‘Dani. Oh my God. You must know how dangerous that is.’
She nodded, wincing a bit. ‘The last thing I remember was thinking about that girl, that backpacker in New Zealand, who died from the same thing. And I thought how grim it would be everyone knowing about it, if my name was in the newspapers, and how ashamed Mum would be of me, and how I could never make things right with her if I was dead.’
‘Don’t be silly – no one would have been ashamed. He’s the one who should be ashamed. But you’re okay. Thank God, you’re okay.’
‘Fabian was really nice. He tried to give me a cuddle and stuff, but I just wanted to get out of there. So I put on my coat and I got an Uber here. I didn’t want my flatmates to see me like this.’
Now that Dani’s coat had fallen open, I could see what she was wearing underneath: a leather corset, suspenders and stockings and the kind of stripper shoes I’d imagined buying to wear for Jude, before immediately rejecting the idea.
‘I’ll lend you something to wear tomorrow,’ I promised. ‘Something of mine will fit you, I’m sure. And if not, we’ll ask Alice. It’ll be fine. But I still think you need to report him to the police.’
‘How can I? They’d see me in this get-up and they wouldn’t believe a word I said. And Fabian would tell them I consented, I said it was fine, and he’d be right. I did.’
‘But you can’t consent to that. Not to being hurt like that.’
‘You can. I did. And I did before. I said yes to all the stuff he did to me. I even enjoyed lots of it. It’s just – he kept pushing and pushing, you know? It’s like he was trying to find where my boundaries were, only I didn’t know. Not until tonight.’
Being strangled until you blacked out would pretty much be beyond anyone’s boundaries, I thought.
‘It’s going to be fine,’ I said. ‘You never have to see him again. You never have to do anything you’re not comfortable with again – ever. You’ve got this.’
Dani drank more wine. She’d stopped crying now, and her face was strangely blank under what was left of her heavy make-up.
‘I thought he was so great,’ she said. ‘I literally couldn’t believe my luck, that this hot, rich, successful man wanted to go out with me. I thought that was it, as long as I didn’t put a foot wrong, I was sorted. Mum would be proud of me. My life would be perfect. But it wasn’t true, was it?’
‘Fabian’s a creep. He always was and he always will be. You’re way too good for him. And there are plenty of other guys out there who are normal and decent and kind and won’t make you do weird shit you don’t want to do, and won’t hurt you, and won’t endanger your fucking life for kicks. Really there are.’
‘Like Jude?’
It was my turn to take a big gulp of wine. ‘Jude’s never done anything like that. But all the same, I’ve been thinking, lately, that maybe it’s not going to work. I thought having a boyfriend would make me happy, but it hasn’t. And I think it’s because he doesn’t really want to make me happy. He’s not a bad person. But maybe “not a bad person” is setting the bar way, way too low.’
‘So it’s back to the drawing board, then? Back to online dating?’
‘I don’t know.’ I thought of Jude, upstairs in my flat, eating the takeaway I’d paid for, maybe commenting on Indigo’s Insta feed. It had been a long time, I realised, since I’d looked at him and felt that rush of excitement, admired the curve of his lips when he smiled and the flicker of his eyes when he laughed. It had been a while since I’d even seen him laugh, except when he’d laughed at me.
‘So “not a bad person” is enough, then? I’m worth more than Fabian, but you’re not worth more than that?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said again.
Twenty-Five
You know what to do with your excess baggage, Aquarius. Ditch it, or pay the price.
Over the next few days, I kept remembering my unequivocal advice to Dani. Dump his sorry arse. Don’t put yourself in danger for a man. No guy is worth this. You deserve so much more.
I remembered it, and I knew it was right. But when I chatted to Dani over coffee and cake at a pavement table after our workout, both of us wrapped up with our hoodies zipped to our chins against the chilly afternoon, and she told me that she had ended it with Fabian – Thank God, I said to myself – there was still something almost wistful in the way she talked about him.
