‘Just to say, I hate you and I never want to see you again.’
My intention at 2.03 a.m. was clearly to sound calm. And yet, the underlying vibe was fury. Just to say, last Saturday was my first date in six months, I’d written, which made me groan out loud in bed because it managed to sound cross and tragic at the same time. Quite a skill, that.
I read on, my stomach sinking further at each word. Just to say, last Saturday was my first date in six months. Which was kind of a big deal for me. And I know you’re busy climbing mountains or whatever but I think it’s polite to reply to messages from people you’ve shagged. X
FUCK’S SAKE, LIL, TELL IT TO A THERAPIST. TELL IT TO JESS. TELL IT TO GRACE. TELL IT TO THE MAN WHO SERVES YOU COFFEE IN THE PORTUGUESE CAFE. JUST DON’T TELL IT TO MAX.
The single ‘X’ was a hilariously mental touch too. The subtext, basically, was ‘I’m furious and want to rant at you, but I’m also going to try and sound normal by rounding off this message as if we’re mates.’
There was no reply, obviously. And he’d read it at… 7.22 this morning. I rolled over on to my front and screamed into my pillow. That was it. I’d disgraced myself. I’d become one of those people you worry about becoming. We knew it was in all of us, this propensity to be a psycho, but the trick was to try and stop it slipping out. To maintain the façade of sanity until you’d been with someone for, what, six months? A year? Only then could you start absolutely losing it over things – their inability to pick up socks, their stubble shavings scattered across the basin like iron filings, when they liked a random girl’s photo on Instagram.
What you absolutely shouldn’t do is hint at any sort of lunacy after one date. Not that there would be another date with Max. I knew that for sure now. I wouldn’t blame him if he stayed safely up that unpronounceable mountain. And somehow, this pitiful scenario felt worse because Max was famous. As if he’d be sitting round the campfire or wherever they sat on the mountains, joking about it with his climbing pals. He probably had this all the time, groupies sending him desperate messages.
I roared into my pillow again. How had this happened? We’d been at the gallery for a couple of hours, I remembered that. Then we went to a pub round the corner. Then? I supposed I’d had one too many glasses of wine. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I was livid with myself. And I felt a hot sense of shame sweep through me. I was literally never having sex again.
IT WAS THREE WEEKS later, on the train home to Norfolk, that I developed an inkling. Or maybe the word ‘inkling’ is too strong. It suggests that I knew what was coming, which I didn’t, despite what certain people claimed later. But it was on the train that the possibility presented itself in my head and, milliseconds later, my body responded by convulsing with fear. Shit. What if? Nah, couldn’t be. And yet? What if?
It was all thanks to Jess, who’d decided to come home with me for the weekend because she said she wanted to escape London for the ‘wilds’ of the country. This seemed ambitious considering we were off to stay in my parents’ semi in Castleton, but Jess had overly romantic ideas about life. She was late to Liverpool Street that Saturday morning so I picked up our tickets and dithered for ten minutes in Caffè Nero wondering whether I could stomach a Danish. I felt sick, which was weird, because I hadn’t been out drinking last night. I stood in front of the glass cabinet frowning to myself. What did I have for supper? I remembered. My ‘special’ pesto pasta – pasta, couple of spoonfuls of pesto and a few peas – the ‘special’ element of this gourmet dinner – lobbed in from a bag in the freezer so I could tell myself I was getting one of my five a day. But it didn’t contain anything sinister, so why did I feel vommy, as if saliva was pooling at the back of my throat?
‘Can I have an Americano please? Medium?’ I said to the woman behind the till. She wordlessly nodded at the card machine in front of me.
I reached down for the purse in my bag and stood up again, but had to put a hand on the counter to steady myself. I felt like I’d been out until 3 a.m. doing parkour in the streets, yet all I’d done was eat my pasta on the sofa with Grace and Riley while we watched a weird Netflix documentary they’d chosen about dolphins. Did you know that dolphins masturbate? I didn’t. Male dolphins wrap wriggling eels around their penises apparently and that does it for them. Isn’t that odd? It made me think quite differently about ever wanting to swim with dolphins. Each to their own but I prefer a vibrator. Although even that had felt like too much work last night, so after the documentary finished I’d dragged myself into bed and, before I could hear any of Grace and Riley’s own mating rituals, fallen asleep.
I picked up my coffee from the end of the counter just as my phone rang in my coat pocket.
‘Morning, darling, I’m here,’ said Jess.
‘Hi. Just grabbing a coffee in Nero. But we should maybe hurry up because…’ I pulled my phone away from my ear to check the time, ‘we’ve only got eight minutes so our platform should be up.’
‘Amazing, I’m desperate for a coffee. Wait there and I’ll come find you,’ said Jess, ignoring my mention of the train. In the eleven years I’d known her, she’d never been early, or on time, to anything. ‘Sorry, Italian blood,’ she’d say, shrugging, and not sounding remotely sorry whenever she arrived at the pub half an hour late.
I hovered at the door of Caffè Nero, scanning the station for a familiar blonde head. There she was, not moving with any sense of urgency, rolling along in a leather jacket with a red canvas bag hanging over her shoulder. She waved as she got closer.
‘Hello, my heart. Let me get this coffee. What an adventure, I can’t wait to see your parents, it’s been FOR EVER.’
‘Could I have a cappuccino please? Large?’ she asked the Caffè Nero lady, before turning back to me, grinning.
‘Guess what?’ she said.
I narrowed my eyes at her and took a swig of my coffee. ‘Er, dunno. Give me a clue.’
‘OK. How do I look this morning?’
I scrutinized her face. It was a face I knew almost as well as my own. Unfairly small nose, wide mouth, brown eyes which were generally thick with black liner, hair, well, generally all over the place but today it was pulled over one shoulder in a plait.
I shrugged. ‘Had your eyebrows done?’
She shook her head. ‘Guess again.’
‘Cappuccino,’ grunted the coffee lady, putting Jess’s cup down at the end of the counter.
‘Come on,’ I said, checking the time on my phone again. ‘We’ve got to go. Can’t stand round playing Guess Who?. Tell me on the train.’
Since it was early Saturday morning, the train was empty. One middle-aged man in a rugby shirt sitting at a table, reading his paper.
‘This one?’ I said, gesturing at a free table opposite him.
Jess nodded and sat. ‘OK, since you’re not going to guess it, I’ll tell you,’ she said. ‘Are you listening?’
‘Yup,’ I said, sniffing my coffee. I wasn’t even sure I could drink it. I felt like swallowing anything would make me gag.
‘Lil?’
