by Rosa Temple
‘Being here isn’t a problem,’ Mum says. ‘We just want to be sure you’re all right. You take your time and tell us when you’re ready, but I’ve got a few ideas of my own.’
‘I bet,’ I say, pulling the covers over my head because the sun is seriously getting me down. Just as I begin to snuggle down, I feel the covers coming off my head.
‘No. You get up and come and eat,’ Mum says. ‘It’ll do you good. You look atrocious.’
‘Thanks, Mum.’
I’m being pulled out of bed by my five-foot mother and marched down the stairs. I want to protest. I actually need the loo but I give in to the strong-arm tactics because I’m pretty hungry anyway.
In the kitchen, Mum pulls out bacon, sausages, eggs, baked beans, bread and butter and lights the electric ring under a large frying pan. Dad puts the kettle on and starts brewing tea. I, in the meantime, start eyeing up the packet of salted Anchor butter on the counter. I grab it and a dessert spoon, sit at the dining table in the kitchen and start to eat butter as if it were a block of Wall’s vanilla ice cream. As I sit, chewing butter, probably looking like a grazing cow, the room falls silent. Bacon stops sizzling and the kettle clicks off. I look up to see my parents and their dropped jaws as they watch me spoon mouthful after mouthful of butter into my face. I avoid their gaze by switching my eyes over to the pull-down blind over the window. It really is a lovely day out there.
Mum gasps because she’s let the sausages burn. Not surprising as the idea of watching my puffy eyed daughter with a greasy mouth and straggly hair eating butter would make me burn sausages too.
‘Sydney? Sydney, love? You think that’s a good idea?’ she says after a while.
‘Mum, it’s the only thing I have the energy to do.’
‘But a fry up is your pick me up. Remember? You’re cure all. You said so yourself. Put the spoon down. You don’t want to spoil your breakfast.’
‘Lunch,’ Dad says out of the side of his mouth.
‘What?’ Mum screws up her eyes and takes the pan off the hob.
‘It’s past breakfast time,’ Dad whispers. ‘Past lunch time really, so we better say it’s lunch.’
Mum shakes her head and tuts. She pushes down on my spoon hand before I can put another lump of butter in my mouth.
‘Darling, it might be best to go back to bed after all. Go back to bed until you feel you want to talk about it. It’s better to talk than eat your troubles away.’
All the time she’s speaking, Mum is wrestling the spoon out of my hand. She skilfully throws it to Dad who just as skilfully tucks it behind his back. I drag myself out of the chair. I can’t compete with the stealth and agility of my parents. Not in my current state.
‘You’re right,’ I say. ‘I’ll go back to bed. Maybe I’ll eat a square meal later. If I can. I’m tired. I owe you an explanation.’
‘In your own time,’ Mum insists. I can feel their eyes boring into the back of my bed head as I slump towards the door.
‘Take all the time you need my love,’ Dad calls.
‘Thank you.’
*
It’s Sunday night. I’ve been in this dressing gown since Thursday night so I decide to shower and take a look in the bottom of the wardrobe because there is a box of my old clothes in there. Mum has washed and folded the clothes I arrived in. She didn’t say anything about my having no shoes on after I asked if I could wear a pair of her Fit Flops. So far I haven’t said anything about Rob to them but I know I should. It’s just that, every time I open my mouth all I want to do is cry. Sadly, I keep filling it with butter which seems to be the only thing that brings me any sort of comfort. That and lying on the bed and sobbing into the pillow.
Both Mum and Dad have retired to bed so I sneak downstairs for some food. I’ve avoided eating with them as it’s easier to avoid the conversation about Rob that way. It’s deathly quiet in the house as I enter the kitchen. I leave the fridge door open for light. One click of a light switch and Mum will come down. She has very keen hearing.
Not too long after I’ve raided the fridge Mum stands at the kitchen door. The light from the hallway flooding in onto the dining table where a feast of butter, ice cream, Jacob’s Cream Crackers and a bottle of ginger beer is spread in front of me. It looks like the upturned mess of a children’s tea party after all the cake is gone, all the sandwiches are curled up and no one bothered to pick up the jug of orange squash spilling into the blancmange.
