...And a Happy New Year?

by Holly Bourne

  There was a silence as Oli digested. Then, “Oh, Evie. That’s such a shock. Are you okay?”

  I shook my head into the phone. “I can’t believe she’s leaving!” I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t get the air in. I was trying, but the air wouldn’t come. I coughed and gulped.

  “Don’t try to believe it right now,” Oli said. “You just need to get used to the shock. Are you breathing properly? In for five, out for seven. Look, I’ll do it for you.” He started taking deep long breaths down the phone, over-exaggerated and slow.

  Shouting came from inside.

  “TEN

  NINE

  EIGHT…”

  “Oli, it’s almost midnight!” I managed to gasp down the line.

  “I don’t care. Come on, breathe with me. In for five, out for seven.”

  My throat was sore and constricted but I tried to match my breathing to his. His voice was so calm, so sure, I felt almost entranced by it.

  “SEVEN

  SIX

  FIVE

  FOUR…”

  “In for five, out for seven,” he repeated.

  My heart rate started to calm down, my hands stopped shaking so hard.

  “THREE

  TWO…”

  “In for five, out for seven. Good girl, Evie.”

  “HAPPY NEW YEAR.”

  And we saw in the year together on a fresh exhale of breath.

  I needed to find the others.

  Kyle and I went downstairs, walking into the euphoria of a new year. Loads of people were still doing that cross-your-arms-and-hold-hands-with-a-stranger thing and belting out a slurry version of “Auld Lang Syne”. Again. Even though it was obvious no one in my house knew the second line. People kept grabbing us, hugging us, holding our arms up in celebration – the contents of emptied party poppers strewn over everyone’s heads. Then Joel put on “Jump Around” and the entire downstairs leaped into the air, dragging Kyle and me into headlocks. I tried looking for the girls but couldn’t see them anywhere.

  Kyle managed to break us free, and we quickly checked the rest of the house – finding only Ethan, naked, with some random girl in my little brother’s bedroom. “Ethan!”

  “Sorry.” He smiled as we closed the door.

  He obviously wasn’t sorry, and I didn’t really mind. It was only Craig’s room. Maybe I wouldn’t even wash the sheets.

  “That’s disgusting, Amber,” Kyle said, and I put my hand to my mouth.

  “Whoops. Didn’t realize I’d said that out loud.”

  “They’re not here,” he said. “Do you want me to hold the fort so you can go look for them?”

  It was moments like this. Moments when he knew exactly what to say that made me sure I wasn’t a total idiot for removing the ocean between us.

  “Would you mind?”

  “Not at all. Go get them. Sort it out. The night’s not over yet.”

  I fled downstairs, out the back door, into the freezing air.

  And I found Evie.

  She was sitting with her back against the wall, talking quietly into her phone. Tears on her cheeks. She sensed me looming, and looked up, held up her hand to say give her a moment.

  She wasn’t giving me the finger. That was a good sign.

  “Amber’s here… I know…thank you. I love you…” She hung up.

  “Evie? Are you okay?”

  She rubbed under her eyes and stared up at me. “You’re really leaving, aren’t you?” she asked quietly.

  My own eyes stung. “I’m sorry. I was going to tell you. I just…I don’t know.”

  She let out a smile. “You deserve to be happy, Amber.”

  My eyes stung so much they leaked a little. “But I’ll miss you.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t. You’ll set me off again.”

  I crouched down, so we were almost eye level, balancing on the balls of my feet. “Are you okay?”

  Evie shook her head. “No. Yes. I want to be a good friend and feel happy for you…”

  “But?”

  “But I don’t want you to go.” She started crying, and I started crying. I tipped over onto her, and we cried together into each other’s shoulders, making them wet.

  “It’s so freezing,” Evie said, between tears, “that I might literally give you a cold shoulder.”

  I laughed, then the laughing made me cry harder.

  “Oh God, what a pair we make,” Evie snuffled.

  We unhugged at the same time, standing up slowly, the cold seeping through my arse. “I should probably go and find Lottie. I didn’t mean to yell at her. It’s just, sometimes she’s really easy to yell at.”

