All the Good Things

by Clare Fisher

  ‘And you don’t have anything with you?’

  ‘No.’ I stared down at my feet, suddenly feeling like a dumb kid. I’d been so excited about getting my period, and it had seemed so harmless – just a thin brown stain in my pants – I’d forgotten about the stuff.

  ‘Honestly, you’d think it was your first one.’

  I tried to focus in on the dirty yellow swirls in the carpet, but it was no use; my cheeks were burning up.

  ‘It’s not, literally, your first one?’

  My voice wobbled as I admitted that yes, it was.

  ‘Shit!’ she said. Then she hugged me. And it wasn’t one of those I’m only hugging you because I reckon I should wimpy-ass hugs, it was a proper one that squeezes the wind right out of you. ‘It sucks, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, laughing and crying at once. ‘You know, all this time, I’ve been desperate to know what everyone was on about, but now I’ve got it . . . I wish I didn’t. I don’t know how anyone puts up with this every single month.’

  ‘Awe, hun!’ She squeezed me some more. Then she gave me this look like she proper loved me. Finally, she yelled at whichever spotty stoner was checking the tickets on Screen One, told him to man the Snack Station, and pulled me towards the toilets.

  She gave me a pad and told me to stick it into my pants proper hard because you didn’t want it ‘boogying about’ down below. ‘It feels like you’re wearing a massive nappy,’ she said, ‘but don’t worry, you’ll get used to it, and it will feel a lot better if you wear one of these, too.’ She chucked a few tampons under the cubicle door.

  ‘Umm, how do you . . .?’

  ‘Ain’t you ever fingered yourself before? It’s like that. I mean, it’s the same angle.’

  When I didn’t reply, she added: ‘Try with your finger now.’

  I did as she said. It was wet and squishy. I kept poking the wrong bit and it hurt. A lot of wincing, poking, bloody tissue and four tampons later, I did it. I pulled up my pants and flushed the loo and opened the door and washed my hands.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Seriously, you saved my life.’

  Chantelle blushed and punched my arm and glanced at herself in the mirror. ‘I’m proud of you, my little weirdo.’ Then she pressed two pills into my palm. ‘These will make it better.’

  I dragged my feet, so as to stretch out what I already knew would be a moment too good to lose.

  Your dad’s face when I told him we couldn’t fuck because it was my time of the month – you’d think I’d just slapped him with last week’s panini. ‘But I thought you could choose when you got your, erm, times of the month because of the pill? You are on the pill?’

  ‘Course I’m on the pill. It’s just I went to the doctor and he said I should give it a break every couple of months, just for a week or so.’ I hadn’t even thought about it and yet the lie slipped out, fully formed.

  ‘Right,’ he sighed. ‘What shall we do then?’

  ‘Same as always. Minus the fucking.’

  ‘Hmm . . . A takeaway?’ He never wanted to leave the Holiday Inn if he could help it.

  ‘I wanna go out. I want to do stuff that’s, you know, normal.’

  ‘Beth . . .’

  ‘Why not? You paranoid? You reckon Jenny’s got some spies following you?’

  He frowned. ‘I’m not crazy.’ But from the way his cheeks went red and he started fiddling about on his laptop, I knew I was on to something. I’d known it since that first and last time we went for pizza and he couldn’t stop looking around. He was embarrassed to be seen with me, or worse: scared.

  ‘Apparently you can get a good curry in Tooting. It’s not far. That is, unless she has spies in Tooting . . .’

  ‘Fine. Tooting it is then.’ He shoved the laptop towards me and loosened his belt. ‘Why don’t you Google places to eat while I grab a shower?’

  ‘Sure.’

