by Kate Davies
She looked at me and started crying.
I started crying, too.
She shook her head and said, ‘Why can’t we make this work?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’ And I ached with how much I still wanted her, despite everything, and how much I’d hurt her. It was all such a mess.
‘Maybe we can move on from this,’ she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Maybe, if we have some new rules, and you put our relationship first—’
But then I thought about how she’d called me a dirty fucking slut, and I thought about Virginie, and the way Sam had stopped me comforting Alice after her break-up, and the fact that she was jealous of everyone in my life, and how she didn’t like it when I went swing dancing, and everything, everything else; and I thought about how I had behaved – how I had demanded that she change, how I had cheated on her, how I had laughed about her lifestyle with my friends, how I had become the worst version of myself – and the idea of starting again with new rules made me feel sick. I shook my head and I said, ‘I don’t think we can. I don’t think we can do it.’
‘Don’t say that,’ she said. She was still crying. She held her arms out to me.
And I can’t tell you how much I wanted to go to her and take back what I’d said, how much I wanted to go back in time to the night we met, when everything was new and exciting, unspoiled. It took so much willpower to shake my head instead, to take a step backwards.
Which was when she let out a roar of anger and love and frustration, and she lunged at me, and I was sure she was going to burn me with her cigarette, and I managed to step out of the way – and she stared at me, eyes wide, shaking her head, and said, ‘I wasn’t going to do that. I would never have done that,’ but she looked scared, as though she didn’t believe what she was saying herself.
And I turned, and I ran, faster than I knew I could, the sea crashing behind me like a ticking clock.
It took me a while to open the door to the cottage; my fingers were fumbling the key in my hurry to get away. I got in at last and grabbed my suitcase, so grateful we hadn’t bothered unpacking. The rug in front of the fire was still rucked up from where we’d had sex earlier. I was shivering and soaking, but I didn’t want to waste time changing. I left the keys on the coffee table and shut the door behind me.
My suitcase rattled on the cobblestones like a bell on a cat’s collar, letting Sam know where I was, so I picked it up and limped up the hill towards a bus stop. There were no more buses to Axminster that night so I called a local minicab company and waited at the top of Silver Street for the taxi to collect me. I could feel my phone buzzing against my thigh. I ignored it. ‘Come on,’ I whispered. ‘Come on.’ And at last the cab arrived, and as the driver loaded my suitcase into the boot, I said, ‘Thank you,’ the words so loaded with gratitude that he seemed taken aback.
‘What’s happened to you, love?’ said the driver, as I dripped onto his seat. ‘Midnight swim, was it? In this weather? You’ll catch your death!’
By the time the taxi pulled away, I had six missed calls from Sam, five texts and one voicemail: ‘Julia, come back. I forgive you. I can’t live without you, babes. If you don’t come back, I’m going to do something stupid, I’m warning you. I think I’m going to hurt myself.’
I pressed the button at the top of my phone and as the screen turned black I closed my eyes. She didn’t know where I was. Nobody knew where I was. I was free.
47. BACK
That feeling of freedom lasted for exactly as long as the train ride back to London. As we pulled into Waterloo, my heart sped up. I could see Sam everywhere.
Every station I passed on the Tube gave me a stab of sadness. Green Park reminded me of the time Sam and I had walked up Albemarle Street, looking at art in gallery windows and making snide comments about how much people were willing to pay for abstract sculpture. Leicester Square made me think of lazy Sundays in Chinatown: dim sum and hangovers and browsing in the bookshops on Charing Cross Road. We’d had sex in that dingy club in Kings Cross, and Jasper lived on Holloway Road, and by the time I got off at Manor House I was crying openly.
As I walked home I found myself hurrying towards the safety of the hazy orange pools cast by the streetlights. In the dark patches in between, I pictured Sam jumping out at me, carrying the knife she’d had in the Shard, and I allowed myself to imagine the smell of her Barbour jacket and the sound of her voice and the way her breath would feel on my skin as she wrestled me into her car, because that seemed the best defence against it actually happening.
