‘Everyone’s sitting down for food,’ I say brightly, when I’m still a few metres away. Pete looks up, his eyes narrowing a fraction as he’s dragged back into the present moment.
‘Right.’ He flashes a flat smile. ‘Come on, then.’
I glance around fearfully, trying to see where Taggie went, but she must have scarpered again. The way she was looking at Pete, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s gone to fetch an axe to chop off his head.
‘What’s up?’ Pete asks, as we take our seats and he notices my jumpy demeanour.
‘What?’ I say, distracted. ‘Oh, nothing. I was just … Taggie.’
‘Relax,’ he says, smiling at me reassuringly as he holds up his glass to be filled by a passing waiter. ‘I know Taggie, remember. She’s an ice queen when she needs to be. There’s no way she’d cause a scene in a place like this.’
I think about the tears Taggie had to fight to contain in front of me, and experience an unexpected stab of irritation towards Pete. She doesn’t seem like an ice queen to me, but I suppose it suits him to label her as one – it must help him to feel less guilty for breaking her heart.
The first course of antipasto arrives, and I watch in a daze as Pete tears apart strips of prosciutto and dips warm bread in the tapenade. He’s drinking red wine at an alarming speed, and seems incapable of sitting still. For all his assurances that everything will be fine, he’s clearly extremely jittery, and this makes me feel even more unsettled than I did before. I can barely eat a thing, and twice I crash my own wine glass against the one full of water when I set it down. I think I’d feel better if Taggie simply came and sat at the table with us – at least then I wouldn’t have to keep checking over my shoulder.
‘So,’ Pete says, when the attentive waiter has removed our plates. ‘Got any New Year’s resolutions?’
Is he being serious?
‘Um …’ I reply, baffled that he would ask such an inane question in these circumstances.
‘Mine is to travel more,’ he barrels on. ‘We should pick our next holiday destination tonight. Right now! I vote for somewhere sunny. How about Easter?’
‘I don’t think I’d get the time off,’ I remind him, which is the truth, but I see my response has disappointed him.
‘You could ask, though.’
‘I will,’ I concur. ‘But I don’t think it’s fair on everyone else, to be honest with you. I got Christmas off.’
‘Doesn’t it ever get to you?’ he wants to know. ‘Being so overworked and underpaid?’
‘I love my job,’ I say, perhaps with more impatience than I meant to. Pete’s always been so supportive of my crazy hours in the past. I had no idea that he thought I was being taken advantage of – and my defences go up automatically.
‘Have you ever looked into working in private healthcare?’ he asks, finishing another glass of wine.
I fiddle with my fork. ‘No.’
‘But wouldn’t it mean earning more?’
‘It’s not really about the money, though,’ I counter. ‘Being a nurse isn’t just a job to me – it’s who I am. If I did anything else, I’d be miserable.’
I want him to respond by applauding my dedication, but instead he just smiles sadly and stares down at his place setting. It is hard for people to understand how much my job means to me sometimes – especially those who work in the private sector – but I’d always thought Pete was one hundred per cent supportive. Tonight, it feels as if he almost pities me, and I don’t like it one bit. Then again, perhaps he’s just being defensive because he’s so on edge. I know he must be, because I am, too. There’s a crackling unease in the air between us, and I get the feeling that anything either of us says or does is going to irritate the other.
‘Nature calls,’ Pete announces then, pushing out his chair so that it scrapes across the wooden floor and walking stiffly back out towards the reception. Why, oh why, did we decide to stay here? I think despairingly. Only a few hours ago we were wrapped naked around each other, and I felt as if he was an extension of me – but now he feels distant again, like a stranger.
I sip my glass of wine morosely, studiously ignoring the solicitous waves coming from Gladys and her husband, who are seated a few tables away. The candle flickers as I breathe through the flame, and I listen in silence to the laughter and hushed conversation emanating from each corner of the room. When the main course arrives and there’s still no sign of Pete, I toss down my napkin and go in search of him.
