A Midwinter Match

by Jane Lovering

  ‘Yes.’

  Our eyes met. Level and steady, we held one another’s gaze. Was he weighing me up? I was noticing the way his brown eyes seemed more hazel in the muted light from the purple-shaded bulb. How his eyelashes were long and still spiky from the snow. I didn’t know what he was looking at, staring so deeply into my face, as though he could pull secrets to the surface if he just looked at me long enough.

  ‘We are working for a bunch of fucking crooks, aren’t we?’ Zac said, eventually. ‘Ethically, I mean,’ he added. The question he wanted to ask was there, hovering in the steam from the coffee which rose from the mug which must have been scorching his knuckles. But he didn’t ask it. He just stood, head tilted slightly to one side, as though he could get an answer merely by looking at me quizzically.

  I didn’t ask either. I just stood to one side. ‘Come in. But stay sideways. If you turn ninety degrees, you’ll get jammed.’

  I shuffled back to allow him into my bedroom, and then closed the door behind him with my foot.

  ‘Wow. It’s quite small.’ He juggled the coffee and pizza. I took them both from him.

  ‘Yes. It’s the cheapest room.’

  ‘Well, good. Because if it were the most expensive, I would be asking serious questions, like does that wall fold down to reveal a gold-plated bathroom.’

  We both looked at the wall in question.

  ‘No,’ I said sadly. ‘If it did fold down, it would reveal only Ed’s room and, I suspect, a wardrobe of colour co-ordinated workwear.’

  ‘Blimey.’ Zac rotated, slowly and carefully. ‘You haven’t even got room to draw the curtains.’

  ‘It reduces the room space by seven per cent. That window ledge is essential shelving.’

  We stopped talking. The unspoken hovered between us.

  Eventually, Zac put his coffee mug down on the window ledge.

  ‘I don’t…’ he began, and then stopped.

  Everything pivoted on that moment. In that tiny room, which now mostly smelled of fresh-brewed coffee and bed, with an undercurrent of cold pizza, I could feel myself turning through space. Was I nice? Or was I what Gareth had believed me to be, bossy, self-serving? Which was the real me?

  I reached behind me and picked up my bag. Inserted a hand into the secret, zipped compartment.

  ‘This is me,’ was all I said. Withdrawing the slim foil packet with the damning words printed on it. My anti-anxiety medication. The pills that kept me from collapsing. Handing him the method to destroy me.

  He looked at the pills, then up into my face. ‘Okay,’ he said slowly.

  ‘I had a breakdown when my boyfriend left me for someone else. Oh, it’s not quite as straightforward as that, he also disappeared, leaving me with all the debts and a house to sell at a loss and all that, but that was what started it. I have an anxiety disorder. Stress makes me…’ I stopped. That was enough, I could see from his face.

  He looked as though he were coming to a conclusion. ‘Fair’s fair then,’ he said and sat, uninvited, on the end of the bed, causing another torrent of paperwork to hit the floor. ‘You may want to grab a slice of pizza; when I said it was complicated, I wasn’t kidding.’

  He didn’t attempt to stop me as I reached over him and took a slice of wilting pizza from the box. It was almost cold and had the temperature and texture of cooling flesh. I looked at it and put it back, exchanging it for the still steaming coffee.

  ‘My mum has dementia.’ He dropped the words heavily into the air. ‘Early onset, she’s been developing symptoms since her forties. She was attacked one night, getting into her car, by a man she mistook for an old friend.’ He stopped speaking again, dipped his head as though the weight of what he was saying lived on the back of his neck. ‘She was never right after that. She’s in a… I dunno what you’d call it. A nursing home? Care facility? She comes home most weekends and I look after her then. But I can’t move, can’t change anything about the house, it has to be as she remembers it.’

  ‘Oh, Zac.’ I touched his shoulder and sat beside him. This was so much worse than the various marital situations I’d imagined for him, so much more painful. My chest ached with sympathy.

  ‘She knits, you see.’ He carried on talking to the carpet. ‘She likes to knit me jumpers. And hats. I think it’s how she shows she cares. But…’ Another stop. A deep breath. ‘She remembers me as being nine years old. When she comes home, she thinks… she thinks I’m her nephew, looking after her.’ He gave me a quick flick of a look. ‘My cousin is sixty-three now and lives in Australia. I like to think I’m wearing rather better than that.’

