‘But for ever love can’t just stop, can it?’
Mack takes his time to answer. ‘Not suddenly, no. But a grinding, gradual halt? Yeah, maybe it can do that.’ He holds my gaze. ‘I don’t fuckin’ know, Cleo, I honestly don’t. I guess it’s the difference between what you say and what you do.’
I don’t say anything because he looks as if he needs to carry on, when he can find the words.
‘I probably should have said no to some of the assignments, prioritized family time over money, but …’ He shrugs. ‘Susie’s a real live wire, you know? Thrives on company, naturally the centre of attention in any room she’s in. I don’t think two kids under five and an endless diet of Peppa Pig fulfilled her emotional needs long term. And that’s not to say she’s not a good mom. She’s phenomenal. Just that maybe for ever love fades if you don’t feel seen, or if you don’t spend enough time together in the same place.’
‘Susie sounds quite like my friend Rubes,’ I say. ‘She’s a proper firefly, always burns brightest in a crowd.’
Mack raises a finger at me, telling me the description feels familiar to him too.
‘It’s funny,’ I say, thinking back to the first time I saw Ruby. Or found her, to be more exact, sitting on the step outside my flat at two in the morning because she’d lost her front-door key, arms around her patchily fake-tanned knees, shoes in her hands, her blood-red hair in a high ponytail. She lives on the top floor, I’m at the bottom. I’ve lost count of the number of times she’s lowered down a plant pot on a string in search of an emergency cigarette or gin. I keep a box of cigarettes on the windowsill in readiness of a distress text even though I’m not really a smoker.
‘When she and I met, we seemed like two peas in a pod, always up for anything, a night out, a shiny adventure, the newest nightclub,’ I tell Mack. ‘But now … God, I don’t know. If she’s a firefly, I’m more of a …’ I break off to think. ‘A glow-worm.’
He laughs, despite himself. ‘You’re definitely not a worm.’
‘That’s probably the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,’ I say, and then I laugh too because we’re definitely drunk and it feels good not to be angry with him for a while.
We lapse into silence, and I wonder if it’s a bad idea to drink any more whiskey.
‘I think what I’m really scared of is that I’ve fallen out of love with love,’ I say, and then I huff all the air out of my lungs like a deflated balloon because that’s the thing that’s been gnawing away at the back of my head. ‘I tell everyone I’m a big old romantic, that I cry at movies and at weddings and at love stories, and all of those things have been true – but I’m not sure they are any more. So now I’m here, attempting to focus on me, to love my thirty-year-old self instead of some nebulous other, and I’m worried that either I’m not going to be enough, or else that I will be enough and I’ll be alone for ever.’
‘Jeez, Cleo, that was a lot of words to say to someone who’s drunk as much whiskey as I have,’ he says, frowning. ‘If I could remember them all I’d try to say something helpful.’
I nod. ‘It’s all right. I can’t remember what I just said either, which is a bummer, actually, because I think it might have been important.’
He looks at his phone. ‘How can it only be six o’clock?’ he says. ‘It feels like midnight.’
‘It’s the bloody weather,’ I say.
‘Should I cook something?’ he asks.
I cooked last night, so I guess it’s technically his turn. ‘We should have a rota,’ I say, ‘to save arguments.’
‘A rota?’ he frowns.
‘You know,’ I say. ‘A plan? You do the dinner on Monday, I clean the kitchen on Tuesday. That kind of thing.’
His expression clears. ‘Ah, a schedule.’
I blink. ‘I say rota, you say schedule.’
‘Let’s call the whole thing off?’
I make ironic jazz hands and he leans his elbows on the table. ‘You do your rota,’ he says, drink-decisive. ‘You do that, Cleo.’
‘It might help if we think of ourselves less as room-mates and more as neighbours,’ I suggest. ‘As in, you live over there,’ I wave towards the bed, ‘and I live over there.’ I flop my arm out in the direction of the sofa. ‘And this,’ I knock my knuckles on the tabletop, ‘this right here is the town square.’