the few metres to the bar.
‘Lexie!’ bellows a man I used to work with who has definitely had at least three beers.
I order a glass of red wine and a few more and refuse to feel guilty about fertility advice not to drink. We have a plan now. This is my last hurrah.
‘Pitch to me!’ says my old editor.
‘I will,’ I promise, and I mean it.
And you know what, I think, as I look round the bar full of men with their ties pulled off and a waiter walking around asking anyone if they ordered chips, no one else is perfect, either. I am okay. I am going to be okay.
‘You’ve been so off radar, Lexie, we’ve missed you,’ says Shona as she squeezes me in a one-arm cuddle.
And because we’re on our own at the table, everybody else standing, I make a snap decision.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, one-arm cuddling her back. ‘I’ve had some fertility stuff going on. I don’t think I’ve been dealing with it well.’
I hold by breath. I said that out loud, I think. I did it.
‘Oh, bloody hell, Lexie,’ she sighs. ‘I wish you’d told me. Me, too. That’s why I’m leaving work, to be less stressed.’ She pauses. ‘And that’s why …’
‘You’re drinking Diet Coke,’ I fill in, laughing. ‘Oh God, the booze guilt is the worst, isn’t it?’
‘Only beaten by the sugar guilt, and the wheat guilt, and the ‘are you having enough sex’ guilt,’ she replies, eye-rolling.
I’m laughing harder than I have in a long time and it’s that easy not to feel alone. You confide and you’re confided in and you empathise, and you find the comedy in the awfulness. Why did I imagine some invisible rulebook that said I had to keep this to myself? That no one wanted to be burdened by my problems? That it was kind of … tacky to bring it up?
A psychologist would probably track it back to my childhood. I think of my mum, flitting into a room and out again, and my dad, heading away for work for two weeks at a time, and I think – there were no windows. There were no windows available for people to ask for help or to analyse. Was that deliberate? Did my parents – the children of postwar stoics – avoid leaving any windows open, so that things didn’t get too emotional?
‘I hope things get better for you soon,’ I say, still squeezed into her, close. ‘You’d make such a cool mum, even though I know it’s crap when people say that.’
She cuddles me, tight.
‘We should meet up soon,’ I say to her, mid-hug. ‘I’ll go nuts and buy you an elderflower pressé.’
I feel her shoulders shake and I don’t know if she is laughing or crying, but I tighten my arms around her, just in case.
I am not the only one here living this, consumed by it. They’re everywhere, the other mes. I’ve just been so wrapped up in my own narrative that I haven’t seen them. But I want to. I want to help them, and bond with them, and cuddle them. I hold onto Shona, even more tightly.
January
I am in a bar, watching Lexie. Similar to when I followed Tom, I just want to know how she works, what she does when she has a moment alone. But Lexie doesn’t have time alone; she makes sure of it.
Lexie is laughing and sipping wine and I am drinking wine too, faster than her, and I am not laughing.
I am not worried about Lexie seeing me because it is dark in here and busy, and she is surrounded – of course – by friends.
So I am able to sit at this safe distance and stare at her as she touches her hands to her hair and face, pulls at the side of her skirt. Nerves, Lexie? Thinking about that YouTube baby you heard crying before you left the flat? I see her drinking and I judge her. From my now extensive online research on fertility issues, I know that alcohol is a fuel to them. Tut-tut, Lexie. Does Tom know you’re throwing away your baby chances with every sip of that large red? It’s almost like you don’t deserve it anyway. It’s almost like you don’t deserve your whole lovely fucking life.
‘Want some company?’ says a man who is too small for me anyway but pretty.
I examine his clothes and I can tell: he isn’t someone who people would view as cool. I steadfastly ignore him, fixed stare in place. He goes to say something but he can’t think what and he simply retreats. A little smaller now, a little less sure. Briefly, part of me feels guilty. But I need to focus.
I see Lexie having a deeper chat than the others, a personal one. I tilt my head to one side thoughtfully, trying to read Lexie and the girl’s facial expressions and work out what they are saying. The other girl sips Diet Coke. They hug, at a certain point, like one of them is dying.
When Lexie goes to the toilet I go along – like girlfriends do! – and slip into the cubicle next to her. I stay in there while she washes her hands and reapplies her lipstick, humming to herself happily.
‘How’s freelancing going?’ asks the woman next to her.
‘It has its ups and downs,’ says Lexie plainly. ‘But mostly I’m glad I did it.’
Something we have in common actually, Lexie. Perhaps we could be friends. If I wasn’t about to ruin your life.
She continues. ‘Nice to keep your own hours but a bit lonelier than the old office.’
‘No Thursday crisps for dinner club?’ her friend asks, spraying musk perfume that drifts into my cubicle.
Lexie erupts in a guffaw.
‘No Thursday crisps for dinner club,’ she laments. ‘Oh God, I miss crisps for dinner club.’
I go back to my spot at the side of the bar, where I pick up my bottle of wine and top myself up then carry on watching Lexie.
Lexie leaves at 11.30 p.m. and I slip out after her. She stops at the corner of the road and swaps her heels for ballet pumps. I’m close enough to hear her sigh of relief as her toes yawn into the shoes.
We even take the same bus home. I’m a few rows behind her, face buried in a scarf, but she wouldn’t notice me anyway. Her own face is buried in her phone.
I look at her social media as she updates it and see comments on a selfie telling her she looks good. She did. I glance up. She does. But I log into the account that I’ve created under a new name and tell her she doesn’t. Tell her the opposite. Tell her that she looks hideous, and old. I watch her shoulders fall and I know, even from here, that she is reading it. Glass, Lexie, thin glass. Smashable, which is convenient.
She gets in the elevator and our night together ends. I loiter outside and head up a few minutes later.
When