I wait by the toilets at first, feeling ridiculous, and ask another male guest to check inside for a tall, ginger-haired man in a blue shirt. When he comes out and assures me the bathroom is deserted, I wander through into a large ballroom, then discover an empty bar area. Aside from various waiting staff and a buoyantly courteous middle-aged Italian man with salt-and-pepper hair, I don’t see anyone, and I’m just heading back through the entrance lounge when I hear it, the sound of angry voices coming through a door behind the reception desk. Ignoring the lump of apprehension that’s wedged tight in my throat, I tiptoe forwards and press my ear to the wood.
43
Taggie
I was waiting for him when he came out of the toilet.
I know Pete well enough to predict exactly how he will behave when faced with a situation he finds deeply uncomfortable, so I knew he would proceed to drink too much and would therefore need to empty his bladder. Staying carefully out of sight until I hear the sound of the water running followed by the hand dryer, I ready myself, then take a step forwards to block his path.
When he sees me, he says nothing at first, just looks at me in that resigned way that I remember. He knows I have him cornered, but he’s not going down without a fight.
‘So, this is where you work now, then?’ he remarks, looking around. ‘Bit nicer than your old office in Farringdon.’
I ignore him.
‘You need to stop messaging me, Pete,’ I say, making myself look at him.
‘I thought we should talk,’ he argues. I can’t fathom that this is the same man I used to share bubble baths with on a Sunday evening, each of us taking it in turns to read out sections of the paper and then laughing when the pages inevitably ended up in the water. Some weekend mornings, he would sneak out to the bakery on the corner of our road, then bring a platter of my favourite pastries to the bedroom. I used to tell him off for dropping flakes of buttery pastry on the sheets, and he would shut me up by kissing me. What happened to that man?
‘There’s nothing to talk about.’
He sighs. ‘There is, Tags—’
‘Don’t call me that.’
He pulls himself up a little taller, which strikes me as classically stupid, given that I barely reach his chest, even in these four-inch heels.
‘We should talk about the b—’
‘DON’T!’ I almost shout, bringing up my hand. Tears are threatening now, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let myself cry in front of him – not again.
‘I just wanted to tell you to leave me alone,’ I say again, ironing out the tremble in my voice through sheer force of will. ‘You have a new girlfriend now, so focus on her.’
I wonder if Lucy told him that we ran into each other. For some reason, I don’t think she did – but then she presumably hasn’t realised what I have. She hasn’t remembered the place we met.
‘Will it help you to know why?’ Pete asks then, his voice now more conciliatory.
‘Why what?’ I demand, crossing my arms defensively across my chest. The tears are still there, I can feel them, and it’s taking every ounce of self-control I have not to let them fall.
‘Why all of it,’ he exclaims. ‘Why I ended things in the first place, why I didn’t come back after you told me, and why I wasn’t there after it happened.’
‘I don’t want to talk about what happened,’ I say, hating how fearful I sound. ‘Just leave me alone, Pete – I’m warning you.’
‘What will you do?’ he says childishly. ‘Set your Italian boyfrie
nd on me?’
He must mean Marco, I realise, and it’s so bloody typical of him that I find myself laughing. Trust Pete to be jealous, even after everything he’s done, after everything he left me to go through alone.
‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ I spit. ‘But if he was, he’d be a massive upgrade on you.’
He opens his mouth to retort, but I turn on my high heels and walk quickly away, heading resolutely for Sal’s office, and the lock it has on the door. Before I can barricade myself inside, however, Pete has run after me and shouldered open the door, sending me staggering backwards across the carpet.
‘GET OUT!’ I yell, reaching for the phone. ‘I mean it, Pete. I’ll call the police.’
‘No, you won’t,’ he replies, but there’s no menace in his voice. He sounds beaten down and exhausted. Despite my better judgement, I replace the receiver in the cradle and push the spare wheelie chair towards him with my foot.
