The Black Dress by Deborah Moggach

Author:Deborah Moggach
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Seven

A week passed and I heard nothing from Calvin. When my mobile pinged it was British Gas telling me my payment was due. I relapsed into my old slovenly ways. It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. What rubbish. Better never to have met Calvin in the first place. I actually felt envious of my previous state of loneliness and despair. At least I could rely on being permanently depressed. Calvin, however, had given me an intoxicating vision of hope for the future. How foolish I’d been, to think I could replace his beautiful wife!

He’d gone for good. I suspected he was a bolter. He was certainly spontaneous—grabbing my hand in the dentist’s surgery, let’s get out of here. Pulling me out of bed at midnight to speed off to a Lebanese restaurant. Tipping a car off a cliff.

Well, now he’d spontaneously upped and gone. He’d left no trace. Even his sweetener was thrown away. My timid dreams of our living together had evaporated. And Pam had reclaimed me.

I didn’t have the energy to resist. And there was a curdled sort of satisfaction in our mutual bitching about Calvin. My confession had loosened things between us. It had certainly encouraged Pam to speak her mind.

‘I never liked the look of him,’ she said. ‘The way he strutted around with his chest stuck out. And that little tuft of hair sticking out of the back of his baseball cap, didn’t you find that annoying? And how did he get a resident’s permit, perchance? There’s regulations about that. Something dodgy going on, if you ask me.’

We were sitting in the tea-shop at the local garden centre. Pam had hinted that my front garden was letting down the street. Not in so many words, of course. ‘You’d feel so much better if you tidied it up,’ she’d said. ‘I’ll go with you. I need some pelargoniums for my patio.’ I was too weak to resist. Besides, I had a car.

I was feeling particularly wretched that day. It was early June, the cruellest month. The young leaves on my neighbour’s beech hedge made me want to cry—so soft and downy, like a child’s skin. It had been a year since I’d last seen Greg, the harebells dancing around our feet. I missed him as much as I missed Calvin. I missed the density of living with somebody else. And is anywhere more depressing than the tea-room in a garden centre? Muzak tinkled as Pam passed me a cupcake. Around us were displays of pastel shirtwaisters, scented candles, trickling fountain features and ceramic blue tits. I wanted to die.

‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘It was hopeless from the start. I’m just terrified of being alone.’

Pam munched her cupcake. ‘You’ve got me.’ She flattened the paper wrapper onto her plate, smoothing it down with her finger. ‘Men aren’t the full shilling, are they, pet? I had a fiancé many moons ago—Teddy—but once he’d put the ring on my finger it all went pear-shaped.

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