With every box that was emptied and folded up, her flat had become lighter, and so had she. For the first time in her life, Gina felt absolutely no desire to fill the spaces that emerged around her. Instead she enjoyed arranging the few objects she’d kept, looking at them properly in different places. There was room for her to spread the Sunday papers on the floor and read them at leisure while the sun streamed in through the picture window and Buzz snored raspily in his basket.
But the final box didn’t contain anything very interesting. It was marked ‘spare room’ and it was stuffed with the random contents of the chest of drawers in their second guest bedroom. Old ripped jeans, odd socks, T-shirts ‘for painting in’, and Stuart’s work shirts with worn collars that she’d always meant to learn how to mend. Not even a forgotten tenner in the pockets.
Gina tipped the lot into a black bin liner and took it down to the fabric recycling bank by the supermarket. And she didn’t have a moment’s regret about it – which, she realised on her way back, was the mystical sign she’d been looking for.
She’d discovered an ability to throw things away.
Her original plan, back in the grey days of February, had been to finish the unpacking by her birthday on 2nd May, but as it turned out, she’d done it with ten days to spare. Admittedly, there were a few racks of clothes that Naomi was supposed to be helping her to sell, and she knew she had to do a second, more ruthless edit of her wardrobe, but the wall that had once been blocked with boxes was now cleared, and decorated with her growing list of a hundred things, and the Polaroids she was taking. The spiderweb of words and images looked so good that Gina wasn’t even sure she wanted to buy a big picture to hang there.
A Hundred Pieces of Me by Gina Bellamy.
• Buzz lying paws up in the sun.
• The misty view from the top of the park first thing in the morning.
• White ducks on the dark river.
• An early morning bacon sandwich.
• My silver pedicure.
• The soft lilac blanket from the household shop on the high street folded over the foot of the bed.
• A blurry photo taken while jumping around the flat to ‘Jump’ by House of Pain – it was supposed to represent dancing but she wasn’t sure if it worked. Gina liked it, though. She liked the experimentation of it.
Instead of buying things to fill her flat, Gina was now obsessed with the square photos and their white borders. The Polaroid camera went everywhere with her. It had the weird effect of making her look for moments of happiness instead of waiting for them to happen. Three scarlet ladybirds on a green leaf by the river reminded her of the sun on her hair, and the secret dark green smell of the overgrown foliage as she and Buzz brushed past; a moment she’d never have noticed without Buzz or the camera.
There were forty-two photos on her wall. The forty-third, she hoped, would be of her birthday cake, because this birthday was going to be her best, even if she had to spend it alone.
In fact, maybe that was the whole point.
Gina’s birthday present to herself was a day off work, and the three things that always made her happy: an early morning walk, lunch with her friends, and a really big cake from the deli.
Buzz’s present was a longer-than-usual trot, all the way round the towpath past Gina’s office and up through the Georgian streets of Longhampton towards the park, where the cherry blossom was cascading sugary petals over the wrought-iron gates of the gardens and the lilacs created an avenue of pale scent as she walked in.
Gina stopped for a moment to enjoy the explosion of pale pink, the sun filtering through it, and fixed it in her mind as a possible colour scheme in the flat. One bedroom wall could be that pale pink. She could do that every year, just for cherry-blossom time, where the sunlight would catch it. And it could be gold for Christmas, Aegean blue in August. Anything she liked.
She was still turning colours over in her mind’s eye as she returned to the flat to get things ready for her little lunch party. Naomi had taken the day off too and was coming over with Willow, as was Rachel. She wanted to thank them, as much as anything, for getting her through the last months: with all the fairweather friends the divorce had weeded out, she was even more grateful for the ones who remained.
There was only a brief moment when Gina opened the front door to find just two birthday cards – from her mum and from an ex-work colleague who’d shared the same birthday as her – that she felt the weight of making her birthday special for herself, just like she now had to make everything special on her own, but even that evaporated when Willow burst through the door an hour or so later, followed by Naomi bearing even more bags than usual and, more or less at the same time, Rachel.
