Time Out by Emma Murray

Author:Emma Murray [Murray, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boldwood Books

13

It’s 10 a.m. on Monday and while I’m grateful my hangover is gone, I still wake up feeling tired and low. My mind is full of Jen. Jen and I doing ‘knick knacks’ (knocking on doors and running away) at an age where we really should have known better; Jen using free make-up samples in The Body Shop to try out different shades of lipstick on me; or Jen and I drinking ‘Fisherman’s Fuck’ (a concoction made up of a lethal mix of measures of alcohol sneaked from our parents’ supplies) on the local green, and then vomiting in miserable synchronisation directly afterwards.

Staring at the ceiling, I think hard about the last time I spent some proper time with Jen. It must have been over four years ago. I was six months pregnant with Anna at the time and Jen had flown over from Dublin to London and taken me shopping for maternity clothes, so I would no longer look like ‘a fat bag lady’, as she put it. I smile at the memory. It was always handy to have a personal shopper for a best friend.

A text from Maria, Bea’s nanny, pops up. It’s a photo of Harry and Anna at the local park, each sitting on a swing, both making the types of silly faces that would never make it to a Facebook post. Seeing Anna so happy makes me feel more relieved than I ever imagined.

I reach over for the remote control and press the button to raise the blinds. Might as well get up and start the day.

As the blinds inch their way up from the ground, I am not remotely surprised to see a pair of pale pink runners, attached to pale calves and then as it rises further, two knobbly knees, followed by white baggy shorts, a green polo shirt, and finally Kitty’s upturned mouth and raised eyebrows. She shakes her rolled-up swimming towel at me and makes an impatient ‘come on’ gesture. I wait for the click of the blind as it reaches the ceiling before flinging my legs out of bed, and stomping over to the window, fully armed with a gesture of my own for Kitty. But then I think about David’s affair and how much I miss Anna, and Jen’s heartbreak… and I turn to Kitty and give her a reluctant thumbs up. What I have got to lose?

Before I can chicken out, I hurriedly put on my swimsuit (which, now I come to think of it, Bea had told me to bring) with a heavy-cotton beach dress over it, grab a towel from the bathroom, and take off my wedding and engagement rings. I feel a flash of pain when I see the bare, lonely ring imprint on my left hand, but as cross as I am with David, I hate the thought of losing those rings to the crashing Irish Sea. I leave the rings on the bedside table and march out the patio doors in the kitchen, determined not to let David’s indiscretions get me down.

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