The London of Us

by Clare Lydon

  The ping of the front doorbell interrupted my thoughts and my heart picked up speed. Who was at the door? Jake, come to plead with me to change my mind? I washed my hands and gave myself a stern look in the mirror, my heart thudding in my chest, my hazel eyes still red from sleep.

  It was probably just someone for Tanya. A parcel, perhaps.

  I heard voices and gulped, swallowing down my fears. I strained my ears but couldn’t make out a man’s voice in the mix, just a dull rumble of sound. Knowing I couldn’t hide in the bathroom forever, I took a deep breath and stepped out into the hallway, walking towards the lounge.

  And that’s when I recognised one of the voices and stopped walking. Could I swivel on one foot and make it back to my bedroom cocoon before anyone realised? I was going to give it a damn good try.

  However, as I turned, I came face to face with a bed-headed Tanya, towering over me as usual, arms outstretched for a hug.

  I couldn’t do anything else except fall into it.

  “You lost?” Tanya squeezed me tight as she spoke.

  “Kinda,” I replied, alarm bleeding from me as if my whole body was an open wound.

  Tanya took my hand in hers, not heeding my non-verbal signals as she pulled me towards the lounge and near-certain catastrophe. I began to resist Tanya’s pull, but she always had been that bit stronger than me.

  “Sophie’s been and got pastries from the café, so it’s a Sunday morning on the balcony in the sunshine. We thought it’d be the perfect way to start the day and your fresh start, put you in a good mood.”

  “But—” I wanted to dig my heels in, put the brakes on, but everything was happening on super fast-forward and I didn’t appear to have a say.

  “—No buts, you’re not hiding in your room all day feeling sorry for yourself. Today is the start of the rest of your life, and we need to start it right. With strong coffee and Jess’s delicious pain au chocolat and pain aux raisins. Am I right?”

  She gave me a grin and tugged me, off balance, down the rest of the hallway and into the lounge.

  It was only when Tanya saw we had another visitor that she flashed me a panicked look; the very same one that had been on my face for the past few seconds.

  Because the extra visitor was Rachel, standing in the kitchen beside Sophie, her black hair artfully swept to one side, in a pair of Abercrombie & Fitch baby blue jogging bottoms, a white V-necked T-shirt hugging her slim, pale frame.

  I swayed and colour bled into my vision, mainly blood red and deathly black: was this where I passed out?

  I tried to recall my recent affirmations, but they seemed to have deserted me.

  Tanya squeezed my hand, before turning to address Sophie, currently standing by her large white kitchen island.

  “Hey!” Tanya said, a jaunt in her voice I was sure she’d added just for me. “I wasn’t expecting company, I would have put my posh shorts on.”

  Sophie looked up with a smile, her blonde hair newly cut, licking her fingers as she finished placing the pastries on a large oval plate. “Rachel’s hardly company,” she replied. “I just realised we were out of jam, so I texted her to say if she brought some up, she could share breakfast with us.”

  Rachel grinned. “And I didn’t have a better offer this morning, so I said yes.”

  This, at least, told me one thing: Tanya hadn’t blabbed, otherwise Sophie would never have done this. I was relieved to know I could trust my friend to keep a secret, even if this was my ultimate nightmare, meeting Rachel on day two of singledom. Or was it day one? After all, this time yesterday, I still had a boyfriend.

  “I wasn’t expecting to see you, though,” Rachel added, smiling at me. “Did you have one too many on Tanya’s balcony last night?”

  I should have known staying here was going to be too dangerous.

  I painted on a smile and addressed Rachel, my heart pulsing, my jaw stiff. “Something like that.” I pressed my back teeth together like I was having a dental X-Ray. “Actually, Jake and I have split up, so I’m crashing here for a bit.”

  Rachel’s face fell. “You’ve split up?”

  I nodded, feeling Tanya wince beside me, seeing Sophie look down at the kitchen bench she was standing over, pausing as she loaded a bunch of mugs onto a tray.

