Chapter 20
Ash
‘I just feel so angry all the time,’ Willow says to Ash down the phone.
‘I genuinely believe he is trying to change and that he’s doing everything he can to reassure me of that, but then I’m furious all over again because I can’t simply accept the good, nice thing, the flowers or surprise date night or whatever, because the good, nice thing reminds me he’s trying to apologise, over and over again, and it makes me want to scream! ’
Ash is listening to Willow sound off about her husband-who-cheated in her earbuds as she navigates around her space to finish her make-up, double-check her outfit, and generally have a little bit of a tidy-up.
Willow has been on a downward spiral for twenty-three minutes, which is fine, of course – if Ash’s husband had cheated on her she’d need to vent to her best friend too, no matter how many months ago it happened – but Ash is also waiting for a natural pause in the conversation to remind Willow that she’s on her way out, and if she doesn’t go soon she’ll be late for Mona, and Ash doesn’t do lateness.
In fact, she finds it the height of self-entitlement, to think your time is more important than somebody else’s.
But Willow isn’t pausing for breath. She’s got a lot to get off her chest this morning. Understandably.
‘I’m like, at work, supposed to be finalising next season’s marketing budgets and signing off a million different things, and yet I’m pissing about on the Surviving Infidelity Reddit thread reading about the millions of other women this has happened to, thinking, what is the point?
What is the fucking point? He’ll do it again.
Fuck, he’s probably even done it before.
I just do not believe Sonja-from-the-Copenhagen-office is the only one. ’
‘Oh, Willow,’ Ash says, forcing herself to sit on the edge of the bed to give her best friend her full focus.
‘I’m sorry it’s so hard. I know how sorry he is, how much he regrets it.
I can’t speak to previous cheating, or if he’ll do it again.
I suppose nobody knows that, do they? But …
’ Ash sighs. She wants to be honest, but she also doesn’t want to say anything she can’t take back.
‘Well. Not every apology has to be accepted. That’s true too.
I know you said you wanted to try, but if you change your mind, that’s OK as well.
I’ll back you. There’s no right or wrong answer here.
You don’t have to be a “good girl” who fights for her marriage because you think that’s what you should do.
You can walk away tomorrow, if you want.
You don’t even have to have a list of reasons, a collection of evidence that justifies the choice.
’ She takes a breath, shrugs even though Willow cannot see her.
‘I think what I mean is, try to make room to listen to your heart. Not just your head.’
Willow is quiet on the other end of the line. Ash’s heart sinks. Shit. That was the wrong thing to say.
‘Willow?’ Ash prompts.
‘Yeah,’ Willow says. ‘I’m here.’
Ash channels her inner CJ and gets the clarification she needs before she can worry any more. ‘Did I misspeak?’ she asks, quietly. Bravely.
Another pause. Eventually: ‘No,’ Willow says. ‘It’s just … you’ve never said that before. About me being able to leave if I want to.’
Ash furrows her brow. ‘Of course I have!’ she says. ‘Nobody would expect you to stay if you didn’t want to.’
‘No, I know,’ Willow counters. ‘But you did say I owed it to my marriage to try.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh,’ says Ash. Her hearts sinks. ‘Well. That was a dick-ish thing to say. Having an opinion at all is dick-ish, to be fair. It isn’t my life, isn’t my relationship. I’m sorry, Willow. Have you been clinging on to that? Has it been holding you back?’
‘No,’ says Willow, but Ash doesn’t believe her. God, what a thing to have let pass her lips, the suggestion of what Willow ‘should’ do. She’s so mad at her past self, even if she doesn’t explicitly remember when it happened.
‘If it has,’ Ash presses, ‘then that can’t have been a very nice feeling. I had no business making you feel guilt, or anything like it. I can only assume that it came from a place of like, you’ve been married for so long and have always seemed so happy, and people make mistakes.’
‘I think you meant it from a place of: don’t throw a husband away when some people don’t have husbands at all …’ Willow replies. ‘Now we’re dissecting it.’
Ash closes her eyes. ‘Fuck,’ she says. ‘Willow.’
‘I need you to tell me I don’t have to stay,’ Willow says, voice wobbling. ‘I don’t trust anybody else. Not him, not my mother. It’s you I listen to.’
‘Do you trust yourself?’ Ash asks, kindly. ‘I’d start there.’
‘Urgh,’ Willow grunts. ‘I thought the happily-ever-after was the ending, you know? Nobody tells you about all the shit it takes to keep your head above water after that. A wedding day is only the start.’
Ash looks at the small clock by her bed. She’s going to have to take this call on the go. She puts her room key in her bag and heads out.
‘Why don’t you fly out here for a bit?’ Ash asks.
‘Getting away has worked wonders for me. You can bunk up with me, or we could have a few days up in Porto, maybe. Did you know that’s where port comes from?
I only just found that out, at a dinner the other night.
’ She doesn’t add that dinner was with CJ at the restaurant, but she thinks it. ‘It’s supposed to be beautiful.’
Willow exhales deeply. Ash traverses the corner into the CoLab co-working space, immediately spots CJ and Luis by the reception desk, heads bowed over something in front of them worth discussion.
They look up as she passes, and Ash points to her ears and mouths on the phone.
CJ nods, raises a hand with a thumbs up as she mouths back OK.
Ash points to the exit. I’m late, she mouths, and CJ wafts her hands in front of her in a shooing motion, encouraging Ash out of the door with a smile and a wrinkle of her nose.
