‘That’s better,’ he slurred. ‘Now, another round.’
He turned and strode purposefully in the direction I’d been about to go myself, but something went wrong. His brain had said, ‘Go to the bar,’ but his feet hadn’t got the memo. One of them went one way and one went the other and his ankles got twisted around each other in a kind of French plait. For a few seconds he teetered, just like my glass of red wine had, but he didn’t manage to right himself. Arms flailing, he faceplanted spectacularly, right next to the table with the little dog, which recoiled in horror.
‘Just a suggestion,’ said the woman next to me, who I was starting to regard as my new best friend, ‘but now might be a good time to leg it.’
‘If you’re sure you’re okay to get home,’ added her friend.
‘I am,’ I assured her. ‘I’m grand. Never been better.’
I gathered up my bag and what was left of my dignity, gave them a quick wave and headed for the door. But as I was passing Brett’s prone form, I noticed something. Right there on his right ankle, between the bottom of his jeans and his grubby white sock, was a chunky plastic bit of kit on a webbing strap. I’d never seen one before, but I knew straight away what it was.
An electronic monitoring device. An ankle tag. Brett hadn’t been working abroad at all – he’d been in prison.
My dating life hadn’t exactly been a resounding success up until that point, but now I knew I’d hit rock bottom.
Two
Six months earlier
Today marks a turning point for you, Aquarius. Facing the future and finding the happiness you desire and deserve means letting go of the past, however painful that may appear.
I was pretty much used to waking up with a feeling of leaden sadness in my heart, and a feeling of hot, itchy softness on my head. The first was my longing for my ex-boyfriend Joe, the sense of loss and regret that had stubbornly refused to shift even though we’d split up years ago, after an intense three-month relationship at university. After many years apart, Joe had come back into my life – or I’d come back into his – and all those feelings had been painfully reignited, even though I’d realised there was no chance of him splitting up with his girlfriend, Alice.
The second was Frazzle, my fluffy ginger cat, who liked to sleep on my pillow so he could keep an eye on the birds in the tree outside.
It was Frazzle who woke me, one Monday morning in late March. There were blackbirds building a nest outside, and every cheep from the birds was met by an answering chirrup of longing from my cat.
‘What are you on about, you big daftie?’ I mumbled, half asleep, trying to turn over so I could maybe slip back into sleep for a precious half-hour.
But turning over was impossible, because Frazzle was lying on my hair.
‘Ouch!’ Fully awake now, I pushed the cat gently aside and sat up. Immediately, the birds forgotten, he jumped to the floor and stared at me, meowing plaintively for his breakfast.
‘Okay, okay. Give me a second to at least wake up. Jeez, it’s like having a furry dictator ruling my life.’
I slid my feet into my slippers and stood up. It was a gorgeous day – already, although it wasn’t yet seven, the sunlight streaming through the window felt warm on my bare skin. The winter, which had felt like it would never end, seemed to be loosening its grip at last, being pushed reluctantly away by the promise of spring.
And something else was different too. Something inside me.
A couple of years back, I’d gone through a phase of doing yoga classes. I think I imagined that it would somehow transform me into this serene, spiritual person who cherished the gifts of the universe and spread good energy around the place and also, crucially, could touch her toes without gasping and grunting like my grandad after he’d been digging his allotment. I didn’t stick with it for very long – the incense the teacher burned before classes made me sneeze uncontrollably and I was always worried I’d fart when I was doing a shoulder stand – but one thing had made an impression on me. At the beginning of every class, the teacher would ask us to do a kind of audit of our bodies: assessing ourselves