A Hundred Pieces of Me by Lucy Dillon Page A

couldn’t resist. They were like postcards, keeping a reminder of happy times in her everyday life: the ‘I ª NY’ mug from her first trip there with Naomi, the Oxford University mug, the Love and Kisses cup that had been her first Valentine’s present from Stuart. Echoes of her old life that were too personal to spot, unwanted, on the shelves in the Oxfam shop but too personal to keep in her new flat, reminding her of what she’d lost.
    Gina lined them up in the crockery cupboard, and stood back. To her surprise, they already felt a bit less personal. They looked . . . random. She frowned. A bit ugly.
    As she stared at their jarring colours and slogans, something slowly loosened its grip on her heart. Once David had made his newest client a coffee in the ‘I ª NY’ mug, she wouldn’t own it any more. It wouldn’t mean she and Naomi hadn’t been there, that they hadn’t clutched each other in fits of giggles at the gusts of hot air from the subway, and at the fire hydrants and yellow cabs, everything just like the movies. Gina remembered the giddiness of that long weekend with a sudden pang; there’d never be another trip like the ones she and Naomi had made in their carefree, careless twenties. That time had gone.
    There was a commotion outside the kitchen window as a man and his dog jogged past on the towpath. The little white terrier set the ducks quacking on the canal, its joyful barks ricocheting off the red-brick walls.
    Gina peered out to check her duck family were OK, and when she turned back to the cupboard, it was as if the mugs had always been there in the office. A collection of random office mugs. Familiar, friendly. Someone else’s. She took a deep breath, and felt another piece of her past floating away. She wouldn’t miss this one.
    The faint lightness of a good mood crept around her, as she pinned her list of kitchen gadgets for sale (most of her wedding list) to the noticeboard, then went upstairs to start the first Monday of her new life.
     
    The morning sun streamed in an uplifting lemony wash through the tall warehouse window on the landing, but there were only four letters and a lot of junk mail in the pigeonhole outside her door, which put a dampener on Gina’s mood.
    She was trying not to worry but January had been quiet. There’d been the usual burst of activity before Christmas, mainly wives calling her at the end of their tether, determined to get unfinished DIY projects tidied away before the family arrived, but apart from some conversations about a listed-building renovation in Rosehill that sounded problematic already, Gina didn’t have much lined up. She hadn’t had the energy to chase leads as she’d done in the autumn, when work was the only thing that blotted out the growing sense of impending doom that swamped her the second she put her key in the door at Dryden Road at the end of each day. So far Gina’s diary for February contained only the pencilled dates of her meetings with her solicitor, and a project Naomi had commissioned before Christmas – a timber outhouse for their garden that would be half a playhouse for Willow and half a man-house for Jason, their joint birthday present in April. The file on that was already half as thick as a finished project, thanks to Naomi’s very specific instructions.
    Gina sorted through her in-tray, filed her receipts for the previous week, then turned to the paperwork she’d brought from home. There were some letters that were better dealt with here than in her new place. She had started to feel quite protective of her fresh white nest, and its growing clear spaces.
    The envelope was franked with the name of the other big firm of solicitors in Longhampton, the one she wasn’t using. Gina took a deep breath and opened it. It ran to several pages, three of which were checklists. Stuart, it seemed, had changed his mind about ‘keeping things amicable’ and was now going for the sort of forensic examination of their joint