by Kate Davies
‘You poor thing …’
I know I sound weak and pathetic, and I felt weak and pathetic at the time, but I was furious, too. Did she really expect me to comfort her about her break-up with another woman? Yes, was the answer. But I couldn’t tell her how angry I was, because she would think I was being unreasonable, and we would fight, and that might be the end of us.
That night I cried on the Tube home. The balding man in the seat opposite said, ‘Cheer up, it might never happen,’ which made me cry more. A woman in a floral beret offered me a tissue that smelled strangely of cinnamon.
The flat was quiet and empty when I got home. I changed into my pyjamas and lay on my bed, listening to the traffic until I fell asleep.
I woke up at three in the morning, sweating, from a dream about Sam and Virginie and the tiny vibrator. I could barely keep my eyes open at work the next day. I offered to make a tea round, and ended up putting milk in Uzo’s peppermint tea, which is the sort of thing that can ruin the office dynamic if you’re not careful, particularly in an office where you pay for your own tea bags. As I was waiting for the kettle to boil a second time, I heard a buzz of activity around Owen’s desk. Uzo was hugging Owen – an unusual occurrence – and Tom was saying something about a feather in Owen’s cap.
I walked over as quickly I could without spilling Uzo’s tea.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
Owen scuffed the floor with his foot and shrugged. ‘Got a second interview,’ he said.
‘Oh!’ I said.
‘Check your email!’ he said. ‘Maybe you’ve got one too!’
So I did – with Uzo and Tom and Owen all looking over my shoulder at my inbox, which was unfortunate, because there was a five-message exchange with Cat near the top, titled Is this costume too tight around the vag area?
And there, in the middle of the unread messages, fat and bold, was an email from Civil Service Jobs. I clicked on it. And then I wished I hadn’t.
We regret to inform you that you have not been successful at this time. The standard of applications was very high …
There was a sympathetic silence.
‘Oh well!’ I said, brightly, turning and smiling at the others.
Uzo rubbed my shoulder.
‘Don’t let the bastards get you down,’ said Tom. ‘It’s all a matter of jumping through hoops. Not everyone can be a bloody performing pony. No offence, Owen.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Owen said.
‘Don’t apologize!’ I said.
‘I probably won’t get any further, anyway.’
‘You will! I bet you will!’ I said, with audible exclamation marks. ‘I’m really happy for you!’
‘Thanks,’ he said, looking down, still shuffling.
‘I always knew Owen was smarter than he looked,’ Uzo said, hugging him again, mug in hand – a dangerous undertaking.
‘Thanks,’ said Owen again, escaping unscalded. Part of me – the nasty part of me – was disappointed.
Owen didn’t seem to want to look at me, which was just as well, because my face was doing an odd, twitchy dance. I was trying to make it smile, but it seemed determined not to. I knew I probably looked extremely upset, which was not an appropriate way to look under the circumstances, so I took my face to the toilets where no one would be able to see it for a while.
I went to Sam’s that night and told her what had happened, crying into my fish pie at the kitchen table as she rubbed my hand absent-mindedly.
‘I feel like such a failure,’ I said.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘If you had really wanted the job, you’d have done more work for the interview.’
I suppressed another flicker of fury, because I’d probably have performed better if I hadn’t been distracted by the memory of French women offering me coffee one minute and fucking my girlfriend the next.
I helped Sam clear the table and then sat down while she stood with her back to me at the sink, scrubbing the dirty plates. The steam from the hot water filmed the kitchen windows and the SAM LOVES JULIA she’d written with her finger months before reappeared, like the ghost of what our relationship had once been, mocking me.
That night I slept pressed up against her, desperate to feel the comforting heat of her body, but she edged away from me, muttering again about needing space. I lay on my back, thinking of all the withering things I could say to her, things like, ‘Polly is a more interesting artist than you,’ and ‘Your Barbour jacket makes you look like a retired policeman,’ and ‘You look a bit like an owl when you’re about to come.’ Just thinking them made me feel calm, in a vindictive sort of way. I realized ‘vindictively calm’ wasn’t an ideal way to feel when lying next to your girlfriend. Perhaps some time apart wasn’t a terrible idea.
