by Luiza Sauma
‘Don’t be so envious.’
‘She’s having a bad time,’ said Iris, ‘and you’re not helping her.’
‘Mona isn’t like you.’
‘Not like me? What do you mean? I was good at school. Maybe not as good as Mona, but where did it get me?’
‘How is that my fault?’
‘I’m not saying it is.’
‘She’s coming back, Iris. Please.’
Mona slumped back on the chair and pulled her sleeves over her hands, poking her thumbs through the holes. A waiter came over and they ordered their food. Eleanor chose a salad. Her eyelids flickered slightly when her daughters each ordered a pizza.
By the time the food arrived, Iris’s hunger had melted, along with the rest of her. The comedown was now a crescendo, gross and humid like fungus. There was sweat all over her body: on her back, trickling from her armpits, shining on her forehead, oozing from her pores. She struggled to talk and think. She managed to eat half of the pizza, somehow, and drank two Diet Cokes, but her mouth still felt like a desert, full of sand. She didn’t order a third Coke because her mother was looking at her with concern. She breathed deeply, which made the sickness more profound. Her heart fluttered like a panicked bird. Will I die like this, she thought, eating a pepperoni pizza while my mother and sister talk about the school fete? Neither of them noticed her crisis, or they pretended not to. Iris went to the toilet and threw up, which made her feel better.
‘What are you doing now,’ she said to Mona, when their mother went to the loo. ‘Fancy going for a swim in the pond?’
‘Bit cold, isn’t it?’ said Mona. ‘I don’t have my swimming stuff.’
‘We can go in our underwear.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Just come and watch, then. We can have a little walk.’
Outside, the sisters waved their mother goodbye and walked up Parliament Hill, past the chatting dog owners. Iris was happy that Mona had agreed to come – she had assumed she would say no and scurry home with their mother. Iris sometimes worried that Mona didn’t like her very much, that she saw her as damaged goods – the disappointing first child, poor fatherless Iris – but then she remembered that twelve-year-olds don’t think like that. She wanted to be closer to Mona, like a real big sister – someone Mona could turn to, especially now, on the eve of her adolescence, the most ludicrous years of anyone’s life. They were accustomed to a fond, mutual distance. Iris hadn’t been around when Mona was growing up. She had been at university, at work, on the other side of London, off her face, uninterested in children.
They took the long way to the Ladies’ Pond, up the green hill. The air cooled the sweat on Iris’s skin. She wondered if she smelled like puke. Beside her, Mona seemed so clean and new – never been drunk, never taken cocaine, never stayed up all night. But they were sisters all the same, across those fifteen years, across the two fathers who separated them.
They reached the woods. Under the trees, it was much cooler – the dregs of winter, refusing to leave. For once, Iris was grateful for those dregs. The colder the water, the better it would feel.
‘Are you really going to swim?’ said Mona.
‘Yeah.’
‘You don’t even have a towel.’
‘I’ll be OK.’
Beyond the gates, five or six women were swimming in the pond, surrounded by trees. There was no sign of the city there – that was what Iris liked best. Usually she only went on hot summer days, when the water and grassy areas were always busy, humming with female voices, but there were women who went all year round, who cracked the ice and leapt in on freezing winter days. They were a different species, tougher than Iris.
The sisters stood by the lifeguards, watching the sun glimmer on the murky pond. The trees weren’t quite as full and green as they would be in a couple of months. Iris stripped down to her black underwear, leaving her clothes in a pile, out of the way. Her skin puckered in the air.
‘You’re mad,’ said Mona. ‘It’s so cold.’
‘Do you think I should jump in or use the ladder?’
‘Jumping is easier.’
One of the lifeguards glanced at them, unimpressed by Iris’s cowardice.
‘OK, I’ll jump.’ Iris stepped towards the concrete edge of the pond and looked down.
‘Do it!’ said Mona.
Iris leapt into the air. The cold water took her in, closed over her head and held her. For a second, she floated under the surface, feeling like every atom in her body had been shaken awake, but it was so cold and the urge to breathe was too much. She stuck her head out and took a lungful of air. It was pure and sweet, like country air.