‘Sit down,’ I instruct, pulling out Sal’s chair and lowering myself on to it with a sigh.
He does as he’s told, his eyes heavy with sadness, and the two of us stare at each other.
‘What happened to us?’ I say quietly. ‘When did we become these people?’
‘All I ever wanted,’ he says, his big hands resting on his thighs, ‘was for us to look after each other – but you would never let me.’
I’m about to argue back, but then realise there’s nothing I can say. I know that what he’s accusing me of is true.
‘You had to be the one in charge of everything,’ he goes on. ‘You hated it when I surprised you, or when I tried to help you. You shut me out so many times that eventually I stopped trying – and I thought I loved you enough not to mind, but …’
‘But you didn’t,’ I finish sadly.
‘I realised that I wasn’t being myself with you. I felt like I couldn’t be,’ he admits, and I look at him in surprise.
‘Of course you could.’
‘No, Tags, I couldn’t. I felt like there was no balance with you, with us, and it ate away at me until there was nothing left. It wasn’t that I didn’t love you; it was that I couldn’t.’
I close my eyes briefly, and tears snake out across my cheeks.
I did always want to be the one in charge, he’s right about that. And I did struggle to let my guard down in front of him, but that was only because I’ve never known how to be vulnerable. I was brought up to be tough, to stand on my own size threes and not allow anyone to make assumptions about me, or look down on me as if I was helpless. But then, when something happened that I couldn’t control, something that tore through me with a ferocious misery from which I had no escape, and I needed Pete to be there to catch me, he was already gone.
Pete has his head in his hands now, and he doesn’t look at me as he continues.
‘When you told me about the baby, I was just so scared. We had only just split up, and we’d been arguing so much. I didn’t see how we could bring a child into that, and I was worried that you wouldn’t let me into its life, that you would do it all by yourself, like you do everything.’
‘You told me you didn’t want it,’ I remind him, the memory of his words even now cutting through me with such agony. ‘You said I should get rid of it.’
‘I never said that,’ he protests. ‘I wished it hadn’t happened, but I would never have told you to do that. When you told me about it that day, you felt like a stranger. You were so, I dunno, smug about it all, like you’d won or something. It was as if you thought you could wave that baby under my nose and I’d come running back to you.’
‘Was that so wrong?’ I ask, raising my voice. ‘We had been together for five years, Pete. We lived together. You were my best friend – I assumed that would count for something.’
He shrugs dejectedly, unable even now to give me the answer I needed to hear then. I want him to say that he was wrong, but even if he did, it wouldn’t change what happened next.
‘When I got that call saying you’d lost it,’ he says, and I have to dig my fingernails into my arm to stop myself from screaming, ‘it absolutely destroyed me, Tags, it really did.’
‘It destroyed you?’ I cry. ‘You didn’t even want it!’
‘It’s not that simple, though, is it?’ he says. ‘It was still my baby, just as much as it was yours. I’m devastated, too.’
‘You didn’t even come to the hospital,’ I snap, wiping the tears off my cheeks with both hands. ‘My dad told me that he called you, but you never even bothered to show up.’
‘I did,’ he mutters, and I stare at him in shock.
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘I was there,’ he says, and looks right at me so I can see the blues of his eyes. I used to love staring into those eyes so much. The first thing I thought of when I found out I was pregnant was that I wanted our baby to inherit them.
‘I just couldn’t come in. I couldn’t face it. You’d never let me be there for you before, and I didn’t know how to even begin to do it then.’
‘I needed you,’ I say then, and immediately I’m sobbing again. Pete shifts in his seat, still immobilised by his stupid dread of doing or saying the wrong thing. What he doesn’t seem to understand, and which I can’t find the strength to tell him through my tears, is that I was still in love with him back then. He was the one I wanted to be there – not my parents, not the doctors and nurses – but him. That’s why I can’t forgive him. I thought that he wasn’t even there – the fact that he was is new information, and I begin to process it as I dab at my eyes with a tissue from the box on Sal’s desk.
