by Libby Page
She immediately thinks of her mum and dad. It’s their favourite song. Even her dad, a gruff former builder with tough hands but a soft heart, hums along when he hears it, his eyes growing misty. She remembers coming down the stairs one night when she was a child and couldn’t sleep, and seeing her parents dancing to the song in the living room. They held each other tightly, her mother’s head resting on her father’s chest, his arms around her waist, hers around his shoulders. She watched them for a while, thinking that they would soon spot her by the door and ask her why she was up so late and whether she was OK. They might make her a cup of hot milk and carry her up to bed. But they didn’t. They didn’t notice her at all.
As she watched them dancing to the song a thought came suddenly into her head: that her parents existed before she came into the world. That there had been a time when she wasn’t even as much as a wish, and they existed happily like this: just the two of them. At the time, the thought frightened her and she tiptoed back up the stairs and tucked herself silently into bed. But as she grew older and listened to more and more friends talk about their parents’ divorces, she looked back fondly on that scene. She realised how lucky she was to have grown up as a witness to love like that.
When she and Timur told her parents they were engaged, both her parents welled up. Her father stood up to head to the nearest shop to buy champagne. Timur went with him, offering to keep him company and also to drive (her dad’s hands were shaking).
While they were gone, Sonja’s mother moved next to her on the sofa and took Sonja’s hands, holding them and placing them on her lap.
‘I hope marriage brings you everything it has given me,’ she said to her, ‘You have chosen a kind man. We are both lucky to have kind men. Just remember to always be kind to each other and everything will be OK. That’s all that matters. I’m so proud of you, sweetheart.’
And her mum had hugged her tightly and Sonja had felt suddenly part of a club where the only rule was kindness. Nothing else mattered.
Sonja looks down at a small puddle of water on the table and realises she is crying. She can feel her make-up dripping down her cheeks, but she is smiling. She laughs a little, oblivious to the people at the table next to her giving her a strange look.
Wiping her face, she reaches for her phone and dials the number she knows by heart. When the phone is answered she speaks quickly and confidently. She has made up her mind.
‘Mum, how many people do you think you can fit in the conservatory? And where do you think we can get eighty pairs of wellies?’
Mona
‘Looks like the rain has stopped,’ Mona says as she waits for the card machine to print a receipt for the woman with the scrapbook. She gestures out the café window where a small glimmer of sunshine breaks through the purple clouds and glints on the office buildings. It has been a strange day – rainy, then cloudy, then sunny, as though the weather can’t make up its mind. The turbulent, changing skies match Mona’s mood.
‘Oh, I’m sure it will be back soon,’ says the woman, her empty milkshake glass catching in the light. She smiles when she says it, though, and Mona notices how much happier she looks now than when she first came in the café.
‘I’m getting married this weekend,’ she adds as Mona returns her card, and the receipt. She looks up at Mona, smiling.
‘Oh, congratulations,’ says Mona, ‘I hope the weather improves for you!’
The woman shakes her head and stands, hanging her coat over her arm.
‘I don’t think it will,’ she says, ‘But that doesn’t really matter, does it?’
The woman’s calm surprises Mona. She remembers friends going nearly mad planning their weddings, putting so much pressure on themselves to create the perfect day that when their wedding photos came back, they looked pinched and tense against a backdrop of laughing, drunken guests.
‘Yes, I suppose you’re right,’ she replies, ‘Have a great day, anyway.’
With a light step the woman turns and leaves, swinging her umbrella slightly by her side as she turns down Liverpool Street and Mona loses the shape of her in the crowd. Mona smiles and for a very brief moment she forgets everything else, warmed by the stranger’s happiness.
3.00 p.m.
Mona
The lunchtime rush finally over, the café is now quiet. Several freelancers, identifiable by their shining MacBooks and the coffees that they drink very slowly, sit alone at tables throughout the café.
