by Sandie Jones
I found myself asking if that’s what we would look like if a photo was taken of us. Would our faces show the same abandonment? Would our feelings for each other be clear for all to see?
I chastised myself for allowing doubt and petty jealousy to sneak in. If they’d been that happy they wouldn’t have split up, would they? They’d still be together now, and our paths would never have crossed.
‘That’s life,’ Adam had said when I’d asked him, three weeks into our relationship, why he and his last girlfriend had broken up. ‘Sometimes things happen and you have no way of understanding them. You try to find a reason to justify it, but there isn’t always an answer. It’s just life.’
‘You make it sound like you didn’t want to break up,’ I’d said. ‘Did she call it off? Did she cheat on you?’
‘No, it was nothing like that,’ he’d said. ‘Let’s not talk about it. That was then, this is now.’ He’d put his arms around me, pulling me into him. He’d held on as if he never wanted to let me go, inhaling my hair and kissing my head. I’d looked up at him, taking in his features: his hazel eyes, tinged with green specks, that glistened under the streetlamps of Borough High Street, and that strong jawline that I’d once called chiselled, to which he’d laughed and said, ‘You make me sound like something in a tool box.’ He’d held my face in his hands and kissed me, gently at first, but then more deeply, as if doing so would stop anything from coming between us. Ever.
That night, our lovemaking had felt different. He’d held my hand as we climbed the stairs to his apartment above the market. We’d rarely made it much past the hallway without losing at least two items of clothing, but that night we waited until we were in his bedroom, where he undressed me slowly. I’d reached out to turn off the lamp on his bedside table, keen to keep the parts of me I didn’t like in the dark, but he’d caught my hand. ‘Don’t. Leave it on, I want to see you.’
Still, my hand lingered, my insecurities at odds with a desire to do what he asked.
‘You are absolutely beautiful,’ he’d whispered, as he ran his thumb across my lips. He’d kissed my neck as his fingers trailed down my bare back, feather-light touches that sent pulses through my body. His eyes didn’t leave mine as we made love. They bored into me, searching for something hidden within. For the first time, he gave me something he’d never given before. What it was, I can’t explain, but I’d felt a deep connection with him. An unspoken commitment that what we had was real.
Now, as I look at the photo in front of me again, I wonder if she was the woman he had been trying to get away from that night. Was he throwing away the manacles that had bound him to her? Had he chosen that time to sever all ties?
Pammie and Adam came back into the living room, Adam ducking his head to get through the beamed door.
‘Here you go,’ said Pammie, as she placed a tray on the table in front of the window. ‘This will fatten you up.’
I closed the album as I stood up, but not before I caught a fleeting glimpse of the caption written underneath the photo: Darling Rebecca – miss you every day.
5
‘You’re fucking kidding me?’ spluttered Pippa, as she shoved a pizza slice into her mouth.
I shook my head.
‘And you’re sure they were a couple? Like, a proper couple, not just good friends? Maybe they were mates, part of a bigger group.’
I shook my head again. ‘I don’t think so. They seemed very into each other. As you’d imagine a boyfriend and girlfriend to be.’
Pippa stopped chewing and a swathe of pink-tinged fringe fell over her left eye. ‘She might not be dead.’
‘She must be. What else would explain “miss you every day”? You’d never write that about someone who was happily living half a mile down the road.’
‘Maybe his mum . . . Pammie, is it?’
I nodded.
‘Maybe she just really liked her and, when they split up, she was upset and really missed her?’ She knew she was clutching at straws.
I shrugged my shoulders. If the truth be known, a little part of me selfishly hoped that the woman was dead, rather than be that ‘missed’ by Pammie, to the point where she felt the need to write it under a photograph. That was a lot to live up to.
‘Why didn’t you ask Adam when you were driving back?’ asked Pippa.
‘I didn’t want to upset the apple cart,’ I replied. ‘We’d had an odd exchange on the way down there and he’s clearly very protective of his mum, so I have to tread carefully.’
