still at his ear. ‘He won’t want to miss a call from Richie.’
*
I sit out on the balcony, curled under two blankets. One of them is the Brixton throw that usually lives across our bed – the one Leon tucked me up under that night Justin came round to the flat and threatened him.
I know Leon thinks I’ve gone back to Justin. I’ve gone through desperate panic, and now I’m thinking that he should have more fucking faith in me.
Not that I’ve earned it, I suppose. I did go back to Justin, lots of times – I’ve told Leon that. But . . . I would never have started seeing Leon if I didn’t feel this time was different – if I wasn’t really ready to leave that part of my life behind me. I was trying so hard. All that time dredging up the worst memories, the endless conversations with Mo, the counselling. I was trying. But I guess Leon thought I was just too broken to fix myself.
Gerty rings me every ten minutes or so; I still haven’t picked up. Gerty has known me for eight years. If I’m angry with Leon for not having faith in me, and he’s known me for less than a year, I am at least eight times angrier with Gerty.
I pick at the sad, yellowing leaves on our one balcony pot plant and very pointedly do not think about the fact that Justin knows where I live. Somehow. Probably Martin – my address is pretty easy to get if you have access to my desk and the payslips that HR drop around.
Fucking hell. I knew I didn’t like that man for a reason.
I look down at my phone as it vibrates around and around on our little, rickety outdoor table. The table’s surface is covered in bird poo and that thick, sticky dust-grime that covers everything left outdoors for any length of time in London. Gerty’s name lights up my phone screen, and with a flash of anger I pick up this time.
‘What?’ I say.
‘I am awful,’ Gerty says, talking very fast. ‘I can’t believe myself. I should never have assumed that you would go back to Justin. I am so, so sorry.’
I pause, taken aback. Gerty and I have fought plenty of times, but she’s never said sorry right away like that, unprompted.
‘I should have believed you could do it. I do believe you can.’
‘Do what?’ I ask, before I can think of a better, angrier response.
‘Get away from Justin.’
‘Oh. That.’
‘Tiffy, are you all right?’ Gerty says.
‘Well. Not really,’ I say, feeling my bottom lip quivering. I bite down on it hard. ‘I don’t suppose . . .’
‘Richie’s not called yet. You know what these things are like, Tiffy, it could be midnight before they even move him from the holding cell to Wandsworth. And the prison’s pretty shambolic so I don’t want to get your hopes up that they’ll even give him his phone call, let alone the legal call I made them promise me. But if I speak to him I’ll tell him everything. I’ll ask him to speak to Leon.’
I check the time on the screen: it’s 8 p.m. now, and I cannot believe how nightmarishly slowly time is passing.
‘I am really, really angry with you,’ I tell Gerty, because I know I don’t sound it. I just sound sad, and tired, and like I want my best friend.
‘Absolutely. Me too. Furious. I’m the worst. And Mo isn’t talking to me either, if that helps.’
‘That doesn’t help,’ I say reluctantly. ‘I don’t want you to be a pariah.’
‘A what? Is that some kind of dessert?’
‘Pariah. Persona non-grata. Outcast.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, I’m resigned to a life of disgrace. It’s all I deserve.’
We sit in companionable silence for a while. I reach around inside to find that enormous pool of Gerty-fuelled rage again, but it seems to have evaporated.
‘I really hate Justin,’ I say miserably. ‘You know I think he did this mostly to break up me and Leon? I don’t think he would actually even marry me. He would just leave me again, once he was sure he’d got me back.’
‘The man needs castrating,’ Gerty says firmly. ‘He’s done you nothing but harm. I have actively wished him dead on several occasions.’
‘Gerty!’
‘You didn’t have to sit back and watch it happening,’ she says. ‘Watch him cleaning all the Tiffany-ness out of you. It was sick.’