Precious You

by Helen Monks Takhar

  “Christ…Fuck…I’ve—I’ve not really thought about it. No one’s really asked me. Fuck.” My only true talent. Being who they need me to be. He takes a couple of big sips of his vodka.

  “Go on. I want you to talk about this and write it up for next week. Honestly, it’s the sort of thing that’s going to really free your writing, your voice.”

  “My voice.”

  “Yeah, let you hear your own voice again. Maybe let someone else hear it too.” I decide it’s time to turn the night. I reach out and hold his hand. I stroke the base of his thumb with the tip of mine. I feel the small muscles in his hands pulse, a twitch of surprise before he holds himself still a few seconds before moving his hand to his face, taking a deep breath.

  “I love my girl. I love her more than anything or anyone in the whole world. She is my world. She’s stood by me thick and thin. She gets me. We get each other.”

  “Go on.” Go on, Iain, tell me everything. Give me all of it.

  “And there are some things I’ve had to let go. Things I don’t know if we can reverse…God. This is hard.” He takes another sip, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Kathy and me, well, you might have wondered, why don’t they have kids? I mean she told me early bells she didn’t want kids. Mother issues and then some. She told me our lives would be shite with kids. We’d never get anything done, you know, ‘pram in the hallway is the enemy of art’ or whatever. I brought it up, or tried to, early on. ‘Are you sure it wouldn’t be nice to have a wee Iain or Kathy running around?’ And she’d be like, ‘No. Why would we want to fuck up our lives and that poor kid by being its parents?’ I’d try again and she’d be like, ‘You want a kid? What comes next? A fucking savings plan for their education we can’t afford, barely getting pissed or going out ever again…The flat’ll be too small, so we sell up and move to fucking Enfield?’ And I’m thinking, ‘That doesn’t sound half bad,’ but she sticks to her guns, says it’s for the two of us to have a great life together, no one else, and that’s going to be enough.”

  I made a sympathetic face. “It was the right thing for her, but it wasn’t the right thing for you, was it? You wanted her to try harder for something you really wanted and now you feel you can’t have?”

  He nods, looks down at his drink. “Sorry, I can’t believe I’ve said all that. I need another. You?”

  “Please.”

  When he goes to the bar, I can tell he’s angry. I watch him down a couple of shots while he waits on the vodka tonics, before turning back to her manuscript. I need to get through as much as I can before it gets taken off me.

  The mother cannot hide her disgust when the girl’s breasts begin to show. She does not acknowledge the girl’s puberty by buying a bra for the child. As she grows, the girl is forced to improvise, tying a musty silk scarf she finds in her attic, binding her chest with a great cloth “X.” It’s when she does this, she realizes she’s gaining on her mother.

  There is power in this.

  The girl can choose to feel no shame, only intrigue over what she might be able to do with something of which her mother seems so petrified.

  This gives the girl some comfort, while her lungs burn as she loads the creep feeder, seeing the perfect opposite of her life for the thousandth time. Shaking the grain from bucket after bucket, the lambs crowd through the narrow bars that block the ewes from eating their children’s feed. Here, the young eat first. The proper natural order.

  They’re protected from their mothers’ needs. That’s how it should be, she thinks, her stomach growling angrily as she watches the creatures fill themselves. If her own mother wouldn’t put her first, she’d have to find some way of doing it herself.

  Protected from her mother’s needs.

  Yes. I get that.

  “There you go,” Iain says, plonking the drinks down.

  “In the nicest possible way, is this a thinly veiled autobiography?”

  “I’m not sure, I’m not too far through it yet.”

  I nod, wait a second before I ask him, “Iain, I want to hear, I want to understand how much not having a family has hurt you. I think it’s something you need to explore for you and for your writing too.”

  “It’s hurt plenty.”

  “And how does it hurt you, Iain?”

