Very Nearly Normal

by Hannah Sunderland

  Still sitting on the bathroom floor, I dabbed the blood from my leg and examined the wound. The gouge was deep, right on top of my shinbone, and it pulsed with that very specific stinging pain that only a razor seems to bring.

  After Marcus I’d been terrified of the next time that I might find myself in the throes of passion, but I needn’t have worried because I wouldn’t find myself there again until I was twenty and I got my first proper boyfriend. His name was Alex and he was a regular at the café I worked at to fund my university diet of pasta and orange squash. We dated for a month before I plucked up the courage to sleep with him and when I did, I discovered that I was clearly never destined to be a sexual being. After the panic of the morning following my last encounter, I’d made sure that I was prepared, buying the condoms and making sure that I knew how to put them on properly. But even this was a mistake, because it was about three minutes into the act that I discovered my latex allergy and, lo and behold, the next day I was back at the doctor’s surgery.

  The third disaster was a disaster of a different kind. This time the only input I had was choosing the wrong person to go home with. Alex had broken up with me three months earlier after finding out that I wasn’t going to be the all-you-can-eat nookie buffet he’d been searching for and I again found myself in a state of singledom. I met Daniel Wilcox in the university café. We were reading the same book and I managed to give away almost the entire plotline because I was reading ahead of him.

  He was nice, moderately attractive, with a posh accent that made me feel like I was aiming high. He was … fine. He was a great cook and he invited me back to his for a meal. It was going great. I was beginning to think Daniel was the boy I’d take home to meet my joyless mother and my monosyllabic father and my deeply judgemental cat. Maybe Elliot would even welcome him into the family by christening his shoes with hot urine. But that was not to be, because as I lay there, looking up at Daniel’s swirling Artex ceiling, my head bouncing against the wooden headboard, Daniel opened his mouth and shouted with passion, ‘Ride me like a seahorse!’

  It didn’t make sense. Why did he have sexual feelings towards seahorses? I remember lying there and waiting what seemed like an eternity for him to finish and once he was done, I grabbed my things and ran out of his flat, dressing myself on my sprint down the stairs.

  I stood up from the bloodstained bathroom floor and threw the tissue into the toilet before staring at myself in the full-length mirror. I turned this way and that, watching the shadows move over the curves of my body and judging every dimple, every hair, every inch. I knew I was too critical, that the way I body-shamed myself was stupid and counterproductive, but I couldn’t seem to help it.

  Everyone who was heralded as beautiful was thin and tanned and didn’t have those little dimples of cellulite beneath their butt cheeks. They didn’t have pale skin or red hair or wide hips. The world had decided what beauty was and they had plastered it all over TV, the internet and the news. But what about the rest of the people who didn’t fit into the criteria? Were they destined to be shunned as fugly for their whole lives or was the criteria simply bullshit from the get-go?

  Theo had told me I was beautiful and I hadn’t believed him, not because I thought he was lying, just that he was maybe confused or partially sighted. I remembered mission number twelve on the list …

  Learn to love myself.

  That one seemed to be the hardest one for me to imagine completing.

  The next morning, the tingle of excitement in my stomach woke me early enough to sit and panic for a couple of hours before Theo arrived. I packed my things, kissed my parents goodbye, searched for Elliot but couldn’t find him and then sat at the kitchen table, the loud tick of the wall clock echoing in my bones as each second passed by. I made a coffee in the chipped Rosehipsters mug that had been my pride and joy since Kate had given it to me for Christmas ten years ago; back when Kate cared about who my favourite band was and other trivial things like that.

  I felt a pang of something unpleasant in my stomach as I took a sip and tried not to think about my outburst at the party. Surprisingly, we hadn’t spoken since.

  I pulled my phone from my pocket and opened up Kate’s Facebook page. The latest post was a shot of her smiling next to her colleague in the airport bar, beer foam clinging to her top lip. I searched Kate’s pixelated eyes for some sign of unhappiness, some sense of loss akin to the one I was feeling, but I found nothing.

