Even in her despair (and something that felt a lot like panic), she had thought –Really? You are really going to use that cliché. And didn’t you get it right the first time you said it?
He followed this with. ‘There’s no one else.’
She hadn’t asked.
She also thought:Why would you think that there not being someone else makes me feel better? You are simply telling me that I alone am not good enough.
Over time, she has persuaded herself that James not being unfaithful was a good thing. She can hold on to what they had. Think of the good times.
That used to be easy. But over the past few weeks?
He moved on pretty easily, didn’t he? Hooked up with Nickeeey at work, a woman ten years younger than Jo, one of the graduate trainees. But then James was five years younger than she was. This thought, like nails on a blackboard, still makes Jo flinch. At first, James seemed to delight in the age difference – the older, sexy woman. He had been twenty-eight when they met; she had been thirty-three. But then …
Jo doesn’t want to go there, so refocuses on Lucy.
Lucy was certainly there for her when she split up with James. Jo pulled hard on her lifeline to her best friend and it held firm, as she knew it would do, despite their … would she even call them differences? Lucy and Sanjeev had been back from Amsterdam for about eighteen months, and she thought during that time they had got back into the old familiar ways. But had they, really? With James needing so much from her, especially when his dad died.
Well, despite all that, Lucy had definitely looked after her when James left. Had her to stay for days on end, more or less let her move in with her and Sanjeev. Lucy had comforted her, held her tight, then poured them both wine, telling Jo she would die alone surrounded by cats. It felt like the old times; Lucy had always been able to make her laugh.
It was only later – when Jo sobbed and hiccupped her longing for a family – that Lucy asked Jo: hadn’t she and James talked about the future; the life-crap stuff? It was then that Jo made another discovery.
She had thought theirs was a relationship of equals; James was not a man to put words into her mouth. Yet now, she realized, that she had followed where his conversations led them, and that he had somehow managed to avoid discussing the future.
Looking back, perhaps she had been waiting for him to catch up. At twenty-eight, when they’d met, she knew he wasn’t interested in settling down – and then time moved on but it seemed James didn’t.
As she saw more of Lucy, her friend became increasingly open about what she thought of James. And none of it was good:twat,selfishandtosserfeatured quite a lot. But it seemed she saved the biggest tirade for their last night together before Jo headed to London. Jo particularly remembers Lucy declaring:
‘Always thought you were too good for the manipulative wanker. For fuck’s sake, who gives his girlfriend a ring box on Christmas Eve with sodding earrings in?’
Jo resisted the knee-jerk reaction to defend James. Experienced the familiarity of being caught between the two of them. She couldn’t help feeling that this was the last thing she needed on their final night together, and that it wasn’t fair. What was she supposed to have done when Lucy moved to Amsterdam? There was no option but for Jo to get on with her own life. And if Lucy really thought Jo had been manipulated by James, what did that say about what Lucy thought of her? Foolish? Easily led? Certainly nothing good.
It was at this point Jo noticed Lucy was only pouring one glass of wine. When she commented on this, Lucy admitted with a slight awkwardness that she and Sanjeev were having a baby. Jo’s grievances fell away, as if she had opened her arms and simply dropped everything she was carrying. She leapt to her feet and hugged Lucy like her heart was about to burst with happiness (which it was), and she buried her anguish so deep that even Lucy couldn’t find it. With the anguish she buried something she had never told her best friend. She had thought she could tell Lucy anything. It seemed she was wrong.
And now she wants to write to Lucy. What on earth can she possibly say that could unravel all of that?
Jo is in the shop staring at a blank page. She has tried writing to Lucy, but her attempts lie in (and littered around) the wastepaper bin. Her mind keeps drifting back to that last evening, and one thought emerges that she cannotseem to shift. Lucy had been furious with James – for sure – but there was also a suppressed anger. It unsettles her, as Jo can’t help feeling that this barely contained rage was directed at her.
The broken bell above the door clinks and Eric the Viking steps into the shop (minus the tin-foil helmet). ‘Morning! I need to get some more ink.’ He nods approvingly at her display of tester pens. ‘Told you they like to be out and about.’
Jo reaches for the cartridges that she knows fit his pen. ‘Black or blue?’ Before he can answer, she adds, ‘Or we have lots of other colours?’
‘No, I’m good with black,’ he tells her.
‘Yes, probably best to avoid green. I had an MP in this morning who told me that the rudest complaint letters are always written in green ink. Then, out of the blue, he started telling me all about the love letters he used to write to his wife, and about how much he loves her.’ Jo nods. ‘I’m glad I got the pens out …’
‘Thank you, Eric the Viking,’ he murmurs.
Jo smiles, but doesn’t respond. ‘It’s amazing what people tell me when they are writing.’
‘What other things have you heard?’ Eric asks, taking the packet of black cartridges from her.
‘Well, the same MP told me that admirals always write in green ink.’
‘I wonder if that’s true,’ he comments, looking interested.
‘No idea. And an old lady came in and told me all about a handwriting competition she won when she was nine. Oh, and that when she was in her twenties, her father’s curate had written to her and, when he went on a trip to the South of France, he bought her a bottle of mimosa perfume. Her father wouldn’t allow the marriage, but sixty years on she still buys mimosa for herself sometimes …’
As Eric the Viking listens, he leans down and picks up the scattered paper from around the wastepaper bin. Absent-mindedly he smooths one of the sheets out on the counter.
