Very Nearly Normal

by Hannah Sunderland

  ‘What makes you think that I’d be a disaster?’ he asked with a frown.

  I looked him up and down – and from his eyes, the colour of the ocean during a storm, to his lips that always seemed to be teasing a smile even when he was trying to be serious, all the way down to his feet that absentmindedly tapped out a rhythm on the path beneath them, there was no question that this boy would spell disaster.

  ‘Why are you trying so hard? I’m not a nice person, I’m not much to look at and someone like you could walk twenty paces in any direction and find himself a date.’ I slumped forward into my lap and rubbed my forehead with cold fingers. Something about talking to him had made me feel like crap.

  ‘Just … because,’ he replied simply. ‘Hand me your phone.’ I took it from my pocket without question and handed it to him. He frowned at the state of it before he tapped in his number and saved it into my contacts. ‘The power is with you now. Sleep on it and see what you think tomorrow.’

  He placed the phone back in my hand, his skin brushing my palm. He didn’t notice, but I felt it all the way down to my toes.

  ‘Hopefully I’ll hear from you soon, Matilda.’

  ‘Actually, I go by my middle name: Effie.’

  ‘Well, Effie, I hope I hear from you all the same.’

  I returned to the shop with an overwhelming sense of relief.

  All I had to do was not call him and I’d never have to see him again.

  Toby was sitting on the century-old leather sofa by the window with a sea of papers spread out over the coffee table in front of him. Toby was a gangly Scotsman, with once dark brown hair that was now streaked with shades of white and grey. He always wore sharp suits, colourful ties and those shiny red winkle-pickers that I’d once made fun of, but now found to be a brave fashion choice.

  Arthur sat beside him in an unnatural position, his legs crossed and his whole body leaning Toby’s way. I greeted Toby cheerily before directing my angst at Arthur.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Arthur said after I turned to him; my hand resting on my jutting out hip.

  ‘Yes, thank you for sending me out on a coffee date with someone who could have been a stalker,’ I replied.

  ‘A date? Do tell.’ Toby placed down his fountain pen and awaited my story with gleaming dark brown eyes that sat behind his square-rimmed glasses.

  I threw up my hands and sat down on the floor opposite them.

  ‘There’s not a lot to tell.’ I told him about Daz and Theo The Eavesdropper.

  ‘Well, it seems to me that you’ve got yourself a real admirer.’ Toby pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his aquiline nose. ‘He went to the trouble of finding out who you were and where you worked. Is he nice? Good-looking?’

  ‘He’s …’ I paused and thought of those cheekbones that you could shave Parmesan on and suddenly I lost my train of thought.

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes.’ Toby chuckled. ‘Effie, life is short. You could get run over by a taxi or hit your head on the kitchen counter and you’d be dead. You’re alive now, so when a handsome lad comes along and wants to take you out, let him. You can always decide against him later.’ He leaned back and looked at an oblivious Arthur from beneath his lashes. ‘Life’s too short to let matters of the heart slip by.’

  I sat at the kitchen table with a freshly opened bottle of wine and a bowl of pasta steaming the glass that sat beside it.

  I know you’re thinking it so I might as well address the Shiraz-shaped elephant in the room. I drink too much – that is not news to me.

  Am I an alcoholic? No.

  Am I an alcoholic in denial? Absolutely not!

  But wasn’t there that study once that said that drinking red wine could lower your risk of having a heart attack? I never paid much attention to those kinds of studies anyway. One week they’d be telling you that oolong tea could increase your life expectancy by twenty years and the next week they’d come forward with a discovery that drinking too much of it made your nipples fall off.

  I looked around at the dark room, lit only by a dull standard lamp in the far corner. There was a small cupboard next to the lamp that acted as a museum of my failures. Inside the cupboard sat my crumpled and torn graduation certificate that Joy had confiscated from me after I’d tried to rip it in half and set it on fire one night after a little too much Black Tower. In the top drawer were the remaining thousand or so pairs of handmade earrings from when I got it into my head to open an Etsy shop, and hanging above the cupboard on its sad little hook was the lead that I had used during my brief period as a dog walker.

