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The Feels.
All the things she’d done to cauterize them and now they popped back up to the surface again?
Startling her, annoying her.
Scaring her.
‘This can’t be my last session,’ Gloria stated carefully, focusing her attention on the large hammered silver bowl sat politely in the centre of the pale wood coffee table between the neutral grey sofa and bland beige chair.
‘Why can’t it?’ Fortuna asked. ‘You’ve reached the goals you set out for yourself when you came here.’
‘But I’m not fixed yet.’ The words tumbled out of her mouth in a rush as if embarrassed at having to be spoken. Reaching out, she plucked one of the stress balls from the bowl she’d been staring at. ‘Only this morning I told my boss that her engagement ring – which naturally, turned out to be a family heirloom – looked like a dehydrated blueberry.’
‘I see.’ Fortuna looked very much like she was trying not to smile, but Gloria was almost certain she wouldn’t have been smiling if it was her engagement ring that was being dismissed. ‘Did something happen for you to feel you needed to express that particular opinion?’
Gloria’s mouth turned down as she remembered Emma showing off her ring to harmless Betty Blunkett and Betty then going on and on and on about her own emerald ring which she’d now had on her finger for fifty-five years.
Tossing the stress ball up in the air, Gloria caught it in her other hand and squeezed it hard. ‘Nothing happened,’ she answered. ‘I said it because I could. Because it’s what I do, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’
Gloria’s gaze flicked to Fortuna defiantly before dropping to her left hand and noticing once more that there wasn’t even an indent left to show she’d once been married.
The cold shame she’d felt after insulting Emma’s taste, and by association, Jake’s entire family, washed over her once again.
Was that what all this was about?
She was suffering from petty jealousy?
For something she wanted no part of ever again?
Where was her perspective?
Why couldn’t she just let all the endless wedding talk float over her head?
‘Gloria?’ Fortuna prompted. ‘Is a quick quip still your first defence mechanism? Because I believe you might have more than that in your arsenal, these days?’
‘But killing people with kindness isn’t as much fun,’ Gloria responded with a pout.
Fortuna did smile this time. ‘So what happened afterwards?’
‘I apologised.’ She hadn’t needed to see the flicker of hurt in Emma’s eyes for the sorry to be immediate. She’d been mortified that in another unguarded moment, this time she’d managed to upset the actual bride-to-be.
You see? It just wasn’t right, was it? Getting so pernickety over an institution that people could enter freely into and did, day after day, the world over. There was no need whatsoever to be feeling this … this burning need to save Emma and Jake from going through the rigmarole of a big special day only to end up a modern-day statistic.
Not that all marriages came to an end.
She wasn’t stupid.
She was just …
Jaded.
A look which so didn’t mesh with her metamorphosis.
She breathed out slowly.
‘Why the sigh? Wasn’t your apology accepted?’ Fortuna asked.
‘It was, although if I was Emma, I guarantee I wouldn’t have let myself off that lightly. I swear it’s like I’ve somehow managed to get the nicest person on the planet to like me.’
‘And that baffles you?’ Fortuna surmised.
It did.
She didn’t have a great track-record in the friendship department. She’d spent most of her childhood deliberately making it difficult for anyone to like her and as an adult the few friends she’d cultivated had scarpered as soon as Bob had left.
She swapped the stress ball back to her other hand. ‘How can simply apologising every time I let my tongue get away from me be enough? How is that progress?’
‘Keep practising all the techniques we’ve been working on.’ Fortuna leant forward in her chair, her hands folded neatly over the top of her notebook. ‘You’re not going to let yourself down.’
‘Can I have that in writing, please?’
Fortuna smiled again. ‘You’re still using your apps?’
Gloria rolled her eyes but then nodded her head. ‘You do realise you’re going to be out of a job now that the whole world and his dog is into mindfulness. I lose count of the number of people posting how many times a day they meditate, which kind of defeats the object in my humble opinion, but I guess, what do I know?’
‘I really wouldn’t focus on what everyone else is doing. If it works for you, use it. If it doesn’t, ditch it. How’s the art coming along?’
‘I suck at it.’
‘But is that the point though?’
‘No,’ she grudgingly admitted. The point of it was to relax her. Distract her. Give her some breathing space.
‘So …?’
‘I’m no Banksy,’ she said, although that wasn’t to say she hadn’t sometimes thought of painting the whole village with murals. ‘For the purposes of your notes though, I’ll admit I’m enjoying it. I used to draw when I was younger. I’m not sure why I stopped.’ Well, she did, but that story was for another time she liked to call ‘Never’.
It had taken weeks of gentle suggestion followed by a confronting ‘What exactly are you afraid of?’ from Fortuna for Gloria to sign up to the notion that using drawing as a form of self-care might not be a truly awful concept. Even then, she’d walked past the art supply shop twice before making herself go in, muttering under her breath about how stupidly indulgent it would be to buy a sketchbook and set of pencils. But as soon as her fingers had stroked over the graphite she’d smiled and got that warm fuzzy feeling in her heart that was usually reserved for things Persephone did.
‘Well, again, I’d say if you enjoy it and it’s working for you, keep doing it. It’s important to have something you enjoy just for the sake of it.’
