by Jill Mansell
Ellie hesitated, her mind racing. It was already too late to tell Roo the truth about Jamie; she would be mortified. What’s more, she would stop being irreverent and funny and treating her like a normal person. It happened every time, without fail. As soon as anyone found out she was a widow, their attitude towards her changed in an instant.
Sorry, Jamie.
Aloud she said, ‘OK, sometimes he snored.’
‘I knew it!’ Roo clapped her hands. ‘And spindly little legs like bits of spaghetti. Just concentrate on the bad points and you’ll be over him in no time. Trust me, I’ve had heaps of practice. I should be a relationship therapist.’
‘You’re right, I’m going to do that. Starting now.’ Retrieving the remote control, Ellie switched off the DVD player with a flourish. She sat down and indicated the sofa opposite. ‘There, I’m feeling better already. Come on then, your turn now. Tell me what it’s like living in Primrose Hill.’
***
‘Spindly little legs? Like spaghetti?’
It was two o’clock in the morning and Roo Taylor had just left. She was single, Ellie had discovered, but currently was seeing someone called Niall who looked a bit like Simon Cowell and was brilliant in bed. She loved New Zealand wines, DIY programs on TV, and MAC cosmetics. Her real name was Rosalind but her father had nicknamed her Roo because she’d been a bouncy baby. She still worked in the music industry, writing songs for people who could sing in tune…
‘Excuse me? Spindly?’ Jamie was wearing his bright turquoise surf shorts. Outraged, he pointed to his lower half. ‘And you just let her say it! There’s nothing wrong with my legs. They’re athletic.’
Ellie carried the glasses through to the kitchen. ‘Your knees are quite knobbly.’
‘They have to be! They’re knees; it’s their job to be knobbly. If we didn’t have knees, we wouldn’t be able to bend our legs. And you said I snored.’
‘I said sometimes.’
‘Occasionally,’ Jamie protested. ‘Occasionally I snore. Like any normal man. And as for her being rude about my T-shirt—’
‘I’m not going to say I told you so.’ Oh, the argument they’d had in the surf shop when Jamie had insisted that this was the one he wanted, and she had complained that it was a hideous cross between khaki and banana. Ellie paused then said, ‘But I did.’
Jamie shrugged. ‘And you didn’t happen to mention I was dead.’
‘I know. Are you OK with that?’
‘Sweetheart, if it makes things easier, that’s fine by me.’
This was the advantage of having a conversation with someone who wasn’t really there; you could make them say anything you wanted. It was cheating, but comforting at the same time.
‘I’ll tell her the truth later.’ Ellie finished rinsing the glasses.
‘You do that. Are you going to bed now?’
She dried her hands and nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘OK, I’ll leave you to it. Night, sweetie. See you tomorrow.’
‘Night.’
She liked him to leave properly; trying to imagine Jamie lying next to her in bed didn’t work and was just too hard to bear. She hung the towel over the rail and watched Jamie head out of the kitchen.
Oh, Jamie, where are you really? Haven’t I been without you for long enough now?
Please come back.
Chapter 7
‘Oh my giddy aunt, did you even listen to a word I said?’
In the sunny bathroom, Ellie pulled the flush and washed her hands. When she emerged, Roo was standing in the hallway brandishing the honeymoon photo in the silver frame.
‘That was on my bedside table,’ said Ellie.
‘I know! You and thingy with the skinny legs! Look, it doesn’t do any good to keep stuff like this out. You’re just making things worse for yourself.’
‘What were you doing in my bedroom?’
‘Having a snoop around. I’m very nosy. It’s OK, I don’t go through people’s drawers; I just wanted to see what you’d done with the room. And it’s looking very nice,’ said Roo. ‘Apart from this.’
Oh well, it had been ten days since she’d moved in; she’d had a good run for her money. Ellie said, ‘That was taken on our honeymoon.’
‘You were married? You didn’t tell me that.’ Studying the photo, Roo said, ‘Just as well you didn’t have kids—they might have inherited those legs.’