  “We have,” I replied, wishing I was back under my crisp white duvet, still warm, where nothing could harm me.

  Rachel walked over, her face set to such a high level of compassion, I thought I might crumble if she came any closer.

  I took a step backwards as she approached.

  “Are you okay?” She touched my arm.

  I stopped breathing and glanced at Tanya for help, but my friend had chosen this moment to slip away to her girlfriend, leaving me with Rachel, just the two of us.

  Her touch made my whole body react like an induction hob: instant, glowing heat.

  “I’m okay, just a lot of stuff to work out, as you can imagine.” I stared into Rachel’s crystal blue eyes as I had done so many times before, but this morning, the gesture had fresh meaning.

  Because today was the first time I’d done it as a single, available woman.

  A single, available woman who was more and more attracted to the single, available woman standing in front of her.

  And those were exactly the thoughts I didn’t want to be thinking this morning.

  It was all too soon, too messy, too much.

  Rachel’s kind eyes were focused all on me, her head nodding in understanding.

  “Of course,” she said. “If there’s anything I can do, for either of you, just let me know.”

  For either of us?

  Of course, Jake was her business partner, she would say that.

  “I will,” I said, knowing I had to get out of here as soon as possible, for my own sanity. “You know, second thoughts, I think I need to get going, so I’ll take a raincheck on breakfast.”

  I glanced at my wrist where my watch normally sat, but was absent today. What lie could I make up on the spot to get out of sitting on the balcony with Rachel, the object of my desire staring at me with sympathy in her eyes, making my heart lurch one way, then the other, like it was punch-drunk?

  “You do?” Tanya said from the kitchen.

  I nodded. “I have to get over to my mum’s for Sunday lunch. I said I’d help her out today, because Dad’s out this morning and my sister is coming over with her family.”

  I checked my wrist again: still empty.

  “You can’t even stay for a quick coffee and pastry?” Tanya walked over and stood behind Rachel.

  I shook my head, a rabbit trapped in the headlights. “I just remembered.”

  Tanya held my gaze, before nodding slowly. “Okay.”

  “Pour me a coffee and I’ll have a swig on my way out, okay?”

  I gave Rachel and Tanya a final smile, before fleeing into my bedroom and collapsing on the bed, my breathing ragged, my thoughts all over the place.

  First things first: I should text my parents to see if they were around today. Yes, it had been a lie, but I had nowhere better to be.

  Chapter 10

  I knocked on the door of my parents flat and stood back, still overwhelmed by all the changes that had happened in the last 24 hours. A good night’s sleep had settled my nerves, but seeing Rachel so soon had emptied the pockets of my life, tipping my thoughts and feelings onto the floor without a moment’s notice.

  Seconds later, my mum greeted me with a beaming smile. I was no giant, but Mum only just reached over five foot — yet she’d always seemed way taller to me. She was wearing jeans and a blue-and-white stripey top, one of about 20 she owned. As Mum always said, if you found something you liked that suited you, you should buy that item in all of the colours and your wardrobe was set.

  She was wearing a racing-green apron over the top of her stripes, and the smeared flour on the front told me she’d been baking this morning, as did the gorgeous scent of sweet, freshly baked pie that hung in the air. I hoped it w
as apple — Mum made the best apple pie in the world.

  “Daughter number two, safely back at the mothership,” she said, a soft smile creasing her face. She held out her arms and I sank into her embrace, just like I used to when I was a little girl.

  Right now, I was that little girl again, transported back to all the times she’d held me when I was in need.

  I was still in need of her reassurance, more than she would ever know.

  Even her smell was comforting: lavender and lemon, her favoured essential oil mix.

  Mum eventually broke the embrace, rubbing her hands up and down my shoulders.

  “Such a long face!” she said, taking my hand and pulling me towards the kitchen. “Come with me, we’ll get you a drink and you can tell your mum all about it.” She turned then, giving me a grin. “I’m just pleased to have you here, I did a little yelp when I got your text — I always love having you for Sunday dinner, especially one that’s a surprise. Although it’s a shame Jake couldn’t make it, too. Is he working again? That boy needs to have a break. Although I suppose in the business he’s in, other people’s leisure time is his work time, isn’t it?”

