t face totally falling apart in front of them, not when Nick’s already so wound up about becoming a father.
It’s Saturday now and I’m walking from the train station to Chloe’s house in suburbia, with a bottle of gin clutched firmly in my fist. I round the corner and see Annabel’s face pressed up against the living room window, waving manically as I approach their front door.
“Darling.” Chloe opens the door and instantly folds me into her arms. “What an utter bastard.”
“Bastard! Bastard!” shouts Annabel as she emerges from the living room in her pyjamas. Chloe grimaces and I chuckle, tousling my goddaughter’s hair.
“Exactly, Bells,” I say, scooping her up. “How’s my best girl?” She rattles off an incredibly detailed description of a pigeon she saw in the playground at school and then wriggles down.
“How are you holding up, Em?” Josh asks as Annabel tugs me down the hallway and into the living room.
“I’ve been better.” I offer the bottle of gin and he takes it with a small bow.
“A double then, ladies?”
“Please.”
“You two sit. I’ll wrangle this troublemaker into bed,” he says, tickling Annabel, who shrieks and runs upstairs. “Gins will be ready in ten!”
We make our way to the sofa and flop in either corner. Chloe fixes me with a look that’s all sympathy laced with anger. My face crumples and within moments I’ve dissolved into tears. Yep, definitely in the puddle phase of the breakup.
Chloe is on me instantly, pulling me into her arms and stroking my hair as I sob into her neck. She’s wearing some really cute cream pyjamas and I sob harder when I realise I’m leaving mascara all over them. What are these? Cashmere? The thought makes me cry harder.
“Shhh, shhh, shhh,” she intones, using the soft noises she deploys when one of her children has bumped their head or grazed their knee. For a moment I feel safe and then I’m hit with a wave of grief as I remember that my own mother will never lovingly soothe my tears again.
They’ve been gone a long time now but grief has a long tail and you never know when it’s going to spring up like a jack in the box and slap you in the face.
For a while, Chloe just holds me and I let myself fall apart.
She’s one of my safest places, my ride or die bestie.
I’d cut out a kidney with a butter knife if she needed one.
“Darling, darling,” she repeats, rubbing circles on my back as I curl up into her hug and my weeping slows into hiccupping sobs. “Would you like me to kill him for you? There’s a spot in Ashtead woods where no one would ever find his body.”
The joke, gentle though it is, breaks the spell and I snort-laugh, grateful for a reprieve from the wracking pain in my chest.
“I just feel so stupid, Chlo,” I sniff, accepting a large gin and tonic from Josh, who’s just reappeared.
He is completely unperturbed by my outburst and I feel a spike of genuine happiness that my best friend has found a rare man that’s both emotionally intelligent and kind.
I smile gratefully, take a small sip, and cough. The drink must be 50% gin. Josh grins.
“Why on earth would you feel stupid, my love?” Chloe replies, a frown deepening between her brows. Her long blonde hair is tied up in an artfully messy bun and her blue eyes are filled with concern. She looks like an off-duty supermodel, even when she’s just been snotted on by a grown woman.
“Things have been so meh for a while. I just kept assuming it would get better. I kept thinking he’d make partner and then remember I existed.” I hiccup back a few sobs that are threatening to break free.
“You deserve so much better than this darling.” Chloe sips her own drink and grimaces, side eyeing Josh, who shrugs.
“I’m an idiot for thinking it would all just work out. What a fool. I’ve let myself settle for so much less than I deserve.”
“Well, you weren’t to know he was screwing around on you,” replies Chloe, her lip curling in distaste. “What sort of name is Stacey anyway?!”
I snort.
“She’s beautiful though, I completely get it. Like the little mermaid but with bigger tits. I’d have snogged her if given the chance.”
Josh coughs a laugh.
“That aside, you’re not stupid for hoping your marriage would get better.”
“No, but I’ve let myself become a passenger in my own life.
I let Colin choose so much. What house we have, what car we have, where we go, and who we hang out with.
You’re the only thing that’s totally mine, you know?
You guys and Nick are all I’ve got.” I sniff at the thought. I suddenly feel very alone.
“Well, you’ve got Annabel and the twins too, it’s not just the three of us.” She winks. “They think the sun shines out of your bum and that you only fart glitter and rainbows. And there’s Luke. He’s basically family, right?”
“Right,” I reply, choking slightly on the gin fumes that burn my nostrils as I bury my face in my glass. I feel my cheeks flush. I definitely do not want to talk about Luke right now.
My brain keeps bouncing back to Wednesday night and it’s not my slight hysteria or Nick’s shock and anger that come to mind.
It’s the stillness that came over Luke as I told him of Colin’s betrayal.
I shudder slightly, trying to shake off the feelings that are shimmering around the edges of my consciousness.
This is not the time to think about Luke Pullman.
“Well, we’re going to take care of you, missy,” says Chloe, sitting upright and putting on her bossy mum voice. “Josh is taking the kids tomorrow and we’ve got a spa day booked. We’ll literally steam that dickhead out of your heart if we have to!”
“Oh Chloe, you really are my fairy godmother, aren’t you?” We clink glasses and down our drinks, shuddering in unison as the gin hits. “More drinks, bartender!” I cheer as Josh gets up. This time, he returns with the bottle.
I wake to a small pink tongue licking my hand. I jolt and sit upright, finding Annabel sat on the floor beaming up at me. She’s crept into the spare room and judging by the darkness, it’s not even 6am yet.
