Pretending: The brilliant new adult novel from Holly Bourne. Why be yourself when you can be perfect?

by Holly Bourne

  The usual knee-jerk of emotions scurry in. Euphoria! He messaged! He likes me! I like him! I’ve not imagined the attraction! Human beings can meet and like each other and make it into a thing and I can be one of those humans! I can do relationships! I can totally do them! There’s nothing wrong with me after all! Yes! Oh I like him so much! Gordon’s! What an idea! I love that place! I hate it normally but it’s so perfect now! Yes! Oh, he really is perfect! I think I’m going to fall in love with him and it will always be perfect! Silly me! Whoopsie! Silly, silly me for doubting this.

  Hang on …

  I just full-on hallucinated him having amazing make-up-sex with his ex-girlfriend. I even christened her ‘Gretel’.

  That’s not normal, is it?

  Bloody hell, that is so un-normal.

  What is wrong with me?

  HE CAN NEVER FIND OUT HOW UN-NORMAL I AM!

  Matt glances over and sees my shaking hands clutching my phone. He takes his headphones off and gestures towards it. ‘All OK? You look like he’s sent you a death threat?’

  I look up, flustered. ‘He wants to go to Gordon’s Wine Bar.’

  ‘Woah, even worse than a death threat.’ He ducks just before I jokingly thwack the top of his head. ‘It’s good that he wants to see you again though, isn’t it?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Are you going to reply?’ He talks slowly, like a teacher would say to a child, ‘that’s a lovely painting, are you going to add a sun to the sky?’

  ‘I mean, that’s the obvious thing to do, isn’t it?’

  ‘Tends to be the pattern. They message. You message. So on and so forth.’ He goes to put his headphones back on, before pausing, holding them out either side of his ears.

  ‘Oh God, what is it?’ I ask. ‘You’re not about to give me some brilliant dating advice, are you? Like “if it’s right there’s nothing you can do to fuck it up, and if it’s wrong there’s nothing you can do to make it work” – because I did not have you down as the inspirational quote kind of guy.’

  ‘No, actually, I was going to talk to you about your shift.’

  My heart stiffens. Vision smears. I know where this is going.

  ‘I had a look at the inbox and there’s a heavy one in there. I’m your buddy so I just thought I’d give you a heads-up and—’

  I cut him off. ‘I know what you’re trying to say, but I’m OK.’

  ‘You sure?’

  I smile through it, though I can recognise all the familiar triggers zing-zinging throughout my nervous system, setting everything off again. Turning all the switches on across my body. I’m in the dark dark dark of the worst that life can be. The white wallpaper dissolves behind my eyelids. The embossed pattern swirling. I’m here in the room and things have got out of hand and I’m not sure how because it all happened so very quickly you see, but the wallpaper and … No. I’m not there. I’m here, in an office. On a Friday. I’m totally safe.

  ‘I’m sure,’ I tell him.

  He must believe me because he puts his headphones back on. Matt can’t handle the office’s choice in radio station. Essentially, if a song isn’t written by some sad bloke tormented by low self-worth and memories of all the exes who got away, Matt doesn’t want to listen to it.

  I return my phone to the top drawer without even thinking about it, Simon’s message temporarily forgotten. I plug in my own pair of noise-cancelling headphones. I know it’s Friday, and it’s fine that everyone wants to listen to Magic FM, but I can’t read about sexual violence to Wham!. I put on Piano and Rain, log in to the charity’s inbox, and wait to see what horrible thing a man has done to a woman today.

  It’s bad, my shift. I mean, it’s always bad, but I’m almost gasping as I read through this message in the charity’s inbox:

  Message received: 15:34

  Was it rape? He is my boyfriend. I don’t understand. Did he mean it?

  Matt’s checking on me more than he’s letting on. I sense every one of his head twitches, feel his eyes dart towards my face.

  I stand up suddenly. ‘My round for tea. Anyone?’ I announce in an overly-chirpy voice.

  He pulls his headphones around his neck. ‘No tea for me. You OK? Honestly April, I’m happy to do this shift if you’d rather not.’

  ‘I’m fine!’ I collect my mug and make a thumbs-up/thumbs-down motion to Katy to see if she wants in. She shakes her head. I act like the day hasn’t shifted entirely, like my life doesn’t feel like a shaken snow globe. ‘Tea coming right up,’ I mutter to myself.

