by Laura Tait
– Slept. I feel shattered – my limbs are bags of sand and my eyelids feel like they’ve got pound coins taped to them, yet my mind won’t quit. Plus the newborn baby downstairs pipes up every time I come close to dozing off.
Which is why the first thing on my agenda as soon as I’ve chained up my bike is coffee.
‘Coo-ee! Rebecca!’
Jemma is at the front of the huge queue that greets me when I open the door of Starbucks. I slope forwards, painfully aware how much everyone – me included – hates a pusher-inner. Any other day, this would be enough to hold me back. But today . . .
‘Get a black coffee and whatever you’re having,’ I whisper, sneaking a tenner into her hand and then loitering by the condiment table.
‘Anything to eat with that?’ Jemma yells over, while others glare. I shake my head. They’re so on to me.
‘My diet starts tomorrow,’ Jemma says once we’re outside, holding up her latte with a double shot, hazelnut syrup and extra cream. ‘Then I’ll be on the skinny flat whites.’
‘You don’t need to lose weight, Jemma.’
She has a great figure. It’s curvy and feminine, unlike my own tall, boyish frame. Hers isn’t dissimilar to Danielle’s. A size bigger, maybe, but no less sexy. The difference is that Jemma doesn’t seem to know she’s sexy. Danielle does. She’d never say it, but it’s there in the little actions, like dancing rather than walking towards the loo in a bar, or eye-fucking the camera when posing for photos.
The thought takes me to a dark place.
‘How was your weekend?’ Jemma asks, slurping her drink as we cross the road.
It was lonely and depressing. Even worse than the weekend I found out about Ben and Danielle. Because now it was about me. It didn’t happen before we met. I could have got over that, I realize now. That hurt, but at least it wasn’t personal. Knowing it happened on the night we met changes everything. For ever.
‘Good, thanks,’ I tell Jemma.
It’s just gone eight o’clock when I get to my desk – less than an hour to devise a more detailed proposal for East House Pictures. I need to be on top of my game.
‘Keeping you up, are we, Rebecca?’ Eddie Riley yells across the office.
I had nearly nodded off, my eyes fluttering shut and my head dropping towards my chest.
Shit. ‘If anyone’s keeping me up, Riley, it sure ain’t you,’ I yell back without looking, and the other guys snigger, which shuts Eddie up.
I grind my fists into my eye sockets, grateful I forwent mascara this morning.
Nine o’clock rolls around, yet when I peer down to reception, there’s no sign of Adam. I sit upstairs, but the wall facing Jemma downstairs is Perspex, so I can see the entrance from my desk.
At five past, there’s still no sign. Same at ten past. At just before a quarter past he finally strolls in, and Jemma sends him up before calling my extension.
‘Sexy vampire has entered the building,’ she squeals.
‘Yep, seen him – thanks, Jem. Fifteen bloody minutes late – he might have called.’
Silence.
‘Jemma?’
‘Um, while I’ve got you on the phone, I have a message for you. Adam Larsson called and said he’d be fifteen minutes late.’
‘OK, no sweat.’ At least I found out before I made a dig at Adam. ‘He’s here now.’
‘Giamboni.’ He grins as he strides towards me. ‘Good to see you.’
‘Good to see you too,’ I lie, taking the hand he’s offering and shaking it firmly. I lead him to a meeting room, spread out my plans on a table and start talking.
‘We just need to bear in mind it has a grade-two listed interior,’ I say finally. ‘So we need to maintain what we can of its art deco features, but the exterior is pretty run down and not structurally sound.’
He isn’t saying much, just the odd grunt, but when I’m done he picks up the page. While he studies the drawing, I study him. I’d be lying if I said he wasn’t handsome – not that I’d admit it to Jemma. Lean, blond and blue eyed with a mass of stubble to make him look devilishly handsome rather than angelically cute. Yet, he leaves me cold.
