I didn’t hear Asif come up behind me.
“K? I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” he said. “How are things going?”
“It’s not been the greatest week.”
“Oh yeah? I mean, do you want to tell me about it?”
He was using what used to be our old code for spending some time with each other. It always started with some innocent comment, and a brief chat over a bottle of beer or whatever other booze was hanging around in the kitchen’s fridge. “I really shouldn’t…Oh fuck it, go on then. Hit me up, then. Go on.”
“Oh, OK. I’ll see what I can find.”
He disappeared into the kitchen corner and returned with an opened screw-top bottle of white and two cloudy tumblers. He poured quickly, splashing drops all over my desk. “So, what’s going on with you?”
“Well, you would have seen me being trotted in and out of Gemma’s. In and out constantly. Then, of course, there’s Lily.”
He sat up straighter. “What about Lily?”
“She’s always watching me, trying to trip me up. You know we were out at this copy camp thing yesterday? She derailed the whole thing. And you know she got Gemma to buy this place? But do you also know she’d been stalking me around my neighborhood before she’d even started? Watching me leave my flat every day, following me. Writing some creepy blog about seeing me. Then, I also have this troll that sounds a whole lot like her. It’s all too weird, isn’t it?”
“Why did Lily say she was following you?”
“She said I’d caught her eye or something. I mean, she’s weird, isn’t she?”
“I don’t know, I think she’s really great, I guess. But if you’re worried about something, why not just talk to her? She’s really easy to talk to.”
He put his hand on my arm and I felt a familiar but almost forgotten jolt of desire move between us.
“This is very bad, Asif.”
“What is?”
And before I really knew what was happening, he was roughly grabbing my breast, and I suddenly realized how I’d missed that sort of thing. Iain had become so tender, so caring, so tentative since I’d got sick, it was kind of getting on my nerves. Asif and I kissed with force, with urgency, and fuck, it felt so good. I went to free myself from my shirt and it felt like the last two years hadn’t happened. I’d missed this; I’d missed feeling like myself. I had a taste of the old me and I liked it. Everything felt so good.
Right up until the point I saw you.
Inside the security double doors, peering into the office. Come back to check on me, had you? I suppose I mustn’t have disappointed, because on seeing me with half my tits hanging out with Asif, you doubled back on yourself. A fluster of initial shock, then a ripple of determination, right before you turned to leave, heading north to get yourself ready to meet my partner with a fresh new angle on me.
“Her. Again.”
“Who?”
“Lily.” I pointed to the doors behind us. Asif turned, but by the time he was facing the door, you’d disappeared.
“Where?”
“She was just there!”
“Shit. Are you sure? I really don’t think there’s anyone there.”
“She was…Anyway, Asif, sorry, I’m late. I’ve got to go.”
I buttoned myself up again, thinking it was around the same time the day before when I’d been doing the exact same thing after you. I switched my machine off with one hand and wrestled my jacket on with the other. You could be over the bridge by now. I needed to move.
“What was it you needed to say to me? You wanted to tell me something?” I hitched my bag roughly onto my shoulder. “Well, it could be nothing, but I overheard Lunt Senior mention something or other about a questionable expenses case you’d put in? Something about a £66 cab fare on expenses? Just thought I’d give you the heads-up.”
“Fine. I’ll add it to the list.”
“I’m only the messenger, Katherine.”
“Sorry. Look, I’ve got to go. Talk to you next week, all right?”
“Sure.”
As I hurled myself down the steps and out the door, toward a bus I would will with all my might to get me home in time to have sex with my partner before he laid eyes on you again, I swear I could still smell your scalp in the stairwell.
* * *
—
I SAT, AS USUAL, toward the front of the top deck. I glanced out the window, noticed my jaw tightening in the glass, before turning my gaze to the roads below.
And there you were on your bicycle, sneaking into the sliver of air between my bus and the curb, racing north ahead of me to meet Iain. Viewing you from on high, I couldn’t see your blinding smile or your dark eyes, but only a young woman who was certainly out to take something from me. I dared the bus to inch too close to the pavement, toward you.
I watched openmouthed as you peeled away from me, turning west down London Wall toward Barbican.
Not you, but someone just like you. From where I was sitting, you lot all looked the same.
When I put my key in the front door, I could hear music, Iain’s music, Jesus and Mary Chain, vibrating through the shared hallway. Iain never played music in the evening. Not normally.
When I got inside, I caught him prodding his midriff again. He’d had a shave. He never did that in the evening either. His bomber jacket was already on; I was too late.
“Hey, where’ve you been? Thought I was going to miss you.”
“You look good. Time for a quick one before you go?”
“Ah, love, no. I don’t want to be late from the off. The old man wants to make a good first impression with the whippersnappers!”
“OK. When you come back, then.”
I nearly told him I’d wait up, before realizing how pathetic I’d sound. That wasn’t me.
