17
One week turned to two, and then three. Jeremy had been thrilled when I’d told him that Mr Bryant had dropped the insurance claim, though I clammed up when he asked for specifics.
‘Just so long as the sly dog doesn’t try any more of his tricks,’ he warned as he adjusted the cuffs on his floral shirt. One of these days, I was sure he was going to appear in a pair of polished wingtips and a black fedora.
‘Don’t worry,’ I assured him, ‘we won’t hear from him again.’
He winked and told me I’d done ‘a bang-up job’.
The wedding plans continued apace. A stack of invitations arrived and sat accusatorily on the kitchen counter, waiting to be stuffed and sent. Christopher and I made a shortlist of possible bands, exchanged long, torturous emails about the guest list, and made tentative enquiries into applying for a marriage license. I sent Isla links to bridesmaids’ dresses, and she even admitted that one of them didn’t make her want to pull out her eye teeth and swallow them. Progress, all of it.
When a large Manila envelope turned up on my desk at work with a Texas postmark in the upper-right corner, I didn’t open it. I didn’t need to – I knew what was inside. I promised myself every morning that I’d deal with it, and every night I left for home with it still unopened in my desk drawer.
Other than that, I didn’t hear from Jackson. He was a man of his word – he’d sent the papers and left me alone. I tried to convince myself that I was grateful, but couldn’t quite manage it.
Christopher and I settled back into our routine. He brought me tea in the mornings before heading off to work, and I made sure the house was stocked with pies in the evening. Friday nights we ate Kung Pao chicken on the sofa, and on Sunday afternoons we ate roast dinners in the Queen’s Head. He went running. I read. Everything went back to normal.
Only I couldn’t get Mr Bryant out of my head. To be that grief-stricken that you wanted to take your own life … I thought of my mother. I thought about what Mr Bryant had said, about it not being grief that made people crazy, but love. It began to gnaw at the edges of me.
Another week passed, and then it was Saturday night, and Ben and Lucy were due to arrive for dinner any minute. I had a chicken and leek pie in the oven, and a steak and kidney cooling on the side and I was now sprinting around the flat desperately cramming bits of clutter and detritus into cupboards and underneath beds.
‘Where are my pants?’ Christopher cried as he dashed down the hall, still naked from the shower.
‘I put them in the wash!’ I called after his retreating back.
He stopped in his tracks and turned around. ‘Bollocks.’ I wondered if he was being literal, until he added, ‘They were my last pair.’
‘Well,’ I said, stuffing a pile of junk mail into the cutlery drawer, ‘you’ll have to go commando!’
He grimaced. ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’
‘It’s good for them.’
‘Good for who?’
‘Them!’ I cried, waving towards his nether region. ‘Your … wrinkly twins.’
‘Oh Christ,’ he muttered, before sloping off to the bedroom.
‘Hurry!’ I found a couple of loose screws languishing on the coffee table – where had they come from? Where? – and tossed them in the crack between the sofa cushions.
They were, of course, late. What had I expected? They were in their mid-twenties and in love. They were probably late to everything. It turned out to be a blessing, anyway, as it gave me a chance to sort through the cutlery to find four clean forks and light the fancy smelly candle I’d bought.
When they finally did turn up, a cool forty-five minutes late, Christopher and I had already sunk two glasses of wine each and were both a little unsteady on our feet when we answered the door.
‘Hello!’ I said, slightly too loudly. Ben immediately thrust a bouquet of tulips wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine into my arms (hipster flowers, of course). I stepped aside to let the two of them in.
Ben was wearing what I can only describe as his version of Sunday Best: a pair of black drainpipes, a white shirt buttoned all the way up, and polished brogues so pointy, my shins winced instinctively. I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and pushed him out of the way so I could get to Lucy.
‘Hello!’ I cried. ‘You must be Lucy!’ It occurred to me that I was acting like someone’s deranged great aunt.
Lucy looked like a modern-day wood nymph, tiny and slight, her blonde curls tumbling almost to her waist. She was wearing an outfit that would have had me committed, but looked achingly cool on her, all long layers and jangly jewellery and mismatched prints. She looked as if she should be living in a hollowed-out tree in a copse somewhere rather than a studio in Homerton.
