But these were joke dates: nothing more than a bit of fun to fill the final weeks of university. They meant nothing and, as Emma pointed out with a mouthful of cinnamon crust, ‘Sam makes cake for everyone.’ This boy was sweet, but I was going to marry a rich American who could get me a green card. Or live a fabulous bohemian life as a lesbian artist.
Still, suddenly self-conscious, I tried to hide my blue wine in the fridge. The shelves, however, were bare, and the clean white glowed against the royal glass. Sam was moving the next day and nothing remained in his house except nude bookcases, the landlord’s flimsy furniture and the muddle of kitchen utensils he was using to cook for me. The sparse surroundings didn’t lend themselves to conversation, and though this was still supposed to be a fake date, I reminded myself how idiotic it would be to begin liking someone at the end of the year.
I’d already sent my things home with my dad and was wearing the only dress I had left. I looked at my toenails, which were painted green inside batik sandals, and wished I were more sophisticated. With relief, I noticed Sam’s pink shoes and smiled.
His last-remaining housemate, John, peeked into the kitchen.
‘Don’t worry, I’m heading out soon. I’ll leave you two love-birds to it.’ He winked with the sickening superiority of a safely coupled friend.
‘Look in the fridge!’ Sam smiled with delight, but my heart sank as John peered at my absurd offering.
‘It’s just the bottle!’ John insisted until I poured a glass. Glancing in turn from the sapphire liquid to my and then Sam’s face, John declared, ‘I give up on you both,’ and flounced out of the room.
I found out later that John had heard every detail of the Posh & Becks picnic and Mulder & Scully coffee morning. Later still, when Sam snatched his phone away from me as I opened a photo album, I bullied him into admitting that he was hiding self-portraits taken before each of our dates to consult John on shirt selection. For now, though, Sam and John were intimidating aspiring playwrights who the drama society referred to as ‘Gilbert and Sullivan’. I’d met them both in the bar after the opening night of my play. They’d said sweet, noncommittal things about what I knew was a far-less-than-impressive production, soothing my embarrassment and massaging my battered ego.
John’s departure left us in silence. Looking sheepish, Sam presented one of those tiny bottles of champagne you find on the ends of aisles in the supermarket, a pink ribbon curled around its neck. Thinking of the blue wine, my odd earrings and cucumber toenails, I squirmed at my lack of elegance and tried to make a joke about the champagne being pink like his shoes. He laughed kindly and I wondered if other people were this socially awkward.
We hovered on the kitchen tiles, staring through the one window at the dull garden wall, sipping pink fizz and making inane conversation about waiting for degree results until there was a clatter in the hall.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’
We hurried to see what had happened and found John at the bottom of the stairs with an empty cardboard box and two smashed espresso cups on the floor. I made inadequate gestures towards helping him clean up while Sam returned to his cooking. John threw the pieces in the bin and grumpily said he’d had enough of packing. Just before he slammed the door, he instructed me with a wink to ‘Have fun!’ and the roof of my mouth dried up.
Sam and I were alone.
This is not a real date, I reminded myself, and wondered why, if that was true, my palms were sweating.
What followed was a cringe-worthy ritual of small talk interspersed with brief moments of relaxed conversation. We ate on a fold-out table in the empty living room, then sat on opposite ends of the sofa. Both the TV and stereo had been packed, so every nervous giggle echoed in the silence.
I could not have known then, in those excruciating pauses between stilted conversation, that within three days we would be holding hands in the street and confirming our relationship via Facebook. Equally, I couldn’t have known we’d drag a mattress into the closet of his new house and fumble away his virginity in our makeshift den. I couldn’t have known Sam would persuade me to follow him to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and we would spend the month of August sharing strawberry crepes and watching bizarre performance art. I couldn’t have known my first night in Chicago would also be my first night without Sam in six weeks and my tears wouldn’t cease all the way from airport security desk to Sears Tower. I couldn’t have known that, against all my expectations, we’d make a long-distance relationship work and share a nothing-short-of-filmic embrace at Heathrow upon my return. Nor could I have known that in eighteen months’ time we’d look to rent our own terraced house in Durham, and on our second anniversary, we’d name a kitten Shakespeare.
On this sultry June evening, neither of us knew anything. But, somehow, after we’d each attempted several hesitant shuffles and the last drops of blue liquid had stained our incisors, we managed to bridge the gap between us and share our first kiss.
In the following weeks, I engraved an umbrella as a birthday present, only to find its recipient had never seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Sam painted me in black and white to look like Audrey Hepburn for mine. We discovered our matching distinctions together and endured the teasing from our friends. There were dinners and breakfasts, and I triumphed in converting him to coffee over tea. We woke together in a single bed every day in August and climbed Arthur’s Seat in flip-flops and canvas shoes.
