by Alison May
‘You are currently seeking promotion. Your boss has invited you to his wedding. Every other hourly paid pleb in the department will be there, all gussied up, overpriced gift in hand, desperate to impress. You can’t not go.’
She considered his argument. ‘I think teaching quality and published research are more important than wedding presents.’
Alex laughed. ‘Seriously, sometimes it’s like motivational sayings were all for nothing.’
‘How is going to a wedding “being the change I want to see in the world”?’
‘Well this is just the sort of event that successful permanently-employed Helen will get invited to all the time. This is you living that dream.’ Alex scanned the flip charted list, still standing in pride of place in the lounge. ‘Have you asked Dom to put a good word in for you yet?’
Helen shuddered. Normally a cast iron reason to spend time with Dominic was something she would pounce on, but this was different. This was going cap in hand, asking for a favour, rather than earning things on her own merit. ‘It feels like taking advantage.’
‘Well yes. It’s not what you know; it’s who you know. Hence the obligatory wedding attendance.’
‘We can’t afford it.’
He shrugged. ‘Any bits of credit card left that aren’t over the limit?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Then we should go. It’s an investment in your future.’
She rolled her eyes. He might have a point though. Her current financial situation could scarcely get worse. Maybe throwing everything at this job was her best option. ‘Where’s the RSVP?’
Alex handed over the card.
‘You’ve already filled most of this in.’
‘Well I’d already decided you were going.’
‘And you’re going too?’
Alex nodded.
‘Why?’ She knew that Alex was even more broke than her and he wasn’t in the running for the job.
Alex shrugged. ‘Might be fun.’
‘He’ll be there.’
‘Who?’
‘You know who. He’ll be with her.’
‘I thought “her” was your friend.’
‘She is.’
Alex stood and turned over the flip chart to the ‘Getting Over Dominic’ page. ‘Look. You had a whole plan.’
Helen shook her head. It had been a stupid plan. Ten years of him not looking twice at her hadn’t cured her obsession. A few four minute mini-dates were hardly likely to do the trick. ‘S’not working.’
‘Because you’re not doing it.’
She folded her arms.
‘You said you’d try online dating.’
‘It’s cringeworthy.’
‘It’s that or speed dating again.’
She closed her eyes. ‘Maybe I could stay as I am.’
‘Dominic’s with Emily.’
‘Well that’s as maybe, but I love him. I love how clever he is. I love how much he cares about the people around him. I love that you can depend on him, and he’s honourable and kind. And I love how hard he works for his students.’ She paused. ‘And I love his eyes. They’re clear and blue, and sort of trustworthy. I’m sorry. I just love him. It is what it is. There’s nothing I can do to change it.’ She looked at Alex. Lucky, happy Alex who didn’t understand. ‘You just love who you love.’
Emily
I sit in the car and let myself be hypnotised by the lights of the car in front of us. Dom’s got the news on the radio, but I don’t want to hear about people dying and fighting. I want to be still. ‘Can I turn this off?’
‘Sure.’
It’s Sunday night. We’re on our way home from Stockport, which apparently is different from Manchester. Dom’s mum was quite vociferous on that point. ‘Do you think it went okay?’
Dom nods. ‘Yeah.’
‘You sound surprised.’
‘No.’ His eyes are fixed straight ahead on the road. ‘Mum liked you.’
‘Do you think?’ Doubt starts to creep in. I thought it went all right. I accepted all the food and drink I was offered, even the vegetables that appeared to have been on to boil since the beginning of time, and the pudding that came out of a tin. I didn’t say a word about the separate bedrooms, but maybe I could have done more. Helen was right. Family’s important. I’m not sure I did enough to make her like me. One comment sticks in my head. She asked me about work, and I explained that I was a personal assistant. ‘Oh. Like a secretary?’ she said. ‘So you’re not a career woman?’ ‘I thought she wanted someone more career focused.’
Dom laughs. ‘Oh god no. She’s very traditional. She’d hate me to be with somebody who put work before family.’
‘But she sounded so proud of your career.’
He doesn’t answer for a second. ‘By traditional, I mean incredibly old-fashioned. I think her and Dad always had a plan for me, and a traditional marriage to a nice girl is definitely part of it.’
I keep staring straight ahead. He mentioned the M-word. We’ve never talked about that before.
‘They sacrificed so much to send me to this fancy school. It was a bus ride and then a train and then another bus every day to get there, and if there was problem with the trains my dad had to take half a day off work to take me to school, and there was always a plan that I was going to do better than they did, have a better life than they did.’
I keep listening. I saw the pictures at his mum’s house. Dominic in school uniform – the whole works, with a cap and everything. The photo was in pride of place on the mantelpiece next to Dominic’s graduation, and then Dominic’s PhD graduation.
‘They were so proud when I got my PhD, and then when I got a lecturing job, but it was weird.’
‘Weird how?’
‘Sometimes I feel as though they worked so hard to make me different from them that we ended up with nothing left in common.’ He stops talking for a moment and swallows. I glance over at him. He’s still staring straight at the road but his eyes look wet. I’ve never seen Dom cry. ‘Sometimes I think I let them down. I think they had in mind that I’d be married with kids by now.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’
‘No.’
