by Holly Bourne
Without forethought, I’m outside, soaked instantly. It’s so much quieter out here, just the steady pounding of raindrops in puddles. I run over the gravel, arms crossed, and come to a stop at the bench he’s sitting on, head in his hands. My heartbeat cranks up the amp. He looks broken, his body physically bent over on himself, hands shaking. I feel a twist of pain in my ribs as I examine what I’ve caused. The privilege of guilt …
‘Joshua?’ I say. His wet and sad body doesn’t answer me. ‘I thought you’d gone …’
He straightens, and pulls the sopping lapels of his jacket across his chest. He doesn’t reply.
‘What are you doing out here?’ I ask. Every part of me wants to touch him but I know I’ll be swatted off. I’ve lost the right to brush his skin. It’s been left on the table, alongside the packets of sugared almonds. ‘You’re soaking.’
More silence. I think he may stand and stalk off. He didn’t ask to be followed. I don’t dare sit. I don’t dare break the silence again. And, finally, through gritted teeth, he talks. ‘I’ve been sitting here,’ Joshua tells me, his voice hardly a murmur, ‘in the fucking rain, trying to work out why I keep getting myself into these situations.’
‘What situations?’ I ask delicately.
He sinks his head back into his shaking palms and I see his eyes are watering before they’re hidden again. ‘Throwing myself headfirst into relationships with women who lie.’
I freeze. I was not expecting that reply.
‘What’s wrong with me?’ Josh asks himself, rain spilling into his collar. ‘Why am I always here? Who the hell even are you? My friends warned me, they told me I was going too fast again, they said I needed to take it slower this time. But, did I listen? No, I never listen.’ He massages his face with his balled hands. I reach out a hand to comfort him but I pause it in mid-air, tuck it back into the pocket of my dress. I don’t know which words to use. There’s no script to follow, no advice from Google or self-help books. ‘There must be something seriously wrong with me,’ he says, again, more to himself than to me. ‘What the actual hell is the matter with me? Why do I always get it so wrong?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say to the top of his head, my voice cracking. ‘It was one lie, and it got out of hand.’
‘I just don’t understand why you’d lie about your name. I mean, what the hell?’ He keeps shaking his head. ‘Why would you do that? And you met all my friends and lied to them too? Why would anyone do that?’
I blink up to the sky, and let the rain merge with my tears. ‘Because I’m bloody terrified,’ I admit. ‘I have had some really bad experiences and I lied about my name to protect myself and it was a total and complete fuck-up.’
The honesty causes him to look up. We lock eyes, and my heart surges with pain again. I shake my head sadly. ‘I’m really fucked up, Joshua.’ My voice chokes out the words in barks. ‘I don’t want to go to Africa either. I only said that because it was a first date and I was trying to impress you.’
He barks out a harsh laugh. ‘Anything else?’
‘I don’t trust men not to hurt me, so, when I met you, I hid loads of stuff to try and protect myself.’
His mouth falls open. ‘I’ve never done anything to hurt you!’
‘No. Not yet. But you will. Anyway, you’re about to break up with me, aren’t you? That’s going to hurt.’ It will, more than I care to admit. Somehow I’ve fallen, once again, into the default setting of me getting my heart broken. I was stupid to think this would ever end on my terms. Nothing to do with hearts are ever defined by my terms. But at least I still have one, at least it’s still functioning, still feels. It hasn’t gone cold like it could have. I’m proud of that, even though I’m ashamed of the lies I’ve been telling him and myself. Even though losing him is going to hurt so much.
‘Break up with who? Do you have any idea how much I’m freaking out right now?’ He throws his hands up in the air. ‘I’m at a wedding, with someone who I thought was my girlfriend, and now I realise I don’t even know her real name!’
‘I told you, it’s April,’ I say as another tear falls.
I look out at the grey bleakness of the wedding venue – something that I’m not sure I’ll ever have in my life. Then I look down at the man refusing to look at me, and I realise I’m in one of those rare moments in life where you can say whatever the hell you like, and it doesn’t matter, because your life has already burned down. I literally have nothing to lose.
