I feel like it’s all hot air, another lecture whitewashed in sentiment. I really just want her to say she’ll take Moses so that I can get on with my life.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. So small and so ordinary, I almost miss it. The thing I had been waiting for without knowing I was waiting for it. I don’t even know what she’s saying sorry for but I am willing to take sorry for anything.
‘Thanks, Mum,’ I say.
‘And thank you. Thank you for letting me support you through this; you never ask for help.’ I laugh. I feel like all I do is mess up and flounder and cry for help. ‘Of course I’ll have him; I’ll always have him. He can move in again, if you like. You, I’m not so sure.’
I try to suppress my smile but, as with most things, I’m unsuccessful. ‘You’ll be happy to know I’m meeting with Alexander this evening.’
Mum chews the inside of her mouth, as if she is actually trying to clamp it closed with her teeth.
‘What?’ I say.
‘I am happy you’re meeting him – you need to talk – but I don’t want you to rush back into anything.’
I cover my face with my hands and speak through my fingers. ‘Jesus, Mum, I can’t win with you.’
‘No, no,’ says Mum. ‘Don’t get angry again! I just … I see how much you’ve been trying to do since the break-up. You have this, I don’t know … energy. Maybe you should be together but maybe not for a while. And it can’t hurt to make him stew a little.’ She pulls Moses into her lap. ‘I know I gave you a bit of stick but maybe I don’t know everything.’
I stand up and then lean down and give her a kiss on the head. ‘You’re a nightmare,’ I say, ‘but you’re my nightmare.’
47
I WONDER IF the universe has one last coupon for me to cash in. If everything has been a test or a dream and Alexander and I must meet for one final, Technicolor ending. I consider this as I choose my seat in the greasy spoon he has asked me to meet him in. I pick a table by the window; it feels quite romantic with the drizzle running down it. I know that, whatever I’ve been through over the past few weeks, Alexander has had his own journey. I forgot for a while what I knew from the start: that his journeys before always led back to me. He may not be perfect – he may never be perfect – but maybe he is something much better than that: mine.
It seems Alexander’s latest journey didn’t involve him getting a new battery for his watch because he is five and then ten and then fifteen minutes late, and then just before I’m about to call it a day and accept that I have been stood up, he pushes through the door along with a gust of cold air. He stands on the entrance mat and runs his hand through his hair, before looking around for me. When he sees me, he assumes an expression of calm, one that I have not seen in months or perhaps even years. He walks purposefully towards me. I stand to meet him and for four, maybe five seconds I think he is going to kiss me and I panic a little about how to react to it. He just says, ‘Hi,’ though, before sitting down, and I am left standing.
‘I’m going to get a coffee,’ I say. ‘Do you want one?’
‘Er … yeah.’ I go to the counter and ask them to bring two mugs of the stuff they have sitting on the warmer all day and night. As I walk back to the table I watch Alexander biting the skin on the inside of his right thumb, something he only does when he’s nervous and that he hates about himself. I never knew whether it was the act itself he hated, or what it represented – his fallibility.
‘It’s coming,’ I tell him.
‘Thanks for meeting me,’ he says.
‘Of course, why wouldn’t I …?’
‘It’s just how things have been … It hasn’t been the smoothest, for Moses or for us. I was hoping we could be friends.’ Friends. This word is meant to be a gift to me but it’s like a bucket of water on the very last embers of a dying fire.
‘And what would that look like to you?’ I ask. I try to hide the anger and humiliation but I’m not sure I do because Alexander tips his head to the right, which is what he does whenever I am being ‘unreasonable’.
‘You know … how we used to be.’
‘How we used to be?’ I laugh. It’s comical how desperately out of touch he is. ‘How we used to be was me listening to you bang on and on about what you’re doing and what you need, and who I am or what I want to be never being a factor.’
Alexander looks up and I notice the waitress has brought over the coffee. She puts two mugs of grey liquid in front of us before walking away. Alexander smiles cordially until she is back behind the counter, then says, ‘Does everything have to be so dramatic?’
