by Kate Davies
‘I think I’ve forgotten how to ride,’ said Ella.
‘You haven’t,’ I said. ‘I thought I might have done, but it comes back to you.’
The others nodded.
I was so wise and sexually experienced all of a sudden. I had an identity again, one that wasn’t ‘slightly shit civil servant who drinks wine from cardboard boxes while watching sitcoms’. I was a lesbian. A successful one, it felt like.
Zhu leaned back in her chair and smiled at Ella. ‘If you need someone to practise with, you know where I am,’ she said.
I laughed, and then I realized that Zhu was completely serious. Ella was folding an empty crisp packet into a tiny square piece. Bo was looking from Zhu to Ella and back again, waiting for a reaction.
‘I can attest to the fact that Zhu is a very generous lover,’ said Rebecca.
‘Rebecca!’ said Bo.
‘What?’ said Rebecca.
It’s incredible what a difference good sex can make. Absolutely nothing else had changed, but I felt as though I’d been upgraded to the business class version of my life. I was less anxious, more sure of myself, less bothered by the terrible things I heard on the news every morning, less bitter around couples.
I even felt better about my father, who clearly still had a few issues about my lesbian revelation. He came down to London a couple of days after the incredible sex, and we went for a lunchtime walk along the river. He gave me an awkward hug when we met, and handed over the Stella Gibbons book without looking at me, which I took to mean, ‘I’m sorry and I love you.’ It was an old hardback of Nightingale Wood.
‘Thanks,’ I said, turning the brittle pages. ‘I haven’t read this one.’
We walked on for a few moments in silence, watching the boats full of tourists pass on the Thames.
‘You seem very cheerful,’ he said at last.
‘I am. I’ve met someone.’
He turned towards me. ‘A – one of – a lesbian?’
‘A lesbian.’
‘Well. Great. That’s great.’ He looked straight ahead again.
‘Yes. She’s not my girlfriend or anything.’
‘Good.’
‘What? Why?’
Dad went slightly red. ‘Nothing. That’s very good news, Julia.’
‘No,’ I said, stopping in the middle of the path, so a jogger had to swerve past me. ‘Why is that good?’
‘Well,’ he said, walking ahead, so that I had to catch up with him, ‘I mean it’s good that you’re not labelling it. You’re too young to put yourself in a box.’
I waited for sadness to hit me, or anger, or something. But I felt nothing. I didn’t care what my dad thought about Sam and me, I realized. I had always valued his opinion – too highly, probably – but this time it was clear to me that he was wrong. He couldn’t hurt me. I was too happy for anything to hurt me.
In fact, I was so happy that I was probably starting to piss off my friends. I caught Alice rolling her eyes at Dave one Thursday night while I was describing Sam’s artistic process.
‘She does her portraits really quickly, like Hockney does, in charcoal, and then she uses acrylic.’
‘Great.’
‘She really is great. She’s been invited to do a show in Florence next year! They’re giving her a studio and an apartment for a month!’
‘Sounds amazing.’ (Eye roll.)
But I didn’t care – I was Teflon-coated, practically, by my newfound happiness.
And anyway, when Alice and Dave met Sam, they were as charmed by her as I was. The four of us went for dinner to a BYO vegetarian restaurant in Vauxhall after we’d been seeing each other for a couple of weeks. Sam turned up late, but with two bottles of wine to make up for it.
‘Which one of you is Alice?’ she asked, looking from Dave to Alice and back again. Everyone laughed.
I sort of knew Dave would get on with Sam – they had mutual friends, had both been to art school, moved in similar creative circles – but I was surprised by how taken Alice seemed to be with her. She crossed her legs a lot and touched Sam’s shoulder and laughed too loudly at her jokes. We all drank too much and soon Alice was quizzing Sam about her coming-out story.
‘I’ve been out forever,’ Sam said, refilling everyone’s glasses. ‘Everyone at school knew. Me and my best friend used to fuck in our dormitory when everyone else was asleep. I had to go back in the closet when I went home for the holidays, though.’
