‘And what makes you think I haven’t hooked up myself?’
He shrugs. ‘I just don’t think you’d be into any of these doughnuts. Not your type.’
‘And what is my type? Wait, don’t tell me. You are.’ He blushes, but I don’t give him any sympathy. ‘You’re right, though. They aren’t my type because I don’t have one – because I’m not interested. I’ve got exams coming up and then university and I’m not interested in hook-ups.’
‘What universities are you looking at?’
*
And that’s how I met Greg. We talked all night, mostly sitting in a cramped hallway in a terraced house while drunk teenagers stepped over our legs.
We were 18. And by the end of that night, I was drunk on him.
4
Maddie woke up the next morning to a mallet hammering at her skull and only fleeting memories of how she got down the stairs and back into her flat. Jade had helped her of sorts, but there was much ricocheting off the walls and stumbling on the stairs while Jade cackled with laughter. Maddie had a vague recollection of handing Jade her keys to open the front door, but the next thing she knew, the sun was streaming through the open curtains of her bedroom and she was slumped face-down on her bed, still wearing her top and cardigan, her neck twisted at an unnatural angle. She’d managed to shed her jeans somehow. They lay abandoned in the bedroom doorway alongside one shoe, like the aftermath of a nasty road accident.
She felt dreadful.
Dribble had dried on her chin and her tongue was painted to the top of her mouth. How much wine did they drink in the end? Three bottles? Considering that Maddie was a two-glass limit kind of girl these days, no wonder she felt like something had crawled into her mouth and died. She peeled herself from the bed and carried her thumping head in her hands as she staggered into the bathroom and sat on the toilet, feeling ashamed of her overindulgence.
Then a new memory came to her in technicolour. Jade suggesting fresh air and opening the door to her little balcony. Maddie holding onto the drying rack as she leant over and threw up over the railing.
Maddie’s garden was directly below Jade’s balcony. She had to stop thinking about it. It was hurting her head too much.
She sat longer than was necessary, breathing deeply, swaying a little and considering whether she was going to be sick again or not, before slowly making her way to the kitchen to pour herself a large glass of water. On her way back to bed, she drank in small sips before crawling under the covers and burying her face.
*
Greg cradled his daughter in his lap while she chatted away to her favourite teddy in a language only she understood. Her blonde curls tickled his chin, but he didn’t notice. She pushed up onto her feet unsteadily for a moment, using Greg’s shoulders as leverage, then plonked back down again. It wouldn’t be long before she was walking. He couldn’t wait to be able to hold her hand as she walked next to him. Daddy’s little girl.
He pulled her to him and squeezed her tight, thinking about Maddie. She wriggled against him and he released her.
He was worried about Maddie. He still felt terrible that he had ultimately evicted her from her home, but Gemma had insisted it was the right move. It did make sense – this was a big house and Gemma was talking about having more children. Meanwhile, Maddie was now on her own and didn’t need very much. The thought made him feel wretched with guilt.
For the last near-on two decades, Maddie’s sole focus had been having a family with him, to the point where everything else had come second, including him and the business they’d set up together. It was desperately sad that she had invested so much into what had turned out to be a fruitless endeavour. If it had been a business deal, he would’ve advised cutting their losses years ago, but she had always been so single-minded about it.
But the guilt was still there and the self-recriminations. He knew she was hurting and much of it was down to him. So making sure she remained a part of his life – and Jemima’s – was important to him, not least to alleviate his own guilty conscience.
Besides, she had been his best friend for so long. He still found himself thinking of things he wanted to tell her, sharing jokes he knew she would laugh at, buying her quirky things she would like.
And then there was Gemma, who was proving difficult to navigate. He knew she wanted Maddie as far away as possible. He had told her numerous times that Maddie was not a threat, that his feelings for her were based more on their history than on any possible future, but she still felt threatened. Part of it was because of how brilliant Maddie was with Jemima. She was a natural mother with every child she met. Gemma had to work hard and it looked like work most of the time. He would never admit this to anyone, but he sometimes wondered if Gemma actually even liked Jemima. She spent more time taking her to classes and crèches than cuddling and playing with her. But then he made up for it with silly games and story-time every day. If he could give up work and be Jemima’s full-time parent, he would, but then he wouldn’t be able to afford to keep Gemma in the lifestyle to which she was accustomed. That beauty cost money to maintain – and he was happy to spend it because a happy Gemma was a happy house.
Maddie was a lot lower maintenance in the beauty stakes, but much harder to please emotionally. Gemma’s tastes may be material, but they were easy needs to meet. Maddie wanted something he couldn’t provide – and for a man who liked to fix problems, that became untenable. If only he could combine the best of both women into one, he would be a happy man.
Late last night Maddie had called him. He had been downstairs loading the dishwasher and catching up on Question Time when his mobile rang. She hadn’t said very much and what she did say he struggled to understand because she was laughing and sounded absolutely hammered. This was unusual in itself. She wasn’t much of a drinker. There had been someone else with her – a woman with a throaty cackle of a laugh, who was swearing like a football hooligan in the background.
He had to admit, he had felt a little jealous. He hadn’t heard Maddie laugh like that in years.
He’d tried to talk to her, but she’d gabbled at him and hung up. He’d been about to call her back but the baby monitor had burst into life as Jemima started to grizzle and he’d rushed upstairs to settle her before she woke Gemma.
But he thought about it now as he sat in his daughter’s impossibly pink bedroom, with the smell of nappy cream in his nostrils, tinged with sour milk from where she had thrown up on him a few minutes ago when she drank too quickly from her bottle. He finally had what Maddie had always yearned for, but it was with someone else. And all he wanted was for Maddie to find a happiness of her own, to move on from the sadness that had engulfed her all these years, but at the first sign of her doing just that, he found he was jealous.
It used to be him that made her laugh like that.
But he also knew Maddie inside and out. The woman he’d heard in the background with the filthy mouth and smoker’s cackle didn’t seem the kind of person Maddie would befriend for long. She was a bleeding heart for anyone with a sob story, but she was also very practical.
Jemima shoved her teddy in his face, interrupting his thoughts, and he laughed and tickled her. She really was his entire world. Gemma could be as difficult and high-maintenance as she wanted to be if it meant he had a few more of these little creatures running around the house.