By Friday morning, I was a wreck.
The entire week had been eaten up by production prep and wedding planning, leaving me with only the odd minute here and there to worry about my own life. Thankfully, Patrick was caught up with a deadline and hadn’t had time to see me before the podcast recording, which he’d sworn up and down on the graves of assorted family members that he was going to attend, and all my friends were preoccupied by their lives. Adrian with Eva, Sumi with work and Lucy with being ‘too fat to live’, to quote her directly. While I hadn’t given an awful lot of thought as to when I would prefer to be pregnant, the height of summer seemed like the worst possible option. I was only carrying a food baby from all my stress eating and that was uncomfortable enough. I couldn’t begin to imagine what an extra thirty pounds strapped to your ribs must feel like.
‘Hey, Ted,’ I tapped my boss on the shoulder, smiling brightly.
‘Ros?’ My boss yanked out his AirPods. ‘What are you doing here? You should be at WESC, you should be backstage, you should be—’
‘It’s all sorted,’ I said calmly, pointing to the great big box on the floor beside me. ‘I was there this morning, the set-up, the soundcheck, it’s all done. I just came back to get the tiger mask and see if there was anything else you needed.’
He pressed both hands against his face and breathed out a gargantuan sigh of relief. ‘Thank fuck, Ros, thank fuck,’ he laughed. ‘Because for a minute there, I thought maybe you’d fucked up and I was going to have to fire you on the spot.’
‘Wouldn’t that be hilarious?’ I replied, polite smile still pasted on my face. Clearly the fact my entire career depended on what happened that afternoon hadn’t even occurred to me. ‘No, everything is great. Snazz should be getting to the venue in about an hour so I’ll head over now so I’m there to meet him. See you there?’
‘See us all there, the entire company is coming,’ he confirmed as a dozen pairs of eyes furtively peered up at me from behind their computer screens. It was like being watched by a whole family of meerkats. He lowered his voice and covered his hand with his mouth. ‘Except Kelvin. We didn’t invite Kelvin.’
I followed his eyes over to a young man across the room. He was wearing prosthetic elf ears and a deerstalker and was peering at his iPhone, laughing loudly to himself. I looked back at the appalled expression on Ted’s face. I’d have invited Kelvin before any of the rest of them. At least Kelvin looked like he knew how to have a laugh.
‘Right, see you in a bit,’ I said, squatting down to pick up the heavy box, unassisted. But Ted had already replaced his noise-cancelling headphones and gone back to ignoring me, as had everyone else.
‘As god intended,’ I muttered, waddling out of the office and into the street.
Patrick’s flat was only twenty minutes from the PodPad offices but twenty minutes was a long way to walk in twenty-nine degrees while carrying a giant cardboard box. Aside from a touch of tepid drizzle, the rain still hadn’t come and the streets of London were full of people wearing next to nothing. I felt wildly overdressed in my jeans and T-shirt but it felt indecent to see the city down to strappy vests and little shorts when we were definitely more of a black-opaque-tights kind of a town.
I’d said I would pick Patrick up en route to the recording but I was nervous about seeing him. Not because I was worried I’d say something stupid or cock up in some way but because I had been sure that he was the answer to all my problems for so long and, suddenly, I wasn’t quite so certain any more.
Pretending I wasn’t sweating through my T-shirt, I stood in front of his door and juggled the box in my arms to reach for the doorbell.
Right before I pressed, I looked at the giant box and smiled. The tiger mask. It would be funny, wouldn’t it? I thought it would be funny. Sumi would think it was funny. I was prepared to bet John would get a laugh out of it. But would Patrick? Without overthinking it, I whipped the mask out the box and, with one deep breath, I jammed it onto my head. Not ideal for my claustrophobia but it would be worth it, I thought, jabbing the doorbell, for the look on his face.
Sweat trickled down the back of my neck as I waited for Patrick to answer and, as the seconds passed, I began to question the sense of my plan. What if I ruined the mask and Ted got mad and fired me? What if my sweat ran into my eyes and mixed with my mascara and blinded me and I couldn’t produce the podcast and I lost my job? Or even worse, what if Patrick didn’t open the door at all because he clearly wasn’t home? And then I tried to take the tiger mask off and realized it was stuck on my bloody stupid head?