  Kate wouldn’t miss me and, if I was being honest with myself, I wouldn’t miss Kate. The Kate I grieved for had ceased to exist years ago and the anger of that loss had clung to me ever since, but now Kate was gone and it was time for me to let go. I scrolled through the feed one last time, seeing the shots of happy, successful people who had slowly ground me down to nothing over the years and, with a mingled sense of foreboding and relief, I opened the settings and let my thumb hover over the screen. I took a breath and checked myself, before lowering my thumb and deleting my account. A message popped up, saying that my account would be kept for a month, should I change my mind. I hoped I wouldn’t.

  Once it was gone, I pushed the phone into my bag and felt a smile form in my cheeks. I felt like I’d just smashed the crooked magic mirror that had caused only pain and now I could forget about all of those shiny happy people and focus on what was important, what all of those people had been focusing on all along, instead of jealously wanting what others had.

  I heard the thrum of a car engine pulling up outside and my heart leapt.

  I opened the door before he had chance to knock, his fist hovering in mid-air. He smiled as I leaned forward and kissed him, the smell of washing powder and mid-price aftershave filling my nostrils as I pulled him close. When I released him, his smile was still intact, if not a little bigger.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  There’s something strangely exciting about a motorway service station.

  The smells of junk food and coffee that mingle in the air and waft into your face the second you step through the automatic doors.

  The panicked search for the toilets as you run, legs pressed together, until you see them.

  The racks of CDs that you momentarily feel will enhance the rest of your journey before you see the extortionate price tag and fling them back with disgust. We’d stopped at the first services that we could find and Theo and I had separated at the toilet doors. I now found myself standing before a rack of junk food, cradling a bottle of Coke in my arm and wondering what Theo would want.

  I knew quite a bit about Theo by now.

  I knew that he was a closet nerd and that his love of Bowie bordered on obsessional.

  I knew that, when it came to takeaways, he preferred Italian and had never developed a liking for Indian food.

  But I had no idea which junk food he’d want.

  Was he a fruit or a mint kind of person? Dark chocolate or milk?

  ‘Don’t think too hard, you’ll hurt yourself.’ I heard him before I saw him.

  ‘Peanut or plain?’ I asked, holding out a bag of each flavour M&M’s.

  He pointed his finger at the plain one. ‘The peanut ones could potentially kill me so let’s stick with plain.’

  ‘You’re allergic to nuts?’ I asked, adding it to the information file I was building on him.

  ‘Didn’t I mention that before?’ he asked, absentmindedly perusing the shelves.

  Theo was paying for petrol and so I insisted on paying for the snacks. I went to the till and winced as I handed over a ridiculous sum of money to the dead-eyed boy with the receding chin behind the counter.

  I pushed the bags into the pockets of my jacket and walked out to join Theo in the atrium, the smell of coffee making my mouth water.

  He took my hand and laced his fingers through mine.

  It was surprising how quickly I’d grown accustomed to being touched. It was difficult to remember more than four times in the last year when anyone had touched me on purpose and one of those was a nurse ta
king a blood test. Of course, Joy and I had shared physical contact during this period of time, but those moments were reserved for ‘mama hug meltdowns’.

  It was still early and the air held that early morning mist that made even the mundane car park look atmospheric.

  As we stepped towards the exit, a woman entered through the automatic doors.

  Theo looked up, his smile falling as he locked eyes with her. He quickly looked down, avoiding her gaze.

  Every one of his muscles stiffened as his body steered me towards the door.

  ‘Theo?’ The woman looked up and froze.

  He winced and slowly turned.

  ‘Hey,’ he said with feigned enthusiasm.

  She smiled in disbelief, propelling herself forward and flinging her arms around his neck.

  His hand fell from mine and he lifted it to her shoulder, as I stood beside him waiting for an introduction.

