Precious You

by Helen Monks Takhar

  He walked around to the other side of the breakfast bar and held me, held me so tight my whole body relaxed. “You have absolutely nothing to apologize for.” He kissed my head. He kissed me on the mouth and I felt like I was home again. We ended up shagging right there in the kitchen. We still did things like that. You probably have no idea. You probably thought we were totally past it. We weren’t. I wasn’t.

  As soon as he got in the shower, I opened my laptop and googled you. I found the odd Lily Lunt, but none of them were right. No Facebook. No Twitter handle I could attribute to you. I couldn’t find your LinkedIn, let alone the blog you said you wrote. There was nothing I could attach to you with any certainty. It was as if you didn’t really exist.

  * * *

  —

  “HEY, KATHERINE.” You’d crept up behind me as I approached the office building without me seeing, making me jump, as proved your habit. “You look nice today,” you added.

  “Good morning, Lily.”

  “How you doing?” It was wintry that day; your black eyes glistened behind the rising steam of your breath. You seemed to search my face. I wondered what you were looking for: signs of my hangover, embarrassment, or maybe how ready I was for whatever you had planned for me that day.

  “Good, thanks. You?”

  I almost told you I hadn’t really drunk that much, for me anyway, the night before. I could handle a lot more and get on with life just fine. But when I thought about what that would achieve and how little it would impress you, I kept quiet. Once I’d thought about it, it didn’t seem that cool to me either.

  “Really well. Here.” You passed me a coffee from the square cardboard tray you were carrying. The lid of my designated cup was loose and dripping, “Sorry, they were a bit sloppy today. Maybe they’d been out last night too!” I noted the other three cups were perfectly clean and dry. “I think this is how you like it?” You thrust the cup at me so a scalding splash hit my hand. “Whoops. Don’t worry, I won’t tell Gem you’re under the influence!”

  You tried to make it sound like a joke, but I don’t think you have much of a sense of humor, do you? People your age are so fucking serious and earnest, but you really need to realize, before it’s too late, that laughing about things isn’t a slight on life, but a full-blooded affirmation of it.

  “Thanks,” I said, meaning for the drink, but you used your free hand to squeeze my arm in a reassuring way: Don’t worry, I won’t tell.

  * * *

  —

  UP IN THE OFFICE, it wasn’t long before Asif came over to our desks. I briefly wondered if it was to speak to me, but knew it was to be close to you. Because you looked so perfect as you typed. Thoughtful, hopeful, young. My hungover mind scrambled for something flirty to say to bring Asif’s attention fully to me, but then remembered the previous night’s allegation and instead found myself adopting a matronly “business as usual” demeanor as far away from casual racism and sex as it’s possible to be. I really needed to keep my job.

  “Morning all,” Asif said, perching on the empty desk next to me, his body twisted so he could look at both of us but talk to me.

  “What you up to?”

  “Wondered if we could talk about the awards?”

  “Sure. Why don’t you find some time in my diary later?”

  He looked confused at my coolness, so turned his back to you and mouthed, “You OK?”

  I nodded workishly. “Three-thirty any good?”

  “Sure.”

  “Would you mind sending me a quick agenda?” You were watching us from the corner of your eye. “Invite Lily. I think we could really use her. If that’s OK with you, Lily.”

  This was a masterstroke. You were probably listening out for “inappropriate content” and instead I’d put you on the front row of interesting work, while creating a three-way environment where neither workplace relationships nor low-level racism would be allowed to flourish. You didn’t expect this. You struggled to sound contained.

  “Sure, yeah. Great. As long as you’re sure? Is that all right? Asif?”

  “Sure is.”