‘Oh shit,’ I muttered, trying to work my fingers into the opening around the neck, tugging and pulling and twisting and wiggling. It was no good, the thing was stuck on, the fur matting against my skin, and the more I struggled, the tighter it seemed to squeeze.
‘You’re not going to pass out in a tiger mask,’ I told myself sternly, desperately trying not to panic even as the mask got tighter and the world outside got darker and my breathing became more and more erratic. Abandoning the safety of Patrick’s front step, I walked back out onto the street, searching for help, but of course there was no one around. I’d have taken any kind of human contact, even the youths my nana was so worried about, anyone who had the strength to yank this bloody thing off my head. And then, I saw them at the end of the road, two men walking towards me. Just as I was about to shout out for help, one of the two men came into focus. One of the two men was Patrick.
It really didn’t matter who the second man was, I knew, with every fibre of my being, that Patrick would not feel like introducing me to a friend, colleague or family member while I was wearing a giant tiger’s head. I had two options: I could run in the other direction even though I couldn’t see very well, end up on the main road, get run over and find myself on the six o’clock news as ‘Local Mad Woman Wearing Tiger Mask Causes Ten-Car Pile-Up’. Or, I could hide in his garden. I opted for the latter.
The garden was sparse in the middle, just a small patch of lawn, lined by tall privet hedges. Without any other options, I clambered up onto his wheelie bin, trying to hoist myself over the locked gate and into the neighbour’s yard before I could be caught. It was only once I was halfway over the gate, the sharp wooden slats cutting into my soft middle, I realized I was stuck. Hanging in midair, my legs kicking the air in Patrick’s garden, my tiger head and human arms flailing wildly in the neighbour’s garden.
‘What the hell …’
Shit. It was Patrick.
‘It’s a burglar, call the police.’ I heard another man’s voice behind me, tense but assertive. ‘You’re stuck now, son. Nowhere for you to go.’
I squirmed, sweaty and sore and utterly humiliated.
‘Get down,’ Patrick ordered. ‘Get down and fuck off and I won’t call the police.’
‘I would if I could,’ I yelled from the other side of the fence, kicking wildly.
‘Probably on drugs,’ the second voice stated. ‘He’s probably on the cocaine or the crack.’
If only, I thought to myself as I heard someone approaching my rear end and watched a hand slide around the wooden door and unhook the latch from the other side. The gate opened, the hinges squealing as I slowly swung backwards until I was face to tiger face with Patrick.
‘Blow me!’ the other man gasped before raising his voice in my direction as the gate began to swing back and forth, the hinges squeaking loudly in protest at the extra weight. ‘Don’t you bloody well move, I’ve got a club in my bag and I’ll knock you out as soon as look at you!’
‘Ros?’ Patrick said, staring up at me as the swinging gate slowed to a steady stop. ‘Is that you?’
‘No,’ I replied in a voice thick with tears brought on by embarrassment and the fact I had several sharp wooden slats stabbing me in the guts.
‘Then why have you got “RR” monogrammed on your backpack?’
‘Because I’m Robert Redford,’ I choked. Every part of me was in pain. ‘I wear this mask when I’m in London so I can walk around without being bothered by my fans.’
‘Ros. Get down.’
‘I can’t,’ I whimpered as the gate swung to a stop and I finally caught sight of Patrick’s face. He did not look nearly as amused as I’d hoped he might. ‘I’m stuck.’
Without another word, I felt him grab my legs and tug as I tried to lift myself up and over the gate, only succeeding in tearing my T-shirt and scratching my stomach as I went.
‘Take the bloody mask off,’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘I can’t,’ I said again as my feet touched the floor, quickly followed by my bottom as I crumpled to the ground. ‘It’s stuck.’
Patrick reached over and took hold of the tiger’s head, yanking it roughly over my head and dropping it into my lap. I rubbed my ears and opened and closed my mouth, stretching my jaw. I was a sweaty mess, mascara and eyeliner everywhere, jeans and T-shirt torn and three deep scratches along my stomach. In my lap, I saw a big bloody smudge across the tiger’s face. I looked up to see a silhouette of Patrick, features obscured by the bright sun shining behind him.
