In Real Life

by Chris Killen

  LAUREN

  2014

  I finally managed to get Jamaal to come inside and stand behind the till, which he was more than capable of operating, and I persuaded Nancy to take a break from her sorting and hang out some clothes, so that I could price up the books in the back room. At least that was what I said I was doing. What I actually did was just sit on the carpet and – after checking over my shoulder (in case what? he came in and saw me?) – look at Paul’s book. PAUL SAUNDERS it said in bold black capitals on the neon-yellow spine.

  I’d sort of forgotten he’d published a book; I’d sort of forgotten Paul completely, to be honest.

  I leafed through to the back page where, on the inside cover, there was a large black-and-white photo of him, his mouth fixed in a serious expression and his nose longer and more crooked than I ever remembered it being. I’d seen this picture once before, on the back flap of the hardback edition, in a Waterstone’s when it first came out. When was that? Four years ago? I’d taken Alyssa in with me, for moral support. I’d only known her a few months at that point, but we were close, right from the start. We stood there in the entrance and flicked through it, trying to get a sense of the story – to make sure it wasn’t, you know, about anything to do with me – and when it wasn’t (I’m embarrassed to tell you this), I actually felt disappointed.

  Ha.

  How does that even make sense?

  And then, when we finally turned to the back inside flap, and Alyssa saw that photo of Paul for the first time, his weird overly long nose and sombre pout, all in over-saturated black and white, the picture cropped so you could only see his face, intensely staring out of the frame like he thought he was Ernest Hemingway, well, when Alyssa saw it, she burst out laughing, spitting the last bite of her Boots Meal Deal all over the pyramid of new release hardbacks.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ she’d said. ‘He’s not much of a looker, is he?’

  I flipped to the dedication at the front.

  To nobody, it read.

  Nice one, Paul, I thought. Just as bitter as always then.

  ‘Lau-ren?’

  Nancy again. I got up and stuck my head into the shop.

  ‘What’s up?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m going,’ Jamaal said. He was right by the door, one foot already through it, rain and wind whistling in, and Nancy had stationed herself behind the till. Apart from the two of them, the shop was deserted.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Please don’t do that. What am I going to tell Jeanne on Friday?’

  ‘Tell her whatever you want, Miss. This is bullshit. I’m off.’

  I glanced across at Nancy, who couldn’t handle even the mildest of swearwords, and sure enough she’d begun worriedly rubbing the corner of the counter with her thumb, blushing and looking as if she might burst into tears.

  ‘Just stay till one at least?’ I pleaded. ‘Please?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Fuck this. It’s not like you even care about this charity anyway, Miss.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I said, genuinely confused.

  ‘Well, you get paid to work here, don’t you?’

  He waited for me to answer, his eyes burning.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ I said quietly.

  ‘No, it isn’t. The point is that this is a waste of fucking time and I’m off. So, bye.’

  He slammed the door so hard it rattled and bounced open again, and Nancy and I stood in the shop for a long moment without speaking, collecting ourselves.

  ‘Shall I put some Justin Bieber on?’ I said eventually.

  Nancy shook her head.

  IAN

  2014

  As the days roll on, it takes all my willpower not to just click the Internet Explorer icon on my desktop. I’m being a hardliner: no internet. Not until I feel better. Between each routed call, there’s a thirty-second gap to fill, which most other Quiztime Solutions employees seem to be using to look at Facebook. I’m taking a leaf out of Dean’s book: in between calls, I’ll play a hand or two of Solitaire or do a few clicks on Minesweeper. And tomorrow, I tell myself, I’ll bring in a book or a crossword. Anything to distract me from the urge to go back online, which is low-level but continuous, like toothache.

  Go ahead, a voice whispers between calls.

  Reactivate your Facebook account.

  What’s the harm?

  How much damage can it do?

  I don’t listen, though.

  I know exactly what will happen.