I daren’t look at him. ‘It would be nice to have kids. I can picture me with children and a husband and a house. The whole thing.’ These are the things that everybody wants, aren’t they? Not flirtations, or maybes, but something guaranteed. ‘I’d want to be a proper mummy though. I want to be looked after and look after a family. And I’d have a house with a garden big enough for a climbing frame, and near to my dad, maybe even with an annex he could live in when he got old. I’d have my whole family around me. I think I’d feel safe then.’
‘Don’t you feel safe at the moment?’
I don’t answer.
He tries a different question. ‘What do you have bad dreams about Em?’
I’ve never told anyone this before. I keep staring at the road in front of us. ‘I dream that everyone’s left me. I dream that I’ve been abandoned.’
He moves his left hand off the steering wheel for a second and strokes my leg.
‘I don’t like people leaving me. I like things to be settled, you know, secure.’
‘I know.’ He glances over at me. ‘So how many children are you picturing?’
I’ve thought about this. ‘Three. I don’t want an only child.’
‘Why not two?’
‘Two would fight with each other.’
‘But with three, won’t one be left out?’
I think about it for a minute. ‘Four then?’
He laughs. ‘Then I think we’re going to need a bigger house.’
We? He said we, didn’t he? The tense, bubbly feeling that lives in my tummy subsides a tiny bit for the first time in a very, very long time.
Emily
I sip my wine. It’s my second large glass of the ‘one quick one’ Helen and I planned to have after work. Are two glasses going to be enough to make sure I sleep
tonight? The dreams are coming more often recently, rather than less. Always the same. Always surrounded by people I know and then one by one they slip away until it’s just me and Mum, and I can never get to her. I end up alone in the dark. Every time. I yawn. Across the table Helen grins. ‘Keeping you awake?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Why so tired?’
Because I barely sleep a night without waking up in a cold sweat. I don’t say that to her. I know what she’d say. Either she’d tell me that it was just a dream and not worth getting worked up over, or she’ll take it seriously and start talking about therapy and counselling, which would be worse. Counselling’s for if there’s something wrong with you. I’m fine. ‘Just a busy weekend. We went to Stockport.’
Helen nods. ‘Must be weird for Dom now his dad’s not there.’
I suppose it must. We didn’t really talk about it. I remember what we did talk about. ‘He sort of suggested getting married.’
‘What?’ She opens and shuts her mouth for a second. ‘He proposed?’
‘Not exactly, but it’s on the cards.’ I let the solidity of the idea of being Mrs Collins calm my anxieties for a second. ‘Thanks to you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well you said I needed to get him more involved in family things. It’s working.’
She nods, a little tiny nod, but she doesn’t smile. She should be smiling. This is good news. She’s supposed to be happy for me. ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘I am.’ Now she smiles. ‘Sorry. I’m a bit preoccupied with work. I’ve got my job application to finish.’
‘How’s it going?’
‘I’ve already done it once, but Alex said it wasn’t good enough and made me start again.’ She sounds a bit miffed. ‘He made me take out all the bits critiquing the gender bias in the questions on the form.’
From anyone else I’d assume she was joking, but it does sound like something Helen would do. She’s not great at letting a point of principle drop. It’s nice that Alex is helping her. I sometimes feel bad that I’ve got Dom and she’s on her own. I let the idea that I’ve got Dom linger in my head. I’m safe. I’ve got a plan for the future, and nothing is going to knock me off course.
‘Hello ladies.’ Alex is standing right in front of our table. I didn’t see him come in, but now he’s here. Whatever I was thinking about vanishes from my head the second he catches my eye. Just for a moment, there is only Alex. Then he turns his head away and grins at Helen. ‘Your carriage awaits.’
Helen gulps her remaining wine. She’s going to offer me a lift, isn’t she? There’s no sensible reason to say no. I consider, ‘I can’t be in the same car as him. I don’t trust myself not to lick his face,’ but decide against mentioning that out loud. In the end I smile and nod and I follow them into the street
His car is the epitome of a clapped-out student banger. It was probably black at some point in the past but now it’s a uniform dirty grey, interrupted only by the dark orange of rust above the wheels. I walk to the passenger side and correct myself. It’s not uniform grey – the passenger side door is green and clearly started life on a completely different vehicle.
‘Do you mind going in the back?’
I shrug. As I squeeze myself through the child-sized gap between the front and back seats I do mind a bit, but being in the back means that there’s no chance of accidentally brushing my hand against Alex’s as he changes gear. Being in the back is safe.
It’s about fifteen minutes drive from the pub to my house. For the first two minutes, it’s fine. Helen is nattering to Alex and I just look out of the window at the city trundling by. Minute three is when I stop looking out of the window and let myself look at him. I tell myself that what happened in my office was a silly moment of flirtation, and that if I look at him properly I’ll remember that he’s not my type at all. I can see his hands on the steering wheel. He’s wearing a T-shirt and his arms are just slightly tanned, enough to turn all the little hairs blond rather than brown. I’ve been telling myself that he’s weedy, but his hands on the wheel look strong and in control.
