‘Oh, just that they were gorgeous, inspiring, really got him thinking …’
‘Why the hell didn’t you say something to him?’
‘I kept thinking, I shouldn’t have been looking. I felt I would be making a fuss. It wasonlyInstagram.’
‘Baldy bastard!’ Lucy cries. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘It was really hard, Luce, I guess it was easier to pretend it wasn’t happening. Not take it seriously.’ She pauses. ‘Once you say it, it’s real.’
‘Yeah, I can see that.’
‘I also knew he would laugh it off and I would end up feeling like I was in the wrong.’
‘Oh, Jo,’ Lucy says, much more softly.
Jo is now huddled on the cushion on the floor. Arms wrapped tight around her knees. ‘I just thought, these women are not me. I’m too old for him. I am going to lose him.’ Jo feels her best friend’s hand on her shoulder.
‘You are worth so much more, you do know that?’
Jo thinks back to Malcolm’s story of the fox in the graveyard. And the words.You, Jo Sorsby, are enough, come to her. ‘Yes,’ she tells Lucy with perfect truth. ‘Now, I do believe I am.’
It is an hour later, over coffee (peppermint tea for Lucy), that Lucy reaches for her phone. ‘Gotta have a look at what my man is following.’
Jo turns quickly. Why does she feel worried? SheknowsSanjeev.
Lucy stays silent for some moments, then laughs.
‘What?’
‘Normal, I guess. Friends, too much football, cats doing stupid stuff, surprising interest in gardens and birds – who’d have thought? But look at this.’ She turns her phone towards Jo. Sanjeev has clearly been following some posts about how to decorate a baby’s nursery.
Jo relaxes.
Lucy glances down at her, ‘You weren’t really worried, were you?’
‘No, of course not. But it throws you when you find you don’t know someone like you thought you did. That you have wasted six years of your life on a total wanker. A manipulative wanker,’ she adds, for Lucy’s benefit.
Lucy is uncharacteristically quiet for some moments.
‘Jo, look, I know I didn’t like the man, but it wasn’t all bad. I can see that. When you guys met – blimey, you set a room alight, the two of you. I was a bit jealous. I’d never seen chemistry like it. I think you were bound to get together, and you had to see it through.’
Jo is shocked. She knows it will have cost Lucy a lot to say this. She turns to Lucy. ‘Do you believe in chemistry that lasts for ever?’
‘You mean love?’
‘No, I’m not really thinking about that. I guess I mean when you feel so drawn to someone, like you have a powerful connection with them.’ The image of Eric the Viking’s hand smoothing out a page with the wordsDear Lucyon it flits across Jo’s mind.
‘Yes, of course,’ her friend says, simply. ‘I know my man farts, eats too many sweets in his car, which he thinks I don’t know about. But still, when he comes through that door …’
‘But how do you know it will last?’ Jo insists.
Lucy smiles. ‘Well, I guess it’s a bit like God – you don’t make a conscious decision about it. You either believe in it or you don’t.’
35
Supper at Average Jo’s
The first thing Jo notices is Malcolm’s cravat. Well, it would be hard to miss. It is covered in a series of psychedelic circles. A swirling splatter of purple, lime-green and orange, in an otherwise grey landscape (apart from his turquoise suede desert boots). ‘You look nice,’ Jo offers as she takes his coat. Malcolm touches his cravat nervously.
