‘Are you still hung up on him? On your husband?’
‘God, no. I’m really, genuinely not. But I rushed into my relationship with him, and it was a massive mistake and it hurt me really badly. I just need time to get over that. Not over him, but over what it did to me.’
‘So you’re saying we shouldn’t see each other any more?’
My heart screamed, No! But there was no way to fudge it. If I said I just wanted to keep things casual, and he agreed, and we carried on spending those blissful nights together, the nights would inevitably turn to days. If we carried on yielding to the physical chemistry between us, an emotional connection would inevitably follow.
And that would leave me at risk of reopening the wounds in my heart that were still so raw, still not fully healed.
I said, ‘Edward, I’m really sorry. But yes, I think that is what I’m saying. It would be so easy to fall for you, and I just can’t let that happen yet.’
His face hardened and I felt a wrench of guilt, knowing I was hurting him. But better now than later on, when we’re both deeper into this, my head insisted.
‘I’m not going to wait, you know,’ he said. ‘I’ve loved being with you. I think you’re special. But I can’t put my life on hold just in case you change your mind.’
‘Of course you can’t. I’m not asking you for that. It would be a totally shitty thing to do.’
That’s what he wanted, though, I thought. If I suggested that, I’m sure he’d agree. And it would have been shitty, and selfish and unfair.
‘So this is it, then? You’re ending it?’
I managed a smile. ‘Maybe we’ll see each other around. At Fifty-One Wardour, perhaps.’
‘I’ll be sure to not send you champagne if we do.’
He was smiling too, a smile as sad as the weight on my heart. I reached for him and we held each other for a long time, all the way back down to earth. Then we’d parted, going our separate ways through the crowds. I’d turned and watched his dark blue coat getting further and further away until I couldn’t distinguish it from all the other coats any more, and I’d made my way home alone.
‘Well, if you do change your mind,’ Bianca was saying now, and for a second I couldn’t figure out what she was talking about, ‘just drop me a text. Paul’s coming over at eight. Men like him don’t come along every day, you know.’
‘I know they don’t. But if there’s someone out there who’s right for me, I guess I’ll find him when I’m ready.’
Maybe you already found him, and let him go. But there was no point dwelling on my decision – I’d made it, and now I had to make it work.
I said goodbye to Bianca, then turned my attention to the boxes and bags, all waiting to be unpacked.
By ten that night, I’d made good progress. Plates and glasses were stacked in the kitchen cabinets. All my clothes were arranged tidily in the wardrobe. The abstract painting Dad had given me for a wedding present hung over the gas fire, its brilliant jewel colours lighting up the room. Maybe I would get a Christmas tree, I thought. Make the place feel even more like a home.
But for now, I was whacked and ready for bed. There was just one more thing to do.
I went into the second bedroom, where one day I hoped there’d be a spare bed and a desk for me to work at, looking out over the garden. For the moment, though, it held only my vintage armoire and a box full of odds and ends – bills and paperwork, my passport, games of Scrabble and backgammon Myles and I had bought and never played, old phone chargers and notepads, a framed photograph of Myles and me on our wedding day.
Most of it was junk, and I’d get rid of it in the morning. First, I’d just work through the stuff and pack away anything important in the cabinet, and then I could go to bed. Beatrice, bored of my unpacking, was already waiting there for me, curled up on my pillow.
I sorted quickly through the box, returning most of its contents to take to the recycling bank in the morning. There, I saw with a pang, was a bundle of the letters Dad had written to me when I was at school. They were all twenty years old or more – by the time I was at university, we’d started communicating by email. I rifled through them, smiling as I thought of all the time he’d spent relating the inconsequential details of his life so I’d feel closer to him.
Then, tucked in among them, I noticed a strange envelope, addressed in an unfamiliar hand. The address on it wasn’t my school. It was a Manhattan address – the apartment Myles had been subletting when I met him, and it was Myles’s name on the envelope.
