‘Come on,’ Cat said, shaking her head.
‘I think you know which one you are,’ Sam said.
‘You’re the one that flew away,’ Cat said. ‘Not me.’
She pictured him packing as she hid in the bathroom, crying.
Sam shrugged. ‘There’s more than one way to fly away.’
Fifteen
‘What was it like,’ Kelly asked, ‘seeing him again?’
Cat shook her head. ‘Kind of… surreal. Like, it’s been so long. And I was looking at him and he looked the same, but we don’t know each other. Like… I used to put his willy in my mouth, you know?’
‘Oh, I know,’ Kelly said. ‘You didn’t, right? Yesterday.’
Cat snorted. ‘No. It would’ve been weird. But also I feel like maybe it wouldn’t be. If I’d asked and he’d said yes, we could go straight back there.’
‘You mean you wanted to? You thought about it?’
‘No. I mean I thought about it, because that’s what I do. But I wasn’t, like, attracted to him. Even though he looks good. It was more just like… we used to do that and we probably could again.’
‘Right,’ Kelly said. ‘I think I see.’
Cat shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It was mostly surreal, like I said. Like he genuinely thought I’d had his kid and just not mentioned it for five years.’
‘It happens,’ Kelly said.
‘But I would never! And surely he knows that. He definitely used to know that. Know me well enough to know that.’
‘Right. But you can also see why he might think that,’ Kelly said. ‘Like if it was the other way round, you’d think it, I know you would.’
Cat sniffed. ‘Yeah. But I’ve got an overactive imagination.’
She picked at the bowl of crisps Kelly had set out on the coffee table. Kelly was dipping hers into a milkshake Sean had brought her from McDonald’s on his way back from work.
‘He didn’t seem keen on the idea of me seeing Harvey,’ Cat said, crunching.
‘No shit,’ Kelly said.
‘As if it’s got anything to do with him.’
‘I mean, he is literally the reason you won’t consider going out with Harvey.’
Cat dropped her head back against the sofa and groaned. ‘Why is it all so stressful?’
‘What?’
‘Life! I just… why can’t I be you? Lovely calm house with a lovely calm husband and an occasionally calm, but always adorable child? Why do I have to love people who just fuck off. And then either don’t come back or come back asking stupid fucking questions.’
‘You love me and I’ve never fucked off,’ Kelly said.
Cat shuffled along the sofa and rested her head on her friend’s shoulder. ‘And I love that about you.’
‘You did try to make me,’ Kelly said.
‘I know,’ Cat said quietly.
‘I think sometimes you try to push people away before they can leave you.’
It wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation, but it was the first time for a while. The very first time had been after Sam had left and Kelly had suggested that Cat could have told him she wanted to go to Australia with him. It had led to the biggest row of their friendship and to Cat moving out of Kelly and Sean’s house and into the flat with Georgie. She’d always regretted it.
‘I don’t think I pushed Sam away,’ Cat said. ‘Did I?’
Kelly kissed her friend’s temple. ‘Why don’t you ask him?’
‘Ugh, no. He thinks I’m a pigeon. A pigeon who had his kid and hid it for five years. I’ve never seen a baby pigeon, have you?’
‘You’re both idiots,’ Kelly said.
Cat didn’t want to talk to Sam again. She did want to talk to Harvey though. She wanted to ask him why he’d told Jan before mentioning it to her. But so far she’d been too pissed off to even text him. Maybe she should copy her dad and send him a postcard.
‘I think I can help with the stress,’ Kelly said.
‘Wow.’ Cat snuggled further into her side. ‘You know I don’t love you that way.’
‘Shut up,’ Kelly said, shoving her. ‘I’ve been offered a review trip to a spa.’
‘Spar?’ Cat said. ‘Good selection of milk. Sometimes the apples are a bit brown.’
Kelly rolled her eyes. ‘Saunas, hydrotherapy pool, massage. All that stuff. I can’t go cos pregnant and feel like shit, so I thought you might want to do it.’
‘What would I have to do?’
