by Carol Thomas
“I can’t.”
“But why? You feel those things, don’t you? Don’t you want to let them out?”
Abby took a breath. Yes, at times she felt all of those things. At times she was so angry she barely knew what to do with herself. But could she summon all of that on this Tuesday evening at 8:30pm? No! What did Mallory want to see? If only she could replay her tantrum; she was sure the praise Mallory would bestow upon her would not only see her nominated for an Oscar for her performance but would also see her ascending the steps of the stage and making her heartfelt acceptance speech. But in truth, on this Tuesday evening she felt empty. Devoid. Nothing to report and she was paying for the privilege of sharing that with Mallory. Feeling somewhat that her emotions had been darted with a tranquiliser big enough to fell a bull elephant, Abby felt out of her depth and sought to distract Mallory.
“I have a book.”
“A book? What sort of a book?”
“A book I am using to help unscramble my feelings. At least, I am trying to.”
“That sounds wonderful, tell me more about… about your book.” Mallory clasped her hands together in anticipation.
“It’s silly really—”
“Uh-uh, nothing is silly,” Mallory interrupted, waggling her finger, causing her gemstone bracelets to clang together. “Remember that in these sessions we can share everything in the confidence that all things are valid! Please… carry on.”
“I got the idea from the Oasis at school. It’s a place we send children when they can’t cope – you know, with their emotions, things at home, that kind of thing. One of the ladies in there told a child in my class to keep a book. A book where he could put his feelings, you know, to help get them out of his mind. I thought it was worth a try. I thought it might help me too.”
Mallory’s eyes widened. “What a wonderful idea! I am so proud of you!”
Abby felt relieved that she had offered Mallory at least something to lavish praise upon; it seemed important to her and Abby didn’t like to disappoint her.
“And tell me, has it helped? Have you put your feelings in it?”
Oh bugger! Abby knew Mallory’s wide eyes and excited anticipation were not expecting a few quotes and one statement of intent that she had only partially kept to.
“Really, it’s just notes, you know – not much of importance.”
Mallory shook her head, drawing Abby’s attention to the wiry grey streaks that caught the light amongst her thick black hair.
“But your feelings are important! You must understand that Abby. If you would like I could… I mean, you could show me your book, share your thoughts with me.”
Abby shifted uneasily in her seat. She should never have made it sound so grand.
“Your thoughts and feelings – they matter Abby; understanding that will be the key to setting your mind free.”
Unable to cope with much more counsellor speak Abby went to her bag and took out her book. Nervously, she handed it over. Mallory opened it. The giraffe Simon had made her fell out onto Mallory’s lap.
“Oh, what’s this?” She held it up inquisitively.
“That? Nothing,” Abby insisted, “just something for the children; it must have slipped in there when I popped it in my bag at school.” (Or, Abby thought, my husband made it for me as a reminder of the first time we made love, when everything was new and special, and when I was sobbing over it the other night I decided to put it in my book to keep it safe and far away from the inquisitive hands of my children!) She took the giraffe and placed it in her pocket. Some things and some feelings she simply wasn’t ready to share.
Mallory turned her attention back to the book and read with interest. Raising her eyebrow, she picked up her pencil and made a note in her own notebook. Oh Lord! Abby wondered what on earth she had revealed about herself.
Mallory tapped her pencil against her lip. “I like this! We can use this.”
Hmm. So perhaps she wasn’t as disappointed as Abby feared she would be.
“How would you feel if I gave you some homework?”
Homework? Abby wasn’t sure she liked the idea. “What would you like me to do?”
“I would like you to write a letter, either to your husband, or to the woman – Helen, you said, didn’t you? Tell them how you feel. Tell them your thoughts and feelings.”
“I couldn’t, I can’t; it’s too… too much.”
“Oh, not to send, oh dear no – in your book. Write as if it is to them. It might help you unlock some of your frustration and give us something to work from. Can you do that?”
