Page 51 of The Man Who Didn't Call
I hovered, halfway out of my stool.
‘I’m not very good at this,’ Jo said. Her face was the colour of house bricks. ‘Shouldn’t be left to my own devices. If you go, I’ll only end up saying more stupid things.’
I sat back down, sending Tommy an apologetic smile, but he was deep in thought, his eyebrows engaged in something that far exceeded my powers of interpretation. I looked away. Ran my gaze across Zoe’s collection of cookbooks aimed at uptight women. At the picture of her and Tommy working out together in Kensington Gardens, back at the beginning of their relationship, when she couldn’t keep her hands off him.
At the end of Zoe’s road, a night bus whined up Holland Park Road. I wondered who this new man was. Where he lived. Zoe seemed impossibly wealthy to a pauper like me, but this man would blow her and her two-bedroomed flat in Holland Park out of the water. He’d be eye-wateringly rich and well connected. And – above all – right for Zoe. Right in a way Tommy never could have been, no matter how many times she forced him up the career ladder.
Eventually Tommy took a deep breath. He turned to Jo. ‘Look,’ he said quietly. ‘I do love you. I do love you, Jo. I just imagined telling you in . . . well, other circumstances.’
Jo, who I suspected had stopped breathing, said nothing. Tommy traced a finger along the edge of Zoe’s kitchen island. ‘You’re the only person I’ve never felt self-conscious with,’ he said. ‘The only person I can talk to about anything, always. I miss you when you leave a room. Even though you call me a “privileged arsehole” too often. Even though you’re the kind of infuriating woman who makes me say these things in front of Sarah.’
Jo allowed a trace of a smile, but she still couldn’t quite look at him.
‘I thought I was happy,’ Tommy went on, ‘when I first moved in here. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t happy at all, and I haven’t been for years. Even as recently as a month ago, I was able to convince myself that this’ – he looked around Zoe’s immaculate kitchen – ‘this was what I wanted. It’s not. What I want is to be me. In my own skin, laughing, real. I laugh until I cry with you, several times a week. I’ve never done that with Zoe.’
Jo remained silent.
‘I mean, look at my career. It was never enough for her that I was a personal trainer. I’m quite certain she only subsidized my business because she wanted to tell people her partner ran a sports consultancy.’
Jo picked at her coat, until Tommy leaned over and stopped her.
‘Listen to me.’
‘Listening,’ Jo said gruffly.
After a moment Tommy laughed. ‘I can’t believe we’re having this conversation with Harrington in the room. This is . . . No offence, Harrington, but this is awful.’
‘No offence taken. And for what it’s worth, I think it’s lovely. If not a bit strange.’
Jo hadn’t yet relaxed. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘It’s scary for me. I’ve . . . I’ve got more to lose than you.’
Tommy picked up one of her hands. ‘No, you haven’t.I . . . Oh, for God’s sake, will youlookat me, you madwoman?’
Reluctantly, she looked.
‘I’mhere, Jo. In this. With you.’
The adrenaline had wound down. Suddenly I was sitting in a room with my two oldest friends who were telling each other they were in love with each other, and suddenly it made perfect sense. I thought back to those months we all had together in California and wondered why I’d never thought about it before. Those two spent hours together, they went on trips, they surfed, they mixed hideous cocktails in Tommy’s parents’ garage. Perhaps I hadn’t seen it because I’d been too deeply buried by grief and guilt. Or perhaps it was simply because I couldn’t think of a less likely match than these two people. But love didn’t work like that, as I’d come to realize. Here they were, sneaking around: clumsy, helpless, vulnerable. In love and unable to do anything other than be together, in spite of the risks.
‘Well,’ I said slowly. I smiled, and my smile turned into a yawn. ‘This is going to take a while. But I’m happy.’
Jo stared down at Tommy’s hand, folded tightly around her own. ‘That’s what I want, too,’ she said. ‘To be happy. That’s all I care about these days.’
My heart cramped. Jo never spoke like this.
I wasn’t anywhere near warm enough, sitting in just my running shorts and vest, but in that second I wanted this moment to go on and on. I loved these two people. Loved that they loved each other in ways I’d never know. Loved that they’d been so desperate to see each other they’d smuggled Jo in here after I’d gone to bed.
‘I’m going to have to go and finish my packing,’ I said. ‘I wish I could stay.’
‘OK.’ Tommy yawned as I pushed back my stool. ‘Although . . . Sarah. I have to ask. Do we need to worry about you?’
‘I . . .’ My voice trailed off. ‘I have kind of scared myself a bit lately.’
‘Us too,’ Jo said. ‘You’ve been pretty weird, babe.’
‘I assume you know about the football?’
She nodded.
