As I push open the door at the end of the lime-green hall (the landlord has a theme—it’s a bad one) the creak of aging wood echoes around me. The shaft of light from the hall behind casts itself on the two sleeping figures like a painting. Ellie’s lying still, facing up daintily like a true princess under her fluffy duck-egg-blue duvet while Mark is curled around her, his hand gently resting on her stomach for comfort.
She looks worried as she sleeps, but then again she always looks worried. She’s a worrier.
I watch them for a little, wondering if I should just turn back, when from out of the darkness I hear my favorite voice in the whole world speak out.
“Bells?”
Ellie’s looking at me, her eyes still half-shut. She moves Mark’s hand off her carefully as she shuffles them both back to one side of the bed. She turns down the bedding on her other side and, stirring enough to understand what’s happening, Mark grumbles something under his breath that I choose not to listen to or acknowledge because I don’t need more negativity in my life. Closing the door behind me I take the invitation gladly and jump straight into the bed beside her.
I didn’t realize how cold I was until the softness of her winter-weight duvet is over me and her arms are keeping me safe and warm.
“Not the one then?” she whispers sleepily, falling back into a peaceful sleep.
“You’re my one,” I reply, cuddling into the warmth of my best friend in the whole wide world.
9
I wake up to the glorious smell of PG Tips.
“Wakey wakey, Sleeping Beauty,” Ellie says, precariously balancing two mugs of milk-no-sugar as she climbs back into the bed beside me. I can feel the grazing warmth of the sunbeams filtering in through the open curtains as I keep my eyes pressed shut, the sound of two china cups clinking above me bringing a smile to my face.
“Ta-muchly,” I reply happily, scooching myself up.
I let my hands reach out for the awaiting cuppa with my eyes still closed and let the steam from the brew unseal my eyelids enough to look around in the harsh light of day.
It’s a tragic sight. Beyond my cup of tea lies only a shell of what was once the best room in the whole of Flat B, 13 Elmfield Road.
“No, no, no,” I grumble like a spoiled child as I look at the brown cardboard boxes piled up around the floor. I almost spill precious nutrients from my tea as I shake my head furiously.
“If I don’t do it now I’ll have a proper panic tomorrow morning,” Ellie replies, surveying her land sadly. Her wardrobe is already open, clothes piled in some order around it like a shrine to what once was. Her shelves are still filled with trinkets and thingamabobs picked up over the eight years we’ve lived here together, but there are already key pieces missing—Greg, her polar bear toy, has given up his throne at the top of her bookshelf in swap for a duffel bag; most of her photo frames have been removed, presumably into the bottom of some box already half-packed; the fairy lights that went up one Christmas five or so years ago and never came back down have finally disappeared. If I didn’t know better I would have thought there had been a robbery. I wish there had been.
On the other side of the room Mark’s boxes already look closed and taped, ready for shipment. I bet he can’t wait to get out, the little troll.
“Where is Mark?”
“He’s gone to pick up the keys from the real estate agent.”
“Already? I thought you said Sunday!”
“Sunday’s tomorrow.”
“Exactly! Sunday’s tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry—we’ll still stay here tonight after the dinner. It’s going to take us all weekend to move everything over and we have to hand the keys back in at one.”
Partly due to my sleep deprivation, partly due to my terrible night, partly due to the unbelievably comforting smell of tea floating up my nostrils but mostly due to my breaking heart, I can feel the tears well up in full force.
“No—none of that now,” she tries, but it’s already too late. Floodgates are open. Waterworks are inevitable. Her usually worried face turns even more worried.
“Can’t you just live here for one more year? What’s one more year going to do in the scheme of things?”
“Not this again.”
“You’ll miss us! The two of you don’t know how to live without us. What if you move in together and find that you don’t have anything else in common? What if you’re bored and lonely and you miss us too much?”
I can’t stop the tears from falling now. Black mascara clumps from makeup I’d forgotten to wipe off last night begin spoiling my perfectly lovely cup of tea.
“Then I’ll come over and stay.”
“What if you break up?”
“We won’t break up.”
“But what if you do?”
“I thought I was the worrier? Not you!” She’s right. I hate when she’s right. “Then I’ll come and stay forever. Happy? Now tell me about this big bad wolf before my tea gets cold.”
10
I’d like to say that I’m a good listener, but I’ve nothing on Ellie. It’s one of her most fantastic qualities, but to date I haven’t seen a quality in her that wasn’t fabulous. She was born to be a psychotherapist, I swear, only she was a woman of far too many talents and she ended up in medical research instead. Every time I ask about her job I get lost, so I’ve stopped asking, but she’s a genius whether I can articulate it or not.
Her listening superpower is probably helped a little by the fact that her mother was my primary schoolteacher. As I outline my series of unfortunate errors from the night before I feel like I’m six years old again sitting cross-legged on the floor of Ms. Mathews’s classroom and crying because Tom Anderson scribbled on my pencil case. There’s a strange comforting feeling that wells over me as her sympathetic and somehow still not condescending eyes blink back at my increasingly outrageous monologue.
“Well, put him in the bin and move on. Plenty of others out there.”
“Are there?” I moan. Even I regret the whine in my voice but I can’t help it. It’s the younger, less-lavender-smelling Ms. Mathews before me and instinctively I’m acting like a toddler. “Because the way I see it I’m running out of options.”
“Oh come on. The perfect guy is just around the corner.”
“I don’t even know what the perfect man is anymore. Ten years ago I knew. I knew exactly what I was looking for then; someone who loved dogs, wanted kids, and looked like Ryan Reynolds. Now? Now I’ll take just about anyone who’ll have me.”
“Now that’s just not true.” Ellie’s laugh is annoyingly infectious.
“It is! I’m telling you! I’ve had a decade’s worth of rejection at this point and I’ve seriously reached a stage where I’m looking at a man across the table who has more hair on his face than face on his face and thanking my lucky stars that he said yes to meeting me in the first place. And still, somehow feeling like shit when the smelly hairy man doesn’t want a second date with me.”
“You wouldn’t want a second date with him anyway.”