‘But you’re not asking about his mum, you’re asking about the possibility of him having had a girlfriend who’s now dead. It’s a pretty big deal, Em. And if that is the case, you’d have thought that would have come up in conversation before now . . . wouldn’t you?’ She added the last two words gently, as if to soften the blow of the sentence before.
I had no idea what to think. Every time I tried to answer the question, I had to remind myself that we’d only been together for a little over two months. It felt longer because it had been so intense, but how can you possibly expect to tell somebody about the decades of your life in eight weeks? We’d touched on exes, of course, but we were still skirting around things to a certain extent, not wishing to get too heavy, too soon. Anytime we’d spoken about our pasts, we’d both been careful to keep things light-hearted. A dead girlfriend wouldn’t have fitted comfortably into any conversation we’d had up until now. Nor would the subject of my ex, Tom. But I’d been happy to share the small misdemeanour of my solitary one-night stand with Graham or Giles – or whatever his name was.
‘That’s shocking!’ Adam had laughed as we sat opposite each other, sharing a Rocky Road Sundae at TGI Friday’s in Covent Garden, a couple of weeks before. ‘You had sex with a man and you didn’t even know his name?’
‘Oh, like that’s never happened to you?’ I’d chided.
‘I’ll hold my hands up to a one-night stand, but I definitely asked her name first and I still remember her name now.’
‘Go on then, holier than thou, what was it?’
He’d thought for a moment. ‘Sophia,’ he’d exclaimed, proudly.
I’d scoffed at his smugness.
‘And then there was Louisa, Isabelle, Natalie, Phoebe . . .’
I’d sucked a mini marshmallow up with a straw and launched it at him.
‘So, what are you going to do?’ asked Pippa, bringing me back into the present. ‘Is it something you need to know, or are you prepared to leave it where it is?’
‘I really like him, Pip. And, this aside, everything is going really well. I’ve never felt like this before, and I don’t want to do anything to jeopardise it. It’s just a little blip on the landscape. I’m sure it’ll work its way out eventually.’
She nodded in agreement, and reached out to touch my hand, for added reassurance.
‘So, what was his mum like? Do you think she liked you?’
‘Oh, she was just the sweetest thing. She went out of her way to make me feel welcome. I had a horrible thought, especially after the incident in the car going down there, that I was the latest in a long line of girls that he’d taken to meet her. But she actually took me aside as we were leaving and said, ‘You’re the first girlfriend he’s brought home in a long, long while . . .’
‘Okay, well that’s a big plus point right there,’ Pippa said matter-of-factly, trying to pull me back from the ex-thing that was nagging at my brain. ‘His mother loves you. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his mother.’
‘I thought it was through his stomach?’ I laughed.
‘Ah, that too, but we all know that it’s really via his dick!’
I choked on my wine, and she fell off the sofa.
There’s never a dull moment when Pippa’s around. Her ability to stick two fingers up at life when it isn’t quite working out is what drew me to her when we first met working at a shoe shop. Our old boss there, Eileen, didn’t quite appreciate Pippa’s feistiness, and it was only a matter o
f time before things came to a head.
‘I’m afraid I don’t have that boot in a size 40,’ she’d heard Pippa say to a customer, ‘but I do have this ballerina pump in a size 34, if that’s any good?’
Tears had rolled down my face, and I’d had to excuse myself from my customer to run to the stockroom. Pippa had quickly followed, with Eileen in hot pursuit.
‘A certain level of professionalism needs to be adhered to when dealing with clients,’ she’d said, wagging a finger. ‘You have both crossed the line today and I will be taking it up with my superior.’
‘Oh, Come On Eileen,’ Pippa had said, in a sing-song voice. ‘I think what you mean . . .’
My breath had caught in my throat, my face had turned red, and my bladder had threatened to collapse as Eileen, who happened to have dark curly hair, had glared at her. ‘If you think you’re being funny . . .’ she’d said.