‘There’s something else I didn’t tell you.’ Ellie took a deep breath. ‘We didn’t break up, exactly.’ Another quick breath, because it was still a hard thing to say. ‘He died.’
Silence.
Longer silence.
Finally Roo said, ‘Oh God. When?’
‘January last year.’
‘Oh God.’ She took another look at the photo. ‘And I made fun of his legs.’
‘Don’t feel bad.’ Ellie half-smiled. ‘I used to make fun of them too.’
Back in the living room, Roo threw herself on to the sofa and grabbed a handful of Twiglets. ‘OK, I’m really sorry about everything I said before. But now you have to tell me all about him.’
Had it really only been nine days since she’d met Roo? The first night they had talked for hours. Since then, Roo had taken to popping over the road most days and now it felt as if they’d known each other for years. The timing had been fortuitous; it probably wouldn’t have happened if Roo’s best friend Marsha hadn’t recently moved to New Zealand, leaving her with a friend-shaped gap in her life. But Ellie was grateful for that; Roo was entertaining company, funny, impulsive, and with an outrageous track record when it came to men. It had also been an education pretending that they were just two single girls, living charmed lives in Primrose Hill, with nothing more to worry about than where to buy the best balcony bras and whether Chanel lipsticks were better than Dior. So she made two mugs of tea and spent the next hour talking about Jamie. She told Roo everything, about how they’d first met, what he’d been like, and how he had died. Roo asked to see more photos and together they pored over an album.
Finally, Roo turned and said emotionally, ‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?’
‘OK, keep your face like that. Don’t move a muscle.’ Jumping up, Ellie took the beveled mirror above the mantelpiece off its hook and brought it over to the sofa. ‘There, now just take a look at yourself.’ She held the mirror in front of Roo. ‘That’s why.’
Horror, sympathy, pity… it was all reflected there in Roo’s face. Seeing it for herself, she said, ‘Oh. Right. Sorry.’
‘It’s OK. You get used to it. But it’s been nice to be treated normally. Sometimes at work it just feels like everyone’s tiptoeing through a minefield when they talk to me.’
Roo said at once, ‘I won’t do that.’
‘They don’t mean to, but they do treat me differently.’
Vehemently Roo shook her head. ‘I promise I won’t. It’s just not the way I am.’
‘Except you’ve just looked through a whole album of photos,’ Ellie pointed out, ‘and you haven’t once made fun of how we look.’
‘Oh well, but that’s because it wouldn’t be fair. And it might hurt your feelings.’ Roo pulled a face, willing her to understand. ‘I’d feel awful if I said something to upset you, after everything you’ve already been through…’
‘Sshh. This is what I get all the time.’ Ellie finished her second mug of tea. ‘I’d rather you were normal.’ She tapped her watch. ‘And it’s seven o’clock. Aren’t you supposed to be meeting Niall at eight?’
Roo jumped up as if she’d been electrocuted. ‘It’s what? But I haven’t done anything yet!’ She was still at the stage where getting ready for a date entailed hours of painstaking preparation. Having leapt to her feet, she hovered awkwardly and said, ‘Oh God, I feel terrible leaving you on your own.’
‘Sshh.’
‘OK, sorry, I’m going.’ Roo paused in the doorway. ‘Look, are you sure you’re going to be all right?’
‘Sshhhhh!’
‘Oh I know, but it’s just—’
‘I’m not three years old,’ said Ellie. ‘I can cope. Go and have a fantastic time with Niall and tell me all about it tomorrow.’
She saw Roo take this in. Finally. Thank God.
‘All about it?’ Roo said it with a raised eyebrow and a glint in her eye.
‘You can be selective, leave out the biological bits.’ Ellie relaxed; all she wanted was to be treated normally. ‘I’ve forgotten what any of that mucky stuff ’s like.’