‘Joshua,’ I start. I perch next to him on the bench, the water seeping up my skirt and through it. He stills, to let me know he’s listening. ‘Look, I said I was called Gretel on our first date to protect myself. And, yes, I was pretending to be the very best person in the world, and then you liked me and I got worried that you only liked me because I’d been hiding parts of myself. Yes, lying about my name is weird and that enough is a good reason for you to end this. You must think I’m crazy. I think I’m crazy …’ I almost laugh, and then shake my head, my wet hair sticking to my face. ‘But, while I’ve been figuring out what the hell to tell you and how to come back from this, I’ve realised that, actually, my name’s the only real lie I’ve told you. The rest of it has just been me hiding things from you. And, the thing is, you were always going to end it anyway when you found out how much I have going on. Because, you think I’m easy-going and carefree and laissez-faire, but I’m not like that. I can be those things sometimes, but a lot of the time I’m not. I’m neurotic and skittish and exhausting and hard work and so many other unsexy things … I’ve not been lying but I have been hiding the bits you won’t like.’
Joshua keeps shaking his head. He’s not running away but he’s definitely shaking his head a lot.
‘Gretel … I mean April. Shit! Literally none of what you’ve said makes any sense.’
‘What do you mean?’
He lets out an angry sigh and throws his hands up. ‘The bits I won’t like? Like? How do you know what I like and don’t like?’
‘Because you’re a man! And you all want women to follow the rules. Like how you didn’t like your ex-girlfriend because she wanted to get married …’
‘What?’ He’s looking at me in stunned disbelief. ‘I didn’t want to marry my ex because she fucking cheated on me! And when I took her back, she kept pestering me to marry her as a way of proving I trusted her again. But then I found out she’d started sleeping with him again.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah! What? You thought I dumped her because she wanted to get married?’ My silence answers that. ‘Well, it’s nice to know what you think of me.’
‘Come on!’ I hold my arms out. ‘What was I supposed to think when you said that? Men always …’
‘Always what? You don’t know. You can’t assume.’
‘Are you really going to say “not all men” at me?’
‘Yes! Because it’s fucking true.’
I’m crying furiously now. Wipe wipe wipe my face. Out it all comes. He won’t come near me now he’s seen all this. ‘You wouldn’t think they were so great and harmless if you had to do my shifts.’
‘I thought you’d stopped that role? Why?’
‘Stop it!’
‘Stop what? Upsetting you? I’m upset too! I only just found out your actual name.’ Joshua twists towards me, looks at my tears. He doesn’t seem repulsed by them, which is new. He still looks angry though. He lowers his voice again and I can hardly hear him over the rain. I shiver as I listen, digesting the story he just told me. About his ex. Realigning it with the assumptions I’ve made, wondering how many more I might’ve made about who hurt who … ‘Look,’ he says. ‘As this is the surrealest thing that’s ever happened to me and I have no idea what’s going on, I may as well be honest too. I know I’ve been pushing things forward, but, I’ve … There have been moments with you when I have felt really … not good.’
Huh? I jolt in shock. But what about Gretel? Surely he’s head over heels for her?
He holds up his
hands. ‘I mean, I obviously like you. I’ve not been leading you on. I don’t do that. I like you, that’s why I’ve carried on seeing you, but Gre— I mean, April. Fucking hell. You are hard to get to know. There are times when it’s great! Like when you sang that song in the Irish accent, or the night of the curry and how you spoke and told me about your job and everything. There are moments where I feel like “Wow, this girl is cool and interesting and clearly really thinks about things”, but then there’s been a lot of … aloofness? Falseness? Like I never know where I stand. Like you’re cagey about meeting me. Holding me at a distance like it’s a test. It’s weird that you brought up Africa, cos that’s not one of the things I like about you. In fact, I’ve never really thought about that. I like the bits that feel genuine. And now your name isn’t even Gretel and I don’t know what the hell to think any more. That I need to go to therapy or something, as I seem to only be attracted to girls who lie.’