  Evie shivered but nodded. “I’ll come with you. I’m worried about her, Amber. I don’t think everything is right with her.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “You mean a pigeon pooed on her once in wonderful London?”

  She shook her head. “Think about it. What does she actually tell us?”

  I did what Evie said and thought about it. “Not much,” I admitted.

  “Exactly. And when does Lottie ever not share? Usually she’s all about the sharing. Usually we can’t get her to shut up. Haven’t you found it weird that she never really says much about uni?”

  “Well, no. And now I feel bad.”

  “Let’s go and find her. Maybe she’s with Will?”

  Lottie was in the front garden, and she wasn’t with Will.

  She was sitting, her legs sprawled out in front of her, on the lawn. Sobbing.

  And, just like that, all my anger fell away. We ran over, slipping in the muddy grass to get to her.

  “Oh my God, what happened? Are you okay?” I bent down to touch her bare shoulders. “Lottie, you’re freezing. We need to get you inside.”

  Her entire body heaved with her sobs. “Will…” she said. “Will just broke up with me.”

  “WHAT?! How?” Evie crouched down too and rubbed Lottie’s arms to try and keep her warm. “We only saw you a few minutes ago.”

  “It was the countdown to midnight!” I pointed out. “He can’t have broken up with you on the countdown to midnight.”

  Lottie nodded, the motion releasing more tears and snot. “He can and he did.”

  Evie and I looked at each other. Neither of us were the biggest fans of Will. Ever since we’d got to know him, doing Lottie’s Vagilante project last year, he’d been arrogant and superior. Which is sort of why he and Lottie suited each other. But I’d never trusted him – he always overthought things, overcomplicated things. Whenever we hung out, I always felt like he was imagining himself being filmed, like we were all in a movie, and he wanted to be the most articulate character. He never felt that…real.

  “What? Why? He’s crazy about you,” Evie said, rubbing her back more.

  Lottie spluttered and gasped to reply. “He said we’re too young. That we need to be free.”

  Evie and I pulled another face at each other. I mean, neither of our boyfriends were saying that. Mine was about to have me come and live in his country, for God’s sake.

  “What a twat,” I said.

  “Don’t,” Lottie heaved. “I’m not ready to hear you call him a twat yet. An hour ago, he was my first proper boyfriend.”

  “He was still a twat an hour ago,” Evie said. “Lottie, Will’s always been a bit of a twat.”

  Lottie lifted her head and her face was a mess, all her eyeliner bleeding out of the black splodges of her eyes. “Will would argue against us using the word ‘twat’. He would say we shouldn’t base insults on genitalia if we want to be proper feminists.”

  “See,” Evie said, smiling. “Total and utter twat.”

  Even Lottie laughed, before she started to cry again. And I knew she loved Will, but this crying seemed deeper than that. Harder than heartbreak crying. It was too hollow, too empty, too lonely, even with both our arms around her.

  “Lottie, we need to get you inside.”

  She shook her head. “Can we…go to our bench?” she asked, i
n a tiny voice.

  Our bench…? We hadn’t been there in forever. It was on the top of Dovelands Hill, where we all first properly became friends.

  “Of course,” Evie replied. “Though it’s freezing. Can we get our coats first?”

  “Let’s get more than coats,” I said. “Let’s really wrap up.”

  Lottie’s cries died down and she gave me a small smile. We still hadn’t talked about our fight, or me going to America yet… “Do you not mind leaving the party?”

  I smiled back. “Kyle will take care of things. Anyway, it’s where we started, isn’t it? Sitting on a freezing cold bench after a house party gone wrong?”

  We all smiled, until Evie said, “And, if you’re leaving, I guess it’s where it will all end too.”

  I felt numb in all the ways it’s possible to feel numb – mentally, literally. My fingers didn’t feel like they belonged to my body, neither did my feet…or my heart.

  I couldn’t believe Will and I were over.

  And he’d just walked off, not giving me a chance to argue him out of it. I definitely would’ve argued him out of it. I’m better at arguing than him.

