OK to cry,’ she said.
‘I’m not that sad,’ I said.
‘Just let it out.’
‘I’m not crying,’ I said, which wasn’t strictly true.
She handed me the tissue box triumphantly.
I called Cat on my way home from Nicky’s. I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts, and I could always rely on Cat to tell me an anecdote about her terrible career to put my problems in perspective.
‘Do you fancy a drink?’ I asked, when she picked up the phone.
‘I wish,’ she said. ‘I’m in Birmingham. Doing the life cycle of the frog again.’ She sounded a little out of breath. She’d probably been having energetic sex too.
‘When are you back?’ I asked, sidestepping a puddle.
‘Not for ages,’ she said. ‘It’s a UK tour.’
‘Ooh!’
‘Of primary schools.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m probably going to get nits again. Or impetigo.’
Cat couldn’t get work as a dancer after school – every company she auditioned for said, ‘You have the wrong body type,’ which is the legal way of saying ‘You’re black.’ But instead of doing what I did when my dance career ended – moving back in with my parents and swearing never to perform again, except to sing my signature version of ‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody’ at karaoke nights – she retrained as an actor. Now she earned most of her money performing in Theatre in Education shows, playing roles like ‘frog’ and ‘plastic bottle that won’t disintegrate’ and ‘uncomfortably warm polar bear’. I think we probably stayed close over the years because neither of us could stand our other friends from dance school, with their OMG I just got cast in Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Swan Lake! #Blessed Instagram posts. I did feel envious of Cat sometimes, though. She still got to experience the thrill of applause, even though the people applauding sometimes pulled each other’s hair and had to be sent to the naughty corner.
‘Lacey’s playing the frogspawn,’ Cat continued, ‘and she won’t stop going on about the musical she’s writing about periods.’
‘I bet that’s actually going to be really successful,’ I said.
‘It is, isn’t it? Oh God …’
I heard a muffled sort of stretching sound on the other end of the line.
‘Are you taking your tadpole costume off?’ I asked her. ‘Go on, sing me the tadpole song again.’
‘I’m the frog this time. Fucking green leotard is a size too small.’
‘You’ve been promoted!’
‘Very funny,’ said Cat. ‘One of the kids came up to me today and said, “You’re not a real frog. You’re too big.” I swear six-year-olds are getting stupider.’ More stretching and shuffling, and then a grunt of effort. ‘Got it off.’
‘So now you’re naked.’
‘Yep. This is basically phone sex,’ she said.
‘This is the closest I’ve come to a shag in three years.’ I gave myself a mental pat on the back. At least I could joke about it.
‘I thought I had it bad,’ Cat said. ‘Lacey’s been shagging Steve, the new tadpole, all tour, and I’ve been feeling like a total third wheel.’
‘You’re best off out of that,’ I said. ‘Tadpoles shagging frogspawn is all wrong. Sort of like incest.’ I tucked my phone under my chin and unlocked the front door.
‘How are you anyway? How’s work?’ asked Cat.
‘Too boring to talk about.’
‘You need a creative outlet outside work.’
‘No thanks,’ I said. All I wanted to do was watch TV without listening to people have sex. I sat on the sofa, coat still on, and felt around between the cushions for the remote. Come Dine with Me was on, and Alice and Dave were out. This was shaping up to be a good evening.
I was a little late to work the next day, so my usual desk was taken. I waved at Owen, who I usually sit with, across the grey no-man’s-land of desks and chairs. I could feel other people looking up at me from the trenches, so I ducked down into the nearest seat, next to Stan, one of the press officers. I usually try to avoid Stan, because he breathes loudly and eats crisps all day. An unsociable combination. This morning he’d gone for salt and vinegar rather than cheese and onion, which was a blessing.
I couldn’t concentrate on logging the new emails and letters – my session with Nicky was still playing on my mind – so I pulled out the latest letter from Eric, the Bomber Command vet, written on thin, yellowing lined paper in shaky blue biro, and started drafting my reply.
You’re not supposed to draft a stock response to government correspondence – you’re supposed to treat each letter writer as an individual. There are guidelines that tell you how to address a Baroness (‘Baroness Jones, not Lady Jones; it’s important to distinguish Baronesses from women who become Ladies when their husbands become Sirs’) and how to refuse an invitation to a Minister (‘Unfortunately, pressures on her diary are so great that she must regretfully decline’). Sometimes you take letters to the Minister for their signature. Sometimes, if the letter isn’t addressed to the Minister, you sign it yourself. Some people write back over and over again, so working on the correspondence team is a bit like having lots of self-righteous pen pals. Eric, the Bomber Command veteran, wasn’t self-righteous, though.
The care home staff are under so much pressure that they don’t have as much time to spend with us as they used to. I think the cuts to social care are a crying shame. Older people are an easy target, because once we reach a certain age, we’re hidden away out of sight.
Most of the old dears at my care home don’t get any visitors at all. That just breaks my heart. I’m lucky – I have a daughter who comes and sees me twice a week. She’s very good. But it’s very lonely getting older. I miss Eve, my wife, more than I can tell you. She died four years ago. Have I told you about her already?
Lovely Eric. He reminded me of my granddad, who I missed every day. When I was at university, Granddad had written to me every month or so, in wobbly, old-fashioned handwriting, telling me stories about his allotment and his cats, always slipping a ten-pound note into the envelope. I had usually been too busy getting drunk to write back. So I took extra care with my letters to Eric. I typed out the old lines about difficult choices and austerity, and then I asked him to tell me more about his wife, because I knew what it was like to be lonely. I caught myself thinking: At least he had a wife. And then I realized that being envious of a bereaved care home resident was taking self-pity too far, and decided to pull myself together.
I