  It took me about five seconds to find about three different lists of Top 10 Tooting Eats; the rest of the time, I browsed his Facebook. He hadn’t done any new posts since last week, but as for Jenny, she posted about four times a day. There’d be a blurry selfie of her smushing her lips against Hamish’s cheek. Then a moany but jokey one: OMG can anyone tell me how to mark Year 11 coursework AND cook the dinner AND entertain a two-year-old AND not eat my weight in Hobnobs?! A bragging one: So I come home to this!! Best. Husband. Ever – with Philip Hamilton. Underneath this a photo of a note in the spidery handwriting I recognized saying he was sorry he had to work late tonight but here was a printout of a Groupon offer for tapas and a comedy night. Once or twice a week there was a moany but serious one: OMG sometimes it’s all too much people can’t be trusted and to top it all off I’ve put on eleven pounds since I started Weight Watchers again. PM me if you want the details: (Underneath would be ten or so comments saying, Hope you’re ok hun! And, I’m PMing you RIGHT NOW! And, You look gorgeous just the way you are! Etc. She wasn’t particularly pretty. Or tall. Or happy. Or clever. So what was it? What did she have that I didn’t? The answer, I hoped, lay in their Center Parcs photos – a 37-photo album which she’d uploaded and 19 people had liked, none of whom was him – but I was only on the first one when your dad came out of the shower and I had to flick back to the safe topic of Tooting curry.

  ‘Find any good places?’

  ‘Loads.’

  ‘Great. Let’s get a taxi.’

  ‘It’s only one bus,’ I said.

  He wrinkled his nose. ‘I hate the bus.’

  There was no point arguing; he was the one paying.

  When we were sat either side of a wobbly plastic table in a restaurant with too-bright lights and bright red walls whose window was Blu-tacked with 5* reviews and awards, Phil said, ‘Thanks for pushing me to do this. Jenny’s always having a go at me for not taking enough risks, and she’s right – I don’t.’

  ‘Jenny,’ I said. She wasn’t just an idea any more; she was a face, a body, a ton of emojis and words. ‘She’s got a lot to complain about,’ I said.

  The waiter brought our poppadoms but he didn’t even flinch. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Beth? What did you mean?’

  I whacked his arm. ‘I was just joking, you div! You’re the one who’s always bringing her up.’

  He opened his mouth to argue but I pressed my finger against his lips. ‘And when you do bring her up, she’s always moaning.’

  I laughed and he laughed with me, but in that weak way which came from about 12% of him, his eyes narrowed like the rest was thinking, what have I got myself into?

  ‘I’m not moaning, am I?’

  ‘You? Christ, no. That’s one of the things I like about you.’

  ‘Then why not –’

  I was about to ask why he still spent five nights with her, only two nights with me. Whether he could meet my friends, come round my flat, be joined up with all the other parts of my life. Except then the waiter wheeled over a trolley piled with enough food for ten hungry humans. Where our words would have been, we stuffed naan and chapati and rice and onion bhajis and chicken korma and chicken tikka and lamb something-or-other and vegetable something-else.

  ‘Which is best, the tikka or the korma?’ your dad asked.

  ‘Can’t choose. It’s like, I’m in Tooting, but my mouth’s in India. It’s sick.’

  He laughed and slid his hand over mine but our skin was so greasy, it slipped off. ‘There’s actually a nice pub just across the road. Fancy a drink when we’re done, my funny little food critic?’

  ‘Yes!’

  The pub was crowded with other couples and a mash of different chairs, including a row of folding velvet cinema seats, a granddad armchair, and some sort of joke throne. There were random things on the wall, like a black-and-white family portrait in a bright pink blow-up frame. There were shelves of old books and of board games.

  ‘Whoever decorated this pub,’ I said, ‘was like a car-boot sale junkie, or somethi
ng.’

  Phil nodded. ‘It reminds me of my childhood. Which I suppose is the point. Especially,’ he pointed at a faded cardboard box with the word RISK written across the side, ‘that one. My brother and I used to play that for hours at a time. Heaven knows why; it’s so boring.’

  There was Monopoly, Ludo, Cluedo, The Game of Life. ‘My first foster dad loved board games,’ I said, trying not to notice him flinch at the word foster. ‘But my second, he said it was a waste of time. When the third family tried to get me to play this game to learn how to tell the time, I was having none of it. That was the end of board games for me!’

  He didn’t laugh. He opened his mouth like he was about to say something but drank some more beer instead. I looked at the other couples; some of them were silent, too. Others looked like they might be arguing. Then there was this couple in the corner, her in the granddad chair, him on a kid’s stool, and he was talking non-stop while she was looking around the room, her eyes like, help! When our eyes met, I gave her a look that said, I hear you! But she buried her face in her phone.

