Precious You

by Helen Monks Takhar

  “What kind of choices?” I felt his chest heat below me, his blood quicken.

  “Really big ones.”

  “Such as?”

  I brought my head up to look at him square in the face. “I think I was wrong about us not trying to have a family. I was thinking maybe, we should start thinking about it.”

  Stillness at first, then he sat up in a way that meant I had to parry out of his way or get an elbow in the face. “Fuck me. Fuck me, Kathy. Why? Why now?”

  “I don’t know. The dream; this dream that’s tormenting me every time I close my eyes. I want us to have a family. I think that’s what I need to make me deep-down happy. To make us deep-down happy. I mean it’s kind of obvious, really.”

  “Obvious, is it? Well, it wasn’t fucking obvious ten years ago when we might have had a chance with all that.”

  “Hey! I’m only forty-one! I could still do this.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I don’t know…Do you want me to be?”

  “Fuck, Kathy. I don’t know. You have a fucked-up dream and suddenly you want a baby? A kid?”

  He hadn’t been looking at me, but at the last sentence he turned to stare me in the face and I felt the full power of his resentment, like a heat lamp burning down on me. I thought he’d fallen in love with me because I wasn’t like women his age, soft and needy, ragging for children and “normality” and to straighten him out for sobriety and fatherhood. I let him be him by being me. I facilitated the life I believed he wanted and that I wanted too. Laughter. Sex. Lots of sex and with other people from time to time. But we were older now. I was still me, but now that wasn’t enough anymore. Another middle-aged woman whose man was going off her. Me, finally getting all caught up with my feminine archetypes after all those years of fighting them.

  “What do you mean? I’ve made mistakes in the past about our life and now I’m being honest. It’s taken a long time to unpick my childhood. You’d be terrified about what kind of parent you could be if you had a mother like mine. But not anymore. I want to think about the future now.”

  He said nothing, closing his eyes as I spoke.

  “I can’t believe this. I just…can’t quite believe it,” he said eventually.

  “Why would I lie to you about something like this?” My tears finally came.

  “I don’t know!” he shouted. “I don’t know,” he said quietly, turning to me and moving my flop of hair away from my eyes. “Fuck me, you know how to keep surprising me. Is this for real?”

  “Yes. It is real.”

  He sighed. “This is big. Let’s just let this sit with us a while. OK?”

  We were quiet for a minute while the explosion settled. We laid on our backs, the white ceiling looming over us, not touching. After a while, he reached out and found my hand. “Come on, let’s go for a walk.”

  We ambled over to the park, hand in hand, passing through a row of cherry blossom trees. A sudden gust of wind stripped them near-bare of their toilet-roll-colored blooms. I laughed like you would in a film, a love story. But it was a little too loud, and the way I shook the petals from my hair and brushed them off his shoulders, the corniness of it all took me over. I was suddenly embarrassed by the whole scene. But I still wanted my love story. I wanted to believe it was all real and everything was as it should be. Iain kissed me long and tenderly. But what I felt in the love of that kiss was a kind of sympathy.

  We stopped, he held my head in his hands and kissed me again and pulled me into a hug.

  “I love you so much, Katherine. Despite—” He let it hang.

  “Despite what?”

  “Nothing…Nothing.”

  And we looked at each other for a second. He searched my eyes, looking for something we were losing, or maybe something I alone had lost all by myself.

  “Come on, where do you want to drink then?” I asked him.

  “Thought I might head back to The Rose and Crown. I’d forgotten how much I like that place.”

  “Wherever you like.”

  I spent the rest of the day trying to be cool Katherine; perfectly ripe me. I enabled him in drinking more, though he seemed less bothered than he would be normally. I talked up the fun we’d have at your party. I kept talking about you, bringing the conversation around to what the party house would be like, how posh it would be, how snowflakey and entitled your friends would be, how mad we were going to make it all.

  “We’ve still got it, me and you, haven’t we? No matter what we decide on what happens next.”

  “That we do.” He squeezed my hand across a tiny table in the corner of the pub.

  * * *

  —

  THE NEXT MORNING, as I headed out for my normal Sunday run, who did I see strolling in through the Green Lanes gate?

  You.

  You with Asif.

  I made it to a nearby clump of trees to watch you. Hand in hand, walking slowly, steam rising from your organic, fair-trade, caffeine-free, fucking weird non-coffee. I’d guessed Asif had succumbed to you too, now I knew for sure you were the one he’d “started dating.” I could see clearly he was well and truly suckered. I don’t remember him ever looking at me the way he was looking at you. It was obvious he was yours to do whatever you wanted with. You’d successfully removed my only ally at work. Now I really was alone there. What were you planning to steal from me next? I had to get to that party and be the reporter; discover the who, when, why, what of you. If I didn’t get one step ahead of you now, everything I cared about could be yours for the taking.

  MARCH 17—CREATIVE WRITING NIGHT

  I’d been wondering if she’d be able to resist muscling in on my “writing group” with Iain after Thursday. In fact, I was seriously worried. I was already on the edge after she said she’d seen my trunk. She would have seen my real initials. But watching her going at Asif like that, I couldn’t have planned it better myself.

