The Distance

by Zoë Folbigg

  ‘Kate?’

  ‘Hello, George,’ Kate whispers, through gritted teeth. Angry, wobbly, vindicated.

  ‘I’m in the middle of something!’ George doesn’t look flustered or flushed, just confused and irritated.

  ‘Sorry, George, she just burst in, said she was from Staples to see Bethany…’

  Bethany looks up, tears in her eyes.

  George’s confusion turns to panic. ‘Are the kids OK?’

  ‘The kids are fine…’ Kate is overcome and starts to look around, lost for words, her body flooding with self-doubt. She feels a twitch in her left eye and puts her hand to her brow to try to quash it. The meek-looking girl in the chair doesn’t look fresh from sex, or as if she’s about to skip out of here hand in hand with George for a romantic lunch. ‘I just…’

  ‘You’re George’s wife?!’ interrupts Freya with a scowl, and shoots Bethany a conspiratorial look. ‘Why did you say you was Kathleen from Staples?’ Freya lets out a confused laugh, then double-takes as she notices that her friend is crying. ‘You OK?’ she mouths. Bethany gives a small shake of her head as if to say no.

  ‘Kate, I’m just dealing with something very important, give me two minutes.’ George looks baffled and angry. Kate has never seen George look like this. And guilty, he looks guilty, but Kate can’t understand why now. Gobsmacked and humiliated, she retreats and closes the door.

  ‘Tell George I’ll be in the lobby…’ Kate says with a pull of her ponytail.

  Freya tuts and strides back to her desk, her bottom even more pert and purposeful than before.

  The shame. Kate knows everyone in the open-plan office will now be talking about George’s embarrassing wife, bursting in to his office as Freya shouted at her not to, so she marches shame-faced through the doors to the lifts but takes the stairwell, down five flights of stairs, and an escalator, past the women on the front desk and out into the street, her horror blowing on the wind down Bishopsgate.

  Deep. Breaths.

  Three minutes later George finds Kate leaning against a wall.

  ‘What the FUCK just happened there?!’

  George’s tiny eyes have turned from blue to steel.

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought I needed to talk to you. Urgently.’ A rash spreads from Kate’s russet cheeks down to the V-neck of her butterfly top.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘No!’ she says with a wobble. ‘I thought you were having an affair.’

  ‘You thought I was having an affair?’ George rubs his cropped grey hair. ‘With Bethany?! Jesus, Kate, I’m old enough to be her dad.’

  ‘Well… I did think it was a bit of a cliché.’

  ‘Actually I was letting Bethany go. She’s not up to the job. As you can imagine she was upset. Nice one, Kate, you made a very tricky thing I wasn’t much looking forward to doing even more difficult.’ George walks away down the road towards the Gherkin, hands stuffed in his pockets. Kate is surprised by his temper. He’s never usually this impassioned. If she wasn’t feeling so mortified, she’d think it was sexy.

  ‘George!’

  She scurries behind him to catch up, battered boots scuffing along the pavement.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were firing her?’

  Kate catches up with George and tugs the arm of his blue shirt. They stop and lean into the exterior wall of Digby Global Investors.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you thought I was having an affair? Anyway. Why did you think I was having an affair?’

  There are a million reasons Kate thought George was having an affair. The distance, the disinterest, that text, that hair, working on a Saturday, the vague blocked-out lunches, disabling Find My iPhone, the new passcode… And she knows all of them will sound ridiculous in the lunchtime hum of beeping buses and taxis.

  Kate’s eyes fill up. ‘Oh, George, what have I done?’

  ‘I don’t know, but you’ve got to pull yourself together, this is ludicrous, not to mention embarrassing, for you as well as me.’

  Freya walks out of the building, gazing at her nails as she sashays down the thin wide steps onto the pavement. She walks past George and Kate as she flits to her appointment in a hurry, shooting them a look of condemnation as she passes, shaking her head to herself. George manages to avoid her eyes.

