I told you about, poor thing, and she remembered, in that moment, how he’d said that to Nadia the night they first met, about the girlfriend before her. She was never well.
Nadia kept walking, her head spinning, with a dogged refusal to look back at him. She knew he was watching. Knew he was furious she’d caused even the tiniest bit of a scene.
Crazy, that was the word he had used, all that time ago. He said his ex was crazy. And now Nadia felt crazy too. And it was awful, horrible – she’d bet her whole life that the woman who was now hearing about his crazy ex would one day herself be crying in the street near a work party being called crazy by him too, when the only thing crazy was how Awful Ben picked away at the women he said he loved and tortured them into thinking there was something wrong with them.
But the problem was him.
It made Nadia want to scream. She wanted to scream, and run back down the road to tell the woman to save herself and dump him now. But if she did that, she really would seem crazy. She wouldn’t have listened to anyone, least of all an ex, if she’d been warned. She would have thought that whoever tried to tell her not to pursue a relationship with him was jealous. That’s what they teach us, Nadia thought to herself, miserably. They teach us that other women are the competition so we don’t talk to each other honestly and figure out that they’re all fucking fuckers.
She reached the Sky Garden and looked up. There was no way she was going in. She was crying, she realized – and, as she fished her phone out of her pocket, trembling a little too. She called Emma.
‘Babe, where are you?’ answered Emma. ‘I’ve seen this guy Gaby has for you. He’s cute. He’s your type. Like, fucking game on, babe!’
Nadia’s voice wobbled as she said, ‘I’m outside. I just saw Ben.’ And then she sobbed hysterically.
‘Fuck. Okay. I’m coming. Stay right there. I’m coming.’
‘The table in the corner, please,’ Emma said to the hostess of the chic hotel. Emma had a theory that if in doubt, go to a hotel bar because they’re always emptier than pubs or stand-alone restaurants. She was right. Nadia felt safe here. It was half empty and they could sit at the back, out of the way, their own little world within a world.
Gaby was with them. The three settled into a corner booth and Emma ordered them the salted caramel chocolate brownie with two scoops of ice cream, the sweet and salty popcorn, and a large pot of peppermint tea with honey on the side. Everything was to share.
‘There was so much I thought I would say to him if I ever saw him again,’ Nadia said, playing with the label on the bottle of water at the table. ‘And I just froze. Urgh.’ A tear rolled down her cheek. ‘He looked so smug too – like he knew he’d caught me in a weak moment or something.’
‘What did she look like?’ Emma asked, intrigued.
‘Question vetoed,’ said Gaby, giving her daggers. ‘It literally doesn’t matter. He’ll do the same to her.’ Gaby had known something was off with Awful Ben almost immediately after Nadia had started going out with him; she and Nadia had had their only fight over it and after they’d made up Gaby knew she had to let her friend make her own mistakes. ‘It happens to a lot of women at some point.’
The tea arrived, and the women fell silent as the waitress unloaded her tray and told them dessert would be right with them.
‘You don’t have to be okay, you know,’ Gaby said, once she’d gone. ‘I’d want to cry and scream too.’
Nadia nodded. ‘I hate that you don’t get over someone like, once. You have to do it again and again and again, every time you think of them.’
‘You’ve been doing really well,’ Emma offered. ‘You’ve been lighter, happier. More positive. You’ve been in The New Routine to Change Your Life!’
‘And now I’m taking a huge leap back,’ Nadia said, miserably. ‘I’m so mad that he can control me! Still!’ She burst into tears again.
‘It’s not a leap back, not at all.’ Emma soothed her. ‘Babe – healing isn’t linear. And look how far you’ve come. You were able to process all that craziness that happened, and then tell us and