  “Let me count the ways. Walking through the park’s hard some days, when I see the dads with their lads, or in the pub with a little one in one arm, pint in the other, I think, I could see myself doing that. That could be me. And—” He’s really choked up now.

  “And?” I squeeze his hand again.

  Give in, Iain, give in to yourself.

  “And when I wake up of a morning, and think about the future, and do you know what I can see?”

  Give in, Iain. Give in to me, Iain.

  “Tell me.”

  “Nothing. I can’t see shite. It’s just blank. Just another day, another hangover, another night in. I start the day and don’t know if I’m going to get through another; how we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing, the same thing over and over; no change, no growth, no fucking joy.”

  He looks at me, hard.

  Gotcha.

  Almost.

  “Christ, look at me, gnashing on about all this sad shite. I’m sorry.” He wipes his eyes with the heels of both his hands.

  “It’s OK to hurt. It’s OK to want more from your life. I get it. I hear you.” I get off my seat and open my arms. He blinks, gets up slowly, and lets me hug him across the table. “I hear you,” I whisper again, my lips brushing his ear. He turns his head for more. I don’t give it to him, but we stay like this for a few moments. I angle my head a little closer, then I let my fingers run down his neck before slowly sitting down again. Our knees are still touching under the table.

  “You hear me,” he says, softly, not moving his knees either.

  “Yes…Do you want to know what I’ve always fantasized over, Iain? Would you like me to tell you the thing I ache for more than anything else?”

  He nods, I open my legs a little further. “Tell me,” he says.

  “Fucking the life out of someone amazing. Having their baby.”

  His eyes spark and his jaw slackens with disbelief before he gets himself together again enough to speak. “Is that so? And what is it, exactly, that would make ‘someone amazing’?”

  “It would have to be someone who wanted it deep down, and who really wanted me.”

  I wait a second before leaning forward again and, under the table, move my hand up his thigh to where his hardening cock waits for me. He doesn’t move. I’ve almost won.

  We finish our drinks quickly, looking right into each other. Anyone watching us would know exactly what he wants to do to me. I don’t know if it’s the booze or the fact that I feel quite sorry for him, but as he walks me across the road to the churchyard of the old St. Mary’s, I’m not repulsed. I’m curious.

  Then, when he kisses me, I like it. I actually really like it. Hands everywhere, he reaches down the front of my skirt and between my legs and moans when he feels me. He feels my youth, my readiness. Suddenly, he can see a future, a startlingly exciting future, and I feel a surge of power. I feel completely adored. It has been a while and I find myself almost giving him everything he wants in that dark alley, surrounded by fallen gravestones. But I can’t let him have it all, yet. I know how to play this game.

  “Iain, we can’t do this. We can’t do this to Katherine.”

  He pulls away from me and I can see saying her name has punched through his drunkenness.

  “Fuck. Fuck! What am I doing!”

  “Iain, Iain. No, please, it’s my fault. This is all on me.”

  “No, it’s me. It’s me. I’ve not stopped thinking about you since Sunday. I feel like I’ve known you forever. Christ, I’ve never had a longer week.”

/>   He looks at his shoes, then asks me, “Was there ever anyone else coming tonight?”

  “What will you do to me if I told you, no?” And at that he pushes me back against a tree and manages to get his hand under my bra. It is quite delicious how desperate he is. I was right: This bit was going to be by far the easiest part of my plan. I think I could enjoy him.

  But he can’t see my grand design yet. I have to look as if I’m resisting what I really want to do, for the sake of his partner, my new best friend. I know he feels like someone’s heard him for the first time in years, and not just anybody, but a young, hot someone. I’ll have to push him away first, maybe a couple of times. I make him stop, then take his hands and say, “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “I know. I know. What are we going to do?”

  “I really don’t know. I don’t think I can do this to Katherine. She’s not only my boss, but I also think she’s a really special person. I don’t think you can do this either. Not really. You love her too much. I know that’s why you were trying to put her, her work, between us. You were trying to stop yourself. You don’t have to feel guilty.”