‘I called him and told him it was over,’ she said, her words coming out in a rush. ‘It was horrible, Zoë. He begged me to forgive him. He said he’d never hurt me again, he hadn’t meant to, he’d only done it because he thought it was what I wanted – all that stuff. He sounded almost like he was crying. And then I had to go round to his place to pick up my things and he’d put this massive fuck-off diamond bracelet in with them and it was just as well I noticed and gave it back, otherwise I’d have had to see him again.’
‘You never have to see him again,’ I tried to reassure her, not mentioning that, of course, he could turn up at the gym any time he wanted.
‘You don’t think I overreacted, do you? I mean, if I told him I didn’t like what he was doing, maybe he’d have just stopped, and it would’ve been okay?’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe next time he could have hurt you really badly. Maybe he’d have stopped doing that one thing but carried on pushing your boundaries in other ways.’
She sighed. ‘I suppose you’re right. I do miss him, though, in some ways.’
‘What do you miss, though?’
‘Being able to go out to nice places with a handsome man. Not having to worry about being the only person without a plus-one at weddings for the rest of my life. Not having to worry about never having a wedding of my own. Being able to go home with him and introduce him to Mum, and all my friends back in Liverpool seeing that it was the right thing to have split up with Jamie and made my own way in life. And now I’m back to worrying about all that shit.’
‘But just think about it for a second.’ I waved my fork a bit too vigorously, and a bit of carrot cake flew off it and immediately got devoured by a passing pigeon. ‘If Fabian had been your plus-one at a wedding, what would be the chances of him not turning up? How many times when you went to nice places with him did you end up feeling bored and anxious while he ignored you and talked to his important friends? Would he actually ever have asked you to marry him, even if you put up with his shitty behaviour and dodgy kinks for years and years?’
‘I know, you’re right. Of course you’re right. I’ll just have to get used to being single again,’ Dani said gloomily.
‘Being single’s not so bad. Come on! I was single for years and years and I was fine about it. It’s good to be at peace with yourself, have your own space, no one to answer to but yourself.’
‘It’s easy for you to say that now,’ she pointed out, ‘you’ve got a boyfriend.’
And that shut me up, good and proper. Because I knew that the advice I was so generously dishing out to my friend wasn’t necessarily advice I’d follow myself. Sometimes, when the direct debit for the gas bill came out of my account and left me staring queasily at my bank balance wondering where Frazzle’s next consignment of posh raw food pouches was going to come from, or when I looked at the bathroom mirror and tried to remember the last time Jude had left me a note written with a soapy finger, or when I lay in bed after we’d had sex, sleepless and unsatisfied, I wondered what advice I’d give someone in my situation.
And I knew exactly what it was. Kick him to the kerb. Or maybe, if I was feeling charitable, Tell him to shape up or ship out. He’s just a cocklodger.
But, somehow, I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t Jude’s fault he wasn’t earning much and was working such long hours. It wasn’t fair that I had a job that paid me a decent wage and he didn’t. I got to swan off to the gym in the middle of the day, while he was stuck at work in an office, or walking the streets pushing leaflets through letterboxes, or getting a train to a rally somewhere at six in
the morning. And he couldn’t help that sex wasn’t always satisfying for me. (Wasn’t ever satisfying, said the brutally honest voice in my head.) He always held me and told me he loved me afterwards, before he fell asleep, and often he said he was sorry it had been over so quickly. Before, I’d told him I loved him, too, but now I couldn’t bring myself to say the words.
Maybe, I decided, I should talk to him. I’d pick a moment and have a proper chat, like the grown-ups we both were, and point out ways in which we could make our relationship better.
Over the next few days, I had conversation after conversation with Jude in my head. They all ended the same way: with him saying that of course I was right, he couldn’t believe it had taken him so long to see my point of view. He’d make a contribution to the rent on the flat. He’d make sure he got in early from work at least once a week, on my night off, so we could go out for a meal together. He’d make time over the weekend to help me give the place a good clean.
I never quite worked out what I imagined he would say about how to make things better in bed, because however many times I considered raising that particular issue, I couldn’t find any words at all.
