Don't You Forget About Me

by Mhairi McFarlane

‘Same here,’ Lucas says. ‘And what you said about protecting me, when he was attacking you. The shame that I didn’t do the same for you will stay with me forever. I wish I could’ve saved you.’

  I smile. I once thought I’d never hear the words I wanted to from Lucas. ‘It wasn’t for you to save me. It never was. And you coming here tonight, it’s enough, Lucas. I’m not just saying that.’

  We gaze at each other. There is an obvious question about whether there’s anything left, but I don’t have the strength or will to ask it. Tonight has restored so much decency and dignity. Putting Lucas in the position of saying: That doesn’t mean I want to resurrect anything now, would ruin it. Oh God, and imagine if he pretended otherwise out of pity, or guilt. I reason with myself: you threw yourself at him, and he passed. If he’s not offering anything now, then assume his views haven’t changed since that night.

  There’s a long pause.

  ‘You’re not coming back to The Wicker, are you?’ he says, eventually.

  ‘No. I’m not. Sorry. I love it, but I feel like I’ve drawn a line now. I’ll go back, on the other side of the bar, see Dev, see Kitty. And you’re going back to Dublin?’

  ‘Yeah. The plan was always I’d help out at the start, to launch it, and then we’d hire a manager locally.’

  There’s my answer to the previous question. Of course Lucas doesn’t want to throw his lot in with me, anyway. Look at who he is now and look at who I am. We made sense in a very different era.

  ‘Right. Devlin said you didn’t like Sheffield much,’ I say.

  ‘It’s got its good points,’ he replies, with that smile, that bloody bastard heartbreaking smile.

  I put my hand out for Lucas to shake. He gives a small, sad laugh, and accepts it. Even just touching him now feels like a hole opening up in my gut, ready for me to fall down as soon as he’s gone.

  ‘I’m glad I’ve known you,’ I say to him.

  ‘The feeling is entirely mutual,’ he says.

  I open the kitchen door and Lucas walks back into the sitting room.

  ‘Is that a hutch?’

  ‘Yeah it’s my tortoise.’

  ‘Oh my word, Jammy’s still going?’

  ‘You remember his name!’

  ‘Yeah. Imagine how many times I was trying not to catch myself out by referring to something I knew from when were at school.’

  He grins and I marvel at how there is now nothing unspoken between us. It’s such a good feeling. I like being able to feel good about him again.

  As I open the front door, Lucas turns and takes a deep breath and says: ‘Gina.’

  ‘No one calls me Gina!’

  ‘I know,’ Lucas says, ‘That’s why I want to.’

  We gaze at each other.

  We have word for word recreated a conversation from our time in the Botanical Gardens. I thought I was sole keeper of this flame. He’s already made it clear I’m not, but this call-and-response is proof.

  ‘When I saw you again at the wake, you were every bit as luminous as I remembered from school. He didn’t take that away. Don’t ever let any man take that away from you.’

  And before I can react, he pushes his hands deep into his pockets, nods at me, and walks off into the night.

  I close the door. A hot flash flood of tears courses down my face. They’re sad tears, but other things too.

  Lucas McCarthy came back into my life and do you know what, it turns out I’m glad he did. We got a few things ironed out. And he has a fabulous dog.

  I exhale. Sometimes the truth is messy and difficult but it isn’t always best left. Sometimes it saves you.

  Upstairs, a voice roars:

  ‘GEORGINA HAVE YOU QUITE FINISHED TALKING DOWN THERE I AM TRYING TO GET SOME SLEEP GOD ALMIGHTY YACKETY FUCKING YACK.’

  ‘We’re done,’ I shout back, fingers wiping under my eyes. Wishing that weren’t true.

  44

  Six Months Later

  You don’t appreciate youth when you have it, do you. When I was age appropriate to be doing a degree, I felt gauche, conspicuous, like everyone could see through the fact I wasn’t bright enough to be there. Now I’m knocking thirty-one and I feel completely out of place thanks to my age. What was I worried about age twenty? With my sheen of cluelessness, ignorance of the set text, Tippexed Dr Martens and permanent moderate hangover, I fitted right in.

  After the Sunday lunch incident, Esther and I secretly, or not-so-secretly, hoped Mum might leave Geoffrey. She didn’t, but I get the impression that the balance of power moved a little more in her favour in the aftermath. Even a protest of that minimal size, registered.

