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Nick loved working in the garden. It may as well rot now.
I knock back the last dregs of tepid coffee, then fire up my laptop. I need to catch up with all the latest news on social media and sort out my work emails. The last thing I want to do is lose my job.
“Take a few weeks off, Audrey,” Raymond, my boss, had said when I called him the day after Nick broke off our engagement. “We’re all thinking of you.”
I love working at Blue Media. I get to meet lots of new people and my colleagues, bar Callum, are a good, friendly bunch. Nick got me the job there two years ago. He was doing a photo shoot for them for a well-known fashion label when an admin job came up. I’d just been made redundant from Blackshore Finance and was desperate for work. Nick put my name forward and Raymond offered me the position on the spot, and, after a short spell in admin, I was promoted to text editor. I now help Fearne, one of the webmasters, with her new clients. Raymond suggested sending me on a web design course recently, and although I was fleetingly tempted I was too busy organising my wedding to give it any serious thought, but now…
My stomach furls at the sight of my profile picture on Facebook. It’s of me and Nick on the night of our engagement, cheesy, I know, but I just couldn’t help myself. We’re smiling into the camera lens, cheeks pressed together, glass of champagne in hand. “Oh, Nick,” I hear myself say, touching his image on the screen with my fingertips, “what on earth happened to us?”
I regain my composure and start typing quickly, there’s no time for tears. There’s work to be done. The sooner I get back to some kind of normality, the better. I change my relationship status to single, upload a new photo of myself, which Maria took of me on the beach in Cyprus, then type a quick message saying I’m back. I scroll through my timeline. Raymond’s status was updated a few minutes ago. A short post about how busy they are, followed by an update on www.weloveflowers.com, a new online florist we’d recently published. Raymond’s posts are mostly work related and he always encourages us to do the same.
“Social networking sites are useful marketing tools,” he’d said, a few weeks ago during one of our meetings, “let’s use them to our advantage.”
Raymond’s a self-made thirty-eight-year-old entrepreneur. He set up Blue Media from his spare bedroom five years ago employs four full-time staff members, which includes me, Fearne, Callum, and Stacey, our personal assistant who steps in when I’m away and does my job too. We also use freelance photographers and illustrators, one being Nick. We’re like one big happy family working from his prestigious office in the heart of London. The boy’s done good.
I bite my nail thoughtfully, a bad habit, I know, but Mum’s not here to slap my hand away. I’m supposed to be off work until next Monday, but what’s the point in moping around here all day in my dressing gown feeling sorry for myself? I need routine, distraction. Getting to my feet, I glance at my watch. Stacey should be back from lunch by now. I’m sure they’ll be glad of an extra pair of hands, especially as they’re rushed off their feet. As I reach for the phone it rings alarmingly in my hand. It’s Louise.
“Wow, you’re eager,” she says brightly, and I get the feeling that she thought I was sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring. “Welcome home. How was your flight?”
She howls with laughter when I complain about the snorer, and tuts sympathetically when I tell her about the little girl who kept washing her hands, how she tugged at my heartstrings, reminded me of George when he had OCD. It isn’t long before the subject of Nick slides into our conversation.
“I kept having all these dreams,” I explain, “I was even convinced I saw him outside a restaurant in Ayia Napa last Saturday. Can you believe that? And then I bloody well fainted. They had to carry me out and bundle me into the car in a semiconscious haze. It was so embarrassing. My parents even called a doctor in.”
“Oh God,” Louise groans. “Dreaming about him is one thing, but if you’ve started hallucinating, well, that’s just not right.” I hear her breathe heavily down the phone. I can just picture her, hand on hip, thin, blonde eyebrows gathered worryingly. “Are you sure it wasn’t just someone who looked like him? I mean, he has got that kind of face, hasn’t he?”
“What, a one-face-fits-all?” I ask, a hint of sarcasm in my tone.
Louise never misses an opportunity to put Nick down.
“Oh, you know what I mean,” she whines. “I’m only trying to help.”
I feel a pang of remorse. She’s right. I shouldn’t be taking out my frustrations on her. I apologise immediately. “I don’t know what’s happening to me, Lou.” I hold my aching head in my hand, “Sometimes, when I close my eyes I can even smell him, as if he’s still here, lying next to me in bed.” A shiver tingles through me as the image of him kneeling by my bed in Cyprus flashes in my mind. “Am I going mad?” I ask, half-joking, half-meaning it. “Perhaps I should go and see my GP.”
“You’ve been mad for years, love.”
“Oh shut up, you,” I say, and we both giggle. I’ve missed my lovely friends. I ask her about her pregnancy and she explains how she weed on six sticks while Gerry sat outside the toilet door, how they can’t believe their luck, can’t wait to be parents.
“Honestly, Aud, after all the disappointments we’ve had, and then all that stress over the adoption.” Gerry wasn’t keen on adopting and I know that they were having some heated debates over it. “We just can’t believe it,” she squeals. I can almost feel her excitement travelling down the phone. “Sometimes I just have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming.”
Despite my sadness, a warm smile spreads across my face. If anyone deserves a break, it’s Louise. Life hasn’t always been easy for her. Her first partner walked out on her the moment he found out she was carrying Jess. She lost all hope in men after that. A devoted mother and chef in the making, Louise rarely had time for relationships. Until Nick introduced her to his accountant Gerry, that is. Then everything seemed to change overnight. From Michelin craving career woman she turned into a domestic goddess, her sole objective to have a family with Gerry.
“Gerry must be a happy bunny,” I smile down the phone to the clank of car doors followed swiftly by the rumble of an engine.
“Errr…yeeeesss…he is, err,” she murmurs, sounding a little distracted, “but he’s…erm…Will you be back before six?”
“Six?” I ask, glancing out of the window as Alan from upstairs zooms off in his old silver Mercedes SL, leaving a trail of fumes behind him.
“Oh, just a moment, Audrey.” There’s a kerfuffle of hissing, mumbling, keys jangling and then the slam of the front door. “Sorry about that, you were saying?”
“Was that Jess?”
“No, no, Francesca’s staying with us for a while.” She sniffles quickly, “Another business trip.”
“Oh no, not Francesca.” I grumble. Francesca is Gerry’s twin sister. She lives in France with her rich, successful husband Jean-Pierre.
“I know,” Louise drones. “But what can you do? She’s family.”
“I hope you’re not putting up her entire brood again.” Francesca has three children by three different men. I had the pleasure of meeting her youngest son Marcel, a charming little boy of five going on twenty, when Gerry and Louise had him over last summer while Francesca and Jean-Pierre went on a Mediterranean cruise. She packed the other two off to their respective fathers.