So the next morning, when we were lying in bed, I told her, ‘Alice and I are going to go and stay with Cat in Edinburgh for the weekend.’
She smiled – the first real smile she’d given me in ages. ‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘I’ll miss you. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’ And she winked at me. I’d definitely made the right decision, if she was winking.
36. VERY SCOTTISH TINNITUS
Alice and I took Friday afternoon off work and arrived at Terminal 5 three hours before our flight. Alice hates to be late for things, and she loves shopping in airports. ‘It feels like free money, when you’re about to leave the country!’
‘Scotland isn’t a different country,’ I pointed out, but she was already in Boots, looking at the travel-sized shampoos.
My favourite thing to do at airports is to get drunk, so that’s what we did next.
‘I’m so glad we’re getting out of London,’ Alice said, when the wine kicked in. ‘Dave keeps emailing me about wedding lists. He wants us to register for fish knives. Who in the twenty-first century uses fish knives?’
‘Dave doesn’t strike me as a fish knife sort of person,’ I said, opening the peanuts I’d been intending to eat on the plane.
‘I know! He’s turned into a weird Victorian gentleman since we got engaged.’
‘At least he’s not at home crying because he’s broken up with his bouncy-haired lover.’
‘Let’s not talk about our stupid relationships any more,’ Alice said. ‘If we were a movie, we’d fail the Bechdel test.’
‘All right then,’ I said.
‘All right,’ said Alice.
We looked at each other blankly for a few moments.
‘How’s work?’ I asked.
Alice shrugged. ‘I’m editing the biography of a man who used to be in The Archers. Lots of photos of his grandchildren and jokes about pig farming. How’s yours?’
‘You know how mine is.’ I’d moaned to her about Owen and his second interview the night before.
We looked at each other a bit longer.
‘Would you like to talk about politics?’ Alice asked.
‘No thank you,’ I said. ‘I’ve had too much wine for politics.’
‘I saw a really good hedgehog video on Instagram earlier,’ Alice said, and she got out her phone.
We drank gin and tonics on the plane, and the safety announcement seemed funnier than usual, and we were still a bit tipsy when the plane landed an hour later.
‘We need to sober up,’ Alice said, as we waited for our bags. ‘We’re going to see a Pinter play tonight.’
I wasn’t in the mood for a Pinter play, but it’s hard to be in the mood for anything when you’re waiting at baggage reclaim. According to the airport clock, it was almost eight at night. I wondered what Sam would be doing without me. I WhatsApped her to let her know that I’d arrived, and to tell her that I loved her. The blue ticks let me know she had read the message straight away. She didn’t text me back.
Because we were in Edinburgh, it was raining. We narrowed our eyes against the wind and dragged our bags towards the New Town, passing jugglers and student sketch groups and tourists queuing at street food vans for haggis toasties. Everywhere we went,
we could hear bagpipes playing ‘Scotland the Brave’ in a variety of keys and time signatures. It was like having very Scottish tinnitus.
Cat was staying in a two-bedroom Georgian flat just off Princes Street with eight other people. She met us at the front door, still in her stage make-up. She hugged me. ‘You came!’
We sat in her room and drank beers, shouting our news to each other over the sound of her flatmates singing improvised comedy songs in the living room.
‘You have a room to yourself?’ Alice asked Cat.
‘I kicked Lacey out to make room for you two. She’s staying with her boyfriend.’
‘The tadpole?’ I asked.
‘He’s a sanitary towel this time!’
‘So the show’s going well?’ Alice asked.
‘Look!’ Cat said, showing us a photo on her phone: a blackboard with SOLD OUT written at the top and Menstruation: the Musical in looping pink chalk letters halfway down.
‘You’ve actually sold out?’ Alice said.
‘Just yesterday’s show,’ Cat said. ‘No need to look so surprised.’
