by Laura Tait
‘Travelling?’ he says, looking up quickly. His expression is unreadable. We’re sitting at opposite ends of his sofa, drinking tea. He’s said nothing while I’ve relayed my story about Richard and work, but his understanding nods and the occasional widening of his eyes have indicated that he’s listening to every word.
And then I put the travelling idea out there.
‘Yeah.’ I shrug, my eyes not leaving his. ‘I mean, there’s nothing much here for me . . . is there?’
Say it, Alex. Tell me that there is something for me to stay for.
Silence.
I wasn’t prepared for this. The whole way here I allowed myself to fantasize about the best-case scenario, in which he tells me there’s no way I can leave, and then scoops me up in his arms, my legs around his waist, and takes me to his bed to make mad, passionate love to me. Then tomorrow I get up and make tea wearing nothing but his pyjama top, and while I’m doing it he comes up behind me wearing nothing but the matching pyjama bottoms and wraps his arms around me. I turn around to kiss him and soon we’re having sex on his kitchen worktop, and Alex doesn’t give a crap how unhygienic it is because he wants me that badly.
That’s pretty much where I was at when I rang his doorbell, my heart pounding with anticipation as I heard his slippered footsteps pad towards the door, thinking about what I would say when he mentioned what happened between us. He would ask what it meant, surely? How would I answer? Confess I wished I’d never run away? Or just show him by picking up the kiss where we left off?
‘Travelling,’ he says again, but this time it’s not a question.
I’m not sure how long we stare at each other for but it’s Alex who breaks our gaze.
‘Excellent idea,’ he says, necking the last of his tea and standing up.
‘You think I should go?’ I ask, stung. He’s taken his mug straight to the sink and is washing it up with his back to me so I can’t see his expression.
‘God, yeah,’ he says quickly. ‘Are you sure you just want to go for six months, though? Why not a year?’
Bloody hell, he can’t wait to get rid of me.
‘Are you finished with that?’
‘What?’ I realize he’s pointing at my mug. ‘Oh, yeah, sorry.’
I hand it over with a shaky hand, watching his back while he picks up the dishcloth.
‘What about you?’ I ask casually, pretending he hasn’t just thrown my heart against the wall and missed it ricocheting into his recycling bin. ‘Did you sort everything with Melissa?’
As much as I don’t really want to know, I have to. I have to know if the other night meant something. Because if it didn’t, and it’s Melissa he wants to be with, then I have to get away and pretend that these feelings I have for Alex don’t exist. I’ve done it before, I can do it again. Distance did the trick the last time, and you literally can’t put much more distance between us than London to Australia.
He turns around, leaning against the sink and crossing his arms. The distance between us is palpable and it’s almost impossible to believe that just a few days ago, on this very sofa, there was no gap between our bodies at all. He hasn’t even mentioned the kiss.
‘Yep,’ he chirps, his voice two octaves higher than normal. ‘We’re good.’
‘Great.’ That’s not great at all. This isn’t how this was supposed to go.
‘Yeah.’
‘So . . .’
‘So.’
And that’s that. It’s not me he wants, it’s Melissa. All this time – every heart-clutching look, every skin-tingling touch, every time he confided in me, or laughed at my jokes – it was just as mates. Don’t cry, Holly. At least not yet.
‘Well, I’d better go sort my life out.’ I grin, wondering if Alex realizes how forced it is, and walk towards the door. ‘I have so much to organize, plus I’ll need to work out what to do about my flat.’
I stop at the door and turn back towards him, holding my arms open. ‘See ya, then.’
‘Yeah, see ya,’ he whispers into my hair as he hugs me. I tighten the grip of my arms around his waist and feel him tighten his back, and I’m torn between wanting to get out before the tears escape, and never wanting to leave his embrace, ever.
I give him one final squeeze, then break away.
And for the second time in my life, I feel a sad sense of finality as I close the door on Alex Tyler.
