Free A Funny Thing About Love by Rebecca Farnworth

to be on my own right now.’
    â€˜Alright, Greta Garbo, I’ll call you later. By the way, what’s with the cactus?’
    â€˜This is not just a cactus. This is Basil, he likes Motown.’
    That comment received another arch of the eyebrow, ‘You’ve named a plant? Sweetie, you really need to go home and rest. Everything will seem better in the morning and you’ll realise that Basil is just a plant with attitude.’
    Back at her North London flat Carmen’s instinct for self-preservation kicked in. She was suddenly exhausted,barely able to put one shoe-booted foot in front of the other. The adrenalin which had been firing her up all day had drained away. There were several messages from Will on her mobile and on her home answerphone asking her to call him urgently, but she really wasn’t up to speaking to him. Instead of hitting the vodka, which was what she had intended as soon as she left Marcus, she made herself a hot chocolate, put on her pyjamas and listened to her all-time favourite Victoria Wood CD, whose comedy always made her feel as if the world was not quite as bad as she feared it was, as she retreated under the duvet. Maybe in the morning her troubles would have melted away like lemon drops.
    But in the morning her troubles felt like bloody massive boulders as not one but three bills landed on her doorstep – including the credit card bill with the unpaid jacket. ‘Bloody Marcus!’ she exclaimed to Basil, who had pride of place on the desk in the living room. He did look a little lonely, though. Perhaps she should download that Motown track and get him a little friend? She was all set to google cacti pals when she stepped back. That way madness lay. She also had another new message on her answerphone. It was Nick. ‘Hi again, hope you’re okay. I’m sorry to load this on you as well but when I get back from the tour we really need to talk about the flat. I’m sorry, Carmen. Speak soon.’
    When Carmen and Nick had separated it had been agreed that she should have the flat for the time being. Somehow the time being had always felt as if it shouldbe longer than nine months. It wasn’t as if she liked the flat that much, as it overlooked a busy main road and was in a sort of in-between place – on the borders of trendy Crouch End and the not-so-upmarket Hornsey. It was next to a fire station, so evenings were frequently punctuated by the beep-beep-beep of the station doors opening and the whoop-whoop of a siren. Though the location also had its perks as in the summer the firemen would sit outside playing cards and some were really rather lovely. The best features of the flat – a third-floor Victorian conversion – were the fire-places, high ceilings and a roof garden with a great view of the local park and of the aforementioned fire station (not that she was stalking the boys in uniform in any kind of pervy way, but pickings had been thin on the ground since her separation). For all its shortcomings, this was her home and she really didn’t think she was up to dealing with Nick’s baby news, leaving her job and losing her home all at once. That would surely count as stress overload.
    She emailed her parents in Melbourne where they were staying with her twin brother, Toby, figuring it would be easier to break the news that she was unemployed that way and be spared the emotional phone call where her mum would be bound to go off on one. (How was she going to support herself ? Didn’t she realise there was a pension time bomb coming up? Did she want to be an impoverished old lady? And so on.)
    Carmen spent the next hour fielding calls from her concerned friends. First was Jess, one of her oldestfriends from uni: ‘Carmen, Marcus rang me, how are you?’ Jess was mother of one son, married to Sean, also a friend from uni. She lived in Brighton where she worked as a part-time English teacher at a sixth-form