Ash smiles, does a funny walk to indicate OK, OK, I’m going!
Ash’s eyes flicker to Luis. He gives her a grin, his typical Luis grin, and then he winks.
Ash could choose to be annoyed by that, but remembers he has, in fact, been forgiven, decides to wear it lightly.
She shakes her head, making it as clear as she can that truly she will no longer be seduced by him.
‘Would that work?’ Willow is saying. ‘Ash?’
‘Hey, sorry, just run that by me again?’ She dashes down the last flight of stairs to the front door and steps out into the brightness of the day. ‘I was just leaving CoLab and it was a bit noisy.’
‘I think I will come,’ Willow says. ‘Fuck it, right? What have I built all this for if not to take a holiday with my bestie when I’m in crisis?’
‘Oh!’ says Ash, genuinely delighted. ‘Yes! Great! Oh that’s so fun. Obviously I am wide open and free. Aside from this ice cream date I have in seven minutes, I have zero plans from now until July.’
‘Date?’ repeats Willow. ‘Not with Disappointing Luis? Don’t tell me you’ve given Disappointing Luis another chance.’
‘Nooooo,’ says Ash. ‘Although I did kiss him last night. But like, more to wind him up?’
‘What?! Who are you and what have you done with my friend? The Ash I know doesn’t kiss people to wind them up. She takes kissing seriously. I won’t say too seriously, but …’
‘Yeah, yeah. Maybe that’s been my problem,’ Ash says. Then she adds, ‘I was just being stupid. I did this thing, with CJ, where I gave her all my fucks and then I was just trying to make her laugh by doing something outrageous.’
‘CJ?’ says Willow. ‘So that’s a thing, now? You’re …’
‘Friends, yeah,’ says Ash. ‘It’s cool, being around somebody so different to me.
She challenges me. I guess out here I’m in the headspace where that feels like an invitation to growth rather than some sort of attack on my personality.
For some reason, I like to listen to what she has to say when she calls me crazy and suggests all these ways I can breathe a bit deeper. ’
‘As long as she’s being nice,’ Willow says. ‘Not gaslighting you somehow, framing it as a favour.’
‘No, no, no,’ Ash insists. ‘She’s good people.
We’ve got to the soft gooey centre beyond the prickly outer shell.
’ Mona is waiting outside their meeting place, and on spotting Ash gives a cheery wave.
Ash points at her phone and holds up a finger.
One minute. ‘Listen, babe, I’ve gotta go. Is that OK? Are you OK?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Willow says. ‘I know it’s boring to listen to me go on about it all, after all this time—’
‘Incorrect,’ interrupts Ash. ‘It is not boring at all.’
‘It feels boring.’
‘Trying to figure out what to do with a big problem always does.’
‘Urgh.’
‘I know. But listen. You are strong, you are capable, you are able to call me whenever you want, whenever it feels especially hard, and I love you and value you and appreciate you, OK?’
‘OK. I’ll look into flights. I miss you!’ Willow says. ‘But you sound good. Healthy. Happy! I’m happy for you that it’s going well out there.’
‘Thank you,’ Ash says. ‘I’ve gotta say, yeah. I’m feeling good. Some might even say changed.’
When Ash returns to CoLab a few hours later, it is with a tummy full of ice cream, sore feet from yet more city walking, heart full from listening to Mona’s crazy tales about continued younger-man adventures, and with a gift, for CJ, a book of poems called Lighter.
‘I saw this and thought of you,’ Ash says, after knocking on the office door. She leans against the door frame and holds it out. ‘I don’t know if you fuck with poetry, but …’
CJ stands up, takes the gift.
‘I can’t remember the last time somebody got me a present,’ she says, and Ash notes the creeping of pink behind her ears, what seems like genuine gratitude. ‘Ash!’
CJ takes it, turns the book over in her hands.
‘“Words for letting go”,’ she reads off the blurb, and Ash says, ‘Maybe I need that more than you do, giving up my fucks and all that, but I don’t know. I just saw it and thought you’d like it for some reason. Be a good paperweight if the poems turn out to be crap.’
‘This is really kind, Ash. Thank you,’ CJ says, pulling the collection to her chest.
Ash holds out a chocolate lolly too. ‘And this is for Jorge,’ she says. ‘It’s a hot chocolate on a stick. You have to stir it into a glass of hot milk and it turns it chocolate and frees all the marshmallows. Dinosaur-shaped, because of course.’
‘He’ll love it,’ CJ smiles. ‘He already told me how much he liked having you at the house. I didn’t even ask him. He just brought it up on the way to school one morning.’
‘Always nice to have fans,’ Ash grins.
CJ looks at her, smile widening. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘It is.’
Ash doesn’t know what to say then, suddenly feels self-conscious, barging into the private back office, proffering gifts and taking up CJ’s time when she probably just wants to get off for the day to go be with her family.
‘Afternoon, Ash,’ Luis says, his hands suddenly on her shoulders to navigate around her into the office. He flops down in a chair and looks between the women. ‘Finalising the details of my epic fortieth birthday present?’
CJ rolls her eyes. ‘He actually thinks he’s getting his threesome,’ she says to Ash. ‘Which is your fault, I believe.’
‘My fault?!’ laughs Ash. ‘I can’t imagine what I’ve said to give the impression he’d ever be so lucky. Or me,’ she teases. With that she gives Luis a wink, and he grins, looks at CJ like, I told you it’s on.