by Laura Kemp
Again she panicked and put her foot in it.
‘So how did that happen then?’
He laughed out loud and she felt the embarrassment of it coming out a bit too cynically.
‘Taught myself. Worked hard. University of Life.’ It was a jab at her, the privileged one whose mummy and daddy had paid for her to go. He waited to see if she’d bite. Annoyed, she said nothing and held his stare.
‘What you up to then?’ he asked.
‘Oh, stuff. You know.’ She felt a right flop. It was time to go: she’d rather leave before she had to pretend life was rosy. ‘Look, I’m really sorry but I’m going to have to go.’ She began to drain her glass.
‘Right, yep,’ he said, playing with the strap of one of those heart rate fitness steps a day things. ‘Kids, eh?’
She coughed on her gin.
‘Kids? You mean, as in me?’ The irony of it. She’d never been further away from having kids. And then she felt even worse because clearly she must look mumsy for him to say that.
‘I thought that’s what you meant.’ He took his lighter off the table which had been on top of a pack of fags and began to play with it, making sparks.
‘No. God, no. I haven’t got any. Only nieces. Gav’s got two. Sweet but knackering.’
‘Where are you now then?’ he said.
It was the question she’d been dreading. She considered making something up: some kind of elaborate story which put her here, there and everywhere. It was far too embarrassing to fess up. The temptation to tell him anything loomed. She was going to leave in three slurps’ time and she’d never see him again. They hadn’t had that spark they’d once had: there were no common denominators upon which to build any relationship. But then he looked at his phone – he didn’t mean to be rude but he was waiting for a business call from the States. He was telling her his time was precious, that he was worldwide, baby. The prick. That was it: why should she lie? Why should she try to impress him?
‘I’m in my old bedroom, under my pony duvet, remember? I have no house, no job, no money, no mates. I’ve been dumped by the love of my life, or at least I thought he was but he turned out to be a spineless shitbag.’ She held her chin high to show she was unafraid.
‘Oh, harsh,’ he said, pursing his lips, as if he’d just heard someone smash a glass rather than she had messed up her entire life.
‘Yep. I’m a loser. It says so on my CV.’
‘That’s too bad, like.’ He was expressionless: he couldn’t even offer her fake concern.
‘You know, it is. In many, many ways.’ But faced with his superiority act, she found some self-respect. She took a slurp. ‘But actually it’s also very liberating. Having nothing makes me realize how much shit people carry around with them. I sort of feel freer.’
He swallowed, taking the dig. She took a second slurp.
‘I’m in the position where I can start again.’
He gave her a sarky nod. Only a leaden hand-clap was missing.
Slurp three. ‘It’s terrifying but it’s also life-affirming.’
Now he tilted his head to the side as if she was talking utter crap.
Fuck you, she thought, taking a fourth slurp. She had nothing to be ashamed of. In fact she was pleased with herself because she hadn’t realized until now that that was the way to look at her situation. She might have spouted it out, fuelled by two Gintinis and years of reading Psychologies mag, but incredibly it made sense. This was a turning point and she felt like thanking Mikey for bringing it to the fore. Okay, their friendship was done and she felt sad and sour, but she was fine with it. This meeting had ended her mourning period for Mikey. He didn’t exist anymore. This new version, this mark II named Murphy was sharp and stuck-up and dull. That was why he grandstanded on Facebook. And she was better off without him.
Vee buttoned up the toggles on her coat and pulled down her hat. She didn’t care how she looked now: no, that was wrong. She did care actually: it was a revelation but she liked being in her own skin.
‘Really good to see you,’ he said as she got up, in the tone people used when they were glad an ordeal was over. There would be no hug: she didn’t want to touch him again. Even though he’d transformed into a bit of a looker. His personality spoiled it all.
Then she chucked a fiver on the table and felt the release of being free from the hold he’d once had over her.