Naomi gave her an indulgent night cream (‘face it, we’re getting on’), and Willow had made Gina another mug with her handprint on it, a bigger one this year.
‘You have to use it.’ Naomi wrestled it off Gina, and poured tea into it immediately. ‘No sticking it in a cupboard or on display. If it breaks, we’ll make you another.’
‘Of course,’ said Gina. ‘Even if I had a cupboard to stick it in, I wouldn’t. I’m all about the using.’
Rachel brought wine and flowers and an embroidered martingale collar for Buzz ‘from the girls in the shop’, which again Gina put around his muscular neck as soon as it was unwrapped. There was a brass disc attached to it, ready for a name, and it was seeing the blank surface where an owner’s details should be that nudged Gina into a decision she’d been toying with for a few days.
She looked up from where she was crouching by Buzz’s side. ‘Rachel, there’s something I wanted to ask. About Buzz.’
Rachel paused, chocolate cake halfway to her mouth. ‘If it’s medical, ask George. I know about as much as you do.’
‘No, it’s about his foster place.’ Gina took a deep breath and leaped into the first big decision of her new year. ‘I want to adopt him,’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking about it, and he likes it here, and I can’t bear the thought of him having to adapt to another person now. Do I . . . need a licence or some sort of formal . . . whatever?’
Rachel put her plate down and clapped her hands in delight. ‘No! Oh, wait, you need a formal home check.’ She pretended to look around the room, under the sofa, behind a giggling Willow. ‘Any cats . . . any dangerous hobbies . . . any wild animals? No, this seems to be the perfect home. Congratulations, I now pronounce you owner and dog.’
Naomi clapped Willow’s hands together and they cheered on the sofa.
Gina’s heart expanded with happiness and she slipped an arm around Buzz’s barrel chest, wondering if he could tell what had just happened. He leaned against her. ‘What about an adoption fee?’
‘Nah.’ Rachel waved an airy hand. ‘Do you have any idea how much your donations have raised in the shop? Way more than we’d charge you. Consider it our gift to you, in return for your gifts to us.’
‘Oh, I like that,’ said Naomi. ‘It’s a karma balance. Happy birthday!’
‘Smiling doggy!’ said Willow, pointing at Buzz.
Gina looked: his top lip was pulled back from his gappy teeth in something very near a smile. But the real smile seemed to be shining from Buzz’s dark eyes as he looked straight back at her, and the trust she saw in them made her own eyes fill. From now on this is your birthday too, she thought, wishing the words into his graceful head. The day your life with me started.
With Willow playing on the big chair, while Buzz watched her from a safe distance, Rachel and Naomi chatting on the sofa, Gina’s flat felt small but full of life. It didn’t take much, she realised. You didn’t need lots of friends, just good ones.
She took the Polaroid camera out of her bag and quietly snapped the scene: her new friend, her best friend, her goddaughter, her dog, her birthday cake, her flat. Having a lovely time, filling her home with their friendship.
When the print developed, Gina wrote ‘Happy Birthday to Me!’ on the white border, and went to sti
ck it to the wall. Right in the middle of the collage.
After they’d left, Gina was putting the plates in the dishwasher when the intercom bell rang. Thinking it must be Rachel or Naomi coming back for something, she pressed the button. ‘What did you forget?’
‘Gina? It’s me,’ said a man’s voice. ‘Can I come up?’
It was Stuart.
Gina felt a clench of resistance. She hadn’t spoken to Stuart since his surprise appearance at the Hewsons’ party. Rory was handling the financial paperwork, and though she’d just about got her head around the fact of the baby, Gina didn’t want to Stuart to spoil the gentle warmth of her birthday mood with some thoughtless request for yet another forgotten wedding gift, or worse, some sort of ham-fisted apology.
‘I’m just about to go out,’ she lied.
‘Won’t take a minute.’
Come on, Gina. Don’t be churlish.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘One minute.’
‘Really one minute,’ she told Buzz, as Stuart’s feet thudded up the stairs at a run. ‘Then we’ll take some cake to Nick. Good reason to go out.’
