by Freya North
She doesn’t reply. There’s no way she’s going back upstairs. If the tea stains the carpet, the landlord can take cleaning costs out of her deposit. For now, she wants to be out of the house immediately.
‘I just came …’ she calls up, ‘I just came to, to – dump my stuff.’
‘So did I,’ Jake calls down. Fen hears them all laughing. She feels suddenly offended. Are they laughing at her?
‘I have to shoot off now,’ she calls.
‘That’s precisely what I’ve done,’ Jake calls down and Fen can hear them all giggling in a horribly self-congratulatory way.
Fen wants to cry. She isn’t sure why. She isn’t sure what to say next.
‘Bye,’ she calls, because it’s neutral and safe and has no opening for a double entendre. Even if it did, she’s closed the door and is marching up the street on the double; out of sight, out of sound.
When Pip opened the door to her flat, Fen thought how the look on her sister’s face must mirror her own. An element of shock-horror mixed with a dose of bewilderment, a dash of unease, all laced with unhappiness. How could Pip know, though? Had Abi or Gemma phoned her?
‘Urgh!’ said Fen, flopping down on to the settee next to Cat, whose facial expression matched both of her sisters’. Pip perched on the coffee table in front of Fen and Cat, her knees practically touching Fen’s. ‘You’ll never guess,’ Fen continued, holding her throat as if to quell nausea. ‘Honestly,’ she went on, ‘it’s not as if I’m a prude – but …’ Cat and Pip regarded their sister with level gazes. Fen shook her head forlornly. ‘It’ll sound like the juiciest of gossip,’ she explained, ‘but it isn’t – it’s horrid. I feel very very uncomfortable.’ Still Cat and Pip watched her. ‘I feel I should move. But first I want to have a bath – it’s made me feel dirty, which is ridiculous.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ said Cat.
‘It isn’t,’ Pip agreed.
‘What?’ said Fen. ‘It is ridiculous – I catch both my flatmates having sex with the same man at the same time and I feel so appalled and revulsed that I’m the one who feels she should scrub herself clean!’
Pip and Cat observed Fen in stony silence. At length, Pip spoke. ‘How could you, Fen?’
‘Oh,’ said Fen ingenuously, ‘I wasn’t peeping – it was unavoidable, the door was open and they were all making such a racket.’ Her sisters were giving her very odd looks indeed. ‘Do you know what Jake said – oh Jesus – he said, “OK ladies, time for tea,” when he was – you know!’ Fen giggled and blushed and covered her face with her hands. ‘Oh God – I shouldn’t laugh but it is so toe-curlingly revolting,’ she said, all muffled.
‘How could you do it to Matt?’ Cat probed, shaking her head and looking quite miserable.
‘Matt?’ Fen asked. ‘I haven’t told him yet.’
‘Are you going to?’ Pip asked.
Fen fell silent.
‘Because it isn’t fair on him,’ said Cat, ‘not one bit, not at all. He’s so so lovely.’
Fen considered this. ‘Jake has probably told him,’ she said, ‘I mean, I bet it wasn’t the first time. I wonder how Matt will respond.’ She looked from sister to sister. ‘That will be telling, won’t it?’ she theorized. ‘If he reacts as I have, all well and good. But say he thinks it’s not that untoward? What then? Do I really want to be with someone with such dodgy morals?’
‘Dodgy morals!’ Pip cried. ‘Dodgy sodding morals!’ She regarded Fen, fire in her eyes and a harshness to her voice that Fen had never heard. ‘Pot!’ Pip yelled. ‘Kettle! Black!’ She leapt up and paced around the room.
Fen looked utterly flummoxed. ‘I don’t follow,’ she faltered.
‘What we’ve been trying to ascertain,’ Cat said coldly, ‘and the reason for us having you here, is how on earth you can do what you’re doing to Matt.’
Fen stared at Cat. There was no penny dropping just yet. ‘I don’t follow,’ she repeated.
Pip returned to the coffee table and sat with her face inches from Fen’s. ‘You have a lovely boyfriend,’ she said in a horribly controlled way, ‘who is obviously besotted by you – and yet you choose to jeopardize what you have with him so you can fuck around in Derbyshire.’
Fen’s jaw dropped. The penny dropped like a lead weight straight to the bottom of her stomach. The crossed lines of the previous minutes unravelled and wrapped around Fen’s throat.
