She snorts in amusement, and I shoot her a mock-angry look. Mock because I’ve just smoked a cigarette and have drunk approximately seventeen martinis and half a bottle of cider. The boat of normality has well and truly sailed.
‘And?’ she prompts, passing me the cider. Attagirl.
‘And … I suppose I became addicted to Seb as well. I was living in a tiny apartment above a restaurant in the Gothic quarter, working in a bar, and never seeing daylight. When I wasn’t working, I was drinking. And when I wasn’t drinking, I was clubbing. And when I wasn’t clubbing, I was sitting on the roof of the building, smoking dope. And when I wasn’t smoking dope, I was … well, you get the picture. I’d been on the road for so long, I think I’d forgotten how to live like a normal human being.’
‘Those who knew you when you were younger,’ Willow says gently, ‘might say that you never learned in the first place.’
‘You’re right,’ I reply, nodding. ‘That’s fair. I was always a little on the savage end of the spectrum. And for sure, spending so long living out of a rucksack and dossing down in hostels and only knowing people who were as transient as me didn’t help. I only ended up in Barcelona because I could speak some Spanish, and because I was trying – in my own messed up way – to get home. I’d been in Ghana – don’t ask – and someone offered me a lift all the way to Morocco. And from there I got a ferry to mainland Spain, and then Barcelona. Have you ever been?’
She gives me a sideways glance that tells me that’s a silly question, and I nod.
‘No. I suppose you’ve been busy,’ I say. She’s younger than me, and stayed at home, and became the One Who Looked After Her Mother. Not that the rest of us had any choice – we had no idea Lynnie was ill, and as soon as we did, Van and I returned to help out. All the same, I do feel slightly guilty about it.
‘So. You’re living the life of a twenty-four-hour party person in Spain,’ she says, recapping the narrative. ‘How does that end up with you being married? Were you drunk?’
‘A lot of the time, yes – but not when we got married, no. There was a lot of paperwork, it was actually quite a long, drawn-out process to make it all legal. Kind of wish I’d skipped it now, but such is life – if you’re going to make a hideous, life-altering mistake, you might as well do it properly …’
‘Why was it such a mistake?’ she asks, and Iknowthat her over-active imagination is working hard to fill in the gaps with all kinds of terrors.
‘He didn’t sell me into slavery or keep me chained up in a cellar, don’t worry,’ I reply quickly. ‘Bad things happened, but nothing like that. I met Seb in the bar where I worked. He’d come in every night, and we’d flirt and chat and he’d buy me drinks. I’d drink the drinks. Then eventually he started staying after closing time, helping me clear up, and drink more drinks, and then we’d go dancing, and we’d take some pills, and then … well, I suppose it was a relationship based on lust and highs. The problem with highs is that there has to be a low at some point.’
‘What happened, Auburn?’
‘Shit happened, Willow,’ I snap back. I hadn’t been prepared for this when I woke up this morning, and I hadn’t been lying when I said I’d buried it all. It’s an episode of my life that was so crazy, so out of control, that I can’t really cope with revisiting it.
‘Okay,’ she replies quickly, reaching out and slipping her hand into mine, squeezing my fingers as she senses my genuine anguish. ‘It’s all right. Is it why you came back? Why you went back to college?’
I gaze off at bay, and chew my lip, and squeeze her fingers in return.
‘That’s over-simplifying it, but in a way, yes. When things fell apart between us – pretty spectacularly, as you’d imagine – it made me think about my life. It made me think I’d made a mess of it. That I needed to change. That I needed less excitement and less highs and less lows. I needed a plateau. So I ran away, back to London, where I dossed around for a while before I decided to go and study. The rest, you know. And I think that’s it for now … please don’t nag me for more, and please don’t feel hurt. I’m not talking about it because I can’t, not because I want to keep secrets from you, okay?’
‘Okay. I get it. That’s fine. You can talk to me about it when you’re ready. Just one more question …’
I nod, giving her permission to ask, and already knowing what the question is going to be.
‘Why,’ she says, calmly, ‘if it’s all over, and you haven’t seen him for years, and it’s all in the past … why haven’t you divorced him?’
I was indeed right. That was the question I’d been expecting. And to be fair it’s one I’ve asked myself hundreds of times over the years. One I’ve never been able to answer. It’s complicated, and many-layered, and fraught with emotional and practical potholes. I could explain all of this to her, but I can’t bring myself to go there. Not yet. I need to keep it simple, for both our sakes.
‘I think,’ I say, eventually. ‘it’s because I’m a bit of a knob, sis.’
‘Ah,’ she replies, wisely. ‘The bit of a knob defence. Well … I can’t argue with you on that one …’
Willow eventually rejoins the ladies inside the café, and I decide not to. I feel shaken and stirred, much like my martinis, and can’t face the thought of them all looking at me in that concerned and curious way. I feel like enough of a freak as it is, without parading it in front of the cake collective.
None of them would judge, or push too hard, or be anything other than kind and understanding. They’ve all had complicated lives, with ex husbands and dead husbands and imaginary husbands and loss and pain and damage, and they’ve all managed to somehow rebuild. Here, in Budbury, where the rebuilding of shattered lives seems to be something of a regional speciality.
I know that if I fell, they’d spread their arms out and catch me like a big fluffy mattress. I care about them, and I like them, and I trust them. I’m just not 100 per cent sure I feel the same way about myself, at least not all the time. I’m trying to be a better person – staying rooted, staying with a family that needs me, doing a job that matters. Trying not to flake out and run. Trying to be my best self, as they might say on an American panel show.
But my best self is feeling somewhat battered right now, and wants to sneak away. In the Olden Days, I’d have snuck away to another continent – but my life is here. Lynnie is here. Willow is here. Finn is here.
I’ve been sitting on the table, enjoying the warmth of the sunshine on my face in that way you do when it first comes back after winter, wondering what to do next. The pharmacy is closed for the day in honour of Laura’s party. Lynnie’s away. I don’t want to go back inside. I have a very rare free afternoon ahead of me, and until I think about Finn, have no idea what to fill it with.
As soon as I do think about Finn, I smile. This is a strange new feeling for me – the very thought of a man making me grin. Not just in a ‘phwoar, he’d get it’ kind of way – though that’s there as well. But also because he’s funny and kind and patient and strong in all manner of ways. Physically, yes – he’s a bear of a man – but also in subtler ways. He’s one of those people everyone pays attention to, even though he never raises his voice. A natural leader, I suppose, who might in an alternative reality have been some big cheese in the army, or elected as Boss of the Entire World.
In this reality, he runs Briarwood, Tom’s school for grown-up brainiacs. It only opened last year, and initially he