by Shari Low
‘Nope, but I’ll go with it if you will,’ I said, trying to inject some amusement into the whole situation. I did that when I was nervous. There wasn’t a job interview in my history that I hadn’t kicked off with a bad joke.
Tonight? The really bad joke was on me.
Seeing him, watching him, noticing that Janet the Flipping Jogger’s hand was on his thigh, I realised that… I missed him. And by ‘missed him’ I meant ‘wanted to blow this whole awkward party off and leave here with him right now’.
How could this be? I had no idea. Coming to my senses? Something dodgy in this wine? Jealousy? If it were, it would be the first time. When we were together, Nate had never given me any reason not to trust him, so I’d never had even fleeting moments of jealousy. I’d never checked his phone or called his work to make sure he was there. I’d just been… sure. Not smug. Just sure that he’d never hurt me. How had I repaid that loyalty? These non-jealous boots were made for walkin’.
The next couple of hours passed in a fixed-grin, stomach-knotted haze of self-doubt. What had I done? Had I made the biggest mistake of my life? And would Janet the Jogger’s fingers snap like dried out twigs if I prised them from my husband’s thigh?
Husband. My husband. Soon-to-be-ex. But was that really what I wanted?
I pushed my hand into Richard’s. Yes, it was. Nate and I didn’t work. Of course I was going to miss him – I’d been with him for most of my adult life. But it didn’t make me happy or leave me fulfilled. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have spent the last few months with Richard having extremely enjoyable times, many of which made areas of my anatomy exceptionally happy.
But… Oh bugger, the whole hand / husband / thigh thing was making my teeth grind.
Just then the DJ struck up the opening bars of ‘Proud Mary’ and Chloe jumped to her feet. ‘Yassss! Come on. My inner Tina Turner needs some action.’
I shook my head. ‘My inner Tina Turner has blisters on her feet from these bloody shoes and doesn’t think she can stand up, never mind dance.’
The shame. There was absolutely nothing wrong with my feet, but the thought of Janet the Jogger watching her boyfriend’s soon-to-be-ex-wife shaking her wobbly bits had made me entirely too self-conscious to hit the floor. ‘Lightweight,’ Richard said, laughing. ‘Chloe, I’m in.’ Off they went, dancing before they even reached the designated area. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to have noticed that I was distracted and more than a bit flustered tonight.
Right now, I wanted to be anywhere else but here.
The proximity of Nate and the tumble dryer of emotions spinning in my gut was too much, so I slid out and headed for the toilets. When I got there, I noticed a door that opened to a lovely little back courtyard with a few wrought-iron tables and chairs. I stepped out and to the right, leaned back against the wall. Fresh air. That was what I needed. And a moment of solitude.
‘Yep, it’s that kind of night,’ said a female voice, to my right. It came from behind a curtain of ice-white hair that fell to the chin of a heart-shaped face, where it stopped in a blunt bob. Stylish. Sleek. The kind of woman who laid out her clothes the night before and never left home without a matching bra and knickers. Not that I’m prone to rash judgments. Much.
‘Cigarette?’ she offered, holding out a packet of something long, white, with a gold band around the tip. Menthol.
‘I don’t…’ I was about to finish the sentence, when I realised that I really, really wanted a cigarette.
At least if I choked to death I’d go with a minty fresh aroma.
She held up a lighter and I had a flashback to a night outside the school disco as a fifteen-year-old, trying desperately to impress the coolest guy in the school by smoking with him. It didn’t work then – I choked and was mocked for months. I carried on smoking for the next couple of years just in case he changed his mind, but I finally gave up on unrequited lust when I got to university, went into nursing and decided I preferred my lungs to be fully functioning.
We’d just put this down to a minor blip. I lit the cig, didn’t give in to an instant urge to hurl, and tried to hold it as if it were a matter of habit.
‘You look like you’re having as good a time as me tonight,’ she said. Actually, she more spat the words out.
She was a stranger, I’d never meet her again and I was seriously stressing, so I went for it. ‘My husband and I separated at the beginning of the year and he’s in there with his new girlfriend.’