  She stepped back and held his face in her hands. The action was intimate. It made my toes curl.

  ‘I can’t believe it’s you. You’re looking good, really good,’ she said. ‘How is everything these days?’

  He took her wrist in his fingers and gently let it fall away. ‘Fine, I’m fine.’ He said it in a way that suggested he was anything but fine.

  The woman had warm brown skin and stunning hazel eyes that reminded me of Elliot’s. She had the toned, athletic body of a goddess and her hair sat in a halo of black curls around her head. She was sickeningly beautiful.

  I looked at Theo from the corner of my eye and I could almost hear his teeth snapping as they pressed themselves together.

  ‘And who’s this?’ She turned her feline eyes to me.

  ‘This is my … Effie,’ he said, his voice cracking in the middle of the sentence. ‘Eff, this is Jenny.’

  Oh fuck.

  No, not her. Not someone who looks like that!

  So, this was the one who got away.

  This was the girl Theo had loved since school, the girl who became his fiancée.

  Why did she have to look like that?

  Why couldn’t she have had a face like a dropped apple crumble or at least just have had the decency to be having a bad hair day?

  She was beautiful. Just like Theo.

  They must have entered rooms to angelic choruses when they were together.

  My God, the child beauties they would have made.

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ I said timidly.

  The doors slid open behind her and a man entered with two giggling identical girls.

  The man placed a hand on her shoulder and smiled at us.

  ‘Hi there,’ he said in a cheery tone.

  She looked Theo up and down before speaking. ‘This is my husband, Matt, and these are our girls, Lucy and Leila.’

  Theo seemed to wince as Matt extended his hand to him. A moment or two passed where I was unsure that Theo could remember how to move, how to breathe. But then he reached forward and shook Matt’s outstretched hand, his eyelids flickering at the unwanted physical contact between the hand that used to hold Jenny’s and the hand that held hers now.

  She looked back to Theo and their history lay heavily in the air between them.

  I looked down at the twin girls who hid shyly behind their mother’s legs; they couldn’t have been any older than three. Matt stood beside her with one of those contagious smiles on his face. I knew I would have caught it, had I not been occupied by my current anxiety attack. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with blond-brown hair and blue eyes; if nothing else, Jenny definitely had a type.

  ‘Hon, I’m gonna take these two to the toilet before we need to find a mop,’ Matt said, smiling at Theo and I and cajoling the two girls away.

  Theo watched him leave, while Jenny watched Theo and I watched Jenny, watching him. We were a train of wandering eyes that spoke our secrets for us.

  ‘So, where are you off to?’ Jenny asked.

  He cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Eff is coming to meet my family.’

  She grinned widely. ‘How are they? How’s Tessa?’

  Of course, Jenny already knew his family. She probably used to have nights out with his sister and knew all the family secrets. I was so far behind.

  ‘Good, they’re all good,’ Theo replied.

  ‘I called Tessa not long ago. My boss wanted a sculpture for the office building and I thought I’d give her first dibs but she never got back to me.’ She tilted her head as her eyes moved over his face.

  Stop it, eyes down, woman! You chose Matt.

  ‘You still boxing?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he said forthrightly. ‘You?’

  She laughed. ‘No, but then I was never the one who was going places with it, was I?’ I moved closer and slid my hand into Theo’s.

  He flinched like I’d startled him; like he’d forgotten I was here. He shook off my hand and it fell back to my side. I swallowed the rejection and gritted my teeth to stop it coming out in the form of words I’d regret.

  ‘We’d better get going, hadn’t we?’ I said, a little too angrily.

  Theo looked up from the ground as if I’d broken his trance and nodded.

  ‘Yeah, long way to go,’ he said.

  She looked sad, as if she wanted to cry. ‘It was so good to see you.’

  ‘Yep,’ he replied.

  ‘Maybe I could give you a call sometime and we could catch up?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said and started walking towards the exit.

  Jenny nodded me a goodbye and walked away as Theo took my wrist and led me out into the car park.

