The Lonely Fajita

by Abigail Mann

  Now I want to cry. Bubbles prickle at the back of my throat and I can’t stop thinking about how much of a fucking failure this whole thing has been.

  I came to London wanting to make a difference, but couldn’t land full-time hours; I’ve got a job that sounds exciting, but is shallow and actually makes me poorer through doing it; I barely see my friends because they’re always busy in their – well-paid, I might add – jobs, and I can’t even bring myself to feel sad that my boyfriend is dumping me because I’m not sure I’ve ever properly been in love with him. He’s stopped his anxious jiggling and we sit in the silence made by our refusal to state the obvious.

  ‘Right,’ I say. I can’t break my gaze from his leather shoes. They’re covered in sticky stains from spilt drinks. He hasn’t mentioned me at all – how he’s going to miss me, how he’s essentially forcing me to move out, or if he’s actually liked living together. Then again, I don’t really feel like saying those things either. I sit up and scoot back on the bed until I’m leaning against the wall with my knees pulled in.

  ‘I’ll have Skype and stuff,’ Tom says as he stands up, winding his earphones around two fingers, before sliding them into his back pocket.

  ‘Yeah, well …’ I add lamely. We’ve never used it before, so I doubt we’ll start now. Soon after Tom got headhunted a few months ago, he asked me to send calendar invites for joint social events, so he’s not exactly going to cope with spontaneous video calls from a different continent, is he? ‘Thanks for being so supportive about all this,’ says Tom, standing near the door. I’m not sure what’s happening. Is this a break-up, a hiatus, or something else entirely? He opens it and the sound of Yaz’ playlist skips onto Chaka Khan’s ‘Like Sugar’, which is so jarring a song in this current situation that it makes my throat close up again. He taps the metal doorknob, hovering. ‘Maybe you could phone Maggie and see if you can stay with her?’

  ‘Don’t tell me how to deal with this shit show, Tom. I’ll figure it out just fine.’ Tom’s eyes widen in surprise and he gives me the tiniest of smiles, which makes me want to punch him in the throat.

  ‘I’ll be going then.’ He holds the door open and looks at me.

  He shifts his weight from one foot to the other and for a second I think he’s going to walk over and kiss me. Despite myself, I lean forward to meet him, but he decides against it and awkwardly pats the wall below the light switch like he’s soothing a horse. We lock eyes, which quickly turns into the worst staring contest I’ve ever experienced, until he shuts the door with a hard pull against its sticky frame. I wait until I hear him swing his backpack on and clump down the stairs before I get up to cook my noodles.

  I stir the boiling water into a whirlpool and shrug off my coat. From the pocket, I fish out a severely crumped flyer, which has slipped into the lining through a hole I’d meant to patch up last winter. I smooth it out on the countertop with one hand and turn the hob down with the other. Water drips over the edge and hisses as it hits a lick of flame. Fuck it. I’ve got nothing to lose.

  Chapter 12

  ‘Shut. Up.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I can’t even …’

  ‘Yep.’

  Suki sits cross-legged on a stack of crates that have been loosely fashioned into outdoor seating with the aid of a cushion and potted palm trees. I take my boots off despite the fuggy damp in the air and skim my toes across the artificial grass. The pho noodles that dangle above Suki’s mouth now slip from her chopsticks, sending chicken broth over the sides of her reusable tub. Most of us would give ourselves a pat on the back for carrying round a glass KeepCup, but Suki has an eco-friendly version of just about everything.

  ‘So, he’s just gone and fucked off, then?’ says Suki, gesticulating to the place Tom has fucked off to with her chopsticks, which is apparently over her left shoulder.

  ‘Yes. Well, he’s gone to his parents until his flight out next week, but in essence, yes, he’s fucked off.’

  ‘I hope this is a stupid question, but he left you a key, right?’

  ‘Yeah. Technically, I’ve got until the end of the month until I have to move out. Obviously he’s not going to keep paying rent. Now I’ve calmed down, I’m trying not to be pissed off about it because he was really helping me out by paying for the whole lot in the first place.’

  ‘Babe, that’s not the point. He can’t just change everything and expect you to be cool with it. There are a couple of major factors here. One, you’re now homeless—’

  ‘Wow, okay.’

