Meredith Alone Read online

  ‘You too, Tom McDermott,’ I whisper as I close the front door.

  That night, I dream I’m doing doggy-paddle in a huge lake with Emily Dickinson. Tom McDermott and the old man from the leaflet are sitting on the side, watching and waving and eating chocolate biscuits.

  Day 1,219

  Monday, 19 November 2018

  I check the clock. 8.19 a.m. Almost right on schedule. Plenty of time to exercise before putting my eggs on to boil at 8.54 a.m. Two eggs, five minutes, for the perfect runny yolk. It took me three days to master it and it was worth the trial and error.

  But before perfect eggs, twenty minutes of cardio. What a revelation it was, the discovery that a twenty-minute workout each day – with a rest day of choice – is all I need to stay fit. I have a few favourite YouTube workouts, but I mix it up now and then, just for fun. And the beauty of doing it at home, alone, is that nobody sees how out of breath I get after six rounds of burpees.

  I always follow cardio with relaxation: stretching, deep breathing and positive affirmations. ‘I accept myself unconditionally’ is one of the recent additions to my repertoire. This morning, yet again, I struggle to get on board with it; it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue. Diane, my therapist, tells me to stick with it, that it has to become a habit to have an impact. I told her that I didn’t think affirmations were supposed to be lies, which led to a long conversation about self-sabotaging behaviours.

  Morning workout done, and with my eggs simmering, I drop two slices of sunflower-seed bread into the toaster until they turn golden brown. I give them a light spread of butter, slice them neatly into soldiers and pop them on to a plate. Next, the eggs go into their spotted cups, I crack the tops (the best part) and sit down at the table with tea in my favourite mug, the one that matches my egg cups. It’s 8.59 a.m. Perfect. I get a kick out of these little achievements.

  I do a few hours of work offline, have a cheese and pickle sandwich for lunch, then log on. I try to limit my time online because I know how easy it is to get stuck there. A digital hour is like ten seconds in the real world. I wrote a schedule once, but quickly realized it didn’t allow for those spontaneous Google moments that pop up on a regular basis, like when you need to know how to make a béchamel sauce or can’t remember the name of Henry VIII’s fifth wife (he popped into my head when I was thinking about misogyny one day, and I always get the Catherines mixed up).

  I know some people think the internet is the root of all evils, but I couldn’t survive without it. Literally. I can get anything I want delivered to my house, often within twenty-four hours. Fresh milk and tampons and batteries and books. I don’t even have to answer the door, if I don’t feel like seeing anyone that day. I have a box attached to the front of it, big enough for parcels. I fitted it myself, I’m proud to say.

  Luckily I found a clever app that records the time I spend online and disconnects me when I reach my daily limit of eight hours. Up to six of those are spent working, depending on how many projects I have on the go, which leaves two hours for misogynistic kings and everything else. Even after all these months, it still surprises me when I hit the limit. But it makes me use my time.

  After catching up with the news (it’s International Men’s Day, which leads me down a rabbit hole of opinion pieces about toxic masculinity), I sign into StrengthInNumbers, the online support group I joined after Sadie emailed me a link with ‘CHECK THIS OUT!!!’ in the subject line. That was just one of her bright ideas. She has a lot of those, sending me links to new books or articles she hopes will give me the push I need to become a Normal Person again. She emails me reviews of new restaurants, texts me with Groupon deals for spa weekends and afternoon tea deals. Just in case, she writes. I delete them without reading them. I know Sadie means well, but I don’t want to spend my free time reading research papers on social anxiety disorder or books about agoraphobia by people with a string of random letters after their names.

  For the record I don’t have either of those things.

  I have to admit that StrengthInNumbers was one of Sadie’s better ideas. I like the anonymity of making connections online, and it’s comforting to know I’m not the craziest person in the country. Today, ninety-eight people are active – about normal for a Monday morning. Evenings and weekends are much busier, for obvious reasons. I’m lucky to be able to work from home and set my own hours, so I’m not tied to the nine-to-five grind. That’s one thing I definitely don’t miss. I often work late – I like being awake when the city sleeps.

