82.
Joel—three years after
Give me two more!”
“No, I hate you.”
“Two more! Come on!”
I can tell Steve won’t be releasing my ankles until I’ve squeezed out two more sit-ups. Torso burning, I oblige. Then I collapse in a pool of sweat and resentment, start groaning loudly about canceling my membership.
“Yeah, yeah.” Steve shoves a water bottle in my face. “You want easy? Stay in bed.”
“Wish I had,” I growl. Rejecting the water, I roll over. Do my best not to throw up.
Steve agrees to suspend the sadism for five minutes while I catch my breath.
“How was it, then?” he asks me.
“How was what?”
“The spa, you idiot.”
I got back this morning from the wellness retreat, the one Callie bought me the now long-expired voucher for. The place is still going strong, squeezing juices for people with bad habits, massaging their vital organs. There was yoga and meditation. Acupuncture, some chanting. A couple of ceremonies involving bare feet, and a bit of halfhearted clanging.
I felt I owed it to her, somehow. Even after so long, at least to honor thethought of it. Her kindness to me that Christmas, the hope she’d had on my behalf that I sometimes dare to feel myself these days. Despite knowing what’s to come.
“A bit bonkers,” I tell Steve. “But I feel good. Weirdly enough.”
“They get you sleeping like a baby?”
“I’ve never understood that. Babies are famously bad sleepers. Speaking of which, how’s Elliot?”
Steve and Hayley had their second, a little boy, two months ago.
“Still a tyrant. Literally a monster in a onesie. I don’t think he’s shut his eyes for more than five minutes since he was born. Love the socks off him, though,” he adds, with a smile. And then, “You’ve not...?”
“No, of course not.”
We have an agreement, Steve and I, that if ever I dream about my godchildren again, he’ll be the first to know.Whatever it is, good or bad, you tell me straightaway.I have the same understanding with Tamsin, Warren. Most people, it seems, would want to know.
I wonder briefly, as I sometimes do, how things would have panned out if Callie had wanted to know the truth. Would we be married with kids now, a family of our own? Might I even have had a chance to change the course of—
“Right,” Steve says, springing to his feet. “Burpees. Come on.”
“What? That wasn’t five minutes.”
“Joel, what am I always telling you? You snooze, youlose.” He says this very emphatically. Makes an L with his thumb and forefinger, brings it up to his forehead.
Just in case I haven’t got the message from the last ten times he’s done it.
•••
They didn’t get me sleeping like a baby at the retreat, actually, despite the acupuncture and reflexology, and the nauseating quantity of essentialoils. I’ve been much better on that front recently, but I still get nervous when I’m away from home at night.
The disquiet gave me a strong urge to get absolutely wasted, but I didn’t want to go there. It reminded me too much of my past, of darker times. Somehow I had to stop myself dashing to the nearest twenty-four-hour supermarket. So I took to roaming the grounds after dark, wrapped up in a thick coat, scarf, and hat.
On my last night, cravings thankfully all but gone, I bumped into someone doing much the same as me.