“Definitely.” He kissed me and went to meet you and your cronies with what could only be described as a spring in his step.
“Wish me luck!” he shouted back up to me as he descended the communal stairs.
Don’t go, please, don’t go. I’m begging you, Iain, know you need to turn around right now and stay here, with me.
“Good luck,” I whispered. How he’d need it with you. Poor Iain didn’t have a chance.
I went to the living room and switched on my laptop. When I heard the front door close, and it was just me and my computer, I had the overwhelming sense this was my future.
Home alone on a Friday night, I sat staring at boarding schools’ websites; pictures of gleaming children, and no hint of their inevitable inner turmoil. There were somewhat sickening “visions” and “mission statements” like: To develop the individual’s full potential through the pursuit of the exceptional…To nurture independence of spirit in preparation for adult life; and much-harder-to-find details on fees.
I finished one of Iain’s bags of wine and called the one you must have gone to when you were sixteen or seventeen. I got through to the switchboard and rang the extension for one of the girls’ dorms. It rang for a long time until someone picked up, a housemistress, I suppose.
“Mrs. Farnaby speaking. How may I help you?” came a foggy voice.
“I’m trying to track down an acquaintance. I have some important information for her. She was with you a few years ago, when she was sixteen, seventeen. Her name is Lily.”
“Lily.”
“Yes. I’m afraid I—she won’t reveal her second name.”
“Who are you? Could you possibly call back in office hours?”
“I’m afraid it’s urgent.”
A long pause.
“By any chance are you some kind of health professional?”
“I’m not able to say.”
“Well, regardless, we wouldn’t give out personal information about a former pupil. We have to guard their pr
ivacy, no matter who they are, or what they may have done. If you were to approach us in writing, we could pass your details on, but otherwise, we can’t take this any further. It goes without saying that if someone is in any immediate danger, you should hang up and dial 999. Good night.”
The phone deadened.
Health professional. You’d been to a lot of schools. You seemed to last no more than a year, two years tops at each. Your mother and Gemma had shipped you off all over the place: Sussex, Norfolk, Dorset, even my own Derbyshire. No wonder you were screwed, but what was wrong with you to deserve being moved around like that?
I thought I could hear someone coming up the front steps and checked the time. Nearly eleven. My partner had been out with you and your creative coterie for almost four hours. I imagined the rest of them would have left by now, leaving just you and him. I was thinking about texting to say I was taking a night stroll and joining you for last orders in The Rose and Crown when I got a text from Iain:
Havin one mor, thn be home. Xxxc
So he was pissed and would be back to me soon. The Iain I knew. All was well-ish in the world, then. One of the many things my partner loved about me was my ability to accept exactly who he was and my apparent absence of jealousy. That sort of thing was for lesser women; the closed-minded, the habitually monogamous, the provincially persuaded. We were far too cool for that. If anything, our affairs in the past powered us higher and closer. But that was then. We were different. I was different, more alive. Now you were the one full of life, so much life it had the potential to destroy us.
By midnight Iain still wasn’t home. I tried to nap on the sofa, couldn’t, so texted Asif:
Hey there. You in bed? Xxx
This used to be the cue to start sexting, but I didn’t get an answer for twenty minutes. Eventually, he sent this:
Hi. Bit knackered. Started dating someone this week. You ok? xxx
I didn’t bother texting back.
When Iain finally came home that night, two and half hours after his last text, he spent a long time in the bathroom with the tap running. I pretended to be asleep and dared not ask why.
People change.
The next morning, I was awake before Iain. I checked my phone while I was still in bed. Acceptableinthenoughties had sent another message to Gemma and me:
Subject: Katherine Ross: an urgent appeal for change
You either need to put the old girl out to pasture, or do something about her writing, because I don’t know what I’ll do if I have to read another fucking turgid piece of so-called “insight.”
I emailed Gemma:
This is putting me under a lot of pressure and distress. I think I can ride it out, but what do you think we should do? KR
She texted me from her personal number:
I’ll do whatever you would like me to do. Let’s discuss on Monday if you still need to. Any further thoughts on who this might be, out of interest? GL
I drafted a message back:
No. You?
Then deleted the “You?” It didn’t feel like quite the right time to push it, yet.
But I knew her game—she was trying to avoid an email trail on this. This could only mean she was very worried it was you, as any right-minded person would be. The major difference being, she was out to protect you by managing your mischief, when it was my mission to remove every layer of your pretenses so we could all see who you really were.
I turned to Iain. He was fast asleep/unconscious, so I ended up getting out of bed first. This virtually never happened and I wasn’t sure how to fill the minutes before he joined me. They dragged and dragged. You’d made me feel like a waiting fishwife again; primed, ready to unleash on my partner, arms crossed over my wizened chest.
Eventually, he ambled into the kitchen where I was attempting to make waffles.