  Maybe Geoffrey realising her family wouldn’t stand for it helped.

  Mum asked me if she can buy me a new coat for Christmas.

  ‘The thing about the pink furry thing, darling, is that it doesn’t encourage people to take you seriously. It sort of sends you up.’

  I sighed, and considered that I could be testy, or I could accept the offer and keep the colourful fluffy one for weekends.

  We went to John Lewis and I chose a mid-length navy coat with bracelet length balloon sleeves and a belt tie and big collar. I admit, as Mum chorused approval and I turned this way and that in the mirror, it made me feel quite elegant. A bit like a vampish woman in a black and white film who’d say, ‘Promise me we’ll be together when this horrid war is over’, next to a steam train.

  We went for coffee afterwards and Mum asked about my job. I’m waitressing at a cocktail bar on Leopold Square. The fifty-something owner, Rita, wanted somewhere women could have a quiet drink without being hassled and the atmosphere is so civilised. She and I took such a liking to one another, she made me manager on my second day. ‘Your manner sets the right tone,’ she said.

  If you asked me for the best places to drink in the city, I’d happily, with no vested interest, recommend it, along with the revamped Victorian place on Ecclesall Road which I hear they’ve done great things with. I used to work there, but I’ve not been back.

  Mum asked if I saw it as a long-term thing or if I was going to hunt further. I got the feeling she was not being as combative about this as usual. I explained that I was looking into retraining.

  ‘I say retraining, I mean actually training for something, given I never did in the first place. I was wondering if I could do an internship on The Star or something. So it could involve writing.’

  ‘I was thinking,’ she said, stirring her flat white, ‘you never finished university. And your father so wanted you to get a degree. I have quite a lot of money sat in ISAs not doing anything, and it was your father’s money too. I’ve been so angry at him for so long that I wasn’t very interested in what his wishes might’ve been, and you’ve suffered for that. I think you should have it to finish your education. Whatever that might be, you choose.’

  ‘Mum, I couldn’t take that,’ I said, touched and not a bit stunned. ‘Not at age thirty, that would make me a complete moocher.’ Also thinking: Mum, you might need a Fleeing Fund.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you can,’ she replied, brisk now that it was out in the open. ‘It’s money you’ll inherit, further down the line, so why not have it now, if you have need of it? It would make me happy to see you put it to use. I know you won’t spend it on cruises. Or let’s face it, with your tastes, designer clothes! Hahaha!’

  I rolled my eyes.

  ‘Think of it as a challenge. I’m setting you a challenge to spend it wisely. I am actually very excited to see what you do with it. Where you can get to. I think you have a lot going for you, Georgina.’

  ‘Do you?’ I said. The narrative has always been mitigating disaster, with Mum and me.

  ‘Yes. I know I’ve not given you that impression. I think … your father so adored you and monopolised you, it didn’t leave much room for us.’

  I got it, all of a sudden – I knew where the resentment and hostility I’ve always felt from Mum, came from. Her problem with me was that Dad fell out of lo
ve with her, and stayed in love with me. It made me a rival as well as a daughter. Now we’d discussed the affair, things had moved. She realised I was always on her side, too.

  ‘I miss Dad, Mum,’ I said.

  ‘So do I,’ she said, ‘though Lord knows why.’

  ‘I’m so glad I still have you though.’ I squeezed her arm, and her eyes were shiny.

  Now, sat in my English Literature tutorials in a modern office block at Sheffield University, I feel like a cat at a Mice Only party, trying to conceal my tail. At first I flattered myself that I look youthful enough they might not notice my incongruity, but I soon gave myself away with my punctuality and cheerful introducing of myself.

  Sometimes I think the undergraduates are grateful for my interrogations of the tutor, giving them plenty of time to go blank and sneak a look at their phone screens.

  Except when the hour is nearly up and I ask when our essays are due in and the tutor says, ‘Oh thank you for reminding me, Georgina, that would be Friday.’ I hear the audible groan and irritated exhalation that the keeno mature student has gone and dropped everyone in it, again.

  I can’t help myself though, I’m so excited to be here. I’ve had four first-class essay marks! I even got to grips with Beowulf!