‘How is it?’ said Mona.
‘Not that bad. Come in!’
‘No way.’
‘You’re missing out.’
Iris turned and swam quickly, to keep warm. Her arms moved through the water like scissors through silk, while her feet were tickled by tendrils of underwater plants. All the bad feelings had gone. She breaststroked her way to the end of the pond, where the swimming area was roped off. Beyond that, a family of swans – a large white mother and her fluffy grey babies – were rooting around at the water’s edge. The mother sized up Iris with her beady eyes. What are they called, thought Iris, the baby swans? Mona would know. When she turned back, she saw that her sister had stripped off her clothes, too. In her pants and vest, without her glasses, Mona looked so young. She was young. Her legs were skinny, her hips narrow and her chest almost flat. She was twisting her waist-length hair into a topknot. My lovely little sister, thought Iris. Or perhaps she just thinks this in retrospect. It’s hard to tell.
‘Jump in!’ she shouted. The lifeguard shot her another look. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered, too quiet to be heard.
Mona walked down the ladder, dipped a toe in and cackled. There was something about cold water that teased out joy or even wrung it out, where there had been none before. There was a splash and her sister disappeared into the pond, then reappeared, gasping for air and giggling. Iris swam to her.
‘Ahhh, it’s freezing,’ said Mona. Her teeth chattered and her pale cheeks blushed in the cold.
‘You’ll get used to it.’
‘I’m glad I came in, though.’
‘Me, too!’
When they reached the end of the pond, where the swans were resting, Iris said, ‘What are they called, the bab–’
‘Cygnets!’ said Mona, before Iris had finished.
‘I knew you would know. I always forget.’
Mona smiled with pride. ‘Ask me the capital of any country,’ she said, as they swam. ‘I’ve been memorizing them.’
‘OK – Sweden.’
‘Stockholm.’
‘Australia.’
‘Canberra. Give me a hard one.’
‘Uh, Fiji?’
‘Suva!’ said Mona, grinning.
‘Wow,’ said Iris, ‘I’ll take your word for it.’
‘Another one!’
‘The Bahamas?’
‘Oh, I don’t know that one,’ said Mona, but she didn’t seem to mind. She was like a different person, now that their mother had gone.
The two sisters swam back and forth a couple of times, delaying the inevitable: getting out of the water, the cold bite of the air, wet underwear under their clothes, shivering and laughing all the way home.
5.
Destiny
By bank holiday Monday, Iris felt clean and renewed. She hadn’t left the flat since Saturday, or spoken to anyone other than a takeaway delivery man, to whom she said hello, thank you and bye. She had wrapped herself in blankets, watched an amazing amount of TV and masturbated twice. Eddie had texted her from his family home in Kent, where he was staying for the weekend:
Hello! Are you feeling as shit as I am?
It pushed back the bad feelings, knowing that she existed in someone’s mind, that she hadn’t disappeared. The Smog didn’t fully descend that weekend. False alarm.
Late in the afternoon, she hea
rd a key in the door and felt relieved, her loneliness and boredom dissolving like sugar in tea. Kiran was back from her weekend away with Ben, her awful married boyfriend.
‘Heyyy,’ came her voice, as she knocked on Iris’s door.
Iris was lying in bed, scrolling through the internet on her laptop. ‘Come in!’
Kiran walked into the bedroom looking smart and polished – her hair and knee-high boots were both glossy and black, in contrast to Iris’s faded T-shirt, tracksuit bottoms and damp hair. Iris stood and they hugged.
‘How’s it going?’ Kiran sat on the edge of the bed, her coat still on, and sighed. She was holding a small brown parcel.
‘All right, and you?’
‘I’m fine.’ Kiran held out the parcel. ‘Oh, I found this downstairs – it’s for you.’
Iris snatched it and put it on her bedside table. It was her latest delivery of pills.
Kiran laughed. ‘What’s inside it?’
‘Just make-up,’ said Iris, too quickly. ‘How was the trip?’