  Some people really are just too easy.

  “God, you’re right. I think you’re right.” He stares into the middle distance. Mystified by himself.

  I kiss him on the forehead. “Walk me home?”

  We jump the fences to the park and it turns out I can’t resist letting him stop me in my tracks a couple of times to kiss me deep in the darkness. When we climb over the Green Lanes gates on the other side, he makes a joke of walking off his erection and we laugh. People would think we’re together. I can tell from the way he says, “Good night, Lily,” he already thinks he’s in love.

  MARCH 18—A WALK IN THE PARK

  We text each other on and off all morning. He knows it’s totally wrong, but he’d kill to hold me for just a minute. Me too, Iain. He can’t help it, but he can smell me everywhere. So, it’s not just me, then? He wants to know my pain. I want to hear your stories. He wants to see me shine. Perhaps we could make each other shine, Iain? Xx

  I know KR. She’s too cool to be a phone checker. She’s not there yet, but I’ll bet we’re not far off it now. She’ll start to notice things are moving soon enough.

  I watch them leave for the park from my window on the world. She comes out onto the front steps of their building first. Pretends to look around. Lets her eyes travel right up to my window.

  He locks up after her. While she spoons about her handbag looking for something she can’t seem to find, he turns the key and sneaks a little look up to my high-rise as well. Longingly, painfully. His body is with her, but the rest of him is up here with me. I can see it all. They walk out of their road and onto Green Lanes. I get my coat and slip out of my building. Something tells me I need to stretch my legs too.

  Such a sunny afternoon, perfect for a lovers’ stroll. Spring is really here. The wind feels urgent. It wants to blow in a new season. So do I.

  They trot along like nothing’s changed in their world. Like they haven’t a care. They walk through an avenue of pink trees and all the blossoms blow down onto them. I’m quite close now. I hear her laugh. She looks quite beautiful as she shakes the petals off her. She brushes some off him too. He holds her close and they kiss for a really long time, then kiss again. I can sense the years moving between them. Like a kind of magic. She’s glowing, shy like a school-girl. He looks into her face for a long time before they start walking again.

  Anyone would think they’re in love. But for how long?

  I start texting.

  I thought you might like to know what I’m doing right now. I’m thinking of your hands on my skin, how wet you made me, how much I’d like to slip myself onto your hard cock. I know it’s so bad, but I can’t help it. Am I bad? What should I do to myself next? Your Lil xxxxx­xxxxx­xxxxx­xxxxx­xxxxx­xxxxx­xxxx

  He fishes his phone from his pocket, holds it just out of her sight by his outer leg and reads it without her noticing. Straightens his jeans. Keeps walking, though he looks over his shoulder guiltily. But he doesn’t see me. He leads them toward The Rose and Crown. If he can’t have me now, the only other place he wants to be is the scene of the crime. Good sign, but I don’t think I can turn him properly with sex alone. I need to provide him with some continuity, or the illusion of it. A link to her. A signal. A chance at replaying the past he thought was lost. The possibility of a future he could still have. I walk past the pub. They don’t see me heading to a designer boutique on Church Street.

  I try on another oversized shirt, leather jacket, and an asymmetrical black dress for the awards. It’s so very KR, just the sort of thing she’d choose for her return to center stage. Sometimes I feel like I know her better than she knows herself. After I’ve paid, I get a text:

  I have to see you again, even if it’s just from afar. Ix

  Awards night used to be one of my favorite of the year. A chance to dress up, flirt with hundreds of people, be center stage, look great, and get laid in glamorous surrounds. But this was my twentieth Leadership awards, which of course didn’t include last year’s. This year, I was “fighting fit” despite the fact that I’d been summoned to the headmistress’s office on Monday morning to have the speech I managed to stitch together pulled apart, while I gazed out the window thinking how much I’d rather be running the “How was your weekend” gauntlet than being told how to write by your aunt.

