She managed a dignified silence for the first twenty-four hours, told herself it was a blip that could come right if she just gave him some space; he would regret what he said, realising what a special thing they were letting go of.
But nothing.
No calls, no texts, and in his silence she has read equanimity. After a bad night, her emotions are as ragged as the Alps. Fitful sleep, wishful dreams, ended by waking to a vision of Helena Reed’s body hanging from the back of her bedroom door.
Now, Manon is exhausted, slumped over her desk in MIT, glancing again and again at her phone, her collapsing face resting on the heel of one hand. So far she’s sent seven texts, smoked five cigarettes, and pranged the car. And it’s not yet 11 a.m.
There is Kim at the front of the room, writing on a whiteboard in marker pen, while Manon examines Kim’s bottom. It clenches to a point at its base and then joins to two very ample, ocean-going thighs, not even the hint of a gap between them. My bottom’s probably as big as that, she thinks. A single person’s bottom. I’m about to be forty, I will never have a baby, and I have a bottom the size of— Don’t cry. Just don’t cry, not in the middle of MIT.
‘Dawn’s doing baby-led weaning, which is great because they just learn to feed themselves, and they don’t grow up with any food issues,’ Nigel is saying, as Davy hands Manon a coffee.
‘Kill me now,’ she mouths at Davy.
She hears the trill of a text message alert and her heart flips over itself just as Kim says, ‘Ready, everyone?’ and turns to reveal her work on the whiteboard.