‘Yes, but we could cancel it this time, and go away in spring, or—’
‘I don’t want to do that. It’ll be fine. I promise. Everything’s going to be okay.’
However, a snag of unease still hangs in the air after we’ve finished the call; that sense of our own lives – or rather,hislife – coming between us. I try to believe it’ll turn out okay, just as I did that day in Corsica when James blew into Minnie’s nose. I had to trust what he said back then. I needed to believe him. But today, for the first time since that day, I don’t feel too sure about us at all.
CHAPTER FORTY
ESTHER
‘Of course you can go to work, Dad,’ Esther had insisted last night. ‘You don’t need to stay here and look after me.’
‘But what about me going away with Lauren?’ he’d asked.
‘That’s fine too. Of course it is …’
‘Could you go and stay with Mum?’
‘I’m fine here at yours. Please stop going on.’
He’d still looked doubtful, or perhaps a little guilty at the prospect of leaving Esther alone. Since they’d arrived at his place after the dramatic move out of Miles’s, he’d been hovering around her, giving her ‘that’ look. That ‘I want to help but I don’t know how’ kind of expression that drives her mad sometimes. Esther didn’twanther dad hovering around her, constantly checking if she was okay. She wanted some time and space to think.
Now he’s gone off to work for a full, busy day before he goes away with Lauren in a couple of days’ time. Esther has got up bright and early, filled with purpose for the day ahead. These days in between Christmas and New Yearcan feel listless and empty but there’s tons she can do. She has emails to reply to, she could bank up a load of Instagram reels and start work on the talk Bethani have asked her to prepare for their big event in a few weeks’ time. She’s due a meeting with them next week and wants to show that she’s given it lots of thought; that she’s committed to the brand. She could also go out for a brisk walk to shake off the cobwebs, and her mum’s been in touch, asking if she fancies a quick lunch at some point during the week. She was apologetic that she can’t be around for Esther much just now, as they’re getting the bar all ready for New Year’s Eve. It’s a huge night for them. There have been some issues with the menu and staff, the new chef off sick and the trainee not yet up to scratch, blah-blah. (Esther had stopped listening by that point.) She could also settle herself properly into her room here. It definitely has a spare-roomish feel about it these days, and she needs to make it more homely now she’s living here.
I’m living with my dad, Esther reflects gloomily. The reality hits her that her relationship is over and she’s been so caught up with Miles, and Miles’s world, that she has literally forgotten how to function all by herself.
There’s the space issue too. Miles’s flat is in an amazing location but it’s actually pretty tiny, and her dad’s house is, well, ahouse.And today it feels too big, too quiet and empty as even Walter, her dad’s cat, is out.
Esther thinks about writing in her gratitude journal that at least she won’t have to suffer any more of those awful nights out, with Miles and his friends dancing wildly. Pretty soon, those terrible images that were burned onto her retinas will start to fade.
That girl in the club pops into her mind; Anya with the cherry red lipstick, laughing with her friends – all girls on a night out together. Esther thinks about Gracie and Jess.They used to be such a little gang, the three of them. There were sleepovers with movies, face masks and glittery nail polish and even a chocolate fountain once, at Gracie’s house. Even when Esther went to a different secondary school they’d still meet up to go shopping on Saturdays, idling for hours over a Frappuccino and trying on clothes. Esther misses them so much it triggers an ache, low in her gut. She misses them more than Miles, she realises now.
Her girlfriends. That’s who she wants. She considers sending them a message, wondering what to say without seeming needy or obviously feeling left out.Hey, did you have a good Christmas?She’s about to ping off identical texts, but what if they’re together and compare? How wouldthatlook? Kind of pathetic, she reckons. And maybe they’d feel sorry for her?
Esther doesn’t want her friends getting in touch out of pity. She’d rather be on her own than that. Anyway, they probably haven’t messaged over the holidays because they’re under pressure to have family time. Both Gracie and Jess are super close to their parents. It’s probably just that, Esther decides.