  I check in with a few of the regulars and ask about their weekends. Janice (WEEJAN) had a difficult time with her wayward teenage daughter, but she managed to resist eating all the chocolates in the Quality Street tin (she only had eight, and didn’t make herself sick afterwards). Gary (RESCUEMEPLZ) says he went on a bender – despite his best intentions – but what else can he do while he’s on an eighteen-month waiting list for a counsellor? I tell him it took twelve months for me to get my therapist Diane, who’s not exactly my favourite person in the world but I certainly never feel any worse after talking to her. Janice says he could get a private therapist for fifty pounds an hour. Gary says times are tough and he can’t afford to pay fifty pounds an hour. Janice points out that he probably spends that on beer and vodka in a week, which doesn’t go down well. I leave them to argue about the dangers of self-medicating and the strengths and weaknesses of the NHS. They’ll go around in circles, as usual. I’m just about to log off when a private chat window opens on my screen.

  CATLADY29: Hello?

  I hover my cursor over the profile picture – a fluffy white cat, which makes me smile. I check her details: female, 29, Glasgow.

  JIGSAWGIRL: Hi!

  CATLADY29: I’m not sure if I’m doing the right thing. It’s my first time here … I just need someone to talk to …

  JIGSAWGIRL: Hey, that’s OK. I’m Meredith.

  CATLADY29: Hi, Meredith. I’m Celeste.

  JIGSAWGIRL: Hi, Celeste. I see you’re in Glasgow? It’s always nice to meet a fellow Weegie.

  CATLADY29: You’re in Glasgow too? Oh, that makes me feel like I’m talking to a real person. Whereabouts do you live?

  JIGSAWGIRL: I’m definitely real. I live in the East End.

  CATLADY29: I’ve just moved into a new place in the city centre. Near the art school?

  JIGSAWGIRL: Seriously? That’s my old stomping ground. Good times!

  CATLADY29: I’m on Sanderson Street.

  JIGSAWGIRL: No way! That’s where I lived. Number 48. Flat A.

  CATLADY29: Meredith, you won’t believe this. I’m in 48D.

  JIGSAWGIRL: OMG! How crazy is that? The flat above!

  CATLADY29: I know, right? When did you live there?

  JIGSAWGIRL: I moved out about five years ago. Decided it was time to take the plunge and buy my own place. Do you like it there?

  CATLADY29: I love the location. Tiny flat, though. Hardly big enough to swing a cat.

  JIGSAWGIRL: LOL! I remember. Speaking of cats … who is the cutie in your profile picture?

  CATLADY29: Ah, that’s my mum’s cat. Lucy. No pets allowed here, unfortunately

  JIGSAWGIRL: I have a cat. He’s called Fred.

  CATLADY29: Aww … you’re so lucky! You’ll need to put him on your profile picture so I can see him!

  JIGSAWGIRL: I will! He deserves to be shown off

  CATLADY29: It’s nice to meet you, Meredith. What brings you here?

  My fingers move quickly over the keyboard, giving my stock answer.

  JIGSAWGIRL: Friendship and support. I have some mental health issues.

  CATLADY29: I hope that wasn’t prying?

  JIGSAWGIRL: Not at all.

  CATLADY29: So, how does it work on here?

  JIGSAWGIRL: Well, there are different channels for different things. Depression, addiction, PTSD … everything really. Those are monitored and moderated by volunteers. There are lots of advice pages as well, with links to professional helplines and resources. And y
ou can also chat privately to people, individually or in groups. Like we are now.

  CATLADY29: It’s quite daunting, to be honest.

  JIGSAWGIRL: Hey, it’s OK. I can’t promise to help, but I can definitely listen, if you want to talk about anything.

  I imagine her looking at her screen, wondering whether to confide in a stranger. Trying to decide whether sharing whatever it is that’s been occupying her thoughts or giving her nightmares will make her feel better or worse. That’s something I can’t give an answer to. After almost two years, I still haven’t fully opened up to Janice or Gary.

  CATLADY29: Actually, I think I’d just like to chat about cats for a while, if that’s OK?

  JIGSAWGIRL: I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.