‘Julian, this is my … friend, Ros,’ he said, gesturing at me by way of explanation. I raised a hand at the older man who was now standing by the front door, and gave him a charming wave. ‘Why don’t you wait inside, I’ll just be a moment.’
‘Of course, of course,’ Julian replied, never once taking his eyes off me as Patrick unlocked the front door. ‘Is she … well?’
‘I honestly don’t know,’ he answered. The older man paused on the doorstep for just a moment, taking in the whole scene, and then disappeared inside, shaking his head.
‘What are you doing, you absolute lunatic?’ Patrick asked, once the door was firmly closed.
‘Surprise?’ I offered, slowly raising my hands and attempting a smile.
He did not smile back.
‘Did you hit your head or have you gone mad?’
I crossed my legs where I sat, wondering if perhaps I had. That would be a relief.
‘That was my publisher,’ he went on. ‘He’s here to talk about my book but now all he’s going to be thinking about is the time he was attacked by a mad woman in a tiger mask. Is that the kind of thing you’d want people to think about when they thought of you?’
‘I thought it would be funny,’ I said quietly as he paced up and down the garden. ‘I see now that it was not.’
‘I don’t know what has got into you,’ Patrick yelled. He was very much not done. ‘Ever since we got back together, you’ve been acting strangely. I know you were gone for two years but you weren’t like this before. You didn’t behave like this last time.’
‘Three years,’ I said, cradling the tiger’s head in my lap.
Patrick’s pale face was beetroot red with rage.
‘What?’
‘I was gone for three years,’ I explained. ‘Not two.’
‘Three years, whatever,’ he huffed. ‘What the fuck were you thinking, hanging around outside my house in that ridiculous mask?’
‘It’s for the podcast,’ I began to explain but it hardly seemed relevant now. ‘You said you’d come to the recording this afternoon.’
‘That’s today?’ he asked. I nodded but said nothing. ‘Fuck. I forgot.’
‘You forgot?’ I repeated. Maybe I had hit my head.
‘This book is killing me,’ Patrick shrugged as though it was enough of a response. ‘Julian came over to see if we could work through a tough chapter. Sorry. I’ll come to the next one.’
‘Are you kidding me?’ I forced myself up to my feet so we were at least somewhere near face to face. ‘You’re going to let me down again? You know this is important to me.’
‘So your work is more important than mine, is that it?’ he asked, his words hot. ‘I’ve got to say, I don’t remember you being this needy. You used to be a lot more easygoing and, I have to say, a lot more respectful of my writing.’
‘I am respectful of your writing!’ I exclaimed, wincing as I strained the six-inch scratch that now ran along my midriff. ‘I’m incredibly respectful of your writing. But you said you would come to this, you asked me to pick you up and now you’re just not coming? How would you feel if it was me constantly letting you down? This is really important to me.’
Patrick turned and slammed the neighbour’s gate closed with an almighty bang.
‘Everything is really important to you,’ he snapped. ‘It was important to you I be at Lucy’s baby shower, it’s important to you I be at your mum and dad’s ridiculous second wedding and it was important to you that I be at Sumi’s bloody birthday, even though my being there was so important to your friends that they’d already fucked off home when I got there.’
‘You were three hours late!’ I shouted back. Inside, I saw the net curtains flinch as Julian backed away from the windows. ‘You were three hours late but you said you were working, so I understood. And please don’t shit on my parents because that’s incredibly rude. I haven’t asked you to do anything out of the ordinary, I haven’t asked you to do anything I wouldn’t do for you.’
‘And there’s the difference, I wouldn’t ask you to do any of this,’ he replied, head held high as we fought for the moral high ground. ‘Did I make you come to my dad’s birthday last Sunday? No.’
I shook my own head in disbelief. ‘I would have loved to have gone with you to your dad’s birthday! You told me you had to work Sunday night.’