Heading upstairs and pushing her way through the crowds, she remembered the night she’d asked him to be her back-up man. As much as she hated being alone and as much as she could cope with being loaded, she’d have died a death living in his world. She would’ve been just as out of place in his as she was in Jez’s. What she needed to do, she realized as she emerged into the night, was to find her own path.
Chapter Nine
M
Hackney, April
Murphy heaved himself out of the water onto the paving slabs then shivered as streams ran down his back and chest.
He imagined them traversing thousands of goosebumps, which were like minuscule erections, before seeping into his shorts, then gathering at his thighs to plummet through the forest of hair on his legs. Walking through the steamy air into the cold on his way to the changing rooms, he felt so clean and alive for taking on the elements so early. The sun had been rising when he got in. The last thought he had before he dived in was that the sky had been streaked pink just like Vee’s hair. He’d buried his face in the water then and thanked the Lord the sky had turned blue by the time he’d finished. It was going to be a beautiful spring day.
As he showered, dried off and got into his clothes, he swore he could hear the Rocky theme tune playing: for it did feel heroic to have swum thirty Olympic lengths at dawn in London Fields’ heated lido. It was victorious to be here, smack bang in the greatest city in the world. The losers would only just now be groping for the snooze button. But he was already dressed, wide awake and on it.
He went into the cafe, scanning the tables for Orla. She was in the queue, so he called her name and ordered scrambled eggs and a skinny cap. ‘It’s on me,’ he mouthed but she waved his offer away, then when she approached with a tray, she told him it was her treat.
‘You always pay,’ she said, her slicked back black wet hair still dripping onto her shoulders. ‘And I’m chuffed to bits you came with me.’
‘Chuffed to bits?’ he said. It was just a swim. Granted, she’d persuaded him to lose his lido virginity and he’d always refused before now. But steady on, like.
‘Yes because we don’t do much, just us.’
‘Whaddyamean? We live together!’
‘I mean as in hanging out by ourselves, with no one else around,’ she said, slowly, as if he was five years old. ‘Like we used to when we were small.’
‘That’s because no one else would play with us because they thought we were weird.’
Orla laughed. ‘They were right! Anyway, you know what I mean, Mikey.’
She was the only one in their group who called him that. Most of the time he was Murphy the free agent and that was how he wanted it, but she made him feel like he belonged to her. That she was the only one now that really knew and accepted him for who he really was.
He took a slurp of his coffee: it was lush, like swallowing a woman in a silk negligee, all sensuous and voluptuous. It was because it was full-fat, he realized, Orla must’ve forgotten or they didn’t have skimmed. He was going to ask but dropped it: she looked so happy.
‘It’s good here,’ he said, to compensate, warming his hands on his cup.
Orla’s smile widened, she had a little gap between her two front teeth, just like Mam had had. It made her look eternally childlike, fresh, free of worries, soaking up everything good that life had to offer.
‘It’s like being on holiday!’ she said.
It fucking well wasn’t, he thought, not the kind he was used to, but she hadn’t been away for a fortnight for years. The snow break in Tignes had only been a few days and whenever h
e'd tried to coax her abroad with him she refused to be apart for longer than a week from the kids on her client list ‘because they had no one else’.
‘Tell you what, when you get married, I’ll pay for your honeymoon.’
‘What? Where did that come from?’ she said, eyes agog.
How could he explain that he wanted to make life better for her, that the way she planned meals to the last penny using Value ingredients broke his heart?
‘Just been thinking it for a while,’ he lied.
‘We haven’t even thought about a wedding. Phil and I have to get a place first. I reckon we’ll still be engaged when we’ve got grandchildren. He sometimes says we’ll go down the aisle on Zimmer frames!’
Orla’s eyes creased up at the joke, which wasn’t that funny to be honest. But if Phil still made her happy after eight years that’s all he cared about. Even if the thought of meeting someone on your first night at uni, sticking with them all the way through that and then staying together when there was temptation and distraction at every corner made him feel queasy.
Then when she’d stopped laughing, she looked at him really intently.
‘What?’ he said, feeling to see if he had any snot under his nose.
