Lifesaving for Beginners

I eat Cheerios out of the box. I order a lot of takeaway and I make a fairly good dent in a box of wine. I don’t think about the accident – the bloody miracle – and I don’t think about my rib, mostly because it doesn’t really hurt anymore. When I’m in danger of thinking about anything serious – like my deadline or how quiet the place is since Thomas left – I turn on the telly. Daytime television is enough to banish even the merest whisper of a serious thought right out of your head.
    I do this for a few days and then I have to venture out for essentials. Cigarettes. Wine. Dinner. Dessert.
    It’s when I’m on my way back that I meet Nicolas. Nicolas from number thirteen, who always makes suggestive remarks when I meet him in the lobby downstairs. Today is no different. Nicolas is in the lobby, checking his post. He takes a few flyers out of his letterbox and straightens, which is when he sees me and smiles. His face is long, his teeth are small and his mouth is wide, and the combination of these features brings to mind a crocodile in long-term captivity. His expression tends towards resigned.
    ‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t Ms Kavanagh from the fancy penthouse. Looking foxy as always, Kat.’
    I say, ‘Hello, Nicolas.’
    ‘Where’s Farmer Tom? I haven’t seen him recently.’
    ‘Thomas isn’t a farmer. He just tells people he is.’
    ‘Whatevs. Where is he?’
    ‘Gone away.’ I allow a trace of melancholy into my tone. Perhaps I’m after a bit of drama after my quiet few days.
    Nicolas sweeps me up and down with his eyes. He always does this. I’d say he’d make a great eye-witness in a courtroom drama. He takes it all in. His eyes settle on the bags I’m carrying, straining with junk. ‘Let me help you.’ And before I can tell him to piss off, he’s wrestled the two bags out of my hands and he’s jabbing the lift call button with his index finger. Inside the lift, he puts the bags down and they clink and crinkle in a most revelatory manner. Nicolas looks inside. Cheeky rat. He says, ‘Having a bit of par-tay, are we?’ I ignore him, which does nothing to deflate him. He hunkers down and does a quick inventory. ‘Tub of Ben & Jerry’s, two bottles of Sancerre, family-size pepperoni, Kettle Chips, large bar of Cadbury’s mint crisp and . . .’ he rummages around at the bottom of the bag, ‘. . . ah yes, forty Silk Cut Blue.’ He looks up and grins. ‘How do you get to be so gorgeous on a diet like this?’
    I don’t know why I let him into the apartment in the end.
    He’s in sales. And I need a distraction from the deadline and the quiet. A pushy salesman and a woman in need of distraction. That’s a pretty deadly combination. But of course, I could have taken my bags of junk and shut the door in his face. I’ve done that before.
    We eat the family-size pepperoni with one of the bottles of Sancerre to wash it down. Dessert is the gigantic bar of mint crisp and I resent breaking it into bits. We don’t bother with coffee. We just go right ahead and open the second bottle of wine.
    Nicolas becomes less sleazy as the afternoon wanes into evening. And there is something attractive about him. I just never noticed it before. He starts calling me pussy-cat, which I find not unamusing.
    We have decanted from the couch to the floor and are lying on cushions, halfway down another bottle, and we’re watching Judge Judy on the telly and roaring laughing at a woman who’s suing her ex-boyfriend for stealing her hair straighteners and the pair of FitFlops that, she said, were the main cause of the tautness of her calf muscles.
    That’s when Thomas arrives.
    I realise he’s in the apartment only when he’s at the door of the sitting room. He’s in his farm gear. A woolly jumper with a hole in the elbow. The trousers of an old suit, tucked into mud-spattered wellington boots. The wellingtons are the ones that I bought him. As a joke. They’re bright pink with yellow buttercups here and there. I never thought he’d actually go ahead and wear them.
    Because it’s a bit of an awkward situation, I start to laugh. It’s not that I find anything funny, exactly. It’s just . . . I don’t know.
    Thomas doesn’t laugh. In fact, I get the impression he’s pretty ticked off. The wine has anaesthetised me, but, still, that’s the impression I’m getting.
    He says, ‘I thought you were working.’
    I say, ‘I thought you were working.’
    ‘I was. But I got worried about you.