Close to You (ARC)

by Kerry Wilkinson

  ‘It was what my dad did,’ he says. ‘I thought I could carry it on, but it’s not been as easy these past few months. Times are changing and I don’t know how much of what I do has a place any longer.’

  I follow his gaze to the arcade and it’s there, too. There are a pair of kids probably bunking off school. When I was young, they’d be on primitive, clunky dance-step machines. Those have now been replaced by high-definition, motion-sensor games with cameras that put the youths onto the screen itself. Everything is changing. It always has and it always will.

  I turn back to him: ‘Did you really go to Bath last month?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes. I didn’t buy anything, though. It was a waste of time.’

  ‘What about Cardiff?’

  ‘This is the first time I’ve ever told you I’m going somewhere and then I haven’t.’

  I examine his face, looking for any sort of tell. I can’t tell if it’s the truth. If this is the first time he’s faked a trip, then he’s extremely unlucky to have been caught.

  ‘I know you don’t like me sitting around the flat all day,’ he says. ‘I didn’t want to look like a loser to you. Didn’t want to let you down.’ He gulps and then adds: ‘Didn’t want to lose you…’

  I turn away because it’s hard to look at him like this. I can’t figure out where those scales are balanced; whether I’m sorry for him or annoyed with him.

  ‘I know Jane and Ben aren’t fans of me,’ he says.

  ‘That’s not true… it’s just they don’t know you so much now.’

  He scratches his chin and fiddles with the cuffs of his shirt. Anything that means he doesn’t have to look at me directly. He can probably sense the unease, too. The feeling that our lives will change here and now. He doesn’t know which way it will go but neither do I.

  ‘I’ve been jealous,’ he says. ‘Your career is taking off. I knew you’d be able to do it – and it’s happening. I suppose I wish it was happening for me, too. I want to be able to provide for you.’

  I snort and think of Jane with her ‘career gap’: ‘It’s not the 1950s. I don’t need or want to be a good little housewife.’

  ‘I know. I’m pathetic.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘I don’t deserve you.’

  ‘Don’t say that, either.’

  He finally meets my gaze. ‘I love you so much.’

  ‘I love you, too.’

  It’s like a reflex. I love you-I love you, too. One sentence follows the other like night after day. I’ve said the words without thinking about them and then, before I know what’s happening, our lives are changing. In the middle of the service station forecourt, David drops to one knee and pulls my hand towards him.

  ‘Will you marry me?’

  Twenty-Four

  THE NOW

  It takes me a few moments to figure out where I am. The mattress is too hard and the covers are too warm; like sleeping on a pavement next to a bonfire. I fight against the quilt, freeing myself from the temporary straitjacket and then roll over to see Andy’s eyelids fluttering. He’s breathing deeply, lost in a dream, and I watch him for a couple of minutes. He always looks older in the mornings, before he shaves. Shearing the stubble from his face each morning skims a few years from his age.

  Sometimes when we’re like this, I see David in him. They don’t look alike and they couldn’t be more different in terms of personality, but, when they’re sleeping, they share the fact that they are completely out of it.

  I roll off the bed and pad around the bare-wood floor until I’m in the hallway. Andy doesn’t have a cleaner and yet his place is always immaculate, as if there are pixie maids who visit in the night. Sometimes, I feel as if I’m making the house dirty simply by being around.

  The bedroom next to the main one has been cleared, ready for me to move in. Andy has put three identical wardrobes side by side into an alcove; and there is a pair of shoe racks under the window. This space is mine to do with as I please… although it will never feel like our house. It’s his space and always will be.

  Back into the main bedroom and Andy is still breathing deeply. He’s not snoring, because it’s not the type of thing I can imagine him doing. He has far too much control over his life for that. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him sneeze, either. David was all about chaos and lethargy; Andy is calm and meticulous planning. His clothes for today are laid out neatly on a chair at the end of the bed, with a chosen pair of shoes underneath.