And then I was home, and safe, and as I turned the key in the lock I forced myself to focus on reality: the smell of Turkish food, the sounds of cars and aeroplanes and Saturday night shouts in the street, the silence of the flat once I’d shut the door behind me.
The flat was empty. And I was alone. I turned on my phone. Eight more voicemails from Sam, increasingly high-pitched and desperate.
‘I’m sorry! OK? Please, babes. Call me, OK?’
‘You fucking bitch. I can’t believe how fucking selfish you are.’
‘I’m going to do it. I have pills. I’m going to do it.’
‘I miss you so much, babes, already. I can’t live without you.’
And on. And on. I couldn’t bear to listen to them all.
So I texted her. An angrier message than I’d intended to send: I’m sorry, but please stop contacting me. I can’t deal with this any more.
And then I deleted her number.
I called Alice next.
‘Hello?’
‘Alice,’ I said, sinking to the floor, my back to the wall. ‘Where are you?’
‘Julia?’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I’m sorry too.’
‘Are you coming home tonight?’
‘Yes – are you OK?’
‘No. I broke up with Sam,’ I said, beginning to cry.
‘Good,’ she said. And then I heard her turn to someone and say, ‘Julia’s broken up with Sam.’
And I heard Dave’s voice say, ‘Thank fuck for that.’
‘You’re back together,’ I said, still crying.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Just – hold on. I’m coming home.’
‘She knows where I live,’ I said.
‘She wouldn’t dare turn up,’ Alice said. ‘We’re coming right now. Dave’s bringing his cricket bat just in case. Just hold on till I get there.’
So I sat there, jumping every time a car drove past, its lights sweeping the house like a torch beam. And then Alice was home – and Dave, with his cricket bat – and they made tea and wrapped me in a blanket like I’d been involved in some sort of natural disaster.
‘Don’t let me get back together with her,’ I said, once I was safely on the sofa.
‘We won’t,’ Alice said, putting her arm around me.
‘I’m sorry for the way I was,’ I said.
‘Stop apologizing,’ she said.
‘Sam’s scary,’ I said.
‘Not as scary as me,’ Dave said, hoisting his cricket bat, trying to look macho, which made me laugh.
‘I love you both,’ I told them as Alice passed me a tissue.
‘We love you too,’ Alice said. ‘We’ve got you back now, haven’t we? We’ve got Julia back.’
But as I was lying in bed that night my phone lit up with a message. You don’t want to deal with ME any more???? Babes, you’re delusional. I’m the one who’s had to deal with YOU! You’ve cheated on me and ruined my life and now you’re blaming me? You’re a fucking psycho—
I didn’t read to the end. I deleted the message, and this time I blocked her number. But the part of the message I had read seemed to be burned into my retinas, visible when I closed my eyes like I’d stared at the sun too long. I lay awake for most of the night thinking, What if Sam was right?
48. RESIDUE
If Sam were telling this story, it would be about a promising queer artist, non-monogamous and pro
ud, who fell hard for a girl she met in a club, even though the girl had only recently come out and everyone knows new lesbians are bad news. You’d hear how her prudish, uptight new girlfriend shamed her for her kinkiness, forced her to give up her lover and lifestyle. How the artist was willing to change everything to make her new girlfriend happy – even her art – and that in the end she hardly knew who she was any more. Her identity as a kinky, queer, poly artist was virtually erased and she was left with rock-bottom self-esteem. And then, despite everything, her girlfriend cheated on her and dumped her. It’s not surprising she was driven almost to suicide.
Sam believes that narrative. So do her friends, I’m sure. But I prefer to focus on the opinions of the people I know and love. Alice and Dave. Owen, who gave me a high five and said, ‘Can you please go out with my sister now?’
My mother, too. I went home to Oxford to tell her about the break-up, and to apologize for how awful I’d been over the previous few months.
She stood on the doorstep and didn’t smile when she saw me.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.