‘Just sample the treatments, make a few notes, tell me about it when you get back and then either you can write the blog post or I can. The company has spas and hotels all over, so it’s worth doing. If they like the post, they’ll offer more and you could always do them too.’
‘Sounds good. What’s the catch?’
‘You’d need to take a man.’
‘Oh, just that one small detail!’ Cat said. ‘Not a problem. There are men everywhere! Just this morning, I sat next to one on the Tube. He was wearing a T-shirt with tits on it and spent the entire journey clearing his throat and coughing into a hanky, but I’m sure he’d be a delightful companion at a fancy spa.’
‘Wow,’ Kelly said.
‘Could I take Sean?’
‘No.’
‘Scared he won’t be able to resist my charms?’
‘I know for a fact that he’s terrified of your charms. And also no, I need him here. Cos sick and pregnant.’
‘Hmm. Who then?’
Kelly grinned. ‘Nick?’
‘Brilliant. “Hey, gay co-worker who I awkwardly asked out, fancy getting naked and rubbed with oils with me?”’
‘Well, it’s a couple’s spa day. I mean, you could take a woman, but I don’t know if you’re up to pretending to be gay for a day.’
‘I could rock it,’ Cat said. ‘If I could think of anyone to take.’
‘I know who you could take,’ Kelly said.
‘Don’t say Sam. The blow job thing was purely theoretical.’
Kelly just stared at her, one eyebrow raised.
‘Seriously?’ Cat said. ‘The last time I saw him it was incredibly awkward. And that was before I knew he’d told his mum I had Sam’s love child.’
‘And you haven’t heard from him?’
‘He texted. To apologise again.’
‘And you replied?’
Cat shrugged. ‘That it was fine. I mean, what am I going to say? That it really pissed me off? That I can’t believe he did it?’
‘You could say that,’ Kelly said. ‘You know, instead of just internally stewing.’
‘What’s the point?’ Cat said.
Kelly shook her head. ‘The point is that it’s good to tell people how you feel, get things off your chest, clear the air!’
‘I could do that,’ Cat said. ‘Or I could just… not do that.’
‘You wouldn’t need to stay over,’ Kelly said, ignoring her. ‘You could use the facilities, get a massage or whatever – and, no, it doesn’t have to be a sexy massage – have dinner and drinks, and then have the option to stay over if things were going well. Also you’ll have all day to tell him how pissed off you are.’
‘Jesus,’ Cat said. She pictured herself and Harvey in the hotel on Kelly’s screen. Lounging on the huge squashy sofas. Drinking champagne on the terrace overlooking the grounds. Shagging madly up against the sliding glass doors of the enormous shower. She shifted on the sofa.
‘Are you humping my cushions?’ Kelly asked.
‘No.’ She picked up a cushion and cuddled it against her stomach. ‘I don’t know though. What if he said no.’
‘What if he said yes? I mean, what have you got to lose? Apart from your two-year no-sex streak.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ Cat said. But there was no way she was actually going to ask him. No way.
Sixteen
Cat could hear the noises from the stairs. Sex noises. Sex noises coming from her flat. Unless the wanking guy had got himself a girlfriend and maybe lea
rned ventriloquism at the same time. No, it was definitely her flat. She pushed open the front door and was immediately confronted with the sight of a hairy arse going up and down on her sofa. She pulled the door closed again, shuddering.
She’d been looking forward to getting home. She’d planned to have a bath, cook a pizza, get into bed and watch something mindless on Netflix. This was why she spent so much time at Kelly’s. But it was also why it wasn’t ideal. She shouldn’t feel so unwelcome in her own home. And she knew from experience that if she mentioned it to Georgie, Georgie would call her a prude and insinuate (mostly with an eyebrow, but still) that it was because Cat never got to have any sex herself.
Cat almost ran back down the stairs and out into the street. Her phone was vibrating in her pocket, but she ignored it. She needed a drink. Today had been a lot and she wasn’t prepared to deal with another single thing until she had some alcohol in her system.
