In my mind, I heard Mike urging me on when I was ready to quit a workout. I remembered myself telling Alice that we’d fight to keep the Ginger Cat alive and open, when it had been under threat of closure by Fabian. I even summoned the picture of Frazzle’s cross, disappointed face whenever he jumped up on the bed and found Jude there.
I could do it. I would do it. I opened my mouth to speak – but Jude got there first.
‘Good!’ he said triumphantly. ‘You can’t dump me. Want to know why?’
‘Why?’ I asked stupidly.
‘Because I’m ending it first.’ His gleeful smile faded away, replaced again with the tragic, hangdog look. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t be with a woman who doesn’t support me one hundred per cent, doesn’t have my back when I need her, doesn’t get me as a person. I thought you were that woman, but hey, we all make mistakes. Indigo says…’
I listened, half outraged and half amused. I knew, now, what he expected me to do. I was supposed to grovel and apologise. I was supposed to insist that he had it wrong, I was the special one, his soulmate. I was the one who was going to try harder, be better, kinder, more accommodating and admiring of this unique and wonderful person who had deigned to allow me to wash his socks, put a roof over his head and be a receptacle for his spunk for three months.
But I wasn’t following the script. Somehow, I’d found my anger – but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing how furious he had made me. That would mean I still cared and, I found, I didn’t any more. Not one bit. Not even about what Indigo said.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’m glad we’re on the same page, and we can end this without any acrimony. Why don’t we head back to the flat and you can pack up your stuff?’
Jude looked at me, then at the half-finished bottle of wine and the unopened pack of crisps. They’d cost me three pounds, even though Archie had given me a discount. This wasn’t the script either, clearly – I was meant to let him stay for one last night, which would turn into two, then three, then the thin end of the wedge.
‘You mean, like, now?’ he asked, his eyes widening in dismay.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think I do.’
And I stood up, waited for him to do the same, then picked up the blanket and shook it vigorously. It felt like I was getting rid of a whole lot more than just grass clippings.
Twenty-Six
If you get your head out of the sand, Aquarius, you might be able to see things as they are, not as you want them to be.
‘So I guess neither of us have boyfriends any more,’ I said to Dani as we left the gym a couple of weeks later, sweaty and out of breath. Summer was truly over now; although evening wasn’t yet falling, the sky was a threatening leaden grey and a thin drizzle misted our skin, making me shiver with cold and the prospect of what it would do to my hair.
Dani sighed. ‘Not for want of trying, on Fabian’s part.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. He’s sent flowers to my flat and to work, and he keeps calling and texting.’
‘Why don’t you block his number?’
‘I should, I know. It just seems too kind of final. I think about it sometimes and I’m… not tempted to take him back, exactly, but I just wonder whether if I’d done things differently, it could all have worked out.’
‘Differently how? He hurt you, remember? What are you meant to have done differently?’
‘I don’t know. Been more assertive, maybe? Set boundaries? All the shit you’re meant to do in relationships but I didn’t do because I was so scared of losing him. And now I’ve lost him anyway.’
‘You dumped him. That’s totally different from losing him.’
‘Oh God. I know you’re right. I need to give my head a wobble and move on. Like you’ve moved on.’
‘I wouldn’t put it quite that strongly. I’ve got back on Tinder and been on two dates.’
‘Two dates! Strong work, Zoë.’
‘Not really. First guy was a Capricorn. They’re meant to be all strong and dependable. Which was why I was surprised when he was half an hour late and then spilled a pint of lager over me.’
‘Oh no!’
‘Oh yes. And he was blatantly at least five years older than his profile said and four inches shorter. I mean, I’m not tall. I don’t mind dating short men. I know the whole thing about wanting a guy to be taller than you is patriarchal bullshit. But…’
‘Don’t tell porkies in your profile?’
‘Exactly. Then the Leo guy – apparently they’re fun to be around, super-sociable but a bit egotistical – turned out to be not much fun to be around and super-egotistical. He literally talked about himself non-stop for two hours.’
‘God, there’s nothing worse than an I specialist.’
‘Yeah. If I’d told him I’d been on holiday to Tenerife, he’d have been to Elevenerife. So I said I wasn’t feeling it.’
‘But you’ve got another date this evening. I’d call that getting straight back on the horse.’
‘That would have to be Sagittarius, though. This one’s Taurus.’
‘Shame. Sagittarius is half man, half horse, right? Imagine shagging one of those.’
We giggled.
‘I wonder how it would work?’ I said. ‘Like, with all the extra legs and stuff.’
‘Bloody hell, I thought I was too boring in bed for Fabian and here I am discussing horse sex.’
‘Enough of that. What should I expect from Mr Taurus?’
‘He’ll be full of bull?’
Still laughing, we parted: Dani turning up the high street to the dental surgery, and I returning to the Ginger Cat to get ready for my date with Brett. Mysterious Brett, who might or might not be a spy.
As I walked, I opened the Stargazer app on my phone and glanced at my horoscope for the day, not for the first time.
Things are not always what they seem, Aquarius. You might not be regretting decisions you’ve made, but if you let your natural impulsiveness come to the fore, you could soon be regretting other ones.
By the app’s recent standards, this was pretty tame stuff. I’d begun to wonder, recently, whether there was something strange going on with it – some glitch in the algorithm or something. Just that morning, I’d had a push notification flash up on my screen that had said, The camera doesn’t lie, Aquarius. You really do look ridiculous when you smile.
I’d dashed to the mirror and grinned at my reflection like a mentaller. I didn’t look any different from normal, but I’d spent the rest of the morning so glum-faced that Robbie asked me if someone had died. I’d forgotten about it pretty quickly, obviously, and gone back to smiling a normal amount.
But then another notification had told me, You might think you can trust your friends, but what are they saying about you when your back is turned? and I’d felt myself getting all paranoid again and wondering, when I heard a shout of laughter come from the table where Maurice and his mates were playing dominoes, whether they were talking about me.