The Shape of Us: A hilarious and emotional page turner about love, life and laughter

by Drew Davies

  ‘There you are,’ she’d said. ‘My name’s Janelle. I’ve brought you something.’

  For a moment, Dylan really did think he’d passed away and was receiving a gift on The Other Side from an Angel – Birkenstocks maybe. Or perhaps this was his mother, a younger version, sent to welcome him to The Pearly Gates? Technically, his mother was still alive, although Dylan hadn’t seen her for many years. He could still remember what she looked like though (vaguely) and on closer inspection, the face in front of him did seem structurally different. As he puzzled over this, he felt something touch his hand, and realised she’d given him a pack of cards.

  ‘Before we start working together, I’m going to give you a reading,’ she said, ‘and then we’ll get you well again. Can you sit up to see better?’

  Janelle had helped him up, moving his pillows so his back was supported.

  No, Dylan decided, he was still in his bedroom. The Pokémon poster over his chest of drawers was definitely his.

  Sitting back, the pretty young woman shuffled the pack of cards – her hands moved very professionally, the speed of them made Dylan’s head spin so he turned away.

  ‘I want you to choose six cards,’ she said when she’d finished, fanning them out in front of him. ‘Just point at the ones you like.’

  With considerable effort, Dylan had moved his finger towards the sweep of cards, tapping six different places.

  ‘Good, let’s see what we have.’

  The reading itself is foggy – Dylan wasn’t used to so much information all in one go (although he does remember he was relieved not to have picked the Death card). Janelle had laughed a lot, he did too – it was the first time he’d found anything funny in months. She described dark clouds, paths with forked roads and a woman that sounded very much like his mother, but Dylan was more transfixed by Janelle’s hands, the rattle of her silver bangles on her wrists, the healthy crescent shaped cuticles on her fingernails.

  ‘That’s one way it can go,’ she’d said at the end, leaning forward and staring him straight in the eye. ‘But you get to decide what happens next, alright?’ Janelle took the cards, putting them back in their packet. ‘You’ll have to work hard, but no one can shape your future, except you. Not me, not these cards, not your father, or the doctors.’ The mattress moved again as she stood up. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow.’ She blew him a kiss and was gone.

  When his dad came in later with a bowl of soup, Dylan asked, ‘Who was that girl?’

  ‘The people from the Firebolt Process I was telling you about sent her. She’s helped a lot of teenagers like you.’

  Dylan couldn’t recall. He’d closed his eyes, too tired to eat, Janelle’s bright smiling face seeping into all his dreams.

  Over the next six months, Janelle had visited him every week. Gradually, Dylan started to get better, moving from his bedroom to the sofa when she arrived for each session. Together, they’d go through the exercises and anything that had come up for Dylan during the past seven days, but there was always time to chat, and gossip, and swap stories, Janelle often staying much longer than her allotted forty-five minutes. She told him about her mother, whom she loved, and her father, whom she didn’t because he was traditional and overbearing and wouldn’t allow pets when she was a child (Janelle liked dogs, but she was more of a bird person – a fact she only revealed while covering Otis’s ears).

  As Dylan emerged from the illness, he embraced his new-found love for Janelle. It was the small things – the way she laughed at his jokes, how animated she became about the film Amélie, or how she organised his pillows so he was extra comfortable. Dylan was also aware he didn’t want to be an invalid anymore so that they were closer to being equals, to give their love more weight. In this way too, Janelle spurred on his recovery.

  Once he’d graduated to sessions at the kitchen table, Janelle invited Dylan to a support group for young people with illnesses. Dylan had been resistant – he didn’t like the idea of being around other sick people – but he agreed to go because she would be there. It wasn’t a success. Dylan didn’t like competing for Janelle’s attention, and loathed being grouped together with other boys (some as young as ten) – it was humiliating, and seemed to create a chasm between them. There was an attitude with the other organisers too; Dylan was quite the catch, a mixed-race kid from a broken family – he would tick a lot of boxes in the diversity requirements report. Embarrassed by the whole episode, he’d stopped seeing Janelle for a few weeks, and then Chris had started coming. Almost at once, Dylan regretted pausing the sessions with Janelle. Perhaps his feelings would fade? he’d wondered. Well, they hadn’t – he loved her more than ever. And now she was in danger. Her life might be in jeopardy! It was up to him––

  * * *

  A knock at his bedroom door snaps Dylan to attention.