‘You went to boarding school?’ I asked.
‘That’s what you’re picking up on from that story?’ Dave asked, leaning forward, ready to ask more.
I spilled a glass of wine all over the table and my legs and Sam jumped up to grab some napkins and the conversation moved on. ‘Clumsy,’ she said, as she mopped my lap, and I felt as though I had let her down – something about the way she looked at me made me feel guilty, and young, and silly, and a bit incompetent. But then she kissed me, and everything was wonderful again.
‘I love her,’ Alice told me the next evening over a dinner of overcooked noodles.
‘Do you really?’ I asked.
Alice nodded. ‘She’s so charming.’
‘I know.’
‘And she’s so hot. So hot.’
‘Don’t let Dave hear you say that.’
‘He told me off last night for flirting with her.’
‘Ha!’
‘I know! But she just sort of exudes sex, doesn’t she?’
‘She does.’
‘I wish Dave exuded sex.’
‘He probably did when you first met him.’
‘Not like Sam.’ She twisted more noodles onto her fork. ‘What if I never have exciting sex again?’
‘You and Dave have plenty of exciting sex.’
‘I know … but you shine whenever you talk about Sam.’
‘But that’s just newness. That goes.’
‘I suppose so …’
I was lying a bit, though. Because I didn’t think it would go. I was so happy. I had basically turned into a lesbian Icarus. I should have known it couldn’t last.
15. EMERGENCY DOUGHNUTS
The not-lasting started one Tuesday morning at work. Owen was telling me and Uzo about the workout he’d started doing at the gym – an unusually boring conversation, even by correspondence team standards – when Tom marched up to us, self-importantly. He’d been doing a lot more self-important marching since Smriti had arrived.
The three of us looked up at him. Uzo put her phone away. ‘Hello,’ I said, more of a question than a greeting.
‘Hello,’ Tom said. ‘I was wondering whether you guys wanted to go for a team lunch today? For a good old catch-up?’
Owen, Uzo and I looked at each other. Tom had never suggested a team lunch before. He didn’t usually go in for ‘good old catch-ups’ either.
I made an unconvincing ‘Sounds great!’ sort of noise.
We went to the Italian restaurant round the corner from the office and ordered the two-courses-for-ten-pounds deal.
‘Change is in the air,’ Tom muttered darkly, shaking Parmesan onto his lasagne.
‘I thought that was the smell of cheap Italian food!’ said Uzo, laughing. I like it when Uzo laughs; it makes her statement necklaces rattle.
Tom ignored her. ‘There’s talk of merging our team with the broader comms team.’
Owen and I looked at each other. ‘Merging’ was one of the bad words.
‘Are they going to make people redundant?’ I asked.
Tom furrowed his brow. ‘Possibly.’
‘They can’t get rid of me,’ said Uzo, leaning back in her chair. ‘I’ve been here too long. It would be too expensive.’
‘They can easily get rid of me,’ I said. I was only a contractor. They wouldn’t need to pay me off at all.
‘They apparently need more people on the Freedom of Information requests team,’ said Tom. ‘So some of you might be transferred.’
There were gasps and cries of ‘No!’ a
nd general noises of disgust. No one wants to work on the Freedom of Information requests team.
‘I just wanted to give you a heads up,’ said Tom. A string of cheese stretched from his mouth to his plate in a slightly disgusting way. ‘If I were you, I’d be looking into my options.’
I was reminded of the conversation I’d had with the ballet mistress at the English National Ballet. ‘You’re young! You did well in your A-levels! You could go to university! You have so many options!’ But none of them were options that I wanted to pursue.
Later that day Owen and I left the office for an emergency doughnut to discuss Tom’s revelations. Owen went for Raspberry Filled. I ordered Chocolate Glazed (desperate times).
‘I know we don’t like working here,’ Owen said, ‘but it’s better than not working anywhere, isn’t it?’
‘Exactly,’ I said.
‘And compared to loads of people, we have it pretty easy. Laura always has to stay at work till, like, eight. She’s a lawyer,’ he said. The corners of his mouth turned up smugly. And then he bit into his doughnut and squirted jam onto his shirt, which was satisfying.
