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She sighs. ‘Just think of what I said. Don’t deprive yourself of a good man, Emily.’
Argh. ‘Goodbye, Audrey,’ I growl.
‘So, the mother-in-law is taking it harder than the fiancé, huh?’ Jago says at my back.
‘When are you going to stop sneaking up on me like that?’ I cry as I jump.
‘Sorry, the door was open. And so are all the windows. No wonder it’s so frigging cold in here. So, what’s up with the monster-in-law?’
‘What do you care? All you want is to get me out of here.’
‘That’s not true. I don’t like to see you unhappy. C’mon, talk to me. We can still be civil with each other, right?’
I huff, then eye him. Can we? ‘OK, then. What if your girlfriend told you she wanted some time off? Would you respect that?’
He grins. ‘I don’t have a specific girlfriend.’
‘Play myWhat Ifgame.’
He purses his lips. ‘Of course I’d respect it. But if I got the inkling that I was losing her, I’d certainly make sure she knew how much I loved her. What’s the matter? Still confused, are you?’
‘About?’
‘About what you want. I can see it in your eyes that you’re completely lost.’
‘I’m not lost, Jago.’
‘Sure y’are. How long are you going to keep denying it? You don’t know what to do. You don’t know if you should go back to him or stay here with us. Funny how he’s nowhere to be seen. If you were mine and I was losing you, I’d make damn sure you didn’t love me anymore before I let someone like you go.’
Someone like you…I wonder what he means exactly. Certainly, it’s a compliment, but I can’t help but wonder whether or not he means anything more by it. Because it comes as a surprise that he thinks someone like me worth keeping. ‘If you were mine,’ he’d said…
I close my eyes, imagining what it would be like if we were an item. Would we bicker as we do now, or would the certainty of an attachment mellow us both? Because, if I was as bitter as a spinster but with a fiancé, he was the portrait of a relationship gone derelict.
Would love make him happier, or would he still be his old cynical self? I’ve seen the way Grandmother treats him and he seemed so used to being treated that way, as if it were the norm and all he had to do was shrug his shoulders to shake off the venom. Whereas I’m unable to think of anything else but the hurt.
‘Is that what you think?’ I say.
‘I think, Little City Slicker, that you don’t even know what you want. You’d like to come out of your shell and from under the shadow of your previous love story – or your dysfunctional relationship gone sour – but you haven’t got the guts.’
I feel my eyes widen in disbelief. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You’d like to live a life larger than your own, but you wouldn’t know what to do with it.’
‘What a ridiculous thing to say,’ I counter. ‘Of course I know what I want.’
‘Then why are you here? Why are you not in London, at your job, in your pokey little flat ordering a takeaway with your boyfriend who falls asleep halfway through your Netflix film?’
How does he even know that? But then, to be honest, isn’t that how most of us live? Day in, day out, over and over, like Groundhog Day?
‘I’m… just taking some time off.’
‘From work, or from your fiancé?’
‘Why is it so important for you to know anything at all about me?’
He shrugs. ‘I don’t need to. You girls are all the same old, same old.’
I laugh. ‘And you are the usual pathetic man who thinks that life owes him a living.’
