by Kate Davies
‘Tell me what the matter is,’ Sam said.
‘And for you, madam? Any coffee or tea?’ asked the waiter.
Sam didn’t answer, so I said, ‘An English breakfast tea would be lovely, thank you,’ and the waiter went away, relieved.
Sam was staring at me. ‘Don’t make decisions on my behalf,’ she said, which was so hypocritical I assumed she was joking and laughed out loud. But she wasn’t joking. And she really, really didn’t like being laughed at, it turned out.
‘You’re humiliating me,’ she said.
‘I’m not!’
‘I will not allow you to speak to me like that.’
‘I’m sorry—’
‘You’re obviously upset with me. The adult thing to do would be to say what the matter is so that we can have a mature conversation about it.’
‘OK,’ I said. I took a deep breath. ‘I just found last night a bit difficult.’
Sam was still looking at me. ‘If you really didn’t enjoy it, you could have said the safe word.’
‘I know, I did enjoy it. It’s just that was a new dress—’
‘I’ll get you another one.’
‘I don’t want another one.’
‘I’ve spent a lot of money making this weekend perfect for you.’
‘And I’m grateful—’
The waiter came back with our food as we sat there in silence.
Sam was right. The hollandaise was cold. I ate it anyway, but Sam didn’t touch hers. She stared down at the table, hands knotted in front of her.
‘Virginie loves me for who I am,’ she said.
I looked up, hoping I’d misheard.
‘I gave her up for you. I take you to the best hotel in London, treat you like a queen—’
‘Like a rape victim, actually—’
‘That was a fantasy!’
‘It was your fantasy!’
Not the right thing to say. Not the right thing at all.
‘Now it comes out,’ said Sam, tossing her napkin on the table. ‘What else don’t you like about me? I know you don’t like my paintings.’
‘I never said that—’
‘You’re not denying it!’
‘I think they’re beautiful! They’re amazing!’
‘But you hate that I’ve hung them in my flat.’
I looked at her. I took a breath. A couple to the left of us, who were having a much less shouty breakfast, asked for more marmalade. ‘I just—’
‘Go on.’
I said, ‘I’m just really aware that they’re mostly paintings of people you’ve had sex with.’
Sam let out a short little laugh. She reddened. She straightened herself and crossed her arms. ‘You’re seriously that jealous? You’re policing my past now?’
‘No!’ I said, reaching across the table as she pulled away.
She shook her head. ‘I’ve changed myself to be with you. I’ve ended a relationship. And now you want to tell me I can’t display my own paintings in my own flat? How dare you!’
‘But that’s not what I said—’
‘I’ve done nothing but go out of my way for you, to make you feel comfortable in my home. And it’s my flat, not yours! You didn’t want to move in with me, remember?’
‘Fuck you,’ I said, my voice wobbly with rage.
I regretted it as soon as I said it.
She pushed her chair back and stood up.
‘Wait,’ I said, reaching out for her.
‘Don’t touch me,’ she said, and she walked, self-righteously, out of the restaurant.
I didn’t follow her straight away. I was too angry. But my anger didn’t last long, and I knew that if I didn’t stop her it would be the end of our relationship. I ran out of the restaurant, hoping they would add the tab to our room bill and not expect me to pay; I didn’t think my overdraft would be able to take it. I saw Sam step into a lift at the other end of the corridor.
‘Wait!’ I shouted, but she didn’t, so I ran down the stairs to our room. By the time I got there, she’d gone.
I felt too keyed up to go home and face Alice. I needed to calm down, to walk the anonymous streets of London and lose myself the way I’d longed to that morning, to remind myself that everything I was doing in my life was a choice and that I could begin again if I had to. I started out in the direction of the bakery I’d seen from the window.
As I stepped off the kerb to cross the street, a car swerved to a stop in front of me.
Sam’s car.
She wound down the window, but she didn’t look at me. ‘Are you getting in?’ she asked, though it was more of an order than a question.
I did as I was told.
Sam drove too fast, staring at the road ahead. ‘What you said was abusive,’ she said, without looking at me.
