We Were On a Break

by Lindsey Kelk

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ he said with a slight sigh, clearly not done with the conversation. ‘I’ll see you Sunday, mate.’

  ‘See you Sunday,’ I agreed, ending the call quickly and stretching my arms high above my head until I heard my shoulders click.

  It was the little things that felt wrong. Running out of the conditioner she always bought, not taking her mug out of the cupboard even when all the others were dirty. All week I’d managed to convince myself things were all right but it was getting harder by the second. Liv not being around was like trying to watch your favourite TV show after the main actor leaves: even though it’s the same, you know something isn’t right and the whole thing isn’t nearly as good. That said, if someone had asked me a week ago what my life would look like without Liv in it, I would have described a Mad Max-esque, post-apocalyptic wasteland with less Charlize Theron and more electric guitar. But now that had all changed. Life without Liv was strange but not unbearable, just sad. And, even though I still felt guilty even considering it, there was a sliver of a chance that life without Liv could also be known as life with Jane.

  Life with Jane. I closed my eyes and pondered the possibilities. Going out with someone in London when I was up here would be a pain in the arse but I could always help out in the bar some evenings, hang out in her speakeasy, drinking Old-Fashioneds like a blond Don Draper, only without the sociopathic tendencies. And maybe we could go travelling once I’d got a couple more gigs under my belt and things were up and running with Camp Bell. She’d told me she’d always wanted to do more of Central America and it was on my to-do list as well. Liv had never been up for backpacking, but Jane’s itchy feet sounded even worse than mine.

  ‘It could all turn out for the best still,’ I told the giant plank of wood I was shifting. ‘Maybe I’m not ready to settle down, after all.’

  Like most planks of wood, it had very little to say but my imagination was ready to fill in the blanks. The future I’d envisioned with Liv was pretty simple. We’d get engaged, she’d move in, we’d get married and give Daniel Craig one or two human siblings. The whole thing was so clear in my mind, I almost felt like I was watching a movie when I thought about it: the little boy running around the garden, pregnant Liv chasing after him while I worked on a rocking horse in the workshop. It was a memory of an event that had yet to happen, but like my mum always said, everything happens for a reason. Usually, I wrote that off as bollocks, obviously, but what if the reason I hadn’t been able to propose was because I was supposed to meet Jane? It was hard to argue with the possibility. Mostly because I didn’t want to.

  I hadn’t done anything wrong, I assured myself. I hated feeling so miserable and guilty all the time for reasons I couldn’t even put a finger on. Liv said she needed space to think, then Liv told me not to call. Was I supposed to sit around twiddling my thumbs waiting for her to make a decision? It hardly seemed fair, after all, this could go on for months and when she did finally make a decision, I could still end up on my own. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, that scared me. I had permanently flipped off the bachelor switch the moment I decided to propose to Liv and it didn’t feel like the kind of thing that could be easily reversed.

  All of this really only left me with two choices. I could sit around the house, talking to a plank of wood, sleeping in her T-shirt and crying on the floor or I could get on with things and see what happened. Pursuing Jane would be entirely out of order but I wasn’t going to avoid her either. That seemed fair.

  ’You’re not doing anything wrong,’ I said again. And this time, I almost sounded as though I believed it.

  ‘I don’t know about you but I’m knackered,’ David said, dropping down on the little Ikea sofa with a cup of tea as I walked into the breakroom. I nodded and wiped my eyes with my sleeve.

  ‘Liv, please don’t cry.’

  ‘I know, there’s nothing else we could have done,’ I said, massaging my temples as though I could rub my headache away.

  ‘That and it’s really unattractive,’ he replied, pointing to my cheekbones. ‘You get all puffy around here and it does you no favours.’

  ‘Noted.’ I patted my cheeks gingerly. ‘He was fine when I checked on him last night. God, they were devastated.’

  ‘They’re always devastated,’ David reminded me as I settled down on the Klippan beside him. ‘I’d be more upset if they weren’t, wouldn’t you? Their dog just died.’