  A whole load of implications came flooding along with his revelations. Zac’s mother didn’t recognise her own son. Did that mean she must wonder, aloud, where he was, why he didn’t come to see her? But she knitted for him, that absent son, who stood in front of her in his thirties, unrecognised.

  ‘Oh, Zac,’ I said again. I couldn’t think of anything else.

  ‘Dad died years ago, it’s just me and her. And, usually, it’s just me.’ The word stretched in a way I recognised. He was trying not to cry.

  I looked at him with fresh eyes. He wasn’t just a smart, bright, overconfident competitor for my job, but a man struggling with an awful burden. It made my ‘boyfriend dumped me’ look thin and feeble as a reason for breaking down.

  ‘The photograph on your desk?’

  ‘Mum and Dad’s wedding. I look a lot like him, apparently.’ Then an attempt at humour, trying to drag this conversation back from the depths it was rapidly circling, ‘Then, I mean. Not now, hopefully.’

  I made a connection. ‘And that’s why you’re so worried about me walking to my car in the dark?’

  He raised his head a couple of degrees and looked at me sideways. ‘I can’t help it. Sorry. You know one of the worst things?’ He reached out and took his coffee mug, cradling it between hands that shook, just a little bit as I watched. ‘I have to live with the most hideous wallpaper you’ve ever seen. I can’t change it because Mum would get upset, unsettled. Honestly, I don’t know what possessed them. It’s got swirls.’

  There had been swirls in the cottage when we’d moved in, so I could empathise with this horror. ‘I was painting our living room blue,’ I said. ‘It looked lovely.’ All those leftover tins of paint I’d just abandoned. Still there, on the floor of the half-painted room when the house had gone back on the market.

  Zac nodded, solemnly. ‘I’ve been dealing with Mum since I was fifteen. At first she was just… funny, y’know? Just forgetful and easily confused. She’s been diagnosed with a form of Pick’s disease.’ His voice brightened temporarily. ‘It’s quite unusual in females and she doesn’t have the aphasia. She’s being studied. I think she’s the subject of at least one PhD.’ A sigh. ‘And sometimes, like this morning…’ He stopped again.

  ‘It just gets too much?’

  ‘I guess we all just have our own lines. Some people’s are further away than others.’ He rubbed his hands over the top of his head, sending the flat hair back up into its more usual spikes. ‘I reach mine every so often. When I just think how fucking unfair it all is.’

  ‘My boyfriend married a thin, rich blonde,’ I said, although why this would help, I had no idea. ‘I saw the pictures before my friends wrestled social media away from me.’

  Zac gave a snorty kind of laugh. ‘Comparison is the thief of joy, isn’t that what they say? Well, comparison can go get fucked. My joy got stolen a long time ago. But you can’t help thinking “what if?” can you?’

  ‘My whole life seems to consist of “what ifs”,’ I said, sadly. ‘It’s the feeling that you’re not living the life you were led to believe in, isn’t it?’

  Zac raised his head fully now. ‘I think you’ve got it there.’ A deep, deep inbreath, like a gasp. ‘I’m fairly sure that life promised me I’d be playing for Manchester United by now.’ A glance flickered down to my bag. ‘Do they work? The tablets?’

  I shrugged. ‘They seem
to. I’m better now than I was, although whether that’s the tablets or just time and space, I can’t tell. But I’m not about to stop taking them to find out.’

  Another silence, into which the sound of Sophie breaking into ‘The First Noel’ came plummeting. I spared a moment to think of my parents’ bickery, happy health-consciousness with Zac’s upbringing and felt an awkward moment of unearned guilt.

  ‘Does she think she can sing?’ Zac looked up the ceiling, where Sophie, in her attic room, was reprising the same verse over and over.

  ‘No. She knows she can’t and she doesn’t care.’ I sighed now. ‘You were right before, we should care less about what people think of us. I wish I could be more like Sophie.’

  ‘There’s the disadvantage that you would have to teach small children, who would, no doubt, advise you of your inabilities continually.’

  ‘That’s true. But then, I’ve got Eva and Albie and Xavier for that.’

