Just Got Real by Jane Fallon

Author:Jane Fallon [Fallon, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405951128
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2022-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

27

He doesn’t bring it up again all evening, probably because he’s worried he’s pushed too hard already. They sit outside finishing the wine as it grows dark and the fairy lights start to glow. Tiny bats fly above their heads. A skinny fox stops, startled to see them there, and then turns and runs into the undergrowth. Thankfully Ant is in a garrulous mood, so Joni doesn’t have to think too hard to find things to talk about, she just lets him hold court and adds the occasional ‘Mmm’. She leans her head back in her chair as if she’s soaking up the warm evening, the food, the wine, and not simply avoiding conversation. Later she finds she enjoys the sex by divorcing the act from the man in her head. Focusing purely on the physical and not the emotional. As if they’re friends with benefits, except that they’re not even friends any more. Acquaintances with benefits. Two people who aren’t who they say they are. With benefits.

She actually sleeps well, despite everything. Maybe her body understands she needs the night to be over as quickly as possible. She only stirs when Ant brings her a cup of tea and tells her he’s leaving.

She drags herself upstairs and fishes her phone out of the coffee-table drawer. There’s a message from Mary: Unbelievable! What did you say?

That I’d think about it, Joni replies now. I need to string him along for a bit while we decide what to do.

A few minutes later there’s another, this time addressed to both her and Saffy: Would you like to come over on Tuesday evening? I can cook us a meal and we can talk about what happens next? Joni assumes that Saffy will have plans already. That her bulging social calendar will be filled this late in the day, so she’s surprised when there’s an immediate response: I’m up for it.

Me too, Joni finds herself writing before she can stop herself. I can get there about 6.45. OK?

She adds up figures, she checks payments, she signs off on payroll. She eats her lunch from the fridge sitting at her desk with a fan blowing gently in her direction. She passes the odd pleasantry with a colleague she bumps into in the kitchen as she makes herself a coffee or washes her hands at the sink in the toilets. Do anything nice at the weekend? How’s your mum? Hot today, isn’t it? The day drags on.

Just before she leaves she remembers the unopened Amazon package she stuffed in her bag as she left home this morning. She opens it and finds the kitten and the unicorn, both more hideous than she remembers. She unpacks every one of Lucas’s figures from the drawer and places them in a line along the front of the desk. Finds one – Batman – who has movable joints and arranges him at the front of the queue in a prone position as if kneeling to a god. Head down, arms outstretched.

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