“I’m a cat!” she declares, purring noisily and going to lick my hand again. I hastily draw it back under the covers and she meows, climbing up onto the bed with me. I groan, my mouth dry following a little too much Tanqueray.
“Come here, pussycat,” I say, pulling her under the covers with me. “It’s still nighttime.”
She snuggles into me and we both relax, letting out matching sighs as she wriggles into a comfy position.
“Are you sad, Auntie Emmy?” she asks, voice sleepy.
“A little, my love.”
“I was sad at school yesterday. Toby called my school bag stupid and said dolls were for babies.”
I nod, smoothing her hair back from her face.
“Toby sounds like a douchebag,” I reply. She smothers a shocked little giggle, whispering the word ‘douchebag’ back to herself.
“Penelope always makes me feel better. You can take her for the day if you want to?” She offers me her ragged dolly, which has a suspiciously soggy foot.
“Thanks Bells. But Daddy’s got both you and the boys solo today. He might need Penelope’s magic more than I do.”
She giggles and then settles, falling swiftly back into sleep. I’ve always envied the way kids can go from wide awake to fast asleep in the blink of an eye. I tuck her in close to me and close my eyes, willing myself to join her in dreamland.
Four hours later, Chloe and I are stretched out on sun loungers at Nirvana Spa.
It’s one of my absolute favourite spots because they let you stay literally all day, they do a mean pizza, and they have a thing called celestial floatation where you get to float in silence in Dead Sea water. It’s bliss.
We’re sipping orange juice in our robes, Kindles laid out on the table next to us. Now that my slight hangover has abated, I feel relaxed for the first time since my birthday party. I take a deep breath, filling my lungs, then slowly let it go. Chloe glances over at me and smiles.
“So, Em. What’s your next move?” She angles the straw into her mouth and gives me a pointed look.
“My next move?” I parrot back, raising a brow.
“Well, there’s a lot of boring logistics to work through – where you’re going to live, how you will split things, who gets custody of which friends, etc.” She waves a dismissive hand through the air. “But what’s next in the story of Emmeline Warner?”
I laugh. Chloe’s got a spark of mischief in her eyes and I can’t wait to see where this is going.
“Seems to me,” she continues, “that you’re single for the first time since you were 18. You’ve slept with precisely one person, yes?”
“Yes…” I reply, eyes narrowing.
“Well then, I see nothing but opportunities in your future, my friend.” She waggles her eyebrows at me and I snort.
“You do make a fair point, my dear,” I muse back.
Colin and I had been like rabbits in the early days but we’d never done much colouring outside the lines.
Our sex life had been enthusiastic but unimaginative.
And in the past five years or so, it had dwindled from missionary once a month to a quarterly drunken fumble.
I can’t honestly remember the last time he made me come.
I close my eyes as another flash of pain spears through me, the image of him and Stacey reappearing, uninvited, in my brain.
“Well, I know it’s only been a week but they do say that to get over someone, you need to get under someone else.
The world’s your oyster now. I vote you make the most of this.
What is it you said to Nick? A new chapter?
This could be that. A new chapter in a sexy little thriller called ‘Emmy finally gets to have an orgasm’. ”
“Hey!” I elbow her. “I have plenty of orgasms!”
“Yes, but we both know the Womanizer can’t make you scream more than a man sucking hard on your clit with two fingers curled inside you,” she says, completely matter-of-factly with a sideways grin.
She’s speaking quietly but we still get two shocked glances from the elderly ladies three sun loungers over. I smother my giggles into my OJ.
“Fair,” I concede. “Maybe I should start a bucket list of all the sexy things I’ve never been able to try?”
“A fuckit list!” shrieks Chloe, definitely not quietly, as several more ladies turn to us and glare. One of them actually huffs.
“Shhh!” I stage-whisper, trying to contain my laughter. “Sure, ok, a fuckit list.”
“What would be on it?” she leans in, conspiratorially. “There’s got to be a few things you’ve come across—” she pauses and winks dramatically, and I explode into giggles again “—in your romance novels that you’ve wanted to try?”
I love it when I get to see this side of her again. She spends so much time in mum-mode that I rarely get to see my bestie when she’s being filthy and fun.
I blush. Chloe and I don’t really have secrets or boundaries but announcing some of your darkest sexual fantasies before 11am might still be a little bit much, even for me.
How do you even begin to admit the filthier things you’ve imagined?
The kind of fantasies you’d never say out loud, even to your best friend.
Surely those secrets are between a girl and her Kindle. I clear my throat instead.
“I’ll have to think about it,” I lie. I could start the list right here, right now, before I’ve even had my first coffee. A flutter of excitement shimmers through my core and I bite my lip.
Chloe laughs softly and picks up her Kindle. “You do that, babe.” She smirks. “I’m going back to my shifter romance. The omega’s just gone into heat!”
I laugh and pick up my Kindle too. But I can’t keep my mind on my romance novel when my brain’s coming up with every filthy fantasy I’ve ever dared imagine.
Visions of being held down in a dark room, of being displayed like a prize, of being edged into torment flood my imagination as I shift on my lounger.
Perhaps I should start with something simpler like being tied up or spanked? Surely that’s not much of a leap…
I can’t help but smile to myself as I pull up my notes app and start typing.
Fuckit List, here we come.