‘Okay, okay. Give me a second to at least wake up. Jeez, it’s like having a furry dictator ruling my life.’
I slid my feet into my slippers and stood up. It was a gorgeous day – already, although it wasn’t yet seven, the sunlight streaming through the window felt warm on my bare skin. The winter, which had felt like it would never end, seemed to be loosening its grip at last, being pushed reluctantly away by the promise of spring.
And something else was different too. Something inside me.
A couple of years back, I’d gone through a phase of doing yoga classes. I think I imagined that it would somehow transform me into this serene, spiritual person who cherished the gifts of the universe and spread good energy around the place and also, crucially, could touch her toes without gasping and grunting like my grandad after he’d been digging his allotment. I didn’t stick with it for very long – the incense the teacher burned before classes made me sneeze uncontrollably and I was always worried I’d fart when I was doing a shoulder stand – but one thing had made an impression on me. At the beginning of every class, the teacher would ask us to do a kind of audit of our bodies: assessing ourselves from our feet up to our ankles, knees, hips and so on, identifying where we were tense or sore, learning to recognise what was going on in every bit of ourselves.
I did that now, trying to figure out what it was about me, this morning, that felt different from the morning before.
The bruises I had on my shins from my workout in the gym two days ago were still there. So was the scab on my knee where I’d cut myself shaving, and the blue plaster on my thumb where I’d missed the target while chopping onions. A tingling feeling on my top lip told me the cold sore that had been threatening to erupt was still hanging around, waiting for its moment to pounce and leave me with a gross blemish that would last for days.
All normal, all just the same as yesterday.
But what was missing was deeper inside me than any of those things. The sense of loss – grief, almost – that had haunted me since I’d split up with Joe had faded. Just like that. It was like when you have a horrible hangover and eat a huge fried breakfast, drink loads of tea and take two paracetamol, then go back to bed and wake up feeling amazing. Or when you’ve had a miserable cold – the kind that makes your eyes look red and piggy and your nose stream for days – and you wake up one morning and realise you’re better.
Not completely better though. If it was a hangover I was recovering from, I’d be at the ‘Okay, I’m never drinking again but at least I’m not dead’ stage. If it was a cold, the skin round my nose would still be red and raw and I’d have an annoying, lingering cough. But I felt different from how I had when I’d woken up the day before, and the day before that, and… you get the idea.
All of me was still the same, except I didn’t have a broken heart any more.
I sprang to my feet and almost went flying as Frazzle wound himself around my ankles. While I cleaned my teeth and washed my face, he stayed constantly half a step in front of me, trying his very best to trip me up.
‘If I fall and break my neck, then who’s going to give you breakfast?’ I scolded him. ‘You haven’t thought this through, have you?’
Frazzle looked at me, his amber eyes quite clearly saying that he didn’t give a shit what I thought.
Once he was fed and I was dressed, I sat back down on my bed, trying to make sense of this new feeling of lightness, freedom, optimism. What was going on? What had happened to me? Was it the advent of spring, which was meant to bring new hope but had never done anything of the kind for me before? Had my heart finally caught up with what my head had been telling me for months: that Joe and Alice were right for each other in a way that Joe and I had never truly been? And, more importantly, without my unrequited love for Joe, what was I going to think about?
Give your head a wobble, Zoë, I told myself. You can’t go around being broken-hearted because your heart isn’t broken any more. That would be off-the-scale ridiculous.
On the bedside table, my phone buzzed furiously with an incoming notification. I glanced at it, the wild hope I would have felt in the past that it might, somehow, impossibly, be a message from Joe strangely absent. It wasn’t, of course. It never had been and now I found myself able to accept quite calmly that it never would be. It was just the astrology app I’d installed ages ago, which sent me a daily message. Some of them were inspirational, some all but meaningless, and some of them downright brutal.
If the app were a friend, I sometimes thought, I’d have unfriended it long ago. Not that I exactly had loads of friends to choose from, since I’d spent most of my twenties travelling – great for life experience, not so good for forging enduring bonds with other people.
