A Catered Affair (16 page)

I wished him luck. “Kenny—thanks again for staying with me. It was such a sweet gesture. I won’t forget it.”

“Anytime,” he said. He went back to the sofa and started putting on his trainers.

“I’d give you a thank-you kiss,” I said when he’d finished, “but since I stink of vomit, maybe that’s not such a good idea.”

He came over and kissed me on the cheek. “Bye, Tally. Promise me you’ll hang in there.”

“I’ll try. See you, Kenny Platters.”

“See you.”

“And good luck again, making your poop.”

A
fter Kenny Platters left, I took a shower and got changed. My wedding dress lay in a heap on the bedroom floor. I couldn’t bear to look at it. My instinct was to rip the thing apart. Or maybe I would do something even more melodramatic like take it home and burn it. In the garden. At night. On a magnificent funeral pyre that I would construct. Once the flames got going, I would throw on all the gifts—clothes, books, CDs, jewelry—that Josh had ever bought me. Their cremation would rid my heart of Dr. Josh Eisner forever. At least that’s what I told myself.

The truth was that although I wanted to do away with my wedding dress, I couldn’t destroy something so beautiful. In the end, I decided to abandon it. I laid it on the bed, along with my pretty feather hat. Then I scribbled a note, which I left poking out of one of the dress sleeves:
Please take. Wedding canceled due to lack of interest on part of groom. PS—Could do with a dry clean
. Maybe one of the chambermaids would flog it on eBay and make a few quid.

While I waited for a minicab in the hotel reception, I texted Mum, Scarlett and Rosie to say that I was OK and on my way home. I asked them not to call round because I needed some time alone to lick my wounds. I would have texted Nana, but she didn’t own a cell phone. I could have called, but I wasn’t up to speaking to anybody. I knew Mum would call and let her know that she’d heard from me.

When I got home I disconnected the landline. All I wanted to do was sleep, but there was one more job I had to do first. I had to return my engagement ring. I knew that most of my women friends would disapprove of me sending it back. Rosie in particular would be up in arms. I could hear her now:
Bloody hell, Tally, that ring cost over a grand. Why on earth didn’t you sell it? At least then you’d have got some compensation for what the bastard did to you.

The argument made sense, but the last thing I wanted was compensation. And even if I had, a thousand quid wasn’t going to cut it. No, returning the ring seemed far more dignified.

I went in search of a padded envelope. I found one in the kitchen drawer where I kept the takeaway menus, bits of old string, and instructions for Ikea furniture that had been built years ago and I didn’t even own anymore. The envelope was used but perfectly serviceable. I wrapped the engagement ring in paper towels and slipped it inside. I decided not to send it by post, as even special deliveries went missing these days. Instead I called a courier company. Since Josh was in Scotland, I decided to send it to Andy, his best man. I knew his address because he shared a flat with one of my girlfriends.

I wrote my second note of the morning. This one said simply:
Please see that Josh gets this
.
Thanks, T.
Then it hit me that the wedding presents needed to be returned. They were in the spare room in Josh’s flat. All the items we’d put on the wedding list, the Habitat china, glassware, cutlery, the Alessi kettle, the retro Dualit toaster, were in boxes on the floor. You could hardly get into the room it was so full. It also occurred to me that I’d left some clothes there. For some reason I thought that it was my responsibility to send back the presents. After all, traditionally, it’s the bride who writes the thank-you notes. But even though I had a key and I knew that Josh wasn’t there, I couldn’t face being anywhere near Josh’s flat. It would be far too painful. He could deal with the presents. It was the least he could do. I would manage without the clothes.

Twenty minutes later, my beautiful square-cut diamond solitaire engagement ring that I’d loved so much was being collected by a bloke in motorcycle leathers. I handed him the envelope. He gave me a form to sign. “Need a pen, love?” I did. I scrawled my name. He took the top sheet and left me with the copy.

“Cheers,” he said. He pulled down his helmet visor and left. I stood in the doorway, looking down at the piece of paper. I didn’t cry—at least not then. I was too numb.