“Morning. How’s you? You were in late.” I tried to keep my voice as neutral and non-pathetic as possible, suggesting that me “rustling up breakfast” was totally normal, as if I knew exactly what I was doing underneath the clouds of flour and spills of milk, as if it was not a desperate attempt to pass time and appear cool and in control of my paranoia.
“I know. I don’t know where the time went. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. How was it then? What were they like?”
“Oh, as you’d expect.”
“So…”
“So?”
“Tell me stuff!”
“It was faintly excruciating, but essentially liberating.”
“Liberating?”
“Yeah, after all these years, talking about my stuff, my ideas. It’s been a while.”
“And do you feel inspired? Are you going to keep at it? What did you take? What are you working on?”
“I’ve kind of revived an old script.”
“Right. You didn’t say exactly what you’d taken.”
“Well, you didn’t exactly ask. Here, let me do that.” He relieved me of the stupid waffle iron I was ham-fistedly trying to oil.
“I’m sorry,” I said. He shook his head faintly as I spoke. I went on, not knowing what else to do. “I know I’ve been really wrapped up in work. Gemma. Lily, for God’s sake. What do you make of her, really? What was she like in her natural habitat?”
There was a stillness to his face as he worked some greasy kitchen roll into the dimples of the iron, a studied unstudiedness, wholly unnatural; Iain shutting me out.
“I think she’s just a young woman, trying her best to get along…Are you having one, or were you just doing them for me?”
“For you.”
“All right, well, some of this might end up in the bin. I can’t eat all this.” He viewed the gloppy batter I’d cobbled together with unhidden disgust.
“I thought you’d be hungry.”
“I am, I just can’t be eating so much.”
He was self-improving. Not because of me, because of you. I knew that.
Later on we shagged and it was good. It wasn’t an absentminded Saturday shag, it was focused. Iain did everything I liked and more. It felt like how we used to be. But I couldn’t help but worry, was he thinking about you? Worse: Was he practicing his best performance, building up his confidence to be with you?
Afterward, in bed, he told me you’d invited us to a party the next weekend somewhere in Sussex.
“Could be fun. Get out of town for once. We’ve not been to a decent house party in donkey’s. Let’s show the Snowflakes what us old ravers are made of.” And he sounded like him.
Me and him Iain, Back to ours Iain. But it wasn’t this that made me say yes.
Because this could be a chance to really probe who you were, to investigate you, grill your friends. You hadn’t come out of nowhere to bring me down. If I asked the right people the right questions, I could tap the truth at its source. I wouldn’t fluff my questions this time. And then there was that other, lonelier voice calling out of me, Maybe I’ll get to dance with Lily again. Maybe it was all in my head. Maybe everything will be all right. This was how low-hanging my life was, overripe fruit, waiting for you to take it down with ease.
“Sure. Why not? Maybe we could get a nice B&B. Make a weekend of it?” I said.
“The Ross-McIvors are ready to party!”
“Apparently so.” I kissed him and lay myself down.
“Why don’t we get something in? A couple of Gs?” Iain asked me.
“Fuck, did I wake up in 1990-something!?”
“Come on. We remember how to party, don’t we?” He wanted to feel young again. He wanted to be young again, for you. “Let’s have a look-see if I’ve still got a dealer’s number.”
He went to scroll through the contacts on his phone, but then turned away slightly, so I couldn’t see the screen. Small
things that speak of the disturbance below. “There he is. Still there. What do you reckon, two?”
“You do know millennials can’t afford coke? We’d better get more in if we’re going to do this. Maybe we could sell a bit on.” I can be young again too, Iain.
He started texting. “You’re a funny girl.”
“Well, either we do that, or they hoover up all our drugs for nothing.”
“OK, you know best. Here we go. I’m writing the text, 4 pls mate, I’m doing it, I’m going to do it. You gonna stop me?”
“Just do it!”
He thumbed his phone. “And it’s done!”
“And you’re a funny boy.” I kissed him and stroked his hair back off his forehead, his sweet, boozy scent my one true home.
“You know I love you,” he told me and I sensed an unspoken “but”; a “but” waiting in the wings for me. I love him so. Please don’t leave me. Not for you, Lily. Not for anyone. We need each other.
“And I love you.”
And we shagged again, but this time I believed it was all for me. He’d not gone yet, but there was more I could do.
It had started as an idle thought perhaps a week earlier. A small notion, one I’d chosen not to look in the face. But with the creeping sense of my partner slipping away from me, I decided to nourish it, force-grow it to its fullest scale. My head on Iain’s chest after sex, as it had been ten thousand times before, I said to him, “Iain, I have something to tell you.”
“Go on.”
“For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been having this really sad, awful, recurring dream. There’s me, twelve-year-old me, at the farm, trying to reach this gate. I try to open it. I don’t know why, but I can’t. Something always stops me. This dream…I wonder if it’s trying to tell me I’ve made some…some choices I should have approached differently.”
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