by Susie Tate
‘Look,’ she said. ‘It’s really important to me to look … to look …’
‘Perfect?’
Millie shook her head. ‘No, not perfect but … just not … me. I need my make-up. I need the stuff El picked out for me to … to …’
‘To hide,’ Pav told her, and she blinked. ‘You need it to hide. You need a mask.’
Millie had never really thought about it that way, but it made a lot of sense. She nodded slowly. ‘And … to be in control,’ she added in. ‘I … when I was a child I didn’t … I didn’t prioritise the way I looked. In school I was a few years ahead of myself. The children in my classes largely ignored me as I was so much younger. The kids my age … well, they didn’t always ignore me. Which was …’ She looked away for a moment, imagining Pav at school: good-looking, outgoing, intelligent in an approachable way. ‘I wish they had ignored me,’ she whispered after a long moment, and his hands gave hers a squeeze.
‘You were bullied.’
Millie shrugged. ‘By the time I left school I knew appearance mattered. I tried during my first degree but the results were disastrous. I met Eleanor when I was eighteen.’
‘You had enough money for a personal shopper when you were eighteen?’
Millie nodded. ‘I had enough money to buy my house when I was eighteen. I have … a lot of money.’
Pav smiled. ‘Clearly.’
‘It’s not my money. I mean, it’s Gammy’s money. My Grandpa owned a lot of property, most of it in London. When he died most went to my father but Gammy was left a hotel. A very nice hotel in central London. She sold it and put it in trust for me, one I could access from eighteen. She wanted me to be able to … she wanted me to be financially independent … from my parents.’
‘From your parents? But why –’
‘Look,’ Millie cut him off. She was in no fit state for a discussion about her parents. Her head was still banging and she had to find her clothes. How was she going to get home? ‘I really need to get going and …’
‘Right,’ Pav said briskly. ‘Breakfast for you I think. And painkillers. But first.’ He reached for her and before she knew what was happening she was being held in his strong arms against his warm body. He was hugging her. It was one of the few spontaneous hugs Millie had ever had and she could feel her nose stinging in response.
‘It’s only me here, okay?’ he muttered into her hair. ‘You don’t have to worry about looking a certain way.’
Millie breathed in his scent mixed with the washing-powder smell of his T-shirt, and sighed. Usually physical contact like this made her anxiety worse. But with Pav it was like his warmth was seeping though her skin and into her bones. The sound of his strong, steady heartbeat sent a wave of calm over her and she began to feel the stress lift away.
‘And I think you look beautiful in my dressing gown,’ he said.
‘Liar,’ Millie whispered, but she was smiling despite herself. She even found her arms coming up to hug him back.
Chapter 17
This is me
Pav made her pancakes.
Millie hadn’t eaten pancakes since Gammy made them for her on a Shrove Tuesday ten years ago (luckily Millie had managed to fire one down before her mother threw away the mix, muttering about carbs and ‘religious nonsense’). The Martakis Pancake-Making Process seemed to involve every bowl, whisk, and pan Pav owned and covering most of the surfaces in his kitchen with flour, egg and milk. Millie tried several times to help clean up, but was ordered to sit back on the breakfast-bar stool, where she continued to watch the destruction in abject horror. When Pav triumphantly placed a pile of pancakes covered in bits of banana and hastily-applied Nutella, he laughed at the look on her face.
‘This is killing you, isn’t it?’ he asked, sweeping his arm out to the kitchen war zone and then kissing her on the nose. She looked at her pancakes and then back and up at him. For some reason she found it was becoming easier to meet his eyes.
‘Please, please let me clean this up now,’ she begged. ‘It is genuinely causing me physical pain.’
‘Nope,’ Pav told her through his cheeky grin, which together with his dishevelled, flour-sprinkled hair and sparkling eyes made him almost unbearably attractive. ‘You are going to get some calories down you along with some ibuprofen. Only way to cure a hangover. I’ll tackle this lot later.’
