Billy Ocean
LOVE REALLY HURTS WITHOUT YOU
I was comfortably sitting at an outside table at Dock of the Bay.
I’d left David wandering around the kitchen, dumbstruck from lack of sleep, and clutching at pages from his great memoir, looking every bit the poor man’s Ernest Hemingway.
I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if I arrived home later that night and found him smoking a cigar, drinking neat bourbon.
He’d rebuffed my efforts entirely at a coherent conversation and, when I’d asked how his date had gone the previous evening – because of course David was dating again – he’d only murmured something about having seen her out that morning, and told me I needn’t worry myself, answering a question that I hadn’t asked.
I wasn’t sure he’d even noticed as I’d grabbed my bag and my jacket, made for the door and said my goodbyes for the day.
Though that did assuage any lingering guilt I had about the shop not opening for another hour, despite what David thought.
I’d placed my order with Bill – a pot of tea and a cinnamon roll – and retreated to the outside world with a copy of the local paper, and a deep and aching appreciation for the uncharacteristic sunshine that warmed me.
Bill followed me some minutes later, humming along to himself. I soon recognised it as the basic tune for ‘A Little Tenderness’, and I smiled.
‘Miss Patti,’ he said as he lowered the tray, ‘one tea and one–’
‘Good grief.’
Bill laughed as he set the cinnamon roll on the table, too. It was easily the size of a fist.
‘You looked a little blue when you came in.’
‘Well,’ I fumbled for words, ‘I’m fit and well. But I’ll never say no to special treatment.’
‘One of my best customers, you are, Miss Patti.’ He tucked the tray underneath his arm. ‘How’s that husband of yours?’
‘Oh, you know David. He’s at home at the moment writing The Great Hereford Novel,’ I joked but Bill only looked puzzled. I waved the comment away. ‘I’m just being silly. David is well, thank you, keeping himself out of trouble with work.’
Bill nodded with some understanding; it seemed an easier idea for him to grasp.
‘I saw your other friend just the other day, too.’
‘Mm?’ I managed, the cinnamon bun already poised for a bite.
‘The lady? I don’t think I ever got her name.’
The bun landed on the plate with a dull thud. ‘Oh.’
‘Bouncy lady, big smile. She was walking’ – he turned to gesture along the opposite side of the road – ‘along the way with another lady.’
My mouth was as dry as a flip-flop. ‘Another lady?’
‘I didn’t recognise her, though.’ He shrugged. ‘I waved, your friend waved.’
‘What did the… the other lady, what did she look like?’
Bill thought for a second. ‘Blonde hair…’
Not old enough to be grey yet, then.
‘Thirties, maybe?’
Oh Christ…
‘Big smile.’
I’ll bet.
‘Just a lady.’ Bill shrugged again, then eyed the cinnamon roll.
‘Anyway, I’ll leave you in peace to enjoy.
There’s another wrapped up behind the counter with your name on, if you fancy pushing the boat right out of the bay.
’ He winked and then disappeared back into the shop, leaving me feeling every bit like my stomach had been pulled out of my mouth. Or maybe it was my heart…
* * *
The receptionist looked unconvinced. But when a patient turns up at the surgery, kneading her chest and complaining of pains, practically begging to see a doctor, there’s only so many times you can say, ‘We don’t have any appointments left for today,’ before you start to look negligent.
She’d suggested calling 111 if the pains were that bad.
I’d told her I didn’t want to make a fuss and that a GP would do.
‘Any GP,’ I stressed, sounding every bit the hypochondriac.
After she checked me in, she told me I could take a seat and wait to be called.
It didn’t feel quite the same being there without Janet; altogether less amusing, for one thing.
There was a child opposite me who had trapped her finger in a door, and was resultantly wailing like a banshee now, and there was no one at all to share my disapproving stares with.
If anything, no one seemed to mind the ruckus of the noise and instead they were throwing sympathetic, understanding expressions at the mother.
I’ve got chest pains, I wanted to say, where’s my sympathy?
I didn’t, though, for fear of seeming spiteful – and perhaps a bit mad.
‘Patti Billsworth?’
‘Yes!’ I leapt from my seat like an OAP with a winning bingo card – and then remembered why I was there. ‘Yes,’ I said again, making every attempt to sound frailer.
The doctor checked everything, short of lifting my back leg to check for signs of lameness.
He typed hurriedly at his computer, adding so many notes that I felt certain he’d found signs of something hideous lingering inside my chest cavity.
But then, in a turn that was entirely anticlimactic and unwelcome, he clasped his hands together, turned to me and asked, ‘Mrs Billsworth, have you ever had a panic attack before?’
‘A panic attack?’ I repeated, as though hearing the words together for the first time. Of course, I was aware of the concept. But I’d long ago relegated it to the same age group as fair working policies and Taylor Swift. ‘No, I’m a robust woman, I’ve never had one.’
