by Emma Gannon
“Hi, girls, so great to see you all,” Jeremy said politely, and swooped down to kiss each of us on the cheek. He then wrapped his long arms around Bea and squeezed her tight, lifting her slightly off the ground. “Sad day?”
“It really is,” I sighed before Bea could reply and flinched as he picked up one of Bea’s huge duffel bags with ease, swinging it over his shoulder.
“Sorry to be a pooper, but we’d better get going, Bea, you know, to beat the traffic,” he said.
“Good point,” Bea said, looking at us glumly.
The three of us, the remaining ones, did a last lap of the house, saying goodbye to all the rooms. The kitchen, where we’d made countless disgusting drinks—we had followed that hideous trend of putting Skittles in vodka for a time. Then Bea’s downstairs bedroom, with a door leading onto the garden patio (covered in bird poo and old rubbish bags ripped apart by foxes), which she’d proudly decorated with one of those giant dreamcatchers hanging above the bed and where we’d often watched back-to-back episodes of Friends. The living room, where once we’d staged a private karaoke party; we’d invited everyone we’d met in the nightclub line that evening, and the neighbors had complained and almost called the police. Isla’s bedroom, on the floor of which we’d eaten many a Domino’s pizza, and Cec’s room, where she had once dressed up as a giant banana and, having got wedged in the door for hours, ended up wetting herself.
And finally, my room, the biggest, with an old fireplace and wooden flooring. My bed seemed to be the place we all gathered when we were sad. It was the room we’d get ready in before a night out because it had the most floor space. The room where we would sit on the floor and chat for hours. There were nail polish stains on the walls and burn stains on the rug from hair straighteners. I loved this room—our communal room.
The doorbell rang again. Isla was collected by her second cousin Sarah, who also lived in London. Isla had lost her parents in a freak road accident at a young age and depended on the kindness of her friends and extended family, who had wrapped a web of love around her over the years. Cec was the last to leave, picked up by her mum and dad, Tiff and Todd, in their brand-new Land Rover. They would be going back to their large house in the countryside to warm themselves by the fire. I always felt a pang of jealousy thinking of Cec’s family and their luxurious lifestyle but instantly shook it away. Cec hugged me closely, as she always knew to do when I was feeling vulnerable.
“Are you going to be okay here until Zeta arrives?” she asked me.
“Yes, of course,” I said, knowing her question was rhetorical, as Tiff had her hand on Cec’s shoulder, and Todd was waiting in the car. They were ready to leave.
“Sure?” She lowered her head and scanned my face with her eyes.
“Yes, go on, I don’t want to hold you up,” I said, and ushered her outside. I squeezed Cec, and shivered. She got inside the car in the back seat and waved with a sad, tight-lipped smile. Tiff and Todd were in the front, beaming, clearly happy to be reunited with their daughter. I went back inside and shut the green front door behind me, the one we had all opened and closed thousands of times, and it suddenly felt cold with no people warming up the house.
I sat on the stairs, waiting for Zeta like a lost puppy. The minutes turned into hours, and I didn’t enjoy having that much thinking time, alone in a house full of memories, reflecting already on a period of time with friends that I would never experience again.
2
2019
It’s been six weeks now since Jacob and I broke up. It feels like a quick snap of the finger, and yet absolutely ages, all at the same time. It’s been horrible, and everything feels uncomfortable and sticky. My brain keeps going around and around like a broken record: nine years down the drain. Nine whole years.
I close my windows and put my bedroom fan on the strongest setting. A cheap one from Amazon that makes an irritating buzzing sound. It’s a muggy day, and my flat suddenly feels boiling.
I have heaps of washing up that needs doing. Heading into the kitchen, I turn on the red digital radio that stands on the shelf above my sink, and it blasts out BBC Radio 4. I listen while I put on my Marigolds. The tap splashes some water on my face, and I realize I’m crying a bit too—at least I’ve held off longer than I did yesterday.