‘Hello,’ she said, extending a minuscule hand. Her voice was much louder and deeper than expected, and both Christopher and I jumped.
‘Should we take off our shoes?’ Ben asked, finger already looped around the back of his brogue. His eyes darted around the flat, and I saw him take in the framed print over the fireplace, the patterned rug spread under the mid-century modern coffee table, and my fancy candle flickering away.
The realization struck me like a thunderbolt. He thinks we’re grown-ups.
I glanced at his face, which was pale with nerves.
It was worse than that. He thought I was his mother. He was basically introducing his girlfriend to his work-mom.
‘No!’ I was shouting now, I could hear it. ‘It’s totally fine, we’re not anal about that kind of thing.’ Christopher shot me a sceptical glance. I was, in fact, anal about that kind of thing, hence us both being in socked feet. I ploughed on regardless. ‘Come on in!’
I sat them down on the couch and dispatched Christopher to get them drinks.
‘You have a lovely home, Jenny,’ Lucy said in her peculiar, gravelly voice. It was nice, actually – sexy, even – but there was something unsettling about it coming from Tinkerbell’s mouth.
‘Yeah,’ Ben added. ‘It’s, like, immaculate.’ He was theoretically seated on the couch, but in reality he was hovering just slightly above the cushion, as though any contact between himself and the upholstery would be disastrous.
‘It definitely isn’t,’ I said, eyes trailing treasonously to the pile of magazines I’d shoved under the sofa. ‘It’s basically a garbage pail.’
‘You’re crazy,’ Ben said. ‘If you think this place is a tip, you would genuinely have a heart attack if you saw my place.’
Lucy’s eyes lit up. ‘Did you know that his flatmate doesn’t believe in sell-by dates?’
‘Wait, what?’
She nodded. ‘The first night I stayed at his place, I tried to make coffee in the morning, and the milk was basically cheese. When I went to chuck it away, Ben freaked out and was like, no! That’s my flatmate’s! He freaks out if I throw any of his stuff away! And I was like, Ben, the milk is off! But apparently it doesn’t matter.’
‘Ben,’ I chided. ‘That’s gross!’
‘It’s not me!’ he cried.
‘And,’ Lucy added, triumphantly, ‘the walls of their bathroom are absolutely covered in mould.’
Ben threw his arm around her and pulled her close. ‘Come on, it’s not that bad.’
She nestled into the crook of his shoulder. ‘It so is.’
‘Well, at least my bedroom isn’t covered in clothes. Jenny, you should see Lucy’s place. It’s basically a wardrobe with a bed tucked in the corner.’
‘Hey!’ She gave him a playful swipe.
‘It’s true!’ He grinned at her. ‘Just try to deny it.’
She shrugged. ‘You can’t criticize a girl for having too many clothes. Right?’ She looked at me for reassurance.
I smiled at her. ‘Absolutely.’
The two of them were so adorable, so completely and utterly crazy about each other, that just being in the same room as them made me feel like some kind of weird interloper. All this cutesy banter and snuggling into each other, and the way they kept appealing to me for approval … by the end of it, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to applaud or leave the room so they could be alone. When Christopher finally reappeared with the drinks, I fell on him like a starved hyena on a stray scrap of wildebeest meat.
‘Let me help you!’ I cried, vaulting over the coffee table and nearly knocking the tray of drinks from his hands.
‘It’s fine,’ he said, shooting me a funny look. ‘I’ve got it.’
We sat around the coffee table, Ben and Lucy taking up one half of the love seat and leaving the other cushion cold and alone, while Christopher and I perched in the two semi-uncomfortable chairs we’d bought because they looked nice but that we never actually sat in. I plucked a crisp out of the glass bowl we only used for this specific purpose – eating crisps with company – while Christopher tried to follow a story Lucy and Ben were telling that was meant to be about the two of them going to Brighton for the day but was actually about how adorable the other one was. I’d already heard Ben’s version in the office – basically, they went to Brighton, ate fish and chips, came home – so I allowed my mind to wander.