  Twenty-One

  December 2013, Day 183

  How are you spending Christmas?

  Cecilie typed, as she looked at the red and white votives stacked on the red and white runner on the dining-room table. She had spent the morning getting the decorations out of the summer house, which was covered in snow at the end of the vast garden, and surrounded by white paper lanterns in the shape of stars. A triangular arch of seven stick candles was already in situ on the windowsill.

  We kinda got a tradition

  What is it?

  On Noche Buena my grandfather and I go to the Villa, the orphanage, where the sisters looked after me some of the time. They have us over for dinner. Sister Juana makes the best buñuelos

  Sounds dreamy

  typed Cecilie, making a note to google buñuelos.

  What about the kids at the orphanage? Where do they go?

  They don’t go anywhere! They don’t have anywhere to go. It’s cool, it’s one big feast. My grandfather makes pozole. I help with the turkey. All good. The kids love it. I guess they’re like my little brothers and sisters.

  As Hector scratched his temples and pressed send, he realised that, at thirty-three, he would probably be older than the kids’ parents, were they alive or in their lives. He felt a yearning tug at his core and looked away from his cracked laptop screen, at the messy apartment he sat in.

  How old are they?

  Some are babies. Most are between four and twelve. Fewer teens.

  What happens to the teens?

  They become useful to the extended family. They can earn a buck. Or some rebel and leave.

  Hector thought of Benny’s thick square head and wondered where he was living right now. He hadn’t seen much of him since that fateful night in the juice bar. The sinister appearances out of the blue on street corners, or in the dark of Hector’s apartment late at night, had stopped.

  But you never left.

  No! The Sisters, the kids… they’re my family. I’ll always go back.

  How enchanting. I can’t imagine what it must be like to live in an orphanage, but actually you make it sound lovely. More fun than here.

  It’s all I know.

  Cecilie put her feet up on a sable plastic chair and looked out of the window at the snowy expanse of her neighbourhood. She took a sip of milky coffee and hovered her fingers over the keyboard of Espen’s MacBook, mustering up the courage to ask her next question.

  What about your girlfriend?

  She’s going to Spain. She’s Spanish. Last year was her first Christmas in Mexico so she stayed, but she missed the Reyes Magos too much. She missed her family.

  They must miss her.

  Hector thought of the disappointment in Mari-Carmen’s voice every time he, a third-world peasant, answered the phone, and he laughed to himself at the prospect of her face when she saw the wall of ivy climbing up her daughter’s thigh.

  He changed the subject.

  What about you? What’s Christmas in the Arctic like?

  Oh, you know, Santa is my neighbour… damn reindeer always shit on our lawn.

  Yeah? Can you tell him to send me some new pencils, I totally run out of kit and my maldito jefe won’t give me any expenses?

  Pencils? Are pencils all you want for Christmas?

  Yip.

  You’re so sweet, Hector!

  He didn’t say anything, so, self-conscious Cecilie changed the subject, typing furiously at the long table.

  So, at Christmas my mum is always home. We host. My grandparents visit from the care home they live in, it’s a few hours away.

  Which grandparents?

  Mamma’s. I don’t know my dad’s parents…

  Cec
ilie wondered when would be a good time to tell Hector about her dad, that he didn’t just die when she was young. That her father’s parents were so heartbroken when he took his own life that they couldn’t bear to see the grandchildren their son had abandoned, so they moved away, never to contact them again.

  And my uncle Hakon and his wife Tove sometimes come. They live in Svalbard, which is even more remote than us, practically the North Pole!

  Wow, cool.

  They have no one to celebrate Christmas with ’cause their kids live overseas.

  Nice. Where?

  USA.

  Not so nice.

  Hahahahaha. You had a bad experience there or something?

  Hector thought back to the disastrous trip he made to see Elizabeth, or La Gringa, as Benny scathingly called her. Hector had planned and saved up every centavo from working in Benny’s juice bar so he could go to the US to see Elizabeth and meet her family. He hadn’t planned to spend so much of the trip with Elizabeth’s friend Megan, nor had he planned to ruin that particular friendship, but he knew he probably wasn’t welcome back in the US any time soon. Probably not even then, some ten years later. But it was a story for another time.