‘I’m sorry, Tag,’ he says, and it’s the first time I’ve heard him sound properly sincere since before we broke up. ‘I’m sorry for all of it.’
‘You were there at the hospital?’ I ask, to be certain that I’ve understood this right, and he nods.
‘Pete,’ I say, knotting my fingers together to stop them shaking, ‘where did you meet Lucy?’
I can tell I’ve caught him off guard with the question, and his cheeks flame red with distress.
‘Out,’ he mutters. ‘In a bar.’
‘Liar,’ I say, standing up so I’m almost the same height as him. ‘I saw her that day. She looked after me when the ambulance brought me in. I remember her face.’
Pete opens and closes his mouth.
‘Did you pick her up there, at the hospital?’ I demand. ‘While your ex-girlfriend of five years was lying bleeding and crying in a cubicle, wondering where you were. Did you chat up the fucking nurse that had just mopped me up?’
‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘Tell me, then. What was it like?’
Another shake of the head.
We both start as the office door opens to reveal Lucy. It’s obvious straight away that she’s been crying, but they aren’t tears of pity for me or for her, they’re tears of anger. I know, because I have shed so many of the same.
‘Taggie,’ she says, her eyes flickering over her boyfriend before finding mine. ‘It’s true, I did meet Pete that day. I’m so sorry.’
There’s a short and mutually horrified silence, and then I’m up on my feet and pushing past both of them. I hesitate for no more than a split second in the deserted hallway, then turn and run blindly out into the night.
44
Lucy
I have never forgotten what it felt like to be cheated on by Johnny when I was nine, but he wasn’t the only boy to trample all over my feelings. When I was fourteen, a boy named Toby wrote me a note in class, asking me to be his girlfriend. I had been harbouring a secret crush on him for over a year at the time, so I immediately replied with the word ‘YES’, written in pink highlighter, only for him to announce to the entire room that he’d only been joking. That one stayed with me for a while.
It took me years to risk acting on another secret infatuation, but when I did, it was with Spencer. I met him while I was studying, and he was the epitome of charming. Everyone loved
Spenny – he was the life and laughter of every party, the ultimate gentleman who held open doors, picked up the tab on dates and, best of all, he was hopelessly devoted to me. At least, I thought he was.
It started with small comments, here and there. Casual questions about what I’d eaten for lunch that day, and reactions of disbelief when I told him honestly that it had been a salad. ‘Don’t worry, juicy Lucy,’ he would say, patting me on the bottom. ‘I’ll still love you no matter what.’
The months passed, and slowly but surely the little confidence that I had started to fall away. I stopped seeing friends, stopped eating carbs, and stopped being able to look at myself in the mirror. Spencer made sure that he was always the one comforting me if I was feeling bad about the way I looked, but he was manipulating me in such a clever way that I wasn’t even aware of it. Even Julia, whose distrusting dial is permanently switched round to the highest setting, was taken in by Spencer’s charm offensive. When we would visit my dad and her, the two of them would grin along when he referred to me as ‘squishy’, and neither seemed fazed when he playfully tutted over how many slices of toast I had for breakfast.
It was after a full year of small but devastating put-downs that I discovered Spencer had been cheating on me with a girl he’d met online. I stumbled across their Facebook messages to each other, but instead of confronting him like any normal, self-respecting woman would, I blamed myself. This girl was slimmer than me, and prettier, and I honestly believed then that I had forced my own boyfriend into the arms of another woman because I couldn’t resist the odd chocolate biscuit. The stupid thing was that the sadder I was, the more junk I consumed, and so I was the heaviest I had ever been. This, coupled with the knowledge that the man who I thought loved me was fooling around behind my back, led me deep into a dark depression.
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