Would the pies be any good? Did I have enough glasses for both water and wine? Had I remembered to take the bottle of Chablis out of the freezer? Would the mousse be set? And, finally, looking over at the occupied half of the sofa, where Ben was gazing at Lucy with a look of such abject wonder it wouldn’t have surprised me if she was shooting fireworks out of her ears, had Christopher and I ever been like them?
And then it was time for dinner. The pies were good. (The chicken and leek was a little dry). The wine was chilled, and we had enough glasses. The mousse had set.
Ben and Lucy were the perfect guests – extremely appreciative and with fairly low standards. They oohed and ahhed over every dish I brought to the table, thanked Christopher profusely every time he topped up their glasses, and marveled over the fact we had matching plates and a full set of cutlery. At one point, Ben spilled a bit of wine onto the table and offered to pay for the napkin he used to wipe it up, ‘because it’s cloth’.
I hadn’t noticed it at work, but I was suddenly aware of how young Ben was. He was still in a world where cloth napkins seem fancy. He and Lucy went to parties where the host didn’t serve food. They went to bars where the music was too loud for them to talk, and didn’t complain about the fact that there wasn’t anywhere to sit. They would stay out until 1 a.m. on a weeknight, and, not only would they be fully functional at work the next day, but they would describe themselves as not having had a late one. They were hangover-proof. They smoked cigarettes without worrying about how it would affect their mile time.
They were young, they were in love, and they were happy. So, so happy. They turned towards each other as though they were each other’s North Star, seeking each other’s light for guidance and assurance.
‘Lucy and I are thinking about moving in together,’ Ben blurted out over dessert, and I had to steady myself on the edge of the table.
‘That’s fast!’ Christopher gave me a sharp look. ‘I mean, that’s great!’ I stumbled. ‘Congratulations.’
‘It’s not a definite yet,’ Ben said, digging a spoon into his mousse.
‘Yeah,’ Lucy chimed. ‘We don’t mean, like, tomorrow or anything, but Ben’s place really is rank, and my place is tiny, so we thought maybe it might be better …’ She gave Ben a shy look.
I saw him reach under the table for her hand. ‘Since we’re together all the time anyway,’ he said.
‘We could get a really nice one-bed in Stoke Newington for what we’re both paying at the moment.’
‘Or around here, even,’ Ben added.
I tried to keep the shock off my face, and failed. ‘But you always say Tufnell Park is for corduroy-wearing, middle-aged Guardian readers,’ I spluttered.
He shrugged. ‘It’s got a few nice pubs, plus the Heath is right on your doorstep …’
‘We’re thinking about getting a puppy!’ Lucy beamed.
I was like a puppy myself, clinging stubbornly to a bone. ‘But … you call it Tossers’ Park, because only tossers live here!’
‘Ben!’ Lucy scolded. ‘That’s so rude!’
Ben held up his hands in mock outrage ‘What?!’ He laughed.
I shook my head in disbelief. ‘I can’t believe you’re thinking about moving to Tufnell Park,’ I murmured.
‘Jenny, let it go,’ Christopher cautioned quietly.
‘Okay! Okay! I’ll let it go! Move to Tossers’ Park if that’s what you want. Get a dog and then get married and then have kids and then grow old together and die in each other’s arms! Okay?’
A shocked silence descended on the table. Lucy and Ben nudged their chairs closer together, as if proximity could protect them from the madness on the other side of the table. Christopher looked at me as if I were some lunatic who’d wandered off the street wearing a tinfoil hat rather than his fiancée. And I was starting to wonder if he might be right. (Minus the tinfoil hat.) (For now.)
‘Sorry,’ I mumbled, and then, conjuring up as much joviality as I could muster, ‘Coffee anyone?’
After admiring the fact we had a French press rather than a jar of instant, Ben and Lucy gulped down their coffees and made their excuses. They had a party to go to, and if they left it any later, everyone else would be too off their faces for it to be fun.
We waved them off after pressing a spare bottle of wine and a bag of real coffee onto them, and then trudged into the kitchen to start clearing away the damage.
‘Can you imagine going to a party at this time?’ Christopher wondered as he scraped a half-eaten bowl of mousse into the trash.
I glanced at the clock: it was ten to midnight. ‘I guess that’s youth for you,’ I said, slinging back the dregs of someone’s glass of red. ‘They seem so happy,’ I said quietly.