  We end up chatting for ages, not just about our mutual love of cats but about Liza, who still lives in 48B and hangs her wet knickers over her windowsill to dry. I tell Celeste I’d have thought she’d have learned her lesson after a gust of wind blew her black-lace thong into the path of the number 60 bus, circa 2002. Celeste tells me she doesn’t think Liza wears black-lace thongs any more and sends me multiple laughing face emojis, and I laugh out loud at the memory.

  I realize that Sadie will be here soon – she texted me last night to say she’d pop in after picking James up from school. Before I sign off, I tell Celeste it’s been really nice to chat to her, and I’m not just being polite.

  Sadie arrived halfway through the first year of secondary school, a head taller than all the boys and with an attitude as bold as her hairstyle. So blonde it was almost white, she wore it close to her head, shaped around her ears. The other girls in our class looked at her disdainfully from behind their permed curtains, but she reminded me of the models in Mama’s Freemans catalogue. I didn’t have the bouncy curls or Sadie’s cool crop; Mama refused to pay for such luxuries. My hair was long and straight, the same boring colour it had always been.

  Mr Brookes sat Sadie next to me in English, and after a quick grilling (yes, I watched Twin Peaks, I definitely preferred Home and Away to Neighbours, my favourite New Kid on the Block was Donnie, but Jordan was a close second), we were friends.

  ‘You passed the test,’ she told me a few years later.

  ‘You failed mine, but I felt sorry for you,’ I deadpanned.

  ‘We’re like salt and pepper,’ she said. ‘Totally different, but we come as a pair.’

  She visits me as often as she can, sometimes with the kids in tow. James and Matilda divide their time between Sadie and her ex-husband Steve, who’s a guitarist in a Led Zeppelin tribute band and left her for a fan six months after Matilda was born. Sadie is feisty. Her response to Steve when he announced his imminent departure over cereal one Saturday morning was: ‘You actually have a fan?’ After he left with his battered suitcase, Sadie marched into the garage and drenched his prized Gibson Les Paul in pastel pink paint. She snapped a selfie with the guitar in one hand, middle finger raised just in case he didn’t quite sense the tone, along with the caption ‘This will remind you of your daughter. It’s the same colour as her nursery walls’.

  That was about a year ago and things are as amicable as they can be when adultery and abandonment form part of the bigger picture. Steve’s fan left him only a few weeks after falling for his riffing skills, and he went back to the family home to beg Sadie’s forgiveness, but she’d already changed the locks. He tried to serenade her through the letter box, and she blasted Red Hot Chili Peppers on Spotify, screaming, ‘John Frusciante – now he’s a guitarist!’

  Sadie has one weekend a month without the kids and she tries to cram in as much as possible. She popped in to see me once between her third and fourth dates of the day (lunch and dinner; breakfast and brunch were done and dusted). ‘I have a very narrow dating window,’ she told my raised eyebrows. ‘Stop judging, stick the kettle on and I’ll tell you all about Larry who still lives with his mother.’

  I don’t judge Sadie, not really. Not any more than everybody judges everybody else. If anything, I’m fascinated by her dating life. It’s been so long since I went on a date, it feels like a lifetime ago. ‘You should join an app,’ Sadie told me once. ‘Just for a laugh. You never know – you might meet someone that will make you burst through that front door. I’ll come over to see you and find a Meredith-shaped hole in it.’

  I laughed awkwardly. We both knew that it would take more than that for me to leave the house.

  The thought of staying at home for three days, let alone three years, is so alien to Sadie that she didn’t quite believe it for the first month. Until she turned up one evening and I was lying under the kitchen table. At that point she took it pretty seriously.

  Equally difficult for Sadie to accept is that I’m happy like this. Or at least, I’m happier than I was during the whole lying-under-the-table phase. It could be worse than scratching the underside of a six. I think she’s got the message, but we still go through the motions now and then.

  ‘What about people?’ she says.

  ‘What people?’ I say.

  ‘Other people! People you meet when you’re out. Random people who make your life more interesting.’

  ‘Random people have never made my life interesting.’

  ‘Remember that night … when we met that guy who read our palms?’

  ‘The guy who said you were going to become a chef?’

  ‘It could still happen!’

  ‘Well, I don’t think I’m going to have six kids.’

  ‘You never know.’

  ‘I know that much.’