‘Am I making a noise?’ I ask her, blankly.
‘No. It isn’t the noise. It’s hard to make out the sound of someone eating butter in the middle of the night.’ She comes in, sits opposite me and gathers her pink dressing gown around her chest. It’s chilly in the kitchen tonight but I’ve grown used to it, even though my fingers are chilled to the glass of ginger beer in my hand. ‘How much butter will you eat before you can start getting over him, Sydney?’
‘Look,’ I say, nodding towards the cream crackers. ‘I’m not eating neat butter anymore. I’m spreading it on the crackers.’
‘Oh.’ Mum makes a face that reads: “well that’s all right then”.
‘Mum,’ I say. I wipe the corner of my mouth for butter. I try but I can’t bring myself to tell Mum what she and Dad have both been waiting to hear. The reason Rob and I split up. ‘I … it’s me and Rob. I’m not going back.’
‘I know, darling. You told us that.’ She places a hand on mine and I cover hers with my cold fingers. ‘You can stay here for as long as you like. Long enough for you to work things out between you.’ She pauses a few moments before adding, ‘How long do you think that will be?’
I shrug my shoulders.
‘No idea. Weeks. Months. It’s not going to be easy sorting out this … working through this mess he’s created.’
I feel a trickle of warm tears down my cheek. It tastes salty as I stick out my tongue when it reaches the side of my mouth.
‘It’s just that,’ Mum begins in a timid voice but doesn’t finish her sentence.
‘What, Mum?’
‘Well, if he created, whatever it is he created, then shouldn’t he be the one to get booted out? You shouldn’t have to leave your home. I’m telling you, Syd, you want to get back there and throw him out. That is, if …’
‘If what?’
‘Well is there any way the pair of you can talk this through and maybe see if … if you can give him another chance? Forgive him?’
Forgive him? That’s the last thing on my mind. I don’t care if I never see him again. Or her. Or my bed. The thought makes me want to be physically sick. I look at Mum. Her eyes are glassy, I can tell, even in the dim light. She’s trying not to cry and I can’t stop myself. I can’t tell her any of what happened. Who Rob was with. Mum would be as shocked as hell if she knew who the woman was with her thighs hugging Robs thighs and … Oh God. I wish I could stop crying.
Mum gets up and hugs me. She kisses my hair which is still a tangled mess.
‘I’ll clear this lot up,’ I choke out. ‘Then I think I need to go back to bed.’
‘Go up now, my love. I’ll sort this out and I’ll see you in the morning.’
I stand and hug Mum. She smells like Mum which makes me sadder still because I know that even though she’s Mum there is nothing she can do to help the situation. It’s all on me to sort out. The flat. Getting my things. Confronting Rob again. I just can’t deal with any of it.
Upstairs I lay on my bed. Well, what used to be my bed. Now that my old bedroom has been renamed the spare room, Mum has made several changes. She has dressed the bed in pastels and polyester. The mattress is new. Soft and sumptuous, but tonight I find no comfort in it. It just makes me even sadder because it’s so lovely. I lay on the frills and knot my brow, summoning up the scenes of Thursday night, wishing I hadn’t attacked Rob. That I’d acted with a lot more dignity. But it’s too late. I have to deal with what happened and I have to find a way to live with it.
Chapter 4
Our Indian su
mmer gives way to rain again on Tuesday morning and hasn’t stopped all day through to the evening. I’m wearing clothes that are thirteen years old and feeling extremely tight around the waist and boobs. Am I really that many dress sizes bigger than I was at eighteen? I’ve had to wear my old clothes from the box in the wardrobe because mine are at the flat and I don’t want to run into Rob or call him to tell him to stay away while I collect a few things. I can’t take the chance of just showing up and assuming he has gone to work because stupidly I’ve convinced myself that, like me, he hasn’t gone back to work. I told myself that even though he was caught out his heart must be breaking just like mine and he can’t possibly face anyone.
Mum and Dad are watching television downstairs and I’m lying on the bed looking up at the ceiling remembering my teenage years in this room. I used to think life was complicated, unfair and extremely difficult to negotiate. What did I know? I was so naive back then. I blamed the world for anything that went wrong and relied on my parents for practically everything.