  ‘Yeah?’ he yells, and the door opens.

  ‘Can we talk?’ asks his father. He’s holding a folded piece of paper and a very full glass of rosé.

  ‘What about?’ replies Dylan, suspiciously.

  ‘We’ve never had a proper chat about, you know, the birds and the bees…’

  Dylan starts to protest.

  ‘You weren’t well enough before,’ continues his dad, speaking over him, ‘but now you’re almost back on your feet. And what with your French fancies on the computer the other day, I think it’s about time we have the conversation.’

  Dad sits on the chair next to the bed and rests his wine glass carefully on the bedside table. Putting on his reading glasses from his shirt pocket, he unfolds the piece of paper, and clears his throat.

  ‘Now,’ he says, ‘there’s intercourse obviously. Who you do it with. Always wear a condom. Have you rolled one on a banana yet?’

  ‘Dad, this is embarrassing.’

  ‘Not as embarrassing as an unplanned pregnancy, believe me.’

  He takes a massive swig of the rosé.

  ‘There’s heterosexual, that’s a man and a woman, and then there’s homosexual, that’s gays and lesbians, but there’s also bisexuals – they like a bit of both. And they’re invisible in our society, the bisexuals, so it’s important to recognise them. Any questions so far?’

  ‘No, Dad––’

  ‘That’s your sex bit out of the way, but then there’s also gendered identity. You might feel like a girl in a boy’s body, or the other way around. That’s when you’re trans identified. Or there’s another one, hold on,’ he scans the sheet of paper. ‘Yes – intersex.’

  ‘You’ve already done that one. Bananas. Condoms. I got it.’

  ‘Not “into” sex. Intersex. It means you might be a bit of a boy and a bit of a girl. Down there. Physically.’

  ‘Dad, where did you get this information from?’

  ‘The Internet – now quiet, don’t ruin my flow.’ He squints at the writing on the paper. ‘There are also people who don’t want to have sex with anyone ever. They’re called asexuals. And there are those who want to have sex dressed up in animal costumes. They are called furries.’

  ‘What about people who like dressing up in animal costumes but don’t want to have sex with anyone?’

  ‘You’d have to ask them, don’t be smart. What I’m trying to say is, as long as you don’t hurt anyone, and you get consent, and it’s legal, it’s fine – there should be no shame in it.’

  ‘Are we done?’

  His dad screws up his face, which is as bright pink as the wine.

  ‘I know you haven’t had normal teenage years,’ he says, his voice wavering slightly, ‘but I just wanted you to know I’m supportive of you, whoever you end up being. You’re my only son… And your mum is proud of you too.’ Dylan flinches at the mention of his mum. ‘I know you don’t like me bringing her up, and she and I have had our differences in the past, that’s true. I might not have been very good at keeping those grievances to myself, but I don’t want to think I’ve poisoned the well. You only get one mother, and she’s not perfect – God knows, neither am I. Sh
e did what she had to do, and I know how hard that must have been for her. Your mum loves you and misses you, she does…’

  ‘Don’t cry,’ Dylan says to his dad, trying to mask his own discomfort.

  ‘It’s the truth,’ and with that, his dad gives him a crushing bear hug, drains the rest of the wine in his glass, and leaves.

  Once the mortification of the talk is over, Dylan turns his attention back to Janelle. He had to be prepared to help her, and that meant being well enough to travel. There was only one thing for it…

  Yes. The details.

  Eight months after their initial separation, they would start to see each other again. JoJo had played her cards absolutely right, leveraging everything she knew of Frank from their long marriage. First, there was the anniversary of his father’s death. JoJo had sent him a letter; brief, sincere. Then she organised the leak in the roof to be fixed – Frank could never keep his hands out of a DIY project, and it had meant greater communication, more time together, the forging of a new path. Finally, she’d visited him at his office after hours, and told him straight: I want you. They had made love right there on his desk, and afterwards, Frank had declared his undying love for her. JoJo’s mission was a success.