‘What?’
‘You said, “Fuck you.” That was abusive. I want you to apologize.’
I would have laughed if I hadn’t felt so desperate. She had won. She had completely won.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and she smiled. I turned to look out of the window so she couldn’t see my face, my tears blurring the view of the skyline as we crossed the river.
And then, without turning round – without really thinking – I said, ‘I can’t do this any more.’
‘Can’t do what?’ Sam said. And then, more coldly, ‘Can’t do what? Are you trying to break up with me?’
I stayed very still.
‘You can’t break up with me,’ she said. ‘Because I’ve already broken up with you.’
She sped up.
‘Slow down,’ I said.
She ignored me.
‘Please?’ I said.
She let out a nasty laugh and drove straight through a red light.
‘Stop it,’ I said.
‘I’m not doing anything,’ she said. She was still driving, towards her flat.
‘Just drop me here,’ I said, as we passed Monument station.
‘If you want to go home, I’ll take you,’ she said.
‘You don’t need to—’ I said, but the more I spoke, the faster she seemed to drive, so I shut up, and closed my eyes, and I thought about happier times. Like the time we’d walked through Broadway Market and she’d told me why I was more delicious than every cake on sale, and the time she’d come to dinner at our flat and Alice had told me she was the most charming woman she’d ever met, and just the night before, when she’d looked into my eyes like she really knew me and told me she’d never felt so much for anyone before. And I had felt the same.
She gave me the most aggressive lift home in history, probably, and when she stopped I opened the car door and ran up to the house as quickly as possible while her tyres screamed on the road and she disappeared.
My key didn’t seem to fit in the front door. I didn’t realize I was holding it upside down for at least a minute. When I finally got the door open I sat down with my back against the wall, not thinking anything, until Alice came out to see whether we were being burgled.
42. NO WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL
‘What’s wrong?’ Alice asked when she saw it was me. She had her arms crossed tight around her dressing gown.
I didn’t get up from the floor. My heart was still racing. ‘Me and Sam broke up,’ I said.
Alice slid down the wall to sit next to me. She put her arm around me. ‘Do you want some coffee?’
‘Tea,’ I said. ‘Too anxious for coffee.’
We sat on the sofa and I told Alice all about what had happened. The whole argument seemed a lot more ridiculous and unnecessary now that I’d spoken about it out loud. The sex stuff was quite funny, actually, the way I told it. Alice had to go to the bathroom when I got to the bit about the Mexican accent and the ‘Sí, Jefe’ situation, because she thought she was literally going to piss herself laughing.
‘So glad we got to talk,’ she said afterwards, putting her head on my shoulder.
‘Will you think I’m weak if I get back together with her?’
‘No!’ Alice said. ‘No, no, no. You aren’t weak at all. You are so strong.’
‘But you still think we shouldn’t be together.’
She didn’t answer straight away. ‘I think – you’ve always said you wanted an equal relationship. But do you really think you’re in one?’
‘No, but—’
‘But what?’ asked Alice. ‘But she’s a woman, so it doesn’t count?’
‘But I love her,’ I said, and I heard the wheedling tone in my voice, and I suddenly remembered a night a few years before: I’d been walking through Kentish Town at two in the morning, a bit drunk, when a man grabbed his girlfriend’s hair and threw her to the ground, right there on the pavement in front of me. I’d stood there, wondering what to say, weighing up whether I should risk intervening, when four police officers jumped out of a van that had been waiting nearby, handcuffed the man and pushed him up against the wall. I was telling one of the officers what I’d seen when the woman came up to us, crying hysterically.
‘Don’t take him away,’ she’d said. ‘He didn’t mean it.’
The policeman said that, from where he was standing, the guy had definitely meant it.
I pointed out to the woman that she had a black eye and a bleeding nose.
‘But I love him,’ she’d said.
Alice made soothing noises while I cried into my hands.
‘I’m going to miss her so much,’ I said.
‘I know,’ said Alice.
‘Can we stop talking about this now?’ I asked.
‘OK,’ said Alice. She thought for a moment, and then she said, ‘How’s your lovely Bomber Command friend doing?’