I roll over and catch my reflection in the mirror by Mum’s sewing table. When I was younger, I had hip length hair. My hair was good then and so was my skin. I didn’t have bags under my eyes like I do now. Neither did I have that dark furrow between my brow which I can see growing deeper the longer I stare. Was it being with Rob that aged me so I hardly recognise the person I see staring blankly back at me with matted, shoulder length hair and pasty skin?
I suppose I look worse for crying for days.
Mum once said she would turn my bedroom into a gym or a crafts room after I left but, apart from the change in décor, all she did was buy a sewing machine and move it in here. It’s hardly used. My posters are gone, along with the Laura Ashley duvet cover I’d saved up to buy with my Saturday money from Boots. I used to come home during the breaks when I was at uni but in my mind I’d moved out on Fresher’s Week. I had big plans. I was going to discover the world and I was going to have a massive city flat overlooking the Thames. Of course, that never happened.
Helena had made a success of her time at university. She’d made some invaluable contacts, contacts I never knew existed and might have been helpful to me if she’d only introduced me to some of them. Through her contacts she was able to join an up and coming advertising agency. She started out as their PR person and ended up as an account executive, planning and running major advertising campaigns and getting her name on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe. Now Helena has the massive flat in London, a fabulously stylish apartment with floor to ceiling windows that overlook the Thames.
Before meeting Rob, Helena and I had indulged in many a bottle of champagne with her work colleagues and she took me to some amazing night clubs and restaurants. I was never envious. Just really proud of what she’d achieved. I always hoped that whatever she was doing so right would rub off on me. It never did. And then I met Rob.
The doorbell rings downstairs. Two quick presses of the bell and the sound shakes me from my reverie. I hear voices. Rob. Shit. Rob is here. I never expected that. I don’t want to speak to him.
Dad pokes his head around the bedroom door to ask what they should do.
‘Just tell him I’m out.’
‘He knows you’re here. I think I gave it away.’
‘Where is he?’
‘On the door mat outside.’
‘Just slam the door then.’
‘I can’t do that. Any message?’
‘Just say to go away.’
Five minutes later I can still hear Rob’s voice and I’m trying to look out of my parents’ bedroom window to see what he looks like. I hope he looks awful but I can’t see him because the porch is in the way so I tiptoe back to my room to hide.
Another few minutes later and my parents are at my door.
‘He’s not going away, Sydney.’ Mum looks desperate and Dad is hovering behind her on the landing waiting for my command. I consider how useless they will be on a spy mission to save the world.
‘I can’t see him, Mum. Not right now. Probably not ever.’
They both retreat downstairs and I step out onto the landing but not so Rob can see me. I can hear Rob pleading with them. ‘Just five minutes. Three minutes, then. All right, one. One minute of her time. That’s all I ask. Please. She can’t walk away from what we had. I love her. So much. You don’t know how much.’
I hear Dad say, ‘Listen, son, she doesn’t want to see you and if you loved her as much as you say then my little girl wouldn’t be sitting up there in the state she’s in now would she?’
I hear the front door close after that and then it’s quiet.
I dart back to the window in Mum’s room to watch Rob walking away. At least he can still walk. I didn’t damage a major artery or anything when I threw the bread knife at him. He’s limping a little mind you. If he’d wanted to, he could have shown up with the police to report the assault. That’s what it had been and I was sorry for that. It was completely out of character and not at all dignified. I couldn’t imagine Helena reacting in that way. She would have handled the whole situation a lot differently. But then again Leon doted on Helena and he would never cheat on her.
I knew if I called her, a person like Helena would have had all the answers but I still can’t bring myself to call my best friend.
Chapter 5
‘I don’t want to talk about it, Mum.’
‘Maybe if we talked it through then you won’t be so … so down in the dumps all the time.’
‘You mean I won’t be hitting the bottle all the time?’
‘Not to mention never coming out of your room unless it’s to raid the drinks cabinet or to go the off licence.’
‘Okay, Mum, I’m not perfect. There’s no need to rub it in.’