  In the first few days of their reunion, they agreed to meet only in west London – neutral territory – to stop Belinda becoming suspicious. JoJo had initially rallied against the idea. Why should she care what Belinda thought? But Frank had calmed her down, he needed time to end it with her, find a way of extracting himself that was mutually beneficial in the circumstances – Belinda was high profile, she could make things difficult.

  ‘Difficult for you, you mean,’ JoJo had spluttered.

  ‘For us,’ Frank said calmly. ‘She’s very well connected.’

  And I’m not, thought JoJo. That’s why she’s so alluring to you, all those sinewy connections.

  There were other caveats too, some imposed by JoJo, others forced upon her. Timings. Sleeping arrangements. What was and wasn’t acceptable in terms of last-minute cancellations. They negotiated. When Frank had his diplomat hat on, he was composed and direct, using his hands to carve up his conversation. ‘I’ll come here Tuesdays,’ he’d said, cutting Tuesday with his rigid left hand, thumb in the air. ‘The rest of the week,’ Frank’s other hand shifted the invisible chips of Wednesday, Thursday, Friday to his right, ‘I’ll be there. But we can have Sundays too. Belinda sees her mother.’

  In another situation, at an earlier time, JoJo would have guffawed at this. Seeing her mother? How conveniently charitable of her – two old birds with one stone – but she holds her tongue. JoJo doesn’t want to scare Frank off just when she’s getting him back. She felt neutered and it was an unusual sensation. She used to think Frank loved her for her caustic sense of humour, her knack of pithily cutting things down to the quick, but since his affair she was never sure if Belinda was a younger model – flattery of a sort – or a reprieve. Although their marriage, for the most part, had always seemed a well-matched and untroubled one, JoJo fought a nagging suspicion that she had somehow worn Frank down, like a weak acid, slowly eroding him over their years together, until all that remained was his teeth in a pool of human pulp.

  JoJo sits in her kitchen, stirring a cup of tea with a teaspoon. The house has taken on an ethereal quality since she found out about the baby – the light plays differently, night and day take on less significance. She finds herself watching television until the early morning, managing to sleep only a few hours before waking, feeling no more refreshed. Her appetite has gone too.

  It is not depression, JoJo tells herself. I do not feel depressed. What is it then? Her mind shutting down? A walking coma? JoJo’s worst nightmare is to become a conscious vegetable, slowly blinking out messages from a hospital bed – ‘Turn on the fan, please’, ‘The nurse keeps stealing my chocolates’ – that sort of thing. This sensation doesn’t terrify her though (it reminds her of her Diazepam days, except there’s no lethargy, she’s quite spritely going up stairs). And when she thinks ‘baby’, her blood does not boil. Baby. Nothing. Belinda and Frank’s bundle of joy. Quite calm.

  JoJo drops the teaspoon, the metal rattling on the brushed granite counter top.

  I’m in shock, she thinks. JoJo considers this revelation with the same languidness of her other minimal thoughts. Standing, she walks over to the bookshelf and takes the medical dictionary off the shelf. The entry is not helpful, however – medical shock is all blue lips and chest pain – so JoJo pads through the kitchen to the hallway and into the downstairs study. It is officially Frank’s, although he rarely used it – his contribution, a wall of books on locomotives and Second World War aeroplanes, anything loud or chugging black smoke from one end.

  Frank. When JoJo imagines him now, it’s not his face she pictures, but the sense of everything he left in his wake: the groups of sycophants and networkers and hangers-on at the few parties they’d attend, which he’d muscle through, so they could find an empty room to finish their drinks in peace, or get their coats and escape early; the women who’d smile and laugh and flirt, especially when Frank was younger, and then later, especially when he was wealthier, which he must see (how could he not? They weren’t exactly subtle about it), but always ignored; and the shoes, and the socks, and other items of clothing JoJo would find the next morning – scattered along the staircase or hung up on door handles – haphazardly discarded in his impatience to join her in bed.

  On weekends, their dynamic shifted, and Frank, shrugging off his corporate identity, took much pleasure in trailing after JoJo as she weeded or hacked away at the hedges (he knew better than to offer help, the garden was her domain), repositioning his chair in the closest shade or under a protective branch to start a crossword, sort out papers from work, or – more often than not – doze. And on holidays, it was strictly JoJo who called the shots, from the places they stayed to the cafés and restaurants where they’d play Shithead, Spite and their infamously raucous games of Six Card Cribbage.