“According to papers today, millennial women are suffering from the paradox of choice. They have a multitude of options that can problematize decision-making! Too much choice! Tweet us—do you feel like having too many options is holding you back?”
I turn the radio off. What an annoyingly chirpy voice.
I have the Sunday blues, but I also feel glad that I have an office to go to tomorrow after a depressingly quiet weekend. I posted some old photos of me sitting in the park on Instagram so that people might think I was busy. In reality, I’m not quite ready for human contact. I’m also 95 percent full of booze and chocolate orange and didn’t move all weekend except for occasionally putting a cold glass of gin to my lips. I am bigger since the breakup—I feel like a woman made of Play-Doh, but it feels strangely comforting. I can grab hold of parts of myself I never could before. My body has changed and morphed, and now I’m my very own teddy bear. My skin is blotchier than usual too. I’m needing half a bottle of something to sleep each night. But I think I’ve gone through the worst of it. At first I spent many days festering in bed in my own juices, distracting myself by watching Netflix documentaries about climate change, serial killers, and how the world is totally fucked beyond repair, and surprise, surprise, it didn’t really help. Then I tried reaching for some positivity: old movies, reading my favorite erotica books, and watching old episodes of MTV Cribs on YouTube. I even forced myself to get a haircut, to try to make myself feel better, and the new hairdresser guy gave me a head massage at the sinks that felt so good I burst into tears. Because the only intimacy I can get at the moment is a hairdresser touching my scalp. I messaged the girls about inane things on WhatsApp—I haven’t told them about the breakup yet. Telling them would make it real, and I want to talk it through with them in person. But everyone seems a bit preoccupied; no one really replies on the WhatsApp group beyond a few quick emojis these days anyway.
Bea always says to “give yourself a wallowing deadline” whenever you feel down, meaning that you should wallow intensely, feel it all properly, and then decide when to stop. My deadline is up. It’s been long enough now. I have to face life again, whatever that means. I start with having a clear-out. My flat is not dirty, but it is certainly messy—there is stuff everywhere. I have ornaments and vases covering every surface, faux plants hanging off every shelf. There is a fruitless fruit bowl full of receipts, bills, and paper clips. I have a pile of books gathering dust next to the TV and torn-out recipe clippings from old magazines that I am not planning to read again stacked up on the end of my kitchen counter. I grab two blue Ikea bags and start loading them up with books, old sweaters, pieces of painted crockery, and vases that I no longer need. Giving away things to a charity shop every now and again always makes me feel better, like I’m in control of what I let in and out of my life. I call up the shop at the end of my road, owned by a lady called Mrs. Farnham who does next-day charity collections. It rings a couple of times.
“Hello?” A croaky man’s voice answers the phone.
“Er . . . hi . . . ? I’m looking for Mrs. Farnham,” I say.
“Oh—nah, she’s not in. Sorry, love. The shop’s not doing collections for a few months while Mrs. Farnham is on maternity leave.”
“Oh, I see! Is there no one else there that might be able to help?” I ask politely.
“No, love, I just told ya. Shop’s shut while she’s off. Shouldn’t say ‘off,’ should I? Sounds like a holiday.” He laughs.
“Right,” I say.
“Ring back in a few months, I reckon.”
I groan and hang up.
The following day, I pick up a tak
eaway coffee in my favorite little café, Kava in Soho, next to the .dot offices. It’s my usual morning routine before work. I quickly check my emails at the end of the bar. The press releases I receive get more and more bizarre by the day:
Amal Clooney Gets Bunions, so Now Everyone Wants Them
Four Steps to Having Skin Like Paul Rudd
The Best Bacon-Scented Sex Products (including Lube!)
Home Remedies to Grow Back Those “Barely There” Nineties Eyebrows
Delete, delete, delete.