‘Can you lower your voice?’ he hissed, looking over his shoulder at the completely empty street. ‘You’re being hysterical.’
‘No, I’m not hysterical, don’t be that man,’ I replied, my senses white hot. I felt focused, I felt clear. ‘This is what angry looks like, get used to it. I don’t think it’s going to be the last time you ever see it.’
He rolled his eyes and glanced back at the house to make sure his precious publisher wasn’t listening. He absolutely was. ‘All this because I’m not coming to your work thing? You should see yourself.’
I was, in fairness, very glad I could not see myself. I could feel myself and smell myself and that was bad enough.
‘All this because you don’t respect me enough to follow through on things you’ve committed to,’ I corrected, all the receipts adding up to a total I could no longer ignore. ‘This is not on me, well, the tiger mask is, but the rest of it is not. It’s on you. You’re not a nice man, Patrick Parker.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ he cried, suddenly incredulous. ‘You dump me to move to America, come swanning back into London with your desperate text messages and expect me to drop everything for you? Is that it?’
I felt the blood rushing around my body, skinned palms and bruised knees throbbing, the scratches on my stomach burning and my eyes ready to shoot laser beams. In that moment, I was invincible.
‘Stop trying to rewrite the past,’ I yelled, jabbing my finger in his direction. ‘I did not dump you, you dumped me and you were glad to do it. I was in love with you, Patrick. Madly, hopelessly, head over heels in love with you and you lapped it up. As soon as I told you I’d been offered the job abroad, you didn’t even blink before finishing with me.’
‘That’s not how I remember it,’ he said with a shrug. I looked down and noticed two buttons of his fly were undone. The indignity. ‘But I’m sure your version of events works better for you.’
I stood up as straight as my shredded knees would allow, mascara all over my face, jeans stuck to me with sweat and T-shirt stained with blood.
‘I thought about you every day,’ I said. ‘And I see now it was such a waste of time.’
‘Ros,’ Patrick loaded my name with meaning, as though the simple act of saying it out loud was exhausting. ‘I’m trying to prepare for an important meeting and I find you trying to break into my neighbour’s garden, wearing a ridiculous animal head, shouting incoherently, but somehow I’m the bad guy? What are you going on about, what do you want from me?’
You are not going to cry, a voice whispered in my head. You’re not going to cry in the street when you’re already sweating, bleeding and carrying a tiger’s head.
‘I want you to want me,’ I said. There was no point holding back now. ‘That’s all I ever wanted from you. I wanted you to want me the way I wanted you.’
And it was true. I wanted him to want me so badly, it burned me up inside. It was something so simple but it always felt like much too much to ask for. I stood there, raw and real and vulnerable, waiting for him to respond.
But he didn’t say anything.
John was right. People didn’t change, their expectations did. Patrick was the same charming, selfish, sexy, intellectual, inconsiderate person he had always been and I was still the adoring, lovesick doormat I had always been. My expectations of him were so low, a worm could have cleared them without catching his belly. Now I understood what I’d really wanted from him, I realized I was never going to get it. I couldn’t change Patrick but I could change my expectations. My expectation of what I deserved.
‘You’ve lost the plot,’ Patrick grunted as I picked up the tiger mask, more backstreet moggy than regal feline at this point. ‘Go to your work thing and call me later when you’ve calmed down.’
‘No,’ I said, balancing the mask in my arms. ‘I’m not going to call you later.’
We stared at each other, each waiting for the other to speak, not knowing what we wanted them to say.
‘Then just go.’ Patrick’s body stiffened as he became a stranger. I looked at his rumpled blond hair, his light blue eyes, the lines of his face that I’d memorized while he slept. He was someone else now. ‘But don’t start sending me “group texts” six months from now when you change your mind.’
‘Bye, Patrick,’ I said, pinching myself together at the seams. ‘I hope your meeting goes well.’
‘This is usually the bit where I say it’s not you,’ Patrick yelled as I walked away, carrying my bloodstained tiger mask, quiet tears cutting a sharp path through my smeared makeup. ‘But this is definitely you!’
‘Oh, I know,’ I called back without turning around. ‘Isn’t it brilliant?’