‘Derbyshire,’ Cat stressed, ‘your own bloody doorstep.’
Fen had not yet closed her mouth.
‘How could you?’ Pip asked, a look of utter revulsion crossing her face.
Fen changed the aperture of her mouth but no sound came out. She put her hand to her throat. ‘I …’
‘Django saw you,’ Cat elaborated, ‘in the Cross Oaks, snug as you like with some bloke.’
‘I …’
‘Couldn’t you be more discreet?’ Cat spat. ‘Couldn’t you just hole up in your lover’s pad – rather than upset Django so? I mean, it’s one thing not to even call him – but it’s another to flaunt.’
‘Django?’ Fen whispered.
‘Saw you,’ Pip confirmed.
‘You know what,’ said Cat, slapping her hands down on her knees, rising from the settee to pace the room, ‘what I don’t get is how you can dare to come here, all hurt and shocked and self-righteous about Jake and Abi and Gemma. I mean, they’re consenting adults, larking about with sex. But you – you. The deception, Fen. The dishonesty.’
Fen looked from hand to hand.
‘Stop looking at your bloody hands,’ Pip barked, ‘and look into your soul. What you are doing is wrong. We presume that they don’t know about each other?’
Silence. Fen shook her head.
‘Have you stopped to imagine,’ Pip continued, ‘how either would feel if he found out? Have you stopped to consider how much unhappiness you have the potential to wreak?’ She took two apples and an orange from her fruit bowl. ‘I can juggle, Fen,’ she said, doing just that, ‘but you can’t.’ She let the fruit fall. The orange caught the side of the coffee table and then thudded to the floor. One apple rolled underneath the table, the other bounced, bashing the skirting-board before coming to rest, bruised. The orange was alone in the centre of the floor. ‘Where do you get it from?’ Pip enquired, quietly, bewildered. ‘Where do you get it from?’
It was all too much for Fen. She started to cry. Neither sister was inclined to comfort her. Both felt let down and confused and very cross with Fen. She stood up.
‘The lies,’ Pip sighed, disgusted, ‘the lies.’
‘I have not lied!’ Fen protested. ‘I haven’t – to anyone.’ There was uneasy silence. ‘Piss off, both of you!’ she cried. ‘Piss right off! Who the hell are you two to judge?’ And yet Fen knew she should stop, sit down, sob her heart out and then pour her heart out. She knew, most importantly, that she should say no more. She knew she’d regret it. But she continued. ‘Who are you to judge me! Cat with your fucked-up love life, and Pip with no love life to speak of. You have no right, no authority!’
With that, she stormed out of Pip’s flat.
THIRTY-FIVE
’Tis an awkward thing to play with souls,
And matter enough to save one’s own
Robert Browning
‘Bugger,’ said Fen out loud on the top of Primrose Hill. Her indignation at having been told off had subsided. She felt ghastly. Though, as we know, she has a slight obsession with her hands, Fen has never bitten her nails. But sitting on one of the benches on the top of Primrose Hill, she had her fingers in her mouth and was half-heartedly chewing away. It seemed, really, the only thing to do. The McCabe sisters rarely argued. Never had Cat and Pip united against Fen. Never had she spat such spite at her sisters. It simply wasn’t her nature. Thus, the top layer of the distress Fen was currently experiencing focused on the insults she had cruelly levied at Cat and Pip. Under that was the wretchedness she felt, now that home truths had been unequivocally pointed out. On all fronts, her beh
aviour had been bad. To Matt, to James, to Pip, to Fen. Even, unwittingly, to her beloved Django.
‘Mess,’ she whispered to herself, tears coursing down her cheeks, ‘my fault.’ She looked over to the aviary in London Zoo. It depressed her. Is that what she had been doing? Kidding herself that she was flying free, flying true, when in reality she was far from her real territory and heading for a bump at any moment? She hadn’t been to the zoo in years, she had no intention of visiting it again. On Primrose Hill, lone dog walkers strolled around, friends flopped on the grass chatting, couples walked hand in hand. Fen didn’t dare look at her hands. She knew she’d only reprimand herself, whichever palm she consulted. Instead, she just sat there because it was cathartic just to do so, crying quietly, feeling miserable. After a few minutes, though, she knew, too, that it was thoroughly self-indulgent.
How much courage do I have? she wondered. Enough to return to Pip’s and apologize? Enough to go to Matt’s, hold him close and tell him that I love him? Because I’ve already told James how I love him.
