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“Jo is amazing. She’s got an incredible sense of humour, and she’s kind, and she’s smart and she’s… her. She’s one of the most confident people I’ve ever met, but the most humble along with it. She’s just…” I struggle for words. “She’s Jo.”
“I love how you use present tense,” Cass says, and I nod.
“I’m sure Jo is still amazing. She may have left me, but that doesn’t change who she was or who she is. I’m glad she found happiness with someone, I’m just sad that someone wasn’t me.”
Cass’s eyes are so piercing. “Do you think you’ll ever get over her?”
With anyone else I’d shrug off the question and say I hope so, but I don’t. I go for the truth.
“I’m really not sure.”
She gives me a smile of empathy, so authentic it chokes me up. I have to take another swig of wine to stop the tears coming.
I wait until I know my voice will be steady before I speak again.
“I still miss her. Every day.”
Cass’s smile is still so full of empathy, her slice of pizza forgotten.
“I missed Jack every day too. Before I met Ant.”
I shrug. “Maybe that’s the key, hey? Maybe I’ll move on when I’m not expecting it?”
“I hope so.”
“Yeah, so do I.”
For so long now I’ve brushed aside questions people ask me about Jo. It feels odd as I pick up my phone from the coffee table and call up the gallery app.
“Want to see a picture of her?”
Cass gives me a nod, so I select one of my favourite photos and hand it over.
I see the surprise on her face, and I smile. That’s always the reaction it gets from people, though I never quite know why.
“Not what you were expecting?” I ask, and she shrugs.
“I dunno, I just…”
“Just what?”
She’s still looking at the picture, and she’s smiling.
“She looks really, really nice. Just a bit older than I thought and more, I dunno. Casual.”
“Yeah, Jo’s five years older than me. She’ll be thirty-five this summer.”
I know the photo by heart. Jo in her loose sweatshirt over jeans, holding my waist as she stares up at me like I’m her everything. I’m dressed in my trademark chinos and chequered shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and it’s quite a contrast. Her glasses look particularly cute and nerdy in that one, and the short bob of her hair looks darker brown, since its winter in the picture, not summer. I look skinnier and a lot younger, smiling back at her like she’s my heaven on earth. Because she was. Always.
Jo didn’t like the picture herself all that much. She said it made her look fat and frumpy, but I used to shake my head every time she said it, because it was bullshit. She could call herself fat and frumpy all she wanted, and she could be fat and frumpy all she wanted to. Jo looks like a goddess on earth, even if she never realises it. She’s always looked like a goddess to me.
“What?” I say when I notice Cass staring at me.
“You really did love her, didn’t you? And she loved you.”
“Yeah. I thought we’d be married by now.”
“What went wrong?”
I could talk all night about the details. I’ve pondered over the how, when and whys so much since we’ve split that I could write a whole novel of speculations, but I try to condense it as much as possible.
“I got the job for Nevilles because we were trying to save up for a deposit on a house together. The hours were long and I was flying overseas a lot. I was tired in the evenings, and still trying to keep up with campaigning, and we grew distant. She got an evening job at a pharmacy alongside her day job, because she said she may as well, since the sooner we got the money for the deposit the better, and we weren’t spending all that much time together anyway.”
I take a breath.
“We were working on it, or trying to, but it was hard. She was tired, I was tired. We didn’t talk like we used to.”
Cass nods, silently urging me to continue.
“I was going to suggest we both switch our jobs to something easier, fuck the deposit, but I was too late on that. She’d met someone. One of the regular clients at the pharmacy. He was a friend of one of her friends.”
“Shit,” Cass says, with enough empathy on her face that I have to push the damn tears away, because fuck it. I’ve cried way too much over it already. Enough for three lifetimes at least.
I know the question that always comes next, so I address it before she says it.
“Jo didn’t cheat on me. When she told me that she had feelings for Martin she was sobbing as hard as I was. It was absolutely fucking awful for both of us.” I take another breath. “Ant can say she was cheating on me and give his the moment she looked at him and realised she had feelings, she was cheating speech all he likes, but it wasn’t like that. It’s never that simple. Jo didn’t look over the counter one day and realise she was in love with another man. It crept up slowly. She says she admitted it to me as soon as she could face admitting it to herself. That’s not cheating. That’s respect.”
