about this and I had been blindsided. If anyone needed space, it was me.
‘Oi, Liv, Mr Harries is here—’ David stuck his head out of the door, took one look at Adam, one look at me and slammed it shut again. ‘Never mind,’ he shouted through the letterbox, ‘I’ll sort it.’
‘Look, I said I’m sorry,’ Adam said, ignoring David’s interruption. ‘I don’t understand why you’re so pissed off.’
‘I’m so pissed off because at three o’clock this morning you apparently broke up with me,’ I explained, beating the flowers in the palm of my hand until there was a carpet of baby pink petals under my feet. ‘And now you want me to pretend it never happened. It was only nine hours ago, Adam. What is going on? You’ve changed your mind now? Nine hours was a long enough break, was it? I. Just. Don’t. Understand.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t long enough.’ I could tell he was annoyed now. Clearly he thought his five-quid apology flowers were going to be enough. ‘If you’re going to be like this, maybe I could use a bit more time.’
‘Fine!’ I shouted.
‘Fine!’ he shouted back.
For a moment, we stood in silence in the car park, neither one of us moving or speaking and I was unsure whether to carry on arguing or run and hide. Adam clenched and unclenched his hands and I could see the same options spinning around in his eyes, like a human fruit machine.
I would not speak first, I would not speak first, I would not speak first …
‘So what?’ he said eventually. ‘What do you want?’
Less than three days ago my answer would have been ‘to get engaged’; now I didn’t have a clue what to tell him.
‘You’re the one who wanted something,’ I reminded him, bitterly pleased he had been the one to break the awkward silence. At some point, our conversation had turned into a competition I was desperate to win, even though I didn’t really know what that meant. ‘You can’t say you want to break up one minute and pretend everything is all right the next without some sort of explanation.’
He straightened himself up to his full height, towering over me as he nodded, either because he agreed or he was trying to convince himself that he did, I wasn’t sure.
‘Fine,’ he said again. ‘I mean, yes. A bit of space might be a good idea, you’re right.’
It was such an Adam thing to do, turn the situation around to make it seem like it was my idea in the first place. But there was no point making this worse than it already was by pointing that out. I rolled my eyes, turning back towards the surgery so that he wouldn’t see. David’s head was just visible through the frosted-glass pane in the door, and I realized he was listening to everything through the letterbox.
‘I’ve got to get back to work,’ I said, pointing behind me with my battered bouquet. ‘I really can’t get into this now.’
Or possibly ever.
‘Fine,’ he replied. So help me god, if he said ‘fine’ one more time … ‘I’ll talk to you later.’
‘When?’ I asked. ‘Specifically?’
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. For the first time since he’d shown up, he actually looked like he was in pain. Without warning, all my fire and brimstone burned away, leaving nothing but a stick figure, holding onto a bunch of broken flowers with a lump in my throat. ‘But I will call you.’
‘OK.’
My gaze settled on his shoes and I couldn’t even look at him. I didn’t think I’d ever felt so unsure around him and that included the time I got so drunk, the second time I stayed over at his house that I puked into his pillowcase.
He automatically stepped towards me for a kiss but stopped just before he reached me. My shoulders seized as he pressed his lips against my cheek instead.
‘See you later, Liv.’
I watched as he climbed into the car and drove away, shopping bags bouncing around in the back seat.
‘You all right?’ David asked behind me, opening the door slowly. ‘Want me to tell Mr Harries to stop being such a daft twat and send him home?’
‘No.’ I turned on my heel, handing him my flowers, taking a deep breath. Not yet, not yet, not yet. ‘I think doing that myself might actually make me feel a bit better. There’s only an hour of surgery left, I’ll be OK.’
‘Sainsbury’s?’ he turned the bouquet over in his hands and gave it a disapproving sniff. ‘Even I know better than that. Shall I put them in water?’
‘Water or the bin, I don’t really care as long as I don’t have to look at them.’
‘Excellent choice.’ David closed the door behind us as I strode back into the surgery. ‘Glad to see you’re OK. I heard some of it. What a tosspot.’
‘Not now,’ I said, taking out my topknot, winding it up and wrapping the elastic band around my hair so securely, I looked like one of the Real Housewives. All of the Real Housewives. ‘Give me a minute and then send in Mr Harries, please?’
I swallowed hard and the edges of my vision began to blur. Not yet, I told myself, not until I was alone.
‘Whatever you say, doc,’ he said, unconvinced. ‘I might pop upstairs and put a bottle of wine in the fridge as well. Just in case we fancy an after work bevvy.’
‘Make it two,’ I called after him. ‘Dinner and dessert.’
‘That’s why you’re the boss,’ he said, shooting me the double guns. ‘You’re so wise.’
I watched as he sauntered off down the hallway, holding my flowers to his chest like Miss World. Despite being considerably younger than me, and one hundred per cent more male, he was usually right about most things, but in this instance I wasn’t so sure. I certainly didn’t feel very wise. I closed the back door to the examination room and made sure the other door that opened into the waiting room was securely latched. Safely locked away, I lay back on the steel examination table and popped my stethoscope around my neck, bouncing the weight of the drum in the palm of my hand until I calmed down. I loved my stethoscope so much, sometimes I put it on with my pyjamas while I was watching telly but today it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t sure if anything was.
‘What is happening?’ I whispered, staring up at the flickering fluorescent tube above me.
Two fat tears slid out the corners of my eyes, ran over my temples and into my hair. Had I spent so much time fretting over when he was going to propose, I’d missed the signs of an impending break-up? This wasn’t my first rodeo; I’d been the dumper and the dumped in my thirty years on this planet but I hadn’t seen this coming. Adam and me weren’t supposed to break up, ever. He was mine and I was his, why would I have looked for signs?
Was this why he was so anxious on Monday night? Not because he was going to propose but because he knew he was going to break up with me when we got home. Another warm tear plopped out of my left eye and made a beeline for my inner ear, making me shiver. But then he’d changed his mind. Probably got home to an empty