  Flakes of paint began blistering off the ceiling as Sophie continued to sing.

  ‘So, what do we do?’ Zac began drinking his coffee. There was still a slight shake to his hand, maybe the relief of the tension or just the continuing knowledge that we still had to compete for the job.

  I pulled a face at Miriam’s paperwork, strewn across my leftover socks. ‘Carry on? Do the job to the best of our abilities?’

  ‘Let the best man win sort of thing?’ Zac scuffed up his hair again. ‘I just felt I owed you an explanation for today. I’m flattered that you’ve told me what you did.’

  ‘It shouldn’t be used against us,’ I said, suddenly fervent. ‘We’re both capable of what we do. My being medicated and you being under domestic stress, it shouldn’t affect anything. I’m pretty sure that’s discrimination.’

  ‘Well, of course it is. But first, we’d have to prove it. And that’s going to be hard, with the merger and them only needing one of us – they could frame it as necessary redundancy.’

  ‘There’s plenty of work for both of us.’ I was still fervent. ‘The one that’s left is going to be overworked into stress-related absence anyway.’

  Zac shrugged. ‘But they’re looking for any reason to get rid of one of us, it doesn’t have to be mental health related. Any nasty habits could get you pushed out; sleeping with your co-workers?’

  ‘You’ve met our co-workers. I’m pretty sure that wanting to sleep with most of them constitutes a mental health related problem,’ I said. ‘But you’re right. They are looking for any reason they can get. They’ve told me you’re ahead, so they obviously expect me to go looking for another job.’

  ‘They’ve told me you’re ahead,’ Zac said, tiredly. ‘So, ditto. I presume you aren’t sleeping with anyone I could use to my advantage?’ He gave me a cautious grin.

  ‘Sorry, no. What about you?’

  ‘Only thing I’m sleeping with is some truly heinous wallpaper. One of the reasons I try not to go home that often. Just at weekends, for Mum.’ The words ‘who doesn’t even know who I am’ were hanging in the still, cold air. They didn’t need to be said, his tone was enough. ‘That Miriam’s file?’

  I grasped the change of subject and clutched it next to the mug of coffee. ‘Yes. I’m working with her to try to get her into work of some kind.’

  Zac chuckled. ‘Good luck with that. She’s the most resistant client I’ve ever had. She’d float in, talk at me for an hour, and then bustle off with me none the wiser.’ He poked the sheaf of application forms with a toe. ‘She seems to like you. I never really gelled with her.’

  ‘I think it’s because you’re a man,’ I said. A distrust of men must run through her like a seam of ore through rock.

  ‘Flattered you’ve noticed.’ Zac flashed me the briefest of grins. ‘Priya’s finally having an effect.’

  ‘Shut up. And go to bed. Getting to work tomorrow is going to make polar exploration look like a trip to Tesco’s, and if we don’t show they’ll probably fire both of us.’ I bent to begin stacking the papers together again.

  ‘Okay.’ He slid off the corner of the bed, bumped his hip against the door frame, swore softly and then was gone, closing the door gently behind him as he went. I listened to the socked shuffle that was him descending the stairs, until I heard the creak and grumble of the sofa having someone lie down on it, when I let out a breath.

  I knew about him, he knew about me. Now we’d find out. Which one of us would fold and pass that information on?

  12

  It had stopped snowing next morning when we drove in to work, and the roads were clearing in patches. Little bits of cobble stood clear of the snow, giving the approach to the Minster the look of a head under thinning hair as we rattled into the car park through the shadows of the monstrous towers. Somewhere, piped music from an open-doored shop played an ironic ‘Silent Night’.

  Zac and I didn’t speak. I think we were both lost in despondency, but it could just have been the earliness of the hour; watching other workers clambering over piled snow to get onto buses or trudging grimly through darkening slush had not been conducive to conversation, so I jumped slightly when Zac spoke.

  ‘Let’s just forget last night, yes?’

  ‘Do not say that in front of Priya, please. She will jump to conclusions so fast that she’ll be in the middle of the North Sea before we can hang up our coats.’ But then I nodded. ‘And yes. We’ll forget about it.’

  ‘It’s probably best.’ He steered the Discovery in through the archway to our office car park and into the parking space that had, until recently, been mine.