I should return it to him, of course. It wasn’t my property, and it wasn’t my business.
But I couldn’t stop myself opening the envelope and pulling out the sheets of paper.
They weren’t the same pale blue writing paper that Dad used. They were pages torn from a spiral-bound notebook. Whoever had written this obviously wasn’t in the habit of writing letters – they’d just reached for the nearest thing and used that. The handwriting was an uneven, awkward script, that of someone who was more used to typing.
There was a date scrawled at the top of the first page – a date I knew well. It was when Myles and I had been seeing each other for about a month, when he’d asked me to move to London to be with him.
Dear Myles,
I read.
Writing to you like this feels completely bizarre. I’ve never written you a letter before – I’ve never needed to. You always answered my texts and took my calls. It was what you promised, remember? That you being in New York wouldn’t change anything, that it was just temporary, and that soon you’d come back and it would be like this time apart never happened.
But it seems something’s changed. For two weeks now, you haven’t responded to me at all. I’ve called, I’ve texted, I’ve emailed and you’ve just blanked me. I rang the office and they said you were out at a meeting, so at least I know you’re okay and nothing bad has happened to you. But that doesn’t mean something hasn’t gone wrong. It obviously has.
Obviously, for some reason, you’ve decided it’s over between us. Just like that. After a year together. After we talked about moving in together. After you told me you loved me. Just the last time we spoke, you said everything was fine – you couldn’t wait to see me. You said maybe I should come out to New York for a long weekend.
You said you were missing me.
You know, I thought about doing just that. I thought about getting on a plane and coming out there, surprising you at work or at your apartment. I’m not going to do that. I’m not that tragic and desperate.
But I wanted you to know how badly you’ve hurt me. You won’t let me say it to you in any other way, so I’m writing it down. I don’t know what happened to change the way you feel, but I wish you’d had the courage to tell me.
I guess you don’t. I guess you’re not the person I thought you were. I guess it’s over.
Have a nice life.
Jess
I read the letter through again. Across the distance of time, I could feel the hurt, anger and betrayal radiating off the page. I wondered who Jess was, what she looked like, where she was now. I thought about the part I’d played in her heartbreak, not knowing.
I thought of Charlotte Bell, bravely coming over to apologise for the hurt she’d unknowingly inflicted on me. I wouldn’t be able to do the same for Jess – there was no surname on her signature and no address at the top of the page.
Perhaps, before Charlotte and maybe even after her, too, there’d been other women in Myles’s life. I didn’t know and I no longer cared, I was relieved to realise. But before any of them, there’d been another other woman, innocently and joyfully flinging herself into love with a man she believed was only hers.
And that woman had been me.
Thirty
It was lunchtime on Wednesday, and Megs had brought Ethan into the office. Only Rosie was there, and she’d had a good old coo over him before offering to keep an eye on him while his mum and I retired to the boardroom.
‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘you’re really lucky.’
Megan’s face fell. ‘Oh, God, Sloane, I’m sorry. What a dick.’
‘Don’t be,’ I said. ‘You know what, if I had got pregnant and then found out about Myles, it would all have been a million times worse. I don’t know if I could have gone through with having the baby. That’s if I’d found out soon enough to have had a choice. And if it had been too late – I don’t know, maybe not having a choice would have been even worse than having one. And having that tie to Myles for the rest of my life, not being able to move on properly – I don’t know if I could’ve dealt with that.’
Megs looked at me intently. ‘You are over him, right?’
‘I’m over him, sure,’ I said. ‘I mean, I wouldn’t get back together with him if he was the only man left on the planet and a nuclear bomb had destroyed all the world’s vibrators. As for whether I’m over what he did to me – I’m getting there.’
‘That’s good to know. Because there’s something I need to tell you.’
My stomach lurched and plummeted, and I felt sweat break out on my palms. All at once, I was back there in our spare room, looking at Myles’s phone, confronting what I believed was betrayal not only by my husband, but by my friend, too.
