Page 16 of Textbook Romance

‘But seriously, thank you for letting me sit in. Very much appreciated.’

‘You’re welcome. Least I could do… you know, after the way you helped me back in May. I didn’t know if I was ever going to see you again. But I’m glad I have and that I get to thank you again. In person. Less of a… wreck.’

There is a sincerity in his smile that makes this whole interaction less awkward. ‘Don’t mention it. To be fair, you saved me from the dancefloor, too.’

‘This is true,’ I say, pointing at him.

‘Did you ever get your coat back?’ he asks me.

‘Oh yeah, someone from the hotel delivered it the next day.’

He laughs under his breath, grinning until I work it out for myself.

‘Oh… you brought me back my coat?’ I say, surprised.

‘I handed it to a young lady at the door. Your daughter? I didn’t want to make a fuss. I was also slightly too embarrassed to say I was someone you met at the table plan. And it was a nice coat. I didn’t want you to lose it.’

I stand there for a moment to take in that kindness, slightly emotional because the coat is from Uniqlo and it’s very warm.

‘Don’t get me wrong… I also went back to have some cake and get in the photo booth to leave some incredibly animated self-portraits with an inflatable cat. But at the end of the evening, I may have had a conversation with someone in the cloakroom and rescued it.’

‘How did you know?’

‘It was the last one there, so I had a punt.’

I still don’t know how to respond to this man in front of me. It’s like someone has sent him to me to help reaffirm my faith in people again. There are dicks out there but there are also nice people, nice people like you, Jack, who do deep dives into cloakrooms and return coats to their owners.

‘It is my favourite coat,’ I tell him, touching his arm. ‘Thank you…’

He looks down at my hand. Was that weird? He thinks I’m touchy. I take the hand back. ‘My pleasure… so…’

But before he has a chance to finish his sentence, a woman swans over and puts an arm over Jack’s shoulder. ‘JACKERS!’ It’s Claudia from the school office, possibly here to finish what she started at that wedding. Her stance with him is overly familiar, fuelled slightly by a half pint of Becks. Jack’s face reads as a mixture of startled and at a loss of how to handle this.

‘Good summer, Claudia?’ I ask her, trying to intervene.

‘Oh, you know. I hear you had an absolute shocker,’ she says, bluntly. Jack winces at her lack of tact.

‘It could have been better,’ I reply meekly.

‘I heard the news from Joyce. She thought something was up when you changed your social media picture, so she went to check your husband’s profile and he’s changed his picture to some selfie of him with another woman so we kind of assumed something had happened…’

Ouch. From a holiday romance to an affair to a social media partner. Is it terrible to say I think I preferred it all when it was a secret, when I didn’t know what it was? Now it feels like someone ripping off a plaster incredibly slowly, revealing that messy wound underneath not just to me but to the entire world via Instagram. Roll up, roll up. Come and look at the car crash that is my love life.

‘Was it an affair then?’ she asks, seemingly unaware that I want the ground to swallow me up. ‘I reckon my ex was cheating on me. Fuckers, the lot of them, you know?’

Jack stands there, his expression changing at being labelled as such, but I can tell he’s also unimpressed by the way Claudia just wants to lay this all out bare here, in the corner of this pub with its patterned carpets and sticky tables.

‘I… It was… It’s just all quite fresh, you know?’ I say, words lining the inside of my throat, but I can’t seem to get them out. I don’t want to put her in her place, I don’t want to tell her anything else. I just can’t talk about it all yet. But as I look around that area of the pub where the staff of Griffin Road seem to be gathered, enjoying their drinks, I also feel a sense of paranoia. Who else knows? How far has the rumour mill travelled? What misinformation lies there? Who else has seen this picture of Brian and Liz? And it feels exhausting, humiliating to have to face it all. ‘I’m just going to excuse myself, guys, to the loo… Lovely to see you, Claudia. And see you again, too, Jack.’

I’m sorry, Jack. You’ll have to deal with Claudia yourself this time. As I walk towards the ladies’ toilets, I can feel all that emotion overwhelming me. It’s like a crushing in my chest, an inability to make sense of what’s happening, to single out a thought, a feeling. Occasionally that feeling springs out of my eyes, tears that could have filled the Thames by now, but sometimes, it’s just an intense sadness at how much has changed in a split second. Usually on a weekday like this, I’d rush home from work, I’d have a cup of tea. Brian would fall in a couple of hours later. Wine would be opened, pasta would be boiled, the kitchen would be a hive of activity where we’d laugh and share stories. Shouting at Dylan for leaving wet football boots by the back door, Lottie complaining I’ve not grated enough cheese. Piling on to sofas, more tea, slippers, my feet meeting Brian’s on the footstool, sharing a throw and shouting at the television. Some warm vision of a routine has suddenly been ripped away from me. Gone. And it wasn’t my choice. I didn’t think it was awful. I loved it. I miss it intensely.

I enter the ladies’ – grateful it’s empty – and take to a stall to settle myself, resting my forehead against the door. Bloody Claudia. She’s a sharer. Such is the way of social media these days that we all know the complete ins and outs of how her most recent relationship broke down, complete with screenshots of text fights and photos outing his cheating behaviour. I chose not to do the same. I didn’t want people’s pity. I didn’t know how to post something with any type of angry edge. I sit on the closed toilet and get my phone out to read the text on the screen.

How did your first day back go?

It’s Dylan. Dylan has taken a concerned child stance with all of this. From a lad who was normally attached to a PlayStation, and who I saw occasionally when he was hungry, it’s nice to see the empathy that was under the surface.

All good. Have you gone straight to training?

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