‘Nope.’
‘Nor a drunk, a drug addict, a psychopath, or—’ The hum of an engine cuts off my sentence. I glance at my sister in panic as an irrational thought swoops through me. This could be Guy again. Lucy’s sixth sense kicks in.
‘Ooh. Is this Mister Loverman?’ She stands and looks out of the window. ‘Well, there’s a man walking up the path and he’s rather lovely… No, hang on. No. This isn’t the bloke I’ve seen on Instagram.’
I work out that it’s Jamie before I even open the door, at which point Gertie bounds over and starts jumping up and down like she’s on a piece of string. ‘Down!’ I command. She ignores me completely.
‘Oh, she’s fine,’ he laughs, picking up the dog as her tail thrashes and she whimpers with pleasure. ‘Were you expecting someone else?’
‘No, come in, I’ve just put the kettle on.’
Jamie looks different today. I can’t put my finger on why because when I deconstruct his features they’re the same as always. The broad shoulders and thick waistline that suggests a hearty appetite and no interest in getting up before sunrise to do burpees. The dusty hair that is vaguely unruly, though I hesitate to use that word as it implies he even attempts to keep it in check. He has definitely caught the sun over the summer though; Grandma would’ve described him as brown as a berry and I make a mental note to remind him about the importance of SPF at some point.
I can see Lucy checking him out as they exchange introductions, before he lowers his thick lashes and says, ‘You know, if you’re busy I won’t stop. I haven’t even got a delivery – I was just passing and wanted to mention something to you.’
‘Oh, what is it?’
‘Well, you said the other day that you felt bad relying on your parents to walk Gertie. And I was thinking: I wouldn’t mind doing it. She’s a fantastic little dog. I’d love it.’
‘That is so nice of you,’ gushes Lucy, sliding a meaningful look in my direction.
‘It is,’ I agree. ‘But Dad walked her earlier. I don’t think her short legs would withstand another bout of exercise in one day.’
‘Ah, right. I’ll leave you to it then.’
‘Oh, don’t do that.’ Lucy leaps up. ‘Stay and have a drink with us. Ellie?’
‘Like I say, the kettle’s boiled,’ I tell him.
‘Oh, please. The sun is over the yardarm,’ Lucy says. It is five past five.
‘Sorry but I haven’t got any wine. The supermarket shop isn’t due until tomorrow.’
‘G&T then,’ Lucy grins.
‘All Jamie wanted was—’
‘I can mix a couple of cocktails if you like,’ he offers. I turn to look at him, surprised. ‘I told you I was a bartender once. It was my first job. Awful place with a manager who could’ve been running North Korea, but it did teach me a few things.’
‘Are you basically telling me you could rival Tom Cruise in Cocktail?’ I ask.
‘That might be a stretch but I can whip something up if you’ve got a couple of spirits and some odds and ends in the fridge?’
He asks for cranberry juice, ginger ale and angostura bitters, none of which I have. But I manage half a bottle of gin, sugar to make syrup and a lime that, he assures us, ‘can make anything taste good’. Lucy pops to Mum and Dad’s house and returns with a cocktail shaker and crystal glasses, setting them down in front of Jamie.
‘I can’t wait for this. Are you going to fling that thing over your shoulder?’
‘I’m not that good. In fact, you might want to take cover,’ he suggests.
He picks up a bottle, balances it on the back of his knuckles and flips it, catching it with the same hand in time to pour the liquid into the cocktail shaker.
‘Oh come on, you clearly are that good,’ my sister exclaims gleefully.
Except, he isn’t. Not really. But that’s what’s so funny about the whole thing. There is something faintly impressive but predominantly hilarious about the flair moves Jamie goes on to almost achieve. He rolls, he throws, he flings – and pulls it off not because his moves are smooth, but because they’re the opposite. Our favourite tricks are not the perfect ones, but those that leave him scrambling after the dropped cocktail shaker or chasing the dog when she trots away with a quarter of lime he inadvertently catapulted across the counter. At the end of these theatricals, Lucy is wiping tears of laughter away, as Jamie declares the result to be a ‘gimlet’, which he garnishes with evening primrose petals from the garden. However he made it, it is delicious – silky and sharp all at once.