  I took a sip of the coffee you’d given me. There was an odd aftertaste, but I was so in need of a caffeine boost, I drank through it. As I reached the bottom of the cup, the last sip was so sour I nearly asked, What the hell did you put in this? Was this why you had been watching me? After about five minutes I was feeling queasy. I dismissed it at first, but before long, nausea came on me in terrible waves I couldn’t ignore. I started to panic. What had you put in my coffee? Ridiculous, the rational part of me knew, yet as I sweated heavily the idea took hold: you were capable of hurting me. I dared not look at anyone in case they could see what I was thinking. And I couldn’t let you see I was struggling. All but soaking through my shirt, I ran to the loo and locked myself in a stall, stripping down to my bra, cramps tearing through my gut. I sat there, panting, semi-naked. I needed to get a hold of myself. It was probably some kind of perimenopausal episode. Eventually I cooled down enough to get up and out of there, giving in and calling Iain, pretending I was fine. But I still couldn’t shake the idea you’d actually tried to poison me.

  Later that afternoon you and Asif disappeared for coffee again. He didn’t even offer to bring one back for me.

  * * *

  —

  AT 3:25 P.M. you were up on your feet and ready for the meeting, iPad in one hand, your filtered water bottle with the smug vertical slice of bobbing cucumber in the other.

  I wanted to print off Asif’s agenda to scribble notes on it, but my computer flashed an error message: The printer was still empty as it had been since early that morning.

  “Can anyone tell me why this printer’s still out?” I shouted to the floor.

  You sneaked up behind me and whispered, as if you were protecting me from humiliating myself any further, “It’s paper-free Wednesday? It’s in the new Environmental and Ethical Policy?”

  Of course it was. I wanted to scream “For fuck’s sake,” but the interns were watching, so I walked back to my desk, grabbed an old invoice, and stuffed it into the empty tray. The printer didn’t agree with the paper, so I ended up walking to our meeting with what looked like a crumpled piece of rubbish.

  As I walked in, my heart sank. You and Asif were squeezed around a red table in the meeting room. Asif was mashed in so close to you, you must have been thigh to thigh. I took my seat unsteadily. The nausea came again just as Gemma wandered by in the corridor outside. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. When I opened them, she was suddenly pulling up a chair next to me. To my horror, she sat down and looked at me expectantly. The lines on my wrinkled agenda swam. I would rather have been anywhere else than there. With Gemma watching, I lost all clue about how I was going to get through this meeting.

  “Gemma. Great you’ve decided to join us.”

  “Well, as Lily said, if I’m going to get right up to speed on how we’re making the rebooted Leadership awards the best yet, I want to get a front-row seat on the planning.”

  I looked over at you. You smiled at me like butter wouldn’t melt. “That’s…great.”

  Gemma and Asif were now gazing gormlessly at me as if they expected me to kick off the meeting. My brain tried desperately to catch them, but words evaded me. Boiling again, I opened my mouth and all it had for me was, “Um.”

  “Shall I start? Would that be OK with you all?” you asked, and before I could speak, Asif said, “Go ahead, Lily, what’s on your mind?”

  “I’m all ears,” Gemma chimed.

  And from that moment on the meeting became The Lily Show.

  “OK, so please don’t take this the wrong way. Your social media strategy was a disaster at last year’s awards. I mean, you do realize, I’m sure, it was essentially nonexistent? Sorry, I don’t want to offend anyone here, but if we’re really serious about our awards being the
premier management accolades, recognizing the techniques that support organizational growth, particularly as more of them are using digital channels to innovate around their business models, shouldn’t we at least feel part of the digital age on social?”

  Your words, your innate self-belief, your tenacity, they all stung me. It was a feeling as old as time: the sudden and horrific realization that the whole world had got younger. I considered shouting you down for spouting your modern mumbo-jumbo, but knew in my heart, the real issue was I’d slipped quietly into obsolescence, nearly taking Leadership down with me, so I said nothing and let you go on to dazzle your aunt, and Asif.

  “They may not have expected to see you being active on social in the past, but at the very least they’re expecting you to be involved in the conversations everyone else is currently having without you. I don’t want to sound, like, massively harsh or anything, but I think we’re losing ground here, trading off an illustrious past that is being all but forgotten in what’s now, I’m sure you’ll agree, a very crowded marketplace.”