Buzz’s ears twitched forward, then back again, but instead of skittering into the kitchen as he would have done a few weeks ago, he lay down by her feet, eyes fixed on the door.
When the knock came, Gina took a deep breath and opened it.
‘Happy birthday,’ said Stuart. He was holding a bunch of flowers – a carefully non-romantic selection from M&S. The lilies were balanced with several ornamental thistles. ‘I was going to leave these, but since you’re in . . . I can say happy birthday in person.’
‘Thanks for remembering. It’s sweet of you to take the afternoon off work to drop them off,’ she said, trying to be light.
He looked awkward. ‘We’re, um, on our way to the hospital, actually. Check-up.’
‘Oh.’ She must have flinched, because Stuart seemed to check himself
‘They’re apology flowers too, to be honest. I wanted to say sorry,’ he went on. ‘About turning up at Jason and Naomi’s the other weekend. We shouldn’t have done that, not without warning you.’
‘You’re Jason’s friend too,’ Gina started, but he held up a hand to stop her.
‘No, it was stupid. I shouldn’t have brought Bryony. I don’t know what I was thinking. We were on our way back from her mum’s, and I suppose I just thought, maybe if you met her, we could just, I don’t know, have a beer and . . .’ Stuart’s voice trailed off, and he shrugged at the ridiculousness of what he’d just said. ‘I’m sorry.’
It was because he was happy, Gina realised. He was in that blissed-out state where nothing outside his bubble registered. Stuart had been a bit useless at anticipating other people’s feelings at the best of times; he wasn’t malicious, just a bit . . . unimaginative.
‘Should I take it as a compliment that you thought I’d be fine about being ambushed by your pregnant girlfriend?’ she said, and it didn’t come out as jokily as she’d meant it to.
Stuart’s eyes searched her face, trying to work out how sarcastic she was being. ‘Well, yeah. To be honest. You seemed almost relieved when we decided to split. I thought you’d be, like, fair enough. I didn’t want him. I thought you might be glad that someone else did.’
‘That’s what you thought?’ It amazed Gina how much more observant she was about Stuart’s personality now they’d split up. He really did decide how things should be, and then set about making them fit into that view. It was just that she’d always been happy to make herself fit; she didn’t have to do that anymore.
‘Yes! Come on, you were barely talking to me at the end.’ Stuart raised his palms, as if she were being unreasonable. ‘I couldn’t say anything right. It was like you were determined to find a problem with everything I said. And, for what it’s worth, Bryony and I didn’t plan this baby. It just happened. But I’m glad it did. It forced us all to move on. We could have stayed like that for ever. At least this way we’ve both got a chance to start something new.’
Anger bubbled inside Gina, a knee-jerk resentment at his criticism, but it didn’t stick. Underneath the voice of reason pointed out that he was right. They could have stayed in limbo for years, each needling the other to do something bad enough to break up over. What kind of victory was that?
It was easier to hate Stuart when he was a curt text or a four-page legal demand. When he was just decent, familiar Stuart standing in front of her, the world’s most awkward love rat, she couldn’t. Gina looked at him, and his awful new beard, and his half-excited, half-terrified demeanour and couldn’t be angry any more.
There had been good times for her and Stuart – the way he’d looked after her when she’d been ill, for one thing. The happy hours they’d had renovating the house, the weekends away. It would be childish to ignore that, to justify the way it had ended. She’d been lucky that he’d been there for her when she’d needed someone reliable and solid.
I’m not even angry with him for cheating, thought Gina. I’m angry with myself for not loving him enough. And what’s the point in that? Why regret what you can’t change now?
Stuart was braced for her response, and at the sight of his apprehension, the fight went out of her. Something in his face reminded her of Buzz. He was expecting her to be cruel, when he used to look at her with adoration. ‘The wife’, he’d loved calling her. Half joking, half not.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
He was thrown. ‘You’re sorry?’
‘I’m sorry that it didn’t work out.’ Gina swallowed. ‘I’m sorry you had to live through a complete nightmare with my cancer, and I never really said thank you.’