‘You. Like, I can see you feel sorry for me.’
‘I don’t!’ he scoffed, glad to see their food coming. ‘What you having?’
‘Porridge, fruit, jam and toast. On a load of case visits today, so God knows when I’ll eat again.’
He closed his eyes and inhaled the thick eggy smell then opened one eye to see she was still looking at him with her eyebrows raised to the roof.
‘You don’t have to, you know,’ she said, stirring in blueberries and kiwi which muddied her bowl.
‘Have to what?’ he said, remembering the best eggs he’d ever had, at a hotel in Berlin, scrambled ones, tarted up with pancetta and maille hollandaise.
‘Feel sorry for me.’
‘Don’t talk soft.’ He rolled his eyes at her and picked up his phone to check the news. He’d subscribed to a techie feed in Japan and it was about now it’d drop. Nah, not there yet. Which made him feel like he was ahead of the game.
She tucked in and he was stabbed with a memory of her dividing up a pittance of own-brand Frosties into two bowls one morning before school. Mum had been having one of her episodes and Dad had already left for work.
‘Do you know why I come here?’ she said, changing the subject, thank God.
‘They do nice eggs?’ he said, through a mouthful, to show he appreciated her buying his brekkie.
‘Because,’ she said, pointedly, ‘it was where I learned to swim. Two years ago.’
He looked up. He didn’t know she hadn’t been able to swim.
‘Serious?’
‘Yep. We never had lessons, did we? Too expensive. Mam and Dad never took us either. When we used to go to the caravan in Tenby, they’d never get out of their clothes at the beach, do you remember? Everyone else was in their bathers and Mam would be in her blouse and skirt and Dad would roll his jeans up to his knees. I’d splash about at the edge, but it made me scared to go in. Then when I met Phil, well, he’s a real water baby and I’d watch him and think I was missing out. So he helped me. I did something for me even though I was scared.’
‘I can’t remember how I learned,’ he said, ferreting around in his head for a memory of armbands. ‘Shit, yes I can. Vicky’s dad taught me. When I went camping with them in France that time.’ He must’ve been fifteen. He’d felt a right idiot when Vicky had morphed from a moody teenager like him this side of the channel into a mermaid over there. He’d insisted on wearing his jeans by the pool even though it was boiling, but Bob took him aside that second day and sort of pulled rank on him. ‘Now, boy, we haven’t come all this way for you to sulk on the side. Your swimmers, get them on.’ For some reason, he’d done as he was told; he was all right was Bob. Then when he’d got in and almost drowned, making an utter cock of himself, he’d swallowed his pride and asked Bob to teach him. By the end of the two weeks, he’d practically had gills.
‘God, when you went away, that was the longest fortnight of my life. I lived off bread, marg and cold baked beans because Mum was in bed. Dad didn’t notice, of course.’
She laughed it off. But it made him feel bitter. Orla would only have been twelve or so. He gripped his knife and fork so hard his knuckles turned white.
‘But what I’m trying to say, Mikey, is that it doesn’t matter, any of that. I sorted it out myself and Phil got me some lessons for my birthday one year and here I am. Like a bloody sardine, mun.’
‘Tidy. There we go then,’ he said, impressed.
‘So… what I’m trying to say is…’
He stopped mid-munch. Oh my God. He’d wondered what she was going on about and now it finally clicked!
‘Do you feel sorry for me?’ he said, spraying specks of yellow into the air. ‘You do, don’t you!’
Orla conceded: ‘A bit.’ Then she buttered her toast as if she hadn’t just said the most fucking ridiculous thing in the world.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ He went to laugh but it came out all plastic.
She looked up at him, took a bite of her toast and started chewing without breaking eye contact. It turned the tables on their birth order: she seemed the older one now.
‘That is the single most stupid thing I’ve ever heard. You feeling sorry for me.’ He couldn’t get his head round it. He had a charmed life. She was talking crap. Big steaming shovels of it.
