Page 26 of Sorry I Missed You

11

Rebecca

My thighs were burning after sprinting full throttle up East Heath Road, which in hindsight had been a tad overambitious. I bent double at the waist, struggling to catch my breath and simultaneously scrolling through my Fitbit: 5K in thirty-one minutes. Not my best time by any stretch of the imagination. It didn’t help that I’d been distracted by thoughts of work and promotions and interviews, all whirring about in my head as I ran. I should be going into this new phase of my career with confidence; full of passion about taking that next step up. Instead, I felt kind of dead inside. Every time I read through the job spec for the head of press and marketing (which I’d done A LOT, hoping something would suddenly click), I felt completely numb. I didn’t usually do numb, much as I would have liked to at times. I filled the void with stuff – with school, with work, with running, with Dan, with whatever would keep my mind off the inevitable.

I made myself do some hamstring stretches because that was where I usually ached most the next day, but my heart wasn’t in it. I fished around in the pocket of my leggings for my keys and was just about to put them in the lock when the front door flew open and Jack nearly slammed straight into me. Rattled, I took a step back, smoothing my hand over my windswept hair.

‘Hi,’ he said, clutching his chest. ‘Sorry!’

‘No worries,’ I replied, wondering whether there was a reason he was charging around like a bull in a china shop.

‘Been for a run again, have you?’ he asked, holding the door open for me.

I’d noticed that since our row over the parcel had blown over, all we seemed to talk about was running. It was as though we’d hooked into the one thing we had in common.

I slipped past him. ‘If you can call it that,’ I said.

He looked surprised. ‘What do you mean?’

I shook my head. ‘It just wasn’t a very good session, that was all.’

He leaned against the door with his hands in his pockets. ‘It is fine to have an off day, you know,’ he said.

I nodded, pretending I completely agreed with him. ‘Sure. Course it is.’

I’d never felt like it was OK, though, that was the problem. One slip, one wrong move and it felt like everything could potentially come crashing down around me, no matter how many times I tried to rationalise it. In any case, this conversation was veering into unchartered territory. Best to end it now before one of us said something to annoy the other.

I jangled my keys in my hand. ‘Have a good day, then,’ I said, noticing he was all in black again. I started springing up the stairs, my breath coming in rapid bursts.

‘You, too,’ he called after me.

I still didn’t know what he did or where he went every day. He’d been right when he’d said he was hardly ever in, but there seemed to be no particular rhythm to it. Some days, he’d be up early and then back late, past midnight sometimes. Other times, I heard him clattering about all day and then he’d go out at teatime. He often had his TV on really loudly, I knew that much; sometimes I could hear it from the landing below. Once, I’d heard him coming up the stairs behind me and as he got closer, obviously not realising I was there, he’d been talking to himself, mumbling something fast and incoherent under his breath. I wondered what that meant, if he had some kind of condition. That was the thing in London: you knew your neighbours to say hello to. Knew what kind of clothes they wore, the takeaways they liked, their supermarket of choice. You knew if they recycled or not, how often they ordered from Amazon. Sometimes you knew what kind of music they were into if they played it loud enough. And then you made up the rest, pigeonholing them into whatever archetype you’d decided they fell into based on the very little information you had. If I was to guess, I’d say Jack worked in some trendy industry, like music or advertising. That he had as many women on the go as he had packages delivered (not that I’d seen any women, admittedly). That he hated cooking and that his flat was a mess. That he was privileged (hence the need to get his own way) and had very likely been to private school. I mean, I was making a lot of assumptions here, but I was pretty convinced I was right about most of it.

Once I’d showered and changed, I made myself a normal tea and Tyler a camomile one. It had been the only herbal tea I could find and had been stuffed at the back of my cupboard behind the jar of decaf coffee I also never used. I had the sneaking suspicion it was past its sell-by date, but surely dried herbs didn’t go off? Anyway, I hadn’t been sure I was going to see him again after I’d turned down his offer of dinner at Nobu. In hindsight, perhaps I should have stocked up my cupboards with health freak/vegan-friendly things just in case.

I walked into the lounge and put the drinks down next to Tyler, who was typing frantically away on his laptop.

‘How was your run?’ he asked.

I flung myself on the sofa next to him. ‘Terrible. I couldn’t get going.’

He looked up, surprised. ‘How so?’

‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘Just wasn’t feeling it.’

He frowned. ‘Those are the times we need to push hardest, right?’

‘Right,’ I replied, turning my head away and surreptitiously rolling my eyes.

As if it was that easy. It seemed he mistakenly thought I was as fit and dedicated to exercise as he was and he found it impossible to imagine that I – or anyone else for that matter – might have an ‘off day’, as Jack had put it.

‘I’m gonna to have to get a flight back to New York tonight,’ he said.

‘OK,’ I said, rearranging the coasters on the coffee table so that they were just as I liked them.

He reached over and tucked a hair behind my ear. ‘Sorry, sweetheart. I’ll be back in a few weeks.’

‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘Really.’

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