December had arrived with a ferocious blast in Dublin. An unexpected flurry of snow overnight had turned mainly to slush and as Ginger looked out of her bedroom window onto the street below, she could see nothing but a mild dusting of early snow on the car roofs. She could still feel the chill in the air, even though her heating had come on. No matter what the weather was though, she walked, although today it would have to be a speedy one – today she had a horrible job to do in Ballyglen and a photographer was picking her up in an hour.
Carla must have mentioned that no newspaper had still got the exclusive on Jason Reynolds’ abandoned wife – now apparently exonerated by the police – and Carla thought it would be wonderful to ‘have someone with Ginger’s empathy talk to her’. Yeah, right.
She pulled on her dressing gown, went out into the living room, switching on lights, and greeted her beloved guinea pigs.
‘Good morning darlings,’ she said, reaching into their luxury guinea pigs’ duplex. There was no sign of either of them: burrowing in their soft nests against the early cold, she figured.
Her walk had become an integral part of her day. It was her meditation. How had nobody told her that when you walked and breathed in the fresh air, and looked at the trees growing around you and the canal floating beside you with its birds and wildlife, that your mind could be freed to rest. It wasn’t the hardcore workout sessions she’d done with Will, but in some ways it was better.
She tried not to think about Will so much anymore. It was easier that way. Love hurt.
That was another thing she thought a lot about on her morning walks, that love hurt so much. She must have been crazy to have dreamed of love and men and finding that perfect person to spend her life with. What if you found the perfect person and they still hurt you? What happened then? She had meant to throw out all the novels she’d loved for years, where heroic men won the hearts of women who had been through so much, but she couldn’t bear to do it and now she allowed herself to read them, for comfort.
Sometimes you need to comfort yourself because nobody else is going to do it. You need to be kind to yourself. Remember that, girls: you have to take care of you and find the simple things that make you happy. For me, it can be books, but for you it might be chocolate, or a run, or talking with your friends or talking to your mother or hugging your pet.
Ginger had given that advice in a Girlfriend column just the other week and she hadn’t flinched when she’d written about her mother. She’d been so lucky with her family, even if her mother hadn’t been there. But her mother had left her so many wonderful things, like her father and her two brothers and Aunt Grace and then Esmerelda had come along, as had Zoe, Margaret, Jodie, Paula, Lulu and Fiona. There were so many wonderful people in Ginger’s life.
Besides, she’d changed so much in the last six months, it was incredible to think of herself now and compare herself with the Ginger who’d been so heartbroken on her birthday. Oh, she was still the same girl but stronger and wiser and more confident.
She and Alice were discussing her coming out from behind the Girlfriend pseudonym.
Ginger had asked for a bit of time to get ready for it.
‘I’ve had a bit of a setback,’ she confided to Alice, no longer astonished that she was having a meaningful conversation with this woman who’d once intimidated her so much.
‘OK,’ said Alice. ‘But I have so many plans for you, Ginger – you can be the face of bigger, beautiful women, like that fabulous model, Ashley Graham.’
‘I’m not exactly beautiful,’ Ginger had said, laughing.
‘Course you are,’ stated Alice, almost crossly. ‘How can we stop women being blackmailed by “thin is best” messages, if the advice giver lets herself be blackmailed too?’
But she’d grudgingly agreed to give Ginger some time.
‘OK, go off and sob about your long-lost love, honey, but think of your career too?’
It was freezing when Ginger stepped outside the apartment and started off at a brisk pace towards the canal. She liked to use this time to think about the advice she was dispensing through her column to her online readers. It was one of the online magazine’s most popular pages. She had learned so much in the past six months and that wisdom was springing out of her and she wanted to help other women with it. Thanks to her new and stronger advice, and the honesty and candour with which she gave it, Girlfriend was growing a huge audience. Ginger was making more from that than from her job on the newspaper. Alice was right – it was time. Then she wouldn’t have to schlep down to doorstep a poor woman who’d been abandoned to the wolves by her own husband and who was probably in so much pain, she didn’t know which way was up.
‘I’ll send a good photographer with you,’ the features editor said. ‘He can do the actual doorstepping. You just need to get her into your confidence.’
Ginger was sick, thinking of that.
Sometimes she hated this job.