  She knew all of Frank’s weaknesses too, of course, identified and mentally catalogued over the years: the history of suicide that ran in his family, the slight curve to his penis, his worry it was not thick enough to please her; now, the arthritis. The death of his favourite cousin when he was a child. His brother gone. Whether or not his father had ever really loved him. In turn, Frank had met JoJo’s family. After that first fateful trip back to South Africa, the one in which her mother had raged with accusations of abandonment and perceived wrongs – leaving the farm, marrying an Englishman, their lack of offspring – he’d held JoJo and told her: I understand who you are now.

  They’d rarely argued for two such strong personalities. If JoJo was cross, Frank would soften. When he would get worked up, she would gently tease him back to normalcy. It always worked. Or at least, it had.

  JoJo walks to the far bookshelf. It’s dimly lit in the study, so she has to squint at the book spines, but she can’t seem to make any sense of them. It’s mostly her gardening books here anyway, something might be upstairs in her office, but she can’t face going up to hunt for it. A new thought occurs: perhaps Belinda will know about shock? She’s Oxbridge trained, isn’t she? Hadn’t Frank let slip how smart she was? Let’s see, where would Belinda be…? JoJo’s recent hobby seemed to be obsessing over the girl’s likely schedule. She had read practically everything Belinda had ever written (even going to the British Library to look through old newspapers and periodicals), educating herself enough about Twitter to monitor her tweets, and following all the recent gossip. This consisted of Belinda’s connection to the twelfth Duke of Buckinghamshire – relatively handsome (by Duke standards), young too, in his early forties and ‘hip’ as the kids would have once said (but no doubt no longer did), being a music producer jet setter. Belinda had been spotted with him at a big event and the tabloids and broadsheets all perked up, writing scurrilous things and making her the talk of the town. Tart of the town, more like, JoJo had scoffed. There w
ere photos of them leaving clubs hand in hand, looking harassed, and others arriving at film premieres, looking smug, and even one at a Royal Garden Party, with Belinda in demure gloves, standing perilously close to the Queen. JoJo wondered if Frank knew about the Duke? She’d tucked the information away as useful ammunition.

  JoJo tries to bring her wandering mind back to Belinda’s whereabouts.

  Today is a weekday, she’s almost certain of it – Thursday, maybe Friday. The offices at the Financial Times then.

  JoJo walks back into the hallway and takes her coat from the stand. She pats her pocket – yes, she has her keys. Her purse is somewhere – she can’t be bothered to find it now, so she raids the hall cupboard, where she keeps a jar with coins and a small stash of notes. Outside, it’s overcast and chilly, but JoJo feels energised by the cold. She can’t remember the last time she left the house. A week? How funny. A net curtain stirs across the street – Mrs Hartridge at number twenty-eight – and JoJo quickens her pace in case she’s accosted. The woman is a busybody and she’s in no mood for it. She’s in no mood at all, really.

  JoJo finds a black cab near Battersea Park and remembers it’s The Economist Belinda works for, not the FT. The Knowledge obviously doesn’t spread to private business locations, so the cabby taps at his phone until he finds the address (JoJo realises that, in her haste, she’s not brought her phone with her either).

  ‘St James,’ he calls through the glass.

  Onwards! – she thinks hazily. She’s glad she got a taxi; she might have wandered into the Thames by herself.

  The mid-October sky is mushy with grey clouds as they pass over Chelsea Bridge. She’s reminded of cotton wool balls, and then, her mind cycling back, of babies. It’s not that she and Frank never tried – they were good at the trying – it was the conceiving they found so difficult. And then she had her trouble and, shortly after, the operation. Then it was impossible. They’d half-heartedly considered adoption, but the people were so intrusive, she knew it would never work. Babies! Such strange things. She’d never found one she was attracted to. To her they all seemed like queer Martians, or geriatrics, or both. The smell wasn’t unappealing – she’d grown up on a dairy farm outside of Johannesburg after all and it was very similar: creamy, sweet, with an undertone of shit. But the hats and booties and the bibs, it makes her shudder.