Looking around the flat Millie could see that there was a fair amount of mess that Pav had no doubt been meaning to ‘tackle later’ for a while. Urology journals were scattered over a good amount of the available surfaces, empty mugs sat on side tables, a pile of what looked like clean washing was sitting on one of the chairs. She bit her lip and he laughed again. ‘Think of it as therapy.’
‘Therapy?’ Her eyebrows went up and he laughed even harder.
‘Hey, look,’ he said, his voice softening as his laughter faded to an understanding smile. ‘I know you like order, and that’s okay. It’s just that maybe you could start feeling like that’s a choice and not a …’ he paused and searched her face, reaching up to tuck a curl of her rapidly drying hair behind her ear, ‘not a compulsion.’ Millie felt her face heat and she looked away from him. There was no way she could attempt to deny that order and control were a compulsion for her.
‘I’m sorry,’ Pav said, dipping his head in an attempt to maintain eye contact, ‘lots of people have trouble with that type of shit. You know that, right?’
She nodded and her hands started twisting in her lap until his larger ones came up to cover them. ‘Er … that psychologist guy. Do you just work with him for the project or … ?’ he was talking cautiously now, obviously sensing that this was a subject he needed to tread carefully with.
She raised her head and met his eyes, taking a deep breath in and releasing it slowly. ‘I have mild obsessive compulsive disorder and more severe social anxiety,’ she told him. ‘I have had cognitive behavioural therapy with Anwar and it … it helped me. I can function … but it didn’t fix me, not completely.’
‘Right, sorry, I didn’t –’
‘This is me, Pav,’ Millie said softly. ‘It’s not something I can change. I have limits and I’ve had to accept that –’
‘But that’s not true,’ Pav cut in, moving right into her personal space as she sat on the stool. ‘You’ve been going beyond what you thought were your limits for weeks now.’ He dipped down to give her a brief kiss on the lips as if to make his point.
‘Pav, I …’
‘How many people did you have supporting you the last time you had CBT?’
‘I …’ She trailed off again and bit her lip. The truth sounded too sad even for her.
‘I mean … did your family know that you … ?’ Every time Pav had tried to wheedle out any information about Millie’s family other than Gammy, she’d shut him down. She even avoided asking him too much about his own, in case the subject of hers came up.
‘No.’
‘Did anyone –’
‘Look, I’ll eat one of these things,’ Millie said, poking at the stack of pancakes dubiously. ‘But I can’t eat all five.’
‘All right, love,’ Pav said softly, tucking that rogue curl back behind her ear again and kissing her on the side of her head. She knew this discussion wasn’t over. Pav was stubborn and he got his way. But for the moment she was willing to do anything, even make an extremely unhealthy breakfast choice, if it meant he would drop this subject.
By the end of that Sunday morning her hair had dried into its natural waves. She still had no make up on, and she was wearing a combination of Pav’s shirt and his tracksuit bottoms with the waist rolled down and the legs rolled up several times. She looked ridiculous. Pav told her she looked ‘totally gorgeous’. Which was another one of his charming little lies.
Her hair had not been allowed to be in its natural state for years. She always ironed it with straighteners and then pinned it back with an army’s worth of hairgrips. Hardly anyone saw her without make-up on. She’d been taught
how to apply it by experts, bought whatever they recommended, then painstakingly applied her mask every day. It was ridiculous to believe that she could look anything other than a complete state without all that.
But after the first hour in Pav’s small flat the strangest thing started happening. It was the way he looked at her, his casual affection, his obvious and pushy reluctance for her to leave (he went as far as to hide her shoes in this endeavour): it all started to have a slow effect on Millie. She started to actually believe that maybe, maybe she didn’t need the mask. Maybe she could be acceptable without two hours of prep work. Maybe even beautiful. It was another one of her limits that she had thought was set in stone, and another one that Pav was smashing through with his usual impatience.
He insisted on driving her back to her house that afternoon, before letting himself in and announcing that he was taking her out again that night, declaring: ‘I need to catch you whilst you’re free and still in a defenceless hangover zone of numb acceptance.’