When the guy behind the desk at the American Embassy informed me, ‘You don’t have the right documentation, mam, I can’t issue you a visa at this time, mam, please don’t get upset, mam,’ I wondered whether to drop out of my overpriced Masters course and stay in England. Meanwhile Sam was calculating the cost of coming to Chicago for Christmas and paying for a year’s worth of calling cards. Sam came home with me to Sussex to help me pack and I sat in the back with him as we drove to the airport. He kissed me goodbye next to the security entrance and, while I was being herded onto British Airways, he was crying on a tube somewhere on the Piccadilly Line.
At some moment amid all of this, after a bottle of regular-coloured wine and another gourmet meal, he whispered to me in the dark, ‘I think I’m falling in love with you.’
And like any normal twenty-year-old with a potentially useless humanities degree and an uncertain future before her would have done, I smiled and mouthed, ‘Me too.’
Epilogue
2012
Dearest Sam,
A long time ago you told me you’d never ask questions because you only wanted me to offer what I felt comfortable sharing. That was a couple of years after my convoluted sobs in your darkened bedroom the night before graduation, when you told me the past was past and you were falling for the me of the present. But it was before you understood quite how dreadfully I didn’t want to visit my hometown, or to play cards with your family, or stay in a Travelodge on our way to Scotland.
We’d moved in together and I was sobbing to an NHS counsellor once a week and curling into disproportionate foetal rebellion whenever my car broke down or someone said something shitty at work. I was trudging through a thicket of depression. You were kind to me. You didn’t always understand me, but you wrapped me in your arms and made much of my world better. But still I thought you’d leave if you knew the truth. Still I imagined you’d pack your bags if I admitted to waking beside you from dreams in which my mouth sought Matthew’s, or if you discovered the thoughts I sometimes had about losing my mind. You said you loved me, but I wondered what kind of love could survive my absurd psyche.
On a brave day, though, I wrote you a letter. I tried to tell you everything: all the miserable details, all the sordid, cringe-worthy secrets. I wanted you to know inside my head. I hoped you might arrive with shining armour to tackle my demons, but deep down I expected you to run. That letter was a dozen pages long. I left it on your keyboard and went to work.
Your response was simple. A hand-written note by the kettle. You said you worried I liked drama and you fea
red I would hurt myself, but you never expressed shock, never called me bad. You folded me back inside our cosy relationship as if I hadn’t just told you things that would make your mother stop inviting me for Sunday lunch. You cooked me dinner and we started the next series of The West Wing. You didn’t care.
You didn’t care!
Today I sit in my chilly attic office with a blanket around my shoulders and the cup of tea you’ve just brought me. The diaries I scrawled so earnestly in a decade ago sit on a bookshelf up here, but the photos I’ve pinned to the walls, the anthologies stacked up high, the scattered save-the-date stickers and the endless Post-it notes attest to my present eclipsing my past. I don’t know how you saw through the frightened and confused girl you met in 2005, how you continued to look beyond the depressed and disturbed girlfriend you found yourself living with from 2007. But somehow you did. Through some sixth sense or superhuman power, you knew the woman I’d become and knew she’d be the one you’d love. Well, finally, I’ve caught up; I’ve got to know her too. A month ago, wearing an Alice-in-Wonderland dress and bright red shoes, she stood before you and vowed to be your wife. And, in the simplest possible way, it made her very happy.
Nat
Thanking
The following is a list of people I need to thank not just for making this book possible, but for helping me through its events and, thus, making my present possible. I consider myself a bit of a loner and sometimes worry I don’t have many friends, but this list is proof I have some of the kindest, most generous and forgiving friends in the world. So, from the bottom of my battered but healing heart, I’d like to thank those who listened to my early, utterly ineloquent confessions: Trev, Dave, Emma, Nat, Frances, Kristin, Emily, Rob, and in particular Jess and Greg. Thank you also to all three of my counsellors, each of whom helped me in different ways; to my writing tutor Megan and those in my classes for patiently suffering through my first cathartic explosions; to the other teachers and editors, who coped with me with remarkable grace; to my best friend Laura for reading all of my rubbish; to the wonderful, supportive members of the Authonomy community, without whom I would not have a publisher; to my editor, Rachel, for her endless patience and my publicist, Jo, for holding my hand; to my husband, whose perfection I cannot put into words; and, finally, to my brilliant family, especially my mum.*
* whose primary concern upon publication is that the world will think she reads only Barbara Taylor Bradford novels – she doesn’t!