‘Have you ever thought about dungarees . . . ?’ Pippa asked politely, before walking out. I had only survived a week longer before following suit, though I sensibly worked my notice. I’d have loved to have Pippa’s chutzpah, but I wasn’t quite as brave or bolshie as she was. I happened to believe that I needed a reference for where I was going, but Pippa didn’t give a stuff, and, to her credit, she was right. She’d got every bar job she’d applied for, and was in the middle of an Open University degree in healthcare.
We were so different, yet so alike. I couldn’t think of anything worse than going out to work at night, and I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than go back to school, but it made for the perfect set-up. I worked all day Monday to Saturday, with Wednesdays off, and she worked every evening at All Bar One in Covent Garden and studied during the day. We were never under each other’s feet, so it was always good to get together on a Sunday to catch up on what the week had thrown at us. It was invariably me that needed guidance and grounding, as most of life’s tribulations seemed to be water off a duck’s back for Pippa. She was much more happy-go-lucky than me, batting men into left field on a whim, and not one for kowtowing to the rules of the establishment. I’d have liked a little more of her abandonment, instead of being laden down with a crippling need to over-analyse every situation. But on the odd occasion I’d thrown caution to the wind, I’d invariably come unstuck, so maybe it wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. It was wanting to be more like Pippa that had led me to act so out of character with Grant or Gerry – it had definitely started with a ‘G’ – at Beth’s twenty-first.
‘Why didn’t you stop me?’ I’d moaned the next day, as we lay on my bed watching Netflix, remembering him picking me up, my legs wrapped around his waist as he carried me outside. ‘It must have been so obvious. Everyone would have seen.’
‘That’s what’s so awesome,’ she’d said. ‘For once in your life, you didn’t care. You just did what you wanted to do, and didn’t give a fig about anyone else.’
That was the problem.
‘I’m never going out again,’ I’d groaned, burying my face in my hands, and right there and then, I’d meant it.
6
As much as I tried, I couldn’t keep Rebecca from nagging at my brain. I wanted to know who she was, and what had happened between them, but I was wary of opening a can of worms that I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted open. Adam also hadn’t seemed himself in the two weeks since we’d been to his mum’s, so I found myself still skirting around the whole ‘miss you every day’ conundrum, hoping that somehow, we’d stumble upon a way to talk about it.
My first chance came as Adam and I dressed the Christmas tree in my flat. He was worried that he was taking the job away from Pippa, but she didn’t have the patience for such a fiddly chore. I’d done it by myself three years running, mostly whilst she sat watching, throwing Maltesers up in the air and catching them in her mouth. She was always grateful though, and repaid me for my efforts with a bottle of Advocaat. It had become something of a tradition, though why she did it, neither of us was quite sure.
‘There must be a very good reason why we don’t drink this stuff all year round,’ I’d said to her last Christmas. We were three snowballs in, neither of us bothering with the cocktail cherry anymore.
‘I know,’ she’d agreed. ‘But it sits there, ever hopeful on its Christmas shelf in the supermarket, all optimistic, pleading with passing shoppers, “Please buy me, I’m only here for a short time. You know you’ll regret it if you don’t.”’
I’d laughed and chimed in. ‘“What if someone pops round, unannounced over the festive season, asking for an eggnog? How will you cope if you haven’t got me?”’
It was such a time-honoured tradition, yet we’d not once had a visitor requesting an Advocaat and lemonade. Not even when neighbours popped round to my parents’ house throughout my childhood. Not in nearly thirty years. Not ever.
Still, there was nothing like it to get me in the Christmas mood, and I fetched it from the back of the kitchen cupboard and swilled the congealed yellow concoction around in the bottle.
‘Can I tempt you?’ I asked Adam – well, his bum, seemingly the only part of him that wasn’t under the tree – as he fiddled with the extension lead.
‘I’m assuming that’s last year’s offering?’ he said, extricating himself from the branches and looking up.
I nodded apologetically. ‘But it never goes off.’
‘I’m all right, thanks.’ He grimaced. ‘Here, what do you think?’
We stood back, admiring our workmanship. ‘Now to see if we should have tested the lights before we put them on,’ he said.
Miraculously, for the first time in years, they worked straight away, and we slumped back onto the sofa, relieved and proud.