  ‘No, but seriously, this is what he’s done. And he doesn’t seem to give a fuck that you’ve essentially broken up. Actually, can we talk about how fucked up it is that he’s just left his live-in girlfriend of six months to go on some sort of delayed fuck-boy gap year? That’s savage.’

  ‘The thing is, Sook, I keep thinking I’m going to get this wave of despair that things have ended but I just don’t … feel anything. I was kidding myself, wasn’t I? You were right the other day. It was convenient, but sharing a sock drawer doesn’t make you a good couple. Well, it was a lot more convenient for me than him. He was, quite literally, losing money because of me.’ I pause and put my lunchbox to one side. ‘When he went away, I didn’t miss him. Not really. I missed rolling into the warm spot he left behind in the bed each morning, and falling asleep to a film on Sunday afternoons, and eating fajitas together.’ My throat gets prickly and I have a lukewarm sip of coffee, which is now too milky because all the foam has dissolved. ‘Suki, there’s nothing sadder than constructing a fajita on your own.’

  ‘Oh, babe.’ She leans over and rubs my knee. ‘You can come and construct fajitas with me and Jazz any time. You know that, right? Jazz might even get off with you if you ask her nicely.’

  ‘Thanks, Suki. I’ll bear that in mind.’ I smile despite how stupidly miserable I am, look up at the sky, and blink rapidly to dispel the threat of tears. ‘You still haven’t told me what happened to Fiona.’

  Suki rubs her chin and skims a hand over her shaved head. She looks up at me with her bottom lip jutting out and I know instantly that she is putting on a facade of guilt; there’s too much twinkle in her eye. I gasp and accidentally inhale a strand of my two-day-old spaghetti. My eyes water and I splutter from a momentary lapse of oxygen. ‘Suki! What did you do?’

  ‘Why would you think I did anything?’ Suki bites a smile into the corner of her mouth, unable to keep up her kicked-spaniel act.

  ‘Tell me you didn’t then.’

  ‘I didn’t!’

  I raise my eyebrows at her, using my best ‘warning face’ that I’d perfected during a summer as an au pair in Italy. When you speak zero Italian and have the authority of a flea, a ‘look’ can go a long way to stop one child trying to set the other’s hair on fire with a stove lighter.

  ‘Okay, I did.’

  ‘I really liked Fiona! She made all those great cookies! I have dreams about the ones with the melty marshmallow middle. God, they were good. And that Lebanese breakfast thing she made after Pride?’

  ‘All right, Greg Wallace, calm down. Anyway, she’s single now so feel free to crack on.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m not quite ready to give up on boys just yet.’

  ‘Well, you keep saying that, but everyone’s a bit gay, aren’t they?’

  ‘Are they? I don’t think I am.’

  ‘You think that now, my friend, but I saw how you backed up when Beyoncé came on.’

  ‘Don’t bring Beyoncé into this.’

  Suki smirks and dangles her arm over the back of a crate propped on its side to serve as an armrest. ‘Anyway, Fiona’s fine. Well, she wasn’t fine for a bit. She was really fucking mad actually. It was weird because I sort of felt like she didn’t have the capacity for anger. She rationalised everything. D’you remember I told you about that night I got pissed with my brother after work and totally fucking forgot she’d booked a table at that posh place – what’s it called? – the one with the mirrors that Piers Morgan
is always in?’

  ‘The Ivy?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it!’ Suki slurps, the steam from her pot twisting around a rope of noodles that hangs from her chopsticks. ‘I turned up wasted and managed a couple of oysters before doing a tactical vom outside the front and then the doorman in his fancy fucking top hat wouldn’t let me in again.’

  ‘Suki,’ I say, laughing, ‘that is absolutely vile. Mind you, that’s a Michelin dinner for one lucky urban fox.’

  Suki snorts and folds her slender arms across her chest. ‘Yeah, so that night I met her mum for the first time and Fi was like –’ Suki imitates a deep, measured American accent ‘– “I know you work so hard and I understand that Fridays are your release, but it made my mom feel uncomfortable and I hope in turn that you appreciate that.” It was a pretty dick move from me, but I wanted her to get mad at me for once. I fucking deserved it.’

