All the Single Ladies (28 page)

‘Oh Julia,’ is all I can say.

‘Do you think I’ve done the wrong thing?’

‘I just worry that you’ll be hurt if she doesn’t write back.’ She doesn’t answer. ‘You will, won’t you? Be hurt, I mean.’

‘I don’t know, Sam,’ she replies. ‘I really don’t know.’

Jamie’s flight remains booked. Our bed is inhabited by me and me alone. We’re not back together – nothing like it. Yet his texts and emails since the
supermarket incident mean that giving up on him isn’t an option. Not when there are still weeks in which to change his mind. But I’m running out of ideas about how to do it.

It doesn’t help that Ellie – my mentor at the beginning – hasn’t been encouraging of late. She keeps saying that Jamie should have acted by now. As if I didn’t want
him to!

I know she has my best interests at heart and is trying to prepare me for the worst. But I don’t want to prepare myself for the worst. Plus, she hasn’t seen at first hand how torn he
is about this. She hasn’t read his emails. She didn’t see the envy in his eyes in Tesco. With time and encouragement, there’s still hope. There has to be. And I think
Ellie’s distracted by work a lot lately. She’s finding both the workload, and some of her students, difficult to deal with this year. At least, that’s what she says whenever I
phone shortly after home time and she’s already cracked into what I know is the first of way too many glasses of wine.

One person who hasn’t lost her enthusiasm for a reconciliation is Lisa. She texts me on Wednesday to ask me to pop over for a cup of tea and, as I’m passing on the way back from a
meeting, I decide to stop off.

When I arrive at the house, it’s quieter than usual, as three-fifths of the children are at school and the baby is asleep upstairs. Nevertheless, I enter the living room and Elvis hurtles
towards me.

‘Auntie Sam! Come and look at Timberlake!’ he says, tugging my jeans.

‘Your guinea pig?’ I reply, a chill running down my spine. I’m terrified of rodents. I know that technically this isn’t one, but it’s got four legs, fur, and is
small enough to crawl up a trouser leg, all of which makes it close enough in my book.

‘Cuppa?’ shouts Lisa from the kitchen.

‘Please! Right. Timberlake. Where is he?’ I say, putting on a brave face.

‘Here!’ Elvis declares, opening up a box that once contained a pair of size eleven Reeboks and removing the creature. I instinctively sit back, trying to look unfazed.

Despite the distance I put between me and Timberlake, however, I notice immediately that something isn’t right.

‘Is he . . . okay?’ I ask tentatively.

‘Oh yes,’ he grins, stroking the animal. ‘He doesn’t mind.’

‘Mind what?’

‘Being dead.’

I draw a breath but feign calmness. ‘Timberlake is dead?’

‘Yes. Do you want to give him a cuddle?’ He thrusts the decomposing corpse of his beloved pet in front of my nose and I jerk back so fast I bang my head on the wall.

‘I’ll pass, sweetheart. Are you sure you’re meant to be holding him?’

‘I’m just giving him a hug.’ He rubs his cheek against the fur and looks up, sensing my unease. ‘He was more fun when he wasn’t dead,’ he tells me.

Lisa walks through the door. ‘Oh yes . . . poor Timberlake. He went this morning. I thought we’d let him lie in state in the shoebox under the telly till Dave gets home. He’s
nipping out in his lunch hour to give him a proper funeral. Oh put him back now, Elvis, won’t you, love? He’s as stiff as a board. And wash your hands before you have any more of them
Wotsits. Now,’ she says, turning to me. ‘How are things with Jamie?’

I take a deep breath and glance at Elvis. He is filling the guinea pig’s coffin with a variety of items to see him through to the afterlife – namely, three pieces of Lego and a
Dairylea cheese string.

‘Oh . . . I don’t know, Lisa,’ I say wearily.

She narrows her eyes as the front door slams and Dave walks in. He’s three years older than Lisa but, despite the thinning hair, he looks younger. He’s got one of those baby faces
you suspect will remain unmarked by time, even when he’s collecting his pension.

‘What’s all this about a dead guinea pig? What have you been feeding it? Curry and chips?’

Elvis rushes over and leaps into his father’s arms. ‘Have you got any Polos, Dad?’

‘There – just for you,’ he replies, and Elvis gratefully takes a small handful and places them lovingly in Timberlake’s tiny paws.

‘Hi, Sam,’ says Dave. ‘How’re things?’

‘Fine, thanks,’ I smile.

‘Apart from my idiot brother, obviously,’ Lisa interjects. ‘He’ll see the light soon – don’t worry.’

I take a sip of tea. ‘I’m starting to worry that nothing can be done about this situation,’ I tell her. As the words spill from my mouth, I suddenly don’t know whether
I’m saying this for reassurance or because I believe it. ‘I mean, why am I bothering with this? Jamie can’t love me that much, otherwise it’d be a no-brainer. Why should I
have to do all the chasing?’ I look at Lisa. ‘It isn’t supposed to be like this.’

Dave and Lisa exchange looks.

‘You’re not chasing anything other than your heart,’ insists Lisa, and I wonder what TV show she picked that up from.

‘I don’t think he’s interested,’ I add flatly, overcome with negativity.

‘But he is, Sam!’ Lisa blurts out obligingly. ‘Dave, we need to manufacture an excuse to get these two lovebirds together. Why don’t we do a big roast dinner for
everyone? Or you could come to Suzuki’s birthday party the week after next.’

She babbles away, concocting all manner of potential scenarios in which to reconcile Jamie and me. But as I glance at Timberlake – lying rigidly amid a heap of Lego bricks and mints
– one question leaps out at me.

Is it sometimes better to just let something go?

