‘It’s really worth a watch,’ he said again.
‘So, apart from watching an entire two seasons of Game of Thrones since we last spoke, how has everything else been?’ I asked, directing the question back to him. He sniffed loudly and the enthusiasm in his voice waned.
‘I’m all right when I have something to take my mind away from … all of that stuff. It’s when I’m left with my own thoughts that things get bad.’
‘A lot of people say that taking up a hobby is very helpful for quieting the mind. Something like knitting or reading or writing, even. I’m sure you’d benefit greatly from writing your thoughts down.’
‘I don’t know if the knitting life is for me, although I’ve enough balls of wool left over from Mum.’ I heard his tone shift when he started talking about his mother.
‘No, I’m not a knitter either. My mother tried to teach me once but she’s left-handed and I’m not, so my scarf came out looking like a four-year-old had done it,’ I said. Jackson chuckled.
‘I like the idea of writing though. Maybe I’ll pen the next great memoir?’
‘You never know.’
‘Okay, well, thanks for the chat, Nell. I’ll speak to you again soon.’
‘See you Jackson.’ I took off my headset for the day. I sighed heavily, exhaling the tension that had built up over the last eight hours and feeling it linger in the form of a tension headache, like a rubber band across my brow.
‘Everything okay, Nell?’ Barry droned as he sauntered over to me from his glass-doored office.
‘I’m okay, just signing off for the day. You?’
‘Had a hard call this morning.’ He looked down.
I sighed an empathetic, yet unhelpful sigh. There was nothing I could do to help; there was nothing anyone could do. ‘I’m sure you did a brilliant job, as usual.’ I gnawed at my lip and then smiled his way before standing and placing a supportive hand on his shoulder. ‘Do you wanna talk about it?’
He looked, for a moment, as if he might accept my offer, but ended up shaking his head.
‘Okay,’ I said, knowing that sometimes talking about it only made you feel more like you did something wrong, or realise that you could have done more. ‘I’m sure Ned will be free for a drink later, if you change your mind.’ It had been Ned’s day off today, but he could never say no to a person in need of delving into the depths of their emotions.
‘Okay. Thanks, Nell.’ His mouth gave the impression of a smile as I turned and walked towards the cloakroom.
I arrived home as the sky was on the verge of night and the street lamps burst into life as I passed along the road. A warm welcoming light glowed from the hallway as I slipped my key into the lock and pushed the door with my shoulder. It stuck a little, as it often did in winter when the wood of the door swelled in its frame, but a few short, sharp thrusts of using my body like a battering ram and it fell open with a quiet squeal.
I took off my coat and hung it over the balustrade, slinging my bag onto the Victorian tiles that I was pretty sure were original to the house. This building was always so quiet, even with both of us milling around inside it. The walls were thick, the ceilings high, the rooms large and impossible to heat to a comfortable temperature during the depths of winter. It had a large unmaintained garden in the rear and a huge kitchen that I often felt sorry for because it was never used to the grand standards it was so clearly equipped for.
Ned had lived in this house with Connie, his ex-wife, whom he had been trying to win back for over six years, but who, as far as I was concerned, was an example of the worst of humankind and should be ashamed of how she’d treated him. She’d run off with a colleague named Richard, after having an eighteen-month affair with him, but had played Ned like a cello, making sure she got as much of his money as she possibly could. Ned had been wealthy once, family money, but not so much anymore.
The house was too big for two people really. Ned and I had spent a drunken evening in the back garden last summer, musing on our lives, and he’d told me then that he really would have loved to have children, but that his time for that had probably passed him by now. When he’d told me this, I’d decided that Ned needed something to care for. He was a carer, a lover, and he needed something to focus that care and love upon. I didn’t count because I could take care of myself and a pet seemed like a big commitment to just spring on someone. And so, one day, I brought home Lola and introduced him to the world of succulent ownership. She’d been with us for six months now, sitting in her little yellow pot on her own shelf (which Ned had put up especially for her) in the kitchen above the kettle. Sometimes, in the morning I could hear Ned talking to her.
It seemed wholly unfair to me that a good man like Ned should end up losing his money, living in an empty home with all of his paternal instincts focused on a houseplant, whereas Connie – mistress of Beelzebub – got everything she wanted. I’d tried to brighten the place up and make it more homely for him by bringing in colourful blankets, lavender bubble bath and Lola, of course. The place had been pretty stark when I got here, after Connie had stripped the place of what she wanted and left Ned to live like a poverty-sworn monk. I was still in the process of trying to make the