I’d been wrong about Bianca. But what if Megan had… Megan and Myles had… surely not. They’d only met on a handful of occasions – at my birthday parties, at restaurants we’d been to with her and Matt as a foursome, at Megs and Matt’s wedding. Surely Megan, who I trusted implicitly, not only personally but professionally too, wasn’t going to shatter my faith in her?
Not Megan. She’d never do that. You’re just being paranoid, I told myself firmly. And although I knew that sensible part of me was right, and I felt ashamed of my brief moment of mistrust, I still dreaded what she might be going to say next.
I took a deep breath, clenching my hands into fists under the table. ‘Go on.’
‘If I tell you this, do you promise you won’t hate me?’
‘Megs! Come on – out with it.’
Megan opened her mouth and closed it again. And then, all in a rush, she said, ‘I never liked him, you know. I’m sorry but right from day one I couldn’t stand the man. Jesus, how can one human being have such a bloody high opinion of themselves? With his arsey suits and his sleazy smile and – oh my God – the way he does that swooshy thing with his hair? It makes me want to chop his hand off and make him eat it, every time.’
It was my turn to open and shut my mouth without saying anything, but I doubt Megs even noticed. She was in the zone.
‘He’s an utter wankpuffin, Sloane. A twatbadger, a cockwomble, a dickbiscuit. He is a miserable piece of knobcheese and I hope he spends the rest of his life regretting what he did to you. In between farting around with his stupid hair, obviously.’
She paused for breath, but still not for long enough for me to say anything.
‘Seriously, if he was here right now I’d be telling him all this, instead of you. I’m frankly amazed you haven’t. It’s just because you’re too fucking dignified, too decent a person, too damn strong and sensible to sink to his bottom-feeder level. You go high, my lovely, but bloody hell, he went low. What a scumbag.’
She paused for another breath, and then went on, ‘There, I said it. Now I guess if you ever do get back together, you’ll hate me and we won’t be able to be friends any more. But it was worth it.’
‘You didn’t sleep with him?’ I finally asked.
‘Sleep with that? Not a hovering batfuck. I mean, I know you loved him and everything, but – ugh.’
‘It’s just… I thought you might have been going to say…’
‘Oh my God! Oh, no. Of course you thought that. I’m so sorry – I should have known. I really didn’t mean to scare you. But that utter slimeball, destroying your faith in everything so badly. I wish you’d unpicked the seams of all his trousers before you left. I wish you’d hidden prawns in the curtains. I wish you’d sold his West Ham season ticket on eBay. Even that would’ve been too good for him, the horrendous bastarding bellend.’
‘Megs,’ I said, ‘I’m worried you’re bottling up your feelings. Why don’t you tell me what you really think?’
‘What? But I…’ And then she looked at me, and we both started to laugh so hard we ended up collapsed over the table gasping for breath, our eye make-up leaving black smears on its glossy white surface.
When at last we’d composed ourselves, I said, ‘Seriously, though. Imagine if I’d ended up staying, thinking he’d change his ways.’
‘They never do,’ Megs replied sagely. ‘Once a shitgibbon, always a shitgibbon.’
‘I know,’ I replied. ‘And if there’s one thing I’ve realised over the past few months, it’s that if I end up on my own, I can cope with it. It might not be my number one life goal to end up a bitter old spinster with only a cat for company, but there are worse things, right?’
‘Like what happened to Vivienne,’ Megan said. ‘Staying in a marriage with a guy she loved, who never loved her and messed her around over and over.’
‘Like that,’ I said. ‘It’s weird, though. It’s like she was trapped in that place, not able to move on, not able to work, not able to even vacuum her carpets or take out her trash, just spending hours and hours in her garden, because that was the one place where she could be happy.’
‘And yet when Max died, she was devastated,’ Megan said.