No! Abby felt quite certain that she absolutely couldn’t, and yet the words were out before she had time to stop them and she agreed despite herself. “Yes, of course!”
Mallory clapped her hands together and beamed.
Chapter 9
Dear Simon,
I am so
I feel
I just want to say – Arghhhhhh!
Stamping her feet and growling through gritted teeth Abby tore the page out of her book and screwed it up. Her homework, despite her best intentions to let her feelings out, was not going well and she was running out of time to get it done before the residential. Leaving homework until the last minute was not a concept that sat easily with her, but with a shopping trip and beauty treatments with Melissa arranged she had more pressing matters to panic about. Despite the fact that most women she knew would love the day she had planned Abby felt it was all way beyond her comfort zone. With a queasy feeling growing in the pit of her stomach she questioned exactly how she had let herself get pressured into it. She thought back over her conversation with Melissa who, with a persuasive insistence Simon would have been proud of, had convinced her the beauty treatments were essential pre-wedding research and the clothes shopping was (apparently) just essential.
Abby rolled her eyes at how easily she had given in, but also reminded herself that going out with Melissa had given her a valid excuse to decline lunch with Simon, Kerry and the girls. She wasn’t ready just yet to let Kerry off the hook for her thoughtless message and she certainly wasn’t ready to play happy families with Simon either. In fact she enjoyed telling him she had other plans and the questioning look on his face when she didn’t reveal what they were. But more than that, she was actually in need of some grown up girly time. Admittedly she didn’t find the prospect of beauty treatments and shopping as relaxing as catching up over a long, gossipy lunch with Rachel but Abby was increasingly enjoying the time she spent with Melissa. Before her troubles with Simon they had just been colleagues, but now they had become closer. Melissa had frequently been there when she needed someone – she had propped her up and helped her prepare to face the day on more than one occasion after finding her crying in the toilets at the start of school. And her advice, although it hadn’t always been welcome, had at least given her something to think about, an opportunity to look forwards rather than back.
Without Melissa she would have felt Rachel’s absence even more keenly. Rachel’s job as a personal assistant to Rebecca Giles, the renowned author riding the wave of her hugely successful erotic novels and very much in demand across the globe for promotional events and book signings, enabled her to travel extensively and Abby hadn’t seen or heard from her properly in what seemed like too long. Maybe her decision not to contact her about her problems with Simon had been a mistake but she didn’t want to make her feel caught in the middle, as if she had to take sides. Instead she determined not to call and to keep her emails jolly (as much as she could muster in her state of mind) and short. The fact Rachel hadn’t called her either, as she surely would have done if she’d known, made her think Simon must have decided against telling her too.
Tooting her horn outside, Melissa took off her baseball cap, lifted her thick-rimmed sunglasses and waved from her gleaming white Mini convertible.
“Bramble, it’s down to you, save me!”
Raising his heavy eyelids at Abby, Bramble let out a sigh with
out lifting his head from his paws.
“Hopeless!” Giving him a goodbye pat on the head and accepting her fate, Abby picked up her bag and fleece and went to the door.
Melissa, who was dressed casually in skinny jeans, a tailored open-necked shirt and pumps, greeted Abby excitedly and moved her navy Radley tote bag, which Abby was pretty sure would have cost more than her own entire outfit, to the small footwell below the back seats.
“There’s a cap in there if you want one.” Tucking her wavy auburn hair back into her hat, Melissa motioned to the glove box.
Abby declined: she didn’t want to contend with hat-hair for the rest of the day, having just spent twenty minutes blow-drying it all into place.
After just a couple of roads, with her hair thrashing around her face, Abby realised her mistake and gave up trying to keep it tame. She also realised Melissa had the strange habit of very slightly pressing the accelerator and brake in a weird scissor action while driving, giving a kind of rocking motion to the journey. Secretly enjoying the fact that Melissa, who always seemed so together and sure of herself, was in fact a terrible driver, Abby started to giggle. Her giggles turned to laughter and she soon found herself holding her stomach, practically convulsing as the peals of laughter burst from her. She didn’t want to stop and quite possibly couldn’t even if she tried. Tears streamed down her face. Glimpsing herself in shop windows as they drove by only made it worse. Her hair was practically standing on end; everything about her looked in chaos compared to Melissa, who wouldn’t have looked out of place if they had been filming for a car commercial.