I have a quick scroll through Facebook while my latte gets frothed. Who are all these people? I don’t recognize any names. A girl who I remember being really fun at school is now married to a boring basic banker. Another friend from university who I vaguely remember as sleeping with the entire football team has now become a nun and has written a painfully long caption to explain her “difficult” exit from the online world. Everything is changing. I scroll past photos of five different toddlers, their faces covered in yogurt, chocolate mousse, and baked beans.
I have a quick cigarette outside on the pavement with my coffee in my hand and lean back to relax for a moment, my old faux-fur turquoise coat touching the brick wall behind me. I take big puffs of my cigarette and inhale loudly through my teeth—going against orders from my dentist who has recently told me off for smoking. An anti-fur fashion campaigner suddenly strides up to me with stickers and a placard. He waggles his finger at me and says I shouldn’t be wearing fur.
“It’s faux fur, actually—from a charity shop in Copenhagen.” I exhale some smoke and tuck my long black hair behind my ear.
He wafts the smoke away and opens his mouth to begin his unnecessarily worthy spiel. “Well, actually—”
“You’ll find I am quite ethical, as a person,” I interrupt, tapping my ash on the floor. I know I’m being spiky and defensive, but this is not what I need this morning. I’m going through a breakup, for god’s sake. People have no manners.
“I’m afraid it’s not good enough. Faux fur is made up of synthetic microfibers that never really break down or decompose. Worse than real fur, in some ways. And don’t get me started on sequins.”
“Well, are you perfect? I bet you wear leather.”
“I don’t wear leather; I’m a vegan.”
“I bet you secretly eat bacon sandwiches when you’re hungover.”
“I don’t, actually.”
Jesus, what is happening? I’m just trying to drink my coffee and have a cig before I go to work. Life’s hard enough without a vegan campaigner banging on and on.
He continues: “Please take this leaflet and read more about it, and please consider your life choices.” He wanders off, to go and find someone else who’s doing life totally wrong.
“Maybe I will; maybe I won’t!” I call after him, ripping up the leaflet.
This is living in London. No rest for the wicked. No physical boundaries. Constant interruptions. Everyone is so on, on, on. Everything is up for debate, and you are always in someone’s way. Having said that, I might moan about London, but I also couldn’t live anywhere else, ever. Growing up in the countryside in Somerset was idyllic in many ways, especially as I met Bea, Cec, and Isla at school, but I also found it incredibly boring. Zeta, Mum, and I would cook every night together, eating dinner in our small conservatory overlooking the garden. We knew all of our next-door neighbors and their business maybe too well. The air was fresh, and the days were quiet. But, for me, the countryside seems like somewhere you go to disappear and die. Fast-paced city life is in my blood.
A young girl with a long green tartan coat and reddish curly hair walks slowly past me, then turns on her heel, pauses, and then comes up close.
“So sorry to bother you, but are you Olive Stone?” she asks, half whispering.
“Yep, that’s me.” I take a slurp of my warm coffee, trying not to act totally surprised that I’ve been recognized. This never happens.
“Sorry, I just wanted to say, your recent piece in the .dot was . . . amazing. Really fascinating.”
“Oh, thank you!” It feels sad to admit, maybe, but this has really puffed me up. I had written a cover story for .dot magazine called “Are Men Okay?,” which had just yesterday been further dissected by a journalist at the New York Times. It was a proud moment for me to have my work discussed by other journalists. I had written about the trend of men faking going to work, based on true stories of people’s husbands who had pretended to go to work for a whole year (putting on a suit and everything). They would go and sit in the park or sit in a café all day, while running up huge debts on credit cards to cover up their desperation and deception. Some of their partners hadn’t known until it was too late and it had totally ruined their lives. It was genuinely worrying. I found thirty-five different case studies—even one that was linked to a friend of a friend.
“Would I be able to email you and send you my CV? If there is ever any work experience?” Curly Hair Girl asks.
“Yeah, okay,” I say, with my cigarette hanging out of my mouth, writing down my email address on a scrap of paper, balancing it on my knee.
