In at the Deep End

by Kate Davies

  ‘Well, if that’s how you see it,’ I said, pushing myself to the edge of the bed. I stood up and walked around the room, pointlessly picking things up and putting them down.

  ‘No, babes,’ she said. ‘Come back here.’ She was smiling, but there was something steely in her voice, and I walked automatically back to the bed. She took my hand. ‘Virginie has a girlfriend, called Charlotte. They’ve been together for years. She and I just see each other every three or four months.’

  ‘And Charlotte’s OK with this?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Sam said, stroking my hand. ‘She’s non-monogamous too.’

  ‘So it’s a relationship. You’re in a relationship with her.’

  ‘It’s not like that,’ she said, sighing, as though trying to explain long multiplication to a particularly slow child. ‘We’re more like really close friends. You’d love her – she’s really funny. She’s like a French Tina Fey, or something.’

  ‘I like Tina Fey,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly.’ She looked into my eyes. ‘I’ve told her all about you,’ she said. ‘I’ve told her how amazing you are. She’s really happy for us.’ And I felt flattered, flattered that Sam was telling people about me, even if they were people she was still planning to have sex with on a semi-regular basis.

  I couldn’t behave normally with Sam after that. I pretended to be tired, and I locked myself in the bathroom for a long, hot bath.

  She knocked on the door after I’d been in there about twenty minutes.

  ‘Julia? Are you OK?’

  ‘Completely fine!’

  But I wasn’t. Of course I wasn’t. I was crying silently, my tears hotter than the bath water. The flattered feeling had faded. I’d thought I’d found someone. I’d been so lonely and then I wasn’t lonely but it looked like I was about to be lonely again.

  ‘Can I come in and talk to you?’

  ‘I’m fine!’

  ‘Please. Open the door.’

  I leaned over to slide the bolt back.

  Sam came in and crouched beside me. ‘I should have told you earlier,’ she said.

  ‘No, I’m the idiot. You told me you’d shagged loads of women. I should have realized.’ I hugged my knees. Something had shifted. I felt too naked now, self-conscious.

  ‘I should have made it clear. I’ve just been having such a wonderful time with you. I didn’t want to spoil it.’

  I nodded.

  She touched my wet arm. I moved away.

  ‘You really don’t need to worry,’ she said. ‘Having sex with other women doesn’t make me want my partner less. It makes me want them more.’

  ‘I don’t see how that works.’

  ‘I’ve told you. Variety. Freedom. And I’m offering you freedom too. Do you see that?’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘We’ll have ground rules. I’ll tell you when I’m planning to see someone else. And you’ll tell me who you’re planning to see. And we’ll have a veto.’

  ‘What if I want to veto Virginie?’

  ‘That’s a bit different. I was seeing Virginie before I met you.’ She reached out for my hand. I let her take it. ‘I hope this doesn’t mean we can’t keep seeing each other,’ she said. ‘You mean such a lot to me already …’

  Not enough that you want to stop shagging other women, I thought. But I said, ‘I’ll have to think about it.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. She stood up, wiping her wet hand on her trousers. ‘Call me whenever you’re ready.’

  As soon as she left, I missed her, with the kind of intensity I used to miss people I had unrequited crushes on. I took a bottle of wine into my room and put on an old Dashboard Confessional album I’d loved when I was at school. I turned on my laptop and looked through Sam’s Instagram feed.

  I scrolled back through every photo of Sam, at every party, her arm around woman after woman. There she was, graduating from her MFA in New York. She’d gone to Tisch, apparently. She’d won a prize in her final year and she’d worn a very nice black suit to the ceremony. There she was with her arm around another woman’s waist – a girl, really, with pastel hair and a gap in her teeth. Had they been dating? Had she been dating someone else and fucking this girl on the side? I tried to imagine her fucking the gap-toothed girl. The thought was painful, but it turned me on a bit, to be honest, and my heart started racing in that addictive, thrilling way it had throughout my teens.