  I stand in the grotty kitchen, gulping down the tea without tasting it. I’m in the office. I am safe in the office. I am in the present moment. God, this office is a shithole. When I was little, I imagined an office with men in dry-cleaned suits and silken ties and women in power heels with perfect manicures. People would shoot up floors in a sleek, glass lift and have meetings overlooking the London skyline. That is not what a charity office looks like, especially a charity office in a never-ending financial crisis. Since the cuts, we’ve had to relocate again. We’re now uncomfortably snuggled above a high-street estate agent. Twenty of us share a unisex loo where everyone can hear everything and there’s no window to let the smell out. There are no freshly cut flowers at reception or state of the art touchscreen thingamajigs – just an office rota for who’s answering the phones this week and some old lumpy computers we got cheap from an office sale. Oh, and too many desperate young people needing help and not enough of us to help them effectively.

  I make myself go back to my chair, then I reach into my clogged handbag and rummage for my lavender oil. I dab it onto my wrists and inhale deeply to further ground myself in.

  ‘Honestly,’ Matt interrupts again. ‘April, I can take over.’

  I look up and smile at his concerned face. Matthew is one of the few things about this job that doesn’t totally destroy my faith in men. ‘You are lovely,’ I tell him, because he is.

  ‘Ice cream afterwards?’

  ‘More than lovely.’ I take another deep sniff of my scented pulse points and read through the email message again. I start taking notes, making sure I’ve caught everything, all the fragments of her story and her pain. Then I minimise the window and double-click on my ‘template answers’ folder, pulling up the Word document entitled ‘Raped By My Boyfriend’. Because being raped by your boyfriend is so commonplace the charity has a template answer for it. I tweak the template that contains all the important phrases about it not being her fault, and there being no right or wrong way of dealing with this, and ask her if there’s someone she trusts whom she can talk to. I signpost her towards specialist organisations that can help her further. I offer hope that, in time, she will be able to make sense of this and not let it define her, or her life. I slurp from my cup and check my reply for typos. Then I put the cup down, have one final read-through, and press send. My breathing’s not quite right. It stays lodged in my diaphragm like a lump of wet clay. My computer beeps sharply to inform me my reply’s been received. I picture it arriving in this faceless girl’s inbox – wherever she is in the country. I imagine her refreshing her screen, waiting for this reply, and now it is here. I hope it helps. I picture her feeling soothed by it, less alone. Her crying, but a good sort of crying, a cry that leads you to the start of a hard, but right, path.

  I’m helping I’m helping I’m helping, I say over and over to myself, and let the thought seep in, spread out, and calm me down again.

  Matt again. Looking over my monitor. ‘Just read through your answer,’ he says. ‘You got the tone spot on.’

  I sigh and hang my head back, staring up at a loose ceiling-tile. ‘Cheers buddy.’

  ‘Just say when, re the ice cream. The rest of the inbox is pretty standard. You’ve got a 23-year-old virgin to look forward to, and someone who wants to know if you can get pregnant from a toilet seat.’

  I smile up at him. ‘I can’t talk about my job on my date tonight, can I?’ I ask. Simon is back in my thoughts now that I
’ve pushed through the trigger. Hope blossoms through my bloodstream. ‘Not sure if sperm on toilet seats is appropriate date-conversation fodder, is it?’

  ‘Google it,’ Matt smiles back.

  I start to type.

  ‘Oh God,’ he says. ‘You’re actually googling it, aren’t you?’

  Here are the ways that I think Simon is different and why I might therefore fall in love with him: he always messages back. He seems pleased to see me. His parents aren’t divorced. He has not declared I am the love of his life yet, which is appropriate, yet he seems to like me the more he sees me, which is also appropriate. He has a steady job and isn’t a failed musician or a failed novelist or a failed actor and only doing the steady job because he failed and is bitter and weird and depressed because of it. He volunteered for the homeless shelter that one time, which is where I met him, so he is not dead inside. He has a sister, which we all know helps things along. He is attractive, but not in a way that means he gets hit on all the time and is therefore too big-headed and likely to cheat. He makes me laugh, and I make him laugh. He is a really good kisser. When I stalked his ex-girlfriend online, she was roughly equally as pretty as I am, if not slightly uglier and, from what I can make out by the date-stamps of the photos, they’ve been broken up for one year and two months which is a good amount of time for him to emotionally recover. He seems really into me … so far.

