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‘I did watch it,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t think Brian and Rosa are going to make it, but I’m hopeful about John and Daisy. I felt sorry for Ed, but I’m not sure she was right for him anyway.’
‘No,’ Rachel agrees, ‘I didn’t like her at all and, as for her dad, I wanted to slap him and tell him to butt out!’
I laugh and head to my room to get ready for the morning’s patients. I could have done without Rachel watching it. I hope that whatever Ed did to ‘sort it’ involved the footage of me landing on the cutting room floor, otherwise I’m in for weeks of ribbing from my colleagues when Rachel tells them. I’m not convinced it will, though. If I were pervy Dave, I’d be fighting tooth and nail to keep me in. I’m exactly the sort of car-crash TV that audiences love, especially if they filmed me running away, which I bet they did.
Seeing Ed again, even if it’s only on the screen, has knocked me off balance. While I’m preparing my tools for the first patient, I wonder what he’s doing now. Maybe he’s found someone else and is curled up in bed reading the Saturday papers with her, or maybe they’re having noisy weekend sex, before going out for a walk in the park. Thinking about Ed having sex with someone else causes an ache in my chest, and I find myself asking what the girlfriend, who only exists in my imagination, has that I patently didn’t.
Thankfully, it’s a busy morning and the usual difficult Saturday crowd, so I’m able to forget about Ed’s sex life as I concentrate on my work. Seeing him has definitely reopened the wound though, and he keeps crashing into my consciousness for the rest of the weekend. I’m back to raking over all the ifs and buts that Mads and I came up with when it was still all fresh, so I’m grateful for the distraction of Sunday lunch with Mum and Dad. Emma, Simon, the girls and Lulu are there too. The girls corner me and talk me to death with stories of school and who their current friends are. I’d forgotten how fickle friendships are at that age. Lulu is a honey-coloured cockapoo, and is absolutely sweet. She seems to sense that all is not quite right in my world and keeps rushing over to me, seeking attention.
I wake up thinking about Ed on Monday morning and tell myself firmly to get a grip. Whatever he’s doing now, and whomever he’s doing it with, is nothing to do with me any more; he made that perfectly clear when he got his PA to screen my calls. I bury myself in my work during the day and start watching a Scandi-noir box set calledUntil the Dawnin the evening to prevent my mind from wandering back to him. It’s typical of the genre; it’s always dark, raining, and the body count is racking up while the chain-smoking detective tries to solve the case. The combination of the complexity of the plot and dealing with subtitles requires all my attention.
I’m watching episode five on Wednesday evening when Mads calls. I haven’t spoken to her since Friday, as I wasn’t sure her unique brand of tough love would have helped me in my current predicament. Wherever she’s calling from is noisy, and she’s shouting down the phone.
‘Hi, I can’t talk for long as I’m out with a friend,’ she yells. ‘He’s just gone to the bar to get drinks, so I’ve got a couple of minutes, tops. Listen, are you OK to drive yourself to your mum and dad’s this Friday? I’ve got a work thing on, so I’ll come straight from the station and meet you there.’
‘Sure, no problem. Who’s the friend?’
‘Nobody you’d know. I’ll see you on Friday, yeah?’
Probably another Tinder date, I think as she rings off.
On Friday evening, Mads’ car is already there when I arrive at Mum and Dad’s. I’m a bit apprehensive as it’s the honeymoon episode tonight, so if I’m going to feature it will be in this one. I’m also a bit worried that another dose of Ed on TV is going to undo all the work I’ve done this week to try to regain my equilibrium.
I call out a hello as I let myself in through the front door, but nobody replies. I can hear voices coming from the kitchen though, so I head that way. As I push open the door, I see Mum, Dad and Mads with glasses in their hands. They aren’t alone though. There’s another person in the kitchen.
Standing just behind Mads, looking straight at me, is Ed.
I’m very glad I’m not holding anything, as I would certainly drop it. I’m sure my mouth drops open.
‘Ah, there you are, love!’ My mother comes and gives me a hug. ‘Look who’s here!’
I seem to be having trouble speaking. I manage a strangled-sounding ‘Hi, Ed.’
‘Hi, Charley,’ he replies. He looks every bit as uncomfortable as me.
‘Umm, Mads. Can I borrow you for a minute?’ I say, before dragging her out of the kitchen and into the sitting room. I’m conscious of an uneasy silence behind me, but I might be about to murder my best friend and I don’t want an audience.
‘What the fuck have you done? Talk!’ I hiss at her as soon as we’re in the sitting room.
As usual, she’s totally unfazed by my ferocity.
‘You’re still in love with him,’ she says, simply. ‘You may not know it, but you are. The Ed shrine that is your flat is a pretty big clue, but watching you watching him last week was the final confirmation. I realised that you were never going to move on unless we got to the bottom of what happened, so I staged an intervention.’
‘Oh, God. What did you do?’
She smiles. ‘Well, first I think we need to give me credit for having the lady-balls to find Ed and get him to come here. You’re finally going to get your answers because of me.’
‘Fine. You’ve got the biggest lady-balls in the world. Now, what did youdo?’ I just manage to avoid adding, ‘And who do I have to apologise to?’
‘It was rather brilliant, even if I say so myself,’ she continues, totally unaffected by the meltdown going on in front of her. ‘The problem, as I saw it, was how to bypass Miss Frosty-Tits, the PA. The most obvious thing was simply to call and make an appointment. I did a bit of internet research and, even though their website didn’t mention fees at all, most of the other divorce lawyer sites offered a free initial consultation. So I worked out a cover story, called up and fed it to the PA.’
‘What happened?’ Despite my irritation with her, I can’t help but be intrigued.
‘She told me that the earliest appointment she could offer me was three weeks away, which took the wind out of my sails a bit. There was no way I could put up with you mooning at the screen for another three weeks. She also told me, get this, the initial consultation attracts a “discounted rate” of four hundred pounds for the hour, with an extra two hundred and fifty if I wanted the “discretion of entering via the underground garage”. I love you to bits, but there’s no way I could afford that. Who charges four hundred pounds an hour and calls it a discount? Anyway, luckily for you, I’m a quick thinker. If I couldn’t afford an appointment with him, I worked out that I still had the option to catch him either on his way into the building or on his way out. You’d already told me he works late a lot, so that kind of ruled out catching him on the way out, as I don’t think hanging around offices late at night is a good thing for a woman on her own to be doing. It had to be done as he arrived. But what time does someone like Ed start work?
‘I told Frosty-Tits that three weeks and the fee was fine, as long as the meeting was first thing in the morning. I then asked her what the earliest time was that he could see me. Thinking that I was now a serious prospect, she was putty in my hands. She told me that he normally started at eight thirty but could meet at eight if I was able to give sufficient notice.’
‘But didn’t you still have to book the appointment and pay?’