  ‘OK, so he was a terrible fortune teller. But don’t you miss those nights? Meeting ridiculous, interesting, crazy people?’

  ‘Sadie, I don’t remember half of them. And they really weren’t all that interesting.’

  Her face falls, and I feel bad. The people we met were only part of the story. We always created our own fun, Sadie and I, going from bar to bar, laughing and dancing and mapping out our lives.

  ‘Don’t you miss eye contact?’ She says it quietly, as if she’s scared I’m going to cry.

  ‘I’m having that with you, now,’ I tell her gently.

  ‘Yes, but you must be sick of my eyes.’

  ‘Never. Your eyes are beautiful. They change colour depending on your mood.’

  She goes cross-eyed and sticks out her tongue. ‘Are they beautiful now?’

  I smile at her, my funny friend who’d do anything for me.

  Like a dog with a bone, she’s not finished. ‘What about fresh air?’

  ‘I have my windows open all the time, and I often stick my head out the back door for a nice big gulp of Glasgow’s finest.’

  ‘Meredith, don’t take the piss.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  And so it goes, until one of us gets bored and we start talking about other things.

  ‘I hate seeing you like this,’ she said to me last Christmas Eve, after we exchanged gifts, pulled crackers and shared a tight hug. She was going to pick James and Matilda up from Steve’s and go home to start preparing for lunch with her family the next day.

  I stepped back from her and sighed. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like … alone.’

  ‘I’m not alone, Sadie. I have Fred.’ Ever supportive, he mewed loudly from the kitchen. ‘And I’m not lonely or miserable. I have been, but I’m not right now.’

  ‘Nobody should be alone on Christmas Day,’ she told me in the cross voice she uses to hide more complicated emotions.

  ‘I have Fred,’ I said again. ‘I’m going to watch Some Like It Hot and start my new jigsaw. I can’t wait.’

  ‘You and your jigsaws!’ Her voice was less cross. She punched me lightly on the arm before closing the front door behind her. I stood there for a while, my hand pressed against my side of the frame. Sometimes when she leaves, it feels as if all the life has been sucked out of the house.

  Today, James has a cold, Matilda has a new tooth, and Sadie has a hangover. ‘We won’t stay
long,’ she promises as they discard hats and coats and boots all over my hall. Fred has no time for children; he’s hiding under my bed.

  ‘What have you been up to?’ I ask her. ‘You look worn out,’ I add, the way only lifelong friends can. ‘Actually …’ I look at her closely. ‘You also look amazing. Your eyes are shining.’

  ‘I’ve met someone,’ she whispers, unable to stop the smile that spreads across her face. She gives me the look that tells me this isn’t a conversation for little ears. By the time she’s emptied a bag of toys on the living-room floor and unwrapped a biscuit for each of the kids, I’ve made us tea and piled my favourite vintage plate – one of my best eBay wins – with grown-up treats.

  ‘I can’t eat a thing,’ Sadie says between gulps of her tea. ‘Ooh, these do look good, though. Maybe just one.’ She takes a bite of chocolate and peanut butter brownie. ‘Mer, this is incredible.’

  ‘Yes, but tell me about your someone,’ I say.

  ‘Colin,’ she says, and I swear her cheeks flush and her eyes sparkle when she says his name. ‘We met online, two weeks ago. We’ve had three dates. I’ve never met anyone like him.’ She reaches across the table and grabs my hand. ‘I’m so happy, Mer.’

  Over two cups of tea, she tells me that Colin is forty-two, a joiner, divorced, has no kids, but is absolutely fine with dating a single mother (‘Unlike most of the idiots I meet,’ she adds). He’s generous, he’s funny, he’s self-deprecating, he’s tall, and he doesn’t give two shits about the Old Firm. Basically he’s Sadie’s ideal man. ‘He’s completely different from Steve,’ she says. ‘Mer, I think I could really fall for him. Can you believe it?’

  I return her grin; it’s contagious. And yet her excitement reminds me of how deprived I am of such a chunk of the spectrum of normal human emotion. When I think about Gavin, I remember what it was like to be in a relationship, but not how it felt. As if it happened to someone else who told me about it at the time. My life is divided into before and after, and the before remains out of my grasp.