I handed him a napkin so he could clean himself up.
‘We could apply for the Fast Stream,’ I said.
‘The next application round isn’t till October,’ said Owen. ‘But there is an SEO recruitment round opening soon …’ Senior Executive Officers got to do much more interesting work than we did. They had job titles like Senior Policy Adviser and Senior Communications Officer. I liked the idea of being senior.
We looked over towards the door, where two SEOs were standing, chatting animatedly about patient satisfaction statistics – quite a feat, being able to talk animatedly about statistics. They looked important. They had bought their doughnuts to go.
16. NO ONE STARTS WITH JUST ONE JUGGLING BALL
When I was with Sam I didn’t have to think about my future, or my past, or the fact that I hadn’t done the washing-up, or anything other than whether we had enough lube to get us through the weekend. A month in, we were seeing each other almost every day, and the sex was getting better and more inventive. We’d have sex every time we saw each other, unless one of us was on our period – she was into period sex, she said, but I wasn’t ready to bleed all over her nice white sheets yet. I wanted to maintain an element of mystique. I’d never met anyone as uninhibited as Sam. She’d say to me, ‘Your cunt is fucking gorgeous,’ and then tell me why in graphic, anatomical detail.
‘I’ve never seen such a beautiful pussy,’ she said over coffee in Soho one day.
‘Thank you. Yours is very nice too,’ I said.
‘Whenever I think about it I have to wank.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘That makes me feel … shivery.’
What was I meant to say? Were we supposed to be competing to say more and more obscene things? Quite possibly. I wasn’t used to talking like this, like the conversation was a big game of obscenity tennis.
She told me I was the best sex she’d ever had. Actually, she said I was ‘the best fuck’ she’d ever had. Apparently no one had made her come just from going down on her before. And let’s remember that she’d had sex with 121 other women. That was probably the pinnacle of my life’s achievements.
We weren’t just having amazing sex – we walked around Columbia Road flower market together, dodging the tourists and hipsters and amateur street-art photographers; we went out for dinner at her local, laughing at each other’s jokes over craft beers and bangers and mash; we strolled up Marchmont Street and browsed the latest LGBT literature in Gay’s the Word. We were everything a London lesbian couple should be, except we weren’t officially a couple.
She’d never been to my flat, which bothered me. I did love going to hers – it was so clean and quiet, and she didn’t have a flatmate or a resident mouse – but I felt it was important for her to see me in my natural habitat. I’d been changing my sheets regularly just in case she decided to come home with me one night, and I’d piled up my most intellectual novels beside my bed, but to no avail. We usually went out in East London, so her flat was more convenient.
One Sunday, I was home painting my nails when the doorbell went.
‘Not for me!’ Alice shouted from her bedroom.
‘Not for me either!’ I shouted back.
‘I haven’t got my trousers on.’
‘I’m not wearing a bra.’
I could hear Alice muttering to herself, putting on her dressing gown. She opened the front door and said, ‘Oh!’
‘Hello,’ said Sam’s voice.
I opened my bedroom door. There she was, standing on the doorstep in the rain, holding a bunch of peonies.
Alice went back to her room, nudging me unsubtly as she passed, leaving Sam and me alone. Sam was still leaning in the doorway, the top half of her body in our flat, her feet still on the doorstep, as though she might not be staying.
‘Are you coming in?’ I asked.
‘Yes, please,’ she said, stepping into the hall. ‘I was sitting at home, thinking about your gorgeous tongue going down on me, and I thought I’d come round.’
‘Thin walls!’ called Alice.
I pushed Sam down the corridor to my room. I could feel her looking around our flat, taking in the damp patch on the ceiling and the dust at the edges of the carpet. I thanked the universe that I had Hoovered my room that day.
She sat on my bed and looked through the pile of books, just as I’d intended.
‘Ali Smith,’ she said. ‘Nice.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ve read all her stuff.’
‘What did you think of Winter?’
‘Except that one.’