Abby had no idea if her tears were happy or sad, she simply felt out of control, verging on hysterical. At first Melissa looked bemused; she rubbed her hand on Abby’s upper arm and initially went for a sympathetic “Ahhhh”, but after a while Abby’s infectious laughter caught hold of her too and she was joining in. By the time they were parking in town, they had both laughed so hard their chests ached and they were gasping for breath.
“Spending time with you is like playing emotional roulette. You are fabulously bonkers!” Melissa panted.
“I know… I’m sorry… I’ve no idea what that was about!” Abby wiped her face, trying to regain some composure.
“Who cares? It was good to see you happy!” Melissa threw the comment back as she went to get a ticket for the car.
Abby looked at herself in the mirror. The wind had fixed a grin onto her face; she had a fringe that stuck up in the air and a mass of knots where her carefully straightened hair had been. She didn’t know if she felt happy, but she suddenly found herself feeling surprisingly optimistic about the day ahead and decided not to overthink it.
Melissa was full of energy and enthusiasm as she excitedly reeled off a list of shops they could explore before their two o’clock appointment at the somewhat intimidatingly named Prrrrimp Your Hide salon. Abby listened intently, attempting to take it all in.
“You know Melissa, what we need is a plan of action for the day. Let’s stop off in Costa and get organised, that way we won’t miss anything out.” It was a cunning plan and Abby was quite surprised when it actually worked and she found herself sitting in Costa sipping coffee and breaking a chocolate tiffin in half (reducing the calories to just over two hundred!), only half-listening while Melissa listed the shops she wanted to cover.
“So how is the weight loss going?” Melissa asked, changing the subject and taking her half of the tiffin off the plate.
Suddenly the chunk in Abby’s mouth didn’t taste so good. She swallowed and took a swig of coffee to help push it down. “Well, I have lost a stone now,” she exaggerated, “and I am down a dress size.”
“That’s great!” enthused Melissa. “It’s really starting to show. You look great… today.”
Today! Abby considered mentioning the fact that Melissa was implying she generally didn’t look good, and then reconsidered as flashbacks of her own bedraggled image over recent months came into her mind. Instead she chose to continue to focus on her weight loss.
“Thanks, I wish it would shift more off my hips instead of my boobs though, I don’t want them getting any smaller.” She laughed, pulling out the neck of the t-shirt and shaking her head at her shrinking bust.
“I know what you mean, I’m having the same problem with my pre-wedding diet. I really don’t want the bust of my dress to be the only part which needs taking in at my next fitting.”
“Imagine if they have to take the bust in but let the waist out!” Abby exclaimed with a big laugh – realising almost instantly that Melissa hadn’t found it funny. Instead she was looking stunned and had put the remainder of her half of the chocolate tiffin back on the plate. Abby cringed from the bottom up, stopped laughing and quickly added, “But that won’t happen!”
Melissa’s mouth curved as she offered a smile that didn’t reach her eyes and a light, fake laugh. If it was intended to make Abby feel better it didn’t work.
“Oh Melissa, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I have a terrible sense of humour. You look stunning. You’ll look great on your big day!”
It was true; Melissa was about a size 12 and always looked gorgeous. In Abby’s opinion she certainly didn’t need to diet. Melissa’s face softened and Abby felt the tension inside herself ease. It was a reminder that her friendship with Melissa was still new – they didn’t always quite get each other yet. Note to self: weddings and weight jokes don’t mix.
The awkward moment having passed, Melissa looked at the list of shops she had added to their itinerary and appeared to spring back to her usual bubbly self. “It’s OK, I’m feeling a bit sensitive this week; you know, just a lot on.” She picked up her tiffin and started to nibble it before continuing. “Anyway, this is one of my fab five days. Yay, I get to eat!”
