8
In the atmospheric, dimly lit gloaming of the deserted restaurant dining room in Headingley, Harriet’s friend Lorna leapt from her seat, pushing her chair back with a loud scrape and theatrically clutching her collarbones.
‘Oh FUCK YES! I thought you were going to tell me you were MARRYING THE CLOWN. OH GOD, THE RELIEF. I’m shaking here, I’m shaking, look at me!’
Lorna held out her hands for inspection of the tremors and Harriet blinked in surprise, momentarily speechless.
She’d told Lorna she wanted to tell her something, and Lorna had said guardedly alright, will our usual Thursday night date at my place do. They pretty much always met for weeknight lock-in drinks at Lorna’s restaurant, Harriet’s job preventing most Friday and Saturday plans.
Lorna had looked wary on Harriet’s arrival and Harriet felt she saw her brace as she made her announcement. However, at the words, ‘I’ve left Jon,’ Lorna exploded like a ticker-tape parade. Clown?
‘You … didn’t like Jon?’ Harriet turned this idea over in her mind while she worked out how she felt about it. She didn’t think she’d been rosy spectacled in this matter – she had judged Lorna’s feelings towards Jon as hovering somewhere around ‘good-natured, mild contempt’. Yet this level of jubilation had really startled her.
Harriet decided she was three-quarters intrigued and a quarter defensive of Jon, mostly out of guilt.
Lorna sat down again. ‘I mean also, sorry for your loss or whatever I’m supposed to say’ – Harriet belly-laughed at this – ‘but it was one hundred per cent completely the right decision, you know that?’
Harriet nodded, sadly. ‘I feel awful that I hurt him so much though. I should’ve done it ages ago, not let it drift until he imagined we were going to get married.’
Obviously, having kids stayed as an unformed, hazy expectation too. Unlike marriage, Harriet had no objection, though equally they’d never discussed it. She suspected Jon’s family wouldn’t like pregnancies among unweds, so he thought he’d fix A to move smoothly to B. It was amazing the size of icebergs you could mutually ignore, really.
‘Did I like Jon …?’ Lorna continued, ‘I didn’t actively loathe him or anything. But … I felt his effect on you was pernicious and he was completely wrong for you. The longer your relationship went on, the less time I had for him. Yes, alright, there’s sufficient material there to say dislike. You could certainly make a miniskirt from the amount of fabric of my dislike.’
‘So if I had been saying I was marrying Jon, I’d have gone the rest of my life not knowing my best friend detested my husband?’
‘Oh no.’ Lorna barked a laugh. ‘I’d have told you. I’d have risked it. I thought I was going to have to tonight, that’s why I was absolutely bricking it.’
Ah. The adrenaline powering Lorna’s rejoicing was principally due to avoiding what she’d anticipated might be a traumatic falling out.
‘This calls for the good wine and the better music,’ Lorna said, jumping up again to first stab at her phone to play George Michael on her duck-egg blue Roberts Beacon Bluetooth (everything in the place was high-end hipster kitsch) then marching over to authoritatively rifle through the illuminated fridges behind the bar.
In a previous lifetime, Lorna had worked for a mobile phone company and hated it. In her late twenties, she got a big compensation payout when she broke her leg falling into an uncovered manhole. (‘They didn’t need to know I’d had a party pack of Desperados and was doing the Pulp Fiction dance with Gethin from IT in order to get off with him. Needless to say, I got no fucking action with my leg in traction, he didn’t even call.’)
She used both the recuperation period and the cash to relaunch her life as the owner of Divertimento, a bistro-bar serving Mediterranean dishes. The Dive, as she always called it, was her baby, and: ‘Much like a parent, I spend all my time stressed and knackered by it, yet somehow never loving it any less.’
Lorna plonked a bottle of orange wine between them and as she poured it out, Harriet described the ring-box-on-a-plate farrago.
Lorna’s mouth fell open. ‘You call that misjudgement; know what I call it? Massively selfish. Only someone who didn’t really care about the actual qualities of the person he was proposing to would pull such shit. He treated you like a prize pet pig. Feeding you acorns and taking you to show.’
‘He isn’t that bad! He isn’t callous. He’d not think of it that way.’
‘If he’s only treating you as a vacuous trophy by accident, Hatley, and he’s not intending to do it … what’s the meaningful difference in outcome anyway? He’s still doing it.’
‘Hmmm.’
She’d never thought of Jon in these philosophical terms before. If you blithely assume everything should go your way, is it that different from fixing it in your favour? If he forgot to consider Harriet’s feelings, was it a world away from not caring what they were?
She had dwelled since on how completely absent her wishes had to have been from his accounting. The mental process must’ve gone: I Love Harriet → I Love My Family → I Love The Idea Of Marrying Her = bingo, it’s all love. Yet without noticing ‘I’ prefixed every aspect.
‘And I had an issue with the money,’ Lorna said, after taking a hearty swig of her wine. ‘I never said anything because I know you’re not materialistic. He bought you, and what’s more, he knew full well he was doing it.’
This was clearly Lorna at last breathing out, getting comfy, after two years in a constrictive corset. (And Lorna might be in a literal corset; tonight she was wearing a banana-yellow chiffon prom dress and hot-pink Birkenstocks. Divertimento was known for the wild fashion of its bleach-blonde owner-proprietor. Jon once said everything Lorna wore looked like ‘she lost a bet’, which wasn’t said in approval and yet actually described the thrill of her style brilliantly. Except she’d always won the bet, in Harriet’s opinion.)