You know that emptiness you feel inside? You going to fill it with something, or let it suck you in?
‘Yeah, thanks for that,’ I told my phone, thinking that, right in that moment, the emptiness I felt was the same kind that had made Frazzle clamour for his breakfast. But then I couldn’t help thinking, Hold on, maybe it has a point. Maybe the Joe-shaped hole in my heart could be filled by someone else.
Maybe it was time for me to stop hankering after someone I couldn’t have and find someone I could.
When I got to work, Robbie was already there. I couldn’t even use an arduous journey as an excuse, because my daily commute consisted of stepping out of my tiny flat, locking the door behind me, walking down a flight of slightly rickety wooden stairs, pushing open a door, and voila, there I was in the Ginger Cat, the pub where I worked as a chef. But Robbie had beat me to it, as he usually did, and was already sliding two loaf tins into the oven.
It was his enthusiasm that had led me to hire him, two months before – that, and the fact that he was cheap, cheerful and touchingly grateful to be offered his first proper job in a professional kitchen. Not that the tiny cubbyhole where the two of us worked practically elbow to elbow was the most professional of workplaces. But I loved it, and so did Robbie, who worked all the hours I’d let him, with boundless energy and the ability to function on about two hours’ sleep a night.
‘Morning.’ I flicked the switch on the coffee machine and heard it roar encouragingly to life. ‘What have you got there?’
‘Date and banana bread. It’s gluten free, dairy free and refined-sugar free. The punters are going to love it. And so am I – was out until four and I’m hanging so badly, Zoë. Any chance of a coffee?’
‘Sure. Double espresso with three sugars?’
‘You’re a lifesaver.’
‘So what were you up to last night?’
Robbie leaned a snake-like hip against the stainless-steel worktop and ran his hand through his hair. It was dyed bright blue at the front and shaved into a careful fade at the sides, showing off his multiple piercings and ear tunnel.
‘Ah, nothing much.’ He ducked his head.
‘Go on! You know I need to live vicariously through you, since I have no social life of my own.’
‘I finished my shift here, and then I went home.’
I gave him my best hard stare. ‘And then…? Don’t tell me you were up watching box sets until four in the morning and getting shitfaced on your own.’
‘Oh, okay. So I had a new Grindr date over.’
‘What, someone you met on a dating app, over to your place? Just like that?’
‘Sure. My flatmates were asleep, they didn’t notice. And if they had, they’d have given zero fucks.’
‘So who was he? Someone you’ve met before?’
‘Never. And never will again. He was useless in the sack.’
Robbie peered into the oven. The kitchen was beginning to fill with the mouthwatering smell of cinnamon. Over the weeks I’d known him, I should have got used to Robbie’s casual attitude to relationships, but it still had the power to surprise me. The idea of inviting some stranger from the internet over to your home, having sex with them, and then hustling them out of the door while they were still putting their so
cks on shocked and impressed me in equal measure.
Also, although there were only about five or so years between us, Robbie had the ability to make me feel about a hundred years old.
‘I thought you Generation Z-ers were meant to be going through a sex recession,’ I said.
‘Yeah, well.’ Robbie flicked his hair out of his eyes. ‘You know the Keynesian theory of fiscal stimulus, right?’
‘Course I don’t. How do you know that stuff anyway?’
‘Did a GCSE in economics, didn’t I? I’m not just a pretty face.’
‘Okay, so hit me with it.’
‘Basically, I’m spending my way out of the sex recession. The way I see it, the more I shag, the more other people are shagging too. So in theory there should be more to go round. Supply and demand, right?’
‘Maybe. But none of it’s coming my way, that’s for sure.’
Robbie widened his huge green eyes, which were framed with lashes so long and dark, Bambi would have killed for them. ‘You poor woman. Why ever not?’
I sighed. The truth – which I certainly wasn’t going to share with Robbie, who was not only my colleague but, in theory at least, my junior – was that I’d had sex precisely twice in the past year, both times with Sean, my ex. And the last time had been well over eight months before. If anyone was in the grip of a sex recession, it was me – but my feelings for Joe had been so all-consuming I had barely noticed.