* * *
The nearest bar to Cat’s flat was an absolute shithole. The next one – only about five minutes’ walk away – was lovely: small and cosy, but with the seating well-spaced enough so as to not be claustrophobic. Plus there was a fireplace. Cat unwound her scarf, hung her chilled coat on the back of her seat and went to the bar for a glass of red. Only when she was curled up in her chair and her fingers had unfrozen did she check her phone.
And found she had a voicemail notification. She knew it was her dad. Well. She didn’t know it was him. But she was fairly confident. No one else left her voicemails. Of course, it could be someone wanting to discuss an accident that wasn’t her fault. Or a wrong number. But it was definitely her dad. She could feel it.
She tucked one leg up under her and leaned back in the chair, still staring at the screen. What would Kelly do? Cat had that thought so often that she should get it tattooed: WWKD. Kelly would listen to it straight away. She certainly wouldn’t sit staring at it and getting in a state about what it might be. She would grab the bull by the balls – wait, no, horn. Was that better? It was still grabbing a bull by something a bull wouldn’t want to be grabbed by. But maybe that was the point of the expression. Cat picked up her phone and had got as far as typing ‘grab the bull by…’ into Google before she remembered she wasn’t meant to be learning the etymology of idioms; she was meant to be acting like an adult and listening to the voicemail from her dad.
She took a deep breath, tapped on the voicemail icon, and held the speaker up to her ear.
‘Catherine? Cat? It’s your dad. I’m in London for a few days and I’d love to see you. Call me on this number, yeah?’
He had a slight Australian accent, she thought. She’d never noticed that before. Something had changed since the last time she’d spoken to him anyway. He was doing that thing where his voice went up at the end of each sentence. Like people complained about teenage girls. In fact, she thought she remembered him complaining about it when she was a teenage girl (who watched too much Neighbours). Weird.
She couldn’t think how long it was since she’d last seen him. It was at least a year. Where had they gone? There was a time when they’d sat outside a pub in Camden and he’d kept looking at his Apple Watch until she’d wanted to rip it off his wrist and throw it into the canal. How long had Apple Watches been around? Not more than a couple of years?
Afterwards, she’d bought a bottle of vodka from the wine shop on the corner and had apparently phoned Kelly, weeping, in the early hours. She’d woken up the next morning in her room – the spare room – at Kelly’s and, after vomiting into the bowl Kelly had left next to the bed (and drinking the water and taking the paracetamol Kelly had left on the bedside table), she’d vaguely remembered lying in the back of Kelly’s car, weeping, as the orangey light from the street lamps shuttled past the windows. The rest had been pretty much a blank.
‘I think you should see a counsellor,’ Kelly had told her the following morning, over a full cooked breakfast.
And even though Cat had argued that she didn’t need to, that it was just seeing her dad set something off in her, but he was on his way back to Australia and she probably wouldn’t see him for at least a couple of years and she could ignore his calls no problem, basically happily pretend he didn’t exist, Kelly hadn’t seemed to think that was a particularly healthy way of dealing with it and had said some other stuff that had made Cat cry and feel guilty and so she’d arranged a trial appointment with a counsellor she found online. The website had said it was free, but the counsellor asked for thirty quid and Cat paid it, so she had already felt pretty resentful before she even met the woman.
And it was fine. It had all been a bit awkward and embarrassing. The woman – her name was Jen – worked from the front room of her own house and the whole time they were talking, Cat could hear her dogs (she had three King Charles spaniels, if the framed photos on the mantlepiece were up to date) barking in another room. She’d made Cat Earl Grey tea in a china mug and left it on the side table next to her, along with a packet of tissues.
‘People often find they need them,’ she’d told Cat.
Cat had wanted to make a joke about it not being the time or place for a wank, but she managed to restrain herself, which was actually progress. Maybe counselling was working already.
‘So,’ Jen had said, sitting on a dining chair diagonally across the room. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Because my best friend told me I should come,’ Cat said. She knew it was the wrong answer. But also that was why she was there and she’d told herself she should at least try to be honest.
