‘So,’ said Naomi, ‘edited lowlights, please.’
Gina drew a breath. ‘OK, well . . .’
Naomi’s mobile buzzed: a photo of Jason holding a laughing Willow popped up, and she hurriedly turned it upside-down.
Too late. Gina’s stomach lurched. Jason and Stuart were exactly the same kind of straightforward, Top Gear-loving, football-playing blokes – but one was a happily married family man with a doting wife and a people carrier, and the other . . . wasn’t. She and Naomi weren’t that different – were they?
Naomi saw her wince, and looked aghast. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘We’re going to his mother’s for dinner, just trying to work out logistics with the childminder . . .’
The coffees appeared and Naomi pushed the cake towards Gina. ‘Just imagine what it’ll be like when all this is over. Focus on Christmas. By Christmas you’ll be a free woman, in that beautiful new flat, looking forward to a romantic New Year’s break with some hot new bloke. I’m envious. I can think of two very eligible men off the top of my head who’d be thrilled to take your mind off all this. Just give me the nod and you can be meeting them over dinner at ours.’
‘Christmas is ten months away. I’ll probably still be getting texts about his sodding bicycle pump.’ Gina scraped the cream cheese icing off the back of the cake. ‘And no blind dates, please. That’s so far down my list of things to do, it’s on the next page. I don’t know if I ever want another relationship.’
Naomi made a soothing noise. ‘Don’t say that. Maybe not right now but eventually . . .’
Gina took a long breath – ‘Think blue, a healing colour, imagine your insides flooded with the waters of a lovely clean swimming-pool’ – exhaled and forked the cake into her mouth.
‘So where’ve you got to?’ Naomi poured a stream of brown sugar into her coffee. ‘Is the paperwork for the decree nisi in?’
‘Yup, that’s all going ahead. But Stuart’s solicitor’s making a big deal about the financial settlement. Apparently he’s not happy about some details of the house sale.’
‘What’s to be unhappy about?’ She widened her round eyes in disbelief. ‘You sold the house, you’ve got the money in the bank. Half each. No?’
‘No, apparently not. He feels he deserves more of it than me because he put his bonus into the mortgage and I was on sick pay for months.’ Gina stabbed at the cake, which was crumbling in a very unsatisfactory dry way. Friday cake. Not fresh. ‘It’s so unlike him to be petty like this. He was fine about it at the time – or was he just lying about it? It makes me wonder what else he didn’t really mean. And he keeps texting. Have I got this? Have I got that?’ Gina bit her lip. ‘I wouldn’t mind, but every time the phone beeps, it’s like he’s reminding me that he’s not texting to apologise. He’s texting to get some stuff, as if I’m clinging to his old football kit and crying into it at night or something.’
Naomi wasn’t saying anything. Gina glanced up. ‘What are you thinking? You’ve got that face on.’
‘Don’t shout me down,’ said Naomi, cautiously. ‘But . . . you don’t think he’s doing this because he’s hoping you’ll get back together?’
‘Sorry?’
‘All those texts. He’s got a solicitor, so why does he keep texting you? If he doesn’t want to keep in contact?’
Gina put down her fork. In the middle of the night, lonely and disoriented, she’d wondered that too. Underneath all her other reactions, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her mother was right: Stuart was a decent bloke; she should have tried harder. No one had the right to expect to be happy all the time. They’d been together nearly nine years. They’d got over the classic seven-year blip, largely thanks to her serious illness . . .
Then she thought of Bryony, and the supposed murder-mystery weekend. Her ruined Christmas pretending everything was fine for her mother. Their wasted twenties.
‘He doesn’t love me any more,’ she said flatly. ‘I don’t want to start thinking like that. Looking back, I don’t know if he ever did love me. Not really.’
‘What? You don’t go through what he went through with you if you don’t love someone.’ Naomi looked horrified. ‘Stuart adored you. And you loved him. That doesn’t just vanish overnight.’
‘It vanished enough for him to have an affair with a younger woman. God, he’s such a cliché. Why couldn’t he just get a motorbike like any other bloke?’