The idea that Millie’s social calendar was so full that Pav had to seize his opportunity was laughable. She told him so. He just smiled, grabbed the tea she made him and settled in to watch the rugby on her television whilst she went off to get dressed in some normal clothes. After staring at her wardrobe for a full minute Millie realised that she did not have an outfit prepared. This was the first spontaneous thing Millie had done in … well, ever. So she had to phone El, who had gone from nice-and-friendly-but-kind-of-because-she-had-to-be, to extreme-friendliness-and-nosiness-to-the-point-of-being-rude, in the space of a couple of weeks.
As expected she gave Millie the third degree about Date With Pavlos Outfit, and at one point she squealed, actually squealed. It was clear that Eleanor no longer consider herself just Millie’s personal shopper, she considered herself a friend. Once she’d finally managed to pin El down on what she should wear and thanked her (normally Millie’s thanks would be in the form of large tips – something that El had always tried to refuse, saying she got commission on what Millie bought, but something Millie had been adamant about), she felt a stab of anxiety. Millie liked Eleanor. She had been comfortable with the client/personal-shopper relationship. It didn’t rely on Millie’s less than sparkling personality: it was a business. It was well defined. This, being friends with El: this was more unstable. What would happen when El realised that Millie was more work than she was worth? At least before it was less … messy. She sighed and moved to put on her perfect outfit before applying her perfect make-up. Whilst waiting for her hair straighteners to heat up, Millie looked at herself in the full-length bedroom mirror. Maybe it was time for a bit more mess in her life. She shook out her waves and frowned at her reflection before moving to the hair straighteners and turning them off.
Then they went to the pub.
Millie had never been to her local pub before. It wasn’t something that would ever occur to her to do. But with Pav she did it. And she did it with her hair loose around her shoulders. She didn’t once have a panic attack. Not once did her throat close over and her voice seize up. They talked about the paper Pav was writing; she tried to explain a statistical method to him, but when he grimaced, she offered to simply do the stats herself.
‘But, I love statistics,’ she told him when he objected. ‘It’s like … it’s like drugs to me,’ which made him laugh. Millie loved making Pav laugh. She told him about Rosie: how gifted she was, all the crazy things she used to make Millie do in that hour before she dropped her at nursery (woodlouse-hunting round the back of the hospital had been the weirdest little excursion).
Millie didn’t drink anything (after last night she wasn’t sure she would ever drink again) but she did eat carbs after five o’clock, something she had not allowed herself to do in five years. And not just any carbs: chips. Even as a child she’d rarely ever eaten chips.
And they were bloody fantastic.
*****
Millie smiled as she heard the now familiar kerfuffle that always heralded Pav’s arrival at her office. Anywhere he went he was like a celebrity walking into an awards ceremony. He called out greetings, teased people, high-fived porters; his confidence was like a force of nature.
‘Hi, Pav,’ she said, not taking her eyes off the screen until he came up behind her and spun her chair to face him.
‘How did you know it was me?’ he asked, and then, in typical Pav style, gave her a brief hard kiss before she could answer.
‘You make a bloody entrance like you’re the rooster in a hen house,’ muttered Don. He tried to look annoyed but Millie couldn’t miss his lips twitching. Don liked Pav, and for some reason he liked Pav for Millie.
‘You’re just as much of an attention whore, you sly old dog,’ Pav teased as he plucked Millie out of her seat, sat in it himself and settled her back down on his lap. ‘I’ve seen you working the radiographers like a potter at his wheel. They’re all over you up there.’
‘Bugger off,’ Don muttered, his cheeks pink as he went back to his one-finger typing.
‘Don, I don’t mind doing that for you. If you just –’
‘You keep your fancy-man entertained and out of my business,’ Don said, determinedly stabbing at the keys one at a time.
‘I shouldn’t be sitting on you,’ Millie whispered, and tried to get up but Pav’s arms around her waist kept her firmly in place.
‘He told you to keep me entertained,’ Pav said. ‘Maybe you should do a dance or something?’
