He drops into the armchair opposite to me. ‘I need to talk to you about the Christmas menu and possible events.’
‘Get lost, Mason. It’s not even August.’
‘You know what it’s like, the office parties will be beating the door down soon. We have to get ahead of the crowd.’
Even though I know he’s right, I bat back, ‘I don’t want to talk about naffing Christmas. Come back to me in December. I might be in the mood by then.’
‘Grouchy today, Brown,’ he notes. ‘And looking like a wet weekend in Weston-super-Mare, if you don’t mind me saying.’
‘Thanks. I do mind you saying.’
‘Charlie said you’d been dumped.’
I look at him aghast. ‘What?’ All I can do is shake my head in disbelief. Wait until I see Charlie.
‘Well, she may have dressed it up with more girlie words, but that was the gist of it. Is it true?’
‘Yes,’ I concur. ‘I have been dumped.’ From a great height.
He actually smiles. ‘The good news is, I’m still available.’
‘Whoop-de-doo.’
‘You’re lucky, Brown. I could have been snapped up. Only this week I took out Sherene Taylor from Girls About Town. She was very keen.’
‘Really?’ Girls About Town is a hideous reality show that Charlie and I are addicted to. Sherene is actually quite hot, but doesn’t appear to have been allocated her fair share of brain cells. ‘You’re saying that I’m on a par with a Z-list celeb?’
‘Look, I get it.’ He sighs at me in an exasperated manner. ‘Your heart’s broken and all that guff, but come out with me. I’ll take your mind off it. We can have some fun.’
‘I’m not interested, Mason. I need to be left alone to lick my wounds.’
‘I’m being serious, Brown.’ He certainly looks like he is. Mason’s expression is earnest in the extreme. ‘We always have a good time together.’
‘Do we?’
‘I know you think I’m superficial.’
‘There are puddles that are deeper.’
He ignores my jibe. ‘We can even do proper boyfriend and girlfriend stuff if that’s what you like. Picnics in the park, long walks in the woods, mind-numbing marathon sex sessions. Oh wait, you’ve already told me that you “want to be held”.’ He makes quotation marks in the air which really gets on my nerves. ‘Make that marathon cuddling sessions.’
I curl up in my armchair, defensively. ‘If you’re going to take the piss, I won’t talk to you at all.’
‘I’m not taking the piss, I’m pointing out the reality of your situation. Don’t waste your time on someone who’s not interested in you when there are plenty of guys – rather like my good self – who are.’
‘I’m done with men,’ I tell him and I mean it. ‘I’m going to be happily single from now on.’ Well, ‘happily’ might be stretching it a bit, at the moment. But, in the fullness of time, I will be happyhappyhappy again. ‘Let’s just confine ourselves to a purely professional relationship from now on. If you were the last man on earth I wouldn’t go out with you.’
‘Jeez, Brown. I just don’t get you.’ Mason stands up, shaking his head. He grabs his car keys from the table between us and marches into the backroom.
‘I’m not sure that I get myself,’ I say to his retreating back, but I don’t think he hears me. My heart sinks. That was unnecessarily mean, but I’m hurting and Mason thinks that it’s amusing to toy with my affections.
Still, I take his departure as my cue to gather up my stuff and go home. I don’t want to face him again today even though I think Mason may have got the message now.
Chapter Eighty-Three
I mope around for weeks. As I swing between snapping at everyone and crying, I try to keep my own company. I think it’s not just Joe I’m pining for, though clearly that’s the catalyst for this all-consuming darkness that’s descended on me. The whole thing has thrown into sharp relief the fact that my life is going nowhere. Since divorcing from Simon, I’ve simply drifted. I didn’t realise that the divorce would affect me this much and I wonder if the scar will ever heal. It’s left me feeling rudderless, adrift. A wounded person trying to make her way in the scary world. All I’m doing is marking time. I’m working as a waitress. I live in a rented granny annexe. I have no ambition, no aspirations. I wonder where that all went. I can’t even think what I might want to do with myself. Perhaps I should move to Spain and start all over again. At least it would be sunny there.
‘What do you think, Gary?’ As usual, cardboard cut-out Gary Barlow has nothing to offer on the subject.
Plus, I spend my time talking to a cardboard cut-out of a boy band member. This is my life.
I need to get out of the house. I’m not working today, so I head into town to spend money that I don’t have.
Drifting about, aimlessly, through the shopping centre, I pick up a few trinkets in Accessorize. Surely something sparkly might make me feel better. I’m just coming out of the shop, clutching my unnecessary purchase, when I catch sight of Tom and Daisy coming towards me through the throng of shoppers. Then, as I look up, following behind them I see Joe and Gina and all the breath leaves my body. They’re hand-in-hand, both smiling widely. They are the very picture of a happy family.
He pulls her to him and kisses the top of her head. She beams up at him. A woman in love. This is heartbreaking. But only for me. They’ve clearly resolved their differences and are enjoying a second honeymoon. I’d like to be pleased for them, for the kids, but I just feel nauseous. Joe’s forgotten me in an instant and I realise that I meant nothing to him after all.
And I’m trapped here. Any minute they’ll be upon me and I have nowhere to go. What I’d like to do is turn and run, yet I’d draw even more attention to myself. I can’t bolt back into the shop as I’d have to go right in front of them, but I don’t want him to see me here. I really don’t want him to see me. How could I bear to exchange bland pleasantries when inside I’m slowly dying?
With moments to spare, I scout round for an escape route but can see no way out. I’ll just have to tough it out and hope that he’s so loved-up that he won’t notice me. Instead, I slowly crouch down behind the massive planter that’s in the middle of the concourse with a palm tree sprouting of the top of it. I try to make myself very, very small. If I stay here, they might well pass by without spotting me.
Then, just as I think that I’m well hidden and that no one, in a million years, will ever notice me, a voice behind me says, ‘What the hell are you doing, Brown?’
It’s Mason. Of all the people, in all the world!
‘Shush!’ I say. ‘Get down.’
He looks at me perplexed. As well he might be.
‘Get down. Get down. I’m hiding.’
‘Not very well, as it happens.’ Nevertheless, he crouches next to me, his face close to mine and grins at me. ‘I’m assuming there’s a good reason for this.’
‘What are you doing here?’ I mutter at him. ‘I didn’t think you shopped where the proles shopped. I thought you went to Bond Street or something where the posh people get their retail therapy.’