The Flatshare(35)

Kay is sobbing. I listen, eyes still closed, and it’s like I’m floating.

Kay: This is it, isn’t it?

It’s obvious, all at once. This is it. Can’t do this any more. Can’t have this eating away at my love for Richie, can’t be with a person who doesn’t love him too.

Me: Yes. This is it.





23


Tiffy

The day after my visit to the hospice, I come home to the longest and most incoherent note I’ve ever had from Leon, laid on the kitchen counter beside an uneaten plate of spaghetti.

Hi Tiffy,

Am a bit all over the place but thank you so much for note for Richie. Can’t thank you enough. Definitely need all help we can get. He will be thrilled.

Sorry I didn’t find you at work. Was my fault completely – left it too late to come and find you, wanted to read your letter to Richie first like you’d asked but took me ages, then just messed up and left it too late, always takes me a while to process things – sorry, am just going to go to bed, if that’s all right, see you later x

I stare at it for a while. Well, at least he didn’t avoid me all night because he didn’t want to see me. But . . . uneaten dinner? All these long sentences? What does it mean?

I lay a Post-it beside his note, sticking it carefully to the countertop.

Hey Leon,

Are you all right?! I’ll make tiffin, just in case.

Tiffy xx

The unusual wordiness of Leon’s letter is very much a one-off. For the next two weeks his notes are even more monosyllabic and lacking in personal pronouns than usual. I don’t want to push it, but something has clearly upset him. Are he and Kay fighting? She’s not been around, and he hasn’t mentioned her for weeks. I don’t know how to help when he won’t tell me, though, so I just bake a bit too much and don’t complain that he’s not been cleaning the flat properly. Yesterday his coffee mug wasn’t on the left of the sink or the right – it was still in the cupboard, and he must have gone to work without any caffeine at all.

In a flash of inspiration I leave Leon the next manuscript from my bricklayer-turned-designer, the one who wrote Built. Book two – Skyscraping – is maybe even better, and I’m hoping it’ll cheer him up.

I come home to this note on top of the ring-bound manuscript:

This man. What a guy!

Thanks, Tiffy. Sorry the flat’s a bit of a mess. Will clean soon, promise.

Leon x

I’m counting that exclamation mark as a major sign of improvement.

*

It’s the day of our trial book launch, the one we’re taking Katherin to so PR can persuade her that a huge launch is exactly what she’s always wanted.

‘No tights,’ Rachel says decisively. ‘It’s August, for God’s sake.’

We’re getting ready together in the office loos. Every so often someone comes in to pee and lets out a little yelp as they see that the room has been transformed into a dressing room. Both our make-up bags are emptied across the sinks; the air is clouded with perfume and hairspray. We each have three outfit choices hung up along the mirrors, plus the ones we’re now wearing (our final choices: Rachel is in a lime green silk wraparound dress, and I’m in a tea dress covered in enormous prints of Alice in Wonderland – I found the fabric in a Stockwell charity shop and bribed one of my most obliging freelancers to make it into a dress for me).

I wriggle around and whip my tights off. Rachel nods in approval.

‘Better. More leg is good.’

‘You’d have me dressed in a bikini if you had your way.’

She grins cheekily at me in the mirror as she dabs at her lipstick.

‘Well, you might meet a handsome young Nordic man,’ she says.

Tonight is all about Forestry for the Ordinary Man, our woodwork editor’s latest acquisition. The author is a Norwegian hermit. It’s quite a big deal that he’s left his treehouse for long enough to come to London. Rachel and I are hoping that he has a complete meltdown and turns on Martin, who is organising this event, and really should have taken the author’s hermit lifestyle as a sign that he probably doesn’t want to give a speech to a room full of woodwork fanatics.

‘I’m not sure I’m ready for handsome young Nordic men. I don’t know.’ I find myself thinking back to what Mo said to me about Justin a few months ago, when I’d rung him in a state about whether Justin would ever get in touch with me. ‘I’m struggling with being . . . ready to date. Even though Justin left ages ago.’

Rachel pauses mid dab to stare at me with concern. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I think so,’ I say. ‘Yeah, I think I’m fine.’

‘So it’s because of Justin?’

‘No, no, I don’t mean that. Maybe I just don’t need that in my life right now.’ I know that’s not true, but I say it anyway because Rachel is looking at me as if I’m ill.

‘You do,’ Rachel tells me. ‘You’ve just not had sex for too long. You’ve forgotten how exceptional it is.’

‘I don’t think I’ve forgotten what sex is, Rachel. Isn’t it like, you know. Riding a bike?’

‘Similar,’ Rachel concedes, ‘but you’ve not been with a man since Justin, which ended, what, November last year? So that means it’s been more than . . .’ She counts on her fingers. ‘Nine months.’