And when we have finished the leaflets I pull my diary from my bag and rip out a clean page, and we write down the places Si is going to contact this afternoon when he leaves me, the support centres he will visit, the places he will turn to for help.
‘Doubtless the doctor at the clinic will go through all of this with me next week,’ he sighs at one point, but I ignore him because I can see that this is helping, to actually do something practical, to make a list, and even if it is not helping Si, it is helping me.
Eventually we leave and Si drops me off. I practically beg him to let me come over in the evening, but he says he will be fine.
‘You won’t do… well… you know…’ I can’t help but ask the question.
‘Anything stupid?’ he says, grinning. ‘No, Cath. I’m fine. Well, I’m not, but I’m certainly not unfine enough to down a bottle of paracetamol, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘Will you ring me later?’
He nods. ‘And sweets? I don’t know how to tell Josh and Lucy. I know I have to, but I need to do it in my own time, in my own way. Is that okay?’
‘God, yes!’ I’m mortified that he thinks I would take it upon myself to tell them, almost as if this were mere gossip.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you, my love. Listen, I’m going to go home and run a nice hot bath, and I promise I’ll ring you afterwards.’
He does ring, and he says that after he dropped me off he took the long route home, via a bookshop – not, obviously Bookends, as he couldn’t face seeing Lucy – and picked up some books about HIV and AIDS, and is planning to curl up for the rest of the afternoon and read them.
I do the same thing in my flat. I curl up on the sofa and open a novel I’ve been meaning to read for weeks. I scan the first page, desperate for some form of escapism, desperate for something to take me out of myself, but every time I reach the bottom of page four I realize I haven’t got a clue what I’ve just read, and I have to start all over again.
Eventually I put the book down and run a bath myself, wondering how I’m going to kill the hours before bedtime, wishing today had never happened, wishing I could have a Groundhog Day experience, relive today, make everything normal again.
I do manage to kill some of the hours before bedtime. Some, but not all. I speak to Si a couple more times and he sounds fine, says he’s going to have an early night, a quiet night, give himself time to digest everything.
But I can’t sleep, and when, at twenty past one in the morning, the phone rings, it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest, and I pick up the phone to hear jagged sobs at the other end.
‘Ssh, ssh.’ I try to soothe, feeling Si’s pain as if it were my own.
‘I don’t want this to be happening,’ he sobs, his voice blurred with alcohol. ‘Why is this happening to me? What have I ever done? Why me?’
‘I’m coming over,’ I say, and, without giving him the time to say no, I pull a coat over my pyjamas, shove my feet into boots, grab my car keys, and I’m out the door.
Six minutes later I’m on his doorstep, and he opens the door, his T-shirt wet with tears, his face puffy and blotchy, hiccuping as he tries to stop crying, and I put my arms around him and start crying too.
I stay the night, although we don’t really sleep. We sit up, still talking, still trying to make sense of it all, and eventually, at around seven, we both fall asleep on the sofa.
Obviously I can’t go into work the next day. Lucy offers to come round in the evening with home-made tomato soup and Lemsips, but I tell her that whatever this flu-thing is, it’s probably contagious and I’ll be fine.
I spend the morning with Si, and he phones the hospital and makes an appointment with a counsellor for that afternoon. This time, he says, he wants to go alone.
I manage to make some headway with my novel, but by early afternoon I feel so guilty about leaving Lucy in the lurch, that I consider walking up to Bookends.
Then again, how on earth would I have made a miraculous recovery in so short a time? I decide to phone instead, and when Lucy comes to the phone I’m astonished by the exuberance in her voice.
‘Darling Cath! We are worried about you. Rachel says take lots of echinacea. Tell me you’re feeling better? Have you dosed yourself up with lots of ghastly lotions and potions?’
‘Yes, and I’m feeling much better, even though I hardly slept last night. How is everything in the shop today? You sound positively ecstatic.’
And Lucy, bless her, drops her voice and I can almost see her bringing the phone up to her mouth as she checks that no one’s listening. ‘Actually, I didn’t sleep much myself last night,’ and her voice is positively purring.
‘Lucy! You didn’t! You and Josh? SEX?’, at which Lucy giggles.
‘God, Lucy! That’s amazing! No wonder you sound ecstatic. How was it, or need I ask?’
Lucy sighs with pleasure at the memory. ‘Oh, Cath, it was so lovely. So unexpected and so, so lovely.’
She tells me that Josh had been just like his old self all day yesterday. That getting together as a gang to have our regular Sunday lunch seemed to have somehow brought them back together again, reminded them of how things used to be before she opened the shop.
They went home last night and Ingrid went out, as she always does these days, and Max went to bed, as he rarely ever does, and, instead of burying himself in a pile of paperwork in his study, Josh opened a bottle of wine and sat down at the kitchen table to talk.
And they found themselves laughing together over some silly story Lucy was telling, and Josh put the dishes in the dishwasher after supper and then stood behind Lucy as she finished clearing the table, put his arms around her and gently kissed the nape of her neck, ‘Which,’ she said guiltily, ‘always turns me to jelly.’
And that, as they say, was that, but God, what a pleasure it is to hear Lucy laughing again. It is a welcome and uplifting distraction, and what a relief to know that whatever was going on between Josh and Portia must surely now be over.
‘Oh, Cath,’ Lucy sighs. ‘I feel that everything’s back to normal. It’s all been so upside down for so long, but now I’ve got this lovely feeling that life is back on track. Now, sweet Cath, to change the subject entirely, or rather to get back to the original subject, what is happening with the lovely James?’
I don’t know where to start. ‘You know how some things are just meant to be?’
‘Yes?’ She is eager, expectant.
‘This, unfortunately, isn’t one of them.’
‘But that can’t be true. What on earth makes you say that?’
‘Every time we try and get it together, something happens to pull us apart, and I can’t help but feel that this just isn’t meant to be. And God knows I’m happy enough on my own, so maybe this is how I’m supposed to carry on.’
‘Nope.’ She is determined. ‘I refuse to accept that as a reasonable answer. If things keep going horribly wrong when James invites you for dinner, why don’t you try to reverse your luck by inviting him?’
‘What?’
‘Make dinner for him. Every man adores a home-cooked meal.’
‘Even when it’s burnt scrambled eggs?’ The thought of cooking fills me with horror.
Lucy laughs. ‘No, my sweet, I shall cook for you both and he’ll never have to know. I’ll make a delicious meal and drop it off at your house. You can pass it off as your own. And who knows, if you get lucky I won’t even have to worry about afters.’ This last word said with a chuckle and probably a leer.