  I had nothing now. No boyfriend, no real uni friends, and I was haemorrhaging old friends too.

  “This puffa coat is so puffary I can’t put my arms down by my sides,” Evie complained, as we walked away from Amber’s house, the music getting dimmer as we left it behind us.

  Amber and I both looked over and cracked up laughing. “You look like a glow-worm,” Amber said.

  “No, you look like a foreskin,” I added and they both went “EWW, LOTTIE!” and I felt like myself for two whole seconds before jumping back into the abyss of despair again. We’d bundled into every available coat in Amber’s cupboard under the stairs, and together sported a weird array of mackintoshes, puffa jackets, and a big piece of fur of Penny’s. It was just enough to keep warm. We came across several merrymakers, who all cheered “Happy New Year” as we passed. Evie and Amber managed to say it back, whereas I just sniffed and mumbled, “I don’t know what’s happy about it.”

  I felt so lost. So thrown away. So…I dunno. Crap? Although that doesn’t sound poetic enough. I was still in disbelief about Will, but the Amber news was catching up on me fast, and that was even worse. And all the things she’d said to me tonight. Did she really think I was swanning around in London? Thinking I was too great to spend time with them? I was drowning in London. And that was the worst thing. I hadn’t realized I could drown and I didn’t want to admit it, but I was.

  We huffed up Dovelands Hill in awkward silence, none of us quite knowing how to be with each other. And that was what made me really sad. We didn’t know how to be around each other any more. Us. The Spinster Club. These girls who I was more honest with than I was with myself. Was… The world had rotated only a quarter of the way around the sun, we’d spun on its axis only a hundred times or so, and yet there was a galaxy between us. We were changing, we were growing. Were we growing apart?

  The three of us sat on our bench with a thump.

  We were. We were growing apart. It struck me like I’d been pronged with a giant fork – which I guess I had, in the shed – and I put my head down onto my knees to cry.

  “Oh, Lottie, don’t cry.” Evie reached out from the many layers of her ridiculous puffa and patted me. “Not over stupid Will.”

  “I’m not crying about him right now. I’m crying about us.”

  “Us?” they both echoed.

  “Yes. Because it’s not the same, is it?” I said, choking on the words, on what they meant. “And we keep pretending it is, but it’s really not. And it’s going to be even more not when Amber flies away.”

  I couldn’t say any more, I was crying too hard. Not even able to look up at the beautiful view. When no one answered but for snotty sniffles, I realized I’d made the other two cry as well.

  “Sorry,” I croaked out. “I’ve ruined your New Year’s Eve.”

  “You’ve not.” Amber reached out and took my frozen hand. She took Evie’s too. “And you’re right. What the hell is going on with us? I’m sorry I yelled at you, Lotts…”

  “I started it. I always start it. No wonder Will dumped me. I’m just a big fat yelling yeller who annoys everyone and everyone just wants to avoid me.”

  “Woah,” Evie said. “Where did that come from?”

  I buried my face into my hands again, feeling so low, so sad, so bad about myself. Dumped. A new year and I was dumped. But it wasn’t even that. Well, it was that, but it was so much more. I was almost too embarrassed to tell them. Too scared that saying it out loud would make it more real, more humiliating, more horrid.

  “I’m really unhappy.”

  I’d said it. It bellyflopped out into the frozen air, landing with a thump on the hard ground. The world didn’t end though. “I’m sorry I haven’t invited you girls to uni,” I added. “But, well, things haven’t been great there…” Amber’s hand tightened on mine. “My housemates hate me. I’ve made other friends, on my course, and at the WEP and stuff, but, I mean, I have to live with them every day. I have to sleep there every night. And they’re always bitching about me and laughing about me and planning nights out without me, even when I’m there, in the kitchen with them.”

  “Oh, Lottie,” Evie said. “That sounds awful.”

