I had to put my bags down to unlock the front door, elbowing it open as I bent to retrieve my things. ‘Rich? I’m back for lunch, and I’ve got something to show… what the fuck?’
‘Tabs! You’re early!’ Richard exclaimed, leaping to his feet and grabbing the Moroccan tile blanket to wrap hastily around his waist.
The naked woman on the sofa discreetly covered herself with the matching cushion, her face a mask of shock. She was very pretty, I couldn’t help but notice. Tanned and toned and with a high blonde ponytail that was understandably a little crushed and messy from being smooshed into the sofa. There were two coffee cups on the table – my hand-painted ones from the weekend course I did with Aunt Lou – and it was that more than anything else, oddly, that brought tears to my eyes.
‘I… I’m so sorry,’ the woman said. ‘I didn’t know he… Ricky?’ She turned to him for help and I could hear her bum squeaking on the leather sofa as she squirmed. The only noise in the horribly silent flat.
Richard just stood there, eyes darting about as if for inspiration. Finally he wetted his lips.
‘Now, Tabs… don’t overreact…’
Chapter 6
It was, in retrospect,a mistake to try and beat Richard to death with baked goods in a paper bag. I was going to be finding raisins and cherries all over the living room for weeks.
I also didn’t have anything left to comfort-eat.
Richard and his unnamed tart (that’s mean, she was probably lovely – definitely seemed surprised to meet ‘Ricky’s’girlfriend, and did offer to wash the cushion cover, which was very nice of her… the cow) left once I started shouting, and then it was just me, alone with the sound of the washing machine as it chugged away, stuffed full of every soft furnishing that was on the sofa. My special mugs were drying by the sink but, honestly, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to look at them the same way again. I hated him for that. Of all the mugs he could have picked.
The mugs were still important memories I made with Aunt Lou but everything else… I didn’t think I’d ever be able to so much as sit on that blanket again. It was tainted. All the hours I spent on that blanket and the cushions. Hours thinking about how they were going to make our apartment (flat, it was a fuckingflat) a home, that one day I might pass them on to our children. God, I was such an idiot. I was struck by a wave of humiliation so strong that I nearly cringed myself into a little ball on the floor.
I took out my phone as a distraction, realising the time as I did so. I should have been back at the shop a while ago. Emma hadn’t messaged me. She probably thought Richard was so happy with his present that we’d decided to spend the afternoon together.
I quickly tapped out a text to her.The sweater curse is real. Taking rest of the day off.
The curse was something I’d heard about on every online crochet group and in many wry post-break-up TikToks, but I’d never thought it was anything to be seriously worried about. How could it possibly be a real, observable phenomenon that making a partner something as big and time-consuming as a sweater was a one-way ticket to suddenly being single? In my years with Richard, I had let it slip my mind. I’d naïvely thought I was somehow immune, given how much of my work was hanging in his side of the wardrobe. But, apparently, I’d been on borrowed time, and the cashmere jumper had finally triggered the universe into delivering a kick to my stupid, trusting face.
A moment later a reply came through.Oh, hon.Red or white?
Vodka, I replied.
Unable to sit still a moment longer, I went into the surgically clean kitchen and tore several bin liners off the roll in the drawer. I walked into the bedroom as if in a trance and opened the wardrobe doors. There were all the jumpers, cardigans and vests I’d made for Richard since we’d got together. The time-consuming patterns I’d created to duplicate designer pieces, the birthday and Christmas presents. Scarves, hats and all the other accessories in a storage container at the bottom. The only things I was good at making, the one skill I was proud of, and it wasn’t enough. None of it was enough.
I started taking the big items down off their hangers, one by one. This one I’d worked on at a lazy picnic in the park while Richard napped. This had been in my bag on our first weekend away. A pair of socks I’d made while he was on a lads’ weekend and I’d missed him. A hat I’d bought the yarn for while we were on a mini-break in Cornwall. I did it slowly at first, then faster and faster, until I wasn’t folding them any more, but stuffing them into the rubbish bags. I threw the bedspread on the floor. They’d probably been in here too. I felt ill just thinking about it. I stripped the sheets off the bed.
Twenty minutes later, when the door buzzer went, I had two black plastic sacks in the living room, stuffed with crochet. I’d probably be able to fit the stuff I was still washing into there. But what I’d do with it all then was anyone’s guess. I’d intended to throw it all away when I started but now I was starting to weaken. It was so much work, so much time. Hundreds, well… probably more like thousands of pounds’ worth of supplies and work-hours. How could I just throw that in the big Biffa bins outside, with the pizza boxes and leaking sacks of rubbish?
‘Hello?’ I said into the intercom.
‘It’s me – I closed early,’ Emma answered. ‘If you don’t want company, I can just drop off the vodka and leave?’
‘No… no, come up.’ I buzzed her in and opened the door, rubbing at my face in a futile attempt to make it look as if I hadn’t been crying, but I had been, eyes running and sobs choking me as I cleared out the wardrobe of every stitch I’d ever made for my now ex-boyfriend.
Emma arrived in the lift and immediately hugged me, her arms weighed down with two bags for life. I heard bottles clink and felt the cold brush of a carton of ice-cream against my arm. God bless Emma.
I let her into the flat and shut the door. She approached the sofa but I herded her towards an armchair instead.
‘What happened?’ Emma asked. ‘Unless you don’t want to talk about it right now?’
‘He…’ I had to stop and dig the vodka out of the bag, taking a shot out of the bottle, neat. I coughed – as I was nowhere near hard enough to drink straight booze like that. What was I thinking? ‘He was here, with someone else. A woman.’
Emma’s eyes widened. ‘That son of a bitch. Oh my GOD, how DARE he?’
That was exactly the energy I needed and I welcomed it, letting her outrage wash over me. It was like being wrapped in another hug – protective and warm.
‘And they were…’ Emma pulls a face. ‘Do you want me to strip the bed?’
‘Done it… and they were on the sofa.’