Cat seemed different – louder than usual, her gestures more exaggerated, probably because she’d spent three weeks surrounded by actors and comedians and the odd mime artist. As she talked about the agents that had come to see her show, and the brilliant reviews, I slipped further into a well of self-pity.
‘You’re very quiet,’ she said to me. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Just work,’ I said.
‘Not Sam?’ said Cat.
‘I don’t want to talk about Sam,’ I said. She still hadn’t texted me back.
‘I do,’ said Cat.
‘Cat,’ said Alice, a warning.
‘She’s guilt-tripping you for asking her to be monogamous.’
‘We’re still not actually monogamous,’ I said.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ said Cat.
‘Don’t you think that monogamy is a patriarchal construct?’ I said.
‘If it is, it’s one of the better ones,’ said Alice.
‘Why aren’t you angry with her?’ said Cat.
‘I am,’ I said, and as I said it, I let myself properly feel it. Fuck her, I thought. Fuck her and her ‘I’m going to be grieving for Virginie’ and ‘I’ll need you to support me’ and ‘I still need to have sex with other people.’
‘Fuck her,’ said Cat.
‘Don’t say that,’ I said.
I don’t remember much about the Pinter play except that it was long and involved a boarding house and a character named McCann. I fell asleep during one of the pauses and the next thing I knew, Cat was shaking me awake and the cast were onstage taking their curtain call.
I do remember how grateful I felt to be sharing my bed that night with my two best friends. ‘I love you,’ I muttered, as we settled in.
‘Shut up and get to sleep,’ Cat said, adjusting the silk scarf she’d wrapped around her hair. ‘You’re helping me flyer tomorrow and it’ll be a thousand times worse with a hangover.’
There are many terrible things about flyering during the Edinburgh Fringe – the baking sun, the pouring rain, the awful stand-ups who tell the same jokes over and over again, the fact that everybody hates you. I hated myself quite a lot that day as I stood there on the Royal Mile, thrusting glossy leaflets at passers-by, trying not to throw up on my shoes. The best thing about flyering is that it’s all-consuming. I didn’t have time to think about whether I’d have a job when I got back, or about Sam, or anything much, except how long it would be before I’d be able to eat something – a kebab, possibly – and start drinking again. Drinking seemed to be the answer to everything in Edinburgh.
I was fantasizing about what kind of kebab I’d have – chicken shish? – when I heard a voice behind me say, ‘Isn’t that the girl we hung out with at the rave?’
I turned around.
‘Is that––’ said Alice.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Hello, Jane.’
There she was, with her sharp bob haircut and her trendy dungarees and her friend Tia, the one with the shaved head and the gum. Tia smiled and I had a sudden flashback to rubbing her back and telling her that she was a mammal. I wanted, quite badly, to die.
We hugged hello.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.
‘Tia’s doing a show.’
Tia handed me a flyer.
‘You should come,’ said Jane. She held my gaze. I held hers. My heart sped up. It was all a bit intense, for noon on a Saturday.
Cat’s show was on at 5.15p.m. in a cabaret venue in the Old Town. Alice and I had seats at the front. We ordered a bottle of red wine, which felt appropriate, considering the period theme, and soon the overture was booming out from a sound system. I felt a rush of envy as the cast stepped onto the stage, but I soon forgot to be envious, because the musical was brilliant – funny and political and oddly moving, which was an achievement seeing as Cat spent most of the second half dressed as a Mooncup. She closed the show with an impassioned torch song about period poverty and it didn’t feel like a choice when I got to my feet to join in the standing ovation; I felt as though I’d been swept up there by the power of her voice and the surprising beauty of the music, and I clapped until my hands were numb. And I cried a bit. I wished and wished and wished I’d auditioned for the part of the tampon.
Cat was hyperactive after the show, hugging everyone repeatedly, speaking too quickly, laughing extra loudly at jokes. She introduced us to Lacey, who immediately dragged her away to meet someone else, so Alice and I were left on our own. We sat down at a table and poured ourselves some wine from an abandoned bottle.
‘My feet hurt,’ Alice said, looking down at her heels.