  “And what should we be doing about it this year?” Gemma asked, wide-eyed in admiration, throwing a glance over to me to see if I’d noticed how well her little pet was performing.

  “Yeah, how do we engage with Leadership’s users in their digital hangouts?” Asif asked.

  At this, I knew the best I could hope for was to leave that meeting broadly unscathed, and the only way I could do this was by saying as little as possible. You and Asif became increasingly animated about the “digital strategy” you were going to build around the awards while Gemma clasped her hands in rapture. As you were all but ignoring me, I tuned out, right up until you offered to write my opening speech for the gala dinner.

  “I could help you hone the message this year,” you told me, smiling, the perfect picture of hopeful innocence.

  “No thank you, Lily. I think I can manage on my own.”

  “Well, let’s keep an open mind until nearer the time, shall we?” Gemma said before pushing off to a board meeting, leaving me to stare at my pointless agenda while Asif continued to drool over everything you said. He barely looked my way, and under the heat of your energy, your bright ideas, I was shriveling, lessening. I decided there and then to opt out of that side of you, get you to send your copy to Asif to edit so I could concentrate “on the core business of the magazine.” Of course it was already becoming clear to me you were establishing yourself as the core business, the reason we’d live again. I needed to spare myself from having to look at your writing and your shining future in the face.

  In that meeting, in what was once my space, I was burning up, out of control. I told you and Asif I had to make a call. I tapped at my desk for a minute before grabbing my jacket and getting myself to a bench in the graveyard of St. George’s Church nearby.

  Did you know, the graveyard is on the site of the old Marshalsea Prison, a debtors’ jail? That day, I sensed the bodies below my feet, cold and still. No money worries for you, I thought, letting myself smile a little as I weighed up whether to call Iain for another pep talk. I could just hear him say, C’mon girl. You’re better than all this shite. You’re a fighter. I took a deep breath and headed back to the office shortly after, ready, so I thought, for whatever came at me next.

  When I reached my desk, I’d just been cc-ed on a message:

  From: Acceptableinthenoughties@gmail.com

  To: g.lunt@leadership.uk

  Cc: k.ross@leadership.uk

  Subject: A note on the Editor

  Dear Publisher,

  I have important information on the current Editor.

  Are you aware that Katherine Ross runs her team like some kind of harem?

  She’ll take whatever she can. Brown, dark, and white. She’s not fussy as long as the flesh is young. Those poor interns will do anything for a leg-up. Some of them know exactly what it takes to get ahead. Shouldn’t your illustrious rag be thinking about safeguarding the young from what amounts to corporate rape?

  With concern

  In her office, I saw Gemma place the receiver down on her phone before getting up to call me into her office. My heart thumped, my legs, jelly.

  “Well, this is clearly wholly unacceptable,” she began.

  “Gemma, I honestly don’t know what this person is talking about.” In truth, Asif had made it onto staff around the same time our relationship became intimate. I didn’t connect the two, but I knew others did.

  “I’ve asked IT to delete it immediately. How do you feel?”

  “I’m shocked…Stunned.”

  “What I mean is, would you like me to take this any further?”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “You’d be within your rights to ask for this to be investigated.”

  “But?”

  “But I was wondering how you’d feel about that.” Her lips pursed and shifted to the left side of her face. She suspected you could have sent the trolling message.

  “I’m a bit shaken up, but I don’t feel the need to pursue any action as yet. Chances are it’s some sad case I’ve done a story on, wouldn’t you say? Some misogynist idiot who thinks he can put the brakes on a successful woman.”

  “I think you’re almost certainly right.”

  “So I don’t think we need to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’s rattled me.”

  “If that’s your decision, I’ll follow your lead.” She and I watched each other for a moment. “Well, I think you’d also be well within your rights to take the rest of the day off. Go home, have a nice cup of tea, and try to forget all about it.”

  She was desperate to get me out of there.

