Page 89 of Close to You
She snorts a little: ‘Ben’s not been himself for the past month or so – but he has busy periods at work, so I suppose it’s that.’ She pauses for a moment and then adds: ‘You should come over one evening soon. Or we’ll go out somewhere?’
‘We’ll figure something out,’ I reply, which everyone knows is code for, ‘not now’.
Jane finishes my drink and starts shuffling with her bag. ‘I have to get going,’ she says.
She asks if I need anything and then we do the usual goodbye hug before she heads off.
I continue sitting and it’s less than a minute until Andy appears at the table.
‘Are you sure you don’t want anything else?’ he asks.
‘I’ve got to head off,’ I reply.
He glances to the door and then focuses on me. Ever since I first started coming here, there’s been something of a buzz between us. Always unspoken, but undoubtedly there. Like two magnets at opposite ends of a table that are far enough away not to be pulled together.
‘I’m sorry to hear about what happened with your husband,’ Andy says.
‘Thanks.’
‘If there’s anything I can do, you know where I am.’
He waits for a few seconds, but I’m not sure what to say. Not yet, anyway. Not properly.
‘See you around,’ I say.
‘I hope so.’
Forty-Four
THE NOW
My hair is jagged and short, like a child who’s found a pair of scissors for the first time. There’s no style – it’s been slashed into sharp angles and, for the first time I can remember, is cropped enough that my ears are on show. I stare at myself in the mirror but it doesn’t look like me. I have to touch my face and my hair to know that it’s really me and that there isn’t some sort of trickery. There is still a sharp pain on the side of my neck close to my scar and, when I half turn, there are two small red dots imprinted into my skin.
‘In here,’ Jane calls.
I turn from the mirror to see that she’s no longer in the living room and then I follow her voice into the kitchen, where my chopped hair is on the floor.
‘I don’t know what happened,’ I say as I stare.
‘Is Norah OK?’ I ask.
There’s a dawning second where Jane’s eyes widen and then, without a word, she skips past me and bounds up the stairs. I should follow and yet I’m transfixed by the hair on the floor. It’s not even necessarily how ridiculous I now look, it’s that this feels like an invasion. I can’t quite process what’s happened.
There is the sound of more footsteps on the stairs and then Jane reappears. She peers down to the hair and then back to me.
‘Norah’s fine,’ she says. ‘She’s asleep. I rolled her over to make sure she’s unharmed – but she is untouched…’
She scans across me and there’s an obvious implication that I’m not. I still feel a little unsteady.
‘What happened?’ I ask, partly to myself, partly to her.
Jane shifts onto one of the dining chairs: ‘I heard noises outside,’ she says. ‘I went to the window and there was someone at the end of the drive. It looked so much like David that I didn’t know what to do at first. We stared at each other and then I went to the front door. By the time I’d opened it, he’d gone.’
‘What time?’
‘Nine o’clock or so? I texted you not long afterwards.’
‘I came straight here.’