Finally, my moment came. It was Sunday, lunch service at the Ginger Cat was over and for once Jude hadn’t had to go to work, or to a rally, or to some obscure meeting of political people in a pub. So we packed a bottle of wine and a picnic blanket and stopped off at Craft Fever and bought a pack of swanky truffle-flavoured crisps, and walked up the hill to the park. I spread out the blanket and sat down, opening the wine and pouring it into the glasses I’d brought from home, carefully wrapped in the blanket so they wouldn’t chip.
It was a glorious afternoon – one of the last we’d have that year, I thought. The sky was such a deep blue it looked almost purple, and the leaves clashed against it in their early-autumn oranges and golds. Jude spread himself out next to me and put his head in my lap, and I stroked his long hair back from his face, looking down at him and wishing things were simple but knowing they weren’t.
‘So how’s your week been?’ I began tentatively.
‘Fucking horrible,’ Jude said. ‘Relentless. But there’s a proper job vacancy come up, and I’ve been told there’s a decent chance I might get it if I apply.’
This was my moment – or was it? Shouldn’t I wait and, if he did get the job and was earning money, he’d offer to make more of a contribution?
‘That would be amazing,’ I said. I stopped, almost bottling it, but then forced myself to carry on. ‘Because, you see, I’ve been feeling lately that things between us are a bit kind of uneven. Like, in terms of who pays for stuff and who does stuff around the flat, and… you know.’
Jude opened his eyes and stared at me, his face full of reproach. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s just… I mean, when was the last time you bought any groceries, or did any washing or cleaning?’
He sat up, splashing wine into his glass. ‘Are you saying I’m not pulling my weight?’
‘No, of course not. Not exactly. Well, yes, I suppose I am a bit.’
‘You’re saying I should be paying you rent, to sleep with you? Is that it?’
I said, ‘Not rent, obviously. But I don’t get the flat for free. Alice offered, but if I wasn’t living there it could be done up and used for functions and stuff, and so I said I should pay for it.’
‘More fool you,’ Jude said. ‘It’s not all that, anyway, is it? You could find somewhere much better for the same money.’
‘Maybe. But it wouldn’t be right above work, and that’s really convenient for me and Frazzle loves being a pub cat. But that’s not the point. The point is—’
‘You think I’m freeloading. When I earn about ten per cent of what you do, and most of that goes on travel and lunches.’
‘I don’t think you’re freeloading,’ I objected. Although, I realised, that was exactly what I was beginning to think, and Jude’s defensive reaction made me suspect he knew it too. ‘I just feel, sometimes, like the way things are between us isn’t exactly fair.’
Jude looked at me, his expression changing from anger to hurt. ‘I didn’t realise that was what this was about. I thought we had something special, a real connection. Something that could transcend all this stuff. I thought we were both free spirits. I thought you cared about the big issues, just like I do – about justice, and equality, and the planet.’
‘I do care about those things. But it doesn’t feel very just or equal when I’m washing about seventeen of your T-shirts every week. Or particularly great for the planet, for that matter.’
He was still staring at me with those sad eyes. ‘I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. This should be a romantic afternoon and you’re nagging at me like we’ve been married forty years and can’t even remember what romance was.’
‘Pointing out that you haven’t been doing your fair share isn’t nagging. And having to say it doesn’t make me feel particularly romantic, either.’
‘Well, you have now,’ Jude said. ‘Fine. You’ve made your point. We can go back to the flat right now and I’ll put a wash on, if that’ll make you feel better.’
I sipped some of my wine. We hadn’t brought a cooler and it was already losing its chill, the bottle streaming with condensation. All at once, I felt a deep weariness. How easy it would be, I thought, to apologise, thank Jude for offering, say we’d stay here and we could give the flat a bit of a tidy-round together in the evening. How easy it would be to just let things return to how they’d been – how Jude clearly wanted and expected them to be.
But I remembered what the app had said: You know what to do with your excess baggage, Aquarius. Ditch it, or pay the price.