  What do you eat at Christmas? Not reindeer? Please don’t tell me you eat reindeer.

  Nei! We have belly of pork with crackling, and serve it with sauerkraut and potatoes and little Christmas sausages. I make a tasty hawthorn gløgg.

  ¡Guau! Wish I could come.

  I wish you could come.

  What about your brother?

  Cecilie felt bad for not thinking to mention him. But Espen was always there, in the womb, at Christmas, his presence was always a given. He hadn’t wanted to leave the Arctic north much either, although he had been on a few city breaks.

  Yeah he’ll be here for lunch. He’s a waiter in a big hotel on the harbour, but he’s doing the breakfast and the evening shifts at Christmas – he works crazy hours, but he’ll take a break to come home for lunch. He might bring his boyfriend Morten, it’ll be his first Christmas with us.

  Cecilie wondered how Hector might react.

  I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a twin.

  It’s OK. People think you have this real closeness and connection, they expect us to do amazing mind-reading tricks, but we’re very different. I can’t get inside his head much. He can’t get inside mine. But we coexist quite happily.

  Does he look like you?

  Yes, but without the long hair.

  Your hair is coooool.

  His is much more functional! But it’s nice to have a twin, it’s nice to have a brother. But, like you say, if it’s all you ever know then it’s just how it is.

  Hector paused and thought about his brother. He hadn’t told Cecilie that when his mum and dad died so did his chance to have a sibling, to coexist happily. He broke his train of thought with a smiley face.

  Cecilie sent one back.

  ANYWAY, the most exciting thing I’m reading about in your country…

  What? Santa doesn’t really live next door to me does he?

  No! Depeche Mode play the Telenor Arena tomorrow, remember? You got tickets, right?

  No. Sad face. It’s a two-hour flight.

  Mexico City is five hours on a bus! I saw them there.

  Cecilie paused. She could feel the hard curve of the grey plastic chair digging into her tailbone, so she repositioned her feet, off the chair in front of her and onto the wooden floor.

  Actually, I have no one to go with.

  She looked back out at the snow and wished Hector would ask her if she had a boyfriend. She wouldn’t mind telling him, ‘No’.

  Hector looked at the clock on the bottom left-hand corner of his dented Dell laptop and realised he had to get going for work. Pilar must have left for school over an hour ago and his art director at the paper, Oscar, had been on his case again. All these late starts since the summer; since Hector had been online for a quick chat before he started work, between Cecilie’s shifts at the library and the Hjornekafé, had made Hector late, and Oscar had given him another dressing-down the week before. He typed faster in the quiet of his apartment, high above the noise of the street below.

  Man! I wish I could go with you. Teleport myself.

  He looked out of the window, to Orizaba’s snowy peak in the distance.

  Looking out of the large window, past the warm yellow blur of the advent candles, at the virgin snow beyond, Cecilie floated away. She floated out of the garden, up to the top of Mount Storsteinen, where she put her hand to her brow to see if she could see him, all the way from there. She wished that he could stand on a peak and reach out so their fingertips could touch. Touch the curve of his arm. See the tattoo of a hand on his bicep, its pointed finger igniting a flame. Feel the warmth of those arms wrapped around her, if he really stretched.

  Are you there?

  Estás allí?

  Ceci…?

  Ah no mames.

  Ceci…?

  Cecilie loved that Hector sometimes called her Ceci, and seeing it appear on the laptop screen in her peripheral vision snapped her back into the conversation. She didn’t know how to say it, but she took her cue from Hector’s boldness.

  You asked me about my first lover. Why have you never asked me if I have a boyfriend now?

  Because I don’t want to know if you do.

