‘Well, good luck to her,’ I said, mustering a fake smile. ‘Maybe she can handle him better than I could.’
‘Maybe she’s got that condition,’ Amber said drily. ‘I saw a documentary about it: when somebody delivers some bad news, they can’t help smiling.’
‘Or maybe she’s just a cow,’ I said, bluntly.
‘So, just to clarify,’ Sean said, ‘are we allowed to say his name?’
‘Yeah, why not?’ I replied.
‘Because she just did and you look like you’d been shot.’
‘I’m okay, really!’ I protested. ‘It’s all for the best. Please can we just talk about something else?’
‘I won’t even mention his name,’ Sean said, running his forefinger across his lips.
‘And don’t remind me how attractive he is either,’ I said, searching for the emergency cigarette I’d borrowed from the doorman on the way in. ‘All anyone’s been saying to me is how attractive he was. It’s pathetic,’ I muttered.
‘He was,’ Sean said as Amber shot him a look of outrage. ‘I’m sorry. But he absolutely was.’
After we’d eaten, I could still feel the remnants of the food stinging the roof of my mouth.
‘So what else have I missed?’ I said, looking at Sean to change the conversation.
‘Amber’s in love. A bit,’ he said coyly.
‘Oh please,’ she said, as cool as ever. ‘Today’s idea of love is closing your Tinder account.’
‘And have you?’ Sean said, raising an eyebrow.
‘Course not,’ she replied. ‘But I definitely go on a lot less.’
I stared at her until she gave me more answers.
‘His name is Patrick,’ she said.
‘Patrick,’ Sean repeated drily. ‘He’s definitely over fifty.’
I laughed.
‘He is, yes!’ She downed the remainder of her martini defensively and tried to get a waiter’s attention for the bill. Sean and I glanced at each other like two schoolgirls banished to the front of the bus. She was too cool to be drinking with us and as a result was forced to hang around with the fifty plus Patricks of the world.
‘Is he retired?’ Sean asked.
‘No, you fucker!’ Amber cried. ‘And that’s it! I’m done! No more questions!’
The next morning Amber shuffled into my room in her dressing gown balancing two cups of tea. As I blinked through last night’s make-up, for a brief moment I had forgotten where I was. The room looked bigger without my stuff in it. She sat down on the end of my bed as I noticed a small damp patch right above the window frame.
‘We have damp,’ I said, gesturing to the wall.
‘I know,’ she nodded, lying down next to me. ‘I’ve missed coming and getting into bed with you of a morning. I even had to buy my own shampoo, and razors…’
‘I knew you used my shampoo.’
‘I knew you knew,’ she said, leaning her head against the rickety wooden headboard. ‘I know it’s hard, Jess, but it’s for the best. You can’t be with a man like that. You’re too… nice.’
‘I hate that word,’ I said, reaching for my tea.
‘He was part of a scene that’s just not for you – believe me, I’ve been there.’
‘It’s knackering, you know, pretending to be someone you’re not all the time.’ I looked down into the rim of my mug and could see the faint brown mark from all the drinks that had gone before it. I ran my fingernail over it in a faint attempt to remove the stain.
‘You’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to think about your own life. And now you can do whatever it is that you want to do… like shag that gym instructor you always fancied.’
‘But I don’t want to,’ I said, quietly.
‘Yet,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to yet.’
As she left the room I knew I had no choice but to trust her. Trust her optimism. Trust that she knew what she was talking about. I pulled a box towards me and began to pull the clothes out. I stopped at a dress I had bought for a job interview. It was creased. I carried on pulling out endless streams of coats, jackets, tops, shorts – any mundane action to stop me from thinking. I reached right to the bottom of the damp box and that’s when I felt it. A black jumper that had accidently been packed up in the frenzy. It belonged to him. I ran my fingers down the leather elbow pads and across a loose thread in the sleeve. A small fault within a ream of beautiful fabric, just like our relationship. In our short time together, he had created the loose threads and I had begun to pull them and before we knew it all we had was a tangled ball of wool. Using the black hair tie from around my wrist I pulled my hair up and pushed it loosely away from my face.
‘Don’t think,’ I said to myself out loud. ‘Just fold your clothes.’
Chapter Three – How to Get Lost in Reality
It was hot – the kind of heat that London isn’t prepared for – when train tracks melt and people begin bulk-buying ice at the supermarket. Grassy public parks become a carpet for Prosecco bottles, factor twenty-five and supermarket plastic-bag picnic hampers. During the light evenings, a sense of heady weightlessness fills the air. Problems disperse and are exchanged for gin and tonics, despite the fact that city girls become forced to unleash their pale legs, hidden for ten months of the year beneath 100-denier tights. These heated times are unusual in Britain and must be relished during every single hour. Summers are precious to us; they’re unpredictable but always ever so fleeting.
By summer I had weathered the storm and woken up on the last day of the last week of the last month of the last year that I was ever going to feel so shitty about myself again. Up to that point the feeling of emptiness was indescribable but a weekend spent hiding under a duvet, my computer conveniently open on his social media, had led to an intervention from a higher power.
According to my friends I was spiralling and I needed to get back to the real world: a distraction from the dull ache that had resided in my chest every day since Charlie and I had split. I wanted to scream, open a window and shout loudly into the world, a vast release or a call to the gods to do something, something bigger than me; bigger than us. Instead I brushed my teeth and made my first steps back to reality; the joyous purgatory between a dream and a slap in the face.
Since my break-up from Charlie, I had tried a number of tactics when it came to trying to give myself a reboot. First, I’d sampled staying in; reverting to the familiar by putting myself under house arrest and refusing to leave unless the house literally caught fire around me. I had stocked up on food, wine, toilet paper and bin liners. I’d tried box sets, starting the novel I’d always wanted to write, and spring cleaning my entire wardrobe by first piling the contents of my wardrobe high onto my bed, followed shortly by a deep sense of regret midway through. In the end, I just threw away half my possessions. All in all, it had been good for feng shui, bad for home economics.
And, of course, I’d tried going out. What’s more fun than dressing up and dancing to music playing so loud that it drowns out your own thoughts and engulfs you in a different sound – the sound of fun and guilt-free solitude, Amber had asked me. True, there’s nothing quite like feeling the beat of your own heart, moving freely in