  I found photos of Sam in Paris, around Christmastime, nose red with the cold, huddled up next to a woman with curly hair bunched under a woolly hat. The woman from the photograph. Their cheeks were touching. I hovered my mouse over the picture. Virginie Bernard.

  I’d found her.

  I tried to see Virginie’s profile, but it was set to private, so I went back to Sam’s profile and clicked on the next photograph. There were Sam and Virginie again, kissing, their eyes closed, with the Eiffel Tower in the background, lit up as if in celebration of their passion. I couldn’t stop looking at the photo. I wanted to remember every detail of it, to take the mystery out of it, to make it meaningless, the way saying a word over and over again makes it meaningless.

  Alice knocked on my door at about 10.30 to ask me to turn the Dashboard Confessional down a bit. I told her about Sam and the non-monogamy.

  ‘Maybe that’s just what lesbians do,’ she said, sitting on my bed. She picked up the wine bottle from the floor and took a swig.

  ‘Alice,’ I told her, ‘That’s homophobic.’

  ‘It’s not—’

  ‘And anyway, the lesbian cliché is that we move in together after one date and start having children after a week, or whatever.’

  ‘And then stop having sex altogether.’

  ‘Why can’t I have a normal girlfriend whose idea of a good night is a little light fingering in front of Strictly?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Alice said. ‘That’s all any of us wants, really, isn’t it?’

  The wine and the whiny guitar music were making us both maudlin.

  ‘I don’t want to turn into my parents,’ Alice said.

  ‘I deserve a monogamous relationship,’ I said.

  ‘You can have too much monogamy,’ Alice said. ‘Dave keeps talking about getting married.’

  ‘So you don’t think I should stop seeing her?’ I asked.

  Alice looked at me. ‘Do you want to stop seeing her?’

  ‘No …’

  ‘But how will you feel when she’s like, “Have a great time with Alice, babes, I’m off for a quick shag?”’

  I considered the question. I pictured myself sitting alone on the sofa, watching RuPaul’s Drag Race and weeping while she was out fucking anonymous women. Or worse – enjoying a mini-break full of sexy French sex. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I can’t do it.’

  ‘But it’s not one-way, is it? You could shag other people too.’

  That did seem like an attractively bohemian idea. ‘I have only just started sleeping with women,’ I said. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t settle down just yet.’

  ‘I don’t know, though,’ said Alice. ‘It’s probably easier in theory than in practice.’

  ‘I know … and isn’t this all a bit like advanced lesbianism? Shouldn’t I start with one woman at a time and work my way up, like you would with juggling balls?’

  ‘No one starts with just one juggling ball,’ Alice pointed out.

  I’d never questioned monogamy before. It was a societal norm, after all, like heterosexuality – but since I’d rejected that, maybe I should reject monogamy, too. Did I really only want to have sex with one person for the rest of my life? I’ve always liked to try new things.

  I lasted three days without texting Sam, but that Thursday morning I woke up after a particularly vivid sex dream, frustrated and lonely. I sent Sam a message asking if she’d like to come round that night. She turned up with a bottle of champagne and a bag full of sushi. I didn’t regret my decision for a single moment.

  I was a bit late to work the n
ext morning, so I was stuck with the desk next to Stan. I ignored his heavy breathing and went through my to-do list. Uzo walked over as I was highlighting the urgent tasks – highlighting things is one of my favourite procrastination techniques, as it makes me feel both organized and artistic – and dropped a letter on my desk.

  ‘This one’s for you,’ she said.

  ‘It’s from Eric!’ I said, settling back in my chair to read it.

  How marvellous that you’ve taken up swing dancing! Eve and I loved to swing. I still dance whenever I can; there’s a tea dance at the home once a week and me and my friend Irene show everyone what we’re made of. Haven’t been able to dance so much recently because my legs have been very swollen. Water keeps leaking out of them. Something to do with my heart. I hope you’re not eating lunch as you read this!

  Anyway, don’t tell Irene, but dancing with her isn’t a patch on dancing with Eve. We were so comfortable together, you see. It’s smashing when you get to that stage, when you know each other inside out.

