Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista (32 page)

‘What is it?’

‘It’s me, Jude. Can I come in?’

‘Mmmm.’

I put the cup of tea on the floor and perched on the edge of her bed.

‘I need to talk to you,’ I said, prodding her softly in the back. She pulled the duvet covers over her head.

‘I’m listening,’ she mumbled.

‘You knew, didn’t you? You knew he was planning on leaving.’

She sat up abruptly, peering at me through hooded eyes.

‘I’m so sorry, Cassie,’ she said sleepily. ‘This is all my fault.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, Matt was talking about how he needed to recruit someone for this job, and like an idiot I said, “Oh, that would be perfect for Jake,” and before you know it, Matt’s offered Jake the job and Jake’s said yes and then you were talking about how great everything was and how excited you were about your new job …’ She paused for breath, let out a huge sigh. ‘I’m sorry, Cass. I didn’t mean to mess everything up.’ She lay back and pulled the duvet back over her head.

‘You didn’t mess anything up, Jude.’ I sipped my coffee thoughtfully. ‘Whether Matt had offered him this job or not … it was only going to be a matter of time.’

‘Really?’ She was sitting up again. I held out the cup of tea, which she accepted gratefully.

‘Really. This is what he wants. It’s just …’ Tears sprang to my eyes. ‘It’s just such bloody bad timing. Less than twenty-four hours ago I was in this state of total exhilaration, I was so excited about my new job – no, my new
career
! I have a career now – can you believe it? Twenty-four hours ago I had it sorted: great job, great new house, great boyfriend. And now I have to make a choice. Do I give up this career opportunity
– my first career opportunity ever, let’s not forget – for a man I’m falling in love with, even if I know he’s probably not “the one”, whatever the hell that means?’

Jude looked at me glumly, for once lost for words.

‘I suppose we could do the long-distance thing …’ I went on.

‘Cass, take it from a woman who’s been there, the long-distance thing is
not
fun. In fact, it’s painful and lonely and depressing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought that I should just call it a day … And I
know
Matt’s “the one”. But there were times when I could see everyone else going out and having fun and meeting new people and I was just waiting, my whole life passing me by …’

‘Jude,’ I said, putting my arm around her. ‘God. You never said.’

‘No,’ she shrugged with a little smile. But I should have known anyway, I thought. ‘Anyway, if you do think that it’s for keeps with Jake, then I wouldn’t even try the long-distance thing. It won’t work and one of you will just end up hurting the other one. And I like you both very much. I don’t want to have to cut one of you out of my life just yet …’

Of course, there was more to think about than just me and Jake. Even if I did want to dash off to Africa to have adventures, even if I was prepared to abandon my great new career for my great new man, I wasn’t prepared to abandon my best friend. My single, pregnant best friend who was counting on me. More than that, I didn’t want to leave her – I couldn’t bear
the idea of not being there when she had the baby. The truth was that I’d loved Jake for about five minutes, but I’d loved Ali for years.

Not that I said any of this to him, of course. In fact, I just put the whole issue to the back of my mind and carried on as though nothing were wrong. Faced with the choice of making a decision about my future with Jake and complete denial, I opted for the river in Egypt.

I had plenty of other things to occupy my mind in any case. Intermediate French and beginner’s Spanish, for starters, with classes at the Wine Academy every Thursday evening, and antenatal classes with Ali every Friday evening, just for good measure. Plus there was the matter of Jude’s impending departure and my imminent move to West London. My relationship with Jake had slipped down my list of priorities a little.

A fact which, it appears, had not escaped his attention. On Jude and Matt’s final evening in London, we had dinner together in the flat – Matt, Jude, Jake and I sitting on boxes around the coffee table eating takeaway, with Ali sitting on the sofa (we weren’t sure there was a box that would bear her weight). For once, the tension in the room was not between Ali and Jude, who were actually being quite civil to each other. The problems began when Ali started talking about moving dates.

‘I can exchange on the fourteenth of April so you could move in any time after that,’ she said, helping herself to another enormous serving of chiang mai duck curry.

‘I’ll move in the very next day,’ I said, clinking glasses with her. ‘I have got to be out of here by the end of the month, so that’s absolutely perfect. God, I can’t wait, Al. It’s going to be so much fun living together.’ Jude gave me a faux-hurt look. ‘Almost as much fun as it has been living with you,’ I said quickly, and clinked glasses with her, too. Jake got up abruptly from the table and opened another can of cider. It was his fourth so far that evening.

‘You’ve not got plans for the fifteenth, Cassie?’ he asked me.

‘Not that I can think of …’ I replied.

‘Right.’

‘Why, were we supposed to be doing something?’

‘Nothing special,’ he muttered, turning away from me to rifle through my admittedly rather pitiful CD collection. ‘Can I change this music?’ he asked, turning it off before anyone replied. ‘It’s fucking awful.’

I looked questioningly at Jude, who just shrugged.

Things got better as the evening wore on, enlivened by endless anecdotes from Jude about my foibles as a flatmate and a good-natured round-up of the very best barbs and ripostes in the Ali-versus-Jude saga. By the time the third bottle of wine was finished, Jude and I were starting to get a bit weepy.

‘You’re the best flatmate I’ve ever had,’ she sobbed, as she flung her arms around me. This sent the others into fits of laughter.

