But maybe I love my independence too. Not more. But as well.
‘I… I think that sounds like something definitely worth thinking about,’ I say weakly, and his hopeful expression is now gone. It is replaced by the look of a wounded man and immediately I want to back-pedal, except I know I only want to back-pedal to stop him feeling like shit and without thinking about how back-peddling will make me feel.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and I mean it from the very bottom of my soul. ‘I wish I could just scream yes and we could kiss and then go home and celebrate with champagne, or even a cup of tea and a bit of feeling each other up on the sofa.’
Normally the mention of feeling each other up on the sofa makes him smile. It’s a phrase we have used many times as code for doing more than just feeling each other up, and it doesn’t even have to be on the sofa. But it isn’t making him smile today. He’s not even trying to fake it, and a part of me admires that. A bigger part of me, however, is now realising that the fear I was feeling earlier was minuscule in comparison to this horror show.
‘I’m not saying no,’ I say, and he nods.
‘That’s always how I dreamed of this moment. Asking the woman I love if we should live together and for her response to be a resounding “I’m not saying no”.’
‘Conal, I know. I know I’m not handling it well. I just wasn’t expecting this and I need to get my head around it and think of all the practicalities.’
‘And you call yourself a romantic?’ He smiles, but it is a sad little smile and I feel as if I have kicked a puppy. No, it’s not as if I just kicked a puppy. I feel like I kicked a puppy square in the little puppy penis. I might just be a monster.
‘I am a romantic,’ I protest. ‘And I love you. Conal, you know I love you. I’m grateful for you every day and I love our time together.’ My chest is starting to feel tight and I know what this means. I might not be at risk of swooning any longer but there is every chance – in fact, pretty much a certainty now – that I am going to cry.
‘You just don’t want to live with me?’
‘I didn’t say that!’ My voice is breaking now and I sound like a fourteen-year-old boy. My nose is starting to run and I will have to sniff soon or blow my nose, and neither of those are dignified.
‘That’s right. You just said you weren’t saying no, but what was it? You thought it was “something worth thinking about”.What man hasn’t dreamed of hearing the woman he loves say that back to him?’
I don’t know what to say. My head is swimming with a hundred different thoughts and questions and words of reassurance, but I can’t bring them together enough to form a coherent sentence. I just worry that whatever I do say – whatever words escape from my lips – I will just make things worse.
So I stand there, tears now sliding down my face, my mouth hanging open again and my hand reaching out to Conal, who gives me that sad smile again. And I fear for another imaginary puppy’s penis. Forget Clarence the angel inIt’s a Wonderful Lifeand his assertion that when a bell rings, another worthy angel in training gets his or her wings and graduates to full angel status. In this case, it is every time I make Conal look at me with eyes so sad I want to vomit, another puppy somewhere gets kicked square in the dick. And it’s my fault.
‘I think maybe I’ll take Lazlo home, and maybe we will both think about this and talk about it again when emotions aren’t running so high. Or maybe we’ll just forget about it for now? It was just an idea,’ he says with a shrug, and he calls Lazlo to him.
I know it is not ‘just an idea’ though. Conal is not a ‘just an idea’ kind of a man. It’s one of the things I love about him – he walks through this life carefully thinking about his decisions, and about the people in his life. He’s the kind of man who arrives at your door with a box of Nurofen and a family-sized bag of Maltesers before you’ve even had to tell him that your uterus is currently trying to kill you. He’s the kind of man who bought my mother flowers on Valentine’s Day because she ‘deserved something beautiful too’ and the kind of man who went to see Taylor Swift with his daughter Aoife and sang along to almost every song even though he doesn’t like Taylor Swift. He just wanted to make the experience special for Aoife. So Iknow he will have been thinking about this, deciding it is something that he really wants, for some time and I have not responded as he would’ve hoped.
And I don’t know why. Or maybe I do. Maybe I’m a selfish witch who is just getting her life back together and starting a club and joining a choir and finally doing her dream job, and maybe she is scared of doing anything that knocks the algorithm off whack.
‘Conal, you don’t have to go. We can go back to mine and…’ My voice trails off. There is no mention of feeling each other up now. No joking and easy flirting – just the knowledge that I have fucked this up. And by fucked, I mean fucked. This is much too big an issue to even try and use the word ‘fudge’ in its place.
‘It’s fine, Becca. Don’t worry. It’s fine.’ Conal kisses me on the cheek – a perfunctory kiss barely making contact. ‘We’ll just forget today ever happened and maybe just take the chance to breathe. I’m snowed under with work anyway. And you have the Fab Forties club. And Clara. Let’s make sure we think about what we really want. Maybe meet up next weekend.’ It’s not a question, but a statement.
Shit.
‘But the weekend is a whole week away,’ I call to his retreating back. He doesn’t turn to look at me, but he does raise his hand to wave back at me. At this stage I’m just grateful it’s an actual wave and not him raising one finger – even if it feels as if he might as well be.
Sixteen-year-old me would be utterly disgusted with herself.
15
THE ONLY WAY OUT IS THROUGH
Becca
I will not have a nervous breakdown.
I will not have a nervous breakdown.
I will not have a nervous breakdown.
I start a new line and type the same words over again. It’s perhaps not going to turn into the article Grace will be waiting for. It’s also not the newsletter I wanted to send out to our Fab Forties Club members about the choir session. Or the email I wanted to send to the choir director to fill him in on our ethos and warn him that we might take the odd hot flush or a fit of the giggles.
For the last forty-eight hours my life has consisted of telling myself, out loud, that I will not lose my shit. Closely followed by bouts of me losing my shit. I have sworn bloody murder at the washing machine drawer for not closing easily the first ten times I tried to ram it into place at an awkward angle, before immediately apologising to it for being a bitch.
