Otherwise I’d never get over Jake, the one I used to think was The One before he broke my heart into seventy thousand pieces and turned me into a cynic who had bitter and self-pitying thoughts whenever I saw a couple holding hands on the Tube.
Jake and I had split six months earlier. He split up with me, I should say, if we’re being totally accurate. It was after eight years together, having met at uni. Various friends had started getting engaged and, all right, I’d very occasionally allowed myself to think about what shape diamond Jake might buy for an engagement ring. But only once or twice, tops. Maybe three times. Tragic, I know, but in the absence of a ring I was happy with Jake. I just wanted us – married or not. And I thought he did too. We used to fall asleep making sure we were touching one another every night. My arm over his chest or our feet touching. Or holding hands. And if one of us woke in the night and we’d moved apart, we’d reach out for the other one so we could feel them there again. It was real. I knew it.
Well, some clairvoyant I was. Six months ago, Jake came home from his office to our flat in Angel and told me he that he felt ‘too settled’. That he wanted more excitement. And as I sat at the kitchen table, crying, wondering whether I should offer to dress up as a sexy nun or be more enthusiastic about anal sex, he told me he was moving out to go and live with his friend Dave. It felt so sudden that I could only sit at the kitchen table weeping while Jake packed and left ten minutes later with the overnight bag I’d bought him from John Lewis for his last birthday. With hindsight, not the sexiest purchase. But he’d said he loved it. It had a separate compartment for his wash bag. Practical, no?
The Dave thing turned out to be a front for the fact that Jake had been shagging a 24-year-old called India from his office. Jess and I had devoted hours (whole days, probably), to stalking her on all forms of social media. On Instagram, she was a blonde party girl who never seemed to wear a bra; on LinkedIn, her profile picture showed a more serious India, smiling in a collared shirt, blonde hair tied back in a smooth ponytail. It was also via LinkedIn that Jess and I discovered she’d only been working at Jake’s law firm for two months before he left me.
‘Quick work,’ I’d slurred, pissed, lying belly down on the floor of Jess’s bedroom where we were stalking her on my laptop one evening.
The next day, I’d got an email from Jake.
Lil, you can see who’s been looking at your profile on LinkedIn. I’m not sure this is healthy. Please leave Indy out of it.
Indy indeed. I’d thrown my phone on the floor in a rage and smashed the screen. But my fury was helpful. Anger was more motivational than sadness. Sadness sat in my stomach like a stone and made me cry; anger made me want to get up and do something. I decided I needed to move out of the flat I’d shared with Jake and find another room somewhere. I’d start again. Optimistically, I bought a book about Buddhism and tried a meditation I found on Spotify, half-hoping to wake up cured the following day.
I didn’t wake up cured. But I knew I had to give it time. The oldest cliché there was and the most irritating, depressing thing anyone can say to you when you’re in the depths of a break-up, staring at your phone, longing to message them. Or for them to message you. But the time thing was true. Annoyingly.
Six months later, I was living in a flat in Brixton on a street just behind McDonald’s. My flatmates were an Aussie couple called Riley and Grace – he was a personal trainer, she was a yoga teacher – who made genuinely extraordinary noises when they had sex. I’d joked to Jess that Attenborough should study them (‘And now the male climbs on top of the female’), but they were lovely when they had all their clothes on, and my room was cheap. Plus, India had made her Instagram profile private which meant I couldn’t stalk her any more. Probably better for all of us that way.