‘What’s the Wi-Fi password?’ asks one, a man in his thirties with floppy black hair and black glasses, a mustard yellow corduroy shirt open over a white T-shirt. Mona directs him to the back of the menu where the code is printed in a small box. The sound of tapping keyboards merges with the music and the noise of the coffee machine: the café’s soundtrack.
Otherwise, the café is nearly empty and as she glances outside, Mona notices the street is quiet too, workers having returned to their offices.
Eleanor finishes clearing a table and joins Mona at the counter – it is the first moment they have had to properly speak to one another since Mona arrived on her shift. She feels suddenly awkward, embarrassed by the fight earlier and unsure what to say to the younger member of staff. They don’t know each other well, despite sharing shifts together. They are usually too busy working alongside one another to properly chat. But Eleanor is smiling at her.
‘Well done about the job,’ she says, twisting a cloth in her hand.
‘Thanks,’ replies Mona, ‘I didn’t mean for you to find out that way. But you saw how Hannah reacted.’
She realises she sounds defensive but doesn’t know how to stop herself – she doesn’t want to admit to Eleanor how upset she feels.
‘It sounds like a great opportunity,’ continues Eleanor. ‘I’ve always wanted to live in Paris.’
‘I still can’t quite believe it really,’ Mona admits, softening a little, ‘It’s all so sudden. I only found out this morning – I haven’t even told my family yet …’
She trails off, wondering what her parents will say when she eventually manages to get hold of them. It’s been several weeks, maybe a month since she last spoke to either of them on the phone. She can’t remember exactly.
Eleanor looks up at the clock and then back at Mona.
‘Sofia should be here soon to take over from me. Why don’t you take a quick break before she gets here so you can call them?’
Mona blinks quickly, surprised and touched by Eleanor’s gesture.
‘Are you sure that’s OK?’ she says, warily, unsure whether she should leave Eleanor alone in the café. ‘I wouldn’t be long.’
‘Yeah, it’s fine,’ replies Eleanor, ‘It’s quiet now, anyway. I can manage.’
Mona nods, says another thank you and then slips into the storeroom at the back, shutting out the sounds of the café behind her. The small, messy space always makes her stressed – there are boxes everywhere and she wishes that Stella would instil some sense of order in the room, or at least let Mona do it for her. She has offered many times, but Stella always tells her it’s not something for her to worry about. But it is, when she feels that the boxes might tumble down on her and it adds to her overall feelings of anxiety. She sits down on the chair in the middle of the room, kicking away a dropped tissue on the floor and pushing a few boxes aside so she feels like she has a little more room to breathe. Then she takes her phone out to call her parents.
Her mother doesn’t answer. Mona leaves a message, asking her to call her back. The phone rings for a long time before her father picks up.
‘Hi Mona,’ he says, the sound of fingers typing in the background, ‘How are you honey?’
The typing continues and Mona pictures her father in his office in their apartment in Buenos Aries, the phone on speaker phone on the table or pressed against his ear as he types an email to a colleague. She can see the late morning su
nlight streaming through the window, catching on the glass of the framed photographs of Matías and Camila, Mona’s stepmother, that cover his office wall.
‘I’m good thanks, Dad,’ she says, her voice cool. With her foot she pushes a box that had been jutting out at an angle, straightening it.
‘I’ve got some news,’ she says.
‘Thanks, sweetheart,’ her father replies.
‘Thanks for what?’ Mona asks, her eyebrows meeting in a frown.
‘Not you, honey,’ her father says, the typing continuing again, ‘I was talking to Camila, she just brought me a cup of tea – she’s working from home today too. She’s got a big pitch coming up – new potential clients – it could be a real game changer for her business.’
‘That’s great,’ says Mona. ‘Wish her luck from me. What I was going to say though, Dad …’
She tries to ignore the sound of typing in the background and the feeling that her father isn’t really listening to what she has to say.