She stood aside to let me in without saying anything.
We sat in my parents’ kitchen, where everything is solid and unchanging – the old, scarred wooden table; the noticeboard, heavy with cards pinned up after every birthday and never taken down – and I made a pot of tea. I told her that I had broken up with Sam, and I apologized again, and I cried, and Mum softened at that, and said, ‘Never speak to me like that again.’
‘I won’t,’ I said.
She took my hand. ‘Well done,’ she said. ‘It’s very hard to end a controlling relationship.’
‘It wasn’t a controlling relationship—’
‘It was, darling. I know what I’m talking about.’ She told me about the man she’d been with before she met my father, a banker called Stuart, who had bought her coats and paid for cabs and told her what she could and couldn’t wear. And who had stolen two grand from her account and then blamed it on her, shouting at her for being so bad with money.
‘Sam wasn’t that bad,’ I said.
‘Wasn’t she?’ Mum said. ‘You were together for less than a year. You don’t know what would have happened if you’d stayed longer. She was already making you doubt yourself, wasn’t she?’
My mother, as usual, was right.
We were drinking our second cup of tea when the door opened. Dad walked in, followed by a thin teenage boy with purple hair.
‘Oh! Julia!’ said Dad, blustering into the kitchen and dumping a pile of books in front of me. ‘This is Harry, from next door.’
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ said Mum.
Harry and I shook hands. He had a lovely gap between his front teeth. ‘I’ve heard loads about you,’ he said.
‘And I’ve watched your channel,’ I told him. ‘I always do a smoky eye your way, now.’
He seemed very flattered.
‘Harry’s helping me film a new video for my channel!’ said Dad. ‘All about queer readings of Romantic fiction! I’m going to talk about the masturbating girl in Jane Austen, and whether there was something going on between Coleridge and Wordsworth.’
‘Was there?’ I asked.
‘Probably not,’ he admitted.
I gave him a hug.
‘What’s this for?’ he said gruffly, patting me on the back.
I hung around for the filming, during which Dad referred to his ‘lesbian daughter’ several times on camera. Afterwards, Harry offered to screen the video for us in his family’s entertainment centre, and we followed him up his newly tiled front path.
Mum gasped as Harry opened his front door. Almost all of the rooms in the house had been knocked through. ‘It’s so big,’ she said.
‘That’s the idea,’ said Dad. ‘Nice, isn’t it?’
Mum didn’t reply, but when Harry tried to lead us downstairs, she veered off towards the kitchen. ‘I just want a quick look at your bifold doors,’ she said.
We found her gazing up at the cloudy sky through the glass panels of the side return. ‘There’s so much light!’ She turned to Harry and said, ‘Now tell me – do you know the name of your parents’ builder?’
I never heard from Sam again, though a few times, in the weeks following the break-up, I picked up my work phone to silence on the other end, my heart racing as I said, ‘Hello? Hello?’ into the receiver, like the woman who dies at the beginning of horror movies. I knew she was doing OK, though. Polly told me – she texted to tell me I’d done the right thing breaking up with Sam. I cried as I read that message and I saved it to read again in case I ever felt weak.
Then there was the exhibition. I found out about it by accident – I picked up a creased Time Out on the Tube one morning, and there, staring out at me from the art pages, looking sullen but successful, was Sam, at the private view of a group show at her new gallery. To the left of her head was the painting of her fist – and to the right was a painting of my naked body, in pinks and purples, my mouth open, my eyes afraid. The caption underneath read Sam King with two of her paintings: Identity (left) and Residue.
It hadn’t occurred to me that she’d paint me again, now that we’d officially broken up. I’m not sure why – she’d painted everyone else she had ever shagged. And it hadn’t occurred to me that her knowledge of my body would be a weapon she could use against me.
Alice and Dave made me feel better about the whole thing when I showed them the article that night.
‘She’s so fucking pretentious with her stupid bright colours and her wanky, obvious titles,’ said Dave, pouring me a large glass of red wine.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Totally wanky and obvious.’