Do you love James more than you do Matt, then?
No. Ironically, it’s because James is so guarded with expressing his emotions that I wanted to tell him how I feel – like it might prompt some kind of reciprocation from him. Matt is much more open and demonstrative. But no. I certainly do not love one more than the other. But this is not the point, this is skirting the issue. How on earth do I manage to leave Primrose Hill?
You should prioritize, Fen. Matt and James are both safely in the dark. It is to your sisters that you should go. It won’t be easy, there will be music to face and it may well be dissonant.
Saying sorry is one thing – but they’ll judge me, they’ll judge me.
Fen dragged her heels. She looked in all the shop windows in Regent’s Park Road though she knew their wares well, having spent Saturday browsing there with Matt. More to the point, it was futile because she knew she could not afford any of the things she fancied. She switched her mobile phone on. No messages. She switched it off again. Then on again. She dialled her voice mail. No messages. No surprise there. She bought two apples and an orange, also a bumper-size block of Galaxy chocolate, Cat’s favourite, and walked with resigned purpose – if slowly – back to Pip’s.
The beauty of true sisterhood – whether women are united by blood or friendship – is the ability not to hold grudges. Men, after disagreements or fallings-out with each other, will invariably just bury the hatchet and pick up where they left off. Women, though, will relish the chance to work through the issue. When they have done so, they are further on than they were when they left off. They move forward, on foundations which are firmer than they were prior to the rift. Simply saying, ‘Sorry mate,’ might be easier; to agree quickly over a pint to let bygones be just that might be very agreeable, but making up shouldn’t be easy – if it is, then surely it wouldn’t be difficult to fall out again.
‘She’s back,’ Cat said, seeing Fen’s legs descending the stairs to Pip’s basement flat.
Whilst walking back to Pip’s, Fen had polished up three or four variants on an impressive soliloquy. However, by the time she was hovering her finger over Pip’s doorbell, all were utterly redundant. The knot in her throat had already lodged itself as she approached Pip’s building. When Cat opened the door, Fen felt her eyes smart over. When Pip greeted her with a gentle, ‘Hullo, slapper,’ the tears fell. The three sisters sat together on Pip’s sofa, though it was only a small two-seater. Pip and Cat were silent, Pip’s hand on Fen’s shoulder, Cat’s hand on her knee. They let her sob. And snort back the snot. And be quiet for a moment before starting up again. Eventually she was all cried out.
‘Here,’ she croaked, thrusting the plastic bag at Pip. Pip smiled at the replacement fruit and laid them gently in the fruit bowl. She and Cat had eaten the surprisingly unbruised apples while Fen had been on Primrose Hill. Cat handed out great big chunks of the chocolate to each sister and they slouched back on the couch and munched.
Pip spoke first, loving chocolate so much that she found it impossible not to gobble it down. ‘Fen,’ she said, with no anger to her voice, ‘what I’d like to know is exactly how you can do it? Not just on a moral level – but on a practical one too?’
Fen stared at Pip’s wall so intently that Pip and Cat could all but see the cogs and wheels of her mind turning. They gave her time and more Galaxy. Fen arose and took a pew on the coffee table, facing both her sisters. ‘I know it sounds odd – especially for someone as hooked on romance as me.’ Pip and Cat nodded. ‘They’re just so different, these two men,’ Fen continued, ‘yet it’s not as if either lacks anything physically or in personality that the other makes up for. That’s what’s so odd.’
‘But don’t you feel guilty?’ Cat enquired.
‘It’s been effortless to keep them apart – in my soul, mind and heart. Matt lives in London, he is my age, my milieu. James lives in Derbyshire. He’s forty-nine.’
‘Almost fifty!’ Cat exclaimed.
‘A sugar-daddy?’ Pip asked.
‘A gardener,’ Fen explained.
‘Oh,’ said Pip, whilst Cat just looked disappointed.
‘I’ve a clear picture of Percy Thrower,’ Cat said, referring to the Blue Peter TV gardener of their childhood.
‘I’m thinking Alan Titchmarsh,’ Pip said, slightly perturbed.
‘You’re both far off the mark,’ Fen assured them. ‘Think back to the Rag and Thistle – to that chap you were ogling with the dogs.’ Pip and Cat’s jaws dropped. Fen nodded confirmation. ‘Him.’
