by Lisa Jewell
Home was a ten-bedroom villa on a hill, sheep all around, a mile and a half to school, downhill going there, uphill coming back. My parents took in orphans sometimes, in emergencies. They’d arrive bleary-eyed in the small hours, huge sets of siblings that they housed in the dormitory room in the attic. We called it “the orphan room” long after there’d been an orphan in it. So my parents can’t have been all bad. But mainly, on the whole, yes they were.
We were known as the clever family. You know that family? We all know that family. Pianos all over the place. Books beyond belief. Grade As or you had failed. That was all we ever talked of. Academic success. My father was a maths teacher. My mother was a writer of books about medical history. We all went to the best schools and worked harder than everyone else and won all the awards and all the medals and all the scholarships and all the trophies going. I swear there was not a scrap of anything left for anyone else.
Well, I was clever enough to keep up, there was no doubt about that. But I was at a disadvantage for being (a) the middle child, (b) a girl, and (c) not the girl who had died. Michaela. That was who I was not. Michaela, who was bonnier than me and nicer than me and yes, naturally, cleverer than me. And also much less alive than me. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that that would make me all the more precious to my mother and father. Well, at least we still have our lovely Noelle. But no.
Michaela died of cancer. We all thought it was a cold. We were wrong.
Anyway, that was me. The less bonny, less clever, less dead sister with the four horrible brothers and the mum and dad who judged more than they loved.
I did OK. I got into Trinity. I got a degree in mathematics, a PhD in applied mathematics. I moved to London shortly after I graduated and it was nice for a while just to be clever Noelle, not just one of the Donnellys. I tried my hand in the financial sector, thinking that I’d quite like to be very rich and have a performance car and an apartment with a balcony. But it really wasn’t me and everyone there knew it wasn’t me and so I left before I’d earned enough money for a scooter let alone a car.
You know, when I look back at this time, I’m amazed by myself, I really am. I was so young and so appallingly unsophisticated, didn’t know a soul, yet there I was in the seething belly of the metropolis, had a room in a flat in Holland Park of all places. I had no idea then how high I was flying in that postcode; I thought everyone who came to London from Ireland lived in a road full of big wedding cake houses. I didn’t know that Walthamstow existed. And I was cute, you know, looking back on it, had model looks, almost, in that bare-faced, hollow-chested sort of way, all legs and tangled hair and huge watery eyes. No one ever told me I was pretty, though, not once; I don’t really know why.
I took a job at a posh magazine for a while. I was in the finance department and I was literally invisible for the full three years. Then I got made redundant and I had to give up my little room in lovely Holland Park, say good-bye to the wide avenue with the organic butcher before anyone knew what organic even meant, the food shop that sold lobster bisque in tins, the park itself with its orangery and its bowers. And that was when I discovered that Walthamstow existed: E11 with its little brown houses and its tired laundrettes, shuttered cab offices and boarded-up buildings.
I decided to retrain as a teacher.
I don’t know what possessed me. I’d already proved to myself that I had no presence, that I was unable to draw any attention to myself whatsoever. How I thought I’d be able to engage a class of thirty slack-jawed teenagers on the principles of algebra I do not know.
I qualified but I never did teach my own class. I lost my nerve. It made me feel sick to my stomach just thinking about it. So at the age of thirty, I placed an ad in my local paper and I began tutoring. I was very good at it and all those smoothie-making mums spread the word, passed me around like a restaurant recommendation, and I made enough to move out of my little room in the little house in Walthamstow and buy myself a place in Stroud Green where the houses were slightly bigger, but not much. And that was that. That was that for a long time. And, oh—did I mention?—I was still a virgin at this point.
No, seriously, I was.
I’d had a boyfriend for a while back in Ireland, from age fourteen to fifteen. Tony. So I’d got all the kissing stuff out of the way, thought the rest would come later. Well, it never did.