  I watch him and it’s easy to see the circle continuing. I married David because I didn’t want to grow old and be lonely. Here I am, three years on, moving in with someone else for the same reason.

  I close the door to the bedroom and head downstairs into the kitchen. There’s so much white, just like Andy’s juice bar. Everything clean and in its place. A bowl is on the counter, filled with a precise measure of bran flakes that Andy will top up with an exact amount of almond milk when he gets downstairs. The espresso machine is already loaded with a levelled, double shot of coffee; the mugs are lined up perfectly on the side, ready to go.

  I wonder if living together will work. Whether Andy will end up trying to organise me in the way he organises everything else in his life. Even if he does, I don’t know if it will necessarily be a bad thing. Perhaps that’s what I need?

  The inside of his fridge is like a spread across the pages of a health food magazine. There are juices, obviously; plus fruit, vegetables, almond milk, soy milk, and five different types of yoghurt. One day soon, this will all be mine.

  Or jointly mine.

  I put a small handful of raspberries into a bowl and head for the sofa. There’s a photo of Andy and me on the coffee table that I don’t remember being there before. It was taken when Andy did a charity race up Snowden last summer. I helped the support team at the top and he raised almost £13,000 for the scouts to buy a new minibus. Our faces are smushed together and, though he’s slightly red-faced, I’m the one who’s a sweaty mess, as if I did all the running. It was taken on Andy’s phone by one of the other volunteers and I have no idea when Andy printed it out, or found a frame. It’s certainly not very flattering to me, although it was a fun couple of days away. We drank beer in the sunshine and I ate the best roast meal of my life the afternoon after the run. It was then that I decided Andy and I might just make it; that I wasn’t destined to become a bitter, divorced middle-aged spinster.

  There’s a power cable that leads to the shelf underneath the coffee table. I follow it to Andy’s laptop, which is sitting with the lid half-open, as if he put it away in a hurry. The screen is glowing a bluey-white onto the keyboard as I lift the lid and pull it out. The main screen shows the desktop but Word and Chrome are minimised into the corner.

  I know I should close the lid and leave it – but it’s not what people do, is it? Not what I do. I click to open the web browser, which reveals the BBC Sport home page. The next tab along is the Guardian – of course it is – and then there’s the home page for Andy’s scout troop. The three pages are him in a nutshell; all it’s missing is a fourth from Men’s Health.

  I’m about to snap the lid closed when I’m drawn to the ‘History’ button. I almost want Pornhub to be top of the list – it would prove he wasn’t quite the saint he always seems to be.

  That isn’t what he was looking for before he drove out to the pub last night, though. Instead, there are a series of Google searches: ‘Morgan Persephone’, ‘Morgan Noble’, ‘Morgan Persephone award’, ‘Morgan Persephone talk’.

  It’s like a tree where I’m the trunk. He’ll search for something relating to me and then the branches take him off in varying directions. Andy looked at the awards page to which Steven directed me that contains the photos of the night. He spent five minutes clicking around the home page for my studio. He did an image search.

  And then, below all that is the two-word search term that leaves me feeling as if I can’t breathe.

  ‘David Persephone’.

  Tw
enty-Five

  THE WHY

  Three years ago

  Jane waves me across to an alcove underneath the trophy cabinet. It’s the first time I’ve visited the rugby club since I was a teenager and this was one of the few places that would serve underage. It also helped that it was largely frequented by beefy men. It’s probably the only time in my life that I’ve ever remotely noticed men’s thighs. Sometimes it feels like I was a completely different person then. As if I woke up one day and the person I used to be had gone to be replaced by whoever I am now.

  With a bottle of wine in one hand and an empty glass in the other, Jane is already a large part of the way towards sleeping while slumped over a toilet seat tonight. We’ve both been there before. She takes a swig from the bottle and then fills the glass and has a mouthful from that, too, before nodding across to where my mum is sitting at David’s side. They’re close to the bar, but it feels like he has eyes only for her tonight.