  Lights streamed from downstairs windows, filtered through tinsel and foil decorations into swinging splinters and odd prismatic shapes. Most of the staff, overcome by guilt for yesterday’s early finishes, must have got in early. An unmistakeable smell of mince pies baking floated over from the café next door and a well-trodden path between the two buildings clearly indicated that breakfast was mostly being taken from the pudding end of the spectrum today.

  I went to open the car door, but Zac put out a hand to stop me. ‘Can I just ask,’ he said, not looking at me, but keeping his eyes on the side door. ‘Your tablets. Do you think they’d be any good for me?’

  ‘You’re not having them.’ I held my bag close to my chest.

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’ There was a little laugh in his voice and it intensified the gleam of light on the snow and the deep, fruity smell of the pies. ‘I meant – do you think I should see a doctor?’

  ‘Well, they don’t solve anything, Zac.’ That pile of little jumpers on the back seat fell onto the floor with a soft sound that made my heart hurt. His mum knitted them out of love, and he kept them out of the same love, even though most of them wouldn’t have fitted Tiny Tim. ‘They just help you deal with it. Nothing makes it go away.’ The walls were holding, though. ‘But, yes. I think you ought to see someone. I’m surprised they haven’t already prescribed you something.’

  Zac began rubbing his hands up and down the steering wheel. ‘I said I didn’t want them,’ he muttered. ‘They put Mum on tablets, but they just made her worse.’

  ‘The tablets did? Are you sure it wasn’t her condition worsening?’

  ‘It might have been, looking back.’ He was still muttering, almost as though he was ashamed. ‘I just got a bit of a… prejudice against taking stuff.’

  ‘Then you’re an idiot,’ I said, smiling as I opened the door and slithered off the seat down into snow that instantly filled my boots. ‘If you had a headache, you’d take something, right? Well, depression and anxiety – that’s like an ache in your soul. Someone makes medicine that may help that pain, and you refuse to take it? Yep, idiot.’

  I waited for him to get out of the car and lock the doors, and then we both stood together just beyond the reach of the golden lights and reflected ornaments.

  ‘Bit of a metaphor, you reckon?’ Zac asked softly. ‘Us standing on the outside while there’s heating and light and mince pies in there?’

 
; ‘There are bars on the windows, Zac,’ I replied, equally softly.

  ‘That is either very deep,’ he began walking and I had to hop through the snow to keep up, ‘or such an obvious observation that I should be worried about you.’

  ‘You don’t need to be worried about me.’ I sounded so cheerful that I almost made myself feel sick. But I had to be. I needed him to forget that I may ever have any issues with keeping the overwhelming nature of life at bay. I even grinned.

  Zac smiled too. It was a sad kind of smile, that made his eyes look old. ‘Okay. Point taken. But I am allowed to think that you are quite brave, aren’t I? For not giving in?’

  I stopped in the doorway and he stopped too. ‘I’m not brave, I’m just keeping going,’ I said quietly. ‘You, on the other hand – I can only imagine what your life must be like.’

  His smile was gone, and the sadness was still there, pulling at the corners of his mouth, tugging lines into his cheeks, as though the emotion put pleats in his face. ‘Don’t. Please, Ruby, don’t even try.’

  But I couldn’t help it. The thought of a lady somewhere, knitting, knitting endless small jumpers for the son who was, in her head, still nine. Whilst he stood in front of her, cooked for her, cared for her, unrecognised and called by somebody else’s name. It made me want to cry.

  But then I looked up at those windows, letting stripes of light slide through onto the snow. This was work and I couldn’t show any weakness here. Even sympathy or empathy could be the little finger-hold they would grab to show me as unsuitable for my job, so I straightened my face and pushed any thoughts that didn’t include paperwork, coffee or vague discussions about the weather to the back of my mind.

  We bustled in and had just begun the lengthy business of taking off layers and hanging them up to drip dry and add to the fusty atmosphere of the office, when Priya came in, having entered through the main office and having heard the gossip that Zac and I had gone home together.

  ‘Okay, spill the beans.’ She dragged me into her office, where a radiator, totally out of proportion to the size of the room, made the place steamy and subtropical. Even the chocolate was wilting. ‘You and Zac? Well?’