She doesn’t answer me. And all I can do is keep staring distractedly into space, mulling the whole thing over.
A long, long pause worthy of a Samuel Beckett play, before Helen eventually breaks the silence.
‘You want my advice?’ she eventually asks, distractedly swirling her wine round and round the glass.
‘Please,’ I say, sounding and feeling like a total dullard.
‘Plan A, you come clean with him. Now, without delaying it any longer. You do what friends do, and you tell him the truth. It’s a bit late in coming, but better late than never. And I mean everything – about why you tracked him down, about Lily, and most of all, why she’s the real reason you wanted to give him a bit of a boost up in life. He may not take it well, may be shocked, even annoyed with you for not being straight with him after all this time, but in the long run, at least you’ll have got it off your chest and done the right thing. And if he doesn’t want to see Lily, then at the very least you’ve been honest with him and given him the choice.’
‘And what’s your plan B?’ I ask Helen, in a tiny voice that I hardly recognise as my own.
‘You’re not going to like it.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Plan B is you cut all ties with him. Starting from now. Stop hanging round together. You’ve helped him all you can, so now call it a day. Because leaving aside the fact that he may not even choose to be a part of Lily’s life, what you’re doing is so grossly unfair. You’ve made friends with someone who at the end of the day, you’re effectively leading up the garden path. You’re deceiving him. Every bit of time you spend with him, you’re more or less lying to him. So just think for a second; how would you like it if someone treated you like that? I know you say it’s lovely to have a buddy, but trust me, this is not how friends treat each other. So I don’t envy you either of your two options love, but that’s the way it is. Come clean with him, or else stop being deceptive. And the only way to do that is to step away from the vehicle.’
Then she looks keenly at me.
‘So what’s it to be?’
Still silence from me.
‘Come on! Not like you to dither.’
I can’t articulate this out loud, but, well, cutting ties with Jake just doesn’t appeal. Not at all. I’d … I’d miss him. He’s the only pal I have that I’m not related to and I can’t even get my head around what life would be like without him.
‘Eloise?’
I lace my fingers through my hair with sheer frustration.
‘Okay then, but you won’t like it. I honestly don’t know what to do, is the answer. All I really want is for everything to stay just as it is. Until I decide what to do and more importantly, when the time is right to do it. Helen, for once in my life I’m happy just the way things are. Can’t I for the moment at least, just continue in the bubble I’ve been living in? Please?’
If I thought that no one in work could tell that a subtle change has come over me lately, it seems I’m very much mistaken. Early the next morning, I’m at my desk, scanning down through the ad pages for next weekend’s Culture section. Yet another God-awful task that falls to the senior editor; it seems the T. Rexes on the floor above me in their infinite wisdom have decreed that on top of everything else my job entails, I now have to comb through each and every single one of the ads we place in all editions, to make sure that they’re ‘fully in keeping with the tone, image, and content of the national paper of record.’ Like they thought people would ring up the Post classifieds wanting to sell vibrators or second hand dildos. As if I hadn’t quite enough apart from this shite-ology to be getting on with, but that’s a whole other story.
(Shite-ology. New hyphenated word I’ve picked up from Jake. Not to self; stop using it in work.)
Anyway, it’s barely eleven a.m. when there’s a gentle tapping at my office door and in comes Rachel; lovely, cool, calm Rachel who in all the years we’ve been working together I’ve never seen act with anything other than Prussian efficiency and unfailing politeness to one and all around her. Rachel that would nearly put a debutante just out of a Swiss finishing school to shame.
And now she’s in front of me, sobbing, actually sobbing, hot tears spouting out of her poor, bloodshot red eyes and trembling like a shock victim.
I’m instantly on my feet and over to the girl like a bullet, gently putting my arms around her and almost cradling her, the way I cradle Lily whenever she’s heavy with sleep, into the chair opposite my desk.
‘What? What is it, tell me what’s wrong?’ I ask her, rubbing my arms up and down her shoulders, the way you see coastguards doing with swimmers who’ve narrowly survived drowning.
‘It’s H-H-Harry,’ is all I can get out of her, between gulps of tears. Harry, I remember is her boyfriend, and dad to her little girl, who’s only about six months older than Lily.
‘Tell me, pet. Tell me everything you can.’
God love the girl, but it takes roughly ten minutes to get the whole story out of her, she’s that distraught she’s having difficulty putting two sentences together. Meanwhile, I whirl efficiently all around her; getting Kleenex, fishing a bottle of Rescue Remedy from the bowels of my handbag and sticking my head out the door to grab a passing intern, telling her to run across the road to Slattery’s Bar and not to come back without a good, decent shot of brandy.
Back to poor Rachel, who seems to be breathing that bit easier now.
‘I know I sh-shouldn’t even be taking up your time like this, Eloise,’ she stammers, ‘… And I’m so sorry to do this to you, but it’s just that, that …’
‘Shhh, it’s OK. You can tell me. That what, love?’
‘I’ve … I’ve come to hand in my notice. I’m so sorry to let you down, but I can’t go on like this any more. I just can’t.’
‘Don’t be so daft,’ I tell her softly, perching down on the ground beside her. ‘You’re going absolutely nowhere until you tell me exactly what’s wrong with you, and with Harry too, for that matter. Tell me. Come on, we’ve known each other a long time and you can tell me anything. We can talk about your wanting to leave later. First fill me in on whatever’s wrong with you, because that to me is far more important.’
My office phone and mobile ring simultaneously and keep ringing and I completely ignore both of them. Just keep looking at her, waiting on her, willing her to talk as soon as she’s ready to. She looks at me in dull surprise at my not rushing off to deal with the calls, seemingly astonished at my even giving her the time of day. But something in my eyes must convince her that the tiger-blooded dragon boss of old has softened a bit because, when the shot of brandy arrives and when I’ve made her knock it back in a single gulp, the colour slowly starts to seep back into her cheeks and finally, she starts to tell me in broken sentences exactly what’s wrong.
Harry’s broken up with her, it seems. They’re together nearly five years, have a gorgeous little girl called Molly, and the bastard announces to her just this morning that, quote, ‘I can’t do this any more, I need to be with someone more committed to me.’ This, by the way, communicated –wait for it – via email.
And that’s not all, it seems. Even though he was made redundant from his