I was in a bad mood again by the time I was finished cleaning. I made a quick dinner – tomato soup with cheese on toast to dip – plenty of Worcester sauce on there too. I turned the TV on and put a well-worn sitcom on as background noise. Once I was done with dinner, I washed up and returned to my crochet with another hot chocolate. I was determined to finish the hand warmers before I went to sleep. At least there was one thing I was in control of.
As I finished up the final stitches and sewed in the ends, I couldn’t deny it any more. I knew who I’d made the hand warmers for. I wasn’t just working away at them because I was too stressed and unhappy to try and sleep. I wanted them finished because Cooper’s clothes – clean, dried and folded – were in a bag for life in a corner of the spare room. They’d been there for a few days now and I hadn’t had the courage to take them back to him. Part of me was worried that seeing him again might lead to more flirting. Part of me was worried that it wouldn’t.
Today I’d had the push I needed to make the trip back up the towpath. There was no point in continuing to wallow or keep myself in stasis, worrying about what would come next. I was going to sort out my housing situation, separate my life from Richard and move on. I had a list of tasks ahead of me, cleaning the flat was just the start. I’d return Cooper’s clothes next – along with the thank-you present I’d made – and then ‘the jumper incident’ would be firmly behind me.
Firm in my convictions, I set the new hand warmers aside and laid down to sleep. Tomorrow was a new start, a new Tabitha. One Sunday that would fix everything by the time it was over. The next time I woke up it would be on a sunny morning, ripe with potential.
I woke, bleary and confused, to hammering on the front door and the persistent chime of the doorbell. My phone told me I’d only been asleep for an hour or so. With a groan, I tripped out of bed and rushed to the door, worried the neighbours were going to be disturbed. I barely glanced through the peephole – I knew already what I’d see. I took the chain off and let him in.
‘What are you doing here?’ I hissed at Richard as he staggered past me into the flat. He was dressed for his weekend golf session in a polo shirt and navy golf trousers. His shirt was untucked though, which wasn’t normal, and his dark hair was falling out of its carefully swept-back gel style. As I flicked on the harsh overhead lights, he recoiled slightly and I saw that there was a stain on the front of his pale pink shirt. He smelled of gin and beer. I wrinkled my nose.
‘Tabs,’ Richard tried to wrap me up in a beery hug but I took a step back. He wilted slightly. ‘I wanted to see you.’
‘You’re drunk,’ I pointed out, redundantly. ‘Go home.’
‘I am home,’ he whined. ‘Come oooon, I’ve been in that bloody Travelodge for ages. I want to come home.’
Travelodge. I’d thought he’d have gone to stay with his ‘lady friend’ or one of his golf buddies. Apparently not. The nearest Travelodge was outside town, near the train station, on the industrial estate beside a Currys and a Carpet Warehouse. At least a thirty-minute drive. Even in this state he hadn’t been stupid enough to try to drive it. He must have walked here from the pub up the canal.
I weighed my options and sighed. I couldn’t just push him out on the street. What if he did decide to try to drive and hit someone? Or fell in the canal as he tried to walk back to his hotel?
‘Just… go to bed, all right?’ I said, relocking the front door and shooing him towards the hallway. He went, stumbling out of his shoes and leaving them in the middle of the room. I rolled my eyes and kicked them to the side, near the coffee table. The last thing I wanted was to trip over them in the morning.
‘Taaaaaaaabs?’
‘Yes?’ I sighed.
‘… thank you.’
He sounded so pathetic that it killed my anger stone-dead. I sighed and felt my shoulders droop as I turned off the light in the kitchen.
‘You’re welcome…’ I rubbed my face and padded back towards the guest room. ‘The sick bowl’s under the bed. Good night.’
Chapter 15
The next morning, Iwoke up and had a brief moment of peace before I remembered Richard had turned up in the small hours. I lay very still under the fluffy, down-filled duvet (one I’d used as a kid staying in Aunt Lou’s guest room) and listened hard. No sounds of movement in the flat. Perhaps he’d woken up, hungover and ashamed, and had let himself out?
I heard a clang from the kitchen and sighed. Yeah, that had probably been too much to hope for.
I got up and wrapped myself in my dressing gown before making my way to the kitchen. My new Greens Steel tumbler was on the floor, surrounded by a puddle of protein shake. Richard, in his rumpled golf clothes, was scooping powder into a second insulated tumbler – also mine – and adding water from the filter jug.
‘Morning,’ I said flatly.
‘… morning,’ Richard grunted. He dropped a shaker ball into the tumbler and closed the lid, mixing up the protein drink and following my gaze to the mess on the floor. ‘Slipped out of my hand. I’ll mop it up.’
I didn’t say anything. He didn’t deserve a little pat on the back for cleaning up his own mess. Instead I sidestepped the puddle and made myself some breakfast – toasted potato scones with pan-scrambled eggs. I made it quickly and took my plate to the lounge to eat, away from the kitchen where Richard was leaning against the counter.
‘Any plans for today?’ he asked, after drinking his shake in silence for a while.
‘Probably going to do some errands,’ I said, scrolling my phone as a distraction.
‘Yeah, I thought the fridge was looking a bit empty,’ he said.
I hummed in agreement but didn’t offer anything else. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Richard carefully refill the filter jug and put it back in the fridge. Something I’d literally never seen him do before. Usually he left the empty jug out, or worse, put it back so I didn’t realise it needed filling up again. It was like watching a dog pick its own mess up in a bag and drop it in the bin. Slightly uncanny.
Interesting that he magically knew how to do these things now. This was the man that Mum thought was my ‘future’? Maybe I’d created this mess by making out he was perfect for the last three years, to win her approval. God, that was depressing.
I finished my breakfast and left to get washed and dressed while Richard was cleaning up the spilled shake. Something else that wasn’t usually his move. Sometimes he’d lay paper towels over a spillage but that was as far as it went.