And then I read in the Times Educational Supplement (TES) about a book. It was aimed at people who thought they “couldn’t do maths,” and believe me the world is full of people who think they can’t do maths, which I have to try very hard to understand, because truly, I don’t. How can people understand how to walk into a room full of people and find something to talk about but they can’t understand how numbers work? It makes no sense to me. Anyway, I can’t remember the name of the book now. It might even have been called Bad at Maths. Yes, that’s right, it was. Bad at Maths. I bought it and I read it. It opened my eyes to things I’d never thought about before. But more than that, it made me laugh. I wasn’t one for reading books, generally, and I only read this because it was in the TES, and so I hadn’t been expecting such humor in a book about maths. But there it was. Humor. Bags of it. And a photo on the inside cover of a lovely man with a smiling face and a thatch of dark hair.
It was a photo of you.
I’d never been a fan of anything much before I read your book. There were TV shows I enjoyed, Brookside being a particular favorite; I watched that up to the last episode. And I always perked up if Take That came on the radio, although on the whole I was more of a classical fan. And of course I’d had crushes across the years. Loads of them. But this was different.
You were different.
Do you remember, the first time we met? I know you do. You were signing books on your publisher’s stand at the Education Show at the NEC. I go every year. Tutoring is a lonely world and you have to plug yourself into the mains every now and then and get a fix of what everyone else is getting. You can’t be yesterday’s flavor of the month when it comes to these north London mummies. You have to keep on top of things.
But mainly I was there because I knew you were going to be there. I’d made an extra-special effort: I had on a skirt and tights and a lipstick the color of toffee apples that set fire to my hair and made my blue eyes shine. I was forty-one years old. The autumn of my youth. Christ, virtually the winter. And yes, I was still a virgin.
You sat on a high stool at a high table, a small pile of your books in front of you. There was no one there, no queue, only a small sign on the wall behind you that said “Author Floyd Dunn Will Be Signing Copies of His Book ‘Bad at Maths’ Today, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.” And next to it a photo, that photo of you, the same one from inside your book that I’d stared at for so many hours, memorizing the way your hair fell around your ears, the line your mouth made as it attempted a serious smile.
My eye went from the photo to you and back to the photo. You were thinner than I’d imagined. I’d expected a little belly, maybe. I don’t know why.
“Hello!” you said at my approach, as though someone had just plugged you in and switched you on. “Hello!” You wouldn’t have known how nervous I was. You wouldn’t have guessed. I played it very, very cool.
“Hello,” I replied, my hands tight around my dog-eared copy of your book. “I have my own copy. Would you mind signing it for me?”
I passed it across to you and you smiled that smile you have, the one that makes your eyes into fireworks that go bang bang bang in my soul.
“Well,” you said, “that is a well-loved copy.”
I could have told you I’d read it thirty times. I could have told you that your book made me laugh more in a week than I’d laughed in the year before I read it. I could have told you that I was completely in awe of you. But I wanted you to see me as an equal. So I simply said, “It has been a very useful tool. I’m a maths tutor.”
“Well,” you said, “I am very glad to hear that.” You took the book from me and held your pen over
the title page. “Shall I sign it to you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Please. Noelle.”
“Noelle,” you said. “That’s a lovely name. Were you a Christmas baby?”
“Yes. December the twenty-fourth.”
“Best Christmas present ever, eh?”
“No,” I replied, “apparently not. Apparently I ruined Christmas Day for everyone.”
You laughed then; I hadn’t imagined a laugh for you. In your photo you looked as if you might go so far as a chuckle, if tickled to the point of no return. But no, you had a proper laugh where your mouth opened wide and your head tipped back on your neck and a big thunderclap boom exploded from you. I liked it, very much.
You wrote something after my name, I wanted to see what it was, but I didn’t want to look as though I cared.
“You’re American,” I said.
“To a certain extent,” you said. “And you’re Irish?”
“Yes. To the fullest possible extent.”
