One Night on the Island(22)

‘I’m sorry things are so tough for you back home,’ I say, when we’ve both calmed down. ‘And that I don’t have anything more useful to say.’

‘Yikes was pretty seismic,’ he says. ‘I might start to use it back home.’

Mention of home centres my mind back on my more immediate problem. ‘I can’t spend another week here waiting,’ I say. ‘This time is too precious to let slip away.’

‘What are you waiting for, Cleo?’

Things have shifted between us tonight, a fragile truce of sorts. He’s given me a window into his world, so I don’t bat his question away. I reach for my glass, more for something to do with my hands, and I can’t quite meet his mismatched eyes as I speak.

‘I write for Women Today.’ His neutral expression tells me he hasn’t heard of us. I’m not offended; he’s from another continent and he’s hardly our demographic. ‘It’s an online magazine,’ I say. ‘The most popular in the UK by miles,’ I add. If I really drill down into why I said that, it’s because I want him to be impressed, or at least not dismissive. I don’t want to drill down even further to work out why his opinion matters to me. ‘I write an online column about being single in London, and more specifically about searching for love.’ I flick my eyes up to his to check if I see derision. I don’t, so I carry on. ‘And I don’t know if I’m just looking in all the wrong places but I’ve been hitting dead ends and going round in circles for a few years now. It’s become …’ I search for an appropriate way to express it. ‘Monotonous. And wearying and shallow. I feel as if I’m fading away.’

I raise my eyes and find him studying me. I notice warmth there, like he’s really listening.

‘I’m thirty soon, and the closer it gets the more anxious I get. I’ve been trying to understand why I feel so conflicted because I’m not consciously worried about the number itself, or even about being single and not having kids yet.’

‘Well,’ he says, after a pause. ‘This sure is the wrong place, as you say, to come looking for love.’

I smile, saddened. ‘But a really good place to know for certain I’m not going to find it, which was kind of the point.’

He nods slowly. ‘So you’re, what, an anti-love columnist now? Because you’ve ended up stranded with the right person to help you on that score. I can give you a million reasons to call off the search right now, Cleo. Love fucks you up.’

An unexpected laugh escapes me. ‘I might just file that,’ I say. ‘It’s pleasingly succinct.’

‘You’re welcome,’ he says, raising the bottle at me as he tops up our glasses. ‘Buckle up, there’s plenty more where that came from.’

‘Are you going to tell me I’m better off alone? You wouldn’t be the first to trot out that old chestnut.’

‘The old ones are the best, as they say,’ he says. ‘I’m not here to warn you off love. You might still find someone who wants you for ever.’ He rolls his glass between his palms. ‘But I’m probably not the best person to dole out romantic advice.’ He looks into his whiskey. ‘Turns out for ever is too long for some people.’

I’ve had enough to drink to let the words in my head fall out of my mouth unchecked.

‘But for ever love can’t just stop, can it?’

Mack takes his time to answer. ‘Not suddenly, no. But a grinding, gradual halt? Yeah, maybe it can do that.’ He holds my gaze. ‘I don’t fuckin’ know, Cleo, I honestly don’t. I guess it’s the difference between what you say and what you do.’

I don’t say anything because he looks as if he needs to carry on, when he can find the words.

‘I probably should have said no to some of the assignments, prioritized family time over money, but …’ He shrugs. ‘Susie’s a real live wire, you know? Thrives on company, naturally the centre of attention in any room she’s in. I don’t think two kids under five and an endless diet of Peppa Pig fulfilled her emotional needs long term. And that’s not to say she’s not a good mom. She’s phenomenal. Just that maybe for ever love fades if you don’t feel seen, or if you don’t spend enough time together in the same place.’

‘Susie sounds quite like my friend Rubes,’ I say. ‘She’s a proper firefly, always burns brightest in a crowd.’

Mack raises a finger at me, telling me the description feels familiar to him too.

‘It’s funny,’ I say, thinking back to the first time I saw Ruby. Or found her, to be more exact, sitting on the step outside my flat at two in the morning because she’d lost her front-door key, arms around her patchily fake-tanned knees, shoes in her hands, her blood-red hair in a high ponytail. She lives on the top floor, I’m at the bottom. I’ve lost count of the number of times she’s lowered down a plant pot on a string in search of an emergency cigarette or gin. I keep a box of cigarettes on the windowsill in readiness of a distress text even though I’m not really a smoker.

‘When she and I met, we seemed like two peas in a pod, always up for anything, a night out, a shiny adventure, the newest nightclub,’ I tell Mack. ‘But now … God, I don’t know. If she’s a firefly, I’m more of a …’ I break off to think. ‘A glow-worm.’