Page 45 of Cuckoo (aka Claire, Darling)

Chapter Forty-Five

12 June 2025

Dear Diary,

Noah and I have had our first proper argument. He was meant to be meeting Sukhi for the first time, she’s been dying to see him. So anyway, she booked for us all to go to dinner, Noah and me, Sukhi and her husband, Fateh. Sukhi and I headed to the restaurant after work together and met Fateh there. It was my first time meeting him, and he was lovely. Very polite and funny. He had this easy banter with Sukhi that I could tell came from all their time together. She was totally herself around him.

So we wait, and it’s getting later and later. We’ve ordered drinks because the waiter kept coming over to ask, and I’m calling Noah to no response. So then eventually he texts me and says he’s sorry but he’s got wrapped up in a work meeting and can’t make it after all– when we’ve already been waiting there for thirty minutes. I was mortified!

Fateh was so nice about it, but I could tell that Sukhi was unimpressed, although she was polite and said she was sure it was something important that was keeping Noah away. I had so wanted him to make a good impression on her, and for him to like my new friend. I’d sort of envisioned all of us hanging out as a four, doing double dates together. So I was fuming. I couldn’t even really enjoy the meal, and when I got home I told him as much. I said he’d embarrassed me and that I felt he wasn’t respecting my friends’ time, and that he should want to spend time with my friends and get to know them the way I want to get to know his.

To be fair, he looked like he felt guilty about it, and then I began to get a stress headache and had to go to bed with a wet flannel, and he came in looking even more sorry. He ran to the shop to get me painkillers and told me he understood why I was so upset and that he didn’t mean to put work before our relationship. He massaged my aching temples until I fell asleep, and in the morning I hadn’t the heart to continue being angry at him.

Claire