  It turned out Ronald, my beloved Labrador, had not eaten something manky. When I opened the surgery on Thursday morning, he seemed fine if not especially chipper. Within an hour, he was vomiting again, turning in circles in his cage and it became very clear Ronald the dog had suffered a stroke. I’d called his owners who confirmed that yes, now I mentioned it, he had been walking a bit funny the day before but they put that down to his puking his guts up so they hadn’t thought to bring it up.

  ‘If I’d known more yesterday I might have been able to do something,’ I said, my arms flapping down by my sides, as though they weren’t properly attached to my shoulders. ‘I should have seen it, though, I should have known …’

  ‘And done what?’ David asked, putting his tea down on the table to give me his full attention. ‘Other than put him out of his misery a day earlier? He was fine when we came in this morning, he wasn’t in pain. I know it’s a shit business but it’s done now.’

  ‘He should have been at home with his family and not spending his last night in a cage at the vet’s,’ I said, still not quite able to let myself off the hook. ‘Poor Ronald.’

  ‘You mean Lucky Ronald who had a nice long life with people who loved him and didn’t suffer at the end.’ He took hold of my hand and squeezed. ‘What’s up with you? This is hardly the first time we’ve been through this.’

  ‘I know,’ I replied with a sniff. ‘Just feels like I missed something, that’s all.’

  ‘You didn’t,’ he said with certainty. ‘So pack it in. You need some rest, we both do.’

  ‘Then I’ve got good news,’ I said, patting his scrub-covered thigh. ‘It’s time to go home.’

  We opened early on Thursdays and usually finished up at four, but between the untimely loss of Ronald and several last minute appointments, it was already after eight. I’d promised myself I would take the afternoon off and actually spend it sorting my life out, but instead of sitting in front of my Pinterest vision board and looking for my copy of The Secret, I’d been busy with the very worst parts of my job; clearing the anal glands of a particularly rancid tabby and sending Ronald off to meet his maker.

  ‘You OK?’ David asked, pulling a packet of Polos out of his pocket and offering me one. ‘And I don’t mean about the dog. Last night was a bit weird.’

  ‘A bit?’ I said, declining the mint. ‘Adam was in the Bell with another woman.’

  It didn’t seem possible when I said it out loud. Not even a little bit.

  ‘We still don’t entirely know what was going on there,’ he reminded me. ‘Has Cass been able to get anything out of Chris?’

  I raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I literally do not believe a word that man says,’ I told him. ‘He’s full of more shit than all the toilets in the village combined.’

  ‘You still want to know though.’

  ‘Well yeah, obviously,’ I said. ‘But I haven’t checked my phone in, I don’t know, seven seconds? So I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Anything I can do?’ he asked.

  I nodded. ‘Actually considering having my vagina sewn up. You’re good at stitches, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’ve got a rule against seeing my boss’s vagina, recreationally or otherwise,’ David replied with great certainty. ‘All joking aside, really, are you all right? You’ve not seemed yourself since you got back off holiday.’

  ‘Can’t think why.’ I dropped my head forward onto my knees and let my hair cover my face. ‘I just don’t want to think about it.’

  ‘And if I was asking how you felt about deworming a cat, that w
ould be a great answer,’ David pulled me back upright by my ponytail. ‘It’s a lot to deal with at once. You’re not Abi the Great and Emotionless and this isn’t a casual ghosting we’re talking about.’

  ‘Better we break up now than later,’ I said, tears stinging the edges of my eyes. ‘Now I can concentrate on the surgery.’

  ‘The surgery you don’t even know that you want?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ I confirmed. ‘Although to be honest, I’m not sure how not sure I am now.’

  ‘You’ve lost me,’ David said. ‘Are we talking about this place or Adam?’

  I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands as it started. First my ears began to tickle, then my eyes. It was something I was getting perilously used to.

  ‘I feel so stupid,’ I whispered as my work husband bundled me up into a comforting hug. ‘I feel like I don’t even know him. My Adam wouldn’t do this. He’s the same but different, like a same character being played by a different actor.’

  ‘Like Doctor Who?’

  ‘More evil than that.’