His words are almost too painful to hear because they’re confirming what I was too scared to believe: the feeling that it was actually me he liked, not Gretel. That the real bits were pulling us together, rather than my lies. Those moments our barriers were lowered. But it hurts because, after what I’ve done, he should leave. If he has any sense he should leave. For his own sake, I want him to leave. I have revealed myself to be the crazy one they are all so frightened of. Yet, when I reach out and put my hand on his knee, Joshua, the idiot he may well be, doesn’t flinch. Instead he reaches out and puts his hand on my wet knee.
I make myself look at him, and dare myself to hope. ‘I know it sounds mental considering everything, but I really don’t lie,’ I tell him. ‘I didn’t before this name thing, and I certainly won’t any more. You are the first person I’ve ever not been honest with, ironically, considering you hate it so much.’
‘Lying really scares me,’ he says. ‘Like, after last time, I can’t handle it. After my ex, I need to know someone. Really know them.’
We look down at one another’s hands on one another’s knees and I colour in the bits of him I just learnt, about his ex, about how he’s been hurt, and he colours in the bits of me. Both of us hiding the broken bits and making up stories in our heads of how the other will respond to them, assuming the worst. And our heads push together, until they’re almost touching, and I can’t stop weeping, and he looks pretty close to crying too.
I open my mouth and words spill, unfiltered, from it, into the side of his face. ‘I’m sorry I’ve put up so many walls but, as I said, something … really bad happened to me,’ I tell him, terrified of how he’ll take it but forcing myself to tell it anyway. ‘It wasn’t my fault, but it’s left me a mess. And men haven’t been very good at dealing with it in the past.’ He opens his mouth, but I won’t let him interrupt me. ‘I … don’t trust men,’ I tell him. ‘That may feel terribly unfair if you believe you’re a good man who has never done anything bad. But please don’t judge me for that. It makes sense if you know what I’ve been through. I’m … complicated, you see. I’ve had some things happen to me that shouldn’t have happened.’ Tears run more freely now, and I wipe my face with the back of my hand. He sits up, watches me cry. He doesn’t comfort me, just lets me continue. ‘I don’t want to tell you all the horrible things that have happened to me, not right now. But, if this had continued, I’d have had to let it out eventually and you’d have ended it then. And that’s why I’m cagey and tried to be someone different, because I don’t trust you to still be here when I’m myself.’
There it is. All out there. I wait for him to drop his hand. I wait for the judgement to cave in on his face. I wait for him to look uncomfortable. I wait for him to be Simon. And the countless others before him, who see my trauma like a contaminant. As a shame they have to decide whether or not they can be arsed to deal with. I’m almost too scared to look at him, because I will not be able to stand it to see one more face fall at the revelation of the complicated reality that is April. But I decide to take one last leap of faith and force eye contact.
We look at one another. We hold one another’s knees.
And Joshua’s face … it doesn’t fall. In fact, it looks like things are clicking into place for him.
‘I’m really sorry you’ve been through something like that,’ he says eventually. ‘Thank you for telling me.’ He lets out a long breath and really looks at me. ‘But you can’t lie, not any more. I need to be with someone who is themself.’ Then, his hand, it squeezes me in reassurance. A reassuring squeeze. My very first. A squeeze to say it’s OK. It takes everything I have not to burst into tears or run away because I simply cannot trust it. ‘It makes me sad that you don’t trust people enough to be yourself,’ Joshua says.
‘It sounds like you don’t trust people much either.’ I think of what he’s been through and how it must’ve hurt. How hard it must be for him to take any of this in right now, after I’ve so hugely pushed his buttons. I give him a reassuring squeeze back.
‘I’m trying to. I’ve got good reasons not to.’
‘I’m trying to too. And I’ve got good reasons too.’
‘Is it a stupid thing to try to do?’ Joshua asks.
‘Trust people?’ I ask. ‘Well, my therapist claims it’s worth striving for.’ I let go of him and point both fingers to my tear-stained, mascara-smeared face. ‘Yes, I have a therapist,’ I announce. ‘Welcome to April.’
