“Do you know he doesn’t love you?” asks my mother, when I have calmed down again.
“Yes. Of course. He doesn’t. It was clear on Nantucket that he wasn’t interested.”
“I thought you said there was a moment when you thought he might have been. In the kitchen. Making popcorn.”
“I thought that at the time, but two hours later he had his tongue down Julia’s throat, so, no. I don’t think it was a moment. I think it was my overactive imagination working overtime.”
“What if you’re wrong?” my mum says simply. “What if he still loves you? Then how would you feel?”
“But he doesn’t,” I groan. “If he did, he would have said something. Oh God. It’s just so awful. I can’t believe he knows.”
“It might not be so awful,” she says. “It might all turn out to be for the best.”
Thirty-six
Jason is now avoiding me. Which is a huge relief. I don’t need to skulk around the flat or suddenly find a reason to go out if he’s dropping Annie at home, because he’s clearly feeling as humiliated as I am, not to mention quite possibly appalled, and is staying as far away as possible.
While I try to get on with my life.
Like an awful flashback, the scene from the meeting, the things I said, the knowledge that Jason heard them, come back to haunt me on a regular basis. Usually when I’m lying in bed at night, and I often throw the pillow on top of my head and groan in horror.
But as the weeks have gone by, it has got a little easier. Not seeing him has helped.
I speak to Maureen, my sponsor, every day, go to my meetings, write my articles, look after Annie, and as the pieces of the puzzle of my regular old boring life have fallen into the same place they were before we left for Nantucket, so the pain has eased.
It is beginning to feel like a bad, but distant, dream.
I even bit the bullet and signed up for Match.com. I didn’t want to do it, but Sam threatened to divorce me if I didn’t, so even though I haven’t met anyone yet, I have spent quite a few evenings winking away and having some … interesting chats.
I don’t know that I feel quite ready to actually go out on a date yet.
Until I meet Matthew, who has blue eyes, and likes windsurfing, and go-karting, and good wine, and basically we have absolutely nothing in common, except his messages are very quick, and clever, and when he asks if he can call me, I say yes, and his voice is warm and lovely, and when he asks if I’d like to meet for a drink, I say no.
Two or three weeks go by, during which we talk every night. This isn’t real, though, I tell myself. Anyone can be anyone they choose during a phone conversation. This means nothing. Who can predict chemistry?
Sam phoned yesterday to see if I would be interested in writing a piece on middle-aged online dating. Great. Everything I write these days has to be prefaced with the word “middle-aged,” which doesn’t exactly make this middle-aged single woman feel particularly good about herself.
“Get over it,” said Sam. “It happens to the best of us.”
Tonight, I have finally agreed to meet Matthew for a drink. We’re going to the Queens in Primrose Hill, and because this is my first date in years, and even though I’m almost certain he’s going to be awful in real life—did I mention we have nothing in common?—I have still put an inordinate amount of time into getting ready today.
I went to the hairdresser this morning and had a few highlights put in. A few more highlights, to be correct. And I got a spray tan, because even though technically it’s autumn, it’s entirely possible that I just went to somewhere like Marbella for the weekend, and I do look so much better with a tan.
Doesn’t everyone look so much better with a tan?
I have lost some weight, which isn’t a bad thing. Not that I was unhappy, particularly, but I am always convinced that if I were ten pounds lighter then everything in my life would be perfect, and lo and behold, when I went to try on the skirt I was thinking of wearing for the date tonight, it was swimming on me.
Instead I go for the really-much-too-small-for-me skinny stretch jeans that are very dark, and very tight,