‘Ouch. Has someone removed all the sharp objects from the table?’ she asked with a wry grimace.
‘Nope. We’re all being very adult and civilised about it,’ I countered truthfully.
‘Urgh, I hate that,’ she said, with a dry, dramatic eye roll that made me laugh. I liked this woman already.
‘Me too.’ I agreed. ‘I’m much better with open hostility and immature petulance.’
She nodded thoughtfully.
‘Anyway,’ I went on. ‘What about you?’
‘My boyfriend is in there with his partner. It’s a long story.’
It took me a moment. ‘His ex-partner?’ I clarified.
‘No. His current one.’
‘His business partner?’ I tried again to make this compute.
‘Nope, his live-in partner. Like I said, long story.’ That sounded like the kind of saga I wanted to hear over a large glass of wine and some high-calorie savoury snacks, but I wouldn’t get the opportunity, because she stubbed out what was left of her cigarette on the concrete floor, smoothed down her skirt, inhaled, exhaled, then forced a smile.
‘Good luck with the sharp objects,’ she said.
‘Think you might need some luck too,’ I added sympathetically. I’m not sure why I felt bad for her. She’d just basically admitted to shagging some poor unsuspecting woman’s partner. But there was a vulnerability about her, a jaded acceptance that just made me feel sorry for her.
Nate would never do that to me. I’d never do it to him. I had a sudden longing for the security and feeling of certainty that had been missing since New Year. Nate was the most decent, loving, kindest guy I’d ever known. Yet I’d just delivered him right into Janet the Jogger’s over-toned thighs. The thought made the red rash creep up my neck again, but this time it was pure anger, most of it directed at myself.
What the hell had I been thinking? How could I have quit so easily? What a fool I’d been.
Or had I? Didn’t I have a gorgeous new boyfriend who made me very happy?
I stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray of the nearest table, and was about to charge back inside when a coughing fit stopped me. My lungs were obviously unimpressed by the minty stuff. As soon as they resumed normal operation, I carried back on inside, still hopping back and forward over a fine line of doubt. Was it time for this nonsense to stop? Time for me to tell Nate that it had all been a mistake, and that he had to unhand Janet from his body?
That mental image made my hackles rise. If this was what jealousy felt like, I now understood why it made people do crazy things – like tell their ex they wanted them back after a few too many glasses of wine.
I bumped into Sasha as I charged back in.
‘Whoa there, Speedy, what’s up with you?’
‘I’ve buggered it up, Sasha. I need to speak to Nate.’
She immediately grabbed my hands. ‘Ah bollocks,’ she said, coming straight to the point as always. ‘Let me guess, you’ve seen him with that woman – who, by the way, just about bored my tits right off – and you’ve suddenly decided you can’t live without him.’
It was spooky how she did that. Her pupils at school must live in fear of her mind-reading abilities. Over her shoulder, I saw Chloe gesture to me to come join her and Richard on the dance floor. They were dancing in perfect timing with each other, doing some kind of shuffle thing and pulling it off in a much more sexy fashion than I could ever manage. Anyone looking at the dance floor would think they were a couple. Maybe they should be. Maybe I should be with Nate and then Chlo
e and Richard…
Sasha snapped me back to the present. ‘Sasha calling Liv, come in Liv.’
‘Yes!’
‘Yes what?’
‘Yes, you’re right. Crap, I hate it when that happens. I’ve screwed this up, Sasha.’
‘No you haven’t. It’s just jealousy, pure and simple. He’s been yours for so long that it doesn’t feel right to see him with someone else.’
‘But what if I should have stuck it out longer and we’d have been good again?’
‘Have you been smoking?’ She always struggled to stick to one point at a time.
‘Yes, but… Fuck, I need to tell him how I’m feeling.’
‘You can’t.’
An uncharacteristic wave of bloody fury took over me. I was the calm one, the voice of reason, but Sasha was way overstepping here and I wasn’t going to back down. ‘Of course I can. Sasha, move out of the way.’
Sighing, but with an expression I couldn’t quite place, she let go of my hands and stepped to the side, allowing me to scan the room.