  I stilled at her words, momentarily surprised she didn’t know Jake wouldn’t be joining us ever again, but then, why would she? I only left him yesterday and I hadn’t exactly been spray-painting my news all over town. Only four other people in the world knew — including Rachel — and just the thought of her threatened to knock me off my stride as I followed Mum down the hall, with her looking over her shoulder, waiting for a reply.

  “The thing is…” I winced as I stumbled over my words. “Well, Jake’s not coming over because we’ve split up.” I took a deep breath, watching Mum’s face as it dropped. “So he won’t be coming around again at all.”

  Her forehead furrowed and she stopped walking, turning to stare at me. She pulled me to her, before taking hold of my shoulders in a vice-like grip. “Oh my, you poor thing. Split up, are you sure? Completely done?”

  “Yes, completely done.”

  She poked her tongue into her cheek. “Is it another woman?” she whispered, like saying it any louder might make it true. She said it with the sure-fire knowledge of a woman who’d seen all this before: man has affair, woman finds out, woman returns to her loved ones and sobs on their shoulder.

  I could see Mum was already preparing her shoulder for me, but I shook my head.

  To be honest, it would make it way easier to deal with if there was another woman.

  But alas, there was not.

  Not in the way my mother would imagine, at any rate.

  “No, there’s no other woman.”

  Not for Jake, at least.

  Mum gave me a concerned stare, then nodded, pulling me into the kitchen where the chicken was sitting in a foil-lined tray, a lemon stuck inside its cavity. The air smelled of the potatoes she’d par-boiled already, now sitting fluffed up all around the pale, uncooked bird.

  Mum’s roast chicken dinners were the stuff of legend — and just about the only thing Dad let her cook at weekends, when the kitchen was his domain. I’d tried to replicate it at home, but I’d never quite mastered it. On the side was the pie she’d already baked, all golden and crisp, with the tell-tale pastry apple shape nestled on the top.

  Mum opened the fridge and poured me a large glass of chilled Chablis: her favourite.

  I smiled as she handed me the wine, taking a long glug, instantly feeling better about my day.

  Mum poured herself a smaller glass, then took my hand again, dragging me through the parquet-floored living room with its patterned wallpaper and thickly upholstered sofas, and out onto the balcony that ran the full length of their flat. It was scattered with green plants and pots of colourful flowers, along with a white wooden table surrounded by four matching chairs.

  This was Mum’s favourite part of the flat, what sold it to her. The balcony overlooked an internal courtyard and quite often, my parents’ balcony appeared to be the only one in regular use.

  I sat down in the cushioned seats, as unexpected panic slid down me: I was going to have to tell Mum the details, and it wasn’t the story she was expecting. When I looked up, she was plumping her orange cushion, before sitting down and fixing me with concerned eyes. The same eyes she’d been gazing at me with since the day I was born.

  “Where’s Dad?” A stalling tactic. I sipped my wine.

  “Out on a job.” She rolled her eyes.

  “I thought he’d retired?”

  “He has,” she said. “But it’s your dad’s version of retired, not mine.” Mum paused. “Sabrina keeps telling him, but he doesn’t listen, you know what he’s like. He tells me these are clients he’s dealt with for years, but he’s been telling me that forever. I just leave him to it now, I can’t stop him.”

  Dad was an architect with his own firm. Sabrina had followed in his footsteps and was now managing the firm, along with two other partners. Dad was meant to have stepped down at the beginning of the year when he turned 65, but he was having trouble letting go.

  “So,” she said. “What’s going on? I thought you and Jake were made for each other, happy as larks.” She paused. “If he hasn’t cheated on you, what’s happened? Men like him don’t come along every day.” She narrowed her eyes. “I take it you ended it?”

  I crinkled my brow. “Why do you think that?”