The sisters gazed up through the window to street level where disembodied legs made their way either late home from work, or out for a drink or meal or movie. ‘Both these blokes enhance my life,’ Fen said, ‘because I’ve come to realize that there are two very different sides to me. On the one side,’ she said, careful not to look at her right palm, ‘is the city-dwelling young thing that I am – enjoying London life, having a hip and gorgeous boyfriend like Matt. On the other side, though, are my rural roots, my love of Derbyshire, of the outdoors and all that is different to the city.’
She regarded her sisters.
‘Two sides of the same coin,’ she shrugged, ‘town and country. Rich and poor. Young and old. Matt and James.’ Pip and Cat wore furrowed brows. ‘Put another way,’ Fen said, ‘it’s like really enjoying a programme on television but flicking over to another equally interesting programme during the advert break.’
‘Fenella,’ said Pip, using her sister’s name in full to stress the anxiety in her voice, ‘you mustn’t toy with men just for your entertainment.’
‘And Fen,’ Cat said, ‘who is the main feature and who is the intermission break?’
Fen shook her head slowly. She shrugged. ‘I couldn’t tell you,’ she said, ‘honestly. But I assure you that I am not using them for my amusement. I am, I think, I suppose, dare I say it, simply in love with two men.’
‘And do you know what to do about it?’ Pip pushed.
‘Carry on?’ Fen said, after a very loaded pause.
‘OK. But what do you think you ought to do about it?’ Pip persisted.
Fen shrugged. Pip used her name in full again, in a soft low voice with an unmistakably menacing edge to it.
‘Minimize the potential for hurt and thus make my bloody mind up?’ Fen suggested.
‘Now say that without the question mark at the end,’ said Cat. Fen twisted her brow and her hands. Cat and Pip waited. Eventually, in almost a whisper and with a tear glassing over her right eye, Fen did as she was told.
‘Who is it to be?’ Cat asked.
Fen wiped her eyes and shrugged, shaking her head vigorously as if to try to forget the weight and urgency of her responsibility.
‘Who loves you more?’ Cat asked. ‘Matt or James?’
‘I don’t know!’ Fen declared, because she had put herself right at the centre of both men’s worlds and hadn’t really stopped to think.
‘Mind you,’ C
at continued, ‘ultimately you should choose according to your heart.’
‘I don’t know, Cat,’ Pip cautioned, ‘I think Fen’s head should keep a close check on her heart. Which man is least likely to hurt you?’
‘I can look after myself,’ Fen declared with a certain petulance.
‘Bollocks!’ Pip said. ‘That’s my line and even I know it’s bullshit, deep down.’
‘What are they like?’ asked Cat, not so much because she wanted to steer the conversation back on track as that curiosity had simply got the better of her. ‘how do they compare? These two sides of the coin?’
‘I don’t compare them,’ Fen insisted, ‘but I can try to describe them.’
Pip and Cat snuggled deep into the sofa, as if story-time on the radio or at nursery school was about to commence. ‘Well, you sort of know Matt,’ Fen began. ‘I so love the way he combines old-fashioned manners with cosmopolitan funky liveliness. He’s also incredibly attentive on an emotional level – very caring, romantic. He sends me little e-mails and text messages and sticks Post-its on my computer monitor for no reason other than he cares for me. That makes me feel wonderful. And in bed – well!’ Fen broke off to blush. ‘At first, it was a little nondescript, but now we don’t so much make love as have rude and rampant sex. He’s amazing – dirty and desirous. I feel very adventurous and abandoned with him. The things he can do with his lips and tongue – a sort of magic-whispering in any of my orifices!’ Fen regarded her sisters, both of whose jaws had dropped. ‘He’s had a long-term relationship that broke up finally just before I arrived on the scene. He cares about her. I’m glad he does. But I’m gladder that it’s now me whom he wants. I’m even cool about his fling with mad Judith at work. I can in no way wonder if I’m his rebound shag. And also, he has a lovely, conventional family. His mum is a real honey. And there’s Nanny too.’
‘And the country pile,’ Pip added, but not wanting to sound cynical, ‘and Daddy’s inheritance.’ Fen poked her tongue out at her sister.
‘We like Matt!’ Cat proclaimed with a wriggle to grab the Galaxy from the table. ‘He’s gorgeous on the eye and a really lovely guy. Hey! I’m a poet – not that you’d know it. Sorry!’