Plays from Vault

by Florence Keith-Roach

  She was still an intern, unpaid, writing anything in the evenings – copy for websites, speeches for people, literally anything – and tutoring kids at the weekend. She was barely scraping by, and she’d been at The Times for over a year with no full-time job in sight. And her mate worked for this magazine, and she’d always say Holly could work for them for a bit, just for a bit, and Holly would tell her to fuck off, but then one Saturday I was repainting the living room – we’d just moved in – and

  Holly came in and sat down, and said

  Melissa offered me another job.

  And I took it.

  Her face was a picture of disappointment.

  And

  I was pleased.

  Is that wrong? I wanted her to be successful. I wanted her to shake free of the shackles of her prosecco socialism and enjoy herself. Be happy. Get paid.

  She wanted me to say, Holly no, those magazines are disgusting, you’ll be supporting the patriarchy, think of the refugees!

  But I didn’t.

  I said I thought she’d made a sensible decision and she could just do it for a couple of years.

  Of course, now, now I wish she’d never

  Obviously

  God

  I just wanted everybody to be happy

  I think I’m more caring than people expect me to be. My sister Ella thinks I’m some kind of lads’-mag-reading arsehole, always accusing me of some slight against her or her mates or even my own girlfriends, like she assumes all men are out to get her. Or maybe it’s just how I come across. Even Neil expressed surprise the other day when I said I’d never cheated on anyone.

  Because I haven’t.

  On Holly

  Or anyone. Anyone ever

  About two years into my relationship with Holly, I started working at the catalogue. Like I said. Good money, nice and stable. Not as cool as some of the stuff I’d done, but

  Quite soon after, one of the buyers had an intern in, this eighteen-year-old girl who looked a bit like Jennifer Lawrence, and one night she kissed my neck. Right here.

  It was weird, rather than sexy.

  We were both working really late, like 11 p.m. or something – come to think of it, I suppose she was just pretending to work – and she came over with a beer for me that she’d got from the

  Tescos round the corner, and then she watched me work for a bit, then she bent over me and kissed my neck

  And then she looked at me and I think that was when I was meant to throw her onto the desk and rip off her pants and in another world I would have but I just stared at her

  Then I shook my head

  And she got her coat and left.

  And I said: have a nice weekend!

  It was the most awkward couple of minutes of my life.

  I told Holly about it, and she laughed and said she thought it was funny, but when she saw the girl at the Christmas party she ‘accidentally’ brushed her lit cigarette against her bare arm.

  It was striking sometimes, this distance between open, honest Holly and secretive, closed-off Holly. Like this situation with Fake Jennifer Lawrence. She was obviously upset about it, and I had absolutely no idea until she’d burnt a little bit of skin off a girl’s arm.

  You don’t know anyone. You don’t actually know their thoughts and feelings, there’s no way you ever will. And yet we move in with people and let them find out our deepest secrets and PIN numbers. We don’t know them. Your skinny blonde fiancée could have murdered a man and tossed the body in the Thames.

  Sorry. Making assumptions.

  You might have a large husband and four kids. What do I know?

  You’re definitely not single though. Men like us…

  I’m very bitter about being forced onto Tinder.

  Tinder is a lot for me to take in. It became a thing when I was still with Holly. Now that I’m single I feel like I have to be on it but the experience is unpleasant. My flatmate Neil swears by it, but he definitely needs that kind of platform because he’s unattractive.

  The constant struggle about how to present yourself – do you use the topless Ibiza picture from when you were really toned or not – what the fuck do you write as the bio – why do you have to put your height? I’m five-eleven and that little five pisses me off. I mean what’s the difference, really, between five-eleven and six? One inch, is the answer, but what I mean is girls really like there to be a six in there. So I’ve left mine out, but now I worry that people will think I’m freakishly short and hiding it.

  She cheated, you know.

  Holly.

  She cheated on me.

  I may seem the type but it was her, who

  Ultimately

  My girlfriend from school cheated on me as well. Rosie Jamieson. We were that annoying golden couple. We were too cool to be head boy and girl but we were both voted rear of the year twice in a row. My school was weird.

  Anyway we were great together. Her dad was American and that made her ridiculously exotic, she ate cool cereal like Lucky Charms for breakfast which blew everyone’s minds, and she always went to LA in the school holidays. LA! She was effortlessly popular. I’d had to work a bit harder, put the hours in, get good at football and finger just enough girls at parties to seem like a sexy playboy but not a scumbag. Rosie and I were the teenage dream. We lost our virginities to each other in her parents’ bed one night when they were away, and the next day we walked around school in a daze, ridiculously amazed and impressed by what we’d done. We went to the leavers’ dance – it’s not a prom, this is England – we went to the leavers’ dance in perfectly coordinated black and white. Like Justin and Britney. And like Justin and Britney, it wasn’t perfect – Rosie was actually cripplingly boring, and we had basically nothing in common – but we looked so good.