  I find the lectures almost luxurious. An hour to tune out of the city outside and live in the world of ideas and study and enjoy a sense my brain is being improved, knowledge increased, critical faculties sharpened, I said. ‘Yeah, like when you plug your phone in overnight for an iOS upgrade. Only I’m allowed to sleep through that,’ says Jared.

  Jared is a very hairy tall boy in a beanie and the only student so far who’s spoken to me. He found out my age and told me he would totally take me out if I wanted, and ‘age isn’t a thing for me, if we vibe’. It made me feel like we’d be recreating Harold and Maude. I thanked him and said I was having some time out of the crazy game we call dating.

  ‘Right, are you like, divorced?’ he said. ‘Any kids? I’m probably not down for that whole scene.’

  YOUTH.

  I bounce into my classes every day, I walk around the campus with a smile on my face, and I don’t care if anyone thinks I’m a divvy. It’s such a novelty to me, to feel like I’m fixing things.

  I want to get a First, not to be obnoxious, but to prove that there’s no shame in travelling the long way round to get where you want to go. It doesn’t matter if you take wrong turns. Arriving somewhere you want to be, in the end, is what counts.

  So I reach out into the past, take the hand of that vulnerable, hopeful girl I used to be, and pull her forward to join me.

  ‘This is very profound, and moving,’ Clem had said, when I finally told them about Lucas coming to see me, after my reading. ‘But why aren’t you boning each other’s brains out?’

  ‘Have you really never considered training as a counsellor?’ Rav said to Clem.

  ‘I’m just saying – what’s not to bone about this man? He’s admitted his mistakes. He has great honour. Handy with some DIY. Stinking rich. And so handsome he could be a vampire.’

  ‘Urgh,’ Rav said. ‘What does that even mean?’

  ‘Undead high cheekbones. Moonlit skin. Angry dark hair.’

  ‘Cock like an ice-cold Calippo. Oh WHAT, Clem? You’re going to start acting like I’m too much?’ Rav said.

  ‘Well. I’d be on my back faster than an old lady on a frosty walk,’ Clem concluded.

  Today, it’s my thirty-first birthday and I asked my friends if we could go hiking in the Peaks. Oh God, the UPROAR. Clem wasn’t going to be able to wear the Mary Quant dress she planned. Rav had some new navy suede shoes that he’d earmarked for an outing and: ‘Look, I know you feel like Miss Marple around these freshers but the self-loathing can go too far.’

  ‘You and I can go another time,’ Jo soothed, always the peace weaver.

  I offered them a compromise – a night in The Lescar. No fuss, no frills. Clem was so disappointed she included a tiara from her shop in her gifts, which she bid me put on straight away. ‘Otherwise it’s nothing but a night in the pub.’

  I felt a bit of a dick at first, but alcohol’s helping with that. Rav checks his watch, says: ‘My round,’ and goes to the bar.

  ‘But to be clear, you do fancy Lucas, right?’ Clem says. It’s been six months but she is still a dog with a bone.

  I adjust my tiara. ‘It’s not difficult to fancy him, let’s be honest.’

  ‘What if he fancied you?’ Jo says.

  I snort. ‘You’re kidding right?’

  ‘Why not?’ she says.

  ‘I dunno: our grimly tortured history and the fact that when I tried to kiss him once, he pushed me away and told me I repulsed him? I can read those sort of signals you know, I speak fluent “Man”.’

  ‘No,’ Jo says, swirling her drink in her glass, a double Monkey Shoulder on the rocks. I love her blokish taste in liquor. Jo is on Tinder, and having the time of her life since we got the tech sorted for her (she initially set it to ‘Men Within 100 Yards’ and Rav had to point out if there was a man hiding in her shed, he was unlikely to be Mr Right). Shagger Phil is, as best we know, a pining, celibate mess. The jury is still out on whether they’ll end up together, but this way, he’ll have waited for her.

  ‘Only because he was mixed up about your history. None of that means he isn’t attracted to you, and now you have your history sorted out …’

  ‘Exactly,’ Clem says.

  ‘Oh, you two! I know it would be a lovely postscript if Lucas and I got together after all this, but life’s not like that. And he’s going to marry a woman who looks like a member of The Corrs, I’m sure, not an ageing blonde in Yorkshire in fishnets.’