I brought my leg up underneath me, and turned to look at him. He was grinning from ear to ear, such a difference from the serious face of the last couple of weeks. ‘I’m fine,’ was all he’d ever said whenever I’d asked why he was so quiet.
‘How’s work?’ I asked now, as I watched the dubious-looking mixture curdle in my glass.
‘Better.’ He sighed. ‘I’ve finally got my head above water this week.’
So, it was work that had been playing on his mind. All the ‘what-ifs’ that had been whirring in my brain were silenced. What if he didn’t want to be with me anymore? What if he’d met someone else? What if he was trying to find a way to tell me? I exhaled slowly, content now I knew that his job was the problem. We could work with that.
‘How come? What was holding you under?’ I asked.
He blew out his cheeks. ‘The account I’m working on has become bigger than any of us had anticipated. I thought I had it covered and was managing to get on top of it, but then we stumbled upon a problem.’
‘What was that?’ I asked, my brow furrowed.
‘Just an IT glitch; something that I can deal with. But it was going to take a lot longer than we’d allowed for.’
‘So, what’s changed?’
‘The powers that be have finally seen sense and brought someone else in on the desk. It’s made a real difference, thank God.’
‘Great,’ I said. ‘Do you get on with him?’
‘It’s a woman, actually,’ there was the slightest of pauses, ‘and yeah, she’s actually okay.’
Two ‘actually’s in the same sentence? He was normally so eloquent. I willed my smile to remain unchanged, to not even flicker against the muscles pulling it tight.
‘Cool,’ I said, as casually as I could. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Rebecca,’ he said matter-of-factly. I waited for him to offer more, but what more of an answer could he give? Yet why did I think his reticence spoke volumes?
‘That’s funny.’ I didn’t know what else to say.
‘What is?’ he asked warily, as if already sensing what I was about to say, even when I wasn’t quite sure myself.
‘That her name’s Rebecca.’
He turned to look at me.
‘I assume it’s not your Rebecca?’ I gave a little laugh, t
o lighten the weight of the question.
He looked at me for a moment, his brow knitted, then shook his head slowly and looked away.
I didn’t know whether I wanted to know more about the Rebecca at work, or ‘his’ Rebecca. It was difficult to know which was more problematic.
‘That would have been weird, though, right?’ I went on. ‘Imagine an ex turning up at work. How would you feel?’
He rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. ‘That’s unlikely to happen.’
‘What’s she like then? This Rebecca?’ I decided I’d deal with the immediate threat first. ‘She’s obviously been a help to you.’
‘She’s good, yeah. She seems to know her stuff, so that saves me the bother of having to go through everything with her. She’s been in the company a while apparently, though I’ve no idea where they’ve been hiding her.’
Did that mean he’d have noticed her if she hadn’t been hidden away? I didn’t want to know how good she was at her job, I just wanted to know her vital statistics and the colour of her hair. I was aware that the questions bouncing around in my head would make me sound like an obsessive, paranoid girlfriend if they were to make themselves heard. But wasn’t that what I was? Wasn’t that what Tom had turned me into? I couldn’t help myself.
‘Is she hot then?’ I asked. His brow crinkled as if working out the most diplomatic answer. If he said ‘No’ too quickly, I’d know he was lying. If he said ‘Yes’, he’d be mad. We both knew he couldn’t win.
‘She’s all right, I suppose,’ was all he could muster, which, given the options, was his best shot.
‘Does your ex, Rebecca, work in the City?’ I asked.
He sat up straight. ‘No,’ he said hesitantly.
Was that all I was going to get?
‘So, she doesn’t work in your industry? That wasn’t how you met?’
‘I wasn’t aware that I’d mentioned Rebecca,’ he said tightly.
A rush of heat spread up from my toes as it slowly dawned on me that he hadn’t. I’d put his reluctant ‘let’s not talk about it’, together with a picture of him and a woman who I guessed was called Rebecca, and let my mind run riot. I wanted to suck all my stupid, insecure words back in.