“Thank you so much. Meeting you has made my day.” She pauses and tilts her head to look at me. “You know, some people, like my friends who read your writing, often say you are quite unlikable. But I like you.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I think it’s really inspiring. That you put yourself out there. And that you don’t care about the reaction.”
“Right. Thanks . . . I think!” I say. I didn’t know I was unlikable. Backhanded compliments really mess with my head.
.dot magazine launched just under two years ago—a new feminist-focused online magazine for younger women that was the brainchild of the founder of a big tech giant in America to try to fill the gaping void left by so many mainstream glossy magazines suddenly going bust. Every viral story that puts .dot more firmly on the map gets more mentions and click-throughs. And for every big story I write, I seem to get another promotion, which sort of feels addictive.
I can get away with murder these days—but only because I’ve worked really hard to climb the ladder at .dot over the years. I’ve lost count of the number of days I’ve walked in with unwashed hair, latte in hand, forty-five minutes late. Gill, the editor in chief, is normally out of the office, and as I am the second most senior to Gill, no one would ever say anything to me about my lateness. I almost wish someone would, to be honest. I’m doing well at work, getting to the point where I’ll soon be more than happy with my paycheck, and it often seems like the only part of my life that I’m sailing through with some element of ease. I think I am in that rare and temporary point in life where I am an “old young person” and a “young old person.” I’m bang in the middle: young enough to be cool, old enough to have some experience of how shit life can be. I know I won’t be this age forever, but right now it’s working out for me—careerwise, anyway. Now all I have to do is figure out how to freeze time.
I walk into the office, the freshly vacuumed soft carpet beneath my Converse sneakers. Someone has tidied all the papers on my desk into a neat pile. Everyone in the open-plan office notices me walk in and immediately looks more preoccupied with their work. This still weirds me out. I feel so out of control in my personal life, and yet in this office people are somehow intimidated by me. Having any sort of influence or power at work is still a huge novelty. I pause. What is that music blasting through the speakers? . . . I have it; it’s R. Kelly’s “Ignition.”
I walk over to Judy, a junior subeditor who is wiggling in her seat and bopping her head to the music.
“Judy—R. Kelly is a sexual abuser. Can you turn it off immediately, please?”
Judy stares at me blankly and turns the volume right down, but not totally off.
I go and sit at my desk, kicking off my shoes. Bloody office politics.
“Here a
re some packages, Ol,” our receptionist, Colin, says, chipper as usual, dropping a heavy pile of parcels onto my desk. “Feels like clothes inside.” He presses down on it with his thumb.
“Yeah. Thanks, Colin,” I say, not looking up from my desk.
“Not excited about your new garms?” he says, sitting down on a swivel chair and crossing his legs.
“No. I ordered them from this American website, they took months to arrive, and . . . well, now I don’t even need them anymore.”
I’d ordered them for Jacob’s brother’s wedding, months ago when we were still together. These clothes arriving is just another sad reminder of everything that’s changed.
“Fair enough. Hey, wanna know something depressing?”
“Not really.” Read the room, Colin.
“It’s not proper depressing—more like, funny depressing.”
“All right, go on.”
“I’ve just downloaded this app that tells you how many books you could have written if you calculate all the tweets you’ve written over the years. I’ve tweeted five thousand times,” he tells me. “So that’s seven hundred thousand characters. So that’s definitely, like, two books.”
“Why would you do that?”
Colin gets out his phone and goes onto my Twitter page.
“Wow—”
“No. Stop.”
“You’ve tweeted fifty-two thousand times. So, you could have written, like, fifteen books by now,” he says, deadpan.
I want to whack my head on the desk. I imagine blood going everywhere, splashing onto Colin.
“Can I make you a tea? Also, this new eye cream got delivered today for you all to test out.” He hands me a gold cardboard box. “You do look a bit tired, my love.”
“Cheers,” I say blankly. “And yes, two sugars, please.”