His hand on my knee squeezes tighter. ‘I want to trust you April.’
‘Right back at you.’
We sit in the rain. We don’t kiss. All that’s gone on can’t magically melt away just because we’ve had one honest conversation. I’m still at war with myself, unsure if I’m on the cusp of yet another bout of hurt, rejection, and reducing of myself. Yet I’m struggling to let go of his knee.
‘We should probably go in,’ I say, sensing that this is as far as we can get right now. That we’ve reached our limit on the emotional window being open and need to digest and think and come to imperfect decisions based on our imperfect actions. ‘The speeches are before pudding, and I want to hear Mark’s speech. Chrissy’s really looking forward to it.’
‘Yeah … um … sure.’
I take Joshua’s hand and lead him over the gravel and back into the dryness of the very lovely conservatory. I can’t believe he’s letting me take his hand and it’s awkward between us the moment we’re inside – shivering and dripping onto the parquet. I wince a smile at him, and he winces one back. Both of us chilled in the cringe aftermath that follows deep heart-to-hearts. I can hear the echoing applause of a speech ending. I wonder if we’ve missed it.
‘We’ll distract everyone if we come in now all wet,’ I whisper to Josh. ‘Should we just peer around the door?’
He nods and we make sodden footsteps towards the threshold of the dining hall. Waiters are lined up in the corridor, brandishing martini glasses filled with Eton mess, waiting for the speeches to finish. They eye us curiously, but don’t say anything. I peer in, watching everyone twisted in the direction of the top table. Chrissy’s dad is sitting down, looking flushed and relieved. Mark is fiddling with the mic, checking it’s still turned on. It feels a bit voyeuristic, watching through a gap in the door, but I don’t think anyone would appreciate us rocking in right now, with half my make-up cried off. Mark stands, puts his hands in his suit pocket. I watch Chrissy’s face. She’s beaming up at him, so much love gooing out of her. He’s so lucky that she loves him, I hope he knows it. I hope he tells her and makes this speech worth it.
‘Hi, everyone, and thanks for coming,’ Mark says, not removing any cards from his pocket. Not a good sign. ‘As you know, I’m not a man of many words but I just want to say …’ I look at Chrissy’s poised face, smiling, joyful, patient, waiting. Mark coughs. ‘… It’s great that you all came here today. It means the world to Chrissy and me to have you here.’
Then Mark is sitting down.
Sitting down.
Back on his chair. Like the speech is over.
Which it must be. Chrissy’s face is on pause, as she computes whether that’s it or not. I see the exact moment she realises that’s all she’s getting. There’s a millisecond where her features collapse, where the hope he may be different, just for once, on their wedding day, because it’s important to her, falls out of her stomach. She blinks. Smiles. Recovers. And stands herself as everyone claps half-heartedly, trying not to shrug at one another. Chrissy stands to repeat her thanks to everyone. My heart is breaking for her. It’s her wedding day. The one thing she wanted on the one day she needed it the most and he didn’t do it.
My anger and bitterness rush in, despite the damp, forgiving, hand holding mine. I want to drop it. I want to go and scream in Mark’s face. I want Chrissy to get what she deserves. Why do any of us bother? I find myself thinking. Really? What is the payoff for the disappointment?
Yet Joshua’s hand is still in mine in this doorway. I’ve cried on him, and told him my name isn’t Gretel, and revealed all my chaotic mess, and he is still here. He’s not run out of the door, or called me crazy, or assumed the worst. He’s just asked for an explanation and listened to what I had to say. We still need to talk, oh boy, do we need to talk, but the fact he’s still here is new. This is not what I’m used to.
And then … I feel his breath on my cheek.
‘That was his speech?’ Joshua whispers in my ear. ‘Seriously? Just that? On his wedding day? I thought you said she was looking forward to this bit?’ He shakes his head, clearly as disgusted for her as I am. ‘Bloody hell. Your poor friend.’
I look down at our held hands, then up to his face.