It took a few moments, before I realised she was right. I saw Chloe and Richard, still dancing. I saw Sasha’s boyfriend, Justin, chatting to the girl I’d cadged a cigarette off outside. I saw a whole room of partying, happy people.
But I didn’t see Nate.
‘He left five minutes ago.’
He’d left. He and Janet had jogged on.
And this was all my fault.
On New Year’s Eve I’d closed the door.
Nate had just double-locked it and I no longer had the key.
Chapter Three
Justin’s 30th Birthday Party
August 2001
‘Has everyone you’ve ever known turned thirty in the last year, or does it just feel that way?’ Richard asked, coming up behind me and planting a kiss on my neck to punctuate each word.
The warm sensation of his breath made me smile. ‘Indeed they are. That’s what happens when you’re socially inept and your friendship circle is the same one you’ve had since university. We’re like a less funny, less attractive, lower-paid version of Friends. That’s why I’m almost thirty and living in my mate’s spare room.’
It took a moment to realise that he was unbuttoning the back of my dress, but as soon as I did, I slid away. It was tempting, but we were late already and I’d paid twenty quid for a blow-dry and I wasn’t going to ruin it, even for a quickie with a guy who could turn me on with just a sideways glance. It was the very best part of our relationship, probably helped by the fact that we both worked shifts, so often only actually managed to get together a couple of times a week. Even after a year of dating, that still suited me just fine.
Justin’s thirtieth birthday party was in a pub in the Merchant City, the more upmarket, grown-up area of Glasgow nightlife. We’d shifted there somewhere in our mid-twenties, when we no longer walked home carrying our shoes in sub-zero temperatures, or stopped for a kebab on the way back. Now we were much more likely to get a taxi home, fully shod, and even I took my make-up off before going to bed. Most of the time.
I had a momentary flashback to Nate folding his clothes before sex – he always did that – then shrugged it off. That was my old life. Nothing there to revisit. Our divorce had come through a couple of months ago, and I’d had a moment of acute sadness, a few tears, and several large glasses of wine with Sasha and Chloe. Then I’d pulled myself together and decided to look at it as the start of a new life. We’d survived relatively unscathed and we hadn’t killed each other in the process of splitting. That was something to be grateful for.
‘Are you ready, Chloe?’ I shouted.
‘I’m here,’ she said from the doorway. ‘Playing bloody third wheel again with you two. People are going to start thinking we are a threesome if we carry on like this.’
She laughed, because the truth was that she didn’t give a damn about being single. Ever since Connor, the love of her early twenties, had hot-tailed it off to the States, she’d been pretty ambivalent on the relationship front. Rob leaving to go to Ibiza had barely made a dent, apart from a rueful, ‘What is it about me that makes men want to leave the country?’
I’d shut that down with, ‘Connor only left the country because you broke his heart.’
‘Yep, and he wasn’t slow in letting Stacey from Chicago put it back together again, was he?’ she’d retorted, but she knew that if she hadn’t ended things with Connor that they’d have gone the distance – in fact, that was what had terrified her into wanting a break.
Water under the bridge.
She still had us. It was an extra bonus that she got on so well with Richard, both in and out of work, so it was only natural that we did a lot of things together. All of them fully clothed.
The party was already packed, hot and smoky when we got there, and there was none of the civilised ‘greeting at the door’ thing – this was ‘everybody in, grab a drink and get on with the celebrations’. Even the arrangements had been low maintenance. Justin had sent out an open invitation to everyone on his email list a week ago last Friday, announcing there would be a piss-up tonight and everyone was welcome. This was why he and Sasha made the perfect pairing: both daring, both bold, both liked to live on the wild side and neither could give a crap about conforming to etiquette.
We negotiated our way in through the crowds, and eventually spotted Sasha sitting alone amidst a sea of glasses at a corner table. Chloe and I headed over, while Richard detoured to the bar for drinks.
‘Hey,’ I greeted her.
‘Oh thank Christ. I’ve been trying to stop people sitting here by loading it up with half-finished drinks, but it’s making me look like the deranged loner, drinking away her bitterness in the corner.’