  “This is very bad, Asif,” she says, practically rubbing herself on him.

  “What is?” the poor clueless boy says back.

  Suddenly, she grabs his hand and puts it on her, starts moving it around, and kisses him full-on like a horny teenager.

  He looks like he didn’t know what hit him.

  She sees me at the door mid-move. Asif looks down, trying to catch his breath. The look in her eyes—I knew she’d definitely leave me and Iain alone tonight.

  Asif calls me five minutes later.

  “I don’t know if you saw anything just now? With Katherine?”

  “More than I wanted to.”

  “I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to do anything with her. I guess I’m still a bit flirty, that’s what she likes, but it’s not like that, not anymore.”

  “Asif, please don’t worry. I completely understand what it’s like for you with her. Want to catch up over the weekend? Come to Stoke Newington on Sunday?”

  * * *

  —

  WHEN IAIN GETS to the pub, he looks anxious. He’s cleaned himself up. He doesn’t look half bad, I guess. I’m waiting for him on a barstool.

  “Hi, Lily. Where are we then?” He’s very nervous. He should be.

  “This is ‘we,’ I’m afraid. Everyone else cried off. Sorry, you’ll have to put up with just me. I bought you a double Grey Goose to say sorry.” I hand him a drink.

  “You dancer,” he says and takes a huge gulp. “It’s probably for the best it’s just you and I. I’ve not let anyone read my stuff for so long. I’ve been bricking myself if I’m honest, Lil.”

  “What do you need to be nervous for?” I turn my body to him and tuck a strand of hair behind my ears, gazing at him while he speaks. He blushes.

  I lead him to a tiny table in the corner that no one ever wants because you have to practically sit in the other person’s lap to fit around it. Our legs will
be touching from the off.

  He was insanely complimentary about the bit of rubbish I sent his way ahead of our meet. An abstract short story about drowning I’d written during my exile after they kicked me out of Leeds. Iain’s stuff was so-so, I guess. A bit shallow. He’d shown me the start of a script for a piece of comedy theater. It was funny in parts, but I wanted to know: What is he trying to say? What’s the message? He doesn’t know.

  “Do you know, Lil, I haven’t really thought about it.” He looks stung by this bit of self-awareness. Softening up nicely.

  “But there’s so much warmth to it. This comes from such a generous place. It really makes you want to get closer to the material.” I blink at him.

  “Really? Well, that’s something, then. Funny, Kathy always used to say something like that. The way I used to write copy, in my agency days, always brought people in. She said she didn’t know how to do what I do.”

  “Wow. That’s really…sweet.”

  “Can I tell you something?”

  “Anything.” I draw my chair in, so he’s practically touching my sweater with the back of the hand that’s wrapped around his tumbler. I’m thinking I could probably turn the night right there and then, but then he dips down and starts rifling through his backpack.

  “I tried to dig out the last thing Kathy wrote. Couldn’t find it, but I did find her first manuscript. She’d kill me if she knew, she’s never even let me read this one. But you seem to have made quite the impression on my girl, got under her skin, for want of a better expression, and you seem to know your stuff when it comes to writing. Would you maybe have a little look and see what you think? Maybe we can think about how to get her going on her own stuff too? It might really help her feel like herself again.”

  He handed me her manuscript. Just like that. A portal to her inner thoughts in the palm of my hands.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Just say you’ll have a little read, have a little think. Maybe we could compare notes next time? Try to help her? Right, I’m off to get us another pair of these,” he says, scooping up our glasses.

  “OK, I’ll make a start now.”

  CREEP FEEDER

  By Katherine Ross

  “The animals eat before you,” her mother tells her over and over. Every day, when she’s rocked awake at 4:30 in the morning. It’s hard in the summer, heart-stopping in the winter. She asks for food, a bit of bread to stop her stomach from attacking her. Every morning, she’s told the same thing: she’s at the bottom of the pile, ahead of her are 500-odd ewes roaming clueless on the poor soil her mother refuses to feed too.

  There was a time when the girl wanted to know why her mother puts the minimum food into her own body, why she goes to bed before the sun goes down, why she provides only minimal care for the sheep, the land, and the daughter. But the girl has decided her mother doesn’t deserve these inquiries. When the mother is so disinterested in the girl, why should the girl bother?

  The land was starving, that’s what the shearers said.

  With her father gone, the farm was dying and so was the girl. Something had to change. The shearers said that too.

  Sometimes the girl wished the very air would change. Sometimes it seemed too clean. On a clear spring morning, the kind of day that dickhead ramblers would flurry over the footpath at the edge of the far paddock, the air was so pure, it made her nostrils burn. A hundred and fifty years her mother’s family had worked this land, this air, but it seemed to oppose the girl’s flesh and bones. That clean air was no good for the girl at all.

  He was back already. Part of me was gutted, but also glad. I didn’t want to rush reading it, though I was so tempted. I wanted to suck the nutrients out of every word, extract every drop of meaning. It was like seeing across time and into her soul.