  If I go back online, I’ll just make myself even more miserable than I am at the moment. I’ll look up certain people I used to know, and stare for whole evenings at a time at certain old Facebook photos and I will wander around certain streets in Nottingham again via Google Street View, and most of all, I will tie myself up in knots again over a certain person whose name I don’t want to say, even in my own head, wondering what would’ve happened if only I’d handled things differently.

  There’s a list of names in the bottom right-hand corner of my monitor at all times. My name is about halfway down it. There’s a clock, too, which is constantly timing exactly how long it takes me to do various things throughout the day. If my name turns blue, for instance, this means that I’m on an active call. If it turns green, it means I’m available to receive calls. And if it turns red, it means I am on a ‘personal comfort break’.

  Sometimes, I’ll read down the list of names – Dean Fossgill, Esther Wu, Hayleigh Forrester, Jade Goodwin, Dalisay Rivera, Lewis McAndrews, etc. – and find it so strange that here we all are, sitting in this same cramped, weird-smelling room together, talking all day, just not to each other.

  At lunch we slope off in different directions in silence.

  So far, my lunch routine is: go for a piss, smoke a roll-up in the entrance, then do a circuit of the Tesco Express. By the chillers, I’ll stare in at the various Meal Deal items and promise myself that I’ll come back and fill my basket with them the very moment I get paid. Then, back upstairs, I’ll take my homemade sandwich out of my rucksack and carry it into the break room and sit down at the long table and eat it in silence.

  No one ever really talks in the break room.

  Most people just silently do things on their phones.

  Today, for instance, there are three of us: me, The Lad With The Pearl Earring, and The Girl Who Always Wears The Same Pink Top.

  The Lad With The Pearl Earring is eating a Tesco Meal Deal and silently doing something on his phone. He’s in his early twenties and could easily beat me in a fight. The earring isn’t actually pearl; it’s one of those David Beckham sparkly ones.

  The Girl Who Always Wears The Same Pink Top is eating noodles from a small Tupperware box. She’s a bit younger than me, and is from an Asian country, I’m just not sure which one. She has long black hair and her skin is a pale brown colour. As she eats, she leafs through a crinkly, tea-stained copy of yesterday’s Metro. It’s only when she looks up from the paper and catches my eye and smiles a small, pained smile at me, that I realise I’ve just been flat out staring at her for the last few minutes. I quickly look down at the empty bread bag that I carry my sandwiches around in and feel my cheeks flush with heat and my ears begin to tingle.

  When lunch break finishes, I go and sit down at my computer, put on my headset, and change my name from red to green. Then I lift myself back out of my chair a little in order to subtly look around the room and find out which way The Girl Who Always Wears The Same Pink Top has gone.

  Turns out she’s sitting almost directly across from me, just behind the I hate it here scribble.

  At exactly one forty we click ourselves back off break, and the room once more fills with the sound of chattering and typing and chirping phones and people apologising and people hanging up. In the gaps between my own calls, I strain to catch The Girl Who Always Wears The Same Pink Top’s voice, and when I finally make it out, it’s very soft and musical and accented in a way I can’t quite place.

  ‘My name’s Dalisay
,’ she says, ‘and I’m calling from a company called Quiztime Solutions . . .’

  I scan down the list of names on my screen, and when I read hers – Dalisay Rivera – something tinkles inside me like a bell.

  In the early hours of the morning, I crouch down by my bed and unpeel the Sellotape around the top of my bedside table box. I lift the lid and peer inside at my collection of sentimental objects. I stick my hand in and rummage around amongst the cinema stubs and Fuji Film packets and pin badges and gig flyers and home-made greetings cards until I find the thing I’m looking for: a bulging brown envelope containing six long and as yet unanswered letters from my friend Andrew in Japan.

  Andrew is my best friend.

  He’s very thoughtful and serious.

  He’s Canadian, although I met him back in Nottingham, when I was working in HMV and he was a customer.

  Andrew always seems to know the right thing to do with himself.

  For example: after Nottingham he moved to Japan forever.

  I get back into bed and prop myself up with pillows.

  As I read back through Andrew’s letters in chronological order, I feel a ball of guilt slowly grow inside me.