Christopher nodded. ‘They really do.’
We worked in silence, stacking the dishwasher and cleaning the pots and wiping down the table and placing the good wine glasses back in the cabinet.
Christopher was hanging the dishtowel back on the oven handle when he said it. ‘I can’t do this. I’m sorry.’ He said it so quietly the first time that I thought I’d misheard him, so I asked him to say it again. I heard it loud and clear the second.
I could have pretended I didn’t understand. I could have asked if he was referring to putting away the dishes, or decanting the leftovers into the Tupperware containers on the counter, but life was too short and we’d already wasted enough time.
‘Me neither,’ I said. His back was towards me, and I watched his shoulders rise and fall. That back of his, that strong, gorgeous back. Every part of me wanted to walk across the room and wrap my arms around him, press his body into mine, feel the warmth of him, the solidity. But I knew I couldn’t. ‘I’ll move out,’ I said, and he nodded.
‘Take your time,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll help if you need money for a deposit …’
‘I have money,’ I said, a little too sharply. I didn’t though. Not enough for a deposit. I flushed with humiliation. ‘Thanks, though. I might have to take you up on that.’
‘All you have to do is ask.’ He turned around at last, and the look on his face was one of such aching sadness that I thought my heart was going to burst out of my chest. ‘They’re so in love,’ he said, his voice full of wonder.
I nodded. ‘They are.’
‘It just made me think …’ He trailed off, shaking his head.
‘I know,’ I said quietly. ‘Me too. You deserve that. I want you to feel that.’
He raised his eyes to mine, and I was surprised to see they were rimmed with tears. ‘So do you.’
We stared at each other for a minute, our eyes locked onto one another, and it was as though both of us were watching the film of our life together run across an invisible screen. The cab in New York. All the late-night phone calls and transatlantic flights. The Sunday morning walks in the park, both of us still tingling from sex, our cheeks pinked from the breeze. All of the nights we’d spent curled into one another. I watched our hearts break at the same moment.
‘We had a good run, didn’t we?’ he said finally, after the credits rolled.
I smiled and tasted tears. I hadn’t realized I’d been crying. ‘We sure did.’
‘I love you, you know.’
‘I love you, too,’ I said.
I knew we both meant it. We would always love each other, in that way you always love your childhood best friend, even if you haven’t spoken for twenty years. But that love was a ghost of what we’d once had, and both of us deserved to have something with blood still pulsing through its veins.
I’d been living in a world of ghosts for years. All of those items to be ticked off some arbitrary list I’d made as a kid … the absurdity of it struck me as I stood there. How much time had I wasted trying to live the life I thought I should be living, rather than letting life happen to me?
I thought back to Mr Bryant’s words. ‘It’s not grief that makes you do crazy things, it’s love.’ All these years, I thought I was dodging my mother’s fate, and really I’d fallen straight into it. It was a bright and clean and orderly sort of crazy, sure, but it was crazy nonetheless.
It was time to throw the list away.
The rest of the weekend was surprisingly bearable, considering it was spent with my now-ex-fiancé. Now that everything was out in the open, it was as if both of us had taken a deep breath of fresh air and relaxed. We called Deborah on Sunday and canceled Tillbury Manor – I’m pretty sure she was more upset about our break-up than we were, bless her – and I contacted the other Jenny and asked if I could sell her the dress back at half-price. She gave me a full refund. The wedding invitations went in the recycling, and Christopher phoned his parents to give them the news. I called my dad and my aunt, both of whom were great about it. And just like that, the wedding – the whole life – I’d thought about for so long, ceased to exist. You pull one thread and the whole skein unravels.
On Monday morning, I got to work early. Ben wasn’t in yet – presumably still basking in the refracted glow of Lucy’s love as he showered in his mouldy bathroom – so I had the office to myself. I got myself a cup of coffee, opened my emails, scrolled through the news. And then, finally, I took a deep breath and opened my desk drawer.
The envelope was where I’d left it. The edges were bent and furred from being shoved into the back of the drawer, and an uncapped pen had left an inky smudge on the front. I slit it open with my finger and inched the papers onto my desk.
