In the wake of this admission, the atmosphere thaws. She’s warmer and more humble than the entitled-sounding accent would give you to believe. I like her.
‘You come trailing some scandal,’ a suit says. ‘The press will revisit it, should we choose to work with you. How would you address that?’
My heart is in my mouth. I’m so anxious that I almost want to jump in and answer this myself, but all my coaching has paid off.
‘I was an idiot,’ Tabitha says. ‘Greedy idiot. Stealing from the tax-payer. Inexcusable. Want to make my amends to society.’
More scribbling on a jotter. Remembering he also has to buy sausages? Or is this another good sign?
Now the interrogation moves on to Tabitha’s availability.
‘Unemployed!’ she says. ‘Available twenty-four seven!’
Talk of having lunch to meet with trustees ensues – which means that Tabitha has got through to the next round. We gather up our stuff and, with me smiling, smiling, nodding, smiling, bowing my head, twisting an imaginary cap between my hands and basically giving it the Full Unctuous, we say our goodbyes.
As soon as we’re outside, Tabitha says, ‘Shall we go and get drunk?’
It’s a bad idea: client-boundaries have to be observed. Plus I’m shattered, much more tired than I’d normally be. Also, I need to go somewhere private and try to breathe.
‘You’re going on a soup run later,’ I say.
‘All the more reason to get blotto.’
But I make my excuses.
The tube is hot, jammers and slow, and it’s gone seven when I arrive at Druzie’s flat in Shepherds Bush.
Druzie van Zweden has been my friend for more than twenty years. She’s originally from Zimbabwe, and our lives intersected in Leeds after Richie left me. She lived in the flat above mine and, despite us having nothing in common, we just clicked. For two years, we were up and down the stairs to each other the whole time, and when I got a much better job in London, it was a real wrench to leave her.
But not long after, she moved to London too, and began working for a charity that oversees aid distribution in trouble hotspots. She was promoted and promoted and promoted and, these days, her job entails flitting around the globe but she has a flat in London, to which she gave me (and Alastair) a key. It saves us having to shell out on a hotel once a week, and we get to keep a toothbrush and other bits and pieces here, so it feels like home.
Druzie’s easily one of my favourite people on the planet, but I’m guiltily grateful she isn’t here tonight: she’d take a dim view of Hugh’s shenanigans. She’s pragmatic – fascinatingly so – about relationships. In her foreign postings, she finds a boyfriend almost before she’s unpacked, and when her employers move her to another country, she leaves without a backward glance.
She’d probably cheerily advise me to shut the door on Hugh for ever, genuinely unable to understand why I can’t.
Druzie’s garden flat is tidy. There’s cheese, there’s peace and quiet, there’s hash in a little carved box, if you’re that way inclined. I’m not myself, but no judgement.
But after yearning to be free from the company of others all day long, I realize there can be such a thing as too much peace and quiet. I put on Jeff Buckley – too sad. I try Solange and that’s worse. Nile Rodgers is no better.
What next? I’m at a loss, and when my phone rings, I’m grateful. It’s Tim. ‘What’s wrong?’ He only rings when something has gone tits-up.
‘Nothing. Just checking you’re …’
Well, that’s nice. ‘I’m grand, Tim. Really.’
The sitting-room doors open on to the back garden, which catches the mellow evening light. I go out with a cup of tea and my laptop. I’ll do some work, then watch Masterchef. At times like this, I’m glad of my job: there’s always something to be done.
It’s only when goosebumps appear on my arms that I see it’s almost ten o’clock and the garden is in chilly darkness – I’ve missed Masterchef!
Briefly there’s relief that I’m not missing Hugh, then panic seizes me – I should be sadder. Like a cold hand around my heart, I think, We really are over.
I can’t breathe! Fuck, I can’t breathe! Oh, my God, what if I die here, all alone in Druzie’s back garden?
I’m on my feet, leaning on the table and, for some long seconds, I stand with my mouth open, paralysed and desperate to hook on to a breath. Finally my chest grabs one, which goes all the way down and I’m gasping and grateful.
Christ, that was really awful. All of today was awful.
But maybe that was the worst day and everything will get a little easier from here on in.
But I’m waaaay too long in the tooth to know that heartbreak doesn’t begin at a high watermark of horribleness, then decrease in smooth, steady increments until you land so softly you barely notice.
Emotions – particularly the unpleasant ones – dole themselves out in fits and starts. They play their cards close to their chests, taking pride in their unpredictability. Bad as I feel now, it’ll be lots worse when I get home tomorrow night and there’s no Hugh. The thought of the house convulsing around his absence generates another round of gasping.
21
Here we go. First night without Hugh. I get into bed in Druzie’s spare room, and it’s so weird not talking to him on the phone, just before I switch the light out – Wait! Someone’s FaceTiming me! For a moment of ferocious hope, I think it’s Hugh.
‘Hey, babes. Cape Town calling.’
Seeing Derry’s face is surprisingly consoling. ‘Thanks for this.’ It was probably tough for her to find the time.
Derry’s role in human resources involves big contracts sourcing the likes of five hundred nurses or three hundred engineers in one country and shifting them to another. The trips are intense – fifteen-hour days spent sifting through sometimes thousands of candidates; interviewing, grading, selecting and making judgement call after judgement call until eventually her critical faculties are eroded to nothing.
‘He go?’ she asks.
‘I suppose. I haven’t heard otherwise.’
‘How’re you doing?’
‘Ah, you know. Not too bad.’ Now isn’t the time. She looks tired and that’s rare. ‘When you back?’
‘Friday. But I’ve to go to Dubai on Saturday night,’ she says.
‘Christ, Der, you’ll die of exhaustion!’
‘I’ll be grand. Things have to calm down at some stage, right?’
She’s paid plenty, but is any amount of money worth this?
‘I know you said you wanted nothing to do with any man except Hugh,’ she says, ‘but us forty-something women are packed with sexual energy, our last hurrah before the mentalpause kicks in and we shrivel up and die.’
‘Thank you for that happy thought, Derry. You’re a gem. Sleep tight. Love you.’
‘Love you too.’
I wish people would stop urging me to go sexing because I can’t separate the physical from the emotional. Some people are brilliant at it – they fancy a person, throw out a suggestion and in the blink of an eye they’re away to the races – and good luck to them. Everyone is different, and living that way could be fun, if you were the right kind of person.
But in my forty-four years I’ve only slept with six men and had a single one-night-stand. Just one! With a Dutch boy, Elian – I still remember his name, even though I was seventeen at the time, which makes it twenty-seven years ago. He was a medical student from Delft, our eyes had met across a crowded bar in Ibiza and next thing we were both weaving through the crowds to reach each other. He was leaving first thing the next morning and we spent the whole night talking and kissing. Together, on the beach, we watched the sun come up, then went to his apartment, where the sex happened about an hour before he had to leave.
Over that one night, I fell in love. Well, some version of love. Our goodbye was tender and sweet – there were no promises to stay in touch, we weren’t complete saps, and within days he’d been forgotten about. For that one night, though, we’d connected: I felt I knew him and he knew me.