Finding Home by Lauren Westwood Page B

niece undressed like the page 3 girl flashes into my head. We arrive at All Bar One and push our way through the crowd to an empty table. Claire continues her rant. ‘We all thought he’d go crawling back to his wife. But instead, he bought a Porsche and a swish flat with home cinema, sauna and gym – the works. To hear him talk, he’s probably got a round vinyl bed with a fur coverlet and a harem of models popping out from underneath.’
    I shake my head. Alistair must be ten years older than Simon, but the mid-life-crisis mentality is the same.
    â€˜The only one who’s got any time for AB-K is Patricia,’ Claire adds. ‘She’s fancied him for years now. And naturally, she’s the only one he’s never looked twice at. Anything else female has to put up with the odd roving glance here and there, not to mention the sexist digs.’
    â€˜Yes, I’ve noticed.’
    â€˜Well, it’s a living,’ she says. We sigh in unison.
    Claire offers to buy the first round. While I wait for her to return with my glass of Rioja, I look around at the bustling throng of young professionals in suits, most of whom would not have been out of place in London. It’s a far cry from the long hair, torn jeans and Che Guevara T-shirt crowd I’d grown used to spending Friday evenings with at the ‘Hand and Shears’ near the college. Suddenly, I begin to feel lonely. I had lots of friends in London, though most of them were ‘couple friends’ of Simon and me. When I left him behind, I left them behind too. Should I have given up my entire life just to end up here?
    Luckily, Claire comes back quickly with the drinks (making me feel instantly guilty when I note that she’s only drinking Coke). We settle easily into conversation. She regales me with more stories of AB-K, Jonathan, and the Ghost of Christmas Parties Past. I ask her about her barrister course and tell her about my time at UCL. I get the next round (Cokes for both of us), and end up telling her about Simon. I tell her about the flat that I went to view that seemed so perfect, and the cruel revelation that it might have really been perfect – for Simon and Ashley, not me.
    â€˜And did they end up buying it?’
    I rake my fingers through my hair. ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Everything happened so quickly.’ Solemnly, I reveal my great shame – the thrown mobile phone and getting sacked from my job. I recount how I’d tried to talk to Simon when I went back to the flat in Docklands one last time to collect my things – still hoping against all hope that he would tell me that I’d somehow misinterpreted what I’d seen. He didn’t – and I hadn’t. He did tell me, however, that that the only reason he’d ever thought of looking at flats was because of the text messages from estate agents that I’d signed him up for.
    When I’ve finished my lament, to my surprise, Claire laughs with unrestrained delight. ‘That’s a brilliant story!’ she says. ‘And sounds like it was completely worth it. You’re lucky, you know.’
    â€˜Lucky?’
    â€˜Just think – a new start. New home, new job…’
    â€˜Well I don’t know. It still feels so unreal.’
    Claire launches into an account of her own woes: specifically her husband, who can’t understand why she doesn’t want to live in Birmingham – in a 3-bedroom semi- with his extended family from Goa. ‘I only see him on weekends,’ she says, a bit sadly. ‘Maybe someday when I’ve made it as a barrister I’ll be able to buy one of these trillion-pound properties we’re supposed to be shifting every day of the week. An “exclusive executive retreat” – or something. Then we can stick his family in an annexe and Atul will have his dad back.’
    â€˜Let’s hope so.’ I feel bad that her situation