It occurs to me that I can’t imagine ever having sex with anyone other than Ben. But Ben and I will probably never have sex again. Sadness washes over me as I picture him on top of me, his hair messy as he closes his eyes and bites his lip. Then suddenly, in my head, it’s Danielle underneath him instead of me, on the night we met, while I’m climbing into my own bed with a stupid grin on my face, wondering if Ben is thinking about me too. I despise myself as much as I despise them.
‘It looks great,’ Adam says, letting the page fall back on to the table.
‘Thank you. What I’ll do next is play around with—’
‘As I said, it looks great,’ he interrupts. ‘But what am I doing in a fire?’
‘Getting out and calling the fire brigade?’ I quip, but even as I say it, I realize my mistake.
‘Right. It’s the getting-out part I’m worried about. What if I’m upstairs and the stairs are on fire? How am I getting out? Toilet window or . . . ?’
I grab back the page and study it, trying to see if I can invent a way out of this. Did I really forget the frickin’ fire escape?
‘Don’t beat yourself up about it,’ he smirks.
I’m not. I’m beating Ben up about it. For taking up my headspace and leaving me off my game.
‘Well done,’ I say, tossing the page back on the table. ‘That was a test, and you passed. You can stay on my team.’
He chuckles, sliding the plan back over to his side of the table with his fingertips, while I pray to God I’m not blushing.
I gaze out of the window, watching a dark black cloud change the colour of the sky as Adam takes his pencil and decorates my drawing with some suggestions to make the concept more structurally sound. Is that what was wrong with mine and Ben’s relationship? It looked pretty good on the surface, but was it structurally flawed? Instead of changing gradually over time, its strength keeping it standing, becoming even more beautiful with age, it just crumbles with the weight of his secret, because it was never made of strong-enough bricks. Still, at least it happened now. We might share a bed, a sofa and a dining table but what would have been the next step? Getting engaged? Probably, I realize. Christ, if he’d asked, I would have said yes. Then this would be even harder.
‘Sorry, am I boring you?’ snaps Adam, as I yawn.
‘A little,’ I say, intending it as a joke but worrying instantly that I sounded vindictive.
Just then my phone starts buzzing and Ben’s name pops up with his stupid smiley face – a selfie he once took when I was in another room and added to his contact details to surprise me.
‘Boyfriend?’ Adam mutters.
‘Not any more,’ I mutter back, rejecting the call. I regret the words as soon as they leave my mouth, and I wait for Adam to whack me with the stick I’ve just handed him, but when I raise my eyes he looks embarrassed.
‘Sorry, I didn’t—’
‘Don’t be. It’s fine. Anyway, are we finished here? Clearly I’ve got work to do on these sketches.’
‘Sure. Um, see you soon.’ He gets up to leave, turning back when he’s in the doorway – a safe distance so I can’t cry on his shoulder, I expect – then adds, ‘Hope you’re all right.’
I stay rooted to my seat in the meeting room as he leaves. I don’t know what’s worse – the sexist structural engineer thinking I’m not on my game because I’m having man troubles, proving women are too emotional to be in charge, or him thinking I’m always that sloppy, proving women are too incompetent to do a good job.
I let my head drop into my hands. You twat, Giamboni.
Chapter Fifteen
BEN
I watch an apocalyptic cloud drift in front of the midmorning sun, casting London into grey, and from my position at the window it suddenly feels like the entire city, the Thames and all the buildings across the water, and even me standin
g here, were drawn from a blunt pencil.
‘What are you still doing here?’ asks Jamie, fastening his dressing gown as he strides from his room.
‘I called in sick.’
I was supposed to have a meeting with Richardson this morning but I feel as though I can barely move. People think heartache is an emotional pain and it is, but it’s a physical pain too. It’s an omnipresent ache in my stomach, a tightness in my throat, a numbness in my head and a tiredness in every limb.
Maybe it’d be different if I had a job I loved, that I could throw myself into as a distraction, but I don’t, and the prospect of a round of How was your weekend? made me feel sick.
‘I wish I had cigarettes.’
‘Want me to go buy you some?’
I return to the couch, tucking myself back into the sleeping bag. ‘I thought you said every cigarette takes seven minutes off your life?’