Why was I letting this happen? What was I being taken for a mug? What had happened to fierce, feminist, independent Zoë who’d never be anyone’s doormat?
‘Look, I know you don’t want to hear this,’ I said, ‘but I’m not happy being treated like your chief cook and bottle-washer while you live in my flat without paying a penny. Spiritual connections are all very well, and I really felt – I really feel – like that’s what we have – what we had. But that doesn’t give you the right to treat me like a combination of a 1950s housewife and your mum. And what’s more—’
I stopped. I was full of righteous anger, but not quite full enough to go on to say, ‘Sex with you isn’t all that, either.’
‘Are you saying you don’t want us to be together any more?’ Jude asked. ‘I thought you loved me.’
‘No! Of course I’m not.’ And then I realised that that wasn’t actually the case. He wasn’t going to change. It had been clear from the start: he wanted a free place to stay and a comfortable life, and, like a mug, I’d given it to him, because I’d believed he loved me and wanted to believe I loved him back. I wasn’t sure any more whether he did, but to be totally honest, when it came to me, all I felt was sadness and annoyance. I’d thought we had so much in common, because we liked the same things and believed the same things and cared about the same things. But, I realised, there was one important exception to that: Jude didn’t care about me.
I was going to end it. I was going to have to, if I was to retain even a shred of self-respect. The only question was when, and how. And then I said to myself, Come on, Zoë! Grow a pair! You know this thing’s dead in the water. Do it now.
In my mind, I heard Mike urging me on when I was ready to quit a workout. I remembered myself telling Alice that we’d fight to keep the Ginger Cat alive and open, when it had been under threat of closure by Fabian. I even summoned the picture of Frazzle’s cross, disappointed face whenever he jumped up on the bed and found Jude there.
I could do it. I would do it. I opened my mouth to speak – but Jude got there first.
‘Good!’ he said triumphantly. ‘You can’t dump me. Want to know why?’
‘Why?’ I asked stupidly.
‘Because I’m ending it first.’ His gleeful smile faded away, replaced again wi
th the tragic, hangdog look. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t be with a woman who doesn’t support me one hundred per cent, doesn’t have my back when I need her, doesn’t get me as a person. I thought you were that woman, but hey, we all make mistakes. Indigo says…’
I listened, half outraged and half amused. I knew, now, what he expected me to do. I was supposed to grovel and apologise. I was supposed to insist that he had it wrong, I was the special one, his soulmate. I was the one who was going to try harder, be better, kinder, more accommodating and admiring of this unique and wonderful person who had deigned to allow me to wash his socks, put a roof over his head and be a receptacle for his spunk for three months.
But I wasn’t following the script. Somehow, I’d found my anger – but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing how furious he had made me. That would mean I still cared and, I found, I didn’t any more. Not one bit. Not even about what Indigo said.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’m glad we’re on the same page, and we can end this without any acrimony. Why don’t we head back to the flat and you can pack up your stuff?’
Jude looked at me, then at the half-finished bottle of wine and the unopened pack of crisps. They’d cost me three pounds, even though Archie had given me a discount. This wasn’t the script either, clearly – I was meant to let him stay for one last night, which would turn into two, then three, then the thin end of the wedge.
‘You mean, like, now?’ he asked, his eyes widening in dismay.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think I do.’
And I stood up, waited for him to do the same, then picked up the blanket and shook it vigorously. It felt like I was getting rid of a whole lot more than just grass clippings.
Twenty-Six
If you get your head out of the sand, Aquarius, you might be able to see things as they are, not as you want them to be.
‘So I guess neither of us have boyfriends any more,’ I said to Dani as we left the gym a couple of weeks later, sweaty and out of breath. Summer was truly over now; although evening wasn’t yet falling, the sky was a threatening leaden grey and a thin drizzle misted our skin, making me shiver with cold and the prospect of what it would do to my hair.
Thank You, Next: A perfect, uplifting and funny romantic comedy Page 22