***
An email dropped into her inbox at lunchtime the next day. Still at her desk at Brace House Business Centre, Ellie was working her way through a mountain of reports waiting to be typed up. Paula had brought her a coffee and she was eating a sandwich she hadn’t ordered that contained off-putting slivers of cucumber. Try as she might, Ellie was unable to understand how anyone could possibly like cucumber. It tasted wet. And green. And just… eurgh… cucumberish. Picking the biggest bits out and dropping them in the bin with one hand, she clicked onto the email from Michael, her boss, asking if she could put in a couple of extra hours this evening, to help clear a backlog of work that had built up.
Damn, how could she wriggle out of this? The last time she’d said no, Michael had launched into an interminable story about how, when his messy divorce had been going through, plenty of overtime had taken his mind off the heartbreak. The next moment, a new email pinged up on the screen and her heart gave a squeeze at the sight of it. The subject was Hi, which gave nothing away. And the sender was Todd.
Ellie put down the sandwich that she hadn’t wanted anyway. A mixture of guilt and anxiety made her mouth dry. Why was Todd contacting her now? The last time had been four months ago, on the anniversary of Jamie’s death. He had written her a brief, stilted email and she had sent an even more stilted one back.
It was all her own fault and she hated herself for it. Todd and Jamie had been so close; Jamie had loved Todd like a brother. And the three of them together had been a team. That they wouldn’t stay friends for life had been unthinkable.
But that was then, before the unthinkable thing had happened, altering their lives for ever. Ellie swallowed with difficulty as all the old feelings came flooding back. Following Jamie’s death, they had both been overwhelmed with guilt and grief. Todd had blamed himself; with a reputation for turning up late wherever he went, it haunted him that on that night he had arrived at the flat early. It was all his fault; if they’d left at the right time—the late time—the accident wouldn’t have happened. He had told her this before the funeral. Up until then, it hadn’t occurred to Ellie that it might have made a difference. But once he’d said it, the seeds were sown and resentment had begun to grow. His untimely arrival had interrupted her and Jamie. Thanks to Todd, they had missed out on the last sex they would ever have. And he’d been right about the accident not happening if they’d left the house thirty minutes later, because by then—she knew this for a fact—the gritting lorry would have been along to make the road safe.
By the time she’d come to her senses and realized that, of course, Todd wasn’t to blame, it was too late. The damage was done, the awkwardness between them had been too much to overcome, and they had done their grieving separately. Three months after the accident, Todd had moved over to the States and Ellie had been relieved. She still hadn’t been able to stop wishing that, out of the two of them, Jamie could have been the one to be saved.
It was shameful, unfair, and she hated herself for thinking it, but that was the way she felt. Basically, she was a horrible person.
Unable to bring herself to delete the message without opening it, she clicked on Todd’s name and brought his email up onto the screen:
Hi Ellie,
Well, it’s been some time, hasn’t it? Hope you’re doing OK and work is going well.
My news is that I’ve left my job here in Boston and I’m coming back home next week, going back to work at the London branch. One year was enough. Once I’m back, I wondered if we could meet up. I’d like to see you again, talk about old times.
Hope you’d like to see me too. Let me know. Are you still in Hammersmith?
Love,
Todd.
P.S. You have no idea how long it’s taken me to write this email. I hope life is as good as possible for you, Ell. I’ve missed seeing you.
Ellie sat back. There was that familiar feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach, the one signaling that something was going to happen whether you wanted it to or not. Like opening the post and getting the appointment for your next smear test.
But what could she do? Pretend the email had got lost in the ether? Change her email address? Todd didn’t know where she was living now…
Oh, stop, stop. Hiding from him wasn’t the answer. Besides, he could find her in five seconds if he wanted to, just by—
‘Hard at work, Ellie?’
Shit, Michael was right behind her. Damn those Hush Puppies of his, enabling him to creep silently around the offices.
‘Sorry.’ Hurriedly she clicked the email off the screen, although he’d probably already read it.
‘You know what company policy is where personal emails are concerned.’ Michael had an irritating habit of sucking air in through his lower teeth when he was being ‘the boss.’ Ellie squirmed as he did it now, then squirmed again in response to his hand on her shoulder. ‘But under the circumstances, I’ll let you off. Todd,’ he said. ‘That’s Jamie’s friend, am I right?’