This is what it’s come to. It’s been over two weeks since I broke up with Rob. Two and a half long, strenuous and heart wrenching weeks. I have ignored every text or voicemail he’s sent but not without hovering over the Reply button contemplating what I would say to a two-timing, lowlife bastard who I still haven’t managed to stop loving. He has put a spell on me, one I can’t break but one I’ve been fighting so hard to recover from. It’s taken a lot of soul searching and, as Mum would attest to, alcohol, but I still can’t move on with my life.
Everything has come to a standstill. I haven’t been back to work. I called in sick every day until Danielle said I really needed a doctor’s certificate. I told her I’d get one but so far, I haven’t even made a doctor’s appointment. Rani called. She said Danielle was furious. She asked what was wrong with me, I’d been off work sick for so long she was worried the plague had hit London again and should she get shots.
‘Rani, don’t tell anyone at the office,’ I’d whispered to her (as if Danielle could hear my side of the conversation on the phone) ‘It’s a matter of the heart. I split up with Rob and I can’t seem to face life at the moment.’
‘Blimey, how special can any man be? Can’t you just forget him and move on?’
‘Shh,’ I tried to whisper again but only managed to spit on my chin.
‘All I can say is this must really be love and the sex must be off the charts. The longest I’ve grieved over any guy is one afternoon.’
‘But you haven’t dated anyone for more than two weeks.’
‘True. But I miss you, you daft cow. When are you coming back? Things are changing around here and you really should come in.’
I continued to get drunk in the afternoons, wallowing. Going through all the stages of grief about fifty times over both in order and then backwards until I was so drunk and confused I’d forget for a moment why I was so sad.
I decide to call Danielle. It’s three days since I spoke to Rani and I know that my boss deserves to hear from me. I wash my hair before I call, slap my face a few times to spark me up and dial. All the time her extension is ringing a mantra is on repeat in my head. I must appeal to Danielle’s inner romantic. I must appeal to Danielle’s inner romantic. I’m convinced
that once she gets the gist of my malady she’ll insist on my taking all the time I need and come in again when I’m ready. I’d vowed that I would stop drinking, get a hold of myself, go back to work and start to move on.
‘Sydney.’ Her voice has a cold edge to it. The inner romantic has not come to the phone and basically I’m fucked.
‘First of all,’ I say. ‘Let me apologise for being off work for so long.’
‘Did you get that doctor’s certificate?’
‘No, but – ’
‘It doesn’t matter. You weren’t here so I couldn’t give you warning, but the paper is making cutbacks. Certain jobs are no longer viable. The online paper is what’s bringing in the revenue with ads and we don’t need as many journalists. Yours was one of the jobs in danger.’
‘In danger? Does that mean I need to come in and prove myself? Because I will … I can …’
‘Don’t bother, Sydney. Your job no longer exists. I’m guessing there is no doctor’s note so consider these past few, unofficial weeks off as notice. I’ll speak to HR about any holiday pay owed or anything like that and get something in the post to you. Was there anything else?’
‘Anything else? You’ve just told me I have no job so no, I guess that’s all. But er, Danielle, just to be clear, I don’t have a job. Right? Is that right? I mean is that legal?’
‘If you want to take it up with HR you’ll probably see that unofficial absence is cause for immediate termination. I’m happy for you to …’
‘No. No, it’s fine. I have no job. I have no life. It’s fine.’
‘Enough of the melodrama, Sydney. You hate this place. Why are we continuing this conversation? I’ve got a meeting in five so I better press on.’
As I sit with my mouth opening and closing like a goldfish on speed, Danielle hangs up. My mouth is dry and I need a drink.
*
I push my hair out of my face and look over at Mum. She’s home from her shift at the surgery, it’s about four in the afternoon. She doesn’t look pleased as she stands in the doorway of my bedroom taking in all the evidence she needs to confirm her suspicions; her daughter is a failure. After a few more seconds of me squinting to look at her through bleary eyes, Mum comes to sit at the side of my bed, arms folded, trying to look sympathetic but I can tell she wants to scream at me. Who can blame her? All the moping, drinking, binging, sleeping. I would scream if I had the energy.
