you okay?’ Anais asked into my ear as she left, hugging me close. ‘You seem …’
But I avoided her eyes, shrugging out of our cuddle and seeing her out with some paint-by-numbers thirty-something rambling about a busy week and work worries.
I eat the rest of the brownies, alone, leaning over the kitchen sink. It’s a while before I hear from Anais again; definitely longer than normal.
December
Suddenly, there is a loud giggle from next door that makes me jump. It’s not Lexie, it’s a woman who is less softly spoken, and I can hear Lexie replying, louder than normal to match her friend, and laughing heartily.
Tom has been away for a few days now, I think, so Lexie’s spending some time with the rest of the people in her life. I am irked at her greed. A beautiful boyfriend who brings her curry and loves her and friends, proper friends, who share in-jokes with her and pop round for tea. Does this really happen?
‘Just Harriet,’ she shouts as I stop playing my piano for a second and jolt.
It is the incongruity of my name, heard through the wall where I thought that I did not exist. But like they exist to me, I exist to them. I look down and see my hand shaking. The spell is broken and I can’t even focus on my piano.
Then they laugh again, loudly and together.
Through the wall, I am a person. They acknowledge me. They speak about me. They laugh at me. If there’s one thing I can’t take, Lexie, it’s people laughing at me.
My heart is pounding.
It’s been three days since I saw Tom/Luke getting into the lift with his curry. The hair. The shoulders. That nose. I shiver. I can’t sleep and I’m behind on a deadline for the score on a children’s musical. The guy I am working for is getting twitchy and my usual desire to impress has deserted me. I don’t care. I am focused on Lexie. I feel a surge of rage.
I can’t even get it together to put the generic flowers in a generic vase. They finally made it off the floor, but they are limp now, lying on the table in their plastic, begging for a drink like a neglected puppy. What can I say? I’m not one of life’s nurturers.
All I can do is Google. It starts innocently enough but then, of course, I search for Luke, even though I know that online he manages not to exist, in case the woman he was supposed to spend his life with sees news of a job promotion or the gig he went to last night.
I Google again.
Luke Miller, Chicago. Luke Miller, media companies. Nothing.
I slam my head back against the sofa and consider what he thinks I would do if I found him. See a social media food shot and book a flight to New York to queue up outside the diner where it was taken, in the hope that he came back for another rare burger and this time, I snared him? Or something worse? Something like last time.
I bang my laptop shut and sit, ruminating.
I should have been married now. Perhaps I’d have a baby, asleep in an upstairs cot somewhere in Hertfordshire. Or maybe Luke would have fetched my backpack and told me we were off, to travel around Europe. We’d come as far as the UK together from the US already, and we might have gone for a year of eating Comté cheese in France and devouring art in Barcelona. Whatever he had wanted, obviously. That’s how it had worked.
I look down suddenly, realise I’m in pain. My nails have been digging so deeply into my hand that there is blood; I have pulled off cuticles and left skin red raw. It throws me. I didn’t notice the harm being caused. I rarely do.
Perhaps Luke would still be all about London. It would only have been four years and he adored it here. We earned good money, me as a songwriter for musicals and TV shows, and Luke in media sales. We – well, he – had a huge circle of friends. Thursday nights I would beg to come along to his work drinks in a fancy hotel bar near The Strand. Occasionally, he gave in.
There are tears now, threatening to jump.
Weekends, thankfully, were usually more private. We’d take our hangovers for chilly walks up Primrose Hill, Luke’s sensitive teeth hurting from the cold and both of our ears pinching until we found a pub to serve us tea in front of a fire.
We’d defrost, pull off hats, flick through the supplements. I’d pretend to lose at Scrabble to avoid a row. I’d pet the spaniel across the bar and fantasise about a future full of dogs, and then Luke would frown and point out all the reasons why pets were a terrible idea. I’d realise quickly, of course, that he was right.
‘Weren’t you thinking of getting a pet?’ asked my mom one day on the phone.
‘Luke doesn’t think it’s a good idea,’ I said, forgetting to edit.
‘But what do you think, Harriet?’ she said, gently but firmly. ‘Sometimes I think you’re so caught up in what Luke wants that you forget to ask yourself that these days.’
I hung up. Started calling less often.
In my version of us in the future, I would be better, too. The sort of person who didn’t forget I was supposed to be dieting and order chips, and not the sort of person who wears the wrong-shaped jeans and has a haircut that ‘seriously, you’ve had since 2003’. Thanks, Luke.
I am crying now, unstoppable. In February this year, one year after we got engaged, Luke left me.
I take out some nail scissors and start snipping at the ends of my long, dull blonde hair before realising what I’m doing with a jolt and going back to work. Trying to go back to work.
I Google Lexie again and this time I click the ‘images’ tab. It’s not like searching for Luke. Searching for Lexie gives you all kinds of information. She isn’t a blogger showing off her life but she does elicit a hundred or so pictures, even for the general public, of which, I suppose – for now – I am still a part.
Lexie lying propped up on her elbow on a beach with her giant, wild, curly brunette hair loose around brown shoulders. Lexie at a laptop, absorbed in her words with a fresh coffee next to her and a Jo Malone candle lit on her immaculate desk. I roll my eyes.
A selfie of Lexie and Tom next to a Christmas tree in their flat. I peer at that one for longer, trying to work out where they are in the mirror image of my home; analysing the small amount of background that I can see.
Eventually, I move on. There’s a picture of Lexie in heels and a pencil skirt with professionally done make-up looking steadfastly without smiling to the camera, one hand on a beautifully curved hip.
She looks incredible; a world away from the freckled girl on the beach or the Lexie in front of the Christmas tree. Online, Lexie is a changeling Barbie to me, and this is the Going Out version.
She goes out with confidence, she goes out with good hair, she goes out with Tom. There are pictures of her throwing her head back and laughing with friends,