  I have a music recommendation for you. See if you can get hold of anything by one of the old dance bands – Bert Ambrose & His Orchestra or Billy Cotton’s band. They were the bee’s knees.

  I put the letter down on my desk. Eric’s letters were always uplifting, like good romantic comedies, despite the anecdotes about the war and the lonely people at his care home and his leaky legs. But like good romantic comedies, they sometimes left me feeling a little bit deflated, as though I’d lost a love that hadn’t been mine in the first place. Obviously I knew that was ridiculous. Yes, it was romantic that Eric had never wanted to dance with anyone but Eve, till death did them part – but they were from a different time, a time of suet puddings and women giving up work when they got married and sixty million people dying in the Second World War. Things were different now. We had freedom, and equal-ish rights, and drones killed people so that we could pretend it wasn’t happening. And I did like switching dance partners in swing class – it was lots of fun, even if I sometimes ended up covered in other people’s sweat. Maybe that’s what non-monogamy would be like, too.

  I turned back to my computer, but Owen was beckoning me from across the room.

  ‘What?’ I mouthed.

  He looked over at Smriti, who was standing with the press officers, laughing (but in a professional way). ‘Come to the kitchen,’ he whispered.

  I met him by the mug cupboard.

  He looked around like an unsubtle spy and said, ‘Tom’s applying for a job at the Home Office.’

  ‘Maybe one of us will get promoted, then.’

  We rocked with silent laughter at the idea.

  ‘He gave me a heads up – the SEO job ads are going up soon.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. I wasn’t sure I wanted to apply for an SEO job – I probably wouldn’t get it, and I wasn’t sure I could handle the rejection. But if I ended up unemployed, I’d probably have to move back in with my parents, and sleep in my single bed, and take tourists on Harry Potter tours of Oxford.

  ‘Let’s help each other with our application forms,’ said Owen.

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  And then Smriti came into the kitchen, so we pretended to be talking about tea bags.

  In the pub after swing dance that week, I ordered two bowls of chips for everyone to share and told the others about my job situation.

  ‘We’re looking for someone to take the Wednesday night beginners’ class, if you’re interested in a teaching gig,’ said Zhu.

  ‘I’m not good enough yet,’ I said.

  ‘You are!’ said Rebecca.

  ‘There’s an audition for the Friends of Dorothy coming up, too,’ said Zhu. ‘Just saying.’

  ‘That’s not a job,’ I said.

  ‘We get paid gigs sometimes,’ said Zhu.

  ‘I won’t get in.’

  ‘You will. The audition’s next Sunday.’

  ‘Go on,’ Ella said. ‘I’d try out, if I didn’t look like a giraffe when I did the Charleston.’

  But I shook my head. Being rejected by the Civil Service was one thing. Failing as a dancer again was quite another.

  17. I CAN REALLY SEE THAT YOU ARE A MAMMAL

  From the moment Nicky opened the door, I knew the session would be a challenging one. She barely greeted me before walking back down the hall to her living room. ‘Full disclosure,’ she said. ‘I’m premenstrual at the moment. So.’

  I told her about me and Sam, and that we were going to give it a go. I wouldn’t say she was happy for me.

  ‘You can’t be in an open relationship,’ she said.

  ‘You’re not supposed to tell me what I can and can’t do.’

  ‘I can when it’s clearly a terrible idea,’ Nicky said. ‘You are still working out who you are. You shouldn’t be in an open relationship.’

  ‘They work for some people.’

  ‘They work for older people. People who have been with their partners for years.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit narrow-minded?’

  ‘We’ll see who’s right. Let’s see, in a year’s time, if it’s worked out.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Fine.’

  Nicky wound her left leg around her right and bent forward. ‘Jesus,’ she said, one hand on her abdomen. ‘Just a warning. PMS gets worse with age. The older you get without having children, the more your womb takes it out on you.’ She looked down at her stomach, and said, ‘Too bad, womb. My career comes first.’ She looked up at me. ‘You want kids?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Think you can have kids in an open relationship?’

  ‘I’m really not at that stage yet.’

  ‘Just something to think about for next week.’

