The bartender turns away with a sigh, and returns with cocktail umbrellas and straws adorned with wrap-around parrots, rather like those paper Christmas decorations that concertina round themselves to make a bell. Only these are, well, parrots.
‘Now that’s more like it,’ I say, once he’s shoved so many accessories into our glasses that there’s hardly any room to take a drink.
‘What do you reckon it’s called?’ my drinking partner asks.
We stare at the drinks.
‘Sex on the parrot-infested beach?’ I suggest.
She considers my suggestion, then wrinkles her nose. ‘Not bad. Although I’d probably have gone for something more along the lines of, “Don’t ask me for sex, I’m not over my ex”.’
I look at her properly then, and I notice she’s also wearing a wedding ring that she keeps twisting round on her finger too. It’s like a secret signal no one teaches you to read.
‘Ten years married. He left me nine months ago,’ she says glumly. ‘For the woman who lives three doors down.’
‘Does she still live three doors down?’ I ask, interested despite myself.
‘Aye, with my husband.’
‘God.’
‘Apparently they bonded over the community garden.’
We start to laugh at the absurdity of it.
‘He said their eyes met over the compost heap and that was that.’
We laugh so hard that tears roll down my face, and she pats my hand.
‘How long for you?’
I swallow. ‘Five months. My choice though. We weren’t married all that long.’
I don’t add how shell-shocked we both are or how horrified my mother-in-law was. The only thing worse than my marrying Oscar is my divorcing him. My own mum’s at a bit of a loss; she keeps sending me texts to see if I’ve eaten breakfast, but whenever I try to talk properly to her she doesn’t seem to know what to say.
I’ve been renting a colleague’s spare room for the last few months; Oscar tried to insist I stay on in the flat, but there was no way I could.
‘Not because of anyone else,’ I add. ‘It just didn’t work out.’
We pick up our drinks and do our worst. ‘Fucking awful,’ she says as we slam them down. I’m not sure if she means the drink or our predicament. She splays her left hand flat on the bar and pokes her wedding ring with the end of a straw. ‘Time to take it off, really.’
I do the same, placing my hand alongside hers on the bar. ‘Me too.’
We stare at our fingers, and then she looks at me. ‘Ready?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Are you ever going back to him?’
Not long after we separated, I wavered late one night and called Oscar in Brussels. I don’t even know what I wanted to say, I was just overwhelmingly sad without him. Perhaps it’s as well that Cressida answered his phone in a loud bar; I hung up and he didn’t call back. I don’t need a crystal ball to know that, in time, she will be the one who picks up his broken heart and pieces it back together. It’s as it should be; perhaps she’s always held on to a piece of it anyway. I’m embarrassed by how often I publicly cried in the aftermath of our marriage break-up. I cried silently on the bus going to work and again on the way home to my empty bed. Sometimes I didn’t even realize tears were rolling down my cheeks until I caught sight of my reflection in the dark bus windows. I recognize it now for what it was: a grieving process – for him, and for me, and for us.
I shake my head at Vanessa, downcast. No, I’m never going back to Oscar.
‘Then you’re ready. We both are,’ she says.
My ring hasn’t left my finger since Oscar placed it there on our wedding day. I can’t imagine ever feeling ready to take it off, but this bizarre moment has presented itself to me, and I can’t wear the ring for ever. I nod, then feel sick.
She reaches for her wedding band, pausing to look pointedly at mine.
I take a big swig of my disgusting cocktail. ‘Let’s get it over with.’
We watch each other and keep pace, turning our rings a couple of times to free them. Mine’s looser than usual anyway; my appetite has disappeared of late. The diamond-set ring slides up over my knuckle and I take it off slowly, because once it’s off I can never put it back on again. Tears prick my eyes, and beside me Vanessa slips her ring all the way off and lays it on the bar.
I take her bravery for my own and follow suit, my mouth trembling. I can’t hide a sob, and she puts an arm of solidarity round my shoulders as we sit side by side and stare at the two wedding bands.
I’ve cried more tears than I ever thought possible over the last year. Perhaps it’s time to dry my eyes.
17 December
Jack
Amanda’s angling for a ring for Christmas. She’s dropped every hint in the book, from leaving magazines open on the pertinent pages to studiously watching Don’t Tell the Bride every Thursday, and now we’re walking through town on the coldest Saturday afternoon of the year and she’s stopped to gaze into a jeweller’s window.
It’s become a difficult subject since she first mooted the idea of marriage in Norway, and I’m not really sure how to address it.
Now she’s pointing out one with a massive diamond – fuck, is that really the price! It looks like a weapon, not a piece of jewellery.
‘Shall we go and get drunk?’ I say, looking at the pub across the road.
She frowns. ‘Is the thought of marrying me so bad you need a drink?’
‘No, but shopping is,’ I say, and hate myself when she looks wounded. I don’t look directly at the rings, because I don’t want to have this conversation today.
‘Okay,’ she sighs. ‘Beer it is.’
‘Another?’
I should say no. We’ve been in here for three hours now and we’re really quite pissed.
‘Go on,’ Amanda says. ‘You said you wanted to get drunk.’
Maybe I’m getting too old for this game, but I’ve had enough.
‘Let’s go home instead,’ I say, swaying a bit as I stand up.
‘We don’t have a home,’ she says. ‘It’s your flat or mine.’
‘You sound sexy when you put it like that.’
She doesn’t get up. She folds her arms across her silvery metallic jumper and crosses her long, denim-clad legs, a dangerous glitter in her vodka-bold eyes.
‘Propose to me.’
I blink a few times to focus. ‘Amanda …’
‘Go on. Do it now, I’m ready.’
Clearly those diamonds are still on her mind. She’s laughing as if she’s larking around, but there’s a steely edge to her voice that warns me of incoming trouble.
‘Come on,’ I wheedle. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ I’m aware that the couple at the next table overheard her and are trying not to make it obvious that they’re watching. She’s a vaguely recognizable face from TV; the last thing either of us need is a public row.
‘You said that to me the very first time I met you,’ she says. ‘At that party. Let’s get out of here.’
I nod, remembering. ‘I did say that.’ I sit back down on the stool, my elbows on my knees as I lean in to make our conversation more private. I’m struggling to hear her properly in here.