She could just have sex. She could just pick a guy, someone she liked to be around and who liked to be around her, they could have a conversation as adults, and agree to do it. It didn’t have to be romance and roses and intense emotions. It could be much, much easier than that. And then she could move on.
Freddie was already in the room when she and Hattie walked in, and Kate offered him a friendly wave and smile as she went to sit down. She liked the way he smiled back at her, before he ducked his head down again shyly.
‘So how are we all doing?’ Andy asked, looking around the group.
Everyone was there, Cathryn, Lizzie, Steve and Mike, plus of course Hattie, who was still busy with her phone.
‘Sorry, I’ll put it away.’ She held her hands up when Andy gave her a severe look.
‘I’m not so good,’ Lizzie said after everyone else had gone around the room briefly mentioning anything that had happened over the past week.
Kate noticed that Freddie didn’t say anything about his walk to her gallery, nor their impromptu dinner. She didn’t say anything either. It would have felt strange to mention it here, to invite the others in on something that Kate felt had been private. There was an unspoken camaraderie that was heart-warming, that made Kate feel like she could trust him.
‘What’s been happening, Lizzie?’ Andy asked.
‘I had this dream the other night, about you-know-who.’
Kate heard Cathryn sigh next to her. It was sympathetic, but Kate also felt that it was the sigh of someone who’d been here before.
‘And what happened in the dream?’
‘Well, I told him that I was saving myself for him, that I’ve always been waiting for him, and he just disappeared into dust. And then I woke up crying.’
‘That sounds very sad,’ Andy said gently.
Lizzie looked to Kate and then to Freddie.
‘We were nineteen and promised to each other,’ she explained to them. ‘He was meant to be there for ever, and then he wasn’t. I’ve been lost without him.’
‘He’s not dead, Lizzie,’ Steve said.
Kate had almost forgotten what Steve’s voice sounded like. He was usually so quiet. The other sessions he’d barely moved much either, save for the odd shift in his seat. He was a patient man, Kate could tell, and one who seemed to like just being there and listening. His words now, while not exactly said in a forceful manner, felt forceful anyway because he was so often quiet.
‘Steve,’ Andy warned softly.
‘Nobody else is saying it, but we all know,’ Steve continued. Kate glanced at Lizzie, who looked as if she might be about to cry. ‘I’m sorry if I have to be abrupt about it, and I know we’ve been here before, but Freddie said something to me last time and I just can’t get it out of my head.’
Kate looked at Freddie, who had blanched so pale with shock and horror that Kate almost wanted to laugh.
‘Freddie said to me,’ Steve continued, ‘he said that it wasn’t too late. That sometimes our pasts hold us back. After last time, I’d given up – given up on you, Lizzie – but I’ve realised since that giving up is a stupid thing to do. Especially if there’s a chance. You cling on to the past like it’s a real thing. But it’s not. And I’ve always been here. We can go around in circles again, but you need to know that I’m waiting for you just like you’ve been waiting for him. When I get frustrated with you, I realise that really it’s me I’m frustrated with.’
Steve stopped, as if he was suddenly aware of the room around him and hadn’t been before.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, before picking his coat up from the back of his chair and making to leave.
When he opened the door, the muffled, consistent thud of the speaker system somewhere below was an unexpected exclamation point, the silence again after he’d closed it behind him uncomfortable and strange.
‘I should go too, I’m so embarrassed,’ Lizzie said eventually. Kate thought she looked even smaller than she normally did.
‘Don’t feel embarrassed,’ Cathryn said warmly.
‘He died to me,’ Lizzie explained. ‘Even if he didn’t actually die – and I know that, I do – it still felt like he died. I mourned. I’m still mourning. Why can’t other people see that?’
‘Do you wonder though,’ Kate could see that Cathryn was picking her words very carefully, ‘that maybe you don’t have to mourn? Or that, if you do, if the grief is like that for you – and who are any of us to say that it isn’t? – but that maybe you don’t have to let it take over everything?’
A single tear fell down Lizzie’s cheek, and her chin quivered.
‘We’re all here, and it’s a safe space to say how we feel. Steve should have thought a little more about how his words impacted you, but we’re all trying to help,’ Andy said.
‘It sounds like he really cares about you,’ Hattie added.
‘I just feel so guilty,’ Lizzie said sadly.
‘I made a promise a long time ago,’ said Cathryn. ‘And when I realised that the promise wasn’t working for me, I felt guilty about it. I felt guilty for a long, long time, but I stuck at the promise. I lost a huge chunk of my life to that promise. They weren’t bad years by any means, but I still wonder what I could have had if I had been braver. And then, one day, I decided to be brave. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever done, but I’m so glad I did it and broke free.’
‘Do you still feel guilty?’ Lizzie asked.
‘Every single day,’ Cathryn replied sadly. ‘But I also feel guilty for me. For denying myself what I really needed to make myself happy.’
Lizzie thought for a moment and took in a deep breath in an attempt to stop herself from crying any more.
‘I’m going to go,’ she then announced. ‘I need to go and be on my own for a bit.’
‘We understand,’ Andy said.
The group was quiet as Lizzie gathered her things and left. Once again, the background thud from the party below permeated the room when the door was opened and quieted again after it was closed.
‘Way to go, Freddie,’ Mike said sarcastically. ‘You obviously got to old man Steve-o!’
‘I didn’t mean to upset him,’ said Freddie.
At the pub afterwards, Kate was studying Freddie. She was watching his face, his form, the way he moved, the way he talked (which wasn’t often). She was thinking about how his body might look without clothes on, how it would feel.
He’d be sensitive, she knew this. But she would have to be sensitive to him too. She’d have to think about how his mind worked, and what made him stressed. It wasn’t an impossible task by any means. And he was nice-looking. He had a kind face, focus in his eyes, hair that was easily ruffled.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Hattie asked when they were at the bar together. ‘You look like you’re trying to speak common sense to a politician.’
‘I’m thinking about what we were discussing about earlier,’ Kate said.
‘What specifically?’
‘About how sex could be transactional. That I might have been overthinking it.’
‘And now it looks like you’re overthinking the overthinking,’ Hattie laughed, then paid the bartender and went back to the table.