  Then the night before my Spanish GCSE Rosie called me and told me she’d been shagging one of the teaching assistants. Not even one of my peers, an actual adult, risking imprisonment and unemployment for quickies in the disabled loo. I couldn’t compete with that kind of romance. When people asked why we’d broken up, I said – ‘exams and that’. Which everyone accepted.

  I could have got that teaching assistant fired and worse. But I didn’t. It’s not like I loved her.

  But Holly

  Holly was

  Can I smoke out of your window?

  Scene Four

  ADAM is flicking a lighter on and off.

  Thanks for that

  I am quitting

  I only started because of Holly

  She made it look so cool

  I think it makes me look a bit dodgy

  I don’t know how to quit though

  I considered getting a vape, but is it ever possible to use a vape and not look like a raging twat?

  I think if I can barely pull off actual cigarettes, I’ve got very little hope with vapes.

  Do you do that thing, where every day, you get dressed with the possibility of bumping into an ex at the back of your mind?

  I totally do

  The other day I wanted to go and get some milk, literally five minutes down the road, and I was wearing this horrible jumper and jogging bottoms, and I opened the front door to go

  And I thought hang on

  I look like a disgraced PE teacher

  What if Holly sees me?

  Actually not just Holly

  Anyone I’ve ever slept with

  But mainly Holly

  It’s actually a ridiculous concern because she doesn’t live here any more. She’s moved back to Warwick. With her parents.

  Bit extreme.

  Anyway now I only leave my house if I look good. Because I’m a grown-up.

  Holly didn’t care about that. You know. Things required of an adult

  I would constantly forget that she was younger than me

  By five years. Not that much, at first. Just five years. But it turns out to be quite a gap.

  I mean she was very mature. Much cleverer than me, in some ways.
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  It’s not even that she wanted to go out all the time, anything like that. It’s just that our timelines were a little off.

  The, what I mentioned, about getting to the age with all the wedding invites and babies and

  That was just from my end. She got pissed off about it. All her mates were still shagging around or going travelling or living with their parents. And mine were building investment portfolios and thinking about school districts. Not that I wanted that, I didn’t want to move to the suburbs or stop being fun, we could have done it our way, kept our

  Maybe that’s naive

  I was always very committed to her. And she didn’t necessarily seem as

  You don’t think about it though, do you. Practically. When presented with a fit, cool twenty-two-year-old girl who thinks you’re funny and gives great head and makes you feel amazing you don’t think about, do we match up, does she want kids young, does she think weddings are stupid Because she did. Think weddings are stupid.

  She’d wear black to them.

  And roll her eyes and laugh at the wrong bits of speeches which could be embarrassing for me

  She came from such a stable, loving home. She didn’t understand the value of love. That’s it, I think. She’d never wanted for it so she didn’t get how precious

  Urgh, precious

  But yeah, how precious it is. She didn’t get it.

  I’m talking about her in the past tense. I don’t know why. I’m sure she hasn’t changed. I’m sure everything I’m saying about her is still true. People don’t change. They don’t. I’ve had to argue that point before, and it’s always with someone who’s recently taken something up – like veganism or vague spirituality or charity work, something worthy but ultimately meaningless, and they want you to recognise that the change they’ve made is a deep, visceral, soul-defining shift in personality. When actually, doing that, jumping on a moral bandwagon like that, is just a reflection of their existing narcissism. But they want you to watch a video on Instagram of them doing complicated yoga poses on a beach in India and think, wow – so-and-so has really changed. That’s amazing. Namaste.

  When Holly took the job at the magazine, it wasn’t because she had changed. She hadn’t. She was completely the same person, but the circumstances were different. I think she probably thought about it this way – do I stick by my principles and refuse to work for a magazine that patronises and insults women on a daily basis? Or do I stick by my… principles and live in a flat that I contribute to as much as my boyfriend does?

  And it took a toll on her. Working at the magazine. It was gradual. She went into it with a sort of Blitz spirit, make the most of the situation. She was writing for the telly section anyway, so mainly what she did was review episodes of The Voice or interview Gregg Wallace. She was kept apart from the nasty, circles-around-cellulite bit of the business.

  But, as any job does, it started taking up more of her time and mind. She had to do a liveblog – do you know what that is? It’s like, a

  She had to do a liveblog for the final of The X Factor, which meant she had to be in the office, blogging for hours, because that thing goes on for hours. I know because I was watching it at home. Anyway she came home when it was done and she went on this rant about it like she… like she cared. Like she really cared. And when she noticed, she stopped, shocked at what had come out of her mouth.

  God, Adam. I sound like one of them.

  The thing is, I would rather talk about The X Factor than the situation in Syria. I think almost anyone would, whether they’d admit it or not. It was easier for me. It was hard on her – at first – but it was just so easy for me. She read Gone Girl and quite liked it – a year before she would have completely trashed it, actually a year before she’d never have considered reading it. She came with me to a Chelsea game and only complained once. She wore a pink dress to a wedding.

  I fell in love with Holly because she was complicated and difficult and interesting. But falling in love and being in a relationship require different feelings. Different qualities. So the fact that she was – I mean she was still all of those things, but – but the fact that those things were becoming less – that worked. For me. And her. It worked for us.