‘Bloody good work,’ Lucy says approvingly. ‘It’s not a quick process though, is it? You must’ve ended up with one enormous queue of girls waiting to be served when you were a bartender. Or was that the idea?’
‘I was way too shy to chat up girls, hence resorting to acrobatics. Though, given the quality of them, you might wonder how I ever lost my virginity…’
‘How long have you worked for this garden centre then?’ Lucy asks.
‘Three months. It’s only really to fill in the gaps in freelance work.’
‘Jamie is a children’s book illustrator,’ I explain. ‘He’s like J. K. Rowling in Sweden.’
He snorts and shakes his head. ‘Hardly. Though I do have a bit of news on the books front.’
It turns out that the agent representing the author – Ulrika Sjöblad – has sold the book to publishers in six countries, including the UK. It will hit British shelves in time for Christmas and there is talk of a book tour in Germany. He’s been told it might involve a speech or two.
‘In German?’ I ask.
‘I do hope not. It’s stressful enough in a language I actually know. Public speaking isn’t really my thing.’
‘Everyone feels like that in the beginning,’ Lucy tells him. ‘I used to hate giving lectures.’
‘Come off it, Lucy. You’ve always been a big show-off,’ I say sceptically.
‘That’s where you’re wrong. I was worried sick every time I had to do it at first, but it gets easier – just like everything if you do it often enough. And before that, you just feel the fear and go for it anyway. Otherwise none of us would ever do anything worth doing.’
The way she glances at me makes this feel like a lecture, especially as I know Colette’s homework tasks are sitting on a sheet next to my bed, entirely uncompleted.
‘Excuse me a minute,’ I say, heading to the bathroom. When I return I find Jamie alone in the kitchen, dropping the strawberries I picked from the garden earlier into the blender.
‘Your sister has adjourned to the patio now the sun has come out,’ he says, screwing on the lid before setting the machine going.
‘What have we got here?’ I ask, raising my voice above the hum.
‘Strawberry Daiquiri.’ He opens it up. ‘I’ve gone easy on the booze though. It’s lethal if you don’t – so sweet you hardly notice the alcohol.’
‘This is turning into quite the party,’ I say, pushing my glass towards him.
‘Oh no, it has to be a clean one,’ he insists. I watch as he runs my glass under the tap, before drying it with a tea towel and pouring in the contents of the blender.
‘No decor on this one?’ I ask.
‘Not even a paper umbrella.’
I take a sip and lower my glass, realising his eyes have softened on my face. Warmth spreads from my neck to my cheeks and I wonder if it’s the alcohol or some vague nostalgia from our school days. He continues to hold my gaze beyond the point at which I can pretend it isn’t happening.
‘Pip,’ he says, out of nowhere.
‘Wh… what?’
He reaches out and his fingertip hovers an inch from my cheek before he presses it gently against my skin. My eyes half-close sleepily and, when he withdraws, my heart seems to expand into the space between us.
‘You had a strawberry pip on your cheek,’ he says, holding up his finger to show me the evidence.
I blink. ‘Right.’
Lucy appears at the door. ‘Just
wondered… oh, sorry. I’ll leave you to it.’
‘We’re coming now,’ I say, straightening up and following her out.
But this, it turns out, is only the start.
Jamie decides to leave the car and, as the sun sets behind the cherry tree, the rest of the evening unrolls into itself. We order pizza and make more cocktails. We play Primal Scream, Simon & Garfunkel and a dozen other forgotten albums. Jamie attempts to teach Gertie to ‘sit’ and fails miserably. We start an impromptu pop quiz – Guess the Intro – and I sweep to a decisive victory that’s no less satisfying for knowing that Lucy is only twenty-four and therefore files Girls Aloud under ‘classical’. We talk about politics and books and apart from when the subject of Grandma comes up, which makes me feel a bit wistful, it is predominantly an evening of rolling, helpless laughter.