  ‘Sam Mitchell?’

  ‘Less evil.’

  ‘The Master?’

  ‘Do you do anything other than watch TV?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘Next question?’

  ‘It’s all shit,’ I said, pressing my thumbnail into the pad of my forefinger to distract me from potential tears. ‘I can’t believe Ronald died, I can’t believe we’re breaking up, and I can’t believe it’s my fault.’

  ‘You can stop that right now.’ David pulled away to look me directly in the red, blurry, swollen eye. ‘I won’t stand for self-pity and you know it.’

  ‘But it feels so good,’ I said, smearing my supposedly waterproof mascara onto his nice scrubs. Revlon, you filthy bloody liars. ‘I really don’t understand what happened. What did I do wrong?’

  ‘Liv, you asked for time and he couldn’t give it to you,’ he replied. ‘That’s not on you.’

  ‘But if I hadn’t asked for the break,’ I insisted. ‘If I’d just let it go when he came to apologize in the first place …’

  ‘Then we’d be going through all of this in six months’ time,’ he replied knowingly. ‘If he was going to do it, he was going to do it and there’s nothing anyone could have done to change a thing.’

  ‘Honest man’s opinion,’ I started, not sure I really wanted the honest answer I was about to ask for. ‘What do you think he’s doing?’

  ‘Honest opinion?’ he asked. With a gulp, I nodded. ‘If something is going on with him and that girl – who isn’t that hot, by the way – then it’s a rebound. I’d have to say he’s feeling hard done by and he’s flirting with her to make himself feel better. He probably only took her to the Bell because he thought you’d be there to see them.’

  It was an honest, considered, XY chromosome response. Even though the girls and me hadn’t had a regular Wednesday in the pub for months, he might have remembered. He might have been doing it to make me jealous. The thought of it should have made me mad, but instead it was strangely reassuring.

  ‘I feel like I might have really messed things up,’ I admitted. ‘I shouldn’t have pushed him away because I was freaking out about the surgery, I should have let him help me.’

  David stared at his fingernails while he thought about what to say next.

  ‘Maybe,’ he replied. ‘But you didn’t, so what next?’

  Blunt, fair and to the point. Exactly what I’d asked for – and exactly what I didn’t want to hear.

  ‘I actually do something with my life?’ I suggested. ‘Instead of sitting around and waiting for life to happen to me? One minute I was that weird girl who cleaned out dog cages on weekends and the next I was that weird grown woman who cleaned out dog cages for a living. I’m thirty already, I don’t want to wake up forty and still be sitting here having the same conversation.’

  ‘This is something,’ David said, waving his arms around in the air. I assumed he meant the surgery in general and not just the breakroom with its curly-cornered Tom Hardy posters and rubbish bin full of Jaffa Cake boxes. ‘Just because you haven’t won an Oscar or broken the internet with your arse doesn’t mean you haven’t done anything with your life. If it does, then what does that make me? Sidekick to no one? I don’t think so. I’m fucking awesome, Liv. I wouldn’t hang around with someone wasting their life.’

  ‘The only way my arse could break the internet would be if I sat on it,’ I replied. ‘And yes, you are awesome, but you know what I mean, I want to do something.’

  He skewered me with a stare. ‘You’re an amazing vet, you make the best Sunday roast I’ve ever eaten and, quite frankly, you’re probably my best friend.’

  I looked up to see bright pink spots in the middle of his cheeks before he clucked his tongue and stood up to collect our dirty mugs from the table.

  ‘Probably?’ I asked with a small smile.

  ‘If you were my best friend, you’d put a word in for me with Abi,’ he said, dumping them in the sink. ‘I know you’ve got her and Cassie, but ever since I’ve known you, my life has been better for it. You’re so hard on yourself all the time. Just for once, can you take one minute to sit back and see what everyone else sees?’

  ‘You know I’m going to make you say it,’ I said, retying my ponytail. ‘What, exactly?’