‘They do,’ he says, depositing bread into the toaster. ‘Want me to go buy you some?’
I can tell from his strangled tone he’s only half joking. He’s been pretty cheesed off all weekend, but what was I supposed to do? Once I lied to Rebecca about the timing I couldn’t exactly tell him, because he’s her friend as much as he is mine. It would have put him in an impossible position. But now he keeps saying stuff like, That’s why you acted weird when I handed you the napkin and, I wouldn’t have given you it if I’d known.
I switch on my laptop while he makes breakfast, neither of us speaking, and I must be in a world of my own because I jump out of my skin when he plonks himself down next to me on the couch.
‘Want some toast?’ he says, holding the plate out to me.
‘No, ta,’ I say.
‘You need to eat.’
I wonder if there is a sentence more commonly spoken to the brokenhearted. Actually, I know that there is, because something else people keep saying is, Try to keep busy. Which helps until you stop keeping busy and the misery returns, redoubled as if angry that you attempted to leave its grip. Any respite hardly seems worth it.
Jamie crunches into his toast then nods towards the laptop. ‘Are you looking at Rebecca’s page?’
I turn the screen away from him. ‘No.’
‘It’s adrenalin,’ he says smugly. ‘When you’re embarrassed your body releases loads of it, and adrenalin causes the blood vessels in your face to dilate, which in turn lets in more blood, and basically that’s why you’ve gone all red.’
I slap the laptop shut with a huff. ‘She won’t accept my calls, she isn’t replying to my texts. I’m going mental.’
Jamie stands up, tsking. He approaches the chalkboard that hangs next to his fridge and uses his fist to erase a number belonging to an Anna.
‘What are you doing?’ I say as he pinches a piece of chalk between finger and thumb.
‘Seeing as you’re going to be here a bit longer than we originally thought, I think we need some rules.’ He starts writing. ‘Rule one, no Damien Rice. Rule two, no double texting.’
I go to argue but he silences me with a raised brow. ‘And rule three, no Facebook stalking.’
‘I knew I should have gone back to Russ and Tom’s.’
Jamie sweeps an arm towards the door, all be-my-guest, and I get about as close to laughter as I possibly could right now.
Which isn’t very close, but still.
In an attempt to keep busy I decide to leave the house. I wasn’t planning on coming here. It just happened, because sometimes life is like that, you do stuff for no real reason at all. Like me and Danielle.
I step off the bus near the gift shop and zip up my coat as I start to navigate the chalky path that snakes through the olive landscape.
I take the packet of cigarettes that I bought at Waterloo from my coat pocket and stop momentarily to light up. Seven minutes less of feeling like this seems appealing right now.
I only ever smoked when I was stressed but I quit altogether when Rebecca and I started dating. She never said anything, but her disapproval was there in the slightest kink on her forehead. And anyway, I was the happiest I’d ever been, I didn’t care about my job; what the fuck did I have to be stressed about?
Sometimes if we’d had an argument I’d go outside and light up – a small act of rebellion – but it’s been months since I felt the coarseness of the smoke in my windpipe.
I follow the circumference of the bed and breakfast and approach the naked edge of the cliff. A lone seagull calls out like a weeping dog in the sky, its wings perfectly still as it surfs the wind.
You have to leave . . .
. . . for good.
Of all the words Rebecca said on Friday, it’s the final two that I can’t shake. I start to cry, and the holding-your-breath trick doesn’t work when it’s mistakes and not onions causing the tears.
I stand here, looking out at the sea through blurry eyes. There are no fences at Beachy Head to prevent you falling should a heavy gust of wind grip your body, and some instinct born of fright kicks in, stopping me getting too close to the edge. It is almost a relief to feel something other than heartache.
I inch forward towards the verge, imagining my body smashing to the foot of the cliff but knowing I could never do it, and not because life doesn’t seem totally unliveable right now. I’d just never have the—
I’m startled by a heavy hand on my shoulder. Instinctively I bolt, twisting my body 180 degrees and finding myself closer than before to a fatal drop.