I took a couple of ibuprofen for my hangover headache and crawled into bed. I fell asleep almost at once. I was woken by the hot midafternoon sun. Once again, my new reality hit me with a punch that left me reeling. I had never felt so alone. I spent the next few hours sobbing on and off. I’d loved Josh so much. I still loved him. I knew that if he walked through the door now and said he’d made a huge mistake, I would fall into his arms, forgive him and take him back. Once or twice I got up to see if he’d left a voice message or texted. He hadn’t. The only texts I had were from Scarlett, Rosie and Mum. They all said how much they loved me and were thinking of me. There was also one from Kenny Platters. He wanted to know if I’d got back OK. He was such a sweet guy. I texted everybody else to say that I loved them, too, and that I would be in touch soon. I sent a message to Kenny letting him know that I was home and safe. I thanked him again for last night. It occurred to me that I really ought to send him something. A bottle of posh Scotch maybe.

Afterwards I made a cup of tea and took it back to bed. I sat with my back against the pillows, sipping and ruminating.

I ached for the intimacy I’d had with Josh. Not just the sex—the other stuff we’d shared: the inside jokes, our daft vocabulary of made-up words that only we understood. Who else but us called a bill a William, or referred to Woody Allen as Wooden, on the grounds that Woody was overly familiar?

I thought about the future we would never have: No forever house where we would raise our children. No family Christmases or camping in France with our kids and a funny-looking mutt that we’d already decided to call Bert.

It occurred to me that I could take some small comfort in Josh having dumped me because of his commitment phobia. It meant it was “nothing personal.” I had done nothing wrong. Then why was I starting to think that his leaving was all down to me?

I started to dwell on my imperfections. I could be confrontational and pedantic. It was the lawyer in me. Perhaps that part of my personality had begun to grate on him. OK, I was reasonably smart, but I had hidden shallows—like my trashy TV and tabloid newspaper habit. Maybe that had driven him away. When I had a lot of work to do, I tended to retreat into myself and become distant. It was an anxiety thing. At other times, I could be self-absorbed. I wasn’t always a good listener. Maybe I’d neglected him.

I kept replaying scenes from our relationship, looking for clues, hints or telltale signs that he’d wanted out.

Last summer we’d spent two glorious weeks on Lemnos. Had he been thinking about leaving me then? I thought he was as in love as I was. Each night, after dinner, we would stroll along the beach gazing up at the stars and making plans for our future. One night, we made love behind some rocks, both petrified that we would be discovered and thrown into some hellhole of a Greek jail.

Did he think about leaving me when he read the Sunday papers and made us Marmite toast for breakfast?

Worst of all, did he want to leave me when we made love?

If I’d had to answer these questions a few days ago, it would have seemed like a no-brainer. Now I wasn’t so sure. All I knew for certain was that if Josh had been dropping hints to let me know that he was unhappy, they were far too subtle for me. I also knew that on top of the loneliness and rejection, I was feeling worthless and a failure.

The daylight faded and I fell asleep again.

The next day—Tuesday—I phoned Jill at the office to let her know what had happened and to say that I didn’t think I’d be able to make it back to work this week. The poor woman was really choked up.

“Oh, Tally . . . what a thing to have happened. Heaven knows how you must be feeling.” She asked me if there was anything I needed. Groceries maybe. “You have to keep your strength up. How about I come round with a nice piece of steak? Red meat’s full of iron. Or what about a chicken? You could roast it and it would do you for a few days.”

I thanked her but said I didn’t have much of an appetite. “Of course I’ll return the office gift voucher,” I said.

“What? Don’t you dare! I won’t hear of it, and I’m sure everybody else will agree. For God’s sake, spend it. Buy something to cheer yourself up.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely positive. I don’t want to hear another word.”

“But I feel so guilty taking it under false pretenses. And it was five hundred quid.”

“Tally, I mean it. Not another word.”

“That’s really kind of you,” I said. “Tell George I’ll be back at work as soon as I can. There’s still so much work to do on the Nasreen Karimi case. And I think being in the office will do me good. It’ll take my mind off things.”

“Speaking of Nasreen,” she said. “The phone hasn’t stopped ringing. All the papers are running articles now.”

