‘Hey, what’s got into you? I’m just worried about you.’
She was uncharacteristically annoyed at him now. How dare he imply that Jade was not worthy? So she may be a bit crass, did everything with the volume turned up high and wore clothes that were a little cheap, but she had also been kind, welcoming and fun to hang out with last night. He didn’t know her, hadn’t even met her.
Maddie wanted to shock him, make him see she didn’t need him anymore. What would Jade say to him right now? ‘I think the days of you having the right to worry about me, tell me what to do, or have anything at all to do with me were over when you decided to shag your PA behind my back, don’t you?’
Then she hung up on him.
Her head was pounding again and she could barely breathe. She had never spoken to Greg like that before. If they had argued in the past, it had always been with voices barely raised above conversational, with Maddie offering an opinion and him telling her she was wrong or dismissing her outright. She felt at once rebellious and brave, then immediately foolish and immature. This was Greg, after all. He knew her better than she knew herself. She could picture his face now, the way he chewed on the inside of his lip when he was perturbed or rubbed at the back of his neck when he was uncomfortable.
She called him straight back and before he could speak, said, ‘I’m so sorry, it’s the hangover. I don’t know what came over me.’
But it was Gemma’s icy voice that replied. ‘He’s not here, Madeleine.’ She was the only person to call Maddie by her full name since her mother had died and it set Maddie’s teeth on edge every time.
‘Oh, I was talking to him two seconds ago.’
‘Jemima needed him. She wanted a cuddle from her daddy.’
‘Right.’ Maddie’s throat felt like it was closing up. ‘Ok, well, tell him I’m sorry.’
‘Sure,’ Gemma replied and hung up. Somehow Maddie knew she wouldn’t pass the message on.
Maddie sent Jade another Snapchat, telling her what she had said to Greg, but omitting that she had called him back to apologise. Jade replied with a ‘You go, girl!’ and a punching fist emoji, followed quickly by:
Remember the pact. I’ll kill yours if you kill mine.
Maddie giggled and replied with the laughing emoji and a thumbs up.
THEN
‘I really want to do this, Maddie. I want us to do it together. I think we’d make such a great team.’
My back is cold against the chair. Greg has left the kitchen door open and the draught is blowing through to where I’m sitting at the breakfast bar. This flat might be small and cheap, but it’s cold in the winter. But then Bristol winters can be so biting. This is our second winter at Bristol University together, where we share a student flat with two med students, Michael and Bryan. Greg and I share the biggest bedroom, Michael has the box room and Bryan has moved a bed into the lounge, meaning that Greg and I spend a lot of time sitting at the breakfast bar rather than being able to slob out on the couch, especially since Bryan parties hard and sleeps long. I have no idea how he will pass his course, but that’s his problem.
I pull my dressing gown tightly around me. ‘But a business degree? It sounds so… boring,’ I say.
‘Our own business, Mads! Think about it, how amazing it would be. No bosses; no rules. All our own. You and me together. I need someone with a good business head and you’re so smart, especially with figures and money and stuff. Look how well you keep us three in line with the budget for this place.’
‘There’s a big difference between running a company and working out whose turn it is to buy toilet rolls.’
All I’ve ever wanted to be is a political journalist after watching Kate Adie on the television, a bulletproof vest strapped to her chest as bombs went off behind her. Now Greg is trying to convince me to change my degree. He has an idea for a business and he wants us to do it together.
‘It’s your dream, Greg, not mine.’
‘It could be yours too. Come on, Mads, you want to do journalism, but it’s so competitive. You don’t know how long it’ll be before you get a firm job offer. At least with a business degree you’ll have something concrete, something real, and with my dad willing to invest in my idea, we can build something for our future together. You can still write in your spare time, like a hobby.’
‘And we could break up tomorrow. Then where will my supposed career be? How would that work with our joint business?’
‘Maddie, I love you. You’re not going anywhere; I’m not going anywhere. We’re in this together, you and me. For the long haul.’ He drops to his knee on the cold linoleum floor and grasps my hand in his. Despite my annoyance, my pulse bubbles as I realise what he’s doing. ‘I want us to be a partnership. I want you to be my wife. Will you marry me? After we graduate, I mean, and get the business going and stuff. Not right now.’ His words are tripping over themselves, but his eyes are alive and dancing. ‘I want us to have the world. The big house, loads of kids, posh cars in the driveway, the lot. What do you say?’
Not the most romantic of proposals, here in our draughty kitchen wearing dressing gowns and thick socks, but I feel like someone has opened a bottle of champagne in my stomach, all fizzing and popping and gurgling.
‘Yes, yes, I’ll marry you!’ I shriek and leap at him, knocking him backwards onto the floor. I kiss him hard, then pull back. ‘Wait a minute, loads of kids? How many are we talking? That could be a deal-breaker,’ I say.
‘Well, at least four surely? Two each,’ he says, grinning.
‘Hmm, ok then. Two each,’ I say and kiss him again, just as Bryan wanders in in his boxer shorts.
‘Take it elsewhere, you two. I’ve got a hangover,’ he says with a groan.
*
We did take it elsewhere and we did get married. I changed my degree and we started the business as equal partners after we graduated. Then, over the years, as my focus on the business waned when our marriage was hit with blow after blow, my shares slowly dwindled along with my independence, spirit and will to live.
5
Sunday. A day of rest. But that’s what she did yesterday.
Maddie wandered from room to room, then did another lap since the flat wasn’t very big. She opened the curtains to the garden and considered the little puddle of vomit still on the lawn. Grabbing a big bowl from the kitchen, she filled it with water and went outside to slosh the puke away.
It was the first time she’d been in the small, enclosed garden. She peered through the wooden fence, but couldn’t see much of her neighbour’s garden on the other side, but what she could see looked neat and brightly coloured. She still hadn’t met her neighbour. Perhaps she should go over there today.
Maddie’s little patch was completely in shade and she wrapped her arms around herself in the chill morning air. There was a square of grass, muddy and worn in places, and something that was trying to be a flowerbed along the fence on one side. A washing line ran from the back fence to the door, with a few broken pegs swinging forlornly from it. Spiderwebs glistened in the weak autumn sun, like tiny insect trampolines, and broken pots were stashed in one corner. Growing anything here would be a challenge. It was not, as Greg had put it, a ‘sun trap’.