When it finally ends in the early hours – with Lucy disappearing to her room across the garden and Jamie’s taxi arriving too quickly for goodbyes – I close the door and start to clear away the mess. As I pick up the chopping board and tip the remainders of strawberry stalks into the compost bin, it occurs to me with a surge of happiness that Jamie has become something that I haven’t had in a very long time: A friend.
Chapter 37
Having a sex life again has been a revelation, hedonistic in ways that I’d entirely forgotten were possible. I love how alive my body feels when I’m in bed with Guy, as well as the physical yearning I feel in anticipation of it. That said, things have changed since I was last doing it regularly – even if I have only endured years, not decades, of chastity. I’d watched Fleabag and worked out that sex these days is altogether more edgy than it used to be.
Despite this, when Guy slaps me playfully on the bottom midway through what began as a tender love-making session, my body tenses. At first I wonder if it’s an accident, then he does it again: a sharp little wallop with the flat of his palm that makes my flesh wobble. For the rest of the time he’s inside me, my brain works overtime, questioning if there’s something wrong with me for not finding this a turn-on. After all, it’s what people do in a post-Fifty Shades world.
‘That was amazing, wasn’t it?’ Guy says afterwards, as he curls me into his arm.
‘It was!’ I say, politely.
I get up to go to the bathroom and splash water in my eyes, feeling oddly empty. I decide to jump in the shower and when I emerge a few minutes later I find him propped up in bed, the swell of his muscular forearm behind his head. He lifts up the quilt and invites me to snuggle in. When he kisses me on the temple, it releases a swarm of relief in me that I wish would go on and on. But a thought pierces through me and I realise what the issue is. It’s not the bum-smacking. It’s something far bigger than that – and for as long as I fail to address it, things are never going to progress as they should between Guy and me.
‘I need to tell you something,’ I say.
‘Sure,’ he replies. He looks at my expression and something in it makes him anxious. He pushes himself up and swallows. ‘What is it, Ellie?’
I look him directly in the eyes. ‘I’m seeing a therapist. I’ve got agoraphobia. That’s why you and I never go out anywhere and only ever meet here.’
He blows a long trail of air out of his mouth, inflating his cheeks. ‘Oh, thank God,’ he chuckles. ‘Sorry, I was convinced you were going to tell me you had an STD then. Go on, please. Tell me all about your therapist.’
‘Uh… okay. Well, it’s going well,’ I continue. ‘She thinks it won’t be long before I’m back to my usual self.’
He nods. ‘That’s good. Really good to hear.’
I don’t know what to say then. His reaction feels subdued, but then that’s probably the best I could’ve hoped for when I’ve worried for weeks that this revelation would cause him to leap up and run out of the house.
‘So we should arrange to go out at some point, don’t you think? Maybe I could come to your place or meet your friends, or colleagues from the studio?’
‘Yeah, we’ll do that. Why not?’ he says, leaning in to kiss me. Before his lips make contact, I pull back.
‘Is there a reason why we only ever get together on Tuesdays and Thursdays?’
He shrugs. ‘Of course not. It’s just work and other commitments. It means I know not to arrange anything else on those days. It’s not a problem is it?’
‘No. Not at all,’ I say, because, for now at least, I’m in no position to suggest an alternative.
* * *
I dread the second session with Colette for reasons that go beyond my having to get there. But what’s bothering me more than anything – the fact that I haven’t done my homework – is not the first subject she homes in on.
‘You’ve been having nightmares again,’ she says, reading my sheet.
‘They’re not unusual when I’m feeling stressed.’
‘About Tabitha?’ I nod silently. ‘Would you like to try talking about her again?’
I bite the inside of my mouth. ‘Okay.’
I take this as her cue to fire questions at me, to thrash out what I remember from when I was a little girl and shove it down my throat until it comes out of my ears in a sane-shaped bubble. But she doesn’t say anything. For a while we just sit until I can’t bear it and start talking just to fill the silence.