Alexander used to hate it when I made displays of emotion in public. He said it made him feel vulnerable, as if feeling vulnerable was an entirely bad thing. We once went to a wedding in Birmingham – some girl he had been at university with – and we were wandering towards the station the next morning when we came upon the Hall of Memory, a memorial to the people of Birmingham who had given their lives in service. Only when I saw it did I remember standing there, clutching my grandfather’s left hand as he saluted his fallen compatriots with his right. People would watch him as he stood, stock-still, shoulders back, and it was my first memory of feeling pride. Of course, as an adult, I realized they were probably just trying to piece together how this little brown girl belonged to this old white man, but that knowledge didn’t taint the memory. I stopped for a few seconds and the tears rushed to my eyes – not for the ones who hadn’t made it, but for the one who survived them all but still didn’t survive long enough for me. Alexander, not realizing I had stopped, had gone on ahead and was now doubling back on himself to jimmy me along. ‘We have a train to catch,’ he said. ‘We don’t have time for your drama.’
Today there is time. I will make time because my drama deserves as much attention as anything he has to offer. I rest my chin on my right hand.
‘You know, I thought for a minute, actually for more than a minute, for quite a while … Imagine me brushing my teeth, getting on the bus like a fool … Thinking that you were gonna meet me here today and ask me to get back with you!’ Alexander doesn’t respond, and I clap my hands together like a child with a new toy. ‘You know what my biggest fear was, all this time? My fear was that you would show up unannounced on your rented white horse and sweep me off my feet, and even though in the back of my mind I would know it would be the wrong thing, I would go. I would go back to you, only to end up in the same place in two years, five years, ten years, fifty years.’
‘I’m pretty sure one or both of us will be dead in fifty years,’ says Alexander. I pick up a fork and slam its prongs into the Formica table between us.
‘Why the hell did you try and make me feel so bad when you clearly don’t give a shit?’
‘That’s not fair, I—’
‘You forget, I’ve watched you go through break-ups, and you never go out without a fight or at least a last shag. What is it you used to say?’ I click my fingers several times. ‘Break-up sex is the WD-40 that stops the door creaking as it closes.’ Alexander smiles at his own wit and it is with this smile that I understand how self-serving he is. ‘So, the only reason you wouldn’t have had one last hurrah with me is if you already had someone filling the gap.’ We look at each other. I like to think we’re having a silent conversation, and obviously I can’t read his mind, but I’d like to believe he’s saying something along the lines of, ‘I’m sorry, I’m a piece of shit. I don’t deserve you anyway,’ or thereabouts.
‘I don’t think there’s any point in wading through everything.’ He sees me open my mouth to protest and holds up his finger. ‘I actually asked you here to try and move things forward.’ He gets some documents out of the leather portfolio he has brought with him and hands me several pages.
‘What is it?’ I try to look through what he’s given me but the letters seem to float above the page.
‘It’s my financial statement. Then there’s one for you to complete and return to me and there’s also a parenting
agreement, which I think we should meet again and discuss when you’re less … well, less … heightened.’
I look up from the pages. ‘We’ve hardly spoken, Alexander. Don’t you even miss me?’
‘I feel like it’s easier … cleaner … if we just get everything sorted. Better for Moses too,’ says Alexander, which is not quite answering the question but answering it all the same.
‘Better for you and Poppy, more like,’ I say, and I mean this to be hurtful but Alexander nods his head.
‘It’s serious with Poppy, yes. I want to move things forward.’
I ask the question that I didn’t have the stomach to ask when I was a girl. ‘Why her and not me?’
Alexander looks down at his lap. I think he’s not going to answer but then he speaks quickly, as if he might change his mind. ‘She’s so open – she accepts me for what I am. I always felt like you were stuck in this fantasy world of what should be or what could be; I could never compete with it.’
‘Did you try to, though?’