‘Stuart was never known for his originality,’ said Naomi. ‘But don’t start thinking he didn’t love you. He did. You know that.’
There was a pause, as the idea of Stuart wanting to make things up sharpened like a photograph in developing fluid, taking on an unnerving credibility. Were the bowls a last-ditch attempt to remind her what they once had? He was proud. He wouldn’t approach her outright and beg forgiveness. It wasn’t his style. But then attaching romantic memories to inanimate objects wasn’t Stuart’s style either. Rory’s Antiques Roadshow explanation was much more likely.
Gina shook her head. ‘No. I had all this from my mum at the weekend. She thinks I should forgive him the midlife-crisis shag and beg him to come home. She’s furious that I’ve derailed her plans for a pair of grandchildren and a house in the country with a pony.’
‘Oh, she’s not . . .’
‘She played the “I don’t want you to die a lonely old spinster” card.’ Gina felt reckless after an hour of trying to rein in her self-loathing in front of Rory. ‘She more or less said that if I’d never met Kit I’d be happy with the marriage Stuart and I had. Can you believe that? She’s still blaming Kit for everything. Never mind what I’ve done, or what I wanted.’ She covered her face with her hands. ‘I don’t mind starting again, I can cope with that, but I wish I didn’t have to keep looking back at what I’ve screwed up. It’s such a mess.’
‘Then let Rory handle it. It’s what you’re paying him for.’ Naomi sipped her coffee, then put it down, which meant she was about to be very honest. ‘Look, if it’s any consolation, it’s a relief for me to see you being angry. That’s what divorcing people are meant to be like. Mean and bonkers. You’ve been so calm so far, with your ruthless sorting and your lists, I wondered if you were actually processing anything.’
‘Cheers.’
‘No, I mean it. You’ve always been so amazing at listening to me ramble on about my problems, I wish you’d let me do the same for you.’ Naomi’s eyes searched her face, silently asking what else Gina was hiding from her, and Gina felt her lips tighten. ‘You should have said about your mum. I could have done my impression of her. Would that have helped?’
Gina half-smiled, and picked up her fork and mashed some cake crumbs into the tines. ‘I don’t want to keep going over the same old stuff. It’s boring enough in my own head. And I don’t want to turn into my mother, stewing over grievances from twenty years ago. I need to move on.’
‘Move on, fair enough,’ said Naomi. ‘But don’t underestimate just how far you’ve come in the last few years. How much crap you’ve had to deal with. That takes a lot of strength, Gina.’
Gina lifted her gaze. ‘It doesn’t feel like it. And what have I got to show for it?’
‘You’re here, dumbo.’ Naomi looked incredulous. ‘You’re still here.’ She looked as if she were about to say something else, then sighed. ‘Tell me about your unpacking. Have you found that denim jacket I lent you about four hundred years ago?’
‘No. But I’ve done ten more boxes since you were last over, and I’ve started making a list of those hundred things I’m keeping.’
The list was pinned to the back wall: a long roll of lining paper, with the items written in black marker pen, starting with ‘1. Blue glass vase (and flowers)’ and running down, so far, to ‘15. My iPhone’. Gina liked the way it reminded her of something from a modern gallery, her writing getting bolder and curlier as the list crept down the wall. ‘I’ve got a fair bit of space now,’ she added. ‘I can see half of a whole other wall and you can get into the spare room without
turning sideways.’
‘It’s going to be gorgeous, that flat . . .’ Naomi looked wistful. ‘It must be like being in a lovely white cloud, lying on the sofa with a glass of wine and some music of your own choice. Not CBeebies. Maybe a novel. A novel! You must be doing so much reading! God, I miss reading. I miss going to the loo on my own most, but I miss reading just after that.’
Gina forced a smile. She wished sometimes that Naomi would stop overstressing the grind of motherhood – she knew she was only doing it in order to make her feel better about not having had children with Stuart. It was the one topic Naomi had ever been less than honest about, and Gina sensed it was probably because the truth – that parenthood shone like a powerful light inside you, revealing hidden corners of your own soul, even with the worry and disruption – was prising open a tiny fissure in their precious friendship. Gina adored Willow and was honoured to have been made her godmother, but sometimes Willow’s easy affection reminded her of what she didn’t have. What she might never have now.