‘Oh God,’ I said, closing my eyes, ‘I wrote him a letter and I still haven’t posted it.’
‘Want to walk to the post box now? We could get a Double Caramel Magnum on the way back.’
So we walked, hand in hand, to the post box. I felt better for the fresh air, and the Double Caramel Magnum was very comforting.
‘Ice cream makes everything better,’ I said to Alice, as we walked home through Clissold Park.
‘Except type two diabetes,’ she said.
I like to think I’m good in a crisis. I seem to come alive; when my grandfather died I remember the strange adrenaline rush that came along with the grief, the feeling that normal service had been suspended and it was suddenly acceptable to eat crisps for breakfast.
I felt a similar adrenaline rush after Sam and I broke up. Admittedly I was a bit of a mess – I was sent home from work for crying in a meeting about handover notes, and I got drunk every night for a week, falling asleep on the toilet floor and waking to throw up, my vomit black with red wine – but I felt completely, tinglingly alive.
I didn’t go back to see Nicky, though. I wasn’t ready for that. I thought I’d give myself some time to wallow, to cry in front of Meryl Streep films, to eat halloumi cheese straight from the packet. I wanted to have forgotten how much more exciting my life had been with Sam in it and how amazing it had felt to lie pressed up against her in the mornings before I listened to Nicky say, ‘I told you so.’ I didn’t want anyone to tell me my time with Sam had been wasted, or that she’d been bad for me, or any of that. I missed her.
Dad called me as I was watching TV, alone, greasy-haired, a couple of days after our break-up.
‘Hello, Julia. It’s me.’
‘I know,’ I said.
‘I just wanted to give you a YouTube update. I have over a hundred subscribers!’
‘That’s great,’ I said, trying to sound enthusiastic.
‘I have fans in New Zealand now!’
I could hear Mum in the background, practically rolling around the floor at the idea of Dad having fans.
‘I went next door last night and Harry played my channel on the widescreen TV downstairs, in their new entertainment centre. My face was the size of a small car!’
‘God help us,’ Mum said. ‘Your face is quite large enough.’
‘Now,’ said Dad, ‘your mother and I have started to think about Christmas.’
‘All right,’ I said.
‘I was wondering whether we ought to try something new this year. Have a sort of theme. Come as your favourite literary character, something like that.’
‘I’ll come as Anna Karenina,’ I said, because that was the sort of mood I was in. ‘You could come as Portnoy from Portnoy’s Complaint.’
‘I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ said Dad. ‘He spends a lot of that novel— well.’
‘Wanking in a toilet.’
‘Precisely.’
‘I know, Dad,’ I said. ‘I was joking.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Anyway. We were wondering.’ He cleared his throat, as though he was about to say something difficult. ‘Would your girlfriend like to join us?’
Girlfriend. Now that Sam and I had broken up, Dad had finally managed to call her my girlfriend. I burst into tears.
Dad didn’t know how to deal with that, so he passed the phone to Mum.
‘Thank fuck for that,’ she said. ‘Pardon my French, darling. But she was awful.’
I was even worse at my job than usual in those first few weeks; I couldn’t concentrate. I’d be researching a reply to an email about treatment options or alcohol misuse, and then I’d be sucked into a Wikipedia loop, reading about the history of Alcoholics Anonymous, watching videos about how vodka is made, learning useless fact after useless fact, the hours disappearing the way candyfloss does, so you’d never know they’d existed, apart from the sickly guilt I felt. The Wednesday after our break-up I watched a particularly nasty video, a film shot in 1913 showing a man leaping from the Eiffel Tower to his death. It wasn’t a suicide attempt; he’d made himself a suit with wings, and he thought he’d be able to fly. As a spectator it was obvious to me that he wouldn’t. But things are always more obvious to spectators, aren’t they?
I watched him flap the ‘wings’ of his suit, which looked like a sleeping bag caught on a clotheshorse, and I found myself laughing.
Owen’s eyes appeared over the divider between our desks, grateful for a distraction. ‘What?’ he said.