  Suki stands up and swings her arms like a swimmer warming up on poolside.

  ‘Right, I better get back down to the pits. Louis wants to have some sort of foosball championship and the loser has to write the code for an interface patch on Sunday.’ Suki is technically employed by The Butcher Works and is rented out to the five or six apps that are housed here. Louis is easily the wealthiest guy in the place, despite only just being able to legally drink in America.

  ‘How can your day be so different to mine when we share the same building?’ I wiggle into my shoes and pick a blob of sauce off my jumper. ‘To my knowledge, our air-hockey table has never been plugged in.’ I walk behind her as we clunk down the exterior metal staircase that leads into a communal courtyard. Suki turns around on the stairs and grips the railing, her eyes full of mischievous charm.

  ‘That big meeting in a couple of weeks, you got a pitch ready for it?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘I’ll think of something. Eventually. Although, I don’t see the point; Mitchell doesn’t care what I have to say, especially if it’s not what he wants to hear.’

  ‘Oh, forgot to tell you, one of the coders on floor three told me—’

  ‘Hang on,’ I say, recognising the number on my screen with a little lurch in my stomach.

  ‘If it’s Tom, tell him to fuck off.’ I wince and push the mouthpiece into my chest. She winks and takes the stairs unevenly, disappearing through a sliding door.

  ‘Hi, it’s Elissa.’

  ‘Hi! I got your email, great news! That’s it now, is it? No more changing your mind?’

  ‘Nope. That’s it. Definitely.’

  ‘Okay, well I’ve submitted your DBS, so I can’t foresee any delays. Like I said, Annie’s ready when you are.’

  ‘Actually, do you think Annie would be okay with me moving in some time sooner? Like … this weekend?’ I grit my teeth.

  ‘If you get your documents back before Sunday, sure!’ Phew. ‘Let me see … Craig’s just submitted his rota and will be doing the rounds at Evergreen Village between 10 a.m. and noon on Sunday, so if you arrive between those times, he can do a final briefing with you before you two become official ElderCare companions. Quick and efficient. I wish my other companions were as keen as you! Honestly, the dithering! Much less chance of me losing the paperwork between now and the weekend, know what I’m saying?’ I laugh along. Not much chance of losing paperwork in a paperless office.

  It all sounds great. And by ‘great’, I mean that I’ve run out of reasons to refuse the offer. But why did creepy Craig have to do the briefing? Hasn’t he got a war veteran in Chalk Farm to steal military medals from?

  ‘Annie will be thrilled. I guess I can tell you this now, seeing as you’re both happy with each other, but you’re the –’ Alina pauses and I can hear her flicking through papers ‘– twenty-third match we’ve found for her since the last one with the dog allergy, and the first she’s agreed to have after meeting them face-to-face. She doesn’t let just anyone round for tea, our Annie!’ Alina chuckles down the phone and rather than feeling comforted, I experience a swell of intimidation. ‘You must have done something right, Elissa.’

  ‘Ha, yeah, I guess so.’

  ‘We’ll get your forms sorted, you know – make sure you haven’t tried to kidnap any grannies in the past – but we’ll work on the basis that everything is fine for your move on Saturday. Any questions just call, all right, my love?’

  I say goodbye and put the phone in the back pocket of my jeans. Twenty-three matches? Annie’s picky, that’s for sure. What had I done that the other twenty-two hadn’t?

  Annie had been in the throes of second-wave feminism, where women were striking at work for equal pay and divorced mothers lived in communes to raise their babies together, and here I am whining about not being able to pay for rent because my rich boyfriend has essentially kicked me out. I mean, a pensioner’s house is far from the loft flat in Camden that I’d imagined myself in when I first moved to London. I doubt I’ll be able to invite a mate over for a movie night, but then again, I don’t do that now, either.

  Chapter 13

  ‘I don’t know how much of this to leave,’ I say. Maggie rolls her sleeves up and peers over my shoulder into the tiny room Tom and I have shared for nearly a year.

  ‘Well, the furniture is the landlord’s, right?’

  ‘Yep. Everything except the lamp.’

