Free You, Me and Other People by Fionnuala Kearney Page A

furious sense of having been taken for a complete idiot. I head out to the hall table, grab my car keys and walk to the shop at the nearby garage. I need crisps and lots of them.
    Sylvia is outside her house with Ted, her Yorkshire terrier, on a lead. ‘Hey,’ she says as I exit the gate.
    ‘Hi.’ I automatically hug her. ‘I’m sorry it’s been a while, I’ve been busy licking my wounds.’
    ‘You’re entitled. Where you headed?’
    ‘The garage, I need crisps.’
    She giggles. ‘I’ll walk with you. Just taking Ted out for a stretch.’
    ‘How’re Nigel and the kids?’
    ‘They’re great. Now … That’s enough small talk. How are you?’
    ‘All the better for all the food you bring me.’ I link her arm for a moment. ‘Seriously, I’d probably have fallen down a grate without you.’
    ‘You look like you probably will anyway. How much weight have you lost? No, don’t tell me. Maybe I can persuade Nige to leave me, just for a while.’ She yanks on Ted’s lead, pulling him closer. ‘Sorry, too soon?’
    I shake my head, attempt a smile. We walk for a few minutes; when we reach the main road, the smell of traffic fumes almost overcomes me.
    ‘Come over for dinner tonight when the kids are in bed,’ she says. ‘Just you, me and Nige. You don’t have to talk about anything to do with Adam. Just eat homemade chicken.’
    ‘Tempting.’ I can feel myself salivate at the thought. ‘But no, I really have to work and I’m not ready to socialize yet. Soon, I promise. Please don’t stop asking.’
    ‘I won’t.’ She steers me into the garage shop and again, I breathe deep to combat the smell of fuel outside. ‘Salt-and-vinegar crisps,’ she tells the guy at the till. ‘A big bag. A big bag with lots of little bags, you know the type?’
    Seb, as his badge reveals he’s been named, looks at Sylvia like she’s a lunatic. ‘You need a supermarket for multi-bags,’ he says, already bored.
    ‘Well, just fill a plastic bag with as many little bags as you can.’ She rolls her eyes at me.
    I’m not even sure I want crisps any more. I shiver, pray I’m not coming down with something.
    ‘Have you noticed?’ Sylvia asks.
    ‘What?’ I remove my purse from my pocket, get it ready for Seb as he’s done exactly what Sylvia asked.
    She tugs on my cotton jacket. ‘It’s mid-October. The trees will soon be bare. Evenings will be dark, the sun shielded by dense layers of cloud, not to be seen again until springtime. It’s cold out there.’ She speaks as if she’s in a Shakespearean play; makes the word ‘cold’ sound very long and very loud.
    I shudder on cue and nod. ‘Note to self. Summer jackets to be put away.’
    ‘Warm jackets to be worn on late-afternoon jaunts for crisps …’
    Walking back, she makes me laugh with stories of the kids and Nigel; when we stop outside the house, Ted does an enormous circular crap right in the centre of my driveway. Sylvia scoops it up into a plastic bag and asks me if I want her to let it harden a little and send it to Adam. ‘Shit for a shit.’ She shrugs. ‘Seems reasonable …’
    I don’t disagree. After hugging her goodbye, I’m soon back in the kitchen, tearing open a bag of crisps. And there, on my own, the dark night drawing in, I turn the thermostat up, throw a cardigan from a pile of washing around me. I flick the tiny kitchen television into life with the remote and scroll through channels until I find a rerun of
Game of Thrones
. Leaning on the worktop, I lick my salty fingertips, as Catelyn Stark tells me, her face grave, that ‘Winter is Coming.’

Chapter Ten
    ‘Why are you still wearing your ring?’
    I stop twirling it around my finger and look at Matt. ‘I’m a married man until Beth tells me otherwise,’ I say.
    ‘Do you think she will?’ Matt keeps glancing at the clock on the meeting room wall. I’m sure he’s trying diversionary tactics, rather than discussing the more immediate elephant in the room.
    ‘Forget my