She opens her laptop and tries to make a start on her Bethani talk. She has decided to focus on the fact that the brand is about afeeling, and a way of being and relating to the world. But it sounds so silly and pretentious when, just a mile away from where she’s sitting now, her dad is probably medicating a diabetic guinea pig or something.
A proper job. That’s what she needs; not this faffing around being paid by brands for doing what amounts to very little. Yes, it’s lucrative. Esther can make a good living from it. But the thought of floating around, being never quite busy enough in this empty house, fills her with dread.
She paces around, relieved when Walter sidles in, sograteful is she for the company of another living creature. But as she approaches him he shoots out of the room. It’s hard not to take it personally.
Esther checks her phone, scrolling idly until she spots Gracie’s Instagram story. It’s like a kick to her stomach.
They’re together right now, Gracie and Jess. At least, it looks like right now because the sky is bright blue in the photo as it is through her dad’s living-room window. But instead of being stuck in their parents’ houses they’re out in a park, flying a kite! On closer inspection Esther identifies it as Ally Pally.New Christmas kite!Gracie has captioned it.We managed to fly it!
Esther stares at it for a very long time. Her two oldest friends, out flying a kite together. How very wholesome and cute! Their inbetweeny days aren’t empty like hers. They’re out having fun, and her mum will be busy at the bar and her dad’s busy too, working through a stack of appointments before he and Lauren go away together. Everyone is doing their thing, Esther realises with a sharp pang. And she’s sitting in her dad’s house, her life a mess.
She realises with a start that it’s nearly lunchtime and she’s achieved precisely nothing so far today. Miles will be perched on a stool in his kitchen, tucking into a raw power bowl. How she hated those meals, and how glad she is that she’ll never again have to listen to him going on about his acid reflux and burping for effect, complaining about ‘bloat’. She can putthatin her gratitude journal. But it fails to cheer her up because she finds herself staring at Gracie, Jess and the kite again, and without warning a tear plops down her cheek.
She needs to get out of there. That’s what’s wrong – being cooped up inside with even Walter shunning her. She throws on her jacket and heads out with no plan of where to go. Sod him, she thinks. Sod Miles and his stupiddelivered meals – black beans and brown rice, barley and red cabbage and seeds sprinkled over, so many seeds; she must have ingested millions of the fuckers like some starved parrot. Sod Miles and his meal plans, dictating what she ate as well as everything else. ‘I hate you,’ Esther mutters out loud, marching faster, past the chain coffee shops and a sportswear shop and a pub.
A pub! That’s what she’ll do. She’ll go in and have a large glass of wine, all by herself, like the breezy independent woman she now plans to be.Day drinking! Why not?she thinks rebelliously. That’ll set her up for the afternoon.
The pub is almost empty apart from two very drunk old men in shabby coats at the bar, and it feels bleaker than it looked from the outside. She sits in a corner and knocks her wine back so quickly it rushes straight to her head. Too late, she realises she’s drunk it on an empty stomach. Lunch is what’s needed. Something to straighten her out because now she’s thinking about the kite-flying again and is starting to well up.
Esther leaves the pub, blinking in the bright wintry sunshine and marches onwards, past a greengrocer’s, an estate agent’s and a couple of charity shops. At a scruffy-looking newsagent’s she swerves in and buys a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. Esther hardly ever smokes these days. Occasionally, if she’s out, she might ‘borrow’ one – but as she never buys her own she doesn’t even think of herself as a smoker anymore.
Today, though, she has a whole packet of twenty all to herself. She can smoke as much as she wants now she’s no longer with Miles. (Despite his enthusiastic drug use, he abhors the smell of cigarettes.) Her dad won’t be thrilled if she starts smoking in her bedroom at his place. But she’ll open the window and she doubts if he’ll make a big thing of it, considering what she’s been through lately.
