“Say why you split up with Lara! What was wrong with her?”
I can see Josh glaze over again. He looks as though he’s trying to catch the distant echo of a nightingale across the valleys.
“Josh?” Marie leans forward. “Josh!”
“Sorry!” He comes to and shakes his head. “Sorry! It’s weird. I was just thinking about my ex, Lara.”
“Oh.” Marie keeps smiling, exactly the same amount of smile, but I can see the muscles tense up a little in her jaw. “What about her?”
“I don’t know.” Josh screws up his face, looking perplexed. “I was just thinking what it was about her and me that went wrong.”
“Relationships end.” Marie sips her water. “Who knows why? These things happen.”
“Yes.” Josh still has a faraway look in his eyes, which isn’t surprising, as Sadie is yelling like a siren in his ear. “Say why it went wrong! Say it out loud!”
“So.” Marie changes the subject. “How was your week? I’ve had a hellish time with that client. Remember the one I was telling you about-”
“I suppose she was a bit intense,” Josh blurts out.
“Who was?”
“Lara.”
“Oh, really?” I can see Marie trying to feign interest.
“She used to read me out ‘relationship issues’ from some bullshit magazine and want to talk about how similar we were to some other random couple. For hours. That annoyed me. Why did she have to analyze everything? Why did she have to unpick every single row and conversation?”
He gulps at his wine and I stare at him across the restaurant, stricken. I never knew he felt that way.
“That does sound annoying.” Marie nods sympathetically. “Anyway, how did that big meeting go? You said your boss had some announcement to make?”
“What else?” Sadie is shrieking at Josh, drowning out Marie. “What else?”
“She used to litter the bathroom with her creams and crap.” Josh frowns distantly at the memory. “Every time I tried to shave I had to fight through this thicket of pots. It drove me mad.”
“What a pain!” says Marie, overbrightly. “Anyway-”
“It was the little things. Like the way she used to sing in the shower. I mean, I don’t mind singing, but the same song every bloody day? And she didn’t want to open her mind. She’s not interested in traveling, not interested in the same things as me… Like, I once bought her this book of William Eggleston photography; I thought we could talk about it or whatever. But she just flipped through with zero interest-” Josh suddenly notices Marie, whose face has almost seized up with the effort of listening politely. “Shit. Marie. I’m sorry!” He rubs his face with both hands. “I don’t know why Lara keeps popping into my head. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Yes, let’s do that.” Marie smiles stiffly. “I was going to tell you about my client, the really demanding one from Seattle? You remember?”
“Of course I remember!” He reaches for his wine-then seems to change his mind and picks up his glass of fizzy water instead.
“Soup? Excuse me, miss, didn’t you order the soup? Excuse me?”
Suddenly I realize a waiter is standing by my table with a tray of soup and bread. I have no idea how long he’s been trying to get my attention.
“Oh, right,” I say, quickly turning to him. “Yes, thanks.”
The waiter deposits my food and I pick up a spoon, but I can’t eat. I’m too flabbergasted by everything Josh just said. How could he have felt all this and never mentioned it? If he was annoyed by my singing, then why didn’t he say? And as for the photography book, I thought he’d bought it for himself! Not for me! How was I supposed to know it meant so much to him?
“Well!” Sadie bounces up to me and slides into the seat opposite. “That was interesting. Now you know where it all went wrong. I agree about the singing,” she adds. “You are rather tuneless.”
Doesn’t she have an ounce of sympathy?
“Well, thanks.” I keep my voice low and gaze morosely into my soup. “You know the worst thing? He never said any of this stuff to my face. None of it! I could have fixed it! I would have fixed it.” I start crumbling a piece of bread into pieces. “If he’d just given me a chance-”
“Shall we go now?” She sounds bored.
“No! We haven’t finished!” I take a deep breath. “Go and ask him what he liked about me.”
“What he liked about you?” Sadie gives me a dubious look. “Are you sure there was anything?”