Page 68 of Happily Never After
She puts her hand on my arm as she corrects me, speaking slowly so I can catch the words. ‘Tu ne l’aimes pas non plus.’
‘What was that all about?’ Angus asks after I’ve bid her farewell and she’s shuffled off. The temptation to tell him that she’s a self-professed expert on love and relationships who took an instant dislike to him is almost overwhelming but, true as it might be, I’m feeling slightly more charitable towards him than I did when we left the house, so I decide to spare his feelings.
‘She’s someone I bump into occasionally,’ I tell him instead. ‘We were just passing the time of day and talking about the weather.’
‘You sounded really sexy talking French like that,’ he says. ‘You should do it more.’
‘Angus?’
‘Yes.’
‘No. Just no. OK? You don’t get to call me sexy any more.’
‘It’s a compliment.’
‘I don’t care what it is. It’s inappropriate and weird.’
‘I know you’re angry with me,’ he continues, unwisely in my opinion given that I’m actually managing to be reasonably civil towards him at the moment. ‘But we did have ten years together, Laura. You can’t just rewrite history and wipe them out. Ten years in which we saw each other naked more times than either of us could count. Ten years of intimacy. That happened, whatever you feel about it now. I think that entitles me to pay you a compliment without you jumping down my throat.’
‘Argh!’ I cry, clapping my hands over my ears. ‘Please, just stop.’
‘Making you uncomfortable, am I?’ A faint smile is playing on his lips. I used to love it when that happened. It was like a secret mini-gesture just for me. His smile is very slightly lopsided and I used to find it sexy as hell.
‘I don’t want to talk about… naked stuff,’ I tell him. ‘It’s giving me the ick.’
He roars with laughter. ‘Naked stuff?’ he repeats. ‘What are we, seven?’
‘Shut up, Angus.’
‘Sex,’ he replies, still laughing. ‘Intercourse. Our two naked bodies coming together, instinctively knowing what the other wants and craves. Don’t tell me you can’t picture it and it’s not a good image, because I won’t believe you. We were good, weren’t we?’
‘Whatever. I’m not joining in your personal porno movie.’
‘Naked stuff,’ he breathes again in amusement. ‘Bloody hell.’
Thankfully, we lapse back into silence as we embark on the return journey, but I can tell something is playing on his mind.
‘What?’ I ask eventually.
‘Have you ever heard of Kintsugi?’ he asks.
Uh-oh. I haven’t a clue what Kintsugi is but, if he’s been seeing a therapist, he could have been up to all kinds of batshit crazy stuff. I bet it’s some kind of weird chanting meditation thing, where you align your chakras or whatever, and he’s going to try to suck me in to doing it with him as some kind of totally messed-up bonding exercise.
‘I’m not into that kind of thing,’ I tell him. ‘I can just about cope with Liv and her Pilates.’
He grins. ‘You think it’s a type of Yoga, don’t you?’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘No. It’s a Japanese art form. The most literal translation of the word is “golden repair”. They take broken pottery, use a special lacquer to glue it back together again, and then cover the repair with gold. The philosophy behind it centres around embracing the beauty of imperfection, that an object can become even more valuable after being broken and repaired.’
‘I see.’
‘There was a talk about it on the cruise. Really interesting, actually.’
‘I’m delighted that you’re taking the opportunity to expand your cultural horizons. Was there a point to this?’
‘Yes. It’s us, don’t you see? It was your allusion to the hammer that made me think of it. You’re right. Our relationship was a beautiful clay pot full of love. When I left, it was like dropping the pot on the floor. It broke and all the love leaked out of it. That’s where we are now. But, if we apply Kintsugi, not only can we repair the pot and refill it over time, but it could end up being an even more beautiful pot than we had before.’