  She smiled. “You’re not crying and saying how unfair the world is. If you’re not, Jake must be, which means you ended it.” She pursed her lips. “Did you cheat?”

  I sighed, shaking my head. “Nobody cheated and I wish everyone would stop asking me. We loved each other, and now we don’t. Well, I don’t. That’s all, no third parties.” Irritation seeped out of my voice, but I wasn’t bothered. Ours was a blameless break-up, not a conflicted one.

  “So why the sudden change of heart? Are you absolutely sure? Because that boy loves you, that much is clear as day.”

  My insides flared, but I kept my cool.

  “I don’t doubt that. But I don’t love him anymore and that’s quite a key component. I can’t just stay together with someone because they want to. I have to want it, too.”

  Mum ran the tip of her index finger along the top of her wine glass, before flicking her gaze back up to me.

  And that gaze was suddenly stifling, taking me back to when I was little and Mum would look at me in the same way. I could never tell lies and I wasn’t about to start now.

  A hot flush shot through me as I considered the next words that came out of my mouth, and I was blushing before they even hit the air. It’s not that I was embarrassed, I was just new to this. And telling my parents was way different to telling my friends or my sister.

  “I know it seems out of the blue.” I paused, my palms clammy, my hands trembling. “But I’ve kinda fallen for someone else, and it wasn’t something I could ignore anymore. Nothing’s happened, the other person doesn’t even know, but I couldn’t be dishonest.”

  Mum regarded me, before reaching over and taking my hand. “And I’m proud of you for doing that,” she said. “I can see this isn’t something you’ve done lightly.”

  I shook my head. “It was one of the hardest decisions of my life, but also one of the easiest. Once I told him, I knew I’d done the right thing. But it’s taken months to work up to it.”

  “Months?” Mum’s voice was etched with surprise. “How many months?”

  I nodded. “A lot. Six.” Somehow, I wasn’t ready to tell her the whole truth. “Maybe more.”

  She took a moment to swallow that information down. “So who’s this new fella — is he someone you work with?”

  My cheeks burned from the inside out as I cleared my throat. Here goes nothing, the moment Tanya and all my other gay friends had told me about. I was about to come out to my mother and I hadn’t even had sex yet. At least, not with a woman.

  “No, nobody I work with,” I said, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up as I uncrossed an
d then re-crossed my legs. “And it’s not a man, either.” I paused, my chest tightening, the words getting caught in my throat.

  I bit the inside of my cheek.

  Just say the words.

  “It’s a woman.”

  A huge gust of something flew up my windpipe, and I forced myself to look at my mother, the woman I’d known my whole life, the first woman I’d ever loved.

  She raised both eyebrows and took a giant slug of her Chablis. Then she tried a smile, but it didn’t quite stick.

  I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but this was new. I’d never faced any judgement when I’d brought up a man I was interested in, but this was obviously different.

  It was making me stutter, and making my mum stutter.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  “A woman — well, I never saw that one coming.” She cocked her head. “This is very out of the blue. Since when do you like women?”

  She was still talking to me, so that was good. “It’s a pretty recent occurrence.” If she thought I had this all worked out, she was sorely mistaken. “And if you’re surprised, believe me, I was just as in the dark.”

  Mum sat forward, staring down at the courtyard before lifting her gaze back to me. “It’s not Tanya, is it?”

  I laughed. My family clearly thought Tanya was the only lesbian in the whole wide world.

  “No, it’s not Tanya,” I said. “There are other women, other lesbians in London apart from Tanya.”

  “But you met her through Tanya?”

  I nodded. “In a roundabout way, yes. She shares a flat with Tanya’s girlfriend, Sophie.”

  I wished I could see what was going on in her head. Was she surprised? Happy? Disappointed?

  Not that her reaction would affect my emotions.

  That ship has already sailed.

  I recalled Rachel’s concerned gaze from this morning, her touch on my arm that had threatened to undo me.

  “But you’ve always had boyfriends in the past. Has there been a girlfriend I’ve missed, someone you’ve not told me about?”