Until now.
‘That’s the trouble with being single, I guess,’ I said lamely.
‘Nonsense! Look at me. I’m single and I get more action than the Primark sale.’
‘But you’re—’ I stopped. Robbie was what? Gay? Twenty-two? Ridiculously pretty? Those things might be true, but they weren’t the real reason why he was meeting people and I wasn’t. The real reason was that Robbie put himself out there. He had a Grindr profile, he wasn’t scared to meet new people, and, if they were rubbish in bed, he’d move on without a backward glance and with a good story to tell his mates.
I, on the other hand, was about as far from out there as it was possible to get. Every night after work, I went back to my flat above the pub alone and stayed there, mooning over Joe. And now, if the strange feeling I’d woken up with that morning lasted and I truly was over him, I’d spend every night alone not mooning over Joe. Which was admittedly an improvement, but a pretty small one.
I remembered the cutting words my astrology app had sent me.
You know that emptiness you feel inside? You going to fill it with something, or let it suck you in?
It was a challenge, a reproof, and also a warning. I was only twenty-seven. But I wouldn’t always be. What if my life was still the same in a year, or five, or ten? In the past, when I’d found myself having a surge of existential angst, I’d responded by chucking whatever job I happened to have at the time and giving notice on wherever I happened to be living, and decamping to another part of the world or the country. I’d resisted the temptation to put down roots, have serious relationships, or even make friends, preferring to see myself as an unfettered free spirit, even though deep down I knew that the price of freedom was loneliness. Over the past five years, I’d worked in Glasgow, Sheffield, Cambridge, Madrid, Warsaw and – after one particularly acute attack of ‘what the fuck is my life even fucking for?’ – Seattle.
But I couldn’t do that any more, because now I had Frazzle. Just a few months before I’d started work at the Ginger Cat, the pub that was now named in his honour, as I’d headed home after my shift at a dodgy tapas bar in Croydon, I’d spotted what I thought was a fox: a furry ginger form trotting along the pavement, a chicken bone clutched determinedly in its jaws. But it didn’t melt into the shadows and dart away like a fox would have done. It stopped, turned towards me, dropped the bone and came over, mewing urgently.
And at that moment, in the dark street, drizzle falling and litter blowing in gusts around me, I knew I’d been chosen. I did all the right things, of course. I checked the cat for a collar. Even though I brought him home with me that night, the very next day I took him to the vet to be scanned for a microchip. I posted on local Facebook groups to see if anyone was missing a cat. And only then did I allow myself to accept, relieved, that Frazzle could be my cat and I could be his human.
So, now, I had him, I had a job I loved, I had my little flat above the pub. I had a life that was beginning to feel permanent. But, apart from Frazzle, I didn’t have a person who was mine, someone who I mattered to more than anyone else in the world, an other half.
The slam of the oven door, and an even more intense blast of hot, sweet-smelling air, brought me back to the present.
‘These bad boys are done now,’ Robbie said, ‘and quite frankly, if I don’t get a coffee soon, I’ll be done too. The place could’ve burned down without you noticing. It’s like you’re the hungover one, not me.’
‘Sorry, sorry, I’m on it.’
I made Robbie’s coffee and a chai latte for myself, and raided the fridge for a portion of the previous night’s veggie lasagne. Robbie’s cake wouldn’t be cool enough to taste for at least half an hour, I was hungry, and who doesn’t love cold lasagne eaten while standing next to the fridge? Just me then?
‘Robbie?’
‘That’s me.’
‘I’m going to die friendless and alone, surrounded by cats, aren’t I? At the rate I’m going.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ He shook his head.
‘No?’
‘You’ve only got the one cat, you see. Hard to be surrounded by one of them.’
I laughed. ‘I’m going to have to start dating again, aren’t I?’
‘What, you mean you’re not? I mean, no offence, but I kind of assumed you were just being discreet about your love life, on account of being my boss and all.’