‘Maybe not, but also you didn’t give me a chance. You were always lost in the future.’ Alexander leans across the table towards me. ‘Do you have any idea how hard it is running your own business? Do you know how many nights I was awake with stress and worry?’ He sits back in his chair. ‘Poppy gets it. She doesn’t try and put even more pressure on me.’
‘I know – I know what it’s like,’ I say, ‘but I also know there’s more to life than work.’
‘Spoken like an irresponsible brat,’ says Alexander. I couldn’t have been more surprised if he had spat in my face.
‘What the fuck are you talking about, Alexander? Your girlfriend probably doesn’t even have the training wheels off her bike.’
‘I’m talking about your bank statements, which still come to the flat because you couldn’t even be bothered to change the address. What have you been spending all the money in the savings account on?’
‘You’ve been opening my post?’ I ask. Alexander doesn’t open post, he just leaves it in a pile on the kitchen table.
‘Don’t change the subject,’ he says. ‘That money was for Moses.’ He taps the table to emphasize the key words. ‘That money’ – tap – ‘was for your son’ – tap – ‘and you’ve blown it on shit.’ Tap.
‘It wasn’t shit,’ I say. ‘I bought a business course and—’
‘More pie-in-the-sky crap,’ says Alexander.
I think about when he was starting his business and I was getting loans to keep the lights on. I think about the MacBook I bought him for his birthday. Spending money was fine when it was for his gain.
‘No, you don’t get the right to an opinion,’ I say. ‘What I spend my money on is my business.’
‘Yes, do what the fuck you want – spend it on ponies and sweeties and whatever it is you think will make you happy – but I want to make sure that my money is well and truly out of it.’
‘Fine,’ I say.
‘It’s not just that.’ Alexander fixes my gaze and lowers his voice. ‘Drugs, Martha?’
I let my head loll back in exasperation. I can imagine Greta gleefully retelling my fall from grace.
‘For God’s sake, Alexander, it was a bit of weed.’
‘I know you’ve found being a mum hard,’ says Alexander, ‘but there’s a limit, and buying drugs in the middle of the afternoon goes way past it.’
I can’t accept what he says; I refuse to. ‘What about the time you went to that stag do and took so many mushrooms I had to travel halfway across the country, so I could hold your hand on the train home?’
Alexander doesn’t say anything; he knows it’s the ultimate weapon against me. I want input, I want emotion, even if it’s negative; his silence is another attack. I shove the papers into my bag and tell Alexander I have somewhere to be.
‘That’s cool,’ he says, as if he has not just eviscerated my character. ‘Call me when you’ve gone over it. We’ll speak in a few days.’
I can’t even respond – the way my life is at the moment, a few days feels like a lifetime away.
48
THE FAIRFAX ‘END of Year Tapas Extravaganza’ is an event you go to when you have nowhere else to go. I had thought it was called an ‘end of year extravaganza’ to be non-denominational and inclusive, but Bob told me the directors thought that people would expect less booze if they left out the word ‘Christmas’. I’m not sure there is anything sadder than going to an office party actually at the office – it just drives home the message that this is all you have – but alcohol is definitely the answer to my encounter with Alexander, and free alcohol is always the answer. Walking to the door, I have exactly the same feeling I do before I go on shift. Darryl is sitting in the reception, as he always seems to be. ‘Happy End of Year, Darryl,’ I say.
‘Thanks, love,’ he says. He has swapped his security cap for a Santa hat, which seems to have the opposite effect to the one desired in that it just makes him look sadder.
‘Darryl, do you have a family?’ I ask.
‘Oh yes,’ says Darryl. ‘Missus and three girls.’
‘Is it hard being away from them? You work here a lot.’
Darryl’s shoulders start to shake and for a terrifying second I think he is crying, before I realize that he is laughing. He leans forward and says to me, ‘Hear that?’
I hold my breath and pay attention but all I can hear is the soft swoosh of traffic outside. ‘No, I can’t hear anything.’
Darryl leans back and folds his arms. ‘I rest my case,’ he says.
‘Have a good night,’ I say.
