The Story of You. Katy Regan

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СКАЧАТЬ – and I liked that, the idea of being looked after for a change. We chatted easily for the allotted three minutes. Afterwards, he made a beeline for me at the bar.

      ‘I like you, Robyn. You’re different. In fact, I’d say you’re marriage material,’ he said, and from there, ‘we’ just sort of happened. I gathered he felt free to throw around phrases like ‘you’re marriage material’ because he was going through a horrid divorce and therefore never likely to marry anyone ever again. And we had a lot of fun for a while, Andy and I. I even liked the fact he’d been married and had two kids, at first: it made him seem ‘normal’, as in, what you’d expect a normal, functioning bloke to have done at forty-two, I guess …

      Before Andy, I’d given up on any kind of normal. I’d realized normal – as in marriage and kids – was not the way it was going for me. And that was fine, I’d made my peace with that. Kaye and I had decided that, if all else failed, we’d join a hippy commune and grow our armpit hair and eat biscuits all day like we did at work. But then Andy came along and he made me believe in normal again. He made me want it.

      I topped the bath up with more hot water and lay back, staring despairingly at the damp patch on the bathroom ceiling, which was encroaching like an oily tide.

      Finishing with Andy had probably been the most amicable ending of a relationship I’d ever known, perhaps because I’d never been more than someone nice to fill a space for him, and that was fine. It was as though he’d swooped in, post-separation, for some respite care at the Hospice of St Kindness (i.e. me, or anyone else who would listen to him) and was now recharged, ready to take on the world again. When I’d told him it was over, he’d looked disappointed and taken aback, but not hurt, I noted. It was the sort of expression you might wear if you’d just been told there was no more carrot soup on the menu and you’d have to have leek and potato.

      After leaving the restaurant, we’d walked to the Tube together, even chatted as we glided down the escalator. As would be the case, a busker was singing Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ with accompanying pan-pipe backing track when we got to the bottom. He’d taken hold of my elbows and we’d gazed at one another with sad smiles as the busker sang how sometimes it lasts in love, and sometimes it hurts instead. Then Andy said, ‘I’ll be in touch.’

      And I’d smiled, because he couldn’t help himself, he couldn’t help but promise, even at the end, something he couldn’t deliver.

      ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to.’

      ‘At least let’s have a cuddle, then?’ he’d said, opening his arms; and we did, and it was nice. Andy’s a good hugger. It’s the one thing we’d both done well probably because there’s no pressure in a hug, is there?

      ‘Okay, bye then,’ I’d said.

      ‘Yeah, I will call though, yeah?’

      ‘Yeah,’ I’d said.

      ‘Take care of yourself, honey.’

      Then we’d turned and gone our separate ways. Two minutes later, I was gliding up the escalator when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him coming down the other way.

      ‘Sorry, I went the wrong way,’ he said, and I laughed to myself all the way home because, was there ever the end of a relationship that so exactly replicated the relationship itself? Hit-and-miss, half-baked, stop-start. Just a little bit of a shambles, basically, with some farce thrown in.

      No, finishing with Andy Cullen was the right thing to do, I decided, lying there until the bath water grew cool. I didn’t want to see him, I was just scared and putting off getting back to Joe.

      I decided to ring my sister, Leah, instead. It’s practically impossible to have a normal conversation on the phone with her these days because she’s always so busy with the kids, so it’s a numbers game: if you ring her ten times, you might just get lucky once. Jack, my five-year-old nephew answered. We had a short discussion about peregrine falcons – I totally dig the conversations I have with my nephew – then I said, ‘Is Mummy there?’

      There was some high-pitched squealing in the background, which could have been Leah or Eden, my three-year-old niece – it was difficult to tell.

      ‘She’s cleaning up Eden’s poo,’ said Jack.

      ‘Oh,’ I said, darkly.

      ‘She needed the toilet but didn’t make it. A poo fell out of her skirt in the kitchen.’

      I laughed. Then stopped. Jack wasn’t laughing. This is because Jack knew that a poo in the kitchen was on a par with the apocalypse for his mother.

      ‘Okay, well, don’t worry. Tell Mummy—’ I was about to tell him I’d call back later when Jack shouted:

      ‘Mummy! Aunty Robyn’s on the phone!’

      I could hear Leah’s sigh, literally metres away in the kitchen.

      ‘Well, tell Aunty Robyn that I am knee-deep in your sister’s crap at the moment and that her beautiful, adorable, butter-wouldn’t-melt niece’s bum has exploded all over my new kitchen floor.’

      ‘Oh.’ Jack came back on the phone. ‘Mummy said the C word.’

      ‘Mm,’ I said, ‘she did. That must mean she is very stressed. Tell her I’ll call her later, okay?’

      ‘She’ll call you later, Mummy!’

      ‘Ha! Well, she can try, but I’ll be doing bedtime then …’

      I reasoned that I may not have got to speak to my sister, but at least any yearnings for Andy, and/or a boyfriend or family life had been very successfully abated.

      That evening, I sat on the sofa, nursing a bottle of wine, writing fantasy replies to Joe, hoping that, the drunker I got, the more likely I’d be just to press ‘Send’.

      Dear Joe,

      I’m so sorry to hear about your mum and ordinarily I’d love to come to the funeral, but unfortunately I am on holiday …

      Dear Joe,

      I can hardly believe it’s taken me three days … the reason is, I was trying to think of a way of telling you …

      Dear Joe,

      Oh, my God, what must you think of me?! I rarely log onto Facebook so …

      In the end, three days, in fact, after Joe sent me the message, and mainly because I ran out of different ways to apologize, I wrote:

      Dear Joe,

      I’ll be there. See you at 3 p.m.

      Robyn x

       Chapter Four

      Dear Lily

      I was thinking today that of all the things I’ve told you so far, I haven’t told you how I got together with your father. He says it’s typical of me, that the day we should get together is the day I save him, СКАЧАТЬ