  At the start of Andrew’s first letter, it’s around the size of a marble, but by the ‘hope you’re okay’ at the end of letter six, it’s as big as a bowling ball.

  I’m sorry, Andrew, I think, folding the letters and slipping them back into their envelopes. Just hang on, please. I will reply as soon as something good happens.

  I close the lid of the cardboard box and shuffle down in bed and close my eyes.

  I think about Dalisay.

  I imagine us walking along a garden path past swirling, photoshopped fairies. We’re holding hands, and the sun is shining, and she’s wearing her best pink top and smiling at me with her calm brown eyes, and the bell is ringing again in my stomach, loud as a fire alarm.

  Then the daydream begins to shift around on itself, slowly transforming into something else, a feeling I’ve not experienced in a long time, the feeling of wanting to write a song.

  First I hear a soft, ascending melody, which I’d most likely play finger-picked.

  Then I hear a second counter-melody which would probably become the vocal part.

  I even hear a few of the lyrics.

  I lie there, very still, the duvet tight across my chest, and wait – as if standing on the front porch of myself, holding the door open – for the feeling to leave my body.

  PAUL

  2014

  Paul looks at the knobbles of Sarah’s spine beneath her pale pink nightie as she curls away from him, over on the other side of the mattress. The top of her head is outlined by the bluey-white glow of light emitted from her iPhone as she reads an article on Jezebel or The Huffington Post or one of the many other American websites she always seems to be looking at.

  Lately, Sarah’s not been sleeping.

  Lately, all Sarah ever seems to do in bed is lie on her side and read articles, sideways, on her phone, facing away from him, the nightie stretched tight across her back.

  When they’re in bed together like that, Paul tries not to think about Alison – to keep his mind as empty as he can, like a meditation technique – because he worries that his brain might give him away otherwise, that it might make a small, whirring, Alison-Whistler-pitched motor noise that Sarah will pick up on and challenge him about.

  He shifts onto his back and his eyes drift up to the shadowy, hole-less ceiling of their bedroom.

  ‘I’m not smoking any more,’ he says into the darkness.

  A pause, just long enough for Paul to wonder if Sarah’s drifted off to sleep.

  ‘Good for you,’ she says.

  ‘You don’t believe me.’

  ‘It’s not that, exactly.’ Her voice is cold and very faraway sounding, as if it’s coming from somewhere deep inside her. ‘It’s more that I don’t give a shit any more.’

  She presses a button on her phone and then they’re both in the dark.

  ‘I want a baby,’ she whispers.

  This was not what Paul was expecting at all. He shuffles himself up to her and slides one arm around her, resting his hand very gently on her hip. Sarah doesn’t move.

  ‘I’m thirty five,’ she says, still facing away from him.

  ‘We could have a baby,’ Paul says, inching even closer towards her and brushing a wisp of hair from her neck in order to gently kiss it.

  Doctor’s appointment, Paul thinks. Doctor’s appointment, Jonathan Franzen, mouth cancer, Australia, Rachel, Alison, baby.

  ‘We could have a baby,’ he says again.

  Sarah doesn’t reply.

  She just shifts a little away from him and curls herself into a ball.

  Sarah takes the second half of the week off work and goes to her parents’ house in Surrey, again, leaving Paul to wander aimlessly round their flat wondering if she’s ever going to come back. She seems sad, almost constantly now. She knows, Paul thinks. It’s obvious. She knows what I’m doing and it’s breaking her heart. I should just finish with her. Tell her the truth. Oh god, what the fuck am I doing with my life.

  Right now he’s standing in their bedroom, rooting through Sarah’s knicker drawer.

  What exactly is he expecting to find in there?

  Sarah’s knickers are different to Alison’s. Sarah’s knickers come in five-packs from Marks & Spencer and are bigger and more sensible and don’t have any bows or see-through bits on them.

  Paul’s hand touches an object that definitely isn’t knickers.

  He pulls it out.

  It’s a Polaroid of Sarah.

