The Art of Keeping Faith

by Anna Bloom

  My thinking was that The Old Brompton Road, where the restaurant is situated, is too far from our house for me to get my favourite food often enough—it’s about three miles—however this is not the point. So I ordered in bulk, much to the restaurant manager’s delight.

  What a clever girl I am! Now if I could only apply that level of determination to my studies I would be guaranteed a First and not the Third that I am optimistically aiming for.

  10.30 a.m.

  It’s the Armistice Day parade and unlike last year when I was completely shit faced on vodka and in near hysterics whilst watching it, this year we are all mooched out in the lounge together wearing our pyjama’s, drinking tea and eating toast.

  What is going to be even more perfect is that I am actually going to see my Ben.

  No. Not actually see him as in he is going to be here, but last night Jayne came up with such a ridiculously simple idea as a way for Ben and I to communicate that I cannot believe I did not think about it at all. I am telling myself that I would have done eventually, but due to the extreme pressure of the last couple of months my brain is not working quite right at the moment.

  Skype.

  That was Jayne’s idea.

  “I just don’t see why you don’t Skype each other,” she slurred.

  “Shwat the shfuck? Shwhy shdidshnt shy shthink of shat?”

  So I am installing Skype on my phone, one eye dutifully watching the soldiers march passed the Cenotaph.

  When I woke up this morning the first thing I did was to pick up my phone so I could text Ben and tell him to do the same when he woke up.

  Apparently I had already done so before passing out face first, fully clothed, covered in Chinese grease.

  I had a text message waiting for me. Typo much! Crazy girl. x

  Crap.

  I scrolled to the message above and saw the one that I had sent him. There was not a single word that did not have a spelling mistake in it. In fact there were some words in it that I didn’t even recognise.

  Drunk texting is so not cool. In fact there should be a law against it. They should take your phone away along with your car keys at the end of a heavy night.

  Or even better, mobile phone’s should be sold with an inbuilt breathaliser that makes the handset shut down as soon as it detects a certain level of fumes.

  I would have been way over.

  I did not bother resending to Ben. The only word that did not have a spelling error was Skype.

  11th November

  Skype Call

  “Hey gorgeous.”

  This is Ben saying this to me. I have just woken up, my hair is doing something terrible and I have a sleep crease along my cheek.

  Ben on the other hand looks so ridiculously hot it actually hurts to look at him.

  And that is just his right eyebrow that the camera is currently trained on.

  “Hey.” I may be looking through one eye.

  “Where’s Kit? I need to officially see that he is alive.”

  I move the camera around and show Kit stretched out on Ben’s pillow, the same place he sleeps every night when he is not standing on my chest patting my face with his paw.

  “Is that my pillow?”

  “Yep, I think he is going to make you sleep in the lounge.”

  I turn the camera back around so I can look at Ben, but I am distracted by something else.

  “Fucking hell, is that what I look like on camera?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Look at my nose, it’s massive!”

  “Lilah, seriously this is the first time we have seen each other face to face in weeks and you are worried about the size of your nose.”

  “Well no, but seriously that is much bigger than it looks in the bathroom mirror.”

  “Have you finished staring at yourself yet?”

  I lower the camera and have a quick check over the rest of me.

  Not too bad, although my boobs look a little flat. I move the camera up again and then give them a little lift in my vest top.

  Much better.

  Right then. Ben.

  “Thank you for yesterday, it meant so much to me.”

  He flashes me his killer smile, which even from thousands of miles away and slightly pixelated is still beautiful. His hair is much longer then it was before and his cheekbones seem to be slightly sharper.

  “Are they not feeding you?” I ask before he has a chance to say anything to me.

  “Yeah, yeah. It’s just a bit manic you know?”

  Well no. Not really.

  “Why don’t you tell me what it is like?”

  “Do I have to talk about it? I would rather talk about you.”

  “God no! You know what I do. I sleep in lectures, sleep in the library, then come home and drink too much wine.”

  He gives a slow smile, “I miss that.”

  I don’t have much to say to that.

  “So come on tell me your average day,” I prompt.

  “Well we normally travel in the mornings to wherever we are going, it is not necessarily a new city. Towns out here are massive so sometimes we just move across a city. Then we check into a new hotel and go and do our publicity stuff, local radio shows etc. We play a gig most nights. The others go on and party afterwards. Sometimes I join them for one or two but then I go home to sleep because I write best in the morning and I’m trying to come up with new material.”