The form was surprisingly simple. Just a couple of pages with some legal language declaring the marriage null and void – initial here, sign and date there. Jackson’s signature was already there, his handwriting blocky and bold. I ran my finger over it, felt the impression his pen had made on the paper. And then I uncapped my pen and added my signature next to his.
That was it. We were divorced.
I breathed out a long sigh. I felt tired – deep, down to the bone tired – but relieved, too. Now I really could have a fresh start.
I was tucking the papers back into the envelope when I found it. There, at the bottom of the envelope, was a photograph. I reached in and pulled it out. I didn’t recognize it at first. It was a close-up of my face tilted upwards. The camera had zoomed in on my eyes, their green obscured by the kaleidoscope of color dancing in them. The lights around Westminster from that night. He’d taken a picture of me looking at them without me noticing. I stared at it. I looked so happy, so filled with wonder. And he’d seen that and captured it for ever.
My heart swelled.
Ben burst into the cube trailing a cloud of shower gel, the ends of his hair still damp. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he called as he tossed his bag down on the floor. ‘Thanks again for dinner on Saturday – it was really great. Lucy and I couldn’t stop talking about how nice your flat is. Even if it is in Tossers’ Park.’ He threw me a cheeky smile, but I sat there, immobile. He saw the look on my face and faltered. ‘Only joking. Lucy and I are seriously thinking about making a move over there. How much do you think the average rent is there for a one-bed?’
‘No idea,’ I mumbled.
‘Oh, right – I forgot Christopher owns. Lucky bastard. I can’t even think how much that place is worth now. Has he had it valued recently? Christ, Lucy and I are never going to be able to afford a flat. Not unless one of our relatives dies and we inherit some serious cash. Not that I want that to happen or anything,’ he added hurriedly. He sat down heavily in his chair and stared at me. ‘You all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost or something. Old Jeremy hasn’t been in here giving you hell, has he?’
I shook my head.
‘Good. Anyway, tell Christopher I said thanks for the tip about that trainers shop in Covent Garden. Lucy and I popped down there yesterday after we had lunch with some of her mates and he’s right, they have an incredible selection. I got a pair of limited edition Adidas that I swear were sold out everywhere.’
‘Christopher and I broke up.’
Ben’s head snapped so hard I worried for his neck in later years. ‘What?’
I nodded. ‘After you left on Saturday night.’
‘Holy shit. But … why? You guys seemed great when we left. Did you get in a fight or something? Has he been cheating on you? That bastard. I swear to God, if he’s been cheating, I’ll shove my limited edition Adidas so far up his arse—’
‘We didn’t fight. He isn’t cheating. It just …’ I shrugged. ‘It wasn’t working.’
‘But the wedding – you guys just booked that place in Somerset …’
‘Canceled.’
‘Fuck.’ He looked genuinely devastated, and I was touched by how much he cared. ‘What can I do?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m fine, honestly. It was a mutual decision, and it’s one hundred per cent for the best.’ He looked so dubious that I had to laugh. ‘Honest! It’s a good thing. I promise.’
He eyed me warily. ‘Okay, but if you want to, like, cry or whatever, I’m cool with it. I’ll put my headphones in.’
‘I don’t want to cry.’
‘Okaaaaaaay …’
‘I don’t! But there is something you could do for me.’
He nodded. ‘Whatever you need.’
‘Can you cover my cases for a little while?’
He tilted his head to the side. ‘You going on holiday?’
‘Sort of.’ I hadn’t realized I was until I’d said it, but now that I had, I was desperate to go.
‘That’s great. A bit of time off will be good for you. When do you leave?’
‘Soon, actually.’ My mind whirred. ‘Tomorrow.’
‘Christ, that is soon. Have you told Jeremy?’ I shook my head. ‘I’m sure he won’t mind,’ Ben said, trying and failing to look reassuring. ‘You never ask for time off, and he still loves you because of the Bryant case. And I’ll handle your cases, no problem. How long will you be gone? A week? Two?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, and admitting the uncertainty felt like clearing a great swathe of space in my head. My shoulders actually sagged with relief.
Ben shot me a strange look. ‘Jeremy might have an issue with that.’
‘I know,’ I said. I glanced down at the photograph on my desk. The eye stared up at me, full of color. ‘I’ll risk it.’