  ‘Your mum loves him,’ Jane says.

  ‘More than me.’

  Jane looks between us but doesn’t deny it. The great love of my mother’s life was my dad. When he went there was nobody else. I was a square peg who had no chance of getting through the round hole. A part of her died with him.

  Jane has another mouthful of wine, though I know her well enough to realise that this is to stop her from having to reply. She doesn’t understand why I said ‘yes’ to David’s proposal. She’s been with Ben for such a long time that she’s never had that fear of growing old alone.

  David waves across to someone behind the bar and the waiter scuttles across with a small glass of sherry for Mum. If there’s no one around to hold her up, she’ll be down like a pensioner on a winter’s day within the hour.

  What Jane doesn’t understand is that a marriage proposal is a line in the sand. A ‘no’ is the end. It’s not as if the couple carry on as they did before, waiting for the subject to come up again at a later date. A no is a no is a no.

  I love that David believed in me.

  He was the only one. Not Jane and definitely not Mum.

  Since we met, my life has got better. It’s like his faith in me forced things to happen. I got personal training clients; I was offered more classes. I had my first chance to talk in front of an audience, when the local college wanted me to address a group of young women. My career was going nowhere and now, ten months after meeting David, it’s finally heading in the direction I want.

  A no is a no is a no – and so I said yes.

  Across the room, Mum has her sip of her sherry and, almost as if it’s some sort of potion that has transformed her, she starts to giggle. It’s often hard enough to get anything from her other than a frown – but then this is, perhaps, where David’s true talents lie. It’s not in the buying and selling; it’s in the way he makes people feel about themselves.

  ‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ Jane says with a nervousness to her tone, ‘but it’s only been ten months…’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m not saying you’re wrong, or anything like that. It’s just…’

  I could make her squirm, but the truth is that I know what she’s saying.

  ‘I know it’s quick,’ I say, ‘but if he’d asked me in a year, I’d have said yes then. All it’s doing is bringing things forward.’

  A no is a no is a no.

  ‘I’m thirty years old,’ I add.

  ‘That’s still young.’

  I can’t help but glance across to the group of young women who are hanging around near the rugby players on the other side of the bar. The room is split in two, with this side for our engagement party and the other for a regular night in the rugby club. The women are either late-teens or early twenties; all slim and wearing short dresses and too-high heels. Their backs will hurt in the morning, or maybe they won’t because they’re young. Youth is everything.

  I want to say that I don’t think any other men will get down on one knee for me. It took me this long to find someone who will.

  A no is a no is a no.

  David insisted on having an engagement party, saying that he wanted to show me off. I put down the deposit on my credit card because they don’t take cash. It’s strange, largely because there’s almost nobody he knows here. It’s mainly my friends from school. He didn’t invite Yasmine, even though I said he should. There are a handful of people that went to university with Ben, Jane and David – but he’s not speaking to any of them anyway. He’s giving all his time to my mother. Over the past ten months, I’ve often wondered how many friends he really has – but the same is true of me. There’s Jane, possibly Ben, and then… I’m not sure.

  Mum rests a hand on David’s knee and then rocks back laughing. The last time I saw her cackling like this was at the repeat of the Morecambe and Wise Christmas special. She insisted it was new, even though one of them had been dead for a good thirty years at the time.

  ‘I better go and help him out,’ I say.

  Jane raises her glass and says she’s not planning on going anywhere soon. ‘Ben’s busy with his football mates from uni,’ she adds.

  As I cross the floor, I glance across to Ben, who is in the middle of a circle of sporty-looking thirty-somethings. They each have pints of lager and I can imagine them reminiscing about the glory days of when they spent semesters playing football and getting pissed.

  When I get to David, I stand over him and touch his shoulder. It’s hard not to notice that my mother’s features instantly sour.