  *

  The next night, while their favourite band played her capital city, Hector sent Cecilie a link to a YouTube video of ‘Enjoy The Silence’ from his desk at La Voz. Espen was working a late shift waiting tables at the i-Scand, their mother was at a symposium in Gothenburg, so Cecilie synched the laptop to the slick speaker system and pumped music around the downstairs of the house while she played Hector’s link.

  She untied the thick band holding her long heavy hair and it cascaded from side to side as she shook her head to the beat. Standing barefoot on the thick rug, surrounded by white paper lantern stars, Cecilie felt softness envelope her toes. As she moved, she imagined roots rising from the rug, curling up her jeans, anchoring her into place, vines strengthening with every beat of electronica.

  Meanwhile, eight thousand nine hundred and nine kilometres away, Hector sat at his desk in the disorderly office of La Voz. He couldn’t focus on the Sagittarius illustration for the horoscopes page he was meant to be drawing, so he looked over his shoulder to check whether Oscar was still out at lunch. With a charcoal pencil in his right hand, and the fingers of his left hand tapping out a rhythm on his jeans, he started sketching out the contours of a loveheart-shaped face.

  Twenty-Two

  July 2018, Suffolk, England

  ‘Ooh nice lippy,’ mouths Venetia Appleyard, exiting a cubicle as she pulls her underwear out from between her bum cheeks and straightens her wraparound dress. Venetia catches Kate’s eye in the mirror above the sink.

  Kate isn’t sure. She’s been feeling self-conscious all evening, but she’s attempting to reapply her Estée Lauder in a shade called Envious without getting any on her teeth. She widens her eyes to say thanks while her mouth is incapacitated.

  ‘Some people say red is submissive, that you’re trying to make your mouth look like a vagina, but I think it’s a good “up yours” to the patriarchy,’ Venetia continues, while she washes her hands in the long rectangular sink that runs along the small wall. ‘Anyway, Pete hates me in Suffragette Red, which always gives me a giggle when I wear it.’

  Kate finishes blotting and edges a little paint out from the corners of her mouth. Her cheeks are almost as crimson as her lips.

  ‘I haven’t worn red for ages,’ Kate says, apologetically. ‘I had to dig it out of the bottom of my make-up drawer, think I’ve lost my touch!’ She twists the almost-perfect bullet back into its navy and gold casing before Venetia notices it’s brand new. ‘Is Pete here tonight?’

  ‘No, he’s at home with Mills. I’m taking this one for the team,’ Venetia says, inserting her hands into the noisy air dryer. ‘Althoug
h it’s a good turnout,’ she backtracks. Venetia enthusiastically encouraged Kate to be PTA chair from September, and knows turnout will be Kate’s headache for the foreseeable.

  ‘It’s great, I’m so pleased. Lots of people want to send Melissa off in style I think,’ nods Kate, sweetly.

  ‘Shall we?’ says Venetia, opening the door and walking through it before Kate.

  They snake back into dark and cavernous Corky’s, Claresham’s only wine bar, that’s been hired out for the PTA summer social tonight.

  ‘Did George make it along? I haven’t seen him,’ Venetia asks, long pendant earrings swinging below her plum-coloured cropped hair.

  ‘Yes, although I haven’t seen him for the past hour, can’t for the life of me see where he is, thought I might find him on my way to the loo!’

  ‘He’s probably having a cigar with Mr Horsley,’ Venetia says, rolling her eyes towards the low ceiling.

  ‘Well I’m sure he went to the loo and…’

  Venetia is already disinterested, she’s spotted headteacher Hilary Smith at the end of the bar and has something she wants to chew her ear about. She turns back to Kate, who is shuffling behind her.

  ‘Catch up later, just need to talk to Hilary,’ she says, with a dismissive squeeze of the arm.

  Kate weaves through the crowd alone. She searches for her drink, for her husband, and finally sees the back of George’s Superdry jacket, slung over his shoulder and hooked onto a nimble finger, as he leans in towards Amber Barrie by the fireplace. Amber is almost as tall as George, and their eyes are locked, deep in conversation.