‘Did I tell you that Matías has a try-out for the first team?’ her father interrupts. ‘There’s a local junior scout. His coach thinks he has real potential. Ever since he was a baby I’ve said he’s been a natural with a ball. Well, maybe not a baby but a toddler …’
‘That’s great, Dad,’ Mona says again, taking deep breaths. She knows it shouldn’t bother her, but her father has never described her as a natural dancer and the casualness of the words hit her in a deeply buried place within her. This is why she hasn’t spoken to her father in a month. Because the conversations always go like this and she finds herself growing angry without meaning to, her hands clenching and unclenching on her lap.
‘Well, the thing is,’ she perseveres, ‘I had this big audition for a job with a dance company in Paris. It’s a really amazing opportunity and they offered me the job so I’m going to be moving to Paris in a couple of weeks. I know Camila’s never been to Paris before so if you ever wanted to come over … I mean, I’m going to be sharing with friends to begin with and then I’ll probably only have a tiny room or apartment, but I could certainly show you around …’
She trails off, ashamed at the hesitance in her voice. This is not her, she thinks as she hears her own words ringing in her head. She is calm and composed and self-reliant. She is thirty years old, has lived independently since she was eighteen and has just secured her dream job. And yet she is also a gangly eleven-year-old in a ballet outfit, deciding she wants to be a dancer and desperately seeking her parents’ approval. Dancing harder and practising longer in the vain hope that the grades, the shows and the awards might make her parents proud and might stop them fighting. Perhaps if she could make them proud enough, they might remember that they loved her, and each other.
Mona swallows hard, remembering. Things have changed now, she tells herself. She is grown up. And yet she still listens to the brief silence on the end of the phone, waiting for the words she doubts she will hear but has not quite stopped hoping for.
‘A dance job!’ says her father, ‘Wow! I was asking Camila just the other day when she thought the cut-off point for dancers was – you know, you don’t see so many forty-year-old ballerinas, do you? Not sure we’ll be able to make it to Paris though, honey, it’s a really busy time for Camila’s business, and the university has me teaching extra classes, and with Matías maybe getting his big break …’
Mona breathes deeply, wondering whether a thirteen-year-old can really get a ‘big break’. She is thirty years old and has been waiting for this break her whole life.
‘But you’ll come here next summer, won’t you?’ says her father.
As Mona looks around the messy storeroom and listens to the tapping of her father’s keyboard, she sees herself through fresh eyes – about to agree to a trip she does every couple of years out of a sense of duty, but that never makes her happy. Why has she spent so much of her limited time and money on trips to Argentina, when she long ago realised any connection she’d once had to her father had long since broken? She should have been going on adventures – taking those weekend trips to Europe that she always dreamt of. And why is she still waiting for her parents to tell her they are proud of her?
As she thinks it, she remembers the fight with Hannah and how desperately she wanted her to congratulate her and tell her she was proud. Since they have been friends, Hannah has always been understanding about Mona’s less than perfect relationship with her parents, listening to her and letting her rant after a particularly difficult phone conversation or after returning from a disappointing visit. She might not have always understood completely, her parents having been together all her life, but she always listened and always, always had Mona’s corner.
And Mona suddenly realises why she needed the reassurance of her friend so much – because over the years Hannah has become not just like a friend, but like family. The family that Mona has chosen for herself.
‘I’m not sure I’ll have time actually this year, what with the new job,’ says Mona, ‘Anyway, I’ve got to go now.’