Sometimes Gina felt that looking at Naomi’s life was like looking at her own from outside a window: she should be in there, with the husband, with the toddler. But she wasn’t.
Naomi’s mobile buzzed again. She turned it over, read the message, sighed and started to gather her things together. ‘Sorry, I’ve got to meet Jason – he’s just picked Willow up from the childminder and he’s already having a meltdown about being late. I’ll leave you to your beautiful cloud. Think of me watching the adventures of Peppa Pig while you’re sipping a chilled Chablis and deciding which Scandinavian crime novel to read next.’ She shoved her chair back and hauled her squashy leather handbag onto the table, decanting boxes of raisins and odd socks in search of her purse.
Gina had a sudden vision of her flat, set against the jangling cheeriness of Naomi and Jason’s house: it’d be dark when she put her key into the lock, and silent, no television news burbling in the background, no sweet smell of garlic drifting from the kitchen. She’d have to bring it to life herself, only to go to bed a few hours later and do it again in the morning.
A childish loneliness gripped her, as if Naomi were off to a party she wasn’t invited to.
‘You don’t want to come over and he can meet you at mine?’ she asked, before she could stop herself. ‘I’ve got a whole load of clothes to go to the charity shop, if you wanted first dibs.’
‘Oh, I so wish I could but you know what I’m like. We’d put the kettle on, and get chatting, and then Jay’d turn up and be all come on, come on. He’s only about five minutes away, so it’s probably easier if I . . .’ Naomi saw Gina’s stricken expression, and hesitated. Gina wished she could delete her words in mid-air, pretend she’d never spoken. ‘Oh. I can . . . maybe drop in for—’
‘No, it’s fine,’ said Gina. She smiled too hard. ‘Silly idea. It’d take you five minutes just to squeeze into the sitting room. Anyway, I’ll be seeing you tomorrow . . . Are we still on for the Saturday usual?’
‘Of course,’ said Naomi. ‘There’s a new café opened over the road from our house, I’ve been saving it for us to try together. Come over.’
‘OK,’ said Gina. But Saturday morning was on the other side of a long Friday night.
The flat was as dark as Gina had expected when she let herself in, and colder. The lamps on the street below threw long shadows over the boxes crowding the sitting room, although there was a little more space than before. She moved quickly around the flat, breaking the silence where she could: she turned on the soft lamps, closed the horizontal blinds, put on the local talk radio station for some background voices while her soup heated on the hob. They were ‘discussing’ Valentine’s Day, so Gina changed the channel to a play on Radio 4. She dithered for a moment about pouring a glass of wine from the open bottle in the fridge, conscious that she’d reached for it without actually wanting a drink.
Did she want a glass of wine? Gina frowned at it, as if it might tell her. Janet had never drunk at home, and had always been convinced Gina was on the verge of full-blown alcoholism because she’d cut loose a bit at university, which was only to be expected after an adolescence of sherry-less trifles and coq au vin with no vin. Janet’s only squabble with poor Terry was over his fondness for one beer with Test Match Special.
Gina reached for the bottle, then stopped again. Was it just a habit? Did she want to be the sort of person who liked a glass of wine at home, which she’d got into with Stuart because all their friends did? It wasn’t going to make anything go away.
What do I want? she wondered, in a sudden panic.
It felt as if every decision had to be re-examined, and the smaller the decision, the harder it was to work out, with no one else there to notice or comment or know. The answers that were floating up from Gina’s subconscious were surprising her. Only having herself to please was strange.
She poured herself a big glass with a flourish, because she could, then looked at it, suddenly scared by how much she wanted it, and poured it down the sink.
After supper, Gina curled up with her laptop on the sofa to start putting together the spreadsheet of costs that she was working out for the Rowntrees’ project, but Lorcan hadn’t replied to her text about the roofers, and without the Internet – still not set up – she couldn’t do the research she needed. After half an hour, she gave up. It would have to be sorting.