About Authonomy
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Footnotes
1 Albert Einstein, On the Method of Theoretical Physics, Oxford University Press, 1933.
Rupert Cochranei
F& R Solicitors
PO Box 101ii
London
SWxxxx
Harriet Mooreiii
Care of Albert Sumac
PO Box 666iv
London
SWxxxxx
31 October 2004
Dear Ms Harriet Moorev
It is my duty to inform you that, as requested in the will of Rose Shaw, we are bound to enquire about the status of your relationship with Albert Sumac as of November 2004. At the reading of the will in December 2003, Mr Sumac requested you not be made aware of the terms of the document in case they influenced any decisions you might make, but now it is imperative I bring certain details to your attention.
As laid out in the will of Rose Shaw, written and signed 8th September 2003, Harriet Moore and Albert Sumac were bequeathed (and I quote):
a rental legacy of £53,000, specifically to be used for a house or flat in Durham.*
a theatre and foreign travel legacy of £12,195.vi*
*These sums are to be paid one year after the testator (Rose Shaw)’s deathvii on the sole condition that the beneficiaries are in a committed relationship. Should this not be the case, all funds should be donated to the Cats Protection Agency.viii
Thus, it is my duty to confirm whether or not you are currently in a “committed relationship”ix with Albert Sumac. I have already contacted Mr Sumac and he has responded in the negative [13], but I need written confirmation from both partiesx before I may proceed with executing Ms Shaw’s last wishes.
As such, I would appreciate it if you could respond to my query as soon as possible using the above address.
Yours
Rupert Cochrane
F&R Solicitors
* * *
i R. Cochrane could be a reference to Ray Cochrane, who’s a retired jockey. I think he’s the one that saved Frankie Dettori in that plane crash.
Jockeys? What? That seems fairly random (how do you know that?!?)
Hey, my dad buys the Racing Post – I can’t help it, I soak up information!
So could F & R be Frankie + Ray?
ii So that’s where solicitors come from!
If this is Natalie’s torture chamber in the Ministry of Love, are these guys her saviours or her rats.
iii no separate contact details? (If solicitor needs H’s personal verification, would they be suspicious of going directly through A?)
iv should she be tempted by the devil?!
v She doesn’t exist, does she?
neither does he!
SUMAC = CAMUS – Backwards existentialist
Also, Rose knew Matthew’s real name, so why would she leave an inheritance to his fake name? Wouldn’t they need to show ID at some point?
vi oddly precise – beginnings of a numerical code?!
Dickensian legal battle or Dan Brown conspiracy?!
vii why the hiatus?
viii a little clichéd?
why is it always cats?
MEOW!
ix Seems fairly subjective for the legalese that follows
x WHY? Surely if one isn’t the other can’t be!
Natalie
You will be hearing from my solicitor, but I thought it politei to inform you myself first. Under adviceii and with little choice given your inability to discuss such matters reasonably, I am in the unfavourable position of having to take legal action against you (see enclosed).
As I’m sure it will yoursiii, this breaks my heart. I have triediv to reduce the sum as much as possible. All the legacy itemsv have been halved, though of course you have already lost your own half, so your total deficit is nearly doubled. I wish it could have been different.
I have also halved the rental cost of the Richmond flat, because in theory we were living there together, though of course we both know I left for half the summer because you became unbearablevi. Gas and electricity are difficult to calculate for the period, so I have let you off there.vii
My sadnessviii is in knowing that none of this would have been necessary had you been able to show me some respect and follow through on your offer of friendship. I have tried to settle with youix, but your stubbornness has made you unable to recognise a friend when you need one, and this, I’m afraid, will now have to serve as another part of your learning processx. A lesson more expensive than any of those at Drake.xi Perhaps now you will understand that getting your own way and having everything on your own terms is both expensive and lonely. Perhaps, anyway. No doubt you will find a way to blame this on me.xii
I am willing to discuss this:
alone
with my solicitor present
with your mother presentxiii
with your bus driverxiv present (yes, your Ma has been blatheringxv
about your latest bedfellow)
or any combination of the abovexvi
I am sorry it has come to this. I tried not to believe it for a long, long time, but I fear I was avoiding the truth: you are cold,
Natalie. You give me goose-bumps.xvii
Yours sincerelyxviii
Matthew Wrightxix
*xx
Details of funds to be recovered from Natalie Lucas of 30 D***** Road, Durham, YO** 4**
Rental legacyxxi Durham flat/house @ 50% of £53,000 26,500
Furniturexxii (private purchase) 1,254
Travel to and from Durham
(two visits with regard to the rental legacy)xxiii 150
Decorations/books, etcxxiv 70
Three months’ rental of Richmond flat @ 50% of £2,550 1,275
Theatre and foreign travel legacy @ 50% of £12,195 6,097
GRAND TOTAL £35,346
* * *
i Given circumstances of letter, this is clearly nonsense
Purpose is to establish the illusion of politeness.
ii Seeks to establish diminished responsibility.
iii Still attempts empathy.
iv Won’t be seen as villain.
v Natalie didn’t write the terms of the will _ you can’t sue someone for breaking up with you, can you?
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