‘It’s OK,’ says the complete stranger, displaying his hands submissively and retreating a couple of paces. ‘I just saw you up here and thought I’d see if you wanted a chat?’
The man is dressed in a fluorescent yellow jacket, a red T-shirt that only just covers his belly, and jeans. The wind has blown chaos into his greying but thickset hair. He introduces himself as Brian.
‘I’m from the Beachy Head chaplaincy service,’ he says, almost jollily.
‘Oh, right,’ I say, not entirely sure what he wants.
‘You know this is the second most popular spot for . . .’
He looks over the edge, and another burst of adrenalin colours my cheeks as I realize he’s come to talk me down.
‘I was pretty sure you weren’t a jumper, but thought I’d better check just in case.’
Curiosity gets the better of me. ‘Why couldn’t I be a jumper?’
He shrugs. ‘You don’t seem too comfortable up here. You doubled back as soon as you got within three foot of the edge.’
He chuckles and I join in, this whole journey suddenly seeming a bit silly.
‘Anyway, young ones like you are usually on their phones if they’re thinking of jumping.’
‘How come?’
Another shrug. ‘Saying goodbye, maybe.’
Who would I say goodbye to? Rebecca is rejecting all contact, Jamie will probably never forgive me, and Danielle? How can we stay friends after this?
‘We get about four hundred potentials here every year and of those about thirty . . .’ Brian jabs his finger towards the sea. ‘You get a feel for who might actually go through with it. Sometimes they do it in front of us, there’s nothing we can do.’
I begin to apologize for wasting his time.
‘We’ve got a little hut just up the road,’ he interrupts. ‘Fancy a cuppa?’
There isn’t much inside Brian’s hut. Just a couple of chairs, a large cardboard box full of blankets and a trestle table with a kettle. On the wall is a pin board with a contacts sheet, takeaway menus and a rota.
‘Where’re you from originally?’ asks Brian, gesturing for me to sit on the Paisley chair next to the table while he makes a brew.
‘Manchester,’ I tell him.
‘City or United? And bear in mind that if you say United there’s still time for me to give you a little push off those cliffs.’
I smile and tell him City, and he hands me a paper cup. I go to take a sip but scald my top lip.
‘What are you doing here, then?’ he says, drawin
g a stool from under the table.
‘Well . . .’ I feel stupid, but I tell him everything.
‘I was going to bring her here to propose,’ I conclude.
Brian allows my words to linger for some time before responding.
‘I’d never say this to my wife but I always think relationships are like a long journey. Sometimes the scenery will take your breath away, and then sometimes it’s one long stretch of boring motorway.’ He produces a wistful smile at something unsaid, a memory. ‘And then sometimes you can’t see what’s ahead because the rain is coming down so hard, and that’s when you need to slow down, not do anything rash, because the rain always stops eventually, and then you’ll be able to see clearly again.’
He sees that I’m not quite following.
‘Give her time,’ he adds. ‘If it’s meant to be she’ll see that eventually.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
I stare into my tea before taking a sip. It’s cooler now.
‘Rebecca is an architect,’ I say, and Brian encourages me to continue with a nod. ‘She once told me that when you create a building, if you make a mistake it’s there for ever. You can’t change it.’ I bite my knuckles, pressing my teeth into the skin. ‘I hadn’t realized she applied the same principle to us.’
Brian gets a text but he ignores it.
‘I should go,’ I say, rising.
‘Already?’
‘It’s OK. It’s been really great to meet you, but I reckon there are people far more in need of your time than me. My problems are all self-inflicted.’
He stands too, holding out a hand for me to shake.
‘Did you ever hear about the Austrian army in 1788?’ I say. ‘They accidentally attacked themselves and lost ten thousand men.’
He chuckles.
‘That’s me – I’m the Austrian army.’
Chapter Sixteen
REBECCA
Friday, 28 November
I can’t decide if it feels like a million years or fifteen minutes since Avril let slip that Ben slept with Danielle, and I walked out of the cable car and out of my relationship. It’s actually a month. A month since I had a boyfriend. A month since I had an entire happy day. A month since I had a proper night’s sleep.