Sometimes, when I get home, it feels as if somebody has died and left me alone in my little universe.
I conquer this by watching more and more TV and making cocktails – only at weekends – fromThe Butler’s Friend, a vintage book from the 1920s which has taught me to make the perfect Boulevardier, where the secret is not just rye whiskey, sweet vermouth and Campari, but to stir and never shake.
Apart from trips home to see Mum and Stefan, my stepfather, and when Vilma comes to see me, I exist in a world of work, home and online supermarket deliveries.
If making the perfect Boulevardier, staying in all weekend and having a loving relationship with my couch cushions were what it took to keep me sane, then that’s what I’d do. Marc’s leaving had shocked me and made me feel stupid all at the same time. Because, under the circumstances, our relationship was hardly built to last. It was a miracle it had lasted as long as it did, but still, I missed him. We’d grown into adulthood together but thatchildhood-sweethearts-lasting-forever thing is a hard trick to pull off.
Still, what we’d had was special and I knew I’d never have it again. Besides, I needed another man in my life like I needed a hole in the head. I had everything I wanted. Except for those new biker boots I was longing for.
Who needs men when you’ve got fabulous boots, right?
2
Marin
I have my hand on the handle of conference room four and I’m steeling myself to open it.
I take a deep breath, hold it for a count of five, and let it out again slowly – a concept brought to me by my daughter, Rachel, who says nobody breathes properly.
‘We’d all be dead, then,’ pointed out Joey, my other child, nine and three quarters and hilariously determined to annoy his elder sister.
‘Properly, dopey head,’ said Rachel. ‘We tense up and don’t use the correct muscles.’
She might have a point. To open the door to conference room four, I think I need a brown paper bag to breathe into because I know exactly what I’ll find in there and, some days, I just can’t cope with the toxicity.
Eighteen years of working as an estate agent has taught me that the early gut impression of a disintegrating marriage can be as good as being their divorce mediator.
In other words: you’d be surprised how much you can tell about people when you are selling their home.
The Ryans, inside the room, are enriched uranium toxic.
Like when I do Pilates and think my stomach might explode with the pain of unused muscles being worked out, I force myself past the feelings and enter the room.
The Ryans are each glaring at the window behind the desk.
They both accompanied me on the initial valuation of theirthree-bed,semi-detached house in the lovely suburb of Glenageary. Every opened door was a failure of their life together. For example, the two unused children’s bedrooms, one of which was where Charlotte Ryan now stored her clothes.
Leo opened one closet door aggressively: ‘See? Half of this stuff still has tags on it. Unworn.’
I like to think I’m always professional but I nearly needed the brown paper bag then, too. Unworn clothes.Expensiveunworn clothes. I yearned to sort through the piles with Charlotte and offer her anything to try them on. She’s probably my height, five six, about the same size – twelve – and is clearly a shopaholic, with money.
There the similarity ends because her hair is expensively highlighted while mine is at thegrowing-out-the-mistake-fringe stage, and is my natural chestnut colour, constantly tied up at the back of my head and nourished with dry shampoo.
Still, the thought of her wardrobe haul is affecting my brain like the thought of a line of cocaine must affect a coke addict. I stifled the urge but the clothes haunted me all the way around the house.
If only I had the perfect clothes, then everything in my life would be wonderful. I’d feel complete, notless-than.
Random female clients wouldn’t look at me as if I was the downtrodden hired help in my black trousers – where are the fashion people hiding the perfect ones? – worn to hide my big hips. My mother wouldn’t remark every time she saw me in work clothes that it was a pity my firm didn’t have a uniform. My mother has a normal nose but she can look down it as if it was a ski jump in Val d’Isère.
If I had the right jeans, trousers and crisp white shirt, I’d like me more and Nate, my husband, would fancy me the way he used to fancy me back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth. But then, maybe marriages are like that, right? Wild lust in the beginning settles down to ‘Did you put out the bins?’.
Now that they’ve accepted my valuation and have chosen Hilliers and McKenzie to sell their property, the Ryans are here in person to discuss the reams of paperwork required to sell a house and sign the company contract. Today.
Charlotte’s wearing Isabel Marant. Hideously expensive and, like mosthigh-end clothes, utterly impossible to sell on after being worn. I know because occasionally I shop for expensive clothes, then find out they don’t suit me, and try to sell them on.
I know I have a problem, OK? For some people, it’s chocolate. For others, wine o’clock.
Anything to fill the gaping hole of emptiness.