  “That sounds exciting.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” He does not seem overly excited; I am finding him a little hard to read.

  “You okay, Ben?”

  The blues stare into the camera for a moment and I can’t help but stare back. As I wait for his response, a silence settles between us.

  Ben shakes his head and then gives me a half lip hitch.

  “I’m just tired, Lilah, the others are having a great time, but you know, I would rather be home snuggled up with you.”

  “Would you?”

  “Yeah I would, I was gutted to miss out yesterday.” The smile flashes again. “From the looks of your text you had a good time.”

  “I did, thank you for organising. We had way too much Sake.” I grimace a little. That stuff really did give me a killer headache.

  “I only half-organised it, I was supposed to pay for it, but Tristan said he would pick it up, supposedly he owed you for something.”

  “Oh, God, yes. All has not been perfect here in wedding planning paradise.”

  “Oh, that doesn’t sound good.”

  “Nah, they are cool now. At least I think they are,” I shrug.

  “You can tell me all about it in a couple of weeks.”

  “Yipee! I know!” I squeal.

  “I can’t wait.”

  “Me neither.”

  We watch each other again. I have a million things I want to tell him. I want to tell him about the almost decent cup of tea I made the other day, or about the book I read where I managed a whole chapter and it was actually quite interesting. I want to tell him about this place I found down by the river that will be great for a drink in the summer.

  But I don’t say any of it. I just look at him instead.

  “Eat more,” I tell him at last.

  “Yes, Mum.”

  “How is your mum?”

  “Okay I think, I have only spoken to her once.” He gives a shrug before flashing me his wicked smirk. “How’s your mum?”

  “Don’t care, we’re ignoring each other again.” I pull a face. I can’t help it.

  “Oh, blimey.”

  “Long story,” I yawn.

  “It’s late, Lilah and you have got to get up for class. Crusades first thing, you want to be firing on all cylinders for that one.”

  “How do you remember that?”

  “I remember everything that you do.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  He gives me his killer smile and I blow him a kiss.

&n
bsp; “Bye, Ben, and it was really good seeing you.”

  “Good seeing you, nice crease by the way.”

  “Oh bugger off.”

  I hang up before he gets a shot of my saggy tits.

  That was so much better than sitting in the hallway or talking on the phone.

  I will love Jayne forever for suggesting Skype, and I will probably think I am the biggest dumbass forever for not thinking of it myself.

  12th November

  6.50 a.m.

  I am in a catch 22. I am supposed to be meeting Richard for a jog in about, ooh, ten minutes and I can’t really be arsed. On the other hand I know that Ben is going to be home in about fifteen days and I want to be super thin, very sexy and not the owner of saggy tits when he gets here. At the moment this is not going to happen, because I have eaten Chinese for my evening meal for three days solid. Not just the Ho-Fun. I have been creating a Chinese banquet by supplementing the fat noodles with various deep fried goodies from Marks and Spencer’s Food Hall and eating a bag of prawn crackers a night.

  What to do? Jog or not to jog that is the question of the day.

  Sod it.

  Me: Rich, I can’t face getting up. Can we jog this evening instead?

  I snuggle back down under my duvet. Kit is curled up asleep under the duvet as well, providing me with some extra, if tickly warmth. It is pretty chilly out there.

  Kit is probably still asleep because he was attacking my feet under the duvet until three-thirty.

  Richard: Can’t do tonight, Fi is home. I think.

  For a moment I have to think what Fi could be, but then I remember that Fi is short for Fiona; Fiona, or Fi, being Richard’s girlfriend.

  Richard told me all about her the other night after I covered him in that pint of beer at Froebel. My recollections are still a bit hazy (five glasses of wine and five Sambuca’s really does erase your memory) but from the little I remember about her I am not entirely sure that I am going to like her.

  She is a high flyer for a start, so guaranteed to make me feel like a complete dick. And, well, she also sounds like a bit of a selfish cow.

  Richard and Fi have been together for three years. He lived on campus last year, but this year she decided to move up here to be with him so he could not move in with his football mates. She has a very important job doing something or other which involves a lot of travelling so poor Richard is actually by himself the whole time.

  “Do you actually love her though? You know, do you want to live with her?” I had slurred, intrigued by the relationship dilemma of a bloke.

  He spent some time stubbing his cigarette out.