‘She was the only thing that kept me going at the orphanage. She was my friend, though at the time I don’t think any of us really knew what the word meant. I worked out that she was being abused by a caretaker at the orphanage, or perhaps I’ve only worked that out since, I’m not entirely sure. She was supposed to be adopted, by an Italian couple, but it fell through. Then just before I came to the UK, she ran away.’
‘Do you know what happened to her?’
I shake my head. ‘She was never found by the authorities. But Mum found a picture recently. It was published in a French magazine about a year after I last saw her. She was homeless, living in the tunnels under Bucharest train station. Nobody knows what happened to her after that.’
Colette takes this in and seems to think carefully about her next sentence. ‘You were coming to see me for a long time before you mentioned Tabitha.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why do you think that was?’
‘Because she’s part of my past and I can’t talk about my past. I stopped a long time ago.’
‘But you were still wondering what happened to her? She’s been on your mind all this time?’
‘Yes,’ I confess. ‘I was obsessed with her when I first came to England. At first, I imagined her finding some happy family like the one I had. But as I got older, I worked out how unlikely that was. Now I’m an adult, it’s worse. I know what happens to little kids who run away and have to survive on the streets. They don’t end up like Hansel and Gretel with a happy ending. She’d be lucky to survive at all.’
‘But you don’t know that, Ellie. This awful, parallel life exists solely in your imagination.’
I look up at her, with a stab of annoyance. ‘Colette, I don’t know how much you know about Romania in the 1990s, but I’m not being overly pessimistic. Do you want to know what I really feel about whatever happened to her? Guilt. For getting what I got, when she got nothing. That’s what makes all this,’ I tap the side of my head, ‘so frustrating. I have no right to be messed up. There’s nothing you can say to me that will persuade me otherwise: I have no right at all.’
She takes off her glasses and leans on her elbows. ‘That’s not how it works, Ellie. You already know that. Everyone carries different-shaped scars. These are yours. And whether you realise it or not, you’re making progress.’
‘Well, I haven’t done my homework,’ I say, feeling suddenly contrary.
‘Which part?’
‘The part that said I had to leave the garden for a short, accompanied walk.’
‘Did you attempt it?’ I don’t answer, which is an answer in itself. ‘But you managed to come here.’
‘Only because I had t
o. My dad virtually bundled me in the car and put his foot down before I had a chance to tell him I’d changed my mind.’
‘I know it’s hard, Ellie. But don’t forget you can take someone with you on the first walk.’
I don’t think she realises how little that would help. The mere mention of a family member coming along would have them falling over themselves to be the one, then they’d make an enormous fuss throughout. Faced with the glare of their loving but suffocating gaze, I am convinced I’d prefer the unthinkable: to do this on my own. The question is, am I even capable?
Chapter 38
Something about the second session with Colette leaves my skin crawling. I can’t decide if it was talking about Tabitha or the idea of embarking on regular walks that keeps pounding me with waves of anxiety. Either way, I am on the verge of adding a pack of Marlboro Lights to my trolley during the online supermarket shop, when Mum appears at my door, carrying a bag from her favourite deli.
‘Why don’t you come over and eat with us tonight?’ she suggests. ‘I picked up a few treats.’
‘But you and Dad normally go for a drink with the Miltons on a Thursday. I hope this isn’t on my account?’ She doesn’t respond immediately. ‘Mum, I’m fine.’
‘I’m sure you are. Just… is everything going all right with Colette? You seem a little… I don’t know.’
‘I’m not a little anything,’ I insist.
‘All right then,’ she replies, lifting her hand in surrender. ‘You know where I am if you need me.’
The beauty of client confidentiality is that I don’t have to tell my parents about the homework. I could easily inform them that Colette set me the task of bingeing on Danish porn and Special Brew and they’d never be able to confirm anything to the contrary.
I can’t stop thinking about it though. The homework stays at the front of my mind for the next few days, including when I’m in bed with Guy, which doesn’t make ideal conditions for intimacy. Still, normal service has been resumed on that front: the moment I suspected he was contemplating slapping me again I performed a kind of stunt roll across the bed. He didn’t try it again.
The World at My Feet Page 18