  I had enjoyed being a dog walker. I loved animals and the job required absolutely zero contact with other people. But the money had been a pile of crap and I’d had to stop after Gumbo, a long-haired chihuahua, managed to get loose and remained lost for a further six hours. His owner had threatened to take me to court and so I’d decided to cut my losses and end that business venture then and there.

  I heard the front door open and flinched.

  They were home.

  I braced myself for the worried glance at the bottle that sat already two glasses less than full in front of me.

  My mother and father entered carrying armfuls of shopping bags, flicking the overhead light on as they arrived and making me temporarily blind.

  ‘Wine already and it’s not even six,’ Joy said as she dropped the bags onto the work surface. I blinked the stunned tears from my eyes but didn’t bother with a snarky reply, even though there was a queue of them lining up in my head.

  My dad mumbled something in his indecipherable northern accent. I just ignored him and carried on sipping my wine and letting my food turn cold.

  ‘Effie, do you remember Marcus Roe from school?’ Mum asked with a grin that suggested she’d been meddling.

  ‘No,’ I lied. A shiver of embarrassment shook me as I remembered the last time I’d seen him. Of course I remembered Marcus Roe. I’d been at school with him since I was seven and he’d been the first person I’d ever slept with. He was always drop-dead gorgeous and the night we’d spent together had been okay, up until … well, let’s just not get into that right now.

  ‘Well, I met his mother in the Aldi just now,’ she carried on, clearly ignoring the tone of my voice that was urging her to forget Marcus Roe. ‘Did you know he’s working for the BBC? He’s a casting director for all those period dramas.’

  ‘Is that so?’ I asked in a monotone drone. I did know this. I’d seen it on Facebook along with all the other people whose lives were actually going somewhere.

  ‘He’s coming home for a few weeks while they renovate his apartment,’ she prattled on. I knew what was coming. She was no Paddy McGuinness but I knew that a date was coming all the same. Let the daughter see the blatantly set-up date. ‘Kelly and I thought that the two of you should maybe meet up and have a chat. He’s single, you know.’

  ‘He’s not? What a shock!’ The sarcasm almost choked me.

  She sighed and pushed a box of cereal into the cupboard. ‘Effie, you’re never going to meet anyone if the only thing you do is sit at home and drink like one of those French bohemians.’

  I lifted the glass and took two large gulps, maintaining eye contact with her over the rim. She huffed and went back to unpacking.

  ‘His number is on the fridge. You should call him, when you stop being so judgemental.’

  I wasn’t being judgemental and I was most certainly not going to call him.

  Chapter Four

  The next day I arrived at work, with more than a slight hangover, to find Toby, once again, sitting on the shabby leather sofa, his glasses perched atop his nose and his ever-cheerful eyes shining out from behind them.

  ‘Effie!’ he cooed in his soothingly soft Scottish tones. ‘You’re finally here.’

  I frowned with confusion and checked my phone. ‘I’m not late, am I? I thought I was meant to be here at eleven thirty.’

  ‘Your gentleman caller is here! He’s in the back with A
rthur.’ He seemed excited, his neck elongating as he spoke, like a peering tortoise.

  I sighed and let my head loll back onto my shoulders. ‘Please tell me you’re lying. I’m too hungover for this.’

  Toby took me by the shoulders and brought his face close. I couldn’t remember him ever touching me before.

  ‘Effie, if you don’t go in there and agree to a date with that lad then I will do it myself. You don’t let blue eyes like that slip through your fingers. You never know, the boy could be your seahorse.’ I shook the memory away, that was a memory for another time, not for now.

  ‘Don’t you mean he could be my lobster?’ I asked with a quirked brow.

  ‘No, I mean seahorse. Lobsters have a bond for only two weeks before going their separate ways. Seahorses on the other hand are the Ozzy and Sharon of the animal world.’

  ‘Erm … you know he had an affair, right?’

  Toby waved a hand in the air and scoffed. ‘But they always come back to each other. Now, off you go.’ He let go of my shoulders and glanced towards the back of the shop and to where muffled chatter drifted in from the back room.

