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Kathryn pays the bill (“My treat,” she insists, as if my £2.20 glass of orange juice was in any way a ‘treat’ for me), and we awkwardly say our goodbyes. For a second, I think she’s going to try to hug me, and I tense in anticipation of it, but she obviously thinks better of it, and goes for a slightly stiff pat on the arm instead.
“It’s not complicated, Emerald,” she says as she’s leaving. “Men generally aren’t. You just have to talk to him. And if you could do it soon, that would be great, because I was hoping to invite the Browns around for dinner, but Jack’s moody teenager act is casting a bit of a dark shadow over the place.”
I nod silently, then wait until she’s had enough time to make it to her car before following her out into the street, and walking the short distance home.
“I knew it,” Mum says once I’ve told her the surprising story of Kathryn and Bertie’s secret poverty. “Didn’t I tell ye that Kathryn couldnae be trusted, Archie? Acting like Lady Muck and looking doon her pointy nose at oor Emerald, when the whole time she was no better than any o’ us.”
“She wouldnae have been better than us even if shehadbeen posh,” Dad points out, but Mum’s already moved on to another subject.
“I almost forgot: Brian dropped off this for ye,” she says, handing me a small gray towel which she holds with the tips of her fingers, as if she’s worried she might catch something from it. “He said ye didnae really deserve it on account o’ no completing your training plan, but he wanted ye to have it anyway, to cheer ye up.”
“Great,” I say glumly, accepting my consolation prize. “Between the nursing home trips and the tiny towels, my friends are really spoiling me.”
“That’s the spirit,” says Mum encouragingly. “Oh, and speaking o’ nursing homes, McTavish popped in again, too. He said he’ll pick you up at 10 o’clock tomorrow. To take ye to see his grandad.”
“Oh God,” I wail, feeling like the entire world is conspiring against me. “Not this again. I told him I don’t want to go. Old people make me feel anxious. Er, no offense, Mum.”
“None taken,” she replies in an offended tone. “I expect it’s the reminder of yer own mortality that does it. That and feelin’ like ye’ve achieved nothing with yer life compared to the Great Generation.”
“That’s a bit much,” I protest. “I may not have a fiancé, a future, or much of a will to live, but I do have a small gray towel with ‘Brian’s Body Shop’ on it. That’s not ‘nothing’.”
“If you say so,” shrugs Mum, turning back to the stove, where she’s busy making one of her oddly colored concoctions. Dad just smiles sympathetically and goes back to the fishing magazine he’s been reading, so I take my towel and go out to the garden, where I pull my phone out of my pocket and sit staring at it for a while, wondering what on earth I can say to Jack to win him back, and whether or not Kathryn might have been exaggerating when she told me how much he was missing me. Or how much he was behaving like a teenager, anyway, which, same thing.
After a while, it starts getting too chilly to sit outside much longer, so I open the message app before I can change my mind and type a quick message.
Hi. Can we talk? I really miss you. I want to sort this out. I love you.
And then another one:
Oh, it’s Emerald, by the way. Just in case you’ve deleted my number from your phone and are wondering who this is. Really do love you, though. Please reply. x
In retrospect, I could probably have skipped the “please reply” bit. It’s too needy. And also the whole “it’s Emerald,” thing, to be honest, because surely he wouldn’t have deleted my number?
Would he?
I sit outside until I’m shivering with cold, and it’s too dark to even see. But Jack doesn’t reply.
Chapter 25
Possible Ways to Win Jack Back, Even Though He Won’t Reply to My Messages:
Take out full-page advert in The Times, apologizing and telling him how much I love him. (Note: check cost of adverts in The Times. Also check whether Jack actually reads it.)
Get McTavish to carve the words “Emerald 4 Jack” into his hay field with a tractor, then arrange for Jack to fly overhead and see it. (HOW?)
Turn up on his doorstep in the rain and hold up cards professing undying love. (Make sure he’s home first. And that the cards are waterproof.)
Go to Karaoke night at The Crown and sing“If This Was a Movie” (Taylor’s Version), while looking at him meaningfully. (Jack would hate this. Also, I don’t think he’s ever been to The Crown, so why would he be there now?)
Just keep sending him messages until he finally replies to one of them?
The thing that’s always annoyed me most about my life is its complete refusal to be anything like a movie — even a really bad one. Because it’s all well and good Kathryn telling me to fight for my man, but what do I do if the man in question doesn’t want to be fought for? What if he reallydoesjust want to sit in his office all day, doing… whatever it is he does in there? What if his mum was wrong, and hedoesn’tmiss me?
Most worrying of all, what if this break turns out to beforeverrather thanjust for now, and I have to spend the rest of my life feeling like this? Missing him, and hating myself, and making lists of all the things I could have done differently, but ultimately didn’t?
Whatif, though?
This is the mood McTavish finds me in when he comes to pick me up next morning, looking pointedly at Jack’s old sweater (Which I’m still refusing to take off), as ifhe’snot wearing a pair of faded dungarees and aFlying Haggist-shirt with a hole in it.