You liked my little joke and you laughed again. It felt like someone massaging the inside of my stomach with velvet-gloved hands.
“Where are you from?”
“Near Dublin,” I replied. “County Wicklow. Where all the sheep live.”
You laughed for a third time and I felt emboldened in a way I’d never felt before in my life. I looked behind me to check that a queue hadn’t built as we’d talked. But I still had you all to myself.
“Are you here again tomorrow?” I asked.
“No. No. They’re putting me on a train back to London after this. Which leaves in, oh”—you looked at your watch—“approximately two hours. I should probably be wrapping this up soon.”
“Have you signed many books?”
“Oh, yeah, hundreds and hundreds.” You clicked the lid back on your pen and gave me a sideways smile. “Kidding,” you said. “About twenty.”
“Long way to come, to sign twenty books.”
“I tend to agree with you.”
You slid the pen into your jacket pocket and turned away from me, looking about for a person to whisk you away, no doubt.
“Well,” I said. “I’ll let you get away. I hope you have a safe journey back to London. Whereabouts do you live?”
“North London.”
“Oh,” I said, an Oscar-worthy moment of fakery, “snap. So do I.”
“Oh!” you said. “Whereabouts?”
“Stroud Green.”
“Well, well. What a coincidence. Me, too.”
“What? You live in Stroud Green?” This I had not known. This I could never have believed to be possible.
“Yes! Latymer Road. Do you know it?”
“Yes,” I said, joy virtually pouring out of my ears and my eyeballs and my nostrils. “Yes, I do know it. I’m just a few roads down from you.”
“Well, well, well. Maybe our paths will cross again then?”
“Yes,” I’d said, as though it would be no more than a fun coincidence if they did, not the culmination of all my hopes and worldly dreams. “Maybe they will.”
Two weeks later, they did.
28
To say that I’d been stalking you would be an overstatement. We lived but two hundred feet apart after all. It would be fair, though, to say that I was going out a little more than I usually tended to. Coming upon a nearly empty bottle of milk in the fridge would fill me with delight. Oh dear, I shall have to visit the corner shop again. And if I returned to the realization that I should also have bought a newspaper while I was out, well, that really wasn’t the end of the world. On with the coat, back to the high street, one eye open for you in one direction, another eye open for you in the other. And anything that gave me cause to pass the end of Latymer Road was a particular bonus.
And then one evening, there you were, in the convenience store, in a blue anorak and jeans, a bottle of red wine hanging from your fist, studying the breakfast cereals intently. I said, “Floyd Dunn.”
You turned and you remembered me immediately. I knew you did. I hadn’t expected that. No one ever remembered me immediately. But you smiled and you said, “I know you. You were at the NEC.”
“Yes, I was indeed. Noelle.”
I gave you my hand and you shook it.
“Noelle. Of course. The unwanted Christmas present. How are you?”
“I’m truly grand, thank you. And you?”
“I am moderately grand, if that’s possible.”
“Oh yes,” I said. “There are many shades of grand.”
There was a small moment then, I recall. It was likely awkward, though I’d be hard-pressed to judge as my whole life until this point had been vaguely awkward. But you stepped into the moment and saved it and that was when I knew.
You said—and I shall never ever forget this because it was so remarkable to me—you said, “Rice Krispies or Mini Shredded Wheats?”
Which may not sound like much of anything, but it was what it wasn’t that was so important to me. It wasn’t a rebuttal. It wasn’t a glance at your watch and an oh, is that the time, I’d better get on. It wasn’t a suggestion that I was taking up too much of your life; that I was somehow blocking your view of better things. It was an invitation to banter.
So of course I seized it. “Rice Krispies,” I said, “are delicious, but five minutes later you’re hungry again. All that air . . .”
You smiled. I liked your crooked teeth.
“All that air,” you repeated. “You are funny.”
“No. I’m just Irish.”