‘There’s nothing to be discreet about,’ I said wearily.
Robbie shook his head and tutted. ‘And there I was thinking you just had high standards, and that’s why you weren’t seeing anyone.’
‘Well, I do have high standards. Doesn’t everyone?’
‘Not me. I mean, sometimes a shag is just a shag. And I seem to have worked my way through most of the hot guys on Grindr who live close enough for a booty call, so…’ Robbie did a gesture that made him look exactly like the shrug emoji.
I felt a wave of envy for this boy, so casually, confidently in charge of his sex life. How much had I missed out on, all those years when I’d been longing and waiting for Joe to somehow magically reappear in my life? Never mind in the months since he had.
‘And you don’t even have to lower your standards!’ he went on. ‘I mean, come on. You’d be starting from scratch. You’d have your pick of the crop. I could help you write an online dating profile, and Archie who runs the beer shop next door is an ace photographer, I happen to know. You could have a new bloke every day for months without running out.’
I thought, I don’t want a new bloke every day for months. I just want one. One special one.
But I said, ‘You might be on to something. Let me give it some thought. But in the meantime, we’ve got the bean burgers to make for lunch, and those carrots that were on special are looking a bit sad, so we should turn them into soup. And I’m not sure those avocados are ripe yet, so we might have to do hummus instead of avo smash on the snack menu.’
‘On it,’ Robbie said, doing a brief juggling performance with three of the bendy carrots, keeping the limp vegetables together in the air as easily as he managed his multiple men.
Three
You’ve been thinking. Made up your mind yet? Remember, fortune favours the brave and love will only find those who look for it.
For the next few hours, I successfully managed to avoid thinking about my love life – or rather my lack of one. I made a batch of sourdough bread and left the loaves to prove. I seared a mountain of mutton for a curry and ground a load of brick-red spice paste to flavour it. I made breakfasts, brunches and l
unches to order.
And when three o’clock came and it was time for my break, I was determined not to start thinking then, either, if I could possibly help it.
‘I’m heading to the gym,’ I told Robbie.
‘Cool,’ he said. ‘I’m off to get my eyebrows threaded.’
And so we left the pub together, but then went our separate ways, Robbie to Alina’s chichi salon on the high street (which I kept meaning to visit myself to get the untamed jungle of my bikini line sorted, but then kept not bothering because, really, what was the point?), and me to the Dark Arch, the gym under the railway tracks.
I’d never been much of a gym bunny before. Well, to be honest, I’d never been one at all. The idea of joining a Zumba class set my teeth on edge, spin bikes left my bits so bruised I couldn’t sit down for a week and, like I said, my enthusiasm for yoga had petered out after about three classes. So when I’d been working with Sean, my ex, at our food cart at the local market and a guy asked if I’d mind him leaving a few flyers on our stand for the new fitness studio he was opening, I’d agreed, with no intention of ever going there myself.
But then I’d picked one up, just out of curiosity. And, just out of curiosity, I’d dropped in later that day to take a look. At first I wasn’t sure I’d come to the right place. The signage was spray-painted like graffiti on the metal roll-up shutters that covered the front of the railway arch. The entrance was a small door to the side, with a threshold across it that could have been put there intentionally to trip unwary feet. Inside, it was dark and cavernous, and would have been echoey if it hadn’t been for the black rubber matting that covered every inch of the floor.
There were no piles of fluffy towels, no smiling receptionists, no lush plants in pots. There was nothing at all that suggested leisure or luxury: just racks of shining chrome bars and black rubber-coated weights, mysterious pieces of machinery that looked like they might attack you if you got too close, and bars and pulleys fixed to the walls like something out of a sex dungeon – or at any rate, like I imagined a sex dungeon might look. Right now, my chances of ever going to one seemed about as good as my chances of taking a trip on Virgin Galactic – and I wasn’t sure which of the two I’d find more terrifying. The only colour in the place came from a stack of brightly painted iron balls that I later found out were called kettlebells.
Thank You, Next: A perfect, uplifting and funny romantic comedy Page 2