Chapter 1 #2
‘Right. Adam.’ I’d been kind of distracted about it all, I realised – in denial, most probably.
I’d been quite happy to let Maddy draft the ad on SpareRoom (‘Are you sane, solvent, clean and reasonably sensible? Two double rooms available in gorgeous, spacious house in Hackney. New bathroom. Cleaner weekly. Courtyard garden. Modern kitchen. Vacant owing to the moving-in-with-boyfriend thing. You’ll be sharing with my mate Charlotte, who’s always up for a laugh but often works long hours, so professionals preferred.
M or F, late 20s to early 30s. Inbox Madeleine or Henry…
’), and for them to vet the candidates. And when Henry had said that his cousin (or second cousin, or something) was coming back from a couple of years working abroad and would need somewhere to live, I’d said, ‘Great! That sounds great!’ and dashed off to work, leaving a slice of bread in the toaster that went black and set off the smoke alarm.
‘He’s been in, what, Dubai, was it?’ I said.
‘Iran. His mate Amir has a start-up there, not Uber but like Uber. But it’s launched now, so Adam’s coming home.
He’s hoping to find freelance work writing apps, but for now I guess he’s at a bit of a loose end.
I haven’t seen him for years but from what I remember he fills the sane, sensible, et cetera, brief, so you won’t have to worry. ’
He looked around, picked up his cricket bat and pads from the floor and slung them into the van.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Looks like we’re good to go. Maddy?’
‘Good to go,’ Maddy said. Then she said, ‘I’ll just have a final check upstairs. Coming, Charlotte?’
I followed her back into our house – or rather, the house that used to be ours, which I’d now be sharing with two total strangers.
It looked the same, mostly. The kitchen was only missing Henry’s space-age espresso machine – I’d have to invest in a replacement – and the fancy food mixer Maddy had bought to make cakes in, which I’d definitely have no need of.
The living room was much the same as always, only a weird mix of tidy and messy – the rug had been hoovered, but there was dust on the bookshelf where Maddy’s recipe book collection of Ottolenghi, Mary Berry, Deliciously Ella and all the rest had accumulated.
The floor had been swept, but there were scuff marks on the walls where Henry had wheeled his bicycle in and out, over and over.
It would be the same in the bathroom, I knew: my stuff all still tidily there in its place; a ring on the counter-top where Henry had kept his wet-shaving kit; a faint smell of Maddy’s peony body lotion in the cabinet.
And the bedrooms – the one where they’d slept, and the other, where all Henry’s clobber had been allowed to accumulate, because although the house had three bedrooms, there was only one bathroom and we couldn’t be arsed to get a fourth housemate.
‘I think we’re done,’ Maddy said.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and said, ‘All done. Listen, have an amazing first night in your new home. I’ll miss you guys, but you know how made up I am for you, don’t you?’
‘I know.’
And then the two of us kind of launched ourselves into each other’s arms and had the most massive hug outside the closed, silent doors to their empty rooms.
I didn’t go back downstairs with Maddy. I went and lay on my bed and looked at Tinder for a bit, swiping left and left again until it got too depressing to carry on.
I went downstairs and made a gin and tonic and drank it while I considered baking a cod fillet wrapped in foil with herbs in it, like Jamie Oliver does on the telly.
But I thought, ‘Sod it,’ and put some frozen chips in the oven and ate them standing at the kitchen counter, looking out as the summer sky slowly darkened from intense blue to slate grey, because it felt too weird to sit down.
Then I walked to the corner shop and bought a tub of Ben & Jerry’s – I didn’t even clock what flavour – and ate that in bed, continuing to stare blankly at my phone.
I’d been single for three years. Three years since I’d realised that although Liam and I still lived together, sharing our flat in Newcastle and kind of vaguely drifting towards marriage and kids, I wanted something more.
He was a nice guy. He’d be a good husband and a great dad.
But I’d found myself looking at his head next to me on the pillow every morning and spending the few minutes before I had to get up and put the kettle on thinking, Shit. Is this all there is?
I might have kept my head buried firmly in the sand on that one, and let things carry on until we no longer just didn’t love but barely even liked each other, but then two things had happened quite quickly, in the space of about a month.
Mum, who’d been single herself for years and years, pretty much since Dad buggered off when I was little, announced that she was moving to Spain.
Jim, the bloke she’d started seeing the year before, was a locksmith who’d made such a success of his business that he was able to retire to Alicante, where his daughter lived with her husband and two kids.
And Mum was going with him, apparently without so much as a backward glance at me.
And then I was offered the job of my dreams in London, and that had given me the spur I needed to make big changes.
Which was all very well, only it seemed like for those whole three years nothing else had actually changed.
My life had fallen into a different kind of routine, but it was still a routine: work, nights out with colleagues, work, drinks in the pub with Maddy and later with Maddy and Henry, work, monthly brunches with Maddy’s friends – who’d accepted me into their group without really becoming my own friends – work…
Until now. Now, with Maddy and Henry gone, I realised how empty not just the house, but my whole life felt.
Maddy and Henry had each other. I didn’t have anyone.
Once again, that question loomed in my mind.
Shit. Is this all there is? And more to the point, I hadn’t had so much as a sniff of a shag for over a year.
I scraped the last dregs of Caramel Chew Chew out of the bottom of the tub with my finger and licked it. It left a sticky smear on my phone’s screen when I typed into Google, ‘How to find love, sex and happiness.’