  “It is…” It was. It felt like releasing poison, admitting how bad it had been. The giggles coming from the living room, the eye rolls when they found me writing my column on my laptop in the sitting room, that night they brought back essentially the whole rugby team at two a.m., blasted loud music, and I could hear them all laughing and stage-whispering, “Whoops, we might wake up the FEMINAZI!”

  “Can you not ask to change flats?” Amber suggested.

  “I guess I could.” I had thought about it. “But isn’t that just what social rejects do at uni?”

  “No,” Evie said. “It’s what people do who get put with people they don’t get on with. It could happen to anyone.”

  “I don’t know…” I let out a huge exhale of breath that floated off, masking the view for a second before it vanished into the night. “London is amazing…don’t pull a face, Amber. It is! But it’s also really overwhelming and busy and chaotic. And some amazing stuff has happened – getting my column, the WEP are great, I really think I can make my mark there. But…I’m lonely…I miss you girls.”

  “And we’ve missed you!” Amber said. “Why didn’t you tell us this was all going on?”

  I turned to her. “Well, why didn’t you tell us about moving to America? Touché,” I added to myself, as an afterthought.

  “Lottie, you can’t say touché about your own comment,” Evie said, giggling, before we all descended into a gloomy quiet.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about America,” Amber said, puncturing it. “I guess I just didn’t want to make it real. I really want to go. It makes sense. But…I don’t want to lose you girls.”

  “You’ll lose us by not telling us what’s going on in your life,” I said.

  “Touché again.” Amber smiled.

  I reached upwards, towards the stars, trying to use the stretch to dislodge all my sadness. “I really thought,” I said, “that everything would take off when I started uni. I mean, I turned down Cambridge, which was terrifying, I got through the Vagilante thing, I turned Will into a feminist. I really thought it was going to be my happy ending, you know?”

  Amber snorted. “This is life, Lottie. There’s no such thing as a happy ending. Because there’s no such thing as an ending. More days keep coming, some good some bad. You can’t just stay limboed in a moment of happiness – that’s not realistic.”

  “Stop being so wise if you’re going to piss off to America.”

  “I’m not going to ‘piss off’ to America. We can stay in touch loads.”

  “Oh, because we’ve done such a good job doing that when I’m only forty minutes away,” I pointed out.

  “W
ell that’s your fault, for not inviting us.”

  “Stop being mean to me, I’ve just been dumped.”

  Amber elbowed me. “Ahh, come on, like you’d want to marry someone like Will.”

  She had a point… I loved him…it hurt it was over… But, well, he always took things very seriously – like he could never be silly and in-the-moment. He always frowned when I tried to make him be like that. And, I’ll admit it, I’d felt a bit trapped, like he’d said. There’d been this one night when I met this amazing older guy in a club, who knew who freakin’ Mary Wollstonecraft was… I’d been so close to kissing him, because knowing who Mary Wollstonecraft is deserves a kiss at the very least…we were totally into each other…but I’d had to stop…because I was in a relationship…

  I was not as upset about Will dumping me as I was about Amber going to America. One was a scribble of biro that I could wash off in time. The other was a tattoo of pain.

  I wondered how Evie was taking it?

  That’s when I realized Evie hadn’t said anything for quite a while.

  We were where it all began.

  Same bench. Same view. Same girls.

  And yet totally different girls.

  Soon Amber wouldn’t even be able to sit on this bench any more.

  I listened to how she soothed Lottie, how she opened her up. How she forgave her even though they’d yelled horrid things to each other.

  BAD THOUGHT

  What if Lottie doesn’t want to hang out with you without Amber?

  I scratched at my hands, staring out at the sea of yellow lights.

  BAD THOUGHT

  Everything is falling apart.

  But, as I listened to the girls, I realized something. They were right. Things were falling apart because we’d been keeping things from each other. Because we’d been trying to face up to things alone rather than facing them together. That’s why the threads were breaking. We’d gone off and started new lives and we were too scared to say, not only to ourselves, but to each other, that these new lives weren’t going to plan.

  “Evie? Evie?” Lottie repeated.

  “Huh?”

  “You’ve been very quiet over there, dressed like a foreskin. Is everything okay?”