  “I think that’s exactly what I’ll do.”

  “And, Katherine, let’s keep this between just us. Stay united. Stay strong?”

  “Stay strong. You got it.”

  I returned to my desk, logged off, and put my jacket back on. You watched it all. You got up and approached my desk.

  “Katherine, are you off? I think you’re out of the office for the rest of the week at the photoshoot? I thought you might be too busy to remember we’re having lunch on Sunday? With Iain?”

  I was pleased you were confirming our arrangement, but when you said my partner’s name I instinctively cringed inside. It was as if I knew somehow what was going to happen. You’d said “Iain” like you already knew him and I didn’t like that. Lily, you didn’t know him, you still don’t know him, and you never will, not the way I did. You’ll also find you don’t know me very well, despite the closeness you manufactured when it suited you. “It’ll be so nice to talk, you and me, properly, outside of work. There are lots of things I wanted to tell you the other night,” and you sent that smile my way again. You apparently planned to share your secrets with me. For that, I couldn’t wait.

  “We’ll see you Sunday at The Brownswood about twelve. It’s usually packed by then, but we’ll be in there somewhere.”

  “That’s all right. Just wear that green leather you save for weekends. You’ll be easy to find!”

  “Right.”

  How exactly could you know I wore that jacket on weekends?

  I was so taken aback, I couldn’t think of anything to say to this. I stuffed my papers in my bag and all but ran out of the door.

  Had you been watching me even before you’d invaded my taxi on Monday?

  As soon as I got in, I told Iain what you’d said, but he dismissed it immediately. “You said yourself she lives this way. She’s just seen you about the neighborhood. What’s so weird about that? I reckon you’ve had a tough few days, so why not give yourself a break from thinking the absolutely worst scenario possible.” He started fixing me a gin and then gave my shoulders a massage, ostensibly trying to take care of me. But this was him taking your side. He would always take your side, from the very beginning t
o the very end.

  MARCH 7—KATHERINE THE CURIOUS

  It’s funny who you bump into when you least expect it. I’m in the big bike shop on the tip of London Bridge when I see Samira, my best friend at my second junior school. That was just before Mum and Gem both got fed up of me not being whoever they needed me to be and sent me away, as if a child is something you can order online and send back to Amazon if they don’t warrant a five-star review.

  I arrived late in the year at Samira’s school and there weren’t many girls to choose from, so I chose her. Samira had two parents, brothers, sisters, one roof over her head her whole life, and tons of money, but she thought her home life was far, far worse than mine. She had no idea, just like I had no idea of what living in a normal family would be like. Her main beef was being the youngest. She said she never got any attention at home. She didn’t know what luxury and freedom this was. Not to be scrutinized like I was, broken down into a series of parts, none of which measured up to whatever Mum and Gem thought I needed to be. Smarter, nicer, more normal. Samira told me she wrote poetry to help get her through.

  “OK.” I told her again and again, “you should really read them out in front of everyone. No one will laugh, they’re so amazing. Everyone will be jealous of you. Go on, ask Miss. You go, girl.”

  So, one day, she gets up to read one of her “best works” aloud.

  It was one of my earliest wins. It showed me how ready people are to believe what you say when you tell them exactly what they want to hear. It’s often as easy as that. As simple as a well-chosen compliment, or the right line of questioning to convince them their life is as interesting and exceptional as they’d like to believe it is.

  They say children are cruel. I knew that already from the last school, when they’d rounded on me for exposing some boy’s lies about his parents still being together. I knew a kid with a dysfunctional parental setup when I saw one. I called out his, they called out mine: I was a two-mum weirdo and had been dragged over the coals for it, especially when they found out I had a “rich mum” and a “cleaner mum.” But Samira had yet to discover the brutality of children. She deserved to be punished for not having any idea how lucky she was. When it was over, maybe she’d run home to her happy family and realize she had somewhere safe, away from criticism and cruelty. I didn’t know what that felt like, not until later, when I set up home with Ruth.