I stand with my back to her and turn on the kettle. I am too sad, too ashamed to say any more.
‘It was good. They’re a large crowd, lively.’
She pauses to hear my tone, possibly disappointed that some of that liveliness didn’t rub off on me. I think she expected me to crawl home, drunk and full of joy. Instead, I’m ruddy-faced, my brow furrowed, and I have blisters the size of fifty-pence coins from having marched all the way home. The energy I feel is nervous; I sense it in my fingertips, through every vessel in my heart. I go over to my freezer and take out a bag of oven chips, rustling through the fridge for some cheddar.
‘I think I’m going to make some chips,’ I say.
‘Now?’
Oven tray and grater, that’s all I’ll need. I turn the oven on and move through the kitchen quietly, obtaining the right utensils and ingredients. I open the cheese and grate it with more aggression than necessary. Linh comes over to the counter and puts a hand to mine. Tears roll down my cheek, dripping off the curve of my chin, and I try to wipe them off with my shoulder.
‘What happened?’ she asks.
I cut open the packet of chips and arrange them on the tray.
‘Do you want chips?’
‘No. I don’t. What happened, Grace?’
I grab at the edges of the kitchen counter.
‘I met a girl today who Tom slept with in Japan. I don’t know what it all meant between them but…’
‘But you never knew?’
I shake my head.
‘Was she pretty?’
I laugh. ‘I guess. She sells houses for a living.’
She urges me to sit down to calm myself.
‘And this made you angry?’
‘I’m angry because I feel like a fool. I am so careful and dedicated with my grief. I ache with how much I miss him, I think about him constantly. So when I get information like this, I feel like a prize idiot. Because he didn’t do right by me. He slept with other people, he didn’t look after himself. He’s not here, Linh, and it’s his fault.’
Linh cups my chin and tries to wipe the tears from my face, encouraging the emotion to flow out of me.
‘He was such a twat,’ I say.
‘You use this word a lot, twat.’
‘It means idiot.’
‘Actually, it means vagina.’
‘It does?’ I say through my tears.
‘You used it so much, I thought I’d check what it meant.’
I laugh-cry, putting my head to her shoulder.
‘All these people deifying Tom. I get it. He was great. But he was so human, so annoyingly imperfect too.’
She smiles wryly. She does this smile when she knows I’m coming to my own conclusions in my head about life and all its intricacies.
‘And you loved him despite of this. My Cam had her moments. She was stubborn, she was argumentative. There were times she didn’t make good choices, but who does? Who isn’t perfectly flawed? Whose life follows some straight and narrow path the whole way?’