  ‘We should probably get going,’ said Phil, as he watched them leave.

  ‘I’ll just go toilet.’ I wanted to stay away from the Holiday Inn as long as possible.

  When a woman in the toilet asked if I had a spare tampon, I smiled and gave her two.

  ‘One’s fine.’

  But I refused to take it back.

  I stayed in the cubicle long after I heard her flush and wash and dry her hands and leave. In that pub, I was just another woman in a happily unhappy couple. Me and my body were a proper grown-up team; we could handle anything.

  11. Owning up to bad things you’ve done

  Lanky Linda didn’t want me to read her books today; she wanted me to read a letter. ‘It’s probably full of bad stuff. I used to just chuck them away, they made me mad, knowing I couldn’t read them, but this is from my son, I recognize his handwriting, I’m not that dumb.’

  I wasn’t used to hearing someone being as mean to themselves as I can sometimes be to me. It made me sad, but I wiped the sadness off my face with a smile and said, sure.

  The letter was full of crossing-out and spelling mistakes and one big, silver-grey smudge where he must’ve leaned his hand while he was wondering what to write next. Once I’d read it in my head a few times, I understood it enough to read it out.

  Dear Mum

  I was out of order to you on the phone last week. Proper mean. I’m sorry. It’s just that sometimes I don’t know what to say to you. Don’t know what to say about school or books or that X-Box Dad got us. Or anything. Not knowing what to say makes me want to break things.

  Words fly all over Aunty Gina and Rob’s place but they don’t do no good. Rob’s moods have got even worse, if you want to know. He puts the telly up proper loud. He watches it all day and all night and it even gets into your dreams (that’s if you get to sleep). You can’t tell him to turn it down or off or that he should get a fucking hearing aid; he goes proper mental. I DIDN’T FIGHT IN THAT WAR TO BE TOLD I CAN’T WATCH TELLY IN MY OWN FUCKING HOUSE THANKYOUVERYMUCH. He went mental at me the night before I had that fight with the English teacher. Yeah, yeah, I can already hear you saying that’s no excuse, and maybe it ain’t, but still. Just saying.

  You’re probably also telling me not to disrespect Uncle Rob, he’s been through hell, blah blah blah (that’s if you’re even reading this – CAN you read this? I knew it weren’t your glasses that stopped you reading those letters from the Council and from the Electric and from School. Just saying). But the war DID make him deaf. And mental.

  Sometimes I think about the way I’d feel when I got back to our house after school. Just the smell of our hallway. The way you’d smile at me when I got into the kitchen, it made me feel . . . I don’t know. Like just by being me and doing normal stuff like coming home from school was interesting, special. Or how you’d sometimes, I’d be lying in bed, proper starving, but I couldn’t be arsed to go downstairs and make myself something, and you’d bring me a slice of toast and butter, it was amazing, how you just knew.

  I’m trying to do those kinds of things for Ella. I’m not as good at it as you are but I’m trying. Bought her new socks in Primark the other day and everything. Her old socks had holes in and I remembered how upset you’d get when you saw holes in any of her clothes, and so I got her a new pack, and she loves them so much, she’s gone and bloody named them.

  I didn’t want to say sorry for those things I said because I thought I’d never feel anything else about my life or about you but I’m glad now that I did because I feel lots of other things. I can almost hear you laughing. When I finish this letter, I’m gonna tell Ella I spoke to you on the phone and that you send your love. It didn’t happen but I know it’s true. Brandon

  Linda couldn’t speak after I finished reading; neither could I. Her son’s words knocked me into a place where I could see the things I didn’t want to see. The hard things. Right now, I can see my hand and the paper and my pillow and the cell wall. I can also see that it isn’t only the hard things that are the problem; it’s the other things I did, the worse things, to stop from seeing them. It was time to look them in the eye.

  There were a lot of things you couldn’t ask Chantelle – how come she was eating a family pack of Doritos five minutes after saying she was on a new diet? Why did she let the guy in the tight red trousers who met her outside the Odeon stick his tongue down her throat when she was with another guy? Was there anyone she was scared of? – but there were lots of things you could.