  ‘Why me?’ I threw my head back, groaned and let my bag fall to the ground.

  I blew disgruntled air from my nose and walked, with purpose, behind the wall of shelves that separated the front of the shop from the hidden Aladdin’s cave behind. I turned through the Classics section, taking a right at Alexandre Dumas and then a left at Oscar Wilde. Above was a balcony where we kept the antiques and first editions, and the smell of dusty old books drifted down and soothed me slightly as I arrived in the Sport section. Theo was nose-deep in a book about Muhammad Ali with Arthur picking out several others and piling them beside him.

  It was one of those days when all I wanted to do was go home and take my bra off. I didn’t need some hanger-on trying to force me on a date, not when I had an unopened bottle of Echo Falls and a Netflix series waiting for me when I got in.

  I huffed and puffed like the wolf in the stories and marched towards him. The sound of my Dr Martens slapping against the floor caused him to turn. At first, he smiled; then he saw the look on my face and the smile was gone.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I stopped in front of him and scowled.

  He nodded towards the book in his hand and then said, ‘Shopping.’

  ‘Morning,’ Arthur said cheerily.

  ‘Don’t “morning” me. This is all your fault.’ I sent my scowl his way before returning it to its rightful owner. ‘I thought the power was in my hands?’

  Theo closed the book, the pages slapping as they fell together. ‘Oh, I didn’t realise that this was a private library. I must have been mistaken in thinking that people could come in here and browse, maybe buy a thing or two.’

  ‘Effie!’ Arthur whispered out the corner of his mouth.

  I ignored him. ‘You came here because I haven’t texted you yet and you knew that I was never going to.’

  ‘Someone thinks highly of herself,’ Theo muttered, rolling his eyes. ‘So, what if that’s even true?’

  ‘Because you told me to call you if I wanted to see you. You didn’t exactly wait very long.’ He clenched his square jaw and I found myself wondering how it would feel to run my fingers along it.

  Stop it! Focus!

  ‘I saw this place yesterday, when I returned the purse that you didn’t know you’d lost. You’re welcome, by the way. I thought it seemed interesting and came back to look around. I didn’t even know if you were working today.’

  I looked him up and down, trying once and for all to figure out his agenda while a hangover headache slowly unfurled behind my forehead.

  ‘I’m not stalking you, Effie. I just wanted to buy some books. Which I will now do, seeing as my welcome has clearly expired.’ Theo took two of the books and put the rest away before walking past without looking at me.

  I cast my eye to Arthur who simply shook his head before returning to the front with Theo.

  I turned to the bookcase beside me and brought my forehead to the wood with a bang.

  I was such a dickhead.

  Why was I overthinking this? I’d gone out with Daz even though he looked like an ex-member of Blazin’ Squad and had been a complete tool, so why was I turning Theo away?

  I managed to get back to the main part of the shop as the bell above the door jangled. I bolted after him, the door hitting the sofa arm and making Toby start as I flung it back and ran out onto the street.

  ‘Wait!’ I called.

  He stopped and turned, his jaw still set. ‘Look, Effie, I think I like you, even though I’m not sure why right now, but if you want me to go away then I will. You’ll never have to lay eyes on me again, but just tell me now.’

  I paused, my mouth open, but no words came out.

  He exhaled and took a step away from me. I felt instant, crippling regret bundle like knotted twine inside my ribcage.

  I tried to force my lips closed and I willed the words that were bubbling up like vomit to fall back down from whence they came, but I momentarily lost control of my body and called out his name. He turned back to me, his eyebrows raised in anticipation.

  ‘I finish at five. If you want, we could go for a drink. But it’s not a date.’

  His face pulled into a smile that I turned away from, for I knew its true power.

  ‘I’d like that. I’ll come back at five.’

  I sent him a forthright nod, spun on my heel and stalked back to the shop, anxiety building in my chest like a shaken can of Coke.

  I closed the door and looked up to see Toby grinning at me like a madman and Arthur clutching a book to his chest, a pissed-off look on his face. He stepped forward and handed me the book. I looked down at the copy of An Introduction to Mindfulness and rolled my eyes.

