I feel rather like a migrant myself right now: homeless and unwanted.
And I’m remembering the reasons I left the city years ago. It’s so noisy, so hectic. The sirens wail endlessly; the people are a flood. The only benefit is the frenetic energy that at least galvanises me.
In Marlena’s studio flat in Farringdon – once a tobacco warehouse, now all stripped-back beams and wooden floors – I phone anyone I can think of about work, emailing any acquaintance who might possibly help.
I need a job. I need the income, and it’s the only thing to distract me from the disaster of Matthew.
I’m just glad Frankie’s safely out of the way.
Sometimes I go to the cinema alone. If I can find them, I watch old Hollywood films; films I watched with my mother when she was home and could concentrate. She loved those films so much; they brought her solace, belief in another life beyond her own.
I try not to think too much of Matthew, although he’s on my mind most of the time.
It’s starting to dawn on me though that maybe it isn’t just me.
Matthew was a man at a crossroads when we met. He was vulnerable and, despite his outer shell of strength, had actually been deeply wounded. He was looking to be saved – he saw me as his salvation.
And then I disappointed him, because I was me – just me, just plain Jeanie Randall – and not salvation at all.
So far I’ve managed not to contact him. I go to the cinema, and I switch my phone off – I hate it anyway – and I sit in the dark watching the screen’s greatest lovers argue – and then invariably kiss and make up again.
I know, deep down, I’m hoping we might do the same.
Fifty
Jeanie
11 May 2015
Good news at last! My old friend and colleague Jon Hunter got my email and rang me this morning. He’s about to go to Tanzania doing the VSO thing, volunteering in an orphanage, and he wondered if I’d be interested in covering his job for a few months. He teaches at a small college just outside Derby.
‘Nice folk,’ he says, ‘if a bit unambitious. Good place to lick wounds though.’
Jon sends me a photo of his small cottage on the outskirts of a small town called Ashbourne in the Peak District. Ashbourne looks quaintly attractive, perched in the dip of two dales, surrounded by fields and woods.
‘It’s like The Good Life; minus Tom, of course, but you can be Barbara,’ he jokes, offering it to me for a peppercorn rent. ‘If you’ve got some dungarees.’
I feel enthused for the first time in months.
And it’s strange – I’m starting to feel a bit less gutted about Matthew. I’m sad, yes, really sad – but lighter, somehow, too.
Perhaps I am starting to come back to myself a little.
Fifty-One
Jeanie
13 May 2015
Matthew has begun to ring me in the last few days. He misses me, he says. He’s really sorry about how everything went, and he wonders if we can meet soon.
Yes, I say, we should meet – but I feel very wary. I don’t know how much more hurt I can take. I remember how long it took me to get over Simon, and I think now this may be my chance to move on more swiftly than the last time.
I want Matthew back on the one hand, but on the other, I have to admit I’m not sure it will ever – can ever – work.
I mention in a text that I might be going up north for a bit.
* * *
I drive up the M1 to see Jon. We meet at a café in the old part of Derby, near the cathedral. This end of the small city is cobbled and picturesque.
Jon arrives on his pushbike as I sit outside in the spring sunshine. He’s fit and tanned, looking infinitely better than when I last saw him in Sussex. Then he was drinking too much: puffy faced and overweight, in the throes of a bitter, acrimonious divorce.
‘You look so well,’ I marvel. ‘You’re like an advert for the countryside.’
‘It’s all the fresh air.’ He grins. ‘It’s good to see you, Jeanie.’
He doesn’t say I look well, and I know that’s because I don’t. I’m too thin – which is rare for me – but I’ve lost my appetite, and I’m not enjoying my weight loss as I might. My sleep patterns are shot again. But I am doing all right really. All things considered.
We drink cappuccino outside the café. White and pink tulips like cupped hands bob around us in the gentle breeze.
When I fill Jon in briefly, he reaches over and pats my arm.
‘I’m sorry it went wrong,’ he says sincerely. ‘Personally I’m giving up on love. Had enough bullshit.’ I have a memory of muted telephone arguments in the staffroom to his wife Lynne, vitriolic and tense. ‘Hence the VSO.’
He’s enthusiastic about the school; he is form tutor to what’s described as a special-needs class, who he’s grown quite attached to.