Millie rolled her eyes and stopped struggling to get up. Pav tended to get his way. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked as one of his arms released her waist and his hand started stroking through her hair.
This was the thing about Pav. Casual affection seemed to be hard-wired into his DNA. And he was slowly but surely getting Millie accustomed to it. After years – in fact if truth be known practically her whole life – of little or no physical affection, it took some getting used to. What scared Millie the most was that she was not only growing accustomed to it, she had almost begun to crave it. The buzz she felt being this close to him, how secure she felt in the circle of his arms, the way his warmth and charm calmed her anxiety. It was all incredibly addictive, and when it was taken away she wasn’t sure how she was going to handle it.
Millie would love to be the type of person who just shrugged and decided to ‘cross that bridge when I come to it’, but she was a natural worrier, a planner, much more an ‘analyse the data, predict all the possible outcomes and obsess over them in a futile fashion’-type person.
‘We’ve got to talk about the conference,’ he told her, and the warmth that had seeped through her in his presence was chased away by fear. She knew Pav was treading carefully with this. She knew he didn’t want to push her too far again, not after witnessing how bad she could get that day in the lecture theatre; but she also knew he was determined that she consider it. Having had no luck in convincing Millie to speak, the conference organisers were now going to anyone they thought could make her go. She’d had the CEO of the hospital down here twice to discuss it with her. The head of the radiology department cornered her at every available opportunity to see if she would change her mind. And Pav, being the Surgical Director, was being contacted as well.
‘I can’t,’ she whispered, pulling away firmly this time to stand next to her desk and cross her arms over her chest.
‘It’s groundbreaking stuff, Millie,’ Pav told her, his voice betraying some of the understandable frustration he must be feeling with her. ‘You have to at least go to the conference. I know it’s hard but –’
‘No,’ she said, taking a step back from him and feeling her nails dig into her forearm. Of course Pav didn’t miss a thing. He frowned and his eyes dropped to her folded arms; then he stood, walked forward into her personal space and gently prised her arms apart. He gave the red marks on her forearms a dark stare before looking back up at her and searching her face.
‘Okay,’ he said, his voice now soft and the frustration f
rom a moment ago gone. ‘We’ll talk about it another time. But you know I can go with you. I wouldn’t let you do it on your own.’
Millie nodded and let out a slow breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. She knew Pav was convinced he could change her mind. He understood her, to a certain extent – but the reality of her limits wasn’t something he could fully comprehend. Going to a conference with hundreds of strange people and actually speaking in front of them: that was so far beyond her limits he may as well be asking her to fly to the moon.
She knew the frustration in his voice from earlier was just the beginning. He wouldn’t put up with her neuroses forever. Eventually they would annoy him too much. But until then she had decided to simply enjoy being with him.
‘Right, so Saturday,’ he said, and she blinked up at him.
‘Uh … what about Saturday?’
‘My sister is engaged.’
Millie cocked her head to the side and frowned.
‘Oh … um, congratulations?’
‘You’re coming to the engagement party.’
Millie’s eyes went wide and she tried to pull her hands together but they were being held firmly by Pav’s much stronger ones.
‘I … I can’t meet your family,’ she whispered.
‘Why not?’ Pav was frowning. He was genuinely confused, as if meeting his family was not a massive deal and as if she would not be a complete embarrassment to him.
‘I just … I …’
‘They’ll love you. My mama loves everybody.’
Chapter 18
Unique
‘Mama, what is your problem?’ Pav hissed once they were out of Millie’s earshot. He’d left her with two of his sisters (the actual bride to be had disappeared half an hour ago) and some of his cousins so he could try and talk some sense into Mama. Glancing over there as he pulled Mama away he could see Millie’s mouth was set in a thin line and her knuckles were white from her grip on the champagne glass she was holding. To be fair to them his sisters and cousins were trying, but the short cold responses they got in return were not showing any signs of improving. He sighed and turned back to Mama; he had to make this quick.