‘You don’t need to protect me, Mikey,’ she said. ‘That’s what I’m trying to say. You should look after yourself a bit more instead.’
‘What? My body’s a temple.’ He flexed his pecs under his hoodie because he had to show her he was happy as.
‘Temple of Doom, more like,’ she said, poking out her tongue. ‘I’m not on about your body or health and you know it!’
‘I’ve got a decent job, two homes. What more would I want?’
‘You’re not happy though are you? Not really. Yes, materially and professionally, but personally, it’s a mess, like you’re missing something, like a loose wire or a connection.’
Orla kept eating as bold as you like. She was being a bit cheeky considering. He looked after her, didn’t charge her rent, shared everything with her.
He finished off his eggs, feeling her eyes on him all the time, then he put down his knife and fork and pushed his plate to the side.
‘Will you cut it out?’ he said, lifting his eyes to hers.
‘Hashtag just saying, that’s all.’
He swirled the dregs of his coffee in his cup. ‘Hashtag fuck off, that’s all. No offence.’
‘None taken,’ she said, shrugging. ‘It’s you who’s in denial not me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Look, you’re a good person, Mikey, a really good person, but you can’t see it. You’re a success, definitely, but you’ve got a deficit of that in your personal life. Your friends aren’t really friends, are they? I mean, they all look up to you, but there’s no one you really trust, is there? And your love life, well, you just go from one girl to the next for no reason. Like Shell, she was lovely, but as soon as she got close you ended it. It’s like you’re punishing yourself for dad being a pisshead, Mum dying and Vicky going away.’
‘Hang on, that’s called drive. If it wasn’t for that I wouldn’t have what I have. Shell and I are on a break, that’s all.’
He hadn’t told her that he’d got scared by her sending him a fourth-month anniversary card shortly after their trip to Cardiff. Nor that he was now seeing a bird called Ruby, who he got talking to in a bar after work. She was a bit mad, a posh curator at a gallery, who’d worked in New York and seemed to have a lot going on. That was a perfect combo, because she wouldn’t be needy.
‘And anyway,’ he added, ‘what’s Vicky go to do with it?’
‘That’s what you’ve got to work out for yourself. If I say it, then you�
��ll only think it’s bullshit. But you aren’t happy. You met your oldest friend and you couldn’t be yourself. That’s weird, isn’t it?’
‘Now hang on, I told you why – it was awkward. We had nothing in common. She hadn’t changed one bit and I felt sorry for her. Time to move on. End of.’
What he hadn’t said was, well, pretty much everything. How hard he’d tried to be decent, to apologize from the off for losing the plot on the beach. He’d even rolled out the Jarvis Cocker pledge and his impression of his Mam, for fuck’s sake. But he’d registered her shock as if she had thought he was incapable of humility. He, of all people, who had had his nose up against the windows of everyone else’s good fortune. She’d completely failed to understand where he was going with it; that he was willing to forgive her for walking out on him when he was twenty-one. When she hadn’t emailed him back with the details of where to meet her in Cambodia. She’d turned her back on him, not the other way round.
Then in the bar, when she’d suggested they let the past go, he’d thought about asking her why she’d just vanished from his life but he’d wanted to be a man about it. He’d even bitten his tongue when she’d taken the piss about ‘his table’, but it had only been a figure of speech. He didn't think he was King Henry the Eighth. And her chippiness about his credit card – some people had to go out to work to earn a living and not rely on The Bank of Mam and Dad.
Basically, for her, he’d bent over backwards, but rather than appreciate this, she’d shafted him.
She was full of attitude, she was, judging him for having two flats and a cracking job. And that show of sadness when he told her about Mam dying, he was this close to pointing out that he’d gone to her mam’s six years ago, the day she’d died, to get her number. He’d been desperate to talk to the one person who understood. He’d got as far as the door but at the last minute he’d bottled it.
That memory sent him off on one: that was why he’d said feel free to get in touch with Orla – he’d implied she’d been the one to do the abandoning not his sister.