I didn’t understand why she went to extreme lengths to avoid eye contact with me after that, until I recounted the conversation to Patrick who pointed out that if she owned her house and loved it, she might have been a bit upset to hear an identical house described as soul-crushing.
I found her blog. It was called Living the Cul-De-Sac Life and there was a picture of our house or hers at the top. Since we were not going to be friends, I was disappointed that she was a good writer and that her funny observations were funny. I began reading it every day. To begin with, in search of references to myself and then, because she was writing the mirror-image version of my life, the one where my vacuum cleaner cupboard is on the left, and I have boy-girl twins and a husband who gets home around eight most nights, so I generally eat at five with the kids and I swear, this is the conversation we have every. single. night.
*Looks at plate of dinner on top of microwave*
Post-it stuck on it says ‘your dinner’
Him: Is this my dinner?
Me: Yes
Should I heat it up?
Yes
Long pause
How long for?
When did he stop being an adult with life skills?!
*
I got a letter from the library, forwarded by our tenants. It asked me for the Ian McEwan back and ￡92.90 in compound fines. Because there was no money in Martha’s Unexpecteds at the time, I rang up and told them that unfortunately Martha Friel was a registered missing person, but if she was ever found, I would ask her about the book.
*
I started going to the allotment with Patrick sometimes on weekends, on the proviso that I didn’t have to help. I said, ‘aka, she died doing what he loved.’ He bought a folding chair and a shed to keep it in so I could sit, reading or watching him, with my feet on a dead tree trunk that demarcated our failing carrots from the thriving carrots of our neighbour. Once, while he was doing something with a hoe that still had the cardboard tag around the handle, I lowered my book and said that I knew it would be expensive if they charged by the word but this is what I would like on my headstone: ‘It’s Cold Comfort Farm. Someone has just asked the main girl what she likes and she says: I wasn’t quite sure, but on the whole I thought I liked having everything very tidy and calm all around me, and not being bothered to do things, and laughing at the kind of joke other people didn’t think at all funny, and going for country walks and not being asked to express opinions about things like love, and isn’t so-and-so peculiar.’
He said, ‘Martha, expressing opinions about peculiar people is the only thing you care about. And you never ever need to be asked.’
*
In December, I got a part-time job at the Bodleian Library gift shop selling mugs and keyrings and branded tote bags to tourists because it meant I could spend eight hours sitting on a stool mostly not talking.
A woman wearing a souvenir sweatshirt came in and I watched her put a gift pack of pencils up her sleeve. When she came up to the counter to pay for something else, I asked if she’d like the pencils gift-wrapped as well. I told her it was complimentary. She turned red and said she didn’t know what I was talking about. She said she no longer wanted what she had put on the counter. As she turned to walk away I said, ‘Only five shoplifting days left ’til Christmas,’ and stayed sitting on my stool.
I told Patrick, who said retail may not be my thing. After Christmas, they replaced me with an older lady who was amenable to standing up.
A short time later I got an email from somebody I didn’t know. He said we had crossed over at World of Interiors. ‘You were really funny. I think you had just got married or you were about to get married? I was doing work experience.’ Now, he said, he was the editor of Waitrose magazine and he had an idea.
*
I started seeing a psychologist because London wasn’t the problem. Being sad is, like writing a funny food column, something I can do anywhere. I found her on findatherapist.co.uk. On the first page of the website there was a button that said What’s Worrying You? in white letters on a sky-blue background. Clicking on it produced a drop-down menu. I selected Other.
The title of her listing was Julie Female. I chose her because she was < 5 miles from town centre and because I found her headshot compelling. She was wearing a hat. I took a photo of the screen with my phone and texted it to Ingrid. She said, ‘Headshot hat one hundred per cent alarm bells.’
Julie Female and I worked together for months. She said we were doing good work. All that time she was careful never to reveal the particulars of her own life, as though I would be compelled to drive to her house on a non-therapy day and sit outside in my car for long periods if I ever discovered she liked swimming and had an adult son in the military.