  ‘Sure, take my hand now that your ex isn’t looking,’ I said, tugging my arm away from him.

  He didn’t stop walking, marching straight up to the car and climbing in. When I joined him both of his hands were white-knuckled around the steering wheel and his head leaned back against the seat.

  ‘Did you want to appear single – is that it? Because, if you didn’t notice, her husband and twins were right there.’

  He didn’t answer, his breaths whistling out of his nose.

  I knew it would only be a matter of time before he became embarrassed of me and why wouldn’t he when the last woman he was with looked like that?

  ‘It wasn’t like that, Eff. I swear,’ he replied after letting his nerves settle.

  ‘Then what was it like? Because from where I was standing it looked like you didn’t want to be seen holding my hand.’ I seethed. ‘And what was that, introducing me as “my … Effie”?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘Oh, don’t give me that “It’s complicated” bullshit.’

  ‘I planned on marrying her!’ His voice rose to an almost shout. He rubbed his hand over his face and spoke normally again. ‘I planned on having kids and late-night arguments with her. My entire life was set and planned and all of those plans included Jenny.’ His words were clipped and furious. ‘The wedding was planned, the honeymoon booked, then she was gone and all of those plans died.’ He smiled a joyless, hurt smile. ‘She still went on the honeymoon though; I believe that’s where she met Matt.’

  I looked over at him, my eyes slick with jealous moisture. He stared straight on through the windscreen; his pupils were pinpricks.

  ‘Why did she leave you?’ I asked.

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’ He looked down at his knees. ‘What does matter is that she bailed when I needed her most.’ He turned to look at me, his nostrils flaring. ‘Yes, I still feel something whenever I think about her, but mostly it’s an overwhelming feeling of betrayal. Think of what you feel towards Kate, then times that by ten and you’re halfway to understanding what I feel towards Jenny.’

  I’d never seen him rattled before. He wasn’t in control here; he’d let the mask slip.

  ‘Is there something you’re not telling me? Something I should know? Because every time I broach the subject of your past you clam up and give me the vaguest answer you can muster,’ I said.

  ‘N
o,’ he replied unconvincingly, ‘I’ve never lied to you and I’m not going to start now.’

  Something he’d said to me recently popped into my mind.

  That wasn’t a lie; it was just an omission of the truth.

  Was he omitting the truth now? Or was I just on edge from meeting the ex-love of Theo’s life?

  What could she have done to make him so angry, to make him seethe like he did?

  I knew from Kate how much you had to love someone to feel that amount of anger.

  Would he ever get that angry with me?

  Chapter Fifteen

  I sat, tight-lipped and silent, in the hours that followed, as my anger flared, burned and then dissipated. The old me would have thrown an EastEnders-level hissy fit and got a taxi home, no matter the expense, just to make a point. But the new me was less of a drama queen. I had been furious back at the service station, but the more I thought about Jenny and what it must have felt like to have her leave him out of the blue, I began to understand his reaction a little more. I wasn’t exactly the best at gracefully handling stressful situations, so who was I to judge him?

  My life had ceased to suck from the moment I’d let him in (metaphorically of course, although hopes of ‘letting in’ of another kind would, with any luck, come up during our weekend away) and I wasn’t going to let petty jealousies ruin that.

  That being said, I would still wait this one out with resting bitch face until I got an apology.

  I looked over at Theo. The muscles in his forearms stood proudly as he held the steering wheel. His eyes stared angrily through the windscreen.

  We hadn’t spoken since Jenny had stumbled in and ruined our sense of adventure and guarded secrets had started to make the air turn sour.

  I shifted uncomfortably in my new underwear. Why was it always a choice between sexy and comfortable? Why couldn’t they make a pair of pants that were both perfectly suited for a movie marathon and being torn off in the throes of passion? I tried to manoeuvre myself without him noticing, plucking the lacy purple garrotte from my butt crack.