Page 35 of Mad About You

At Cal’s suggestion, they carried their bottle of white to the picnic table in the garden. The steamy atmosphere on a late summer evening was unexpectedly potent and her senses were heightened by the last half hour’s ordeal.

Cal was dressed like Tom Hiddleston inThe Night Manager(she’d overheard this ridicule from Sam – ‘I’d not let you manage my night’ – and liked it): pale-blue linen shirt with rolled-up sleeves and now, sunglasses. The effect was only enhanced by the way he looked like he’d been roughed up by spy drama heavies.

As Harriet sat down, she took it all in: bees buzzing groggily in the flowers as the light faded, the scent of honeysuckle, the damp, muggy air, fairy lights glowing amber like fireflies as the solar power kicked in. She was enjoying her fridge-cold glass of Chenin Blanc more than any wine she could remember. Cal had upended a bag of crisps into a bowl, and Harriet was struck by the endearing idea he had unselfconsciously copied a parental habit.

‘After I’ve been beaten up, I always like to reflect with wine and Waitrose nibbles,’ Cal said, as he moved the bowltowards her. ‘A thrashing, and a finger savoury. A perfect Sunday.’

Harriet smiled into her wine. He talked like someone who read and wrote a lot.

‘Is this the right flavour pairing?’ Harriet said. ‘I’m a wine-crisp sommelier. Like, a hearty beef crisp goes with a robust red.’

‘Ready salted and …’ he consulted the bottle’s label, ‘floral aromas, assertive apple and pear.’

‘Ideal.’

‘You seem to have taken it in your stride,’ she said, gesturing to his face while taking a crisp.

‘I haven’t been hit like that since one time at school, and it turns out my survival mechanism is the same: hope they don’t do it again.’

Cal had a very sophisticated form of confidence, Harriet thought, the kind where it can play dress-up as qualities such as self-deprecation, and vulnerability. You needed to be pretty sure of yourself to have sailed through the last half hour with no apparent fear, combativeness, embarrassment or bravado.

‘Do you mind me giving you some unasked-for advice?’ Cal said after a pause.

‘I can’t really say no, while gazing upon your ruined face,’ Harriet said, taking another crisp.Mmm, crisps.

‘There’s no chance of you and Jon getting back together, right?’ Cal said.

Harriet crunched, and shuddered. ‘Uh, no. There wasn’t before tonight.’ She conjured up a Lorna-ism. ‘I would rather eat aquarium gravel.’

Cal laughed, then wiped at his face, serious again. ‘Tell him that, once and for all. Maybe not the gravel part. It’s nice, you caring about whether he has his phone on him to get home. But trust me, someone in that state is clinging to anything as hope that there’s still a way. Cut him off. Don’t even politely entertain any further bullshit.’

Harriet frowned. ‘But I’ve moved out? He surely knew that we were over.’

‘He’s ranting on about fighting for you, so no, I don’t think he does.’

‘I feel like such a shit for hurting him so much, is the problem.’

‘Yes, and I’m afraid he knows that. That’s the weakness he’ll exploit, your guilt. But you asserting yourself doesn’t make you cruel.’

Harriet nodded, writhing slightly. It was hard to imagine a less-appropriate relationship advice coach. (And surely this was the moment he should tell her to leave – he hadn’t wanted her here since Sam’s reveal and now she’d given him a solid reason for booting her out? She wondered if he felt too guilty, now he’d got a look at who she’d left.)

Nevertheless, cold Cal seemed to be hitting nails on heads and she couldn’t help but appreciate a different perspective. He had faced Jon down, but neither did he stoop to his level or gratify him with any display of anger in return. Perhaps she could do with borrowing some of that strategy, and attitude.

‘I’m so baffled by this. Ever since I finished it, this whole side to him has emerged that I never knew was there. I feel quite freaked out and very stupid for not being aware of it.’

Harriet remembered what Lorna said about Jon being a bad person to break up with. The more she thought about it, the more she was slightly frightened by the extent of Lorna’s prescience. In her many years of knowing her, Lorna’s instincts had never been wrong. Another person’s attitude that Harriet should borrow.

Cal grimaced. ‘Some people don’t let you leave well, I’m afraid. They don’t do easy endings.’

Harriet nodded. They exchanged a look of understanding that they’d not be discussing his aborted nuptials. In this moment, Harriet couldn’t fit that episode together with what she’d seen of Cal so far tonight, whatsoever. Unconfrontational, able to wisecrack under pressure, and annoyingly … pleasant. But then, how did she expect a bride-jilter to behave? Given her track record for understanding male behaviour, and the fact it was none of her business, she decided not to try.

‘Is there another lad this was meant for?’ Cal said, pulling his shades down to squint while pointing at his damaged forehead.

Harriet cringed. ‘Oh, God – no! It’s as if Jon wants there to be someone else, so I can be the scarlet woman, and he can duel.’

Harriet knew that this jealousy hadn’t comeentirelyfrom nowhere. She’d simply not needed to notice it, before. For example, a running joke, if she was going out without him, was Jon asking, ‘cui bono?’ –who benefits– at the sight of her outfit, Harriet always replying: ‘No, Zara,’ or similar. The idea there had to be a male admirer for any effort she made was, on review, overwrought. She’d chalked up too much to an ex-all-boys’ school, creaky outmodedness. It wasn’t school, it was Jon.

‘Then are you sure Jon’s not seeing someone, and this is all displacement?’ Cal said, looking studiously into his glass.

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