Chapter Thirty-three
ALEX
The doorbell rang just shy of 9 p.m. Holly hadn’t texted or called since Melissa’s phone call but I knew that it was her. I pressed the buzzer to release the door two storeys below, all the while imagining our cottage in the Peak District. I was driving up our gravel driveway in second gear, pulling in next to the vintage campervan in duck-egg blue that we’d bought for weekend breaks to Totnes and Edinburgh. I surveyed the Derbyshire stone, the glossy black of the front door. The nights had drawn in for winter and the curtains were closed. It was my birthday. I turned my key, opened the front door and surprise!
‘I’m thinking of going travelling.’
A sob rose through me as a new reality sank in. It was the first time I’d seen her since our kiss, which I’d decided not to mention. It would only make things awkward, and she’d think I was over-analysing. And anyway, we had enough to talk about. What I hadn’t expected was this. But I should have, because I’d lived it before. Holly hadn’t come to broadcast her love; she’d come to tell me that she was leaving, walking out of my life again, promising that she’d stay in touch, just like she did eleven years ago.
How could I have allowed myself to become so deluded again? At school Holly could explain what every button on a scientific calculator meant: nCr, ALGB, tan. Teachers said she was a natural when it came to maths, and more than once she commented that her love of maths and my love of English typified the difference between us. She liked hard facts, I liked to search for different interpretations. She could stare at a piece of art and enjoy it for what it was, I was always straining to find out what it meant. She lived life while I mulled it over.
You’d have thought I would have learnt my lesson first time around. Holly puts three kisses at the end of a text message, Alex has visions of gripping her hand in a maternity ward; Holly’s foot slips across the sofa, Alex debates the practicalities of opening a joint account; Holly offers a drunken kiss, Alex imagines he is Menelaus reclaiming Helen of Troy from Paris. Holly breaks up with Richard . . .
I needed to start dealing in facts, not fiction. And one fact was clear: Holly was not in love with me. If she was, she wouldn’t keep absconding.
I took her in, sitting on the opposite end of the sofa from me, just like she had been a few nights before, except this time she was upright, her feet coy, facing in on themselves. Her hair was restrained in a ponytail and there was a strand of grass on her skirt. Where had that come from? She stared at the floor for a moment and then at me, cheeks blushed, eyes expectant, as if she was waiting for me to respond, to tell her it was OK, that she should follow her dream.
The one thing I was thankful for was that I hadn’t spewed out my emotions and that Holly would never know what I was imagining as I let her into the flat.
I listened to her footsteps as she descended the uncarpeted stairs towards the door that leads onto the high street. I tried to judge her emotional state from the rhythm of her steps but it disclosed nothing; her steps could have been anyone’s. She stopped momentarily. A change of heart? Seconds passed, I could hear my own heartbeat. But her descent resumed, as unrevealing as before, until the front door slammed with a cartoon clunk, causing my insides to rattle. I glanced at the window but stopped myself from walking over and looking down onto the street, knowing that it would be all too much to watch her trail from my life again.
I wake to the sound of the dodgy plumbing downstairs – growling like Chewbacca – after someone flushes the loo. The moon is peeking out from behind a chimney on the other side of the high street, a paracetamol in the sky s
pilling a dose of light into the front room. I check my phone. It’s 2.17 a.m.
My neck feels stiff from sleeping on the sofa and I’m uncomfortable. The heat of the day has left the flat stuffy. So much so that Holly’s scent has lingered. Sun, chocolate, outdoors. Holiday smells. I remember her hair against my cheek, the faintest trace of damp, as if she’d spent the morning in the sea.
I hold my phone above my face while I navigate to my messages, reviewing our correspondence from the past months, scrolling backwards with my thumb.
Load earlier messages.
Meeting Kev in the pub. Our night in the park. Graffiti.
Load earlier messages.
Feeding Harold. The pub quiz. Don’t say anything about Richard.
