Page 39 of The Last to Know
Ash furrows her brow. ‘Of course I have!’ she says. ‘Nobody would expect you to stay if you didn’t want to.’
‘No, I know,’ Willow counters. ‘But you did say I owed it to my marriage to try.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh,’ says Ash. Her hearts sinks. ‘Well. That was a dick-ish thing to say. Having an opinion at all is dick-ish, to be fair. It isn’t my life, isn’t my relationship. I’m sorry, Willow. Have you been clinging on to that? Has it been holding you back?’
‘No,’ says Willow, but Ash doesn’t believe her. God, what a thing to have let pass her lips, the suggestion of what Willow ‘should’ do. She’s so mad at her past self, even if she doesn’t explicitly remember when it happened.
‘If it has,’ Ash presses, ‘then that can’t have been a very nice feeling. I had no business making you feel guilt, or anything like it. I can only assume that it came from a place of like, you’ve been married for so long and have always seemed so happy, and people make mistakes.’
‘I think you meant it from a place of: don’t throw ahusband away when some people don’t have husbands at all …’ Willow replies. ‘Now we’re dissecting it.’
Ash closes her eyes. ‘Fuck,’ she says. ‘Willow.’
‘I need you to tell me I don’t have to stay,’ Willow says, voice wobbling. ‘I don’t trust anybody else. Not him, not my mother. It’s you I listen to.’
‘Do you trust yourself?’ Ash asks, kindly. ‘I’d start there.’
‘Urgh,’ Willow grunts. ‘I thought the happily-ever-after was the ending, you know? Nobody tells you about all the shit it takes to keep your head above water after that. A wedding day is only the start.’
Ash looks at the small clock by her bed. She’s going to have to take this call on the go. She puts her room key in her bag and heads out.
‘Why don’t you fly out here for a bit?’ Ash asks. ‘Getting away has worked wonders for me. You can bunk up with me, or we could have a few days up in Porto, maybe. Did you know that’s where port comes from? I only just found that out, at a dinner the other night.’ She doesn’t add that dinner was with CJ at the restaurant, but she thinks it. ‘It’s supposed to be beautiful.’
Willow exhales deeply. Ash traverses the corner into the CoLab co-working space, immediately spots CJ and Luis by the reception desk, heads bowed over something in front of them worth discussion. They look up as she passes, and Ash points to her ears and mouthson the phone.CJ nods, raises a hand with a thumbs up as she mouths backOK.
Ash points to the exit.I’m late, she mouths, and CJ wafts her hands in front of her in a shooing motion, encouragingAsh out of the door with a smile and a wrinkle of her nose. Ash smiles, does a funny walk to indicateOK, OK, I’m going!Ash’s eyes flicker to Luis. He gives her a grin, his typical Luis grin, and then he winks. Ash could choose to be annoyed by that, but remembers he has, in fact, been forgiven, decides to wear it lightly. She shakes her head, making it as clear as she can that truly she will no longer be seduced by him.
‘Would that work?’ Willow is saying. ‘Ash?’
‘Hey, sorry, just run that by me again?’ She dashes down the last flight of stairs to the front door and steps out into the brightness of the day. ‘I was just leaving CoLab and it was a bit noisy.’
‘I think I will come,’ Willow says. ‘Fuck it, right? What have I built all this for if not to take a holiday with my bestie when I’m in crisis?’
‘Oh!’ says Ash, genuinely delighted. ‘Yes! Great! Oh that’s so fun. Obviously I am wide open and free. Aside from this ice cream date I have in seven minutes, I have zero plans from now until July.’
‘Date?’ repeats Willow. ‘Not with Disappointing Luis? Don’t tell me you’ve given Disappointing Luis another chance.’
‘Nooooo,’ says Ash. ‘Although I did kiss him last night. But like, more to wind him up?’
‘What?! Who are you and what have you done with my friend? The Ash I know doesn’t kiss people to wind them up. She takes kissing seriously. I won’t saytooseriously, but …’
‘Yeah, yeah. Maybe that’s been my problem,’ Ash says. Then she adds, ‘I was just being stupid. I did this thing, withCJ, where I gave her all my fucks and then I was just trying to make her laugh by doing something outrageous.’
‘CJ?’ says Willow. ‘So that’s a thing, now? You’re …’
‘Friends, yeah,’ says Ash. ‘It’s cool, being around somebody so different to me. She challenges me. I guess out here I’m in the headspace where that feels like an invitation to growth rather than some sort of attack on my personality. For some reason, I like to listen to what she has to say when she calls me crazy and suggests all these ways I can breathe a bit deeper.’
‘As long as she’s being nice,’ Willow says. ‘Not gaslighting you somehow, framing it as a favour.’
‘No, no, no,’ Ash insists. ‘She’s good people. We’ve got to the soft gooey centre beyond the prickly outer shell.’ Mona is waiting outside their meeting place, and on spotting Ash gives a cheery wave. Ash points at her phone and holds up a finger.One minute.‘Listen, babe, I’ve gotta go. Is that OK? Are you OK?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Willow says. ‘I know it’s boring to listen to me go on about it all, after all this time—’
‘Incorrect,’ interrupts Ash. ‘It is not boring at all.’