“That’s fantastic, but I left all the news editors my numbers. I wonder why they haven’t contacted me. I really ought to speak to them to make sure they’ve got all their facts straight.”

“It’s my fault. I’m sorry if I crossed the line, but I told them they weren’t to disturb you because you were on your honeymoon. I thought you deserved a few days off, so I passed them over to George. I knew he was fairly up to speed with the case.”

“No, that’s fine, Jill. You did the right thing. On second thought, I’m not sure I’m really up to giving newspaper interviews just now.”

Jill told me to take care. “We’ll all be thinking of you,” she said.

No sooner had I put the phone down than it started ringing.

“Tally. Terry here.”

“Terry.” Did I know a Terry?

“Terry the builder? We’re due to start work on your flat on Thursday?”

Oh God. Of course.
That
Terry. I’d totally forgotten. I hadn’t packed up the kitchen contents. I hadn’t booked a van to move the furniture into storage. I hadn’t even booked a storage unit. Josh and I had been planning to do all that this week. On top of everything, I had nowhere to stay while the work was going on, but I supposed I could always camp out at Mum’s.

“Terry, I’m so sorry, but I’ve had a few personal problems and I’m not sure I’m going to be ready for you by Thursday.”

“No worries. The thing is our van got nicked and we won’t be able to make it, either.”

“No! That’s fantastic . . . Sorry, I didn’t mean that. Of course it’s not fantastic. It’s dreadful that your van got stolen.”

“Tell me about it. Me and a mate dropped into the Taj Mahal in Stockwell for a vindaloo and when we come out, there it was—gone.”

Long story short, Terry and the rest of the gang wouldn’t be able to start work until Monday. That gave me plenty of time to get the place ready.

It didn’t occur to me to call off the work. Not only was the flat in dire need of a face-lift, but I’d paid Terry a pretty hefty nonrefundable deposit. I also decided that living in a newly refurbished apartment—clearly, I wouldn’t be putting it up for rent now—would be some small consolation after everything that had happened. I’d bought it because it had huge potential and because it was in a great location, just off Camden High Street, but its tatty nylon carpets and embossed wallpaper that a previous owner had covered in white paint—long gone yellow—had depressed me from the moment I moved in.

In the weeks leading up to the wedding I’d gotten really excited that the work I’d put off doing for so long was actually going to start. When it was finished the place was going to look wonderful. The plan was to knock the living room—which had a fabulous gray marble fireplace and the original wooden shutters—into the kitchen and make it one large living space. I was also going to put in French doors leading to the garden. The new kitchen units were on order. Ditto the white bathroom suite and gray floor tiles.

I wandered into my beige melamine kitchen and started opening cupboards, trying to work out how many containers I would need. As well as packing up the kitchen contents, I would need boxes for my books and CDs. Then there were all my winter clothes and shoes. It occurred to me that for the first time in two days, I wasn’t thinking about Josh.

I went online and ordered thirty removal boxes. It seemed like a lot, but when I’d discussed packing up my flat with people at work, everybody said the same—that when they’d moved or put their house contents into storage, they always underestimated how many boxes they needed.

Afterwards, I rang round various man-and-van-type removal people. Everybody was booked up for Sunday. The only guy who could fit me in was the Wizard of Aus. We agreed on a hundred quid cash.

By lunchtime I was ready to go back to bed. I had no idea how exhausting misery could be. Once again, I checked if Josh had texted or e-mailed. He hadn’t. Mum, on the other hand, had texted three times and Scarlett twice. Both wanted to know how I was and if they could come over yet. I told them that I needed more time alone.

I thought about taking a shower, but I couldn’t be bothered. I smelled my pits. I was good for another day.

On Wednesday morning, I was woken by the buzz of the intercom. I turned over and ignored it on the grounds that it was probably just some delivery bloke wanting to get into the building. Let him try another bell. Eventually, somebody would let him in. The buzzer went a second and a third time. Muttering, I dragged myself out of bed, shuffled to the door and picked up the handset.

“’Lo.”

“Tally, it’s Rosie. I’m worried about you. Let me in?”