  “Yeah, I guess? I mean how are you actually supposed to know?”

  I did not have an answer then, and I don’t have one now. I don’t know if, ‘yeah I guess,’ is good enough. but then I don’t really know anything at all.

  Right, then. I am going back to sleep before the last minute dash to get ready for lectures and a high-ish speed drive to campus.

  Lunch time

  I am moaning. I have decided that despite the fact I failed to jog this morning I should still start the diet.

  I am hungry, like really hungry.

  “For goodness’ sake, Lilah, can’t you just have your normal lunch?”

  “Do I have a normal lunch?”

  Meredith pokes her head up between our study desks; it is at least an hour and a bit until our next lecture. Outside it is freezing and for the lack of anything better to do we ran inside the library to escape the biting wind.

  “Isn’t your usual lunch a pint of lager and a packet of cheese and onion crisps?” She raises her eyebrow at me.

  “Oh my God, I’m not a bloody bloke!”

  “How many times have you had a pint for lunch?” she challenges.

  “Not that many,” I state although I am clearly lying. When Ben was here a pint was standard for lunch but then so was sex.

  “Sure.” She rolls her green eyes before ducking her head back down. Bloody know it all.

  “Well how many times have you had a half of lager for lunch because you are a big girl’s blouse?”

  Her head comes back up.

  “About the same amount of times you had a full on, ‘I’m a bloke pint.”

  This is not going well.

  “What’s wrong with you,” asks Meredith when it is clear I have no sharp or witty come back.

  “I’m hungry,” I whine again.

  “And?”

  “And, I am bored.”

  “And?”

  “And I am tired.”

  “It’s all those late night telephone calls. Can’t he ring you earlier?”

  It’s the million-dollar question: Can’t Ben just ring me during Eastenders like a normal boyfriend would, not in the middle of the night when I am trying to get my much needed beauty sleep.

  “It’s not just the phone calls, I love the phone calls. It’s the combination of late night conversations and the crazy cat.”

  She thinks about this but changes tact.

  “Shall we go and get something to eat?”

  “Like what? I am supposed to be on the Ben’s Coming Home Diet.”

  Meredith gives a shake of her head. “No, no, you have got it wrong. You need to lay down extra fat to make up for the fact you will not have time to eat when he is here because you will be having sex all the time.”

  Ah, sex. I remember that.

  Then I think about the laying down fat idea.

  “Uh, have you seen the amount of Chinese food I have been eating recently?”

  “Have you ever seen a fat Chinese person?” She does not give me time to answer that I think I may have done once, but it was only a glance down a darkened alleyway. “Nope, I didn’t think so,” she confirms for me.

  “Come on let’s go on the hunt for a bacon buttie, that’s what’s wrong with you, you’re missing Ben’s bacon Sandwiches.”

  “You know full well that I will not allow a pathetic imitation of a bacon buttie pass my lips until Ben comes back.”

  “McDonald’s?” she asks, tempting me with fast food goodness. Ooh, I am not sure about this. I doubt we will make it to the McDonald’s in Asda and back in time for our lecture; Asda is a notorious nightmare where you are guaranteed to lose hours of your day.

  But then on the other hand a McDonald’s does sound awfully tempting …

  One hour later

  Yep, we are not going to make it back.

  However, Asda has provided the following benefits:

  I have eaten three happy meals that have made me very happy indeed, although I am not sure the feeling will last. I may be sick instead.

  Meredith and I have bought new spontaneous cushions in purple and have decided that we are going to redecorate the lounge at some point in the future when we can be bothered.

  I was browsing the music section and found Sound Box’s album. How cool is that, I was able to go to Asda and buy my boyfriend’s album—Meredith took a picture of me holding it with a cheesy grin on my face to send to Ben. Because yes, we are soooo mature.

  Asda has also had some drawbacks.

  We have missed out on afternoon lectures; I felt too sick to go in after my third happy meal.

  I ended up spending seventy quid (I bought wine as well, it was half price!) which I can’t afford. They would not give me any discount on the CD because I was the lead singer’s girlfriend. In fact I think they wanted to put the price up. Actually I don’t think they believed me at all which is a little disconcerting.

  My jeans are now even tighter than when I put them on this morning which is making me feel doubly guilty about missing the jog/death run this morning and my inability to stick to the Ben’s Coming Home Diet.

  15th November