‘Shit, are you okay?’ she asks.
‘No,’ I sigh. ‘That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Paul broke up with me last night,’ I admit, flinching at how it feels to say it out loud.
‘What?!’ Priya balks, all traces of amusement gone from her face. ‘Paul broke up with you?’
‘Yes,’ I croak, my voice tremulous as I fight the urge to cry.
‘Oh my God,’ Priya utters, her eyes wide with concern. She moves in to give me a hug.
‘Err, wash your hands!’ I tut.
‘Ha,’ Priya laughs. ‘Even in the depths of despair you’re still worried about hygiene.’
‘Of course,’ I reply as Priya rolls her eyes, squirting soap from the dispenser onto her palm before wringing her hands together under the gushing tap.
‘So, what happened?’ she asks. ‘I thought he was going to propose.’
‘Apparently not,’ I sigh.
Priya has been almost as excited about Paul’s proposal as I’ve been. Straight after I saw him outside the jewelry shop, I came back from the office and told her. Since then, we’ve both been gearing up to the big moment of Paul popping the question. Priya quite literally bought a hat. During her lunch break last week, she found a beautiful half-price wide-brimmed ocean blue hat in a boutique down the road and bought it to wear to the wedding. We both agreed it was a good investment. I can only hope that she kept the receipt.
I tell her the whole sorry story of last night, from how the restaurant wasn’t quite how it used to be to how it turned out that Paul didn’t even remember that we’d had our first date there. I recount him informing me he’d quit his job and explain that he’s now jetting off to India to find himself and hadn’t been buying a ring in Hatton Garden’s, but pawning one.
‘He pawned his mother’s ring?!’ Priya balks.
I nod weakly.
‘That’s awful. For a stupid self-discovery mission to India?’ Priya sneers.
‘You’re Indian!’ I remind her.
Priya may have grown up in north London, but her family hail from Delhi.
‘Yes,’ Priya rolls her eyes, ‘but that doesn’t mean I support people dumping my friends to gallivant around over there.’
I laugh, although I still feel a sinking sensation. ‘I don’t even think he’s even trying to be a horrible person though, that’s the thing. The things he was saying made it sound like our life together has been getting him down for a while. He hates my obsession with the house, he says he feels bored and trapped.’
‘Sorry, but I’m not having that,’ Priya scoffs, chucking her paper towel into a nearby bin. ‘You don’t just quit your job and disappear to India when you have a problem in a relationship. That’s not how adults behave.’
‘Unless you’re totally unbearably sick of your life,’ I counter.
Priya rolls her eyes. ‘No. He’s being a child,’ she insists and it’s a comfort to hear the anger and sense of injustice in her voice.
It makes me feel better. It makes me feel less like the boring insufferable noose around Paul’s neck that I’ve been feeling like ever since I left the restaurant.
‘I don’t exactly love what he’s doing, but it is what it is,’ I reason.
‘Really?!’ Priya frowns. ‘No. You need to sort this out,’ she insists.
‘What do you mean? I can’t. He’s a grown man. If he wants to hop on a plane to India, I can’t stop him.’
I eye my reflection despondently in the mirror.
‘Has he actually left already?’ Priya asks incredulously.
‘I don’t know. He didn’t come home last night. Some of his clothes were missing. He could have gone straight from the restaurant to the airport for all I know.’
‘He’s just left?’ Priya gawps.
‘Yep!’
‘You know I’ve always really liked Paul, but this is some next level bullshit.’ Priya shakes her head.
‘Yeah, it really is,’ I admit, taking a wand of concealer from my bag to top up the lashings underneath my eyes.
‘You shouldn’t tolerate this,’ Priya insists.
‘What can I do?’ I sigh, dabbing the wand onto my eyebags, while meeting her pointed gaze with less enthusiasm.
‘He’s really taken the wind out of your sails,’ Priya observes.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
Priya gestures at my reflection. ‘This is not the Rachel I know. The Rachel I know doesn’t slump her shoulders like that. She doesn’t look despondent and defeated. She has a smile on her face. She’s confident. She’s a go-getter and she doesn’t take shit.’
I laugh weakly. ‘That Rachel didn’t just get dumped!’ I point out. ‘Like I said, I can’t force Paul to be with me if that’s not what he wants.’
Priya shakes her head. ‘No. He’s clearly having some kind of quarter-life crisis. This isn’t Paul. You need save the relationship and save him. It sounds like he’s having a breakdown,’ Priya observes.
‘How can I save him when he’s jetting off to the other side of the world? He’s out of my hands,’ I remind her, turning to face her.
‘Okay, look…’ Priya leans back against the sink, a pensive expression on her face. ‘The guy clearly needs a holiday, that’s understandable. Work’s obviously got too much for him. Happens to the best of us. But I really don’t think you should let your relationship go without a fight. You guys have been together for ages, that means something. One stupid argument in a restaurant shouldn’t spell the end of all that.’
‘One stupid argument and a getaway mission to India!’ I add fretfully.
‘Okay.’ Priya meets my anxious gaze. ‘Let him have his break in India. Give him a few weeks to unwind, relax, get some headspace or whatever it is he needs to do and then go and make up with him, talk to him, and get your lives back on track. You’re not the kind of person who lets life just wash over you, Rachel. You’re not just a piece of flotsam that gets swept up in the stream and chucked about. You’re the kind of person who has a Life List, for crying out loud,’ Priya reminds me.
We had a drunken heart to heart in the pub one night back when we first started at the firm and I told Priya about my Life List. She wasn’t particularly fazed. She’s just as ambitious. She’s a strong believer that you forge your own destiny. Like me, Priya comes from a modest background and worked hard to get to where she is. But unlike me, she’s the kind of person who wakes up at the crack of dawn every day, blitzes a protein-filled smoothie and listens to motivational podcasts while pounding the treadmill at the gym. When she broke up with her cheating ex-boyfriend, instead of wallowing in self-pity, watching movies and scoffing ice-cream like the rest of us, Priya stayed in hermit-like all weekend and emerged with an action plan. It was a detailed military-style dating strategy with clearly outlined objectives (namely, find a guy worth marrying) and key performance indicators (number of high-quality matches, dates per month, etc.). Within six months of actioning her plan, Priya had a new boyfriend, and within a couple of years, they were married. His name’s Rene and she’s totally smitten. Priya’s methods may be unusual, and they’re certainly not the stuff of Shakespearean romances, but they’ve worked for her.