  ‘I see a clever, caring, funny woman with a great arse and nice tits who chose to dedicate her life to making a difference in other people’s,’ David replied, one fist dug into his hip. ‘It pisses me off when you constantly do yourself down. Abi doesn’t do it, Cass doesn’t do it, I don’t do it. You’re a good person, Liv, but you’re angry with yourself for not being exceptional. Only you’re totally missing the point – you are exceptional.’

  ‘Right now I feel exceptionally stupid,’ I said, closer to happy tears than sad ones for the first time in forever. ‘Thank you. I’m still not entirely convinced but it was nice to hear.’

  ‘And if you were convinced, you’d be a massive wanker and I’d have to take it all back,’ he said with a casual shrug. ‘Apart from the arse bit, I can’t deny that.’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t talk about my arse,’ I instructed, shifting awkwardly on the settee.

  ‘Noted.’

  ‘Really though, thank you,’ I said. ‘You’re going to make someone a lovely wife one day. Just not Abi.’

  ‘It’s all I’ve ever wanted,’ he replied. ‘Now do one before the phone rings and someone wants you to come round and inspect their gerbil or something.’

  I didn’t need telling twice.

  With a quick salute, I grabbed my bag and staggered out the door front, hugging myself against the chill in the air. I checked my phone as I crept around the building: nothing from Adam, nothing from Abi or Cass but there was another message from Henry. A flood of welcome relief washed over me as I opened it and saw a smiley face emoticon. Just a message, no dick pic. Between his decision not to photograph his penis and David’s pep talk, it went a small way to restoring my faith in men.

  ‘Livvy!’

  The last thing anyone wants to hear when they’re walking out of work is the sound of their boss calling their name. Especially when they’ve been avoiding their boss all week and that boss is their dad.

  ‘Glad I caught you.’ He marched up the path, clutching an envelope in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other. ‘I’ve got some paperwork you need to sign.’

  ‘Can we not do this now?’ I asked, wiping my face with the back of my hand. ‘It’s late, Dad, I’m knackered.’

  ‘No, we need to do it now,’ Dad insisted, waving the envelope in the air. ‘No point in procrastinating, Livvy, got to get on with the future, live in the now.’

  Well, at least I had a better idea where my copy of The Secret was hiding.

  ‘My now needs a cup of tea,’ I replied, rubbing my eyes with the back of my wrist. ‘My now can’t read paperwork when I’ve been at work since half past six thi
s morning.’

  ‘You don’t need to read it,’ he assured me. ‘You need to sign it.’

  I closed my eyes and opened them again, just to make sure he was really there and I hadn’t accidentally inhaled something I shouldn’t and passed out in the examination room. But no, I was wide awake and my dad was standing in front of me, tweed jacket, neat trousers, ruddy cheeks, looking every inch the image of a country vet. I, on the other hand, looked every inch an actual vet: dirty scrubs, messy hair, no make-up and raw, red eyes.

  ‘Come on then.’ I gave up and nodded back towards the flat. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

  ‘I brought champagne,’ Dad replied, following me down the path and up the stairs inside.

  ‘And you’ll be leaving it here when you go,’ I said, throwing my keys on the counter and flipping on the already full kettle. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’

  ‘It’s a good job I didn’t bring your mother with me.’ He cast a disapproving eye over my living room and tapped his envelope in the palm of his hand. ‘You want to get this place tidied up, Olivia.’

  ‘What I want is to sleep,’ I assured him. ‘This week has been manic.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s not been that bad,’ he said, clearing a spot on the settee and settling down. ‘Everything always feels worse when you come back off holiday.’

  I glared at the back of his head for a moment.

  ‘No sugar in my tea, by the way, I’m trying to cut it out. Did you know they’ve said it’s more addictive than drugs? Isn’t that mad? Adam’s mum was telling us all about it at the party. You should throw it out, it’s a silent killer, Olivia.’

  Gripping the handles of two mugs, I concentrated on making the tea and not bashing him in the head. Murdering your dad was frowned upon, wasn’t it? Generally speaking?

  ‘I had the solicitor put together a deed of ownership,’ Dad explained while I gathered together enough biscuits to be considered an acceptable spread.