‘What was it that made her such a great flatmate?’ Ali giggled. ‘Was it the flooded kitchen, the constant
boy drama or the fact that you lived in constant fear of eviction thanks to Cassie’s imprudent financial management?’

‘She’s a lovely flatmate,’ Jude insisted, still hugging me. ‘At least life’s never boring when Cass is about … You’ll see,’ she said, giving Ali a wink.

‘I’m living in fear,’ Ali said. ‘Cassie and a baby. I wonder which one will be more trouble?’

Later on, after I’d helped Ali into a taxi and Matt and Jude had gone to bed, I found Jake skulking in the kitchen, looking for another drink.

‘I think we’re out,’ I said, slipping my hands round his waist. ‘Come on, let’s go to bed.’ ‘I’d better not, Cass,’ he said, disentangling himself from my arms. ‘Early start tomorrow. I should probably just call it a night.’

Later, alone in bed, I realised that the fifteenth of April was the day he was supposed to be leaving.

A few weeks later, I took the day off work and borrowed Ali’s car to drive Jake to the airport. Neither of us said much on the way there. When we arrived, a little early, we found a booth in a coffee shop and sat down.

‘I’ll give you a call when I get there,’ Jake said. ‘There’s no time difference, I don’t think. I’ll have to check on that.’ He took my hand. ‘The time’s going to fly by, Cass.’ I didn’t say anything. There was a long and uncomfortable silence. Eventually, he spoke again.

‘But… you’re not that worried about time flying by,
are you?’ he asked, staring morosely at his feet. ‘Because you want to end this.’

A tear slid down my cheek and landed in my untouched coffee.

‘We should have talked about it weeks ago,’ I said. ‘I should have said something straight away. We can’t do the long-distance thing, Jake – you know we can’t.’

‘It’s only six months …’

‘Maybe. Maybe this trip is six months, maybe it’ll be longer. And how long will the next one be? This is what you want to do with your life, Jake. It isn’t what I want.’ He pulled his hand away from mine. I took it back. ‘I love you,’ I told him. ‘I do, I really do, and I’ve had such a good time with you. But there’s too much here for me to go off on the road with you – work, my family, Ali. And there’s too much out there for you to stay here.’

‘But we could try …’

‘Yes, we could try. And I think we’d fail and that one or both of us would end up very hurt. More badly hurt than we are now.’

He leaned over the table and kissed me.

‘You’re right,’ he said, wiping the tears from my cheeks. ‘I know you are. I just don’t want to let you go, that’s all.’ He slipped around the table so that he was sitting next to me, and we sat there for a while in silence, our arms around each other.

‘You’ll still call me when you get there, won’t you?’ I asked eventually.

‘Course I will.’ Then he picked up his bag and got to his feet. ‘I really ought to get going,’ he said.

‘Don’t,’ I pleaded. ‘Not yet. Have another coffee.’ Neither of us had touched a drop of our first cups.

‘Cass, they’re calling us to the gate. I need to get through security first. You know how long it takes these days.’

Clinging tightly to his hand, I walked him to security and kissed him goodbye. I waited until he was safely out of sight, then I burst into tears.

It took for ever to get home – there had been an accident on the M4 – and when I got there I felt more depressed than ever. The flat felt so empty, stripped bare of Jude and all her clutter. My things were half-packed – I had until the end of the day to finish it off. The removals van was coming first thing the next day. I couldn’t wait. The sooner I got out of the flat and into my new place with Ali, the better.

That night I ate a solitary dinner of cheese on toast made under the grill accompanied by a glass of Chateau Saint Martin ’04. It might have been mid-April, but the flat felt so cold I was tempted to put the heating on. It felt horribly quiet, too. I wished I hadn’t packed the television away. I sat up until midnight waiting for Jake to ring, but he didn’t. I rang Heathrow to make sure his plane hadn’t crashed. It hadn’t. I called his phone a few times but I just got an odd beeping noise and then silence. I went to bed feeling miserable. I woke briefly at three in the morning. There were three texts on my phone.

Joe is going to be a footballer, no doubt. Won’t stop
kicking. See you tomorrow xx Ali

Last night at 6A Venn St? Thinking of you. NY groovy xx Jude

And finally:

Sorry didn’t ring earlier. Signal patchy. Hellishly hot here. I miss you xxxxx Jake

When I finally woke up the sun was shining through the blinds and the removals men were ringing the doorbell. I threw on some jeans and a T-shirt and opened the door to two strapping young Australians wishing me a cheery ‘G’day’. They were remarkably efficient – the entire place was cleaned out by nine thirty.

I took one last final tour of the place before I left. Oddly enough, it seemed smaller with the furniture gone than it had with everything in it. I was standing in the hallway, staring into the bathroom, remembering the first time I’d ever laid eyes on Jake, the time he’d nearly cracked my head open with the door, when one of the Australians, the particularly attractive one, called out, ‘This the last one, love?’ He was just picking up the final couple of boxes, one filled with papers and the other, a shoebox containing my Louboutins.

‘Oh, leave those,’ I said, taking the box from him. ‘They’re not coming with me.’ I thought for a moment about chucking them in the bin, but decided instead to leave them on the kitchen counter. You never know, the next girl to move in might just be my size.

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