In the drawing room he refused tea and biscuits. ‘I have this.’ He indicated his black Myprotein shaker. His hands trembled. ‘It’s good she’s in here.’ He was talking too fast. ‘It’s been a nightmare, though. It all got so dark, so fast.’
‘Save it for when we’re in the room.’ I felt desperately sorry for him.
He stood up. ‘Can we start? I just want to get it done.’
When we walked in, everyone stared, wondering who this good-looking man belonged to.
Lowry Cooke – who’d obviously just understood what was going down – was gleeful and alert, practically rubbing his hands together in anticipation. Yeah, well, enjoy it while you can. Wait until Sienna, his ex-girlfriend, was here to spill the beans on his antics!
‘So, shithead?’ Harlie said to Caleb. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
Caleb was waxy with pallor. ‘Your ma told me,’ he stuttered. ‘I wanted to help.’
‘I don’t want your help.’
‘Harlie …’ I silenced her with a look.
Caleb took his chair. ‘Can I …？’ he asked, and began removing his jacket, revealing huge shoulders and bulky biceps which strained against his sleeves. We were all rapt.
Caleb was objectively hot, but his oversized biceps made me sad. It was bad enough that women angsted about all the ways their bodies were wrong. But now it seemed that the young men were getting in on the act, going to the gym, living on raw eggs and boring on about ketosis, God love them.
‘I’m Harlie’s ex-husband,’ Caleb said. ‘We’re still married, but separated –’
‘– I haven’t seen him or heard from him in eleven months,’ Harlie said. ‘Packed up his stuff when I was at work, told me nothing about it –’
‘– I told you –’
‘– I came home, everything was gone. He wouldn’t answer my calls. Went round to his mum’s and she wouldn’t let me in. Went to his work. Same.’
Gently, Trassa shushed Harlie. ‘Let the lad tell his side of things. Go on,’ she instructed Caleb.
In a husky voice, he said, ‘I met Harlie when I was twenty-five. She was twenty-four. First night I met her, that was it, I was done.’ To my relief, he was picking up confidence. ‘She was my dream girl. Gorgeous, a great laugh, great dancer, hard worker, ambitious. Like me, she was into her fashion, her fitness. We both wanted kids, two, but not for a few years.’
‘Her drinking?’ I prompted.
‘Like, she drank. But so did everyone. Five years ago, weekends were party central – everyone got messy. Monday to Friday though, I’d go to the gym, eat clean, focus on work. I was living with my ma, and Harlie was at home with her pair. Once or twice a week she’d come over and stay. She’d always arrive with her quarter-bottle of vodka but, you know … I thought it was one night a week, not every night. Like, not a problem.
‘So we got married two and a half years ago, and bought a house. Suddenly we had a mortgage so we were on a budget, we didn’t have the same money for going out on the lash, but it was grand. Me and Harlie were together, we had our new home. I was training in the Drill, a Korean fitness model – we were hoping to buy the Irish franchise and set up on our own. We were buzzing, really excited, like, we had a plan. Except Harlie kept buying vodka –’
‘– I didn’t keep buying –’
‘But you did.’ He sounded so forlorn that it silenced her. ‘At the start, money was my worry. But … I don’t drink vodka. So the two of us were knocking around the house on a weeknight, ironing our work clothes or whatever, Harlie drinking vodka and me on the Kinetica Recovery. It was weird. Drinking is for when you go out. But I kept making excuses for her. She said her job was stressy, she needed to relax –’
‘It was stressy and at least I’m not addicted to the gym, like you.’
‘My job was stressy too –’
‘Caleb, you’re not the one in rehab,’ I said. ‘You don’t need to explain yourself.’
‘Oh, okay. Thanks.’ He looked heartbreakingly young and grateful. ‘So. Harlie got drunk. A lot. Often by bedtime she was out of it, like slurring her words and making no sense – after an evening of watching The Sinner and eating turkey stir-fry, you know? Like, it didn’t fit. So I helped her get a new job, one with less pressure.
‘But nothing changed, except the quarter-bottles became half-bottles, became full bottles. Then there were two on the go every evening, the “official” one in the fridge, the “secret” one under the sink. Even when I showed her that I knew, it didn’t stop her.’