  ‘How do you know when a guy really cares about you?’ I asked one night. I’d been wanting to ask ever since the hunger started to take over, but I had to wait for the right time and place: two drinks into a night off, on her squishiest sofa, the Chuckle Sisters out on a double date, her kids asleep (or pretending to sleep) in the next room.

  ‘Hmmm . . .’ Chantelle slopped some more vodka into her glass. ‘I used to think it’s when he buys you stuff. But then I learned the hard way. IT’S NOT WHEN HE BUYS YOU STUFF. Actually,’ she slurped her drink, ‘that’s probably a sign he’s stopped caring.’

  ‘But people who’re married. They’re always buying stuff for each other.’ I thought of Jenny’s recent Facebook post: a £100 voucher for ASOS and a box of Milk Tray from the #besthusbandever.

  She raised her drawn-on eyebrows. ‘Exactly.’

  We sat back and slurped. There was a cry from next door, and she sat up, ears pricked, but it didn’t turn into a child stomping towards us, so she sat back.

  ‘I guess it’s when he’ll do things he doesn’t want to do because it makes you happy. Or because you need him to do it. I only clocked this, right, because it’s what Jayden’s dad wouldn’t do. Like, he’d only do things when he felt like it. If I wanted to do something just ’cause I felt like it, forget it.’ She slurped the last drops of vodka from her curly straw. ‘Dickhead.’

  I waited for her to ask about Phil. But then the crying started up again, and she stomped into their room and there was a lot of shouting, and then she came in with a small floppy boy over her shoulder, and she didn’t have to tell me that our night had reached its end. Part of me was glad she’d not had time to ask, but the other part was disappointed.

  Do you love me?

  When will you leave Jenny for me?

  Why do you stay with Jenny when you don’t even like her?

  If you don’t want to stay with me, what are we doing right now?

  Who the hell are you?

  These were the questions I wanted to ask your dad but couldn’t. The other thing I couldn’t do was admit that not being able to ask was a sign things between us weren’t 100% good. It could lead to admitting that sooner or later I’d have to live without your dad. Where would I be then? Who would I be? And what would Chantelle say when she found out I’d been lying? Easier than asking myself these questions was to block them out.

  I didn’t ask your dad to take me out to dinne
r again; instead, I’d say I was starving for Caribbean, and he’d say, but they don’t deliver, and I’d make what I hoped was my cute face, and mumble that I’d been looking forward to it all day. And then he’d sigh and kiss my forehead and say, all right then, and as I watched him put on his shirt and trousers and coat and gloves, going out in the world just for me, I felt good. As soon as he was gone, the good was broken up by something else, some shaky, nasty thing, and the only way I could escape it was to go through his laptop. His bag. His briefcase. The more parts of his life I knew about, the harder it would be for him to leave.

  I found, folded between his dorky white vests and his granddad diamond-print socks, a card with his son’s handprint on. The hand was printed in bright red paint. On the back of the card, in scarily neat teacher – i.e. Jenny’s – writing, it said: ‘Daddy, I really miss you when you go away for work. Don’t forget to Skype me! xxx.’ I put my hand over Hamish’s handprint. My hand was bigger than his but not that much. I could imagine him giggling as our palms touched. Out of nowhere, the tears came. Tears for that kid – stuck in the middle of he’d never know what.

  I found a diary. I copied every entry out of the next few weeks: everything from ‘tiny tots football – pick Hamish up’ and ‘LIGHTBULBS!’ and ‘Mum and Dad – lunch?’ to ‘Rachel’s birthday bash – Bella’s, Soho, Friday 26th’ to ‘Amsterdam – stag do – pay deposit by 22nd.’ I also copied down his address, and Jenny’s mobile number.

  I found a bottle of mouthwash.

  Also, a ring. His wedding ring.

  The ring was thick and gold and way too big for me but I tried it on. I tried it on every finger. It fitted on my big toe. Then I zipped it back into the pocket I’d found it in and closed his suitcase and pretended to sleep. When he came back with spicy chicken and macaroni cheese and collard greens and mash, my heart would be beating so high up in my throat, I’d be full after a few mouthfuls.

  ‘I thought you were starving?’ he’d say, forking food out of my container.

  Then I’d touch him where he’d be guaranteed to like it and wink. ‘Only for you.’