for the tin opener.
‘Not now. Before.’ I reach under the sofa in case it fell from my heartbroken hand when I finally drifted off into fitful sleep.
‘Oh, that. That was just the microwave. I’m heating up leftovers. Pizza. Mmm mmm. Want some? Oh, duck,’ she says, catching my sob face, ‘you don’t have to eat it.’
She sits beside me. Credit to her, she only reels back a little bit when I slump into her arms. Must shower one of these days. ‘I don’t want pizza,’ I snivel. ‘I’d never eat pizza again if I could have Matt back.’ Not that one has anything to do with the other. Or that I’d be able to keep the promise anyway. Blame my sorry state for making me resort to nonsense like this.
‘Here’s your phone.’ Caitlin unplugs it from the wall. That’s right. I’d wanted it charged in case his make-up call took more than 27% of my battery.
Now I’m fully charged but still broken up.
‘Nobody rang,’ she says, handing it to me.
‘You’re too young to be looking at phones,’ I snap. Which is also ridiculous considering that she could practically build her own apps before she was out of nappies.
I feel like a first-class arse when Rowan gathers her daughter in for a hug. ‘I’m sorry, love,’ I tell Caitlin. ‘I haven’t been myself lately.’
‘I know, Auntie Nelly, but there are other fish in the sea.’
‘You didn’t really just say that.’
Caitlin shrugs. ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’
‘I’ll take dating advice from you when the Tooth Fairy no longer has to visit, okay?’
She sticks her tongue in the hole where her bottom tooth had been. ‘I’m just saying what Mummy said.’
‘Way to belittle my breakdown, Rowan.’
Now it’s Rowan’s turn to cast evils at her daughter. ‘You’re not having a breakdown. This is a temporary situation.’
‘You mean you think we’ll get back together?’ I hear the desperation in my voice.
Rowan’s eyes slide from mine. ‘Maybe.’
‘You’re a hopeless liar.’
‘I mean it might not be the worst thing if you didn’t,’ she says. She starts to gather up my tissue mountain but changes her mind. Instead, she folds over the ends of the biscuit packets. ‘To be honest, he didn’t always seem totally committed. He stayed away for Christmas.’
The cushion slides further towards the floor when I sit up. ‘He got food poisoning, Rowan. You’re not suggesting he purposely ate bad chicken to get out of seeing Gran. Trust me, he’s totally committed. I mean, until we broke up. But I can fix this.’
Rowan shakes her head. ‘I’m not sure you should, though, duck. You shouldn’t have to convince a bloke to be with you.’
‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you, when my sap of a brother made it so easy. Meet, fall in love, get married, job done.’
Rowan, being Rowan, doesn’t take it personally that I’m being a complete cow. She knows I couldn’t have loved her more if she were my own blood sister. Luckily, she remembers it even when I talk like this.
‘I’m saying that you’re worth more, Nelly, that’s all. And you know it. If someone hasn’t got the brains to see that, then that’s his loss, not yours. He hasn’t bothered to ring you, has he?’
‘It’s only been three days.’
‘And how many days is okay before he’s an arse for not ringing his fiancée?’
‘Ex-fiancée, apparently.’
‘Just— Don’t ring him, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Really okay? Or are you just saying okay until I leave the room and then you’ll ring him?’
‘Really okay.’ I do have some pride left. Rationally, I know Rowan is right. I just need my heart to catch up with my head. And for Matt to ring me to apologise.
I can’t bear to think about what it will mean if he doesn’t.
I suppose I should come clean now, because you’ll realise it sooner or later anyway. I’m the family screw-up. Not jailbird level. Just as in nobody is surprised when something else doesn’t work out for me. There’s always that knowing eye-roll. Like it’s all my fault and what do you expect, it’s Nelly.
But this is jailbird level. I’m the one about to be jilted. Never mind that my heart feels like it has been ripped in two. Oh, how everyone will pick over that with their Christmas dinner. Nelly’s fiancé ran a mile rather than marry her.
Maybe I’ll fake food poisoning this year.
I haven’t told anyone about me and Matt. And it’s been nearly three weeks now. That makes me either the world’s biggest optimist or completely delusional.
The problem is, the details of our last conversation are getting a little fuzzy. They say our minds do that when there’s been a traumatic event, but you’d think something like this would be cemented into my memory, given that it’s ruining my life. It’s fair to say that I wasn’t as coherent as I’d have liked, what with all the crying. I think I offered all kinds of promises when he started talking about taking a break.
A break. That’s one word away from a break-up, but that’s what he’s done. He’s gone on a break. Which is possibly why he hasn’t returned my calls.
Rowan knows about us, obviously, since I wallowed all over her sofa for more than a week, but she’s sworn to secrecy, and my brother’s been out of town on one of his consultancy assignments (Abu Dhabi this time), so there’s a chance it won’t get back to the family yet. There haven’t been any major events to cover for lately. Mum sometimes asks how Matt is when we talk, and I say ‘fine’ like I always have.
I suppose it’s too much to hope that I can keep this up, that they won’t notice the absence of a groom on the day itself.
I wish I had the stomach for it, but I cannot face everyone. Because it wasn’t me who called time, was it? I’m the one everyone is going to wonder about. No matter how I spin it, I’m the jiltee, the rejectee, the un-fiancéed.
They’re going to think I’m the defective one. Again.
I do remember that Matt was frustratingly vague about this whole break thing. That means there might still be a chance that we can make things okay. He’s got to come to his senses at some point. I will not believe that this is the end. We were too good together to just throw away the best two years of our lives. Anyone would get cold feet with all the wedding planning we’ve been doing. I probably have gone a bit overboard on it all. Naturally, I offered to pare everything down to the bare minimum, if that’s what he wanted. Even though we did decide on all the details together, and I’m not just saying that. Matt has made as many suggestions as I have, and we’ve agreed on them all. That’s what I mean: nobody is as well-aligned as we are. So why hasn’t he been in touch to admit he made a mistake?
It’s the silence that’s killing me. If we’d just broken up like normal people, then I’d get on with the usual stages of break-up grief. The share prices in Kleenex and Gordon’s would go up. I’d baffle friends and strangers with unanswerable questions, maybe do something ill-advised with my hair. At least I’d be tragically thin, even if losing that ten pounds for the wedding dress would be a moot point.