He smiled. ‘It isn’t necessarily anything to do with your physical robustness.’
‘I meant emotionally.’
He winced. ‘It isn’t always anything to do with that either.
’ He scootched his chair forwards and I suddenly felt the deep need to inch mine back; his had the advantage of wheels, though, so there was no way for me to distance myself from him without making this more awkward.
‘Do you feel as though you’ve been under a lot of stress lately, Mrs Billsworth? ’
‘No,’ I answered, too quickly.
‘Okay.’ He frowned. ‘What was happening when the chest pains started?’
‘I was eating a cinnamon bun.’
The doctor nodded and thought about my answer for longer than I expected him to. ‘Anything else at all happening, at the same time as that?’
My favourite bringer of tea was telling me about having seen my ex-girlfriend with a woman.
‘No,’ I repeated.
‘I see.’ He leaned back and I sensed, of all things, a kind of disappointment in his reaction. ‘Mrs Billsworth–’
‘I’ve recently parted ways with someone, romantically,’ I admitted, all the while a voice continued to scream WHAT ARE YOU DOING, WOMAN?
like a howling siren in the back of my brain.
‘When I was eating the cinnamon bun, someone had mentioned having seen that person’ – I cleared my throat – ‘with another person.’ There was a stretch of suitably awkward dead air before I added, ‘That’s when the pains… ’
‘I see,’ he said again, but this time with more purpose.
He turned to grab his prescription pad and I felt a wash of relief.
Maybe there’s a pill for this. Maybe heartache is that easy now.
‘I think, given the situation, it likely was some sort of anxiety attack that you suffered, that you are suffering, but there are one or two things I can recommend for it all, too, so let’s have a try, shall we?
’ He smiled and waited for something in return.
I managed a murmur of agreement. ‘Are you able to take the rest of the day off work, Mrs Billsworth?’
‘I’m self-employed, so I can, if the occasion really calls for it.’
‘Okay.’ He paused to scribble something down. ‘Let’s see what we can do…’
* * *
By the time David walked into the kitchen I’d resorted to using three squares of Dairy Milk in place of a spoon. I was manoeuvring another load of butterscotch ice cream into my mouth when he came to a sudden stop just inside the doorway.
‘What in God’s name are you doing?’
‘I was at the doctor’s today.’
‘And he’s prescribed more sugar?’ He pulled out a chair and sat opposite me.
‘If I’d known doctors were doing that these days, I might have been more inclined to go.
’ David broke off his own three squares and tried my method.
‘Genius, Patti, it truly is.’ He spoke around a square of chocolate and a lump of butterscotch. ‘Why did you have to see a doctor?’
‘I had chest pains.’
‘You had chest pains?’ he repeated, in a decibel higher than I’d used.
‘It was a panic attack.’
‘A panic attack?’
‘Are you an echo?’
‘No, I just… A panic attack, really?’ He awkwardly spooned out another mouthful. ‘You just don’t seem the type, no offence.’
‘None taken.’
‘A panic attack over what?’
‘Bill gave me a cinnamon bun.’
David paused with the chocolate and ice cream partway to his mouth. He narrowed his eyes, too, as though inspecting what I’d said for hidden meaning. ‘I feel as though I’m not getting all of the information here.’
‘Bill also said that he’d seen Sheila.’
‘Ah…’
‘With another woman.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘Bollocks, indeed.’ I threw three squares of chocolate in my mouth at once and kneaded my chest. The pain was coming in short bursts, even though I’d followed medical guidance to the letter: chocolate, ice cream, a mental health day.
He’d said something about a blanket, too, but Fred had been lying across my feet since I’d started eating and I reasoned that was close enough.
‘My darling.’ David reached for my hand and my stomach tensed. ‘May I apply the balm of tough love?’
‘You’re going to anyway, aren’t you?’
He put a show into thinking about it. ‘Yes.’
‘Go on, then.’ I rested my remaining square of chocolate back in the wrapper. ‘Have at it.’
David pulled in a greedy breath and avoided eye contact, which did nothing for my nerves – or my chest pain.
‘If Sheila is moving on, do you not, perhaps, think it’s time…’ He wore a sad expression. I knew well enough without him saying.
I don’t know how long I took to think about my answer. But there seemed to be too many ticks from the kitchen clock before I managed to say, ‘What happens if I can’t? Do I stay heartbroken forever? Is that… Will that be what happens?’
He was the wrong person to ask, of course. David believed in heartbreak as much as I believed in panic attacks.
‘It will get easier,’ he answered, even though he didn’t sound convinced of what he was saying. ‘I’m told that time is very good for these things.’
I managed a laugh. ‘Any other wise suggestions?’
‘Only one.’ He stood and wandered out of view. I heard him ferret about in one cupboard, then another, a series of bangs coming from somewhere behind me before there was a final thud: a bottle landing on the table. ‘Butterscotch is an exceptional accompaniment to gin.’