The next day at work is so hectic there’s barely time to go for a wee. I have these days sometimes. You attempt to break for a rudimentary biological necessity –
but someone phones, or calls you into a meeting, or thrusts an invoice at you that absolutely-must-be-signed-there-and-then-or-the-sky-will-cave-in.

I hadn’t predicted it was going to be quite so chaotic today, though I knew I had a bit to finish on the tender for a bridal show. I hadn’t counted on Lorelei Beer demanding an
impromptu meeting before she had to race to her mother’s in Cardiff for a family funeral, or on ‘urgent’ business with three other clients (their definition of which was a long
way from mine), or on the drinks machine electrocuting the work-experience girl.

Why I ever signed up as the nominated first aider I’ll never know.

‘We’re going to have to get you to A&E,’ I tell her. She looks fine, but the first thing I learned on my course was to defer responsibility whenever possible.

The ‘fine’, by the way, refers to her immediate medical requirements, rather than anything else about her appearance. She’s twenty-one, with disastrous hair, an explosion of
acne and an apparent inability to say anything. When she first arrived, clutching a CV boasting twenty-seven A-star GCSEs, nine A-star A levels, and a double first, along with her Tupperware
sandwich box, I genuinely wondered if she had a vocal-cord malfunction.

‘Would that be okay?’ I ask her softly.

She nods shakily but says nothing. I’m constantly torn between feeling so sorry for her I want to hug her till her sides hurt – and shaking her by the shoulders and declaring:
‘Speak, woman!’

‘I don’t think you should drive,’ I tell her. ‘We’ll get you a taxi. Mind you, we need someone to sit with you.’ I look up and hone in on the corner.

Deana, who has been filling Natalie in all morning on what a useless reprobate her sister’s friend’s second cousin’s current boyfriend is, has paused momentarily – to dye
her eyelashes. She is surrounded by pots and Petri dishes – as if she is on the brink of discovering a cure for cancer – and is smearing Vaseline under her eye area with a cotton
bud.

‘Deana!’ I stand up decisively and clap my hands. She raises her head briefly and looks at me along her nose, like a Roman empress. ‘I’ve got a job for you.’

Natalie drops her magazine and screws up her face.

‘I’d like you to take Anna to hospital.’

Anna flinches. I feel for her, I really do. But there’s no other way. Being in a car with Deana will be character-building, at least.

‘You wha—?’ says Deana.

‘Hospital. Please. She’s injured. Or possibly isn’t, actually. But she needs checking out.’

‘My car’s in the car park and the ticket only lets you in once,’ she protests. ‘Wharrama gonna do when I get back?’

‘Either get another ticket and put it on expenses, or get a taxi. Come on, please.’

Deana’s urgency is some way removed from anything you see on
Casualty
.

I go back to my desk and fend off a further series of phone calls, including one from the organizers of the Santa Dash – a charity race I’ve taken part in for the last three years.
They want me to sign up the whole office for the event this December, obviously unaware of the total lack of influence I have on Deana and Natalie during work hours, let alone during their own
time.

Still, I register the office for the run – deciding to worry about practicalities later – and return to my tender. I’ve been doing it for only five minutes, when I realize that
I can’t focus. My mind is elsewhere. Namely, on the men in my life.

I log on to Facebook and hold my breath when I see Ben online. I open up a chat box and compose a message before I can even think.

I know it’s bland, but it’s the only way to go. I sit glaring at the screen, as if waiting for a boiling kettle . . . but there is no response for an age. Then a message flashes. Not
any old message. This is the message every single woman dreads when they’ve just started a chat conversation with a man.

‘Great,’ I blurt out, noting that another three women – one of whom looks like Pamela Anderson’s poutier sister – have posted more gushing messages of thanks about
the miracles he’s worked on their pets.

Natalie looks up.

‘Unpaid invoice,’ I lie.

She pulls a face as if to say: ‘Why would I care?’

I flick back to my tender document and start attempting to add figures, unable to concentrate. Suddenly, I hear a muffled ping – and flick back to Facebook.

I take a deep breath. I could use this moment to make chitchat, to sweep things under the carpet – or I could get straight to the point. Thinking fast, I reply:

I hit return and watch impatiently as words flash up to tell me that Ben is writing a reply. Eventually, a new message appears.

I swallow.

There’s an interminable silence as he composes his response.

I close my eyes and feel tears gathering. How do I respond to that? I start writing something, then delete it. Then I write something else, and delete that too. Eventually I take a deep breath
and type in one word, before hitting enter.

My heart is thudding, filled with dread as I await his response. He’d be perfectly entitled to call me every name under the sun.

I can’t help but smile.

I laugh.

As I send my reply, I’m feeling better than I have for days. I’m about to close down Facebook and return to some legitimate work, when another message flashes up.

I groan.

Part of me wishes I could let Jamie go quietly, but I don’t have it in me. Occasionally, I have a vague sense that it could be for the best, until I remind myself of
everything about him that I loved and still love.

There’s never been anyone like Jamie in my life.

I know that if I was reading my own story on a problem page, I’d be screaming at the magazine that it’s time to move on and find someone else. But the reality is different when
you’re living it.

Besides, don’t passion and all-consuming love count for anything these days? Are they concepts that are now too old-fashioned? They weren’t once. Shakespeare might have had less of
an impact if Romeo had reacted to Juliet’s apparent tragic death by keeping a stiff upper lip and joining a dating website.

These days, when someone’s left you, people are frustrated if you can’t ‘move on’ quickly. You’re allowed to wallow for only a certain amount of time before
you’re expected to give it a rest and get on with life. But I believe this: sometimes love is dysfunctional and damaging and dangerous. Moreover, we can’t help who we love. And I still
love Jamie.