Gloria tried to quieten the panic in her chest as Fortuna closed her notebook and then started rearranging the stack of papers underneath. ‘You’re rustling those papers there like this is really it – I’m out on my own.’
‘You’re not on your own. You have friends.’
Gloria blinked.
She guessed she did.
Emma Danes, the Jane Austen-loving mixologist, had taken the biggest gamble going to bat for her working at Cocktails & Chai. A huge deal seeing as the moment it became the latest business to open up inside the clock house it also became the new headquarters for Whispers Wood’s gossip mill. Emma’s unswerving friendship had even (okay, nearly) convinced her that the tearoom/bar would still have customers if she wasn’t part of the wallpaper for customers to ogle and discuss.
Then there was award-winning garden designer, Jake Knightley, the only one of six siblings with the passion and vision to take over the running of their ancestral home, Knightley Hall, which stood on the edge of the village. At least, she was going to claim they were friends. He was quite succinct was Jake, so she was pretty sure he’d have simply stopped talking to her altogether if he was still pissed at her publically pointing out last year what an idiot he’d been being over Emma.
She thought – hoped – she was making progress with hairdresser, Juliet Brown, owner of Hair @ The Clock House. Super-chic and sweet Juliet who, because of the nature of her job, had a lifetime’s experience seeing and hearing too much but, thankfully, was way too nice to comment on any of it.
Even no-nonsense Kate Somersby, owner of the day spa Beauty @ The Clock House, and perhaps the hardest to win over, given her need to make sure the clock house businesses succeeded, now liked her enough to spend more than the agreed budget on Secret Santa presents. Who else could be responsible for giving her the impressively coffee-table-sized: How to Stop Swearing and Other Bollocks Ways to Improve Your Manners book, last Christmas?
And obviously there was Old Man Isaac. Like she’d said, he was her Gandalph. Her Obi-Wan. Or, if you wanted to get less ‘mentor’ and more ‘friend’, the way he insisted she had a lot of potential, the Pretty Woman Vivian to her Kit De Luca.
Oh, and then there was Seth.
Seth Knightley. Jake’s younger brother.
A claxon sounded inside her head.
Everyone kept joking about the ‘magic’ chandelier at the clock house and the ridiculous fairytale about how it brought single people together. Joking like she and Seth weren’t friends … so much as its next victims.
Which was fine, she reminded herself, relaxing her jaw, because they weren’t.
She didn’t believe in magic and fairytale endings.
And you didn’t have to be a Strictly super-fan to know it took two to tango.
Plus, she shouldn’t forget that she was on a strict tangoing break.
She didn’t need to worry about Seth.
Seth was …
She fumbled for a proper definition – a label – anything helpful at all to stick on what they were and feel okay about it.
She came up blank.
Back to five friends then.
She thought of the Famous Five books.
Five Friend Gloria Pavey.
Bloody hell.
She supposed it was a start.
‘You really think I don’t need to keep coming to see you?’ she checked.
‘I really don’t.’
Bloody hell, again.
Fortuna obviously favoured the brave.
Gloria released a sigh and stood up. ‘Okay. Well, I guess Thank You for all your patience with me.’
‘Not at all, you’re the one who’s done the hard work.’
Gloria tried to be honest with herself.
And brave.
Even in those early hours before dawn she was now able to poke and prod at all the Before-She’d-Married-Bob stuff and all the After-She’d-Married-Bob stuff and feel less governed, less defined and less stigmatised by it all.
She did feel more even-tempered. More balanced. Less worried about all the wedding talk.
Sort of.
That insidious worry that had been flirting so maddeningly with her started up its banter proper.
‘Nope,’ she announced, promptly sitting back down, ‘I can’t have you signing off on me when I’m still able to feel that anger.’
‘That’s not anger you’re feeling,’ Fortuna promised. ‘It’s a little anxiety, maybe.’
‘Do all your patients come in with one thing and leave with another?’
‘It’s only natural to be feeling anxious. We all do when things come to an end.’
‘Well, on the grounds that I’m better attuned to others’ feelings these days, how about I come back next week. I wouldn’t want you to have to feel anxious about our relationship coming to an end.’
Fortuna laughed. ‘Keep on being brave, Gloria.’
‘I don’t feel very brave.’ The words came out small, hoarse and reluctantly.
‘It was brave to admit to being worried about repeating old behaviours and ruining new friendships. It’s brave to change how you react to things. If you persevere it will become habit-forming and some of the anxiety you’re going to revert to previous behaviours will ease.’
‘So, this is really it, then?’
‘You know where I am if you need me, but for now I think it’s time to simply: Go Forth and Be Yourself.’
You, do you – that’s what she was being told, here? Well, she supposed it was better than being told she needed to try forest bathing because she’d been walking through the woods of Whispers Wood for years and had still ended up needing therapy.
Be herself.
Herself without blowing up at a little wedding talk.
It was said with such simple belief that Gloria rose to her feet, slightly shocked to discover the stress ball had been simply sitting in her hand unclenched for the last ten minutes. With a smile, she held out the ball and said, ‘I’m taking this with me,’ and after a moment’s hesitation, she reached into the bowl she’d been staring at for twelve weeks and took a second ball and said, ‘this one too.’
For luck, she thought walking out into the sunshine.
