‘Great, well, me neither. And if I haven’t made it patently clear, my job is being divorced – successfully, blissfully divorced –andshouting about it from the rooftops so other divorced people can feel good about themselves and get their lives back on track and never, ever have to feel as small and helpless and lost as I felt when you left that day and never came back. You never came back…Fuck.’
A sob burst out of me, sending fat tears spilling down my face. I swiped at them, wishing I was anywhere but on that fucking island with the only man who’d ever broken my heart.
‘Ally…’
‘Why didn’t you come back?’ I whispered, my voice strangled.
‘You didn’t want me to.’
‘Yes, I did,’ I squeaked, another sob taking hold.
He scooched his chair closer. ‘Hey…’ He reached for me, wrapping me in his arms and gently stroking my hair, which just made me cry harder.
Tommy wasn’t giving up his job and I wasn’t giving up mine, and they couldn’t have been any less compatible. Simply put, there was no way to make it –us– work.
‘Shh, it’s okay, Ally.’
‘No, it’s not,’ I wailed.
‘No… it’s not,’ he echoed, and my heart split clean in two.
25
Thought of the day…
There’s an old adage that says misery loves company.
That’s bullshit.
Misery loves comfort food, binge-watching mindless TV,crying intermittently,then pretending you’re going to be fine.
Youwillbe fine,but not for a long, long, long (fucking) time.
I was a walking cliché after I returned from Aetheria. The human version of a cautionary tale. Everything I told my followers to avoid doing, I did.
Wallowing, running through conversations in my head over and over, pining, replaying the sex blow-by-blow, second-guessing my decisions, second-guessing my emotions, second-guessing everything Tommy had ever said and done, indulging future memories that would never happen, more wallowing, more pining, wallowing and pining together…
And what would you even call that? Walling? Pillowing? They sound like sexual positions.
Sorry – I digress…
More than a week passed of me sleepwalking through life. I showed up at work, meaning my body was present, but my mind and spirit were elsewhere – such as the coal cellar or the box room or the cupboard under the stairs. Metaphorically speaking, of course. It wasn’t like Claude locked me away for being a miserable git – no matter how much she might have wanted to.
In stark contrast to my zombie-like demeanour, I started dressing like an eccentric, scrounging items from the back of my wardrobe and appearing each morning like Vivienne Westwood crossed with Willy Wonka – and a bit of Elmo tossed in for good measure. Though, to be fair, it was anadorablefluffy red shrug.
One morning, I wandered into HQ barefoot, wearing shortie pyjamas printed with ducks. And not regular ducks –rubberducks and each one was in costume. I have no idea where they came from – the pyjamas, not the ducks.
Claude took one look at me, spun me around by my shoulders, and smacked my arse, telling me, ‘Get upstairs and take a shower.’
She had a point. It had been two days since I’d bathed, and I was starting to smell a bit ripe. I returned to HQ thirty minutes later, smelling as if Jo Malone herself had gorged on an entire patisserie. But at least I was dressed (semi-)normally in bright-orange wide-leg trousers, a cropped purple tank top, and fuchsia Converse high-tops.
‘You should see this,’ Claude said as I sat at my desk and stared at a black screen. She reached across and pressed theonbutton and my laptop leapt to life.
‘Hmm?’ I asked, tearing my eyes from the screensaver – a photograph of one of the towns in the Cinque Terra. Vernazza was my guess.
‘This,’ she said, reaching across me again – this time to manoeuvre the mouse.
I looked back at the screen and my inbox appeared. Claude clicked on an email and it populated the screen.I’m Super Famous, I Want Out!blared from the subject line.