‘What? You don’t need to thank me for that.’ Stuart seemed bemused. ‘What else was I going to do? I loved you. I hated watching you suffer. It did my head in. If anything . . .’ He frowned, then rolled his eyes. ‘What the hell? It needs to be said. I always felt guilty that I didn’t spot it before.’
‘Now that’s ridiculous! If I didn’t notice, how could you?’
‘I should have felt . . .’
‘Don’t.’ Gina raised her hands: this was what had wound her up all those years, his determination to take charge. ‘It was my body. I should have noticed something wasn’t right.’
‘Does it matter now?’ From the expression on his face, Stuart wasn’t just talking about the cancer.
‘No.’ She tried to smile. Her emotions were blurring. ‘We did our best. I hope you’ll be happy. I hope you’ll make each other happy. With . . . with the new baby and everything.’
‘Thanks. I appreciate that.’ Stuart squeezed his forehead, as if trying to rub out a headache. ‘I’m just sorry if . . . You said I wasted your time. I’m sorry if I did. I hope you haven’t wasted it.’
‘It was your time too,’ she said. ‘And it wasn’t wasted. Everything gets us to where we are now, right?’
She stretched out her hands. Stuart took them, folding them in his own, and gazed into her face as if he was looking for traces of what they’d once seen in each other. For a second, Gina caught a glimpse of the Stuart she’d first fancied at Naomi’s party: a twenty-something football hero with nice jeans, no chat-up lines, and denim-blue eyes that would make him a handsome old man.
He squeezed her fingers. She recognised the old tenderness, and then it was gone, their history, slipping under the waters like a stone.
‘Can you be sad and happy at the same time?’ she said, her voice cracking.
‘Dunno,’ said Stuart. ‘I’m not as good with words as you are. Come here.’
They stood and hugged goodbye without calling it that, and Gina felt lightness shiver through her, the same lightness she felt when she walked into her airy, empty flat at the end of a long day.
Thirty-four. This was what grown-up felt like. It wasn’t so bad.
It had just gone three o’clock when Gina drove out to Langley St Michael and her mood lifted with every song the local station played. The sun was shining enough to warrant s
unglasses for driving, she had half of the enormous birthday cake in a tin, and her dog – her very own, very first dog – was harnessed to the back seat of her car, pointy nose lifted to the gap in the window, eyes closed in sheer bliss.
There had been no comeback as yet from the detailed email Gina had sent Amanda in response to some of the queries she’d raised in her Skype conference, mainly about the roof and the letting issue. She’d been over several times since the power-cut night to liaise with Lorcan about various building schedules, and Nick had seemed fine when she’d called in. Friendly, cheerful. Just as normal, in fact. But, then, she’d been deliberately normal too.
Gina wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or slightly disappointed. Relieved, she decided. Just about.
Nick was sitting out in the rear courtyard with Lorcan, his two lads and the roofers when she pulled into the circular drive. They’d obviously knocked off for the day, and were enjoying a cold drink in the sun.
‘Hey!’ Nick raised a can of Coke to her. ‘Come and join us!’
‘Half three? You’ve finished early, Lorcan.’ Gina made a show of checking her watch. ‘What time do you call this?’
‘It’s Friday. We’ve finished those joists and we’re waiting on the new lead. No point starting the next phase till Monday now.’
‘Slacking.’ Gina pretended to sigh. ‘And you’re encouraging them, Nick. What can I say? Don’t let them bill you for a full day. Have they tidied up?’
‘This is what you pay her for.’ Lorcan looked amused. ‘The whip-cracking.’
‘And she’s very good at it. Except I can’t help noticing she’s very late herself.’ Nick squinted up into the sun.
‘This is my day off, I’ll have you know. I only came to bring you a bit of birthday cake.’
‘Ah, that’s more like it,’ said Lorcan, as Gina put the cake-tin down on the wall next to them and started cutting slices.
‘It’s your birthday?’ said Nick. ‘You didn’t say!’