‘Aren’t you staying with your dad?’
‘Maybe you don’t know? They sold their house a few years back, now they – I mean Dad, Christ, I keep forgetting – is in a one-bedroomed flat. I could sleep on the couch but it’s not fair to do that to …’ He hesitated. ‘To Kallie, my partner.’
WhoIsSheWhereDidYouMeetHerDoYouLoveHerMoreThanYouLovedMe …
I cleared my throat. ‘How’s your dad doing?’
‘A good day today. He has lung disease, COPD, in case you didn’t know.’
How would I know? I didn’t even know what it was.
‘Used to be called emphysema. It’s a hard thing to see. To be honest, after a day there, I’m glad to escape back to Justin’s.’ After a short pause, he blurted, ‘And yeah, I feel super-guilty about that.’
‘Try not to feel guilty.’ More therapy-speak but it was the only way I felt safe talking to him. ‘Carers always feel guilty, they never think they do enough. But they need to take care of themselves too.’
‘Ah, I’m grand,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to take care of myself.’
Yeah. Whatever. ‘So I’d better get back to work.’ He couldn’t miss the sudden snippiness of my tone.
Quickly, he said, ‘You got a dog?’
‘Um, yes, Crunchie.’ Just thinking about her warmed my heart. ‘Rescue dog.’
‘Part golden retriever? Part …？’
‘Corgi. She has cute corgi legs. She makes me really happy.’
‘Yep, dogs are great.’
‘True that. Do you have …？’
‘Ah, no. I wasn’t sure if … No. No dog. Not yet, anyway. Sorry for disturbing you at work.’
‘It’s okay, it’s my lunch break.’
‘Joey says you’re still an addiction counsellor. At the Cloisters, of all places?’
‘Head counsellor, actually. I train up the newbies.’
‘Seriously? Wow. And how does that work? They do regular tests to check you’re clean?’
‘… What? No. They trust me. And I trust me.’
‘Is Nola still in your life? Tell her I said hey.’
My lips tightened. He could fuck off, acting like we were friends again.
‘So. Thanks for being so cool about me showing up at your home. That sort of shit – it’s not who I am.’
Well, technically you are, because you did it. But I just said, ‘Okay.’
I hung up and sat in my car, breathing hard, waiting to calm down. Him offloading his stuff onto me – after all he’d done – it was confusing.
On a whim, I FaceTimed Anna. It was 8.20 a.m. in New York so maybe I’d catch her before she started her day.
And there she was! My heart lifted.
‘Great timing,’ Anna said. ‘I’m just getting dressed.’
Anna was a rarity among successful New York women; she had no fear of sugar and stayed in bed when everyone else got up in the dim dawn to go to Barry’s Bootcamp. ‘If I turn into a blimp, so what?’ she always said. ‘We get one life, I want to enjoy mine.’
She didn’t turn into a blimp, though. Unlike Claire, Margaret and me, who were Model A Walshes – tall Never-Slenders who took after Mum – she and Helen were Model Bs: short and slight, with a whippet-y ability to burn calories.
I brought her up to date with the latest on Luke.
‘Yeah.’ She sighed. ‘You and Luke were such a love story. This was always going to be painful. But you ignore the universe at your peril.’
‘Excuse me?’
She was shimmying her way into very skinny jeans. With a hoick of the waistband and a whizz of the zip, she was neatly contained. It was a pleasure to watch.
‘You and him, it was a …’ She threw a silky T-shirt over her head and spoke through it. ‘Brutal finish.’ Her delicate face reappeared. ‘But now he’s in Ireland.’ She slung several fragile gold chains around her neck. ‘It’s like the universe has put him there so you and he can make peace.’
‘So the universe has given Luke’s Dad COPD just so Luke and I can learn to be civil?’
‘Oh, Rachel.’ She clucked sympathetically, shucking on an oversized blazer, flicking a hand back to free her swingy ponytail from the collar. ‘You’re not that sneery cynic.’
‘Oh, Anna,’ I replied. ‘You’re not that space cadet who thinks the universe gets personally involved on my behalf.’