  I see both her and Jo looking beadily at me. ‘Let me leave the memory of Lucas McCarthy with that handshake, not making a desperate hopeful arse of myself,’ I say, toasting them with my glass.

  ‘Yeah, you see,’ Clem says to Jo, ‘push needed.’ I see Jo nodding at her, and suddenly feel something is out of the ordinary.

  ‘You know we haven’t given you a birthday present? We sort of took a mad risk that will either see you grateful to us for the rest of your life, or …’ Clem trails off.

  ‘Or …?’ I say, with a hard intonation. Oh. God. If Clem thinks it’s ‘mad’ and a ‘risk’ …?

  ‘Or it’s a friendship-terminating calamity that will haunt us all ’til our end of days.’

  ‘Oh well, this is magnificent! Have you bought me an easyJet flight to Dublin and some Ann Summers crotchless pants? I am willing to waste your £100.’

  ‘No. It’s a bit wilder than that.’

  ‘OK, I’m honestly worried now, what have you done? Jo, you’re pale!’

  Jo shows me gritted teeth and then glances up behind me and I go stiff, turn slowly and see Rav, who has a tray of drinks. And with him, Lucas McCarthy.

  45

  ‘Surprise!’ Rav says, and I stare, dumbstruck, and wish I didn’t have a tiara on my head.

  Lucas, his hands in the pockets of a dark jacket, eyes on me, says: ‘You know when you said I should definitely turn up for her birthday as a surprise and she’d love it and there was absolutely, without question, no flaw in this plan?’

  ‘Yes!’ Clem says.

  ‘Is that Georgina looking pleased to see me?’ He pretends to inspect my expression, and smiles. I am too shocked to smile.

  ‘She’s speechless with joy!’ Rav says, bustling past, setting his tray down. I feel their tense expectation.

  I swallow, and try to collect myself. ‘Hi. Erm, what’s going on?’

  ‘We were trying to think how we could give you the greatest of birthdays, the birthday you deserve after everything you’ve been through …’ Jo gabbles, ‘And we thought, the best gift would be … that you’d like to see Lucas. And Lucas was up for a visit …’

  ‘They thought we should talk,’ Lucas says. ‘I was already thinking about getting in touch, then Clem and Jo got in touch with me …’

>   I look at Clem, full of delight at her own connivance, and a still very nervous Jo, back to Lucas, who has no right to look so at ease. He smiles again.

  ‘I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t have something to say. But I can go home again if this isn’t welcome, no hard feelings.’

  ‘No! No. It’s OK,’ I say. I will kill my friends later, slowly.

  ‘I’m fine to say what I have to say in front of your friends, if it won’t embarrass you.’

  ‘We would really like that,’ Clem says, before I can reply.

  ‘Oh you fu—’ I say. ‘How do I know if it’ll embarrass me when I don’t know what it is?’

  ‘It’s only embarrassing to me, really,’ Lucas says.

  ‘OK.’ I plant my sweaty hands on my knees, to steady myself.

  ‘I was wondering. Now we’ve sorted out our past. I was wondering if I could be part of your present again.’

  My heart stutters and then stops. I am dead. I open my mouth and then close it again. Then open it.

  ‘Are you asking me to come back to The Wicker?’

  ‘No. I’m asking if I could take you out to dinner. Sometime; I can see you’re busy tonight. A date.’

  I pause, sunshine spreading inside me. Lucas McCarthy is asking me on a date? ‘Aren’t you living in Dublin?’

  ‘No, not if you’re here. I’ve applied for a transfer. Hopefully the boss will sign it off but he’s a right wanker.’

  I can’t help it. We grin stupidly at each other. He came back for me? He’d do that for me?

  ‘I’ve practised this with Devlin,’ Lucas says, ‘And I quote, “Come on you surly bastard you can do better than that, you’ve said more to me when you’ve been moping over her for the last few months.”’

  I laugh. Moping. I never imagined, for a second, he could want me again the way I want him. I thought that had flown forever.

  ‘I said, Dev, I’ve got to not pressure her and play it cool, just ask her on a date and leave it at that. He said, Luc, you are so far beyond the point you can play it cool with this broad. You’ve already been such an almighty butthurt dick around her, you made her quit, and she was a really decent hire so thanks for nothing. Tell her how you honestly feel. From what you say, you owe her that.’