‘And why does she think you need to come?’
Cat bit at her lips. ‘Because my dad came to visit and I got shitfa— drunk.’
‘And why do you think you did that?’ Jen asked. And Cat decided she was wasting her time. Her time and Jen’s time.
‘Because he left,’ she said. And then she told Jen the basic story – the same story she told everyone – but she wasn’t really paying attention. She was looking at the carpet, the fireplace, the curtains, the pictures on the walls. Even Jen’s black leather diary, open on the coffee table, ready for her to book Cat in for another appointment. But Cat already knew there wouldn’t be another appointment. She knew what her issue with her dad was; she didn’t need to shell out her hard-earned cash to talk about it with a stranger.
‘When your father left,’ Jen said – she’d been sitting with her legs crossed, but now her feet were flat on the floor and she leaned forward to focus more intently on Cat, ‘what did your mother do?’
Cat’s breath caught in her chest. She reached for the tea, but her hands were shaking. And she hated Earl Grey anyway; it tasted like perfume.
‘What do you mean, do?’ she asked instead.
‘Did she talk to you about it at all?’
‘She told me that he’d gone. And why.’
‘What reason did she give?’
‘What do you mean?’ Cat said again.
‘You said she told you why he’d gone.’
‘She said he wasn’t happy. And he wanted to…’ What had she said? Cat knew her mum had told her something; she must have done. But she couldn’t think. ‘He wanted to…’ Cat shook her head. ‘I can’t…’
‘It’s OK,’ Jen said. ‘We can come back to that.’
* * *
Now, in the pub, Cat texted her dad and said she wasn’t going to be around, sorry. Then she deleted the voicemail so she wasn’t tempted to listen to it over and over in the middle of the night when her resistance was low. She finished her wine, wrapped herself back up, and headed home.
Seventeen
Cat blamed her emotionally fraught day for what happened when she got back to her flat. Georgie and her boyfriend had gone out, but they’d actually left a used condom on the coffee table. Cat had stared at it for a while, something like fury building behind her breastbone, before she’d heated the pizza, retrieved her beer from its hiding place in a bag of carrots at the back of the salad tray, and crawled into bed. And i
t was there that her phone had rung. And it wasn’t her dad. It was Harvey.
‘I’m starting to think you’re avoiding me,’ he said.
Cat could hear the smile in his voice, but also a nervousness too – he wasn’t sure how pissed off she was.
‘I’m not…’ Cat started. And then stopped herself. ‘Yeah. A bit. Sorry. I just… I don’t understand why you told your mum.’
‘I didn’t mean to!’ Harvey said. ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And I didn’t think you would have done that. Not without telling Sam. So I gave my mum a hypothetical and she just kind of weaselled it out of me. I told her not to tell Sam. I still can’t believe she did.’
‘Right,’ Cat said.
She folded some pizza into her mouth and pulled the duvet up to her chin. She was still fully dressed but she could sort that out later. Or sleep in her clothes. Either one.
‘I shouldn’t have said anything,’ Harvey said. ‘To Mum, I mean. Before I spoke to you.’
‘No,’ Cat said. ‘You really shouldn’t have. But… no harm done, I guess.’
‘Was Sam…’
‘He was fine,’ Cat said. ‘It went about as well as those ex-boyfriend turning up at your work to accuse you of hiding a secret kid things always go.’
‘Shit,’ Harvey said. ‘I really am sorry.’
Cat shrugged before realising he couldn’t see her. ‘Doesn’t matter. Honestly. I’ve had quite a day. It’s the least of my problems.’
‘Want to talk about it?’ Harvey asked.
‘Nah,’ Cat said. But then she told him everything anyway. How one of the other account managers had fucked up a tax return and Colin had asked Cat to sort it out, which pissed off the original manager and also meant that Cat got yelled at by the client. And then there was the call from her dad, which she didn’t mention. And the sex on the sofa and condom on the coffee table, which she did.
The One Who's Not the One: A feel-good, laugh-out-loud romantic comedy Page 10