The print-out of Stuart’s list was on the coffee table. As well as the bowls he’d decided he wanted a pair of framed Tube posters Gina had given him one Christmas, and a powerful torch he’d bought with their combined supermarket points, and some WiFi speakers that had been in their bedroom. Nothing she particularly wanted, but annoying to find in the packed boxes.
Gina tipped some clothes out of a box, scrawled ‘Stuart’ on it, and dumped in four of his Dan Brown paperbacks as a start. Fine, he could have everything back. Each item she chucked into the box made her more irritated, but it was a nice clean anger, because she knew exactly what she was cross about: in this case, the way Stuart started either a Dan Brown novel or a Jeremy Clarkson collection on the plane to every single holiday, chuckling to himself then refusing to say what he was laughing at. This wasn’t the confusing, diffuse pain that swept through her periodically: it was reassuringly specific.
Multi-gadget remote. Knife sharpener. Wisden’s Almanac 2009.
And he might as well have his love letters back, she thought, turning to the box marked ‘Study’.
Gina couldn’t bring herself to throw out handwritten letters: they felt too much a part of the person, like locks of hair or baby teeth. She kept all the letters anyone had ever sent her in shoeboxes, stacked in a bigger box in her old study – postcards from her mum and Terry, notes from Naomi, jumbled together in manila envelopes.
The box was pushed into a corner by the door. Stuart hadn’t written her many letters, but there’d been one or two sweet notes while she was in hospital; one in particular had been the closest he’d ever come to a proper love letter, scrawled in a waiting room where he’d sat, chewing his nails while she came round after her operation. It was short but precious because Stuart rarely committed his feelings to paper; she’d treasured it, but Gina didn’t want to keep it now. It hurt her just thinking about it.
She reached into the big box and took out the first two A4 envelopes, one fatter than the other, neither addressed nor sealed. They brought her to an abrupt stop.
The first contained a small handful of sealed envelopes, addressed to Stuart, Naomi, her mother, Kit and a couple of other people. Goodbye letters that she’d never sent, but never wanted to get rid of either. Gina stared at them for a second, then put them back. Another day, when she was feeling more robust.
The second envelope was thicker, and it wasn’t what she was looking for but Gina took a deep breath and tipped it out onto the pale carpet.
White envelopes, blue envelopes, all covered in the handwriting of her early twenties, the studied arty script she’d used then with the curl
ed ds and dashes. It made Gina feel uncomfortable to see it; it wasn’t unlike her handwriting now, but there was something self-conscious about it. The letters were all addressed to the same person:
Christopher Atherton
Brunswick House
Little Mallow
Oxfordshire
Again and again. The postcards had been desperate, their message shouting from the back of the card. Even now, Gina couldn’t help her eyes catching her own words even though she didn’t really want to.
Having an amazing time in the big city. Today I saw the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition at the Courtauld which you’d love. I’ve bought you all the postcards. I’ll send them. I think of you every time I see Ophelia, and wish we could see it together. I love you. I miss you. Gina x
Gina cringed at her own gushing passion for the Pre-Raphaelites and their hyper-coloured reality and doomed women, draping and dying all over the place, with their bee-stung lips and the drooping eyelids. At the time, Gina remembered feeling as if it captured exactly how she felt, the helplessness of that all-consuming love bursting out of her, luscious and vivid, and withering on the vine in Hartley. Now, it just seemed superficial. It certainly wasn’t any sort of death she’d encountered since. It embarrassed her to think she’d sent those images to Kit’s house.
Gina’s wasn’t the only handwriting on the envelopes. Each line of Kit’s address had been neatly crossed out, and her mum’s home address in Hartley had been written beneath in fountain pen, with ‘Return to Sender’ underlined three times. The anger in the writing still made Gina’s heart race. It was elegant, looped copperplate, an educated hand, but there were points where the writer had pressed so hard the nib had splayed, leaving a hairline crack of fury running through the middle of the word. Bellamy. Hartley.