‘Nothing,’ I said, still laughing. Minimizing my screen.
‘No, what?’ he said.
So I told him.
‘That’s what you were laughing at?’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘What’s happened to me?’
‘Well. I mean. You have just broken up with someone.’
I laughed again, and then I felt myself begin to cry.
‘Julia,’ Owen said, in his quiet monotone. ‘Julia.’
I pretended I hadn’t heard.
He stood up, and said ‘Julia,’ slightly louder, so that a few other people looked up, too.
‘I’m fine,’ I said.
‘OK,’ Owen said, and he sat down again, but I could feel him still looking at me, and a few minutes later he came over and crouched by my desk. ‘Want to come and get some tea?’
I nodded damply.
‘Have you heard from her?’ he asked me, putting tea bags in our mugs.
I shook my head.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘She wasn’t very nice to you.’
‘She was, actually,’ I said, letting myself cry again. ‘Sometimes.’
‘No,’ Owen said. ‘Don’t think about the good times. Think about the bad things about her.’
‘I don’t want to,’ I said.
‘When Carys got dumped she said there wasn’t anything bad about Sarah—’
‘Carys got dumped?’
Owen nodded. ‘But then I reminded her that Sarah was always taking selfies and pouting in mirrors.’
‘When did they break up?’
‘Couple of weeks ago. So, tell me the bad things about Sam.’
‘She thought she was a stud. She wore a Barbour jacket like that was an original thing to do.’
‘There you go.’
‘She got angry with me if I didn’t pick up the phone when s
he called. And she did take me to Lyon and spent a lot of time having sex with another woman.’
Owen nodded, at a loss for words, I think.
‘She was good in bed, though.’
‘That’s very hard to give up. Very hard.’ He gave me a strange sort of half-hug. ‘You can do this, Julia,’ he said.
‘Thanks Owen,’ I said, and I made a resolution to put at least £10 into his leaving collection.
But I missed her – I missed her beauty, her edges, her dangerousness, the spiciness of her. Without her, everything was bland, like the ratatouille my mother makes to use up the old vegetables in the fridge.
Cat and Alice were brilliant. They took me out and bought me drinks and told me I could do much better than Sam, which I needed to hear, because I was still in the ‘I’m going to die alone surrounded by crocheted tea cosies’ stage of grief.
‘She’s a fucking psycho,’ Cat said.
‘You can’t say that,’ said Alice. ‘She doesn’t have a diagnosis. But it’s fair to say she doesn’t seem very happy.’
‘She needs to do a fuckload of work on her own problems before she so much as kisses another woman.’
‘She probably could do with a bit of CBT,’ said Alice.
Alice and I were hanging out lots more now that we were both single; it was like the good old days, before I knew what enema kits were.
She persuaded me to come to the world’s most expensive spinning class with her one day after work; she had replaced sex with staring at attractive personal trainers. ‘You can pretend that they fancy you, as long as you don’t look in the mirror afterwards and remember how red you go after cardio,’ she told me, as we took our very uncomfortable seats on the spinning bikes.
‘Take a moment to remember why you came here today,’ shouted the instructor, as we climbed a hill to a Jay-Z song. Because I’ve broken up with a woman who likes to have problematic sex in skyscrapers, and I miss her, I thought.
‘You’re all heroes!’ shouted the instructor, which was a bit of an exaggeration. I allowed myself to admire her arm muscles and her midriff. I’d have plenty of time to work on my arm muscles, now that I was single.
My swing dance friends were brilliant, too. Ella hosted a sleepover at her flat – two bedrooms, in an ex-local authority building near the Barbican, completely amazing – and we practised jumps and swingouts in her living room until her downstairs neighbour banged on the door and asked us to keep it down. And then, like teenagers, we played spin the bottle. My bottle landed on Ella, and that was all the confirmation I needed that I didn’t fancy her – it felt all wrong, like kissing your sister, or a puppy. But then Ella’s bottle landed on Zhu and it went on for ages. Bo, Rebecca and I actually got up to make ourselves another drink and left them to it on the sofa.