‘Oh, I will,’ he says, before chuckling again. I can tell he means it. I suppose it’s wrong of me to assume that a place means the same thing to different people.
The party is on the second floor. Usually home to the canteen and several meeting spaces, it has been made into a Christmas fiesta, courtesy of a job lot of maracas and a truckload of cheap tinsel. Tashi is just by the lift entrance and squeals when she sees me. I let myself be swept up into an embrace by her, and even at this point the squealing doesn’t stop. ‘So, so pleased to see you! How are you?!’
‘Better for seeing you,’ I say.
‘Congrats on your promotion.’
‘Ugh, don’t,’ I say.
‘Why would you say that?’ Tashi asks. She holds me away from her and examines my face.
I twist away from her hands and her enquiring eyes and say, ‘Well, it’s not exactly celebratory. Congrats, you’ve won yourself another five years working here!’ I lean against the trestle table set up by the lift. It was a bit ambitious to think I could come to a party at my workplace and not think about work.
‘Some people would kill for the opportunity. If someone offers you something you should be grateful. It’s a gift, even if it’s really hard to see right away. If you’re negative about it, the universe will hear that.’
I laugh. ‘The universe and I aren’t really on speaking terms.’
‘Fine,’ says Tashi, coming and sitting next to me. ‘What about me? Be positive for me. Someone who’s a bit lost and wants to know what to do with their life and might be looking to you for some guidance.’
I put my arm round her shoulder. ‘You want guidance?’
She nods.
‘You’ve come to the wrong place on so many levels.’ I pick up a leaflet resting on the table. It depicts a weary-looking donkey, carrying a load of bricks. ‘Is this yours?’ I ask.
‘Yes!’ she says. ‘It’s to support working horses and donkeys. Make sure they’re being cared for properly.’
‘You’re collecting?’
‘Well, it’s a raffle. There’s a hamper and a trip to a sanctuary in Dorset.’
‘Had any interest?’
‘Jim from IT gave me a carrot.’
The lift opens and three lads from the post room step on to the floor. They spot Tashi’s leaflets.
‘Collecting money for your mum, are you!’ shouts one, and the others chee
r and applaud him.
‘Tashi,’ I say, ‘these aren’t your people. That’s my guidance: get out whilst you still can.’
‘Well, actually,’ she says, and she stares at her shoes, ‘I was thinking about volunteering with the charity.’
‘The donkey people?’
‘Yeah, Brett says—’
‘Who?!’ I suddenly realize why she’s being all sheepish.
‘Brett, you know – from the retreat.’
‘Yes, I know! Lovely, brawny one. Massive, actually.’ I try to make a measure of his breadth with my hands. ‘Massive!’
‘Yes, that one. After you’d gone, we ended up talking loads, and then we kept in touch afterwards and he got me into the Working Horse and Donkey thing, and now a space has come up on this trip he’s taking and—’
‘Go!’ I stand in front of Tashi and hold both her hands. ‘Take it from someone withered and cynical; please, just go. Go now.’
‘Now?’ asks Tashi, looking at her stand.
‘Yes, now.’
Tashi grabs her bag and shoves her leaflets and the carrot into it before dashing towards the lift. ‘Thanks,’ she says as she waits for it to arrive.
‘You go get your happy ending,’ I say, because who am I to burst her bubble?
Bob spots me standing alone and pushes me into the throng with a firm hand against the small of my back. He stops at a group of three women standing near a drinks table. ‘Ladies, this is Martha, our latest addition to the senior team.’ He then leans uncomfortably close and whispers in my ear, ‘Welcome to the inner sanctum; try the punch.’ He pats me on the hip and then backs away, telling me he’s got babies to kiss.
‘Tool,’ says one of the three women, a statuesque brunette. ‘I’m Hope, HR.’ She sticks out her hand and I accept a solid handshake. ‘Don’t drink the punch – it’s laced with some dreadful coconut liqueur. Here, have some fizz.’ She pours me a serving into a plastic cup. ‘This is Helen and Anekwe.’
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