Beth O'Leary - The Flatshare

‘She’s calling now,’ Mo says, holding out my phone to me.

‘I don’t want to speak to her.’

‘Shall I answer?’

‘Do what you like. She’s your girlfriend.’

Mo gives me a long look as I sit down on the sofa again with shaking legs. I’m being childish, obviously, but Mo getting together with Gerty at this particular moment feels like he’s siding with her. I want Mo on my side. I want to scream at Gerty. She had the chance to tell Leon I would never do something like that to him, that he should check in with me before believing anything, and she didn’t.

‘She can’t find Leon,’ Mo tells me after a moment. ‘She really wants to speak to you, Tiffy. She wants to apologise.’

I shake my head. I’m not ready to be done feeling angry just because she wants to apologise.

‘She’s argued for a legal call with Richie when he gets to the prison,’ Mo says, after a pause to listen. I can hear Gerty’s voice on the other end of the phone, tinny and panicked. ‘She says she’ll tell him what really happened, so he can use his phone call to try Leon on his mobile — you can call any number on your first-night call. He probably won’t be in and processed until late, maybe even tomorrow morning, but it’s still our best hope of getting the message out to Leon if he doesn’t come home.’

‘Tomorrow morning ?’ It’s only late afternoon.

Mo looks pained. ‘I think it’s our best option for now.’

It’s ridiculous, really, that a man in prison with only one phone call is a best option for getting hold of someone.

‘Leon’s phone is off,’ I say dully. ‘He won’t answer.’

‘He’ll see sense and turn it back on, Tiffy,’ Mo says, phone still at his ear. ‘He won’t want to miss a call from Richie.’

I sit out on the balcony, curled under two blankets. One of them is the Brixton throw that usually lives across our bed — the one Leon tucked me up under that night Justin came round to the flat and threatened him.

I know Leon thinks I’ve gone back to Justin. I’ve gone through desperate panic, and now I’m thinking that he should have more fucking faith in me.

Not that I’ve earned it, I suppose. I did go back to Justin, lots of times — I’ve told Leon that. But . . . I would never have started seeing Leon if I didn’t feel this time was different — if I wasn’t really ready to leave that part of my life behind me. I was trying so hard. All that time dredging up the worst memories, the endless conversations with Mo, the counselling. I was trying . But I guess Leon thought I was just too broken to fix myself.

Gerty rings me every ten minutes or so; I still haven’t picked up. Gerty has known me for eight years. If I’m angry with Leon for not having faith in me, and he’s known me for less than a year, I am at least eight times angrier with Gerty.

I pick at the sad, yellowing leaves on our one balcony pot plant and very pointedly do not think about the fact that Justin knows where I live. Somehow. Probably Martin — my address is pretty easy to get if you have access to my desk and the payslips that HR drop around.

Fucking hell. I knew I didn’t like that man for a reason.

I look down at my phone as it vibrates around and around on our little, rickety outdoor table. The table’s surface is covered in bird poo and that thick, sticky dust-grime that covers everything left outdoors for any length of time in London. Gerty’s name lights up my phone screen, and with a flash of anger I pick up this time.

‘What?’ I say.

‘I am awful,’ Gerty says, talking very fast. ‘I can’t believe myself. I should never have assumed that you would go back to Justin. I am so, so sorry.’

I pause, taken aback. Gerty and I have fought plenty of times, but she’s never said sorry right away like that, unprompted.

‘I should have believed you could do it. I do believe you can.’

‘Do what?’ I ask, before I can think of a better, angrier response.

‘Get away from Justin.’

‘Oh. That.’

‘Tiffy, are you all right?’ Gerty says.

‘Well. Not really,’ I say, feeling my bottom lip quivering. I bite down on it hard. ‘I don’t suppose . . .’

‘Richie’s not called yet. You know what these things are like, Tiffy, it could be midnight before they even move him from the holding cell to Wandsworth. And the prison’s pretty shambolic so I don’t want to get your hopes up that they’ll even give him his phone call, let alone the legal call I made them promise me. But if I speak to him I’ll tell him everything. I’ll ask him to speak to Leon.’

I check the time on the screen: it’s 8 p.m. now, and I cannot believe how nightmarishly slowly time is passing.

‘I am really, really angry with you,’ I tell Gerty, because I know I don’t sound it. I just sound sad, and tired, and like I want my best friend.

‘Absolutely. Me too. Furious. I’m the worst. And Mo isn’t talking to me either, if that helps.’

‘That doesn’t help,’ I say reluctantly. ‘I don’t want you to be a pariah.’

‘A what? Is that some kind of dessert?’

‘Pariah. Persona non-grata. Outcast.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, I’m resigned to a life of disgrace. It’s all I deserve.’

We sit in companionable silence for a while. I reach around inside to find that enormous pool of Gerty-fuelled rage again, but it seems to have evaporated.

‘I really hate Justin,’ I say miserably. ‘You know I think he did this mostly to break up me and Leon? I don’t think he would actually even marry me. He would just leave me again, once he was sure he’d got me back.’

‘The man needs castrating,’ Gerty says firmly. ‘He’s done you nothing but harm. I have actively wished him dead on several occasions.’

‘Gerty!’

‘You didn’t have to sit back and watch it happening,’ she says. ‘Watch him cleaning all the Tiffany-ness out of you. It was sick.’

I fiddle with the Brixton blanket.

‘All this mess has made me realise . . . I really like Leon, Gerty. Really like him.’ I sniff, wiping my eyes. ‘I wish he had at least asked me whether I actually said yes. And . . . and . . . even if I had . . . I wish that he hadn’t just given up.’

‘It’s been half a day. He’s in shock, and drained after the session in court. He’s built this day up in his head for months. Justin, as ever, has impeccably dreadful timing. Give it a little time and I hope you’ll find Leon un-gives up again.’

I shake my head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

‘Have faith, Tiffy. After all, isn’t that what you’re asking from him?’

Move between wards like I’m haunting the place. Should I be able to focus enough to take blood from a vein when even breathing feels like an effort? It’s easy, though — blissfully routine. Here’s something I can do. Leon, Charge Nurse, quiet but reliable.

Notice after a few hours that I’m circling Coral Ward. Dodging it.

Mr Prior’s there, dying.

Eventually the junior doctor on shift says a morphine dose on Coral Ward needs countersigning. So. No more hiding. Off I go. White-grey corridors, bare and scratched, and I know every inch of them, maybe better than the walls of my own flat.

Pause. There’s a man in a brown suit outside the ward, forearms on knees, staring at the floor. Odd to see someone here at this time of the morning — no visitors on the night shift. He’s very old, white-haired. Familiar.

I know that posture: that’s the posture of a man Mustering Courage. I’ve struck that pose enough times outside prison visiting halls to know how it looks.