The next Tuesday, I watched the door of Luke’s office from my spot next to a falafel shop. Inhaling cumin until he came out wearing new jeans.
Dating! He was available for dating when I was barely available for showering. At the junction of Shaftesbury Avenue and Old Compton Street, Luke checked his phone and smiled. I felt a rage I didn’t recognise in myself. I was used to burying reactions. Anger – from seeing this life that he was building without me, with its dates and its funny texts and its happiness – was a new thing.
And yet, at no point did it occur to me to walk away and stop torturing myself. To build a life of my own and exist independently from whatever they were doing. At no point did it occur to me that what Luke and I had had been far from perfect anyway, or that what Luke did to me on a regular basis wasn’t kind, or good, or humane.
At no point did it occur to me that that anger I had just glimpsed would lead to me being curtailed and locked up in an institution.
All I focused on was getting Luke back.
For now, though, I had to dive behind a queue for a burger pop-up because Luke had turned around to look for something. Shit. I had just about got away with turning up at his office; he would never let me get away with following him. I pictured him seeing me and my legs began to shake. Fury was gone, replaced by the much more familiar fear.
He disappeared then though, into a tiny Italian bar. The kind that serves coffee and pastries and five signature house cocktails, and if you want anything else, tough. London loves one of those. So now, apparently, does Luke.
Then I was free to look at every woman on this busy street and wonder if they were Naomi.
The woman with the dyed pink hair in adidas trainers. Was that her? The tiny, pretty Spanish girl marching through the crowd speaking loudly with earphones in? It could be the blonde giggling on the phone or that girl, no more than twenty-two, nervously checking out the signs to find the bar that she was looking for.
In the end, though, I knew. It was the woman who walked into the bar five minutes after Luke, looking like someone I ached to be. Petite, blonder than me, in jeans and black biker boots. She had found her look; she didn’t have visible trainer socks.
Instead, she looked like one of those women I always thought Luke should go out with, more than I have ever believed deep down that I did. A confidence in her walk and in her head, held high, that said she would never take Luke speaking to her, treating her, demeaning her like he did me. Meanwhile, I knew that if he would come back to me, I would take it over and over again. I found the nearest old man’s pub and got steadily but quickly drunk.