Tears start to roll down my cheeks, but I cannot stop. Soon there are no earlier messages to load, and I realize that these past months were just an interlude. Holly and I, our story ended eleven years ago, and all this has just been a bad remake of an old film that should have been left well alone.
It’s approaching 8.30 a.m. when my feet hit the pavement at Deptford station and my phone begins to splutter inside my pocket. My mind allows itself to be fooled by hope, but the feeling is fleeting.
‘Hello, Dad,’ I answer, struggling to shield the disappointment from my tone.
‘Expecting someone else, were you?’
I rub my stiff neck, wincing, and contemplate telling him that it is not a good time, but for some reason I feel a warmth towards Dad this morning that I haven’t felt for a long time. It is as though last night made me realize who I can really depend on. Then again, maybe it’s his fault I’m in this mess. Him and Mum, for lending me fanciful expectations of love. Terry and Julie, like the couple in The Kinks song; married at nineteen, expecting within a year. Everything in the right order. Till death do us part.
‘It’s a bit early for you, isn’t it?’
‘I’ve got bingo at 10.30 a.m.’
The halal butcher is erecting his awnings. I do not acknowledge him as I pass. I gave up smiling at the shopkeepers on my third day.
‘Bingo?’
‘Don’t mock it until you’ve tried it, son. I can’t think of anywhere in the world with a more favourable female-to-male ratio.’
‘You’re playing bingo to pull?’
‘You’d love it,’ he says. ‘The men’s toilets are pristine. No one ever uses them.’
I smile to myself, at Dad and his bingo, at being cheered up when I didn’t think it was possible.
‘Anyway, I rang to tell you that Kev’s better half is organizing a surprise party for his thirtieth. A week on Friday. I thought I might get to meet this Melissa girl of yours?’
Melissa – I’d almost forgotten about her over the last twelve hours.
‘I’m not sure that’s going to happen.’
‘Don’t tell me you’ve split up?’
The Afro-Caribbean food store is already doing a brisk trade. I went in there during my second week. The banana I bought for breakfast turned out to be a plantain.
‘Not exactly but—’
‘Can’t say I’m surprised.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Do you realize you’ve never actually told me about your girlfriend, Alex? Not mentioned her once in however many months it’s been. The only reason I know is because Kev tells me when he and Diane pop around.’
‘It hasn’t come up.’
I can see pupils now. Familiar faces, mainly. These are the people I convinced myself I was moving to London for, but there are schools like Whitford High all over the country. The reason I chose London was . . .
‘Holly Gordon, on the other hand, you never shut up about. Holly this, Holly that. When are you going to sort yourselves out?’
Something invisible grips my abdomen, rendering me speechless. My eyes begin to well again.
‘Look, I’ve got to go. I love you, Dad.’
There is a pause, the meaning of which my mind is too blurred to fathom.
Then he says: ‘You too, son. I’ll see you next weekend.’
Chapter Thirty-four
HOLLY
This is the most epic To Do list I have EVER written.
There are so many layers, subcategories and side lists to it. Firstly, it’s all the destinations I want to cross off on my travels. I want to get around as many as possible, but I don’t want to spend the next couple of months on planes and trains.
Then there’s the To Dos for each destination. I decided on six months for my adventure, so I need to make sure I allocate the right amount of time to each place so that I don’t miss any of the best stuff, without staying anywhere too long.
Then there’s all the things I need to do to make it all happen. Buying, packing, booking, checking.
It’s an A3 work of art – that’s what it is.
I’m sitting with it spread out in front of me on the floor, and I’ve just run my pen through the two jabs and bikini wax I achieved this morning when Harold strolls onto the page and settles herself down on it, eyeing me with barely concealed resentment.
She knows something is going on. Her rebellion over the last week has included climbing into every container I’m attempting to pack my house contents into, sleeping on the clean, freshly ironed clothes I’ve laid out ready to pack and peeing into my brand-new rucksack.
‘Get lost, cat,’ I groan, gently pushing her off my travel plan.
You’d love that, wouldn’t you? she says, with narrowed eyes. It would lessen your guilt about being the second owner to abandon me.