  The morning after my session with Nicky I woke up, my heart racing. What she’d said had lodged inside me, tilting my opinion of Sam off balance. But I wasn’t going to let her tell me what kind of relationship I could and couldn’t have. I was in my twenties. I could have sex with whomever I wanted. I could be young and reckless.

  I logged on to Facebook and looked at the events I’m invited to but never respond to. A pub quiz, a couple of house parties, a few club nights in East London. And a rave. Ella had invited me to a gay rave. I’d never been to a rave before.

  I texted Ella to check she was actually going.

  Definitely, she replied. Zhu’s coming too. Wanna come?

  I knocked on Alice’s door. ‘Alice?’

  ‘I’m asleep.’

  ‘Do you want tea?’

  ‘I want to go back to sleep.’

  ‘Shall we go to a rave tonight?’

  I heard a rustling and then a thud, and then Alice opened the door, wearing her duvet like a cape. ‘What?’

  I made her some tea.

  ‘We don’t know how to rave,’ Alice pointed out, once we were sitting in the living room, mugs in hand.

  ‘Yes, we do,’ I said. ‘You just have to wave your arms around a lot and tell everyone you love them.’

  ‘We don’t do drugs, though.’

  ‘You don’t do drugs,’ I said. I don’t have anything against them, but Alice swore she’d never take them again after we took MDMA in our third year and she spent the night rolling around in a lavender bush that she thought was a nature goddess and woke up the next day to find a voicemail summoning her to the Dean’s office; the lavender bush belonged to him, it turned out, and his security camera had caught Alice flattening it with her writhing body.

  Alice shook her head and pulled one of the sofa cushions onto her lap. ‘I’m hungover. And Dave and I are meant to have a night in tonight.’

  ‘Bring Dave.’

  ‘He won’t want to come.’

  ‘Of course he will!’

  Alice looked at me and sighed.

  ‘Anyway,’ I said, before she could say anything, ‘I thought you weren’t ready to settle down and you wanted to go out and do young things? Raving is a young thing!’

  She sighed again. ‘Where is it
?’

  I smiled. ‘Hillingdon.’

  ‘That’s hours away!’

  ‘Fine then. I’ll just have fun with Ella without you.’

  A low blow.

  ‘You think Ella’s more fun than me,’ Alice said.

  ‘I don’t. But I will if you don’t come and rave with us.’

  She didn’t say anything. I was winning.

  ‘I’ll pay for us to get an Uber home?’

  ‘I’ll come if Dave comes,’ Alice said, and I knew it was a done deal. Raves were much more Dave’s scene than ours, after all, judging by the number of invitations he received to parties frequented by artists who thought scrawling the words ‘blow job’ on a canvas qualified you for the Turner Prize.

  The rave was in an abandoned carpet showroom. Alice and I both felt quite excited as we climbed in through the broken window, handing our fivers to a 16-year-old boy in a Looney Tunes baseball cap. Here was a London subculture we’d never explored before! We were young and trendy! We’d both been a bit worried about what to wear, but we needn’t have been. The rave was an amazing cross-section of society: leathery tattooed men were dancing with blonde teenagers wearing chicken-wire fairy wings and hard-looking men in Reeboks chatted to goths and hippies, everyone united by drugs and beer and electronic music. There were makeshift bars in each of the rooms, selling coke, K, MDMA and laughing gas. It was a bring-your-own-booze situation and we’d come prepared with two six-packs of Red Stripe. We met Ella and Zhu in a corner near the speakers. We began to work our way through the beers, dancing and talking, about Sam, of course.

  ‘I have to say, I think you deserve someone who’s really committed to you.’ Ella’s face flashed white, red, and white again in the warehouse party lights.

  ‘She is committed to me,’ I said, waving my arms around, pretty expertly, I thought. ‘You can be committed to someone and attracted to other people.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Zhu said, taking a swig of beer. ‘I’m poly. Wouldn’t give it up for anything.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. Finally, someone I liked, someone who knew what they were talking about, endorsing Sam’s way of life.

  ‘Don’t you get jealous?’ Alice asked Zhu.