‘So … that suggests I was for sale, which is my fault?’ Harriet said.
‘No. It was more insidious than that. Whenever you were in danger of coming to your senses in a period of quiet reflection, it was “How about a weekend in Reykjavik!” or “Let’s go to this incredible place in York to try the tasting menu” or “Have your friends round for dinner in my palace and I’ll chuck my wine cellar around”.’
Eesh, Harriet had forgot that. Jon had produced a bottle worth a grand when everyone was in their cups. It looked flash but put everyone on edge, suddenly having to switch from post-prandial, carefree raucousness to mumbling their polite appreciation as he somewhat pompously talked them through its ‘cherry and blackcurrant nose’. They’d had tense words afterwards; Jon confused that largesse could ever be taken badly.
‘If he’d worked in Specsavers, the Barraclough grift would’ve been much shorter,’ Lorna concluded.
‘I don’t see how that isn’t on me though, if you’re saying I wouldn’t have stayed if he was skint?’
‘It wasn’t that you wanted him to spend money on you but … He created gratitude in you. Constantly. You felt gratitude that he was so obsessed with you, and gratitude at all his mad spoiling to demonstrate it, and that gratitude made you think you owed him the relationship. He used his spending to oblige you and control things. It wasn’t generosity, it was a messed-up power dynamic.’
Harriet grimaced. She’d have to think on this, but she didn’t see how she could be innocent. Then again, she remembered times when trying to go Dutch with Jon caused such a fraught showdown, she gave up. It was, she realised with hindsight, disempowering.
‘Nor did he remotely pass my Day Three At Glastonbury test,’ Lorna said. ‘Which is foolproof, in my opinion.’
‘What’s that again?’
‘It’s the third day of the festival. It’s a rainy, muddy year, someone in the chemical truck that cleans the Portaloos has pressed the wrong button and sprayed gallons of actual human shit straight into the dance tent, covering both of you. You’re subsisting on those foil trays of compacted noodles that have three slivers of greasy onion in them, the cider hangover’s kicking you like a donkey. Toploader are the Sunday headliner. But. Are you having a laugh about it?’
‘That is a harsh test, Lorna.’
‘Born of much experience. If it’s right, terrible adversity somehow makes your chemistry shine brighter. That’s when you find out if it’s genuine joy in each other’s company: if it can make the worst times good, or reveal if your relationship relies on all the trappings.’
‘I’m never going to meet anyone that makes me think not being coated in faeces is a “trapping”.’
They looked at each other and both collapsed in laughter. Harriet felt a pang of guilt at Jon’s disgust if he witnessed the scene.
‘Apologies, I know I’m being Lorna Plus tonight. I’m so glad you’ve seen the light. Also,’ Lorna spoke more quickly: ‘You wanted kindness, and I know why. I’m sure it felt kind.’
Their eyes met and Harriet’s throat felt tight. They rarely spoke about Before Jon, but somehow it was always there, like a sleep paralysis demon squatting in the bedroom shadows.
Lorna returned to a lighter tone: ‘I was starting to get seriously worried. I gave you and him eighteen months, tops. This is why, if you’d told me you’d said yes this weekend, I was going to have to put our friendship on the line to say oh no you fucking don’t. Good women are not a rewards system for silly men.’
Harriet hooted. ‘It wouldn’t have put it on the line.’
‘Might’ve ruled me out as a bridesmaid though, huh?’ Lorna said. ‘How’s living in Jon’s spare room going? Was it a headache choosing which one?’
‘It’s … bad,’ Harriet said. ‘But only because I feel so bad about it. Jon’s being nice and giving me space. Of which there’s lots anyway, as you say.’
‘Is he now. We need you out sharpish, then. Rox will have somewhere.’ Their friend Roxanne was an estate agent for a company that did lettings as well as sales. She normally completed what Lorna called their ‘Dark Triad’ but had an unmissable work event that evening, if drinking acidic warm white wine with honking Hoorays in Hackett shirts was unmissable.
‘I’m also relieved that you didn’t marry Jon, buy a house with him, have kids, and only then come to your senses,’ Lorna said. ‘He was super nice as a partner, but I predict he’d be one hell of a vindictive ex if you had to unentangle anything.’
‘Jon?! No,’ Harriet laughed, and she was gratified to be completely sure of herself for once in this conversation. ‘He couldn’t be more considerate and respectful. I was even surprised he swore at me in the conversation when I finished it.’
‘Harriet, you only know Boyfriend Jon, not Business Jon. I doubt Captain Gravy got to be MD by cuddling everyone.’
Harriet laughed again, shaking her head.
‘He’s currently trying to develop a macaroni and cheese with kale, he’s not Tony Soprano.’
‘As I say, I’m glad he has no hooks in you, so we’re never going to find out.’
An hour and a half later, feeling the most stable she’d felt in days thanks to Lorna’s support, Harriet got back to Jon’s house, and found a note stuck to the fridge:
H (only if you want to!) pots labelled 1, 2 and 3 are a baba ganoush recipe we’re trying out, let me know which you like? Pretty sure 2 is shower grout, not to unduly influence the results. Jx
Lorna was right about so much, but wrong about Jon.