‘Yeah, it was good. It was good and bad.’
‘Why bad?’ Iris knew why. She was asking out of politeness.
Ben was married with three children – that was the bad. Kiran was obsessed with him and he made her feel alive – that was the good. Feeling alive is always good. But Ben’s wife and children were always there, hovering in the corners of her happiness. There were six people in the relationship. Kiran had only met one of them.
‘You know, the stuff with Ben’s wife. It’s not easy.’
Kiran had been involved with Ben for a decade, on and off. They met when she was eighteen and he was thirty, at a pub in Soho, but he ended it soon afterwards, when Kiran went to university – where she and Iris became friends. In that first year, she spoke about Ben non-stop, as though he were the Messiah, sent to Earth to save her. He got back in touch a few years later, when he was an unhappily married father of two. When Iris finally met him, she was seriously disappointed – Ben was just a fat, sweaty City boy with a red face. He called Kiran ‘my Indian princess’. His only redeeming feature was that he paid for all their drinks. That’s when she realized: love is bizarre and can’t be trusted.
‘What’s new?’ said Iris, already bored with the conversation they’d had so many times.
‘Ben wants to leave her, but she’s really depressed. I get where he’s coming from. He says that she might kill herself if he leaves. So yeah, I don’t want that to happen. I’d rather wait a little bit longer.’
‘Why does he think she’ll kill herself?’
‘I mean, he’s, like, her life. She doesn’t work, she just looks after the kids. Apparently she’s Prozacked up to the eyeballs. I get why he’s worried. He’s thinking of the children.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’ll wait a bit longer, but I’m not going to wait for ever. Till Christmas, maybe.’
‘Last year you said you were going to wait till Christmas.’
‘Yeah, but, you know. We love each other.’ Kiran held her chin up and shook her head. ‘It’s not easy, but we’ll get there in the end.’
Iris didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t approve of the relationship. Not just for moral reasons, but because Kiran was obviously being duped by Ben and, more generally, by TV shows, films and songs into thinking that love was worth the sacrifice, the humiliation. She was a true romantic. She believed in destiny, as if a higher power had brought her and Ben together. ‘Of all the pubs in Soho,’ she often said, ‘we were both in that one at the same time. Isn’t that funny?’ Iris didn’t think it was funny – there were dickheads in every pub in Soho – but she never said this, because she loved Kiran.
By contrast, every time Iris started a new relationship her feelings got smaller and smaller, like a well-used bar of soap. She hadn’t always been like this. When she met her ex-girlfriend, Edie, the summer after sixth form, she still believed in love. Back then, Iris had few friends left, because of the terrible thing she had done. She and Edie worked at the same cafe. Edie didn’t need the job – her parents were rich – but she was clever, generous and kind; no, magnetic. She made a crack in Iris’s loneliness. It lasted two months and Iris ended it, but still, she thought of Edie all the time. She dreamed about her at least twice a month. The recurring special guest star of her unconscious. Edie was the first, the model for the others. The original bar of soap.
‘Well, you know what I think,’ said Iris, ‘and there’s no point in going over it again.’ Though she knew, of course, that they would go over it, again and again.
‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’
‘Really? Which part?’
‘That I’m deluded, maybe.’
‘You do realize he’ll never leave his wife?’
Kiran shrugged. ‘Maybe he will and maybe he won’t.’ She didn’t want to think about it. The fantasy felt so much better. ‘Look, I know what you think, but when I’m with him, everything seems better. I can talk to him about anything. I can be myself.’
‘Are you not yourself now, with me?’
‘Yeah, but …’ Kiran sighed and took her coat off. She didn’t look depressed, just thoughtful. ‘Anyway, how are you?’
‘I hooked up with Eddie. You know, my colleague?’
Kiran jumped and clapped her hands together. ‘Really?! How was it?’
‘It was good. We were really fucked, though.’
‘I’ll make some tea and you can tell me everything.’