‘Yes, she was. Absolutely in pieces. But I really think it was his death that helped her to deal with having lost her baby. Juliet. And let her see the trap she’d fallen into, the way her grief about that and her heartbreak over Max had kind of made her get stuck. She couldn’t heal and move on. But once he died, it was like she could look at what her life had become and say, “No. I don’t want this any more.” And Bianca and Charis turning up and making friends with her and her getting the part in Craig’s production of The Cherry Orchard were just some of the ways that things worked out for her. If they hadn’t happened, I reckon she would have worked stuff out by herself.’
‘Possibly,’ Megan said. ‘But it’s a brilliant part in a blockbuster production of a great play. Even if it doesn’t end up being a springboard to a whole new career for her, it should bring in some money, which I’m sure she’ll be grateful for.’
‘Well, you’d think so. That’s what I thought. But it turns out we’re both wrong.’
I filled Megan in on the last time I’d been to see Vivienne. I’d arrived at eleven in the morning and stood outside the door for a few seconds, almost fearful of knocking in case I’d find that something had happened to disturb the equilibrium of her new life.
But I needn’t have worried.
Vivienne opened the door seconds after I knocked, wearing an emerald-green velvet tracksuit. Her hair was smoothly blow-dried, and although she wasn’t wearing any make-up, her skin glowed. The rich, sugary smell of baking wafted through from the kitchen.
‘Darling!’ She kissed me on both cheeks, and I could smell some kind of expensive, rose-scented moisturiser. ‘Come in! Great timing – I’ve just taken a batch of mince pies out of the oven. They’ll be like molten lava still, but if we wait a few minutes we should be able to sample them without burning our mouths.’
I followed her to the kitchen, where we sat at the wooden table, now scrubbed so clean its pine surface was almost white, and she poured coffee from a cafetière. Outside, I could see that the garden had been pruned back for winter; only a winter-flowering cherry tree still wore a drift of white blossom that reminded me of one of Vivienne’s diaphanous nighties. A robin was perched on the back of the
bench where we’d sat when she told me about Max’s death and the painful, drawn-out demise of their marriage.
‘You’re looking so well,’ I said. ‘Working suits you.’
‘Honestly, I’d forgotten what it was like to be so busy!’ She swished around the kitchen putting milk and sugar on the table, carefully levering hot pastries out of their baking tin with a palette knife and arranging some on a plate, adjusting the angle of the holly wreath that hung from the mantlepiece. ‘I have my voice coach twice a week, and I’ve been doing barre fitness classes to try and get back into some sort of shape, and of course we’re rehearsing every day, and then there are all the social things with the cast. Come the weekend I just sleep and sleep! And after the press previews it’ll be the opening night and then I’ll be working non-stop for six months.’
‘It sounds exhausting, but it definitely suits you,’ I said. ‘Please let us know if there’s anything we can do to help. The theatre will send your fan mail to the office and we’d be happy to reply to it for you, and of course we’ll handle all your media requests and only say yes to the good stuff. And we can set up and manage your social-media accounts.’
‘Oh, you don’t need to do that,’ Vivienne said. ‘I’m already on the Gram.’
‘You what?’
‘Isn’t that what you’re supposed to call it? I’ve got an Insta account now. Ruby-Grace helped me set it up. Such a charming young woman. She explained about hashtags and told me who I should follow. Reese Witherspoon’s already followed me back. She’s a keen gardener, did you know?’
I imagined Ruby-Grace sitting with Vivienne, right here at her kitchen table, patiently explaining to her about two-factor authentication and filters, and my heart melted a bit.
‘Well, it sounds like you’ve got that nailed. But other things as well – like, if you’d like a selection of frocks sent over for the opening-night party, or anything like that?’
‘I already have my frock. I took Charis to Harrods to see Father Christmas, and we had tea there afterwards and then went shopping. It’s Dior and it’s utterly fabulous. I’ll never need to buy another evening dress in my life.’
No, We Can't Be Friends: A totally perfect romantic comedy Page 28