She nodded, bracing herself for the inevitable squeeze. Michael probably thought he was being sensitive and sympathetic but his touchy-feelyness, quite frankly, gave her the creeps. Amongst all the hideous aspects of being a widow, submitting to unwanted hugs was one of the worst. Michael felt compelled to comfort her, and it would be churlish and mean to complain about it. Poor chap, he meant well. What was she going to do, accuse him of sexual harassment? ‘So, how about a couple of extra hours tonight?’ Squeeze.
Plus, he didn’t miss a trick.
‘Um, the thing is, I’m supposed to be… doing something…’ Oh, it was no good; she was rubbish at lying under pressure. Caving in, Ellie said, ‘Well, OK, I’ll do an hour.’
Michael did the air-sucking thing. ‘We really need to catch up. Make it two and I’ll give you a lift home.’
She hesitated and glanced out of the window. The rain had been hammering down all day. There were engineering works on the Northern Line. And waiting at the bus stop would wreck her pink suede shoes. ‘OK, deal.’
Michael beamed. ‘You’re a great girl.’ Squeeeeeeeze.
The moment he’d left the office, Ellie clicked back on to her emails. Come on, get it over with, then she could put it out of her head.
Hi Todd,
I’m glad you’re well. Hope your trip back home goes OK. I’m doing all right. As well as can be expected, I suppose. Keeping very busy. Doing lots of overtime at the moment so not many evenings free. Maybe we could meet up when things are less hectic.
Love,
Ellie.
She pressed Send. There, done. When Todd received her brittle, stilted reply, he’d know she wasn’t ready to see him yet.
Todd wasn’t stupid; he wouldn’t hate her for it. He’d understand.
Chapter 8
At eight thirty, Michael pulled up outside the flat in Nevis Street. The rain, battering down on the roof of the Honda Civic, sounded like a never-ending drum roll. There wasn’t another soul in sight. Everyone else had too much sense to venture out in such a downpour.
The lift home was welcome, the conversation less so. As they’d made their way across the city, cocooned inside the lovingly valeted car that was his pride and joy, Michael had opened up and talked at length about his loneliness. Quite movingly, in fact. Since the breakup of his marriage he had had to watch his ex-wife move on, remarry, and give birth to twin girls. In contrast, his own confidence had nose-dived and his one and only attempt at socializing had resulted in a slow dance at
a club on a friend’s stag night with a girl who had turned out to be a boy. ‘See, nobody else knows how I feel.’ His face was pale and earnest under the glare of the street light. ‘Except you, Ellie. We’re in the same boat, you and me. You understand what it’s like.’
Ellie unfastened her seat belt. She was fairly sure she hadn’t slow danced with a boy who was really a girl. ‘I know, but things’ll get better. You’ll meet someone else. Anyway, thanks for the lift—’
‘Don’t go!’ Michael’s arm shot out and he seized her hand. ‘Ellie, you’re on your own. So am I.’ Eugh, knuckles being stroked! ‘We deserve to be happy, don’t we? So how about being happy together? I’d never hurt you, I promise.’ He was hyperventilating and edging closer now. Stunned, Ellie realized his mouth was puckering up, homing in on hers like a heat-seeking missile while his other hand reached out to clasp her by the waist and—
Click.
Phew, saved by the seat belt. Lamentably out of practice when it came to making romantic advances, Michael had forgotten to take his off.
‘Michael, no. Stop it.’ His face fell as she gently pushed him away. ‘I can’t do that.’
‘No?’ Ellie saw him mentally adding this fresh rejection to all the others he’d suffered in his life.
‘Sorry. It’s not what I want. But it’s kind of you to… offer.’ Oh God, his chin was starting to wobble, please don’t say he was going to cry.
‘Fine, I know, I get the message.’ Michael sat back, his eyes swimming with tears. ‘Loud and clear. I’m not your type.’ He wiped his hand across his face and heaved a sigh. ‘I’m thirty-five years old and nobody’s ever fancied me. I don’t appear to be anyone’s type.’