  I spot him before he spots me, so I get to enjoy that giddy thrill of watching a man wait for you. Oh Simon, I really do want to fall in love with you if I can possibly help it. He looks handsome in his work stuff – the sleeves of his blue shirt rolled up to show off his tanned arms. He’s already ordered a bottle of red – remembering I prefer red from last time. He’s managed to score us a tiny barrel table and two stools outside. He’s on his phone, scrolling with his thumb, oblivious to the loud weekend braying of everyone drinking around him. Then, sensing me, he glances up. His eyes crinkle as he smiles, which, according to the relationship expert Roald Dahl, means the smile is really genuine. I wave bashfully and smile back, also a Roald Dahl one. This is it, you know. This could really be it. A man doesn’t smile like that unless this could be something. I walk over, highly aware of myself, wishing I hadn’t had that second glass of wine at after-work drinks. I hadn’t meant to, but London’s been boasting a most unusual heatwave, and, determined not to waste a moment of it, we’d carted some wine to Regent’s Park around the corner. I wanted to soothe the lingering aftertaste of my shift. Plus, after googling it, I had the dawning realisation that maybe Simon would want to have sex tonight and promptly freaked the hell out. Wine has now diminished the fear that it won’t work or it will happen again. I just feel floaty and convinced it will all be fine, even though I’ve not used my vaginal trainers in ages.

  We don’t quite know how to greet one another yet. The last time I saw him, we were pinned against some wall by the Tube station, kissing so hard it’s a miracle we weren’t arrested. I’m sure that’s in both of our minds now, yet we’re back to formal courtship.

  ‘Hello you.’ He kisses me on the cheek, while I sort of turn it into a hug.

  ‘You smell great,’ I find myself saying tipsily, as we pull apart. ‘We’d have totally genetically healthy children.’

  I die inside for exactly two seconds until he snorts with laughter and my stomach relaxes again. He laughs widely, showing off at least three fillings which is still sexy to me because I’m off my tits on oxytocin.

  He leans in and sniffs my neck. ‘Mmm, you smell like you came from a diverse gene pool.’

  ‘Our children won’t even need to get vaccinated.’

  Then we’re kissing in a way I’m normally against people doing in public, mimicking the finale of our last date. Wiping away the polite greeting. The wine’s temporarily abandoned, the surrounding rah-rahing crowds of Friday drinkers fade into a Vaseline smear, and I’m tasting Simon’s mouth and really feeling quite certain this must be love.

  I break off. ‘Please don’t sniff my butt like a dog though,’ I say.

  He showcases his sexy oxytocin fillings again. ‘But that’s my best move.’

  We settle into our bottle of red and the euphoric fizzing of connecting with another person you really fancy.

  It’s all been worth it, I decide, as he picks up the bottle and drains the last of it into my glass. All of the heartache and the break-ups and the terrible dates, and the ringing various female friends, saying I’m exhausted and can’t do this any more, and the constant worrying of ‘will this ever happen to me’, and the crying until I choked, and that year after Ryan where all I did in my empty hours was google ways to kill myself that wouldn’t damage my mum too much when she found my body … it’s all been worth it because of now. Simon. This. The way we are slotting in together.

  ‘I’m not like the other guys who work in finance,’ he’s saying, sloshing his wine around his glass so it’s licking the rim but never quite splashing. ‘They’re all just in it for the money but I’m not. I’m an ombudsman; I’m just there to make sure they behave. You say you work in finance and everyone just assumes you’re a banker wanker, but someone’s got to keep them in line.’

  I nod my head heavily, looking like I’m trying to understand some of the number nitty-gritty he’s now explaining to me when, really, I’m having the very terrible thought that he works in finance, and this means he earns good money, even if he’s not a banker, and that’s quite useful you know, because I work for a charity so I’m always broke. Maybe he has enough savings to buy a house? Then I can live in it? And then, if we get married, it will sort of be my house too? I mean, I like Simon for Simon – not for his money. But the money is useful. Hang on, what the hell is he talking about now? I blink away our three-bed Victorian conversion in Greenwich. ‘What was that?’ I ask.