I keep staring until minute six, and then I force myself to look away. I’m still safe here in the back. Looking at someone’s arms isn’t wrong. Even thinking about kissing them is okay. I’m not actually going to do it. I know that really he’s just some friend of Helen’s who I barely know, and what I do know about him is that he flirts with every girl he meets, and sleeps with nearly as many. I look out of the window. We’re coming up to the new bridge. It’s not new, of course. It’s just one of those things that they have in every town that was new once, and the title stuck. I must come over this bridge, either with Dad or Dom or on the bus, pretty much every day. I look out of the back window of Alex’s antique car and I can see the railings and the river below.
Minute seven. That’s when I realise I’m not safe at all. The whole idea of safe rushes out of my grasp. It’s hot in the car. Too hot. I want to rip my clothes away from my skin, to try to find some cool air. I scrabble at the back window, but it only opens a crack. My throat gets tighter. I know that soon I’m not going to be able to breathe at all. It’s not safe here. I can’t breathe. I close my eyes and try to wish myself somewhere else. There’s a layer of sweat all over my body. I’m burning up, and then all at once I flip from white-hot to icy cold.
‘Emily? Em? Are you all right?’
I open my eyes. Helen is twisted around in her seat staring at me. I need to tell her about the breathing and the hot and the cold but I can’t make the words.
‘Alex pull over.’
‘I can’t stop on the bridge.’
I close my eyes again. Helen’s still talking but it sounds a very long way away. I tell myself that I can manage this, that it’s just another bad dream, and soon I’ll wake up and it will all be over. All I have to do is keep breathing and wait for the darkness to go away.
The car slows to a stop and I feel the air around me shift as Helen throws her door open. I let her guide me out of the car and into the day. We’re in the supermarket car park not far from the bridge. I lean against the bonnet and stare at the floor. Nice, solid, grey floor.
Helen touches my arm, but it’s Alex that speaks. ‘Do you think you’re going to be sick?’
I shake my head.
‘Any dizziness? Headache?’
‘No.’
‘And you can see normally?’
I nod.
‘Can you look up for me?’
There’s something capable and reassuring about the way he’s talking to me, like a girl hyperventilating and losing the power of speech in the back of his car is completely run-of-the-mill.
‘Well you’re looking a better colour.’
‘I feel a bit better.’
Helen extends her arm around me. ‘You should have said you got car sick. I wouldn’t have made you sit in the back.’
Car sick?
Alex frowns. ‘Do you think that’s what it was?’
I nod quickly. I don’t feel sick, but car sickness sounds much better than explaining that I looked out of the window and just stopped breathing. Saying that might make it sound like there’s something wrong.
Helen
At home Helen turned on her computer and waited for the antique machine to boot and find the internet connection. Emily and Dominic were talking about marriage. It wasn’t surprising. It confirmed what she already knew. Her decision to get over Dominic had been quite right. Her only failing was not doing better at it. Speed-dating had been hell. Online dating was next on the list.
She typed and clicked her way to one of the sites she’d seen advertised on TV. It looked friendly enough, proclaiming proudly that forty eight thousand members were currently online in her country. Surely one of the forty eight thousand must be an acceptable Dominic-substitute. She picked a username and password, confirmed that she was a woman seeking a male partner, and clicked Register. This was easy. Now presumably she just waited for th
e men to find her. Apparently not. From the numbered headings on the screen in front of her it appeared that there were twelve more screens of questions about her and her lifestyle and preferences. She hadn’t got anywhere near to a member of the opposite sex yet and she already felt weary.
She took a deep breath. Question 1: What sort of relationship are you looking for? A) Serious, b) Casual, c) Let’s wait and see, or d) I’m not looking for a relationship. Helen let out an involuntary ‘Ew’ of distaste when she realised what the people in the fourth group were looking for. She selected ‘Let’s wait and see,’ and moved on.
The next screen presented her with twenty-seven different words she could pick from to describe her personality, but only let her select one single characteristic from the list. Well that was preposterous. People were complicated. She wondered if there was an option to write a discursive essay on the nature of personality. There wasn’t. She scanned the options. Well she wasn’t ‘superstitious’ and only a mad person would pick ‘high maintenance’ or ‘possessive.’ That got it down to twenty-four. ‘Alex!’
She yelled down the stairs and waited to hear his footsteps. He stuck his head round the door. ‘What’s up?’
‘Would you say I was more adventurous or more quiet?
Alex shook his head. ‘Neither. Why?’
She turned the screen for him to look at. He clapped his hands together. ‘Well you don’t want to put carefree or up for anything. They basically mean slutty. So does adventurous actually. ’ He skimmed the rest of the list. ‘You’re quite stubborn.’
‘I’m not putting stubborn.’
‘Fair enough. How about generous?’
Helen shrugged. ‘Thoughtful?’
‘Boring. Put generous.’
‘Am I particularly generous?’
‘You’ve been advising your friend on how to spice up her relationship with the man you’re in love with.’
‘Not spice up exactly.’
Alex gave her a pointed look.
Helen clicked on the ‘generous’. The progress bar at the top of the screen edged imperceptibly forward. ‘You’re not going to let me finish this on my own, are you?’