  She’d used one of your tricks at the top of the show, asked if I was OK, checked again, that I was sure I was, indeed, “fighting fit,” before launching into a line-by-line takedown of my first cut. My total humiliation almost complete. I walked out with what looked like a highly classified document, heavily redacted. Whole sections scrubbed out to protect the world from my lazy writing. You saw it too, of course. I knew it wasn’t incredible, but I don’t know what she was expecting from me. She was more than happy to position you as the white knight who would save the awards day from my leathery clutches: “Katherine, Lily’s got slightly ahead of the game. She got the impression you might be struggling, so went ahead and drafted something to be delivered on the night, by you, of course, but in all truth, and this may be hard to hear, it’s her voice that’s really capturing where Leadership is and where we really need to be.”

  “I’ve already specifically asked Lily to stand down on redrafting for me. With the greatest respect, her voice is not my voice. I can’t see this working,” I told her, my anger rising. I’d seen this sort of behavior a thousand times in interns those last few years. You tell them not to bother doing something, they go off and do it anyway and then proudly present the fruits of their labor like a tabby cat with a dead blue tit. When I’d turned them down in the past, they’d go above my head to moan but would be turned away by my old directors. In this new world, all their complaints and ambitions were met with open ears. Your lot were getting it all now: the indulgent parenting transferred to workplaces where management let the thinness of your collective skin define the atmosphere.

  “Please, I’d like you to take a look. Read it through. Make it your own.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  I returned to my desk and tried to tune out the sound of the interns flogging eleventh hour tables for the awards. The ceremony, pegged in your redraft as “an inspiring celebration of true excellence in management,” was just another revenue stream; a means of separating subscribers from their budgets. The “shortlists” were shameless this year. Up to a dozen nobodies for each category, all with the aim of lengthening the interns’ call lists and deepening Leadership’s ailing profits. The horror of what they were turning my magazine into.

  I tried to think of reasons not to walk out of there. But my flat was already starting to feel less like home. Iain and I had a good enough weekend on the surface, but those small, devastating things kept happening. When we wa
lked to the shop, he kept turning around, looking back over his shoulder. He seemed to go to a private place in his head when we watched a film. He even held back on his drinking. He ate less. Nothing you could point to as evidence specifically, but very small things told me something was shifting. I felt more alone than ever.

  I knew you were due in from a sponsors’ meeting soon, but I couldn’t let you see me this down. So, off I went to St. George’s, turned my back to the office building to find a way of leveling myself out. From, I can’t do it anymore, to, I have to take it, to, Find a way to make today a good day, all the way to, Today is a good day.

  I left the graveyard on a superficially even keel, but you were about to rock me off my guard in a way I couldn’t have imagined.

  When I got back to my desk, I was considering some kind of move on the offensive. I was going to allude to the fact that I couldn’t give a shit if you’d seen me with Asif, or that I’d seen you with him in the park, and all my moment with him had done was warm me up for a hot weekend with my partner. My partner. I’d held my own happily against the other women Iain had been with while he was with me. This was me. This was us. I could do it again, stand firm, particularly because I knew, I always knew, it was me you were really trying to get the attention of. What happened next only served to confirm this, albeit in the most disturbing way possible.

  You’d taken whatever you thought you were doing to me to a whole new level. You were shameless now. How intimately had you been studying me, unpacking every detail of my appearance, the way I move through the world? It chilled me to the core.

  Because through the double doors that morning, in blasted my past; a sickly dazzling reminder of me at the height of my powers, the days gone by that I’ll never get back. The days that now belonged to you. At first I couldn’t process what I was seeing, as if I didn’t want to confront this new act of war, this blatant move to take yet another pillar of my identity away. Had I actually met you before we shared that cab? I thought for a split second. Was that why you looked suddenly so familiar, like someone I once knew but just couldn’t place?