And for the first time, she hangs up the phone, not waiting for a reply. In the storeroom she breathes out deeply and drops the phone into her apron pocket. Then she stands up and starts to tidy. Carefully, she straightens the boxes that are scattered on the floor until they are stacked in neat piles, a bigger space cleared around the two chairs in the middle of the room. She moves boxes of food and drink (spare sauces, coffee beans) to one side of the room, and puts extra paper cups and lids, napkins and receipt rolls on the other. Everything is done quickly; she hauls boxes that make her arms ache and frantically wipes the dusty surface of the shelf on one side of the room with the corner of her apron. Once the room is in some sort of order and she is out of breath from the sudden burst of activity, she pauses, resting her hands on the back of a chair. Her thoughts on her family, she suddenly thinks how much she has sacrificed to get to this point. She has always felt it is partly her fault that she doesn’t have a closer relationship with her parents, because she chose to move so far away. Her father left for Argentina first, of course, but she could have split her time between the two countries, spending more holidays in Argentina and watching Matías grow up. Although she saves up and visits every two years, she can never afford to stay for long and has never formed a close relationship with her half-brother. And her mother … She checks her phone again but there are no messages or missed calls, no acknowledgement that she has received Mona’s message. Mona tells herself that she is teaching and can’t get to her phone. Whether it’s the truth or not, Mona blames herself for the distance between her and her family, because she has always put the pursuit of her career above everything else.
And that’s when she thinks of Lucas. It has been a long time since she last thought about him, but suddenly he is there in the stuffy storeroom, the sound of his voice, last heard twelve years ago, remembered as clearly as if he were standing next to her.
He was her first boyfriend, and even though there have been plenty of fleeting encounters since, she knows that he is the only man she has ever really loved. He was the son of a friend of her mother’s in Singapore. They started dating when they were fifteen and stayed together until Mona left for London. Thinking of him now, memories come back in snippets like flashes of sunlight through a crack in a wall. Tiny slivers of wood shavings caught in the thick hair in his forearms (he was training to be a carpenter); his older sister’s twenty-first birthday party, how she let Mona get ready with her in her room, lending her a lipstick the colour of squashed berries; the wooden box he made her for their two-year anniversary and filled with her favourite things – her favourite sweets, a pair of cashmere socks she had wanted, a limited-edition copy of her favourite book.
Mona suddenly wonders what happened to that box. She didn’t take it with her to London and tries to think what her mother might have done to it when she left Singapore for Germany. She likes to think her mother migh
t have kept it, but even as she thinks it she knows it isn’t true.
*
‘Don’t you love me?’ says Lucas, his knees tucked under his chin as they sit side by side beneath the window in his bedroom, the blinds pulled down against the heat, a thin sliver of sunbeam falling in a line between them. It is a week before Mona is due to leave for London, her place at dance college confirmed, her accommodation organised, her bags nearly packed. She looks around the room, taking in every detail. She knows the specific messy order of his room well, like a periodic table learnt by heart: on first view completely disorientating, but on learning its details, making complete sense.
A desk covered in tools and half-finished pieces of woodwork, seemingly haphazardly scattered, but actually arranged by project, the tools and materials for each one separated in individual piles. Makeshift bedside table formed from a pile of stacked books (The Time of the Hero; The Motorcycle Diaries; Lord of the Rings; Star Wars: Complete Locations; Modern Carpentry: A Practical Journal), an Anglepoise lamp resting on top. Bed with sheets unmade, the colourful blanket made by his grandmother half trailing onto the floor (Mona recalls kicking it off their feet in the night many times, too warm from the heat and from each other). Clothes flung over the end of the bed but arranged by item: T-shirts and shirts in one pile, shorts and trousers in another.
‘Of course I love you,’ she says. She wants to reach for his hand but they are held tightly together across his knees.
‘Then why are you leaving?’ he says.
It is a conversation they have had many times before, ever since Mona told him her dream was to study dance in London and to perform in the West End. She has heard stories of it from her mother, who lived there for a while before she was married, and her dance teacher, who danced there when she was young. It is something she has wanted for a long time, so they have been having this conversation throughout the duration of their relationship. But it always seemed something distant, unbelievable somehow. Sometimes in the past he had even teased her about it, whispering to her that she would never really be able to leave him, as he touched her beneath the sheets in his bed, a pillow between her teeth to keep from making any noise and their ears both alert to the sound of the front door clicking and his mother returning home from the market.