Abby gave her a quizzical look.
“You know, five and two; eat for five days, restrict yourself for two. The terrible two are a killer!”
Abby nodded and grinned, not so much because she had heard about the ‘fab five, terrible two’ diet but more because only a teacher would use alliteration to help her diet become more palatable.
“Ooh, you know what we need?” Melissa’s face lit up, as if she had the answer to all their problems. If only!
“No… What?” Abby asked, fearing the answer.
“Exercise! It will keep us going. Especially you. You don’t want the weight slipping back on now you are starting to be less miserable.”
That statement surprised Abby. Not the exercise part – she wasn’t sure why she hadn’t already considered the fact that exercise would be the next torture Melissa lined up for her – but the part about being less miserable. Was she less miserable? Abby pondered it. Maybe. Or maybe she was just learning to accept the misery as part of her. She had stopped fighting it so much; she was more accepting of the voices in her head and her imagined images of what Simon had got up to in Washington. She hated them, but she also knew that part of her didn’t want them to go. She needed to remember all that had happened.
“I am NOT joining a gym. I don’t have time!” Abby imagined herself in the clothes of a 1980s Jane Fonda with the body of the dancing hippo in Fantasia. It was not a pretty sight!
“No, OK, but I’m sure we can think of something – leave it with me. I’ll get us fit!” With that Melissa stood up decisively. “Ready to hit the shops?”
Abby sighed.
Chapter 10
Being a Saturday, the High Street was busy. It was a hot day and there was a lot of flesh on show – some of it definitely worth sharing, some of it definitely not. Abby felt comfortable in her cropped jeans, navy t-shirt and sandals. With the array of shops spread before them she looked at her favourite haunts: ELC and Mothercare (shopping always included getting something for the girls); M&S (she loved the food hall and café); Waterstones (even though at present she found she couldn’t concentrate long enough to read, she was still buying books she hoped to read one day). These shops would have all been o
n her own itinerary, but today she had placed herself in the hands of Melissa and while she had only half-listened to her outline for the day ahead she was pretty sure such shops didn’t even feature in Melissa’s world.
Abby was also pretty confident that some of the more teenage-type clothes shops wouldn’t feature either, and for that she was grateful. Clothes shopping in general filled Abby with dread. The thought of humiliating herself in front of a young, orange-faced, gloriously thin shop assistant, scantily clad in clothes which wouldn’t look out of place on an X-Factor wannabe, fuelled her fears. While Melissa was younger than her, Abby knew she would be relatively safe in her hands; she was one of those people who went for understated elegance and chic, her look undoubtedly more Kate Middleton than Katy Perry.
“Right, what shall we attack first: the fact that summer is approaching and you have the winter wardrobe of a fifty-year-old librarian, or those bloody mandals you insist on wearing?” Melissa thrust out her hand, pointing at Abby’s sandals.
Abby lifted her bag to her chest. “Miiiiiaaaaa-ow! Don’t hold back on my account Melissa, say it like it is!” she laughed. Abby knew Melissa was teasing but she also knew there was an element of truth in her analysis of her clothes; there was no point in arguing. Feigning insult she continued, “Anyway, I’ll have you know these are women’s sandals and they’re really comfy, great for walking!” Abby waggled her foot in Melissa’s direction, showing off her lightweight, chunky Velcro-strapped sandals.
“Abby. Honestly, unless I’m mistaken you are not about to go hill-walking in the Hebrides!”
They both laughed.
“OK. Let’s start in Next; your order must be lost in the post!” Melissa gave Abby a wink and a knowing grin.
Abby appreciated the safe option to start. She knew Melissa was easing her in, treating her like her own little special needs clothes project and building her confidence before pushing her further. She also knew Melissa had contrived reasons for their day out, and despite her own fears about the day she was grateful for it.