  ‘When I said that we could go for a drink, I meant something with a percentage on the label,’ I said as Theo held the door to Green Machine Juice Bar open for me.

  ‘I didn’t want to be predictable and take you to a bar,’ he said as he perused the bafflingly complicated menu. ‘Anyway it’s not safe for a lady, or a man for that matter, to drink alcohol around me. My charms can become overpowering.’

  I snorted a laugh and ignored the ironic wink he sent my way. ‘So, the lack of wine is for the greater good of mankind then, not because you’re a cheapskate?’

  ‘Cheapskate? Have you seen these prices? A glass of wine at a Wetherspoons would be half the price of these.’

  I pressed my hand to my chest and feigned a flattered smile. ‘Don’t I feel special. Wetherspoons, you know how to treat a girl, don’t you?’

  Theo ordered something called a Foghorn from the girl at the till and then turned to me expectantly.

  ‘What are you having?’ he asked.

  I looked back up at the menu, which might as well have been written in Ancient Aramaic, and shrugged. ‘I’ll have what you’re having.’

  Theo asked me to grab some seats while he waited for our drinks and so I headed for two tall chairs by a table at the window. The sound of a blender roaring into action blocked out the noise of the strange funk music playing from hidden speakers. I tried to settle into a position that didn’t look posed, but the chair was too tall and my legs were too short. Add to that the fact that I was feeling extremely self-conscious and inadequate in the presence of Adonis-like gym people, and the whole ordeal made me look like I was having extreme intestinal discomfort. The sound of the roaring blender ceased and Theo headed over with two grotesque-coloured drinks.

  ‘Erm … thanks?’ I said as he handed me one of the small plastic cups of purple-brown hideousness.

  ‘This place is great. Have you been in here before?’ he asked, looking around at the trendy shop filled with trendy people.

  ‘Have you ever seen that film about the little girl who’s a vampire and when she walks into someone’s house uninvited, she starts bleeding from her eyes?’

  ‘Er, yeah, I’ve seen that.’ He frowned in co
nfusion.

  ‘That’s how my body reacts to places that serve healthy foodstuffs. So, to answer your question, no. I have not,’ I replied and took a sip through my straw. The second the viscous liquid hit my tongue I knew it was a mistake. It took all the will I had to swallow it and when it was finally on its way to my stomach, I pulled my sleeve over my hand and used it to wipe my tongue. ‘What the hell is in that?’

  He took a sip and let out a refreshed ‘ahhh’ before answering. ‘Apple juice, ginger, flaxseed, celery and beetroot. It’s meant to be good for de-fogging your brain after a long day.’

  ‘It’s good for force-feeding to an enemy during torture, is all this is good for.’

  He sniggered to himself and took another sip. ‘You’re not turning your nose up at a Wetherspoons wine now, are you?’

  ‘I’d take Donald Trump’s old bathwater over this.’

  ‘Oh my God, what a disgusting thought.’ He grimaced and pushed my drink closer to me. ‘Come on, it’s good for you.’

  ‘My body wholeheartedly rejects it.’

  ‘I didn’t take you for a quitter, Effie.’ He cocked his head and smirked and I hated how susceptible I was to it. I lifted the straw to my mouth and gave it another try and by the third sip it was almost bearable.

  ‘So, the guys at the shop. They’re a couple, right?’

  ‘Arthur and Toby? I wish. They’re in love, but I think Arthur is the only person on the planet that doesn’t know that.’

  He leaned his elbow on the table and braced his head against his hand. His fingers half disappeared into the depths of his shaggy hair and I caught myself wondering if it was as soft as it appeared. I imagined that it might smell like fresh sea air and pine needles. It took several seconds for me to realise that I’d just been staring at him, my eyes glazing over as I imagined combing my fingers through it. I thought that maybe he hadn’t noticed, but then I saw the self-satisfied grin on his face and knew I hadn’t got away with it.

  ‘So,’ I cleared my throat and looked down to stir the sludgy contents at the bottom of my cup in an attempt to hide my blushing face. ‘How come you’ve not got a girlfriend? Someone like you doesn’t stay single for long.’