  ‘Why don’t you go and spend some time with your friends…’ I say, not making it a question.

  He takes the hint and stands, squeezing my hand almost imperceptibly. I expect him to head off to be with Ben and his old football mates, but, instead, he crosses to the other corner of the room and disappears behind a group of people.

  I take the seat he was in next to my mother, although she is seemingly now interested in an unremarkable patch of wall.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ I say.

  ‘What else was I going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know – but it’s nice you’re here.’

  She clears her throat and I’m not sure if it’s genuine, or if she’s annoyed about something.

  ‘What music is this?’ she asks.

  I stop to listen: ‘I’m not sure,’ I reply.

  ‘It’s terrible. Music was so much better in my day.’

  ‘I think everyone believes the same thing.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m right.’

  She finishes her sherry and passes me the empty glass.

  ‘Do you want more?’ I ask.

  Nobody rolls their eyes quite like my mother. It’s always been able to make me feel a couple of inches high. As if not reading her mind is some sort of crime. ‘What do you think?’ she replies.

  ‘I don’t know – that’s why I’m asking.’

  She stretches for the glass: ‘I’ll get it myself if it’s too much trouble.’

  I stand abruptly, saying that I’ll go and then crossing quickly to the bar. There’s nobody else after a drink, so I get another sherry for Mum, as well as a glass of red for myself. It’s only when the barman returns that I ask for a double whisky and neck it when nobody’s watching. I’m going to need it to get through the evening.

  After that, I load a paper plate with food from the buffet and then head back to Mum, who is still sitting by herself. She takes her drink and then points at the food.

  ‘What’s that?’ she says, her top lip curled.

  ‘That’s a samosa,’ I say, pointing to one side of the plate, before motioning to the other, ‘and that’s a yam roll.’

  Mum wafts a hand across the plate. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with a plain ham sandwich. Never killed anyone, did it?’

  ‘Not everyone eats meat, Mum.’

  ‘Pfft. People weren’t so fussy in my day.’

  I open my mouth to reply, but then close it. Nothing is going to be worth turning this into a full-on argument.
I should have left her with David. He’s more or less the only person around whom she turns into a pleasant person. If he was anywhere in sight, I’d nod David across and hand over the reins once more – but he seems to have disappeared.

  ‘I’ve got to mingle,’ I say, wanting a way out.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about me,’ Mum replies. It’s hard to tell whether she’s being sarcastic, or if she actually wants to be left alone.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ I say, although she’s back to staring at the wall. I can imagine her saying that nobody needed phones in her day because they had perfectly good walls to stare at.

  There’s still no sign of David and I assume he’s gone to the toilet, so I head back to Jane, who is still in her alcove. There’s a slim hint of a smile on her face that makes it clear she knows exactly what’s happened between my mother and me. She’s known us too long.

  She’s also tipsier – and holds up the half-empty wine bottle. ‘This is my last one,’ she says.

  ‘It’s a long night,’ I reply, though she shakes her head.

  ‘Not only tonight: for a long while. Ben and me are going to start trying for children. This is my last weekend of drinking.’

  It takes me a couple of seconds and then I reply with the only thing I can: ‘You’ll be a great Mum,’ I say – although I’m looking at my own mother as I say it. Maybe I believe it; maybe I don’t.

  David is back in the room. He walks gingerly across the floor, like an old man who’s forgotten his stick, and then turns in a circle, seemingly not knowing where to plant himself. He said he pulled a muscle when he decided to go running on a whim. I was taking a spin session at the time. I’ve never known him do that before, but I suppose that’s why he pulled a muscle.

  Jane is watching him, too and I can feel the tension from her. ‘I should’ve told you this a long time ago,’ she says, somewhat abruptly.

  ‘Told me what?’

  ‘Ben and David were never really friends at university. We didn’t really know him. After my birthday party, we spent a good hour trying to figure out why he came and who invited him.’