  He reaches over the barrel table to take my fingers again. ‘I was just asking about your job. You’re always quite quiet about it.’

  ‘Well, yes, that’s because I’m an advisor for a sex and relationships charity. I can’t really talk about it on dates. It’s all very uncouth.’

  He squeezes my hand harder. ‘We’re on our sixth date, April, I think things can get a bit uncouth.’

  Then he does that thing men do with their eyes, when they’re making it super clear they really want to have sex with you. Oh God, here it comes. It will be OK, it will be OK. If he’s The One, it will be OK.

  ‘So, your job?’ he prompts, leaning back and returning his eyes to normal. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Well, do you like it there?’

  ‘I love it there.’ I brandish my wine glass with excitable abandon and let the joy of my job cancel out my unfurling anxiety. ‘I mean we’re constantly running out of money; we couldn’t even afford a Christmas party last year. But the work is rewarding and my colleagues are great. My job is split,’ I explain. ‘I spend half my time on organisational stuff – sorting out our volunteers, our safeguarding policies etc. Basically I’m in charge of recruiting volunteers, training them, keeping them, and ensuring they know what the hell they’re supposed to be doing. Then I spend the other half of my time doing shifts on our front-line services.’

  ‘And they are?’ He looks only half interested now, but maybe I’ve just imagined him glancing at his phone?

  ‘Well, I work on our online service. People send in their questions about sex and relationships and we write back.’

  ‘Sex questions? You must get some fruity stuff.’

  I laugh and finish my glass, feeling the warmth of it dribble through me. It is date six and I’m starting to feel comfortable with Simon. Nothing to do with all the wine, I’m sure. ‘Nothing shocks me any more,’ I tell Simon, my potential future husband.

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Oh yeah. You can’t be a prude with this job. I mean, on my first day there, I had to chair a meeting about our anal sex policy.’

  He almost spits out
his wine. ‘And what is your anal sex policy?’

  ‘Do you mean mine, or my place of work’s?’

  He swallows hard, and I’m pleased with myself for that line. I laugh again and enjoy his squirming. ‘Told you I’m unshockable. In my defence, you started this conversation. Though my colleague, Matt, told me not to bring up work for a while longer.’

  His head tilts. A smirk tugs across his face. ‘Oh, so you’ve been talking to your colleagues about me?’ He puts his glass down so he can reach over and take my hand again.

  I nod shyly, unable to even describe how amazing his skin feels against my skin. ‘Why? Have you told your colleagues about me?’

  It’s his turn to nod. ‘I may’ve mentioned I’ve been on a few dates.’

  This is it. I told you this was it! If he’s telling people about me, that must mean he’s falling too. My muscles untwist themselves, heaving sighs as they relax into giddy abandon. I try to drink in the moment around me and commit it to memory, so I can recap it accurately for our grandchildren. The sweaty sun in the sky, the smell of the nearby Thames in my nostrils, my exact outfit, his exact outfit, the precise location of our barrel table, the noises of the groups around us. It’s all so wonderful that I make a fatal mistake.

  I believe.

  And therefore I start to relax.

  ‘I always wonder what it must be like to just have regular relationships with work colleagues rather than really intense ones,’ I ponder, brushing the rim of my wine glass against my bottom lip. ‘When you work for a charity like We Are Here, in order to be professional, you have to immediately have highly-personal and unprofessional conversations.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Simon asks, tipping his head back a bit too far to get to the wine in his glass. It’s not the most attractive look but it doesn’t matter because he’s potentially my future husband and therefore everything he does is adorable.

  ‘Well, if you work with upset people telling you upsetting things, like we do, it’s unhealthy to have an I’m-at-work bravado, you know? We’ve got to feel healthy in ourselves to handle the users appropriately. You can’t take on a shift on a helpline if you’re in a bad way. That’s irresponsible. You may accidentally let it seep into your responses. So, my colleagues and I are, like, super close. We always have a buddy to debrief to after each shift, and we have to talk about our emotions all the time. I know basically every terrible thing that’s ever happened to them, and vice-versa. That way we can all know our triggers, and look out for one another during shifts.’