At Clemmie’s flat
Optimism and indigestion
A week later, Thursday
When I came back to Seaspray Cottage last Friday after our little party on Plum’s deck I was buoyed up and fully determined to keep my promise to the girls.
I tore up to the flat and into my new underwear, ripped open my latest package from Maudie Maudie and chose a dress made of a few teensy scraps of navy chiffon. In fairness it was probably more suited to a fairy than to a fully grown person like me. But, what the hell, it seemed to cling in the right places so I pulled it on anyway. Five minutes after landing I was curled up with Diesel on our favourite pink sofa, sucking in my stomach so far even I could tell my boobs looked astonishing. Then I waited.
My first strategy was to pop up on my five-inch velvet stilettos – so lucky I packed them! – as Ross walked in. Before he got his breath back from the climb I’d already have jumped him.
When he still hadn’t turned up quarter of an hour later I started breathing again and decided I’d get him to share the box of bite-sized brownies and bottle of fizz I’d brought with me and take it from there.
By the time I’d come to the end of the browniesandthe bottle I was lying with my legs hanging over the sofa end thinking I’d wing it. Five episodes ofOutlanderlater I called off the mission for the day, due to the non-arrival of the target.
And this has pretty much been how it’s gone all week. Sixentiredays later, I haven’t had one opportunity. Not one! He has definitely been back to the flat, because I’ve seen crumples on the duvet where he’s been sitting on his bed. He’s just never been here at the same time as me. Isn’t it always the way?
When it came to the meringue evening last Saturday, Plum coming in his place at the last minute felt like one of those unavoidable things. It was quiet without him, but it was only the once. By the time he’d sent replacements for the brownie and blondie evenings and the donut one too, no one said, but it was starting to feel like this was the new normal.
No one had made any firm commitments, least of all Ross, so I know I was wrong to have built up my expectations. But somehow the picture of my last week in my head had me laughing and joking, with Ross realising I was too hilarious to live without. Instead, with every no-show from Ross the mood got gloomier. Our final evening last night we all made the effort, but it still petered out. Talk about ending in an anticlimax!
So much for my bigger ambitions with Ross. As the week went by, and his silence grew metaphorically louder, I’d just have liked to see him to find out why he was upset, and if there was any way I could help.
He wasn’t even around when Charlie messaged to say he and Clemmie will be travelling back next weekend, times to be confirmed when flights are finalised.
As the week went on, even Diesel’s high spirits waned. With Diesel, quiet is always relative; he still tried to steal my muffin off my plate while I was staring out into the distance across the bay at breakfast this morning.
I know when Ross was first moving in, I was dreading the sound of his key in the door. But being here now, knowing I’mnotgoing to hear him breezing in saying,Bertie, there you are!is actually making me physically ache for him to come home. I know it’s wet and weedy, and that’s not who I am at all. But there’s just this gaping hole at the pit of my stomach, a hollowness that makes me feel like crying and throwing up both at the same time. I’m the first to admit, it’s taken me by surprise. I’m just so used to thinking of him as annoying yet super sexy, I had no idea I’d miss him so much when he wasn’t here. Without him everything just feels so dull and dead and faded.
Last Friday I was riding a wave, and primed for him to walk through the door. A week on, my expectation of seeing him has dwindled hour by hour, and I’m totally deflated. It’s starting to feel completely possible that the time will come for me to leave without our paths ever coinciding. And I can’t quite cope with the constrictions of panic that thought sends through my chest.
And the undies are tossed on the chair by my bed like a mocking reminder of how wrong I got this.
But as the days have passed, it’s become clear; Ross’s absence isn’t an accident, it’s a deliberate choice. There’s no mistake, heisavoiding me. And as that realisation has gradually sunk in, my once fluttering heart has slowly turned to stone.
My whole life since uni I’ve been so self-reliant. Letting a man determine how I feel isn’t like me at all. Similarly, there’s little point second-guessing the reason. All I know is the change seems to go back to the day of the storm up at Walter’s; he must be so adamant he doesn’t want to take things further, he’s going to enormous lengths not to be anywhere near me. Playing for time, until I disappear out of his orbit for ever.
This evening, it’s almost a week after we drank fizz at Plum’s, and I’m expecting to spend the evening dashing up and down the stairs as people call to collect a stack of bake boxes. There’s so little going on at home now, but I refuse to wallow, so I’ve started on try-outs for my next book. That’s another thing about Ross being around less; there’s a whole lot more baking left over than there would have been otherwise.
I’ve taken the cookie theme further, and as everyone knows we’re doing a last big effort for the Kittiwake funds, so there are cookie bags too, and the regulars will be dropping by to pick those up.
As I come back up after quite a chat with the third doorstep customer of the evening I find Diesel slinking out from the kitchen, so I give him a gentle reminder he’s not supposed to be in there. ‘Hey, boy, I hope you haven’t been helping yourself?’ When I go in to check there’s a tea towel on the floor by the sink, and a cooling tray, so I pick them up. ‘I don’t know where you found these, but thanks for not wolfing the cookies.’
He gives me a wounded look and flops down on the rug by the sofa. Every time I make a trip downstairs after that I shut the kitchen door, just to be sure. But Diesel doesn’t move again. When Clemmie and Charlie do their video call just before eleven, he’s so fast asleep he barely lifts his head and we all laugh at how loudly he’s snoring. I go through to the bedroom to show them Pancake, who manages to open one eye when I tickle her behind her ear, and then they sign off.
Before I go back through again I glance down at the chair by the bed just to remind myself I bought the bra and pants for me, not anyone else, and to promise myself I will wear them for the book launch on Saturday. Then as I pick up the bra I see the knickers have gone.
Damn. There’s only one knicker-stealer in this flat, so I raise my voice so he hears me. ‘Diesel, carrying socks in your mouth is cute, running off with my new briefs isn’t funny.’
I do a sweep of the hall and the bathroom to see where he’s dropped them, and when they aren’t there I get on my hands and knees and scour every last corner of the kitchen. I do the same in the living room, and I’m coming round the corner from the back of the sofa when Diesel lets out a long groan that makes my blood run cold.
‘Diesel, get up now!’
He lifts his head, then drops it and grunts again.
I scramble to my feet and rush through to the kitchen and come back with a handful of gravy bones. ‘Come on, up you get, I’ve got biscuits!’
A whiff from fifty yards is usually enough for him to pelt along the beach at a hundred miles an hour. But he doesn’t even stir, and even when I put a biscuit under his nose, he just turns his muzzle away.