‘Of course they do,’ I said. ‘You’re wearing ridiculous shoes.’
‘I want to go to bed.’
‘Come and see Tia’s show with me,’ I said. ‘It’s just around the corner.’
Alice shook her head. ‘I’ve had enough of clapping at things.’
‘What’s that?’ Cat was back, arms around both of us.
‘Julia wants to go and see Tia’s show.’
‘Fuck it,’ said Cat. ‘If Sam wants you to sleep around, you might as well go for it. Jane’s a babe.’
‘I’m not going to have sex with her,’ I said.
We left Cat with her cast, telling a loud anecdote that involved a lot of arm movements, and walked out into the street. The cool air made me feel more awake, yet more aware of how drunk I was. I checked my phone. Still nothing from Sam.
‘Are you coming back to the flat?’ Alice asked.
I shook my head. And as she walked up the hill, to bed, I walked down, unsteadily, mouth fuzzy with drink, towards Tia’s show, towards Jane.
37. SHUT IT, YA BAWBAG!
Tia’s show was in the back room of a pub. There were only ten of us in the audience, but we were all drunk, and laughed easily. My favourite bit was when she talked about how she liked to be touched officially – patted down in the airport, examined by a doctor, etc. Jane caught my eye when Tia talked about her nipples going hard during a breast examination.
The bar had stopped serving by the time the show was over, and Tia and her friends were talking about going to a club. Jane asked me if I wanted to come.
‘I don’t think I should,’ I said.
‘We can go back to my flat instead,’ Jane said.
I could have said no.
I could have texted Sam, to check she was OK with what I was about to do.
But I knew she wouldn’t be.
And I was hurt, and angry, and sick of following rules someone else had come up with.
And I wanted to forget about everything – about my failed job interview, and the fact that I’d missed out on being in the cult hit of the Fringe, and my girlfriend, who missed her lover.
So I said, ‘OK.’
When she kissed me, I kissed her back. I did it without really meaning to. It was sort of a Pavlovian response. Which makes
me a dog, doesn’t it? That seems appropriate.
Just like that we were back at Jane’s flat and she was pushing me back onto the bed and undressing me. As she kissed my neck I noticed how different her skin felt to Sam’s, and I didn’t really like the difference, but I was turned on by it at the same time. She bit me, a playful bite, but probably harder than she’d meant to, and it released something in me – some of the anger and frustration – and I scratched her back in retaliation.
‘You like it rough now, then,’ said Jane, and she pulled my hair so hard that my eyes watered. I pulled her hair, too, and the whole thing was starting to feel like a school-playground fight, but then Jane kissed me again, and I bit down on her lip, and she pushed her fingers into my mouth, and I bit them too, and she pushed my legs open, and then she was fucking me.
I took hold of her wrist and pushed it further inside me. I wanted her to hurt me, because I was full of fury now, with Sam and with Jane but mostly with myself, and this seemed the best way of getting it out of me. I reached out and touched Jane’s breast, because Sam rarely let me touch hers.
And as soon as I did, I came.
And coming was like a victory.
And then it was over, and I was left with a crawling emptiness and dread.
‘Fuck,’ Jane said. ‘You’ve been doing your homework.’
She wiped her hand on the bed.
Outside the window, a lone bagpiper was playing ‘The Bonny Banks o’ Loch Lomond’.
Someone on the street shouted, ‘Shut it, ya bawbag!’
I closed my eyes. A tear slipped out. ‘Fuck,’ I said. That had been so easy to do. I had barely noticed the line as I’d crossed it.
At some point I must have fallen asleep. I woke up with Jane still next to me and checked my phone. Two missed calls from Alice, and a text from Sam.
So sorry for the late reply, babes. I got an early night. When are you home? I miss your gorgeous cunt. And your gorgeous face, obvs xxx
I could hardly bear to be in my own body, I felt so ashamed. I’d always thought of myself as a good person, the sort of person who buys sandwiches for homeless people and votes with less privileged people in mind and would never, never cheat on her girlfriend.