I bunked off swing dance and we had sex and pizza and wine. It was wonderful.
‘I haven’t been on this many dates with the same person for years,’ I told her.
‘I don’t usually bother with dates,’ she said. ‘Unless I’m really serious about someone.’ She took my hand. ‘I’m having the most perfect evening.’
‘Sorry about the flat.’
‘What about the flat? It’s lovely.’
I made a face. ‘It’s not lovely. You don’t have to pretend it’s lovely.’
‘It’s yours, and that’s what matters,’ she said, looking me in the eye. ‘I think everything about you is lovely.’
Every One Direction song and every Meg Ryan film flashed through my mind. I’d never realized how accurate they were until now. I wanted to say something to her, something like ‘You complete me,’ but I managed to keep my mouth shut and smile at her, a smile that must have told her how I felt.
We had sex again. She wore the strap-on and I got on top, reaching back to make her come with my hand at the same time.
Afterwards, we lay side by side on our backs on top of the duvet, little fingers curled together.
‘You are a total natural at lesbian sex,’ she said.
‘Thank you.’ I smiled down at our bodies, my pasty legs against her golden ones, and I realized I felt completely happy with my body and what it could do, for the first time in years.
And that’s when she said, ‘I can’t believe you’ve only been with two women. Imagine what you’ll be like when you’ve fucked more people.’
It took a while for that to sink in.
‘You’ve got so much to look forward to,’ she continued. ‘There are so many different kinds of women. Butches, femmes, pillow queens, bull dykes, whatever. Older women, younger women. If I could, I think I’d shag every woman on Earth.’
I couldn’t compute what she was telling me. ‘I thought you liked having girlfriends,’ I said.
She turned to look at me. ‘I do. I love sharing my life with someone.’
‘Right …’
‘But I like sharing my body, and my love, with lots of people at the same time.’
I nodded slowly, looking up at the ceiling.
‘I wouldn’t want to limit myself to one woman. It would be like only eating cheese sa
ndwiches for the rest of your life. Sometimes you just want pastrami, don’t you? Which is why I’m non-monogamous.’ I felt her shrug, as though her pastrami analogy explained everything.
I pushed myself up onto my elbows. ‘So— who else are you sharing your body and love with at the moment, apart from me?’
‘No one!’ she said, sitting up, suddenly realizing I might not be taking this 100 per cent brilliantly. ‘No one since I met you! Of course not! I’d have told you!’
‘Oh,’ I said, my voice steady. ‘OK.’
‘But I will at some point. And you will too, if you want to.’
‘OK,’ I said again, trying to adjust my vision of our future.
‘And of course there’s Virginie,’ she said.
I tried to smile, but the corners of my mouth were turning down treacherously. I knew that name. I’d seen it on the photograph I’d found in Sam’s copy of The Portrait of a Lady. ‘You’ve never mentioned Virginie before,’ I said.
Sam frowned. ‘I’m sure I have.’
‘You definitely haven’t,’ I said.
‘I’m pretty sure I’ve told you about her.’
‘You really haven’t.’
Sam shrugged. ‘Either way. She’s my lover.’
It’s amazing, the power words can have. They’re just vibrations, really, over in a second, but I’ll never forget the expression on Sam’s face, or her intonation, when she told me she had a lover, as if it wasn’t important.
‘You didn’t tell me,’ I said. I thought I might cry. I didn’t want to cry.
Sam took my hands. ‘You don’t need to worry about her,’ she said. ‘I don’t see her very often.’
‘But when you do see her …’
‘When I do see her, we have sex,’ said Sam, as though she was admitting that she was a vegetarian, or enjoyed a spot of badminton on a Saturday.
I moved the pillow up to cushion my back and sat up. ‘So you haven’t seen her since …’ I wanted to say, ‘since we’ve been together.’ But we weren’t together, officially. So I didn’t have the right to be angry, did I?
‘No. Haven’t wanted to.’
‘But you’ve spoken to her.’
‘Maybe once. We mostly text each other. She knows I’ve got my hands full with you—’