  She looks much younger, about twenty, Paul guesses, and her hair is longer and darker and shinier. She’s posing in a pastiche of one of those Bettie Page 50s pin-up girls, and she’s wearing stockings and suspenders and high heels and nothing else.

  He tries to work out who might have taken this picture, tries to remember the various bits and pieces she’s told him about previous boyfriends, his brain buzzing around uselessly within the choppy, fragmentary chronology of it all.

  The Sarah in the picture looks so much happier than Sarah now, and Paul knows that it’s him that’s making her feel this way; him who’s sucked all the life out of her.

  For a moment, he remembers a thing in perfect clarity: a thing she told him on one of their first dates, in the Cornerhouse bar. She was drinking a gin and tonic and she leaned in across the table towards him, wearing a black dress and gold hoop earrings, and said that she’d always wanted to be a dancer when she was younger, that she took classes as a teenager and was planning to get back into it, actually, that she was going to join the gym again and get into shape, and then pick up from where she left off, because when she was dancing it felt like ‘nothing else mattered’. And then she’d laughed, saying she realised how corny that sounded, and he’d said, ‘No, no, that’s good. You should do that.’

  Paul slips the photograph back beneath the knickers and shuts the drawer.

  Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 16:04:59 +0000

  From: lauren_cross83@hotmail.com

  To: fiveleavesleft@hotmail.com

  Subject: Re: Argh

  Ian,

  Please don’t be worried! Your email was lovely. Really, really lovely actually. Thank you so much. I don’t think anyone’s ever been that honest with me. I feel flattered too.

  It’s only taken me a while to reply because all my time’s been taken up with Emily – traipsing round, hunting for a flat, handing out our CVs, etc.

  No luck on that front as yet, I’m afraid to report. We’re still living out of suitcases in a double room at this cheap hostel place which I’m 99% sure is flea-infested. I keep finding these itchy red dots on my legs in the mornings. Gross. Anyway, if we don’t find somewhere soon, I’m going to have to just stump up and pay for a better hostel for us both (Emily’s refusing to chip in; she wants to spend all her money on booze and joss sticks and things with mirrors sewn into them.
)

  If I’m completely honest, so far she’s annoying the fuck out of me. I guess when I agreed to come here with her, I didn’t actually know her that well; she was just someone on my course who always seemed to be having a good time and knew what they were doing. It was funny when you said you thought of me as that kind of person: well, that’s exactly how I’ve always thought of Emily. Things always seem to just work out for her somehow, and I think maybe I decided to come away with her to watch up close how that worked, maybe even take away a few tips. Well, so far what I’ve learnt is: to get what you want, you just have to complain really loudly about [anything] and eventually someone else will come along and sort it out for you.

  Oh dear, I don’t know. I realise that I’m complaining too, by writing about it, and if I’m not careful, I’ll accidentally create an infinite loop of complaining that will swallow us both completely.

  Canada is amazing. I wish you could see it too. Everything’s so BIG and CLEAN and BRIGHT here. And the people are so nice. I couldn’t get my head around it at first. I was still in England mode. We were waiting at this bus stop the other day, on our way out to look at a (way too expensive) apartment, and this lady started talking to us, just chatting to us about the weather out of the blue, and my first instinct was to think ‘Okay, what’s she after?’ You know, as in: is she going to ask for change or try and steal our bags or something dodgy like that, but it turned out she JUST WANTED TO TALK. Weird, right?! People here are actually friendly for no reason! It doesn’t make sense! We English are so repressed! I’m going to stop using exclamation marks now!

  You were right to picture mountains by the way: from most places in Vancouver, almost everywhere really, you can look up and see the Rocky Mountains in the distance, which I still haven’t quite got over. (I’ve not seen a bear standing on any of them yet, though.)

  Ooh, before I forget, I’ve got to tell you about this thing they do in the local paper here. It’s a bit at the back, called ‘I SAW U’, and it’s for people who are too shy to speak to each other! I’ve become a bit addicted to reading it. Here’s an example:

  Purple Pants and Leather Man