“True,” he said. “You do have a natural inbuilt advantage when it comes to humor. So.” You turned back to the breakfast cereals. “Seven-year-old girl. Mother is a health freak, so no sugary stuff. What would you choose?”
Seven-year-old girl? Well, there’d been no mention of a seven-year-old girl in your biography. I can’t say I was too fond of small girls. “Is this your daughter we’re talking about?”
“Yes. Sara. Her mother and I recently separated and now I’m a weekend dad. So I can’t afford to make any mistakes. My wife already thinks I’m going to leave my daughter somewhere or let her put her hand in a food blender. That kind of thing.”
“Weetabix then,” I said. “It has the least sugar of all the cereals.”
Your face softened and you smiled again. “See,” you said, “I knew you’d know about things like that. I knew you would. Do you have children of your own?”
“No. Not even vaguely.”
You looked at me then, and I could tell you were wondering whether or not to say something, something in particular.
I acted like I wasn’t fussed and, whatever it was, you decided against saying it. I could see you swallowing the words back into yourself. “Well, you have been most helpful. Thank you, Noelle.”
You picked up the Weetabix. And that was that.
But it was enough so that the next time I bumped into you, a week later, we had a little open-ended thing going on, a little rapport. We chatted about the weather a bit then. And the next time we chatted about some government scheme to ruin all the schools, which we’d both read about in the papers that morning. It was the fourth time, a month after the Education Show, that you said, “Have you ever tried that Eritrean place? By the tube?”
“As it happens, no I have not.”
“Well, it is excellent. I’ve been going there for years. You should try it . . . In fact . . .”
And there it came, your invitation to dinner.
Yes, Floyd. Your invitation to dinner. I know you will try to twist this and rewrite it, like you try to twist and rewrite everything, but you know and I know that you started this. You saw me, Floyd. You saw me and you wanted me. You asked me to dinner. You turned up at that dinner on time and smartly dressed. You did not look at me and say, This has been a terrible mistake, and do a runner. You smiled when I walked in, you stood, you took my shoulders, and you pressed your face against my face. You said, “You look lovely.” You waited until I’d sat down before you sat
down. You maintained a steady line of eye contact.
You did. You totally, totally did.
And then it was you. You phoned me a few days later (just long enough to make me sweat, just long enough to make me think about calling you first but I did not. I did not.). And you invited me to your house.
Yes you did.
Your goal was clear that night. You wanted to fuck me. But that was OK because I wanted to be fucked by you. I didn’t care that dinner was somewhat perfunctory—what was it now? Pasta, I think, with some kind of shop-bought sauce that must have taken you all of five minutes to throw together. But a nice bottle of wine, if I recall. And we ended up on your sofa an hour later and while you were pulling at my clothes and panting all over me I said, “Believe it or not, I am a virgin, possibly the last one in existence.” And you were very kind about it. You didn’t laugh or say, You’re taking the piss. You didn’t recoil or sigh or tell me to go home. You were kind. You touched me all over until I was a blob and then you were slow and patient. And it did hurt. Yes, it really did. But I’d been expecting that and frankly, you weren’t the biggest boy in the class, if you know what I mean. A blessing really.
And I knew. I think I really did know from that point on that you and I were mainly about sex. And that was fine with me.
But I grew accustomed to you over the months, grew accustomed to your pillows and your cereal bowls, the smell of your scalp before you had a shower, the sight of your name on my phone when you called or texted. You inhabited a big chunk of my life: over 30 percent if we’re going to talk in numbers. And probably 30 percent of that 30 percent was sex. The rest was just lying in your bed listening to you shower, waiting for your calls, watching you cook, watching you eat, sitting on your sofa watching TV with you, meals out from time to time, walks in the park from time to time, making arrangements to meet. That’s a lot of shared existence for two people in a sex-based relationship, a lot of time not having sex. More than enough time for a bond to form. I never told you I loved you. You never told me you loved me. Some people would say that that was sufficient grounds to diminish everything else that happened between us. But I disagree.