Alice took the copy of Time Out and peered at the photograph. ‘That’s quite a nice painting of you, actually,’ she said. ‘I’ve always been envious of your breasts.’
‘Alice!’ I said.
‘What?’ she said. ‘They’re very perky. Mine look like eyes, staring in opposite directions.’
‘They don’t. They’re lovely,’ I said.
‘Oi,’ said Dave. ‘Since when have you two been intimately acquainted with each other’s breasts?’
‘Skinny dipping,’ I said.
But I still see Sam in my dreams. Sometimes she’s angry, her face a knot of rage. She shouts at me, and I wake with a jolt, as though I’ve been thrown forward suddenly. Sometimes she’s kind to me, though; she’s forgiven me for what I did, and we hug and make peace and wish each other well. Those are the worst dreams, the ones I wake from with an aching sense of loss, my face wet with tears.
It’s hard to accept that you’re the villain of someone else’s story.
49. WOW
‘Told you,’ said Nicky, as soon as I arrived for my session.
‘I really don’t think therapists are supposed to say “I told you so,”’ I said.
‘I did, though, didn’t I?’ She opened her notebook and flicked back through the pages. ‘Here,’ she said, stopping on an entry and tapping it with her pen. ‘Seventeenth of March. Advised Julia against entering into an open relationship with Sam.’
‘Well. Good for you.’
Nicky took that as a compliment and smiled. ‘So,’ she said. ‘How do you feel now?’
‘A bit empty.’
Nicky nodded again. ‘She made you feel like you had a purpose, didn’t she? But that was all an illusion, wasn’t it?’
I nodded.
She reached for the tissues hopefully.
I shook my head.
She drew her hand away, disappointed.
‘So,’ she said, turning to a clean page in her notebook, ‘what else is going on in your life, then?’
‘I’m through to the assessment centre for the Fast Stream.’
‘Interesting,’ said Nicky, in a voice that suggested it wasn’t.
‘And Alice and Dave are engaged again.’
‘I’m surprised he risked proposing a second time,’ said Nicky.
‘
She proposed to him,’ I said. ‘They were eating calamari and she slipped one of them onto his finger.’
‘That’s disgusting,’ said Nicky. She narrowed her eyes. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’
‘I got into the swing dance troupe—’
‘No. You’re seeing someone. Is it a man?’
‘No!’ I said.
‘Oh, good,’ said Nicky. ‘Who is it, then? Ella?’
‘No.’
‘Don’t tell me it’s Jane.’
‘If you’d just stop guessing, I’d be able to tell you. It’s Owen’s sister. We’re meeting up next week.’
‘Are you nervous?’
I thought about it. ‘I am now,’ I said.
Nicky shook her head. ‘You were already nervous. I’ve just helped you realize it.’
‘Well. Thank you very much.’
‘You’re welcome,’ said Nicky. ‘Where are you going for your first date?’
‘Ice skating.’
She tutted. ‘Such a cliché.’
Carys suggested meeting outside Broadgate ice rink (smaller and less touristy than Somerset House – a promising choice). She was wrapped up in a tartan scarf and one of those sheepskin-lined denim jackets that men with long hair used to wear in the Nineties. I felt silly and shy as I walked up to her, and we had a bit of an awkward ‘One kiss on the cheek, or two?’ moment, but once we got over that, things were easier. She spoke really quickly, and she had a throaty laugh, and she said, ‘Wow,’ whenever I told her something about myself, which made me feel like a much more interesting person than I actually am. She told me all about herself straight away – about her supper club (successful) and her relationship with her ex-girlfriend (not so successful) and her love of improv comedy. ‘It’s based on the philosophy that you should say yes to everything your improv partner suggests,’ she told me. I loved that idea. I wanted to say yes to everything. Yes to moving on from Sam. Yes to having a job that didn’t make me want to contract tonsillitis to get a week off work. Yes to dancing. Yes to Carys. Yes yes yes yes yes.