Page 92 of The Love Hack

‘Queens Park Rangers get relegated, you check your phone,’ said Ross.

‘Exactly. So I checked my phone, just for something to do, to kind of distract myself from what was going on. And I had the Ask Adam column open in one of the tabs and I refreshed it, and there was the question and your answer.’

It hadn’t been my answer – it had been GenBot 2.0’s. But I wasn’t going to tell Amelie that now, and I wasn’t sure I ever would.

‘And that set me straight. Honestly, Luce, it did. He came back with the water and I threw my glass over his head – I know, I’m not proud – and I told him he was shit in bed and had a tiny cock, and I was leaving.’

‘Good for you,’ I said.

‘Good for you,’ said Amelie. ‘Honestly, that column told me what I needed to hear. He’s a dick, Luce, and he’ll never change.’

THIRTY-SIX

Dear Adam

I’m sure you don’t remember, but I wrote to you a few months ago, about my daughter. I told you how I’d lost my wife to cancer, and I was worried about how I’d manage parenting my daughter alone as she goes through her teenage years.

Well, it was her thirteenth birthday yesterday and I found myself recalling your advice. Actually, that’s not quite true, because what you wrote has been with me every single day since I read it. Your words gave me confidence – helped me to believe that I can do this, and that really meant the world.

I’m not going to say it’s been easy, and we’ve still got a long road ahead of us. We still miss my wife like crazy. But I tell my daughter all the time how much I love her and how proud her mother would be of her. I talk to her about my feelings, too, and I know that if one day I meet someone else and I’m ready to embark on a new relationship, we’ll be able to make that work together.

Adam, I wanted to thank you. I needed your advice and it helped me to find what was there inside inside me all along.

Jonno, London

At Heathrow airport, Amelie said goodbye and got on the train in the opposite direction to us, back home to Mum and Dad, who’d been alerted to her arrival by text and were ready to welcome her with a freshly made bed, shoulders to cry on and Mum’s legendary roast chicken.

Ross and I headed east. He’d told me he was going to visit his own mother, as he always did when he got home from a trip to New York. She still felt a heavy burden of guilt, he said, over having left his father, and needed reassurance from Ross that it had been the only possible choice for her to make.

We said our goodbye on the platform before boarding our train, standing there amid the crowds of suitcase-wheeling travellers, holding each other close then kissing on and on like two people at the end of a sad French art-house movie.

‘But I’ll see you tomorrow, at work,’ I said, rubbing my face on his shoulder to wipe away a tear. ‘Why am I being so daft?’

‘Because when you’ve only had twenty-four hours together, twenty-four apart feels like a long time.’

‘It really does,’ he agreed. He wasn’t soft enough to actually cry, but his usual cheerful smile was absent.

‘We could get a coffee together tomorrow before we go into the office?’ I suggested.

‘Deal.’

‘Don’t change your mind.’

‘I won’t. Scout’s honour. Say hi to Astro for me.’

‘I will. Promise.’

Then our train thundered into the station and we pushed our way on, strap-hanging by the door because there weren’t two free seats together.

When his stop came, he kissed me one more time, promised he’d text later and stepped off. I watched him until he disappeared around a corner, the doors thudded closed and I was left alone.

My New York adventure was over. In a sense, I’d achieved what I’d set out to: Amelie was home, and we both knew the truth about Zack.

But it felt like a hollow victory. My sister was putting a brave face on things, as she always did, but I knew her heart and her pride were hurting badly. And her future looked uncertain, having to find somewhere to live and somehow get a job with a new baby on the way – a baby who would grow up with a mostly absent father, same as Ross had.

Inevitably, my thoughts turned to Ross. For him, the trip must have been a bitter-sweet one. Bitter because it was his first pilgrimage to the city of his birth since his father’s death; I wondered whether he’d continue to visit every year, go to the shady park with the giant stones and remember what he’d lost. And I wondered whether every time, from now on, he’d remember meeting me there, and that would be the sweet part – the beginning of something wonderful.

But was it? He’d given me no reason to doubt him. In the months since I’d met him, I’d never heard him say an unkind word about anyone. I’d never known him to slag off a colleague or flake out on a deadline. He’d never treated me with anything but respect.

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