‘And that would be untrue because…?’ I teased. She didn’t rise to it.
Chloe and I plonked ourselves down and checked out the room. A few guys I remembered from university, Justin’s brother Jake, sitting with what I assumed were their parents, a gang of his workmates… My eyes rested on a female that I recognised, standing in that group of Justin’s colleagues, chatting to another woman. White blonde hair. Cut in a chin-length bob. I hadn’t caught her name last time we met, but at least I’d know where to go if I wanted to borrow a sly cig.
Richard came back with a tray of drinks for the whole table, the conversations got going, Justin appeared, already fairly lubricated, which made Sasha laugh as she jokingly chided him, and we got on with celebrating yet another milestone in our group. The drinks flowed all night as Justin alternated between getting drunker at our table, and getting drunker while he worked the room.
A while later, I spotted him doing the Slosh – a traditional Scottish synchronised dance that looks a bit like line dancing and is performed to the backing track of a jaunty tune – with his Auntie Doreen. I nudged Sasha, ‘He’s having a brilliant time.’
‘Doesn’t he always,’ she said. There was a hint of dryness to her words and I made a mental note to keep an eye on her in case something was brewing. I hoped I was just being hyper-vigilant and oversensitive. Tonight was Justin’s birthday – surely even if he was irritating her in some way, she’d let it pass?
‘Darlings!’ Oh God. My inner child put its head on the table for a moment of escape, before I rallied and responded. ‘Hi Mum.’
‘Ida! I’m so glad you’re here!’ Sasha beamed.
‘Wouldn’t miss it, my lovely,’ she cooed, enveloping Sasha in a hug so heavily perfumed it could take out a cardiovascular system. My mum was grappling fifty, and she dressed accordingly. If the fifty-year-old in question was Cher. There were fishnet tights, there was a black sparkly dress with transparent bits, and there was a hairstyle so large, a swift turn of the head could take out several innocent passers-by.
She finally released Sasha and shared her effusive greetings around the table. I was next, followed by Chloe, and then the grand finale, when she eyed Richard with blatant adoration. Oh yes, the grief and devastation over my break-
up with Nate had been brutal, it had been dramatic, it had required that I visit her multiple times a week because she ‘was struggling to deal with the loss’, it had been a complete nightmare… and it had lasted until about thirty seconds after I’d introduced her to Richard, mentioned he was a doctor, and she’d hit him up with every symptom she and her dancing chums had experienced in the last six months. He’d assured her that she was healthy as a thoroughbred, and she’d clicked her kitten heels, decided she adored him, and would now struggle to pick out Nate in a line-up.
That was our Ida. ‘Right, I’m off to mingle. Where’s that gorgeous man of yours?’ she asked Sasha.
‘Up there doing the Slosh with his Auntie Doreen,’ Sasha replied.
‘Oh, I love a Slosh.’ She immediately tuned into the music and her diamanté slingbacks tottered off in the direction of the dance floor, singing ‘Beautiful Sunday’ as she went.
I decided to deflect by turning the spotlight on potential bumps in my personal life. Time was ticking by and I couldn’t help notice that my ex-husband and my replacement were not yet here.
‘Where’s Nate?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t he coming?’
Sasha adopted the pursed lips of disapproval. ‘I’ve no idea. To be honest with you I’m a bit pissed off. We haven’t been able to get a hold of him all week and then he left a message on Justin’s voicemail earlier saying he’d be late.’
A dozen thoughts rushed through my mind. Was he sick? No, he’d have called someone. Maybe he was having an emotional turmoil? Perhaps he and Janet had split? Was it wrong that, even after all this time, a tiny part of me cheered at that prospect?
My thoughts were interrupted by the screech of electronic feedback, then ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like your attention please.’ It was Justin’s brother, Jake, standing on the bar with a microphone. This would be good. It could be anything from an emotional speech to an announcement that there was about to be a session of strip limbo dancing. ‘I’d just like to say happy birthday to my brother, Justin.’
A cheer went up, then he carried on.