  ‘Oh, thank goodness,’ says Maggie, leaning against the door frame. ‘I thought for a second we’d have to find a way to get that chest of drawers in the Mini. I mean, I would have tried!’ I put my arm around Maggie’s waist and rest my head on her shoulder. We sway slightly, looking at the almost empty room.

  ‘Let’s get going, shall we? Anything last-minute to do? Did you want some help cleaning?’

  I snort and balance a plastic container of shoes on my hip, some of which have mildew and mould from the damp patch in the corner. ‘Absolutely bloody not. Tom can do it. He moaned that I never cleaned properly, anyway.’ I put on a whiny voice, which, I’ll admit, is very petty of me. “You have to pick things up and hoover under them, Elissa!”’

  ‘I do that!’ says Maggie.

  ‘Hmmm. Well, I’ll just write a quick note to Shamaya and Yaz. I’ll be down in a second,’ I reply.

  The little bedroom, so often dark and dreary, looks almost cheerful. Sunshine sneaks through the branches of an oak tree growing on a strip of muck outside, dappling light on the gallery of absent memories formed by bleached shadows of Blu-tacked photographs.

  ‘The parking timer is going to run out in a few minutes, Elissa!’ Maggie calls up the stairs.

  ‘All right, I’ll be down in a sec!’ I sidestep out of the room and prop the last of my boxes on the kitchen counter, which is strewn with grains of uncooked rice and a rogue pizza crust. I can’t think of what to say to Yaz and Shamaya. I doubt we’ll be meeting up to reminisce about the times we jostled for the bathroom before work. I use the marker dangling from a length of string next to the ‘chore chart’, and quickly scrawl a message on a pizza box. I settle on:

  Good luck in the future! Hope the new housemate lets you eat their chicken nuggets too! (Yes, I noticed.)

  I prop it up near the microwave. There’s no conflict quite like passive-aggressive notes between housemates.

  I come downstairs and wiggle the box behind Maggie’s driving seat, which is a feat in itself. There’s barely enough room for a passenger in her car. Maggie must notice I’m dithering on the kerb, because she winds down her window. ‘D’you want a few minutes? I can do a lap of the block if you like.’ I bite my lip and look back at the tatty front door, crowded with bin bags and marked with dents from people trying to kick it in, thinking it was the corner shop.

  ‘No, it’s okay. I’m done here.’ I post the keys back through the letterbox and clamber over an IKEA bag of underwear and clothes I never saw the need to hang up. ‘Let’s go.’ Mr Saleem gives me a little nod from the shop counter as the engine of Maggie’s ancient Mini chugs into life.

  ‘You okay, pea
ch?’

  I take a breath and nod. ‘I am, actually.’

  I’m not lying this time, even to myself.

  We drive alongside Kennington Park and past the Imperial War Museum, where people pose below the branches of trees newly bursting with blossom, then over Waterloo Bridge. The path is thick with meandering tourists. Now I consider it, I don’t think I’ve ever been through London in a car. It feels purposeful and undisputed, similar to the people with dogs in Hyde Park; there’s no question whether they live here or not.

  As we drive uphill, the chewing-gum-smeared pavements turn into wide avenues lined with gnarled trees and clipped hedges. When I first moved to London, I’d had delusions of grandeur, probably from looking at highly stylised Instagram feeds, so I’d bought a plastic window planter and a small bag of compost so we could have flowers on the windowsill. Someone had nicked it within a week and we weren’t even on the ground floor. That wouldn’t happen here, though. Some houses even have a tasteful wreath on the door, and not because they’d forgotten to take it down at Christmas.

  ‘Is this it?’ asks Maggie sceptically, pulling up in front of the decorative archway of Evergreen Village.

  ‘Yep.’ Blossom sprouts from an apple tree pinned against the outside wall and as I follow the line of its branches, I see a woman snap a picture of the ornate entrance, tugging a dachshund behind her as she rounds the corner.

  ‘And you had doubts about this place?’ Maggie asks, flicking up the sun visor to peer at the bell tower.

  ‘Yeah. It’s horrible, isn’t it?’ I say with a bashful smile.

  ‘Swapping kebabs for pink wafer biscuits seems a small price to pay for this, El. It’s beautiful!’ Maggie steps from the car to the cobblestones.