Yes, it was my choice to leave. But I still cannot picture a day when it does not burn: the thought of Josh kissing someone else, touching her and turning her on, peeling off her clothes. In the ten months or so since Josh and I broke up, I haven’t even considered getting to know anyone else. I’ve only just got used to seeing my finger without my rings and not scrabbling around to work out where I lost them. It still, on so many levels, seems unbelievable to me. Even though I’m the one who left, dating another man would feel like cheating on my husband.
We have spoken occasionally since the day he came to Polly’s house. Just logistics, stuff like council tax and redirecting the post. I moved into Dad’s for a few weeks not long after that, then eventually found a flat to rent just around the corner from work. It’s pretty soulless, in that it looks like a multi-storey car park, and there are lots of passive-aggressive noticeboards in the communal areas, and nobody is ever prepared to make eye contact in the lift. But for now, it is fine. There are three bedrooms, which means I can have people to stay, and I have even set up a tiny studio of canvases in the box room.
Communication with Josh has been made mildly more torturous, though, by the fact that I now have a mobile phone. The temptation to text him throbs constantly, a second pulse beneath my skin. But I know it wouldn’t be fair, just because I occasionally get lonely and miss what we had.
So I have promised myself I will keep my distance from him.
Especially after what happened last time.
I’ve seen Josh in person on just three occasions since last summer. The first, at a bowling alley in October, for Darren’s birthday. That night, Polly, Ingrid and Lo acted like my assigned personal security the entire time, so Josh and I didn’t even get to speak.
The second was our annual festive drinks at the pub. Josh sat at one end of the banquette, and I was at the other, and, aside from a wordless held glance when I first saw him at the bar, we barely communicated. After that, he got so drunk that Darren had to take him home in a taxi.
But the third time was different.
An old friend of Giles was throwing a housewarming, a few days before Christmas. Giles had assured me Josh wouldn’t be there. But a couple of hours in I was exiting the kitchen with a pint in my hand when I collided, quite literally, with Josh. The drink went everywhere, soaking us both.
I couldn’t help thinking back to that first-ever party, Josh getting hosed down by projectile tequila.Sorry, mate. Gag reflex.
‘Shit,’ we said, at exactly the same time. And then, ‘Sorry.’
After a long, hypnotic moment, Josh reached out to push the ends of my now-wet hair over my shoulder. His dark eyes roved mine. ‘You okay?’ he murmured.
Five months had passed since we’d been close enough to touch each other. He looked so fiercely handsome that, out of nowhere, a frustrating little film reel began to spool through my mind. Kissing him in cinemas, the backs of taxis. How it felt to be in bed with him, the lightning-strike of his fingers on my skin. Lazy Saturday-morning fucks that stretched almost into Sunday. The weight and heat of him sinking into me.
He was wearing new trainers, olive-green Vans. It was a weird feeling to realise there were already tiny things I did not recognise about my own husband.
Josh let out a breath, as if he was battling a deep urge of some kind. We were standing close now. I detected the woodsy, warmed-earth scent of unfamiliar cologne.
A thought alarmed me. Was the cologne for someone else? And was she here?
My back was against the wall. The hallway was almost entirely unlit, save for some fairy lights sparkling along the dado rail. The hypnotic pulse of trance music was drifting towards us, as though the house had its own heartbeat.
‘How are you?’ I managed to ask benignly, though my body felt anything but.
‘Finally feeling festive.’
I smiled. ‘Only now?’
‘Well, I watchedSerendipityyesterday. That kind of... got me in the mood.’
For a couple of seconds the moment held. We were hardly breathing, not blinking. Then Josh took a step forward, put a hand on the wall just above my shoulder.
‘I miss you,’ he murmured, his body a gentle cage now around mine, the watch I gave him for his thirtieth glinting from his wrist.
My heart began to race. I felt a softening between my legs.
‘It drives me crazy. Seeing you. Not being able to touch you.’
You can, my heart whispered.You can. Touch me, Josh.
‘When I’m by myself... I think about you.’
Tears rose to my eyes. Hot, salted frustration.I think about you, too.
On the stereo, the CD switched to Joni Mitchell’s ‘River’.
Our all-time favourite Christmas song.