Kiran got up and went to the kitchen. Iris settled back on the pillows, comforted by the sound of her friend clicking on the kettle, opening and closing cupboards. She was doing it all super-fast because she wanted to hear about Eddie. Maybe we’re soulmates, thought Iris. Kiran and me, rather than Kiran and Ben. She wouldn’t see it that way, though. Sex always wins. Everything swirls around it. A hole into which everything disappears.
6.
Thank You, Smog
For several weeks, the Smog stayed at bay. The absence in Iris was filled by Eddie. Despite her cynicism about love, she wasn’t entirely immune to its effects. When she heard his name – even when it was Alison saying, ‘Eddie, what learnings do you hope to glean from your social media listening project?’ – it sounded so clean and beautiful: Eddie!
Eddie and Edie. Edie and Eddie.
She thought about him all the time, even when they were sitting next to each other, which they did for several hours a day. There were two Eddies: the human made of meat and bone, and the one in her mind, who made her insides glow with warmth and longing. Somewhere, in between their desks, the two Eddies would meet. She tried to remind herself that he was just a person. Probably a terrible person, like Iris, but his newness made him special. Even a two-hour brainstorm about web analytics was bearable, because Iris and Eddie could spend it avoiding each other’s eyes and thinking about the myriad ways in which they wanted to fuck each other. Thinking about fucking was often better than doing it. During one particular meeting, she conjured up a blaze in her belly that spread to her genitals and the tips of her fingers. Afterwards they had sex in the disabled toilets, which was OK – despite the smell, despite the fact that she didn’t come.
One day Iris woke up feeling like there was a great weight bearing down on her body. She found it hard to open her eyes. The Smog’s long, smoky tentacles were reaching around her in an unwelcome, suffocating hug. She managed to get up, but it clung stickily to her skin, hair and eyeballs. When she looked in the bathroom mirror, her face was grey and flat, like a pavement. She seemed to reek of cabbages and mould. Showering didn’t help. She walked down the street, bought a coffee, caught the bus and sat on the top deck. Her head was still damp from the shower. She rested it against the glass, leaving a wet mark. She tried to ignore the tentacles worming their way into her body, making her blood run thick. Focus on reality, she told herself. Be mindful. She’d recently read an article that said mindfulness could help. Here was reality: the coffee tasted sweet
and earthy, the air conditioning on the bus made her skin bristle. It was a warm day in early summer, but there was a tinge of sadness in the air. In a couple of months, summer would end, like everything.
She had been with Eddie for two months. Inevitably, that would end, too. When would he reveal himself? When would she? There was a flutter inside her, like an animal trapped in a cage. Stay inside, she thought. She looked out of the bus window and saw a little girl in a private-school uniform – maroon blazer and kilt, knee-high socks, a straw hat – walking down the street with her father. He looked kind of Jewish and lawyer-y. Something about his blue suit, his jowls, his thinning hair, his wire-rimmed spectacles; a melancholy, thousand-year-old heft. A Jewish lawyer father – she had once had one of those.
The girl on the street was six or seven, skinny legs skipping, smiling brightly, while her father looked tense and distant. There was a strangeness in Iris’s limbs, like they didn’t belong to her. Maybe she was becoming one of those lunatics obsessed with cutting off their legs – she loved reading about those people because they made her feel so sane. It was comforting to know that there was a limit to her madness. She wasn’t like that homeless guy in front of Shoreditch Town Hall with terrified eyes, shouting at the sky. She didn’t see things, she didn’t hear things, she had a job. She seemed like a normal person. All this pretending, performing, it was her life’s work – so much harder than anything she did at Freedom & Co.
That morning, she had her annual performance review in the IdeasBox. The first ten minutes were fine. Alison praised Iris’s passion for digital innovation, her relationships with clients, her talent for project management. Iris was pleased to have passed for someone who was interested in those things.
‘The thing is, though,’ said Alison, in the eleventh minute, ‘and I’ve heard this from several people round the office …’ She gave a small, curt smile, as if she were sorry she had to share such dreadful news. ‘Everyone thinks you’re fab, you’re such a great asset, but we just feel that you lack leadership skills. Do you know what I mean?’