Got a new phone with three lines

7. Boss left office before me and said 'working late, Tom. Good man' (with a smile!)

What a day! What a day! He looked at the bad column.

Bad

1. Marina?????????

He had written this late last night. He had not had time to write any more than this. He had not really understood what was going on. He had wanted to sleep on it. Think about it. That had not helped. Well, it had helped a little because he had forgotten about it when he was sleeping.

And until this moment he had still forgotten about it, but now it was coming back and it felt like ... how did it feel? It felt like someone had thrown a big bowl of very cold water over him, on a hot day, when he was not expecting it, when he was looking somewhere else. That is how it felt as he remembered last night and the conversation he had had with Marina, or rather, what Marina had talked to him about, because Tom had said very little.

He went over the conversation again in his head. The way he understood it, of course.

'Hi Marina, how are you?'

'Hi Tom. Have a good day?'

'Yeah, so-so.' (He had not had time then to check his notebook so he did not tell her what a good day it actually had been.)

And then he had asked her about hers, the way you do, you know, like this:

'What about you? How was your day?'

Well, you ask these things but, of course, what you expect to hear is, 'Yeah, fine,' or ,'Yeah, OK,' or ,'Yeah, so-so,' and that is usually it. You can go on and do something else. Change your clothes, take a shower, put your feet up, turn the television on, maybe even open a beer, if it has been a really good day. Or open a beer if it has been a really bad day. You do not expect this kind of answer:

'WONDERFUL!!! GREAT!!! I've had a wonderful day. You won't believe it!'

She had said it exactly like that, in capital letters: (G-R-E-A-T) and with exclamation marks (!!!).

She then told him a story about a man who had come to the house, done the ironing for her and had stayed a while to talk to her and drink a coffee with her. This man did not give his name and did not explain how he knew she was doing the ironing. He did not ask for any money or give her any other information about who he worked for or anything. It was mad. Tom could not understand it. It did not make any sense.

Secondly, Marina had told Tom about a conversation she had had with a butterfly. OK, she had told this story with a smile and a laugh, but it still seemed strange to Tom. Tom did not use a lot of words and did not easily share them with anyone. Least of all with animals.

Finally, when Tom had gone very quiet, Marina told him that she was going up to London on Thursday to meet a friend. When Tom had asked who she was going to meet she had not answered at first and then she said 'Joanne'.

Tom had asked, 'Joanne Searle?' because this was the only Joanne they knew and Marina had replied, 'Yes, isn't that nice. She phoned me, a total surprise.'

A total surprise was right. Tom knew Joanne. He had worked with her in London for three years. But he also knew, as Marina clearly did not know, that Joanne had given up her job six months ago and had gone to live with a group of Buddhists in Nepal.

'I've had enough of running around trying to get somewhere,' Joanne had told him before leaving for Nepal. 'Because when you get there you can't remember why you wanted to be there in the first place. I'm going to learn to be happy being who I am, and where I am!'

Joanne was going to spend three years, three months and three days learning how to meditate. She had not organised

a going away party and clearly Marina did not even know she had gone away.

Tom looked out of the window of the train for a moment and then looked back at his list of bad things and wrote some more notes under 'Marina?' Like this:

Ironing Man

Butterfly

Joanne

Then he wrote:

Is Marina going mad? Is my wife seeing another man?

Maybe yesterday had not been such a good day after all.

***

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 817