I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face. I couldn’t afford to get upset now. I’d wanted to leave Tom; I’d thought of it for years. And now I’d left him. I needed to cope with that, rather than thinking about what might have been.
* * *
• • •
The first thing I did once I’d carried everything up to the flat was to go to a supermarket and buy a load of cleaning products and some cheap kitchenware so that I didn’t have to eat out. I had no intention of taking those things with me to my new house, so I just bought a fork, a knife, a spoon. One plate, one pan, one bowl. I felt a bit like Jack Reacher, as though I should keep my toothbrush in my pocket.
I was okay until I started to buy some food. Automatically I picked up a box of muesli and put it into my cart. It was as though something pinged in my brain and I couldn’t stop staring at it. People pushed past me and I moved to a quieter aisle. I realized I’d been eating that cereal for years and years. It was a muesli with all sorts of things in it, nuts, raisins, the lot, and though the packaging was impressive, I’d never liked it. It tasted dusty and too sweet. Yet I’d eaten it every weekday for years. Tom liked it and used to say there was no point in getting two different cereals, that they’d go stale. Whenever I suggested trying something else he’d go quiet and moody. It was crazy, really, how much his mood could affect me. Why had I put up with that? I went back to the cereal aisle and looked at the range on offer. Which should I buy? What did I actually like? My head started to hurt. I didn’t know. I just didn’t know what I liked. It hadn’t mattered what I liked.
Tom chose everything. And, to be fair, he did usually make the right decision. He had good taste—I knew that. It’s just that . . . well, sometimes you want to choose something yourself, don’t you? When I was living at home my mum decided everything. We either did things her way or we suffered; my sister and I learned that lesson pretty early on. And Fiona got away from it by emigrating when she was eighteen. As for me, I had a few years of freedom and then just when I was really enjoying my life, I met Tom.
I put the box back on the shelf and moved away. I wouldn’t buy any cereal at all. I’d have something else. But the same thing happened in the other aisles. I didn’t know which bread to buy, which cheese I liked. All I knew was which cleaning materials I liked, which washing powder was best. Even the soap confused me. Should I buy the one we always used? Did I actually like it? I didn’t know anymore. I could feel my throat swelling with tears and knew I had to get out of there. I hurried around the store, throwing things into the cart. The only criteria was that I hadn’t had it at home. If it looked familiar, I didn’t want it.
There was a woman in the supermarket who was buying cushions and blankets; she looked like she had good taste so I watched her and just bought what she did. This was a tip my mother had passed on to me. Not that she did it herself, of course, but she told me my taste was a bit odd. Unreliable, she said. She told me the best thing to do was to copy someone else who seemed to know what she was doing.
As soon as I was home, I unpacked my shopping. Already I knew I’d made some bad decisions. I didn’t care; I stuffed the cupboards and the fridge full of food. I threw the cushions and blankets onto the sofa, scattered a couple of magazines on the coffee table, and placed a plant from the florist’s shop downstairs on the windowsill.
When I’d finished I realized the room was arranged just as ours had been at home. It was like a poor man’s version of our living room. I stood for a while, unable to decide what to do. Tom had always been the one who decided how the living room would look. I knew I had to change things around; it would bring back too many memories otherwise, so I dragged the sofa into another position and put the table and chairs by the window. The furniture was heavy and I was hot and sweating by the time I finished, but I didn’t stop until it didn’t resemble home at all.
I hadn’t bought alcohol. At home we’d have wine delivered from the local wine merchant and Tom would stock up the drinks cupboard with whiskey and gin and liqueurs. I don’t think he’d had a day without a drink in all the time I’d known him. Usually I’d join him, to blur the edges of my life. I didn’t want anything like that here, though. I’d drunk enough at the hotel to last me a good while. I didn’t want to drink myself into a stupor now. Not now. I’d escaped that life. I needed to be wide-awake for my new life.
I packed up all the empty bags and packaging and went out to the alley at the back of the shops where all the bins were kept. I found mine with my flat number painted on it and was just about to open it when something brushed past me. I screamed, thinking of mice and rats and foxes.
When I stepped back from the bin and looked around I saw a cat was hiding between two bins, watching me. It had a coat of matted black fur and as I turned toward it, it ran down the alley to where a bin had overflowed. It started to scratch and pull at a bag of food there and I realized it was starving.
I thought of the cat that Fiona and I had had when we were growing up and how spoiled and loved he was. “Haven’t you got a home to go to?” I asked gently. I stooped to see whether it wore a collar. It didn’t, just a scratch on its ear that looked as though it wasn’t healing properly. “Are you hungry?”
Slowly it came toward me and sniffed. I held my hand out and felt its tongue flick out to lick me. It turned then and started to root in the bag of rubbish, found a piece of meat, and shot away into its place between the bins to eat it. I watched for a while, wanting to stroke its fur, to give it food and water, but I shook myself. It was clearly living on the streets.
Reluctantly I left it alone but when I went for a walk that evening, I found the cat in the street, roaming around, sniffing in the gutters for food. On impulse I bought a few packets of cat food from the corner shop. I took a couple of foil containers from my kitchen and filled one with water, the other with food. I knew I shouldn’t feed a stray cat; it would think it belonged to me, but I couldn’t bear to think of it hungry. I took the containers down to the lamppost outside my house and watched from the doorway as the cat devoured the food.
It looked desperate. I recognized that look. It was how I felt, too.
CHAPTER 14
Ruby
Back in the flat, I charged my phone and put on one of my favorite song lists. I dragged my suitcases into the bedroom and started to unpack. I had to shut out the memories of packing the week before, hastily cramming clothes into my bags, muttering my memorized list as I raced around gathering everything together. I remembered sitting on my cases to zip them shut, so excited for my future. That excitement had vanished now, oddly enough. I tried to forget my imagined future as I organized my clothes in piles on my bed: sweaters, shirts, jeans, dresses. There were hangers in the wardrobe and I was just about to hang the dresses up when the music stopped and my phone beeped.
Immediately I thought of Harry. Like a fool, I hurried over to check. Of course it wasn’t him. At that moment, though, it was the next-best thing: an e-mail about a job.