  And if things had stayed like that forever. If she’d accepted that. If she’d kept her head down

  That sounds bad

  If we’d kept going like that we’d be planning a wedding right now. Instead of doing this.

  That’s

  That’s frustrating.

  Scene Five

  ADAM is wearing a coat and holding a wet umbrella.

  I’m never late, this is so

  Annoying

  I’m never late. This is, isn’t, a

  I hope I didn’t

  You weren’t waiting too long?

  Pissing it down out there.

  I was with my dad, actually

  …

  Long day. Could do without this, today. But I know

  We’re on a

  Schedule.

  Normally, of course, I’d have told him to fuck off when he got in touch, that’s what I usually do. Ella’s the only one of us that actually bothers with him. But Ella isn’t answering my texts

  Because she’s got it into her

  Female solidarity. Fucking annoying.

  So I don’t know, I’m tired, I’m stressed, I said yes, this was a few weeks ago

  He got in touch

  I said okay fine. This is getting to be, I mean, I’m getting to be quite

  Sorry. Can I just take a minute.

  …

  Thanks

  I wish he behaved more like a villain

  He’s just

  Some old bloke

  He’s boring, if I’m honest.

  He’s obviously, you know, he’s older and feeling guilty about

  what he

  Trying to make amends

  All so predictable it’s

  It’s not interesting

  You want the people who have fucked with parts of your life, of yourself, you want them to be obvious baddies. You want them sitting on a scary armchair stroking a white cat and laughing as servants torture babies in front of them. You at least want sinister. Nasty. Unpleasant. Give me unpleasant, at least

  He’s just some boring old bloke. He drives a Volvo and he wears jumpers from Next. He’s a property surveyor. He has a wife. They don’t have children. They’re members of the National Trust.

  He’s just a

  He took me for dinner a few weeks ago. He told me about his life, which was fairly boring but mercifully short, and he asked me about Holly, and my job, and it was fine. Nobody cried or shouted, nobody threw crockery across the room. It was just so pedestrian.

  Then after that we’ve played squash a few times. I don’t know why, really. We haven’t once mentioned the fact that he is the man who abandoned me. I haven’t asked him why he did it, how he can live with himself, anything like that. We seem to be pretending that we’re acquaintances, like we used to work together or something.

  But today he wanted to talk. Hence being late. He wanted to talk about

  I’ve tolerated him so far, but my life is none of his business.

  That was his choice. He can’t turn up and start giving me advice now, like he has any idea, like he’s the kind of man I would want to emulate anyway

  I don’t care what he thinks about

  I don’t

  I don’t require his opinion. Relationship advice from my dad would be like getting empathy lessons from George Osbourne.

  He isn’t an

  Appropriate

  I’m sorry. This isn’t my day. I’m tired. Neil dragged me out last night to this tragic fucking singles’ night organised by some drippy girl he works with or went to school with or something. It was utterly pathetic.

  I am not the kind of man that has to go to a singles’ night. I refuse to let what’s happened turn me into one of those men. I might as well develop a bald spot
and a stutter. Pathetic. I am a proper

  I am a

  And the only way to cope with it was to drink, a lot, and so I drank a lot, and ended up pulling some girl who I wouldn’t be able to pick out of a line-up now, got back late, all so fucking depressing

  It’s

  All so fucking depressing at the moment. Everything

  Ah, I

  I miss Holly. I really miss her. I miss everything about her, even the stuff I hated. I miss her body and her mouth and her hands. I miss how angry she would get if she didn’t like a film we watched and I miss the way she would bite my lip when we kissed and I miss her stupid fucking Heinz jumper and god this is embarrassing

  Like you give a shit

  You shouldn’t give a shit, it’s

  I just miss her, mate.

  Don’t you think if I just called her and

  Or if I could see her

  …

  Never mind.

  I’ve taken to reading old articles she wrote. Not the serious ones. The ones from the magazine. Totally vacuous stuff about series ten of Strictly and that reality show where the boyband Blue tried to start a nightclub in Ibiza.

  If I read those articles I can hear her voice. And she’s in the room with me because I can remember her telling me about writing them. So when I can’t sleep I just read those

  I mean that has to count for something.

  You would hope.

  Don’t you –?

  I mean in your

  She got into the swing of it, you know. At work. She started to enjoy it. She found some other imposters, other writers who couldn’t give two shits about Kim Kardashian’s arse workout but had ended up working there by accident, similar to her, you know. And one of them was Ashley.

  Nice lad.

  He had a girlfriend, Ellie? Or Emily? Or something, I did meet her, we went for dinner with them. Smug couple summit. Let’s have a bottle of Pinot Noir and revel in our life choices. We went to their housewarming party as well, they were freshly moved in together, all proud of their new Le Creuset and two-bedroom shithole above a newsagent in Clapton.

  Holly would say, thank God for Ashley. He’s the only one who gets how stupid it all is. Someone to sit next to in meetings. Someone to get lunch with. Yeah. Thank God for Ashley.