‘That’s so thoughtful of you, thanks, darling. I dearly need this,’ I said, taking a sip of my coffee, willing the caffeine to temporarily numb my banging head.
‘Sounds like a good night?’
I shook my head. ‘It was a disaster.’
‘Oh, no. How are things between you and Hugo now?’ she asked.
‘Worse than ever.’ I sighed, looking down at the table. ‘He spent the night flirting with a woman he works with – well,womanis being generous; she’s barely out of her teenage years.’
I took satisfaction in watching the shock and outrage play out on Liv’s face. ‘That’s awful. You poor thing.’
‘Of course I got upset and then I drank too much and I think we ended up having a huge argument – I can’t really remember, to be honest.’
‘Well, that’s hardly your fault. You were upset. It’s completely natural that you would react like that.’
‘Hugo won’t like me letting the side down in front of his work colleagues. Appearances mean everything to him.’
‘Maybe he should have thought about that before he flirted with the office junior!’ Liv defended me. ‘It’s so disrespectful to treat you like that in front of everyone. That must have been so hurtful.’
‘It was humiliating.’ I cradled my mug in my palms.
Liv nodded sympathetically. ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking but do you… eh…’ She fumbled for words. ‘Do you think there’s something going on between them?’
I tossed my hands up into the air. Liv had voiced the thoughts that were tormenting me. ‘Who knows? I don’t think anything would surprise me at this point.’
‘Are you going to confront him?’
I sighed and held my head in my hands. ‘Do you know what? I don’t think I have the energy at this point. It feels like we’re further apart than ever…’ I added glumly.
‘Well, look, at least you’re still going to Julia. He wouldn’t waste his time if he didn’t want to work things out between you,’ Liv said optimistically.
I ran my thumb up and down along the curved handle of my mug. ‘I think it might be too late. We’ve had several sessions and things are worse than ever between us.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ she replied.
‘Me too,’ I said sadly. ‘I knew going into it that this was our last hope of working things out. Marriage counselling doesn’t work for everyone, unfortunately, and I guess we’re one of the unlucky ones. Anyway, enough about me. How are you two doing?’
‘Still the same,’ she sighed. ‘Going back and forth and around and around in circles but no matter how often we talk about it, Jay really wants to have another baby and I’m not ready.’ She flopped back against the chair. ‘To be honest, I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.’
We chatted some more and by the end of the coffee, I was thankful to find my hangover seemed to be abating.
‘I’m feeling a lot better about everything, thank you, Liv. It’s really good to have someone to talk to about it all. Someone who gets it, y’know?’
She blushed. ‘Me too. There’s nobody else I can talk to about all this stuff.’
‘I’m so glad I met you. I don’t know how I’d cope with all of this if I didn’t have someone to offload to.’
‘I know.’ She laughed. ‘At least we can keep each other sane!’
19
LIV
I waved Maya off as she climbed up into her jeep and pulled out into the traffic. As I began walking home, I was on a high. I had assumed that someone as self-assured as Maya would have no need for someone like me in their life but the more I got to know her, I knew she counted me as a friend. She valued our friendship. I had spent my whole life struggling with female friendships, always feeling like the outsider, too boring or not pretty enough. My hairstyle was always wrong or my clothes never cool. Now that I was at home with Finn, I had lost touch with the women I was friendly with when I was working. And besides, those friendships had been different, more guarded. Maybe it was because we were work colleagues, I had always found myself not wanting to do or say the wrong thing in case I came across as unprofessional and so we never truly opened up to one another. We chatted on a general level but we never went too deeply into our personal lives but with Maya, it was different. My friendship with her was easy.
‘I really like her, Jay,’ I said that evening as I strained a saucepan of pasta into the sink, watching the starchy water run through the holes of the colander while Jay made an alfredosauce. I had filled him in on the school-jumper fiasco and how we had bumped into Maya in reception, who was also running late. ‘She’s not like you’d imagine her to be.’
He hiked his brows sceptically. ‘Come on, Liv, you have to admit, it’s an unlikely friendship.’