  “This is really something,” I said and I meant it.

  “You think? That’s great.”

  “Can I take this copy home?”

  “I was thinking, how’s about you read what you can now and let’s meet up again really soon so we can talk about it together? I reckon if the two of us told her that her writing was maybe worth something, she’d properly get on the mend again. I mean, she’s doing OK now, but I know Kathy, she’s doing her best, but she’s not there yet. I think if she’s going to get past it, she needs to go back to the start, remember what she wanted to be and try again. It’s not too late for her.”

  I nod. “Is she…I don’t know how to put it in the right way, obviously she’s back at work now, but I agree with you, she still seems pretty…troubled.”

  He rubs his forehead. “I think it’s fair to say, you’ve probably not seen the best of Kathy. This past while’s been really rough on her. How it all went to shit at the magazine. She didn’t really see how bad it was getting until it was probably too late and by then, your aunt’s lot came in. Nearly twenty years of her life, about to go down the drain. Sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down. She’s been more down than up in the past few years, but she’s a tough girl. I should think you’ll know that, working for her!”

  “I’ve heard she can be pretty hard on some of the interns, probably because they’re not pulling their weight? But she’s kind of left me alone in that respect. I really think we’d be really good friends if we didn’t have to work together.”

  He believes me, of course.

  “Well, you had her pretty hammered yesterday. Did she seem OK when she left yours?”

  “I’d actually fallen asleep by then. I thought we had a great time. Did she tell you? I’m a massive Smiths and Morrissey fan too?”

  “Well I never.”

  “We were tooling about my place like no one’s business.”

  “I would have liked to see that.” Here’s a decent segue.

  “Hey, do you guys fancy getting out of town? I’ve got this party next week, some old school friends, just outside of Haywards Heath. Wanna come? Come on, I’ll make sure there’s plenty of Smiths on the playlist.”

  He laughs. “Why in heaven and hell would you want old farts like us hanging about, cramping your style?”

  “You’re not old. Listen, do you guys know how sexy you are?”

  “Sexy?” he laughs, blushes again. He pulls his T-shirt off his torso and looks around. He wants to hear more. He wants to believe it’s really true.

  “For sure. You’ve both still got it. Katherine’s cool as fuck, and you…” I start, and he grins at me, but I say nothing.

  Go on, meet me in the middle, Iain.

  “And me what?” he says after a second.

  “Well, you must have had more than your fair share of admirers?”

  “I may have, from time to time, but not for a while.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Well, it’s no real secret to say Kathy and me, we’ve technically had what other people might term an ‘open relationship,’ but, you know, with her being ill and all, it’s not really been on the menu, so to speak.”

  “Oh, OK,” I say, making a show of shaking off some visible doubt that’s made me uncomfortable, then trying to pretend everything’s just fine. It works. He looks at me, waiting for more. “Nothing. I’m sure it’s nothing at all. Sorry. I didn’t mean to make things awkward.”

  “Lily?”

  He has an idea who Katherine Ross is. I breathe first before saying, “It was some of the interns, talking some shit the other day.”

  “Talking about what?”

  “About Katherine. And Asif.”

  “Well, that happened, a while back. He was getting a bit much, so we put the kibosh on it.”

  I nod, before quickly changing the subject. “These are going down great. Another?” He finishes his drink before putting his glass down on the table. I watch him from the other side of the bar. His doubt in “Kathy” seems to be growing.
He looks uncomfortable, but he doesn’t look susceptible yet.

  We talk some more, mostly about all the things he’s been thinking about writing, which I respond to accordingly. “Wow, that’s so creative. It’s rare to come across someone with such originality. Special.” And, “An agent would be a fool not to snap you up. If I were them, that’s what I’d do, I’d claim you as soon as I could.” But he’s not biting yet. Suddenly, it’s getting late and I’m running out of time. He pulls out his phone and starts texting her, inevitably. Be home soon, babe xxx or something totally co-dependent like that. If I can’t get to him tonight, I might not have enough time before she works everything out, because she will. Secrets always ooze out eventually, no matter what people wrap around the truth.

  I try another tack. “Iain, if there’s one thing I want you to take away from our night together, it’s that you’ve got great writing in you. So, next time, I want to read something that’s really you, right from here.” I place a finger on his chest, his heart.

  “Christ, I’ll have to see if I know how!”

  “ ’Course you do, you could do it now if you wanted to. In fact, I’ve got it…I want you to tell me the one thing you’ve always really wanted but never had. It has to be something that can’t be changed, something you have to live with forever.”

  “So, I can’t say not winning a BAFTA for best screenplay, because that could still happen, right?”

  “Totally. It has to be something you can’t change, but you would if you could.”

  “Right. Shit. Can I have a bit of a think?”

  “What, you don’t know it straightaway? I wonder if someone really needs to think about this question, maybe they’ve been suppressing something? Perhaps you’ve been blocking lots of things you’ve wanted deep down?”

  He swallows. His eyes fill. He puffs out his cheeks and looks at the ceiling. Jackpot.