part0012

I always wear swimming goggles for chopping onions because they make my eyes run something terrible. I don’t actually wear them for swimming – I think they look naff to be honest. Anyway, I was feeling a lot better than I had for a long time; not exactly happy, but sort of on the way to being happy. Josie seems to have turned a corner and come out of herself a bit and I suppose I was feeling a little bit optimistic about things getting better, getting back to something like normal. A new normal.

I heard the front door open so I knew it was Josie and I called out a hello to her but when I turned round and saw her; my God, for a moment I thought it was Nessa, what with the goggles being a bit misty. For a split second I thought she’d come back to me.

Yes, I know. Bloody stupid.

Of course as soon as I took the goggles off, I could see that it was Josie, and of course I knew it wasn’t Nessa really, it couldn’t possibly be Nessa. The sensible part of me knew that it wasn’t her but just for a moment she looked so like my Nessa. And in that split second, I felt everything; elation that she’d come back and horror that she was never coming back.

Josie’s little heart shaped face with those enormous blue eyes and that haircut - Nessa had really short hair when we first met and I used to make her laugh when I called her my little pixie.

Josie wouldn’t believe me when I said her hair looked lovely. She thought I was looking at her in horror and I didn’t want to tell her the real reason because that would have upset her even more so all in all I made a right mess of everything. Now she thinks she looks awful and that everyone’s going to laugh at her and make fun of her. And that little bit of confidence that she’s worked so hard to get in the last few weeks has gone and it’s my fault.

At least she went to the rehearsal; that’s the thing with our Josie, she takes her responsibilities seriously. If she wasn’t band manager there’s no way she’d have gone. When I dropped her off for the band rehearsal, she was wearing one of my old beanie hats and that bloody Parka. I could kick myself, I really could. I’m such an idiot. I said to her, you can’t wear that hat forever you know; your hair will take months to grow.

And she just gave me that look , and I thought; she will, she’ll be wearing that hat for the next six months.