I give in, tossing down my pen and rubbing behind her ears with both hands.
‘Mum and Dad are taking you to York to live with them while I’m away, so don’t give me all that.’ Tears spring to my eyes, and I wipe them away with one hand while scratching her under the chin with the other. She’ll be fine. She’ll love it at my parents’ – I went to see their new pad the other day, and it’s much bigger than my place, and has a garden and there’s already a cat flap from the previous owners so she can come and go as she pleases. Harold will be happy there.
I went so that I could tell my folks in person about going away.
Dad was a bit confused. He’s a creature of routine, so the appeal of spending six months on several unfamiliar territories is lost on him. But he told me to enjoy myself and stay safe, before turning back to his newspaper. Mum was surprisingly supportive. Asked a lot of questions about where I was heading and what I was going to do there, oohing and aahing at my responses. She agreed to take Harold on the condition that I promised never to hitchhike, and that I would update her on what’s happening in Neighbours when I get to Australia.
All my furniture is in storage so all that’s left are boxes of stuff for them to take to theirs when they pick up Harold. My flat looks bigger and cheerless without my belongings. This must be how it looked when Max and I first moved in, but I can’t remember – it seems so long ago. So much has happened since then, despite how little I have to show for it.
A knock on the door interrupts that depressing thought, and I rush to answer it.
‘Jem!’ I cry, surprised but overwhelmingly happy to see her. ‘Come in.’
‘No, that’s OK,’ she insists. ‘I just came to give you this. It’s from everyone at Hexagon.’
She rummages in her bag for about three minutes, before producing a creased envelope with ‘Holly’ scrawled across it.
‘If that’s even your real name,’ she says, folding her arms as I pull out a card.
‘If you weren’t planning on coming in you should have just posted it to me,’ I point out, trying not to laugh.
‘I wanted to double-check you do actually live here. I wasn’t sure exactly how far your double life went. Besides, I left it too late for it to reach you before you leave.’
‘I’m sorry, Jem,’ I say, putting my hand on her arm. ‘Like I said in my email, I did really, really want to tell you. But Richard didn’t want me to and
he kept making me think that it was only for a little while longer.’
‘But I tell you everything!’ she whines, pushing past me into the flat. ‘I don’t know how you could just let me sit there and babble pointless shit about my calamity of a love life and not mention the fact you’re shagging your boss.’
After closing the door, I sit cross-legged on the floor, leaning on the wall where my sofa once sat, and pat the space next to me.
‘I’m all right standing, thanks,’ she says, flipping her head to the side pointedly.
‘Please, Jem – I hated keeping it from you,’ I tell her. ‘But I was in a bad place. I can’t believe I let him convince me it was better kept a secret for so long. I feel so stupid now. And I’ve lost you and I’ve lost Alex and none of you can hate me more than I hate myself.’
Then I burst into tears.
‘Oh, shush,’ Jem says, the prickliness dissolving from her expression. She sits down next to me, putting an arm around my shoulders as my tears turn into full, convulsing sobs.
‘Please stop crying,’ she begs, after a little while.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I tell her again. ‘I really did want to tell you.’
‘Yeah, yeah, whatever – it’s fine. But you need to stop crying. Seriously, Hols, you are one ugly crier. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen you cry before. Like, don’t get me wrong – you’re a gorgeous girl and everything, but right now your face is all swollen and blotchy, and you’ve got a big drip of snot.’
She hands me a tissue from her bag and I’m about to blow my nose with it when I notice that there are blue ink stains as well as some unidentified yellow splotches all over it, so I dab my nose lightly with it before discreetly dropping it on the floor by my leg.
‘Now, what’s all this about Alex?’ she asks.
‘Well, I went to see him after—’
‘Sorry,’ she interrupts, swivelling on her bum on the wooden floor. ‘I hope you don’t mind but I’m going to turn round this way while you tell me so I don’t have to look at your face.’
