Olive

by Emma Gannon

  “Oh . . . no. Definitely not! The complete opposite.”

  “Sorry, dear, I didn’t mean to assume. It’s normally a sensitive area when women are having problems conceiving.”

  “I just broke up with someone, the love of my life, actually,” I sniff. “I feel so alone in my thoughts. I feel nothing there. It’s so empty.”

  Seal is cupping my forehead with her warm hand now.

  “It is okay to feel sad and go through the motions. You are in an intense reflection mode.”

  “What do I do now?”

  “You must lead with your heart. Make all decisions with it.” Seal prods me really hard in the chest with her spiky finger. Her hands are so hard and harsh, probably from years of massaging the hardened backs of stressed-out Londoners.

  “Ow,” I say. Seal smiles at me.

  She dims the lights, fills the room with burning sage, and lights some more candles—and stands there, stroking my temples until I fall asleep.

  When I wake up I have a splitting headache, and immediately feel like a failure. How long have I been asleep at Seal’s house-slash-spa? As I open my eyes, a suitcase full of negative emotion spills its contents everywhere. I need to get home.

  “Have some more water and, please, walk home slowly,” Seal says. As I sip my water my hand is shaking slightly. I insert my card into her payment machine. On the walk back to my flat I feel really spaced out, and when I get there I face-plant on my bed and fall straight asleep. When I wake up again from my second nap, it takes awhile for the haze to clear. There are three empty packets of prawn cocktail crisps next to my bed. I just thought that seeing Seal would be a fun thing to do to pass the time, like a back massage, but it’s brought up so much more than I imagined. There was a haunting urgency to her voice, like she wanted me to pay attention to her—to my body. I visualize a pie chart of all the different aspects of my life. Seal suggested I write down “what I know to be true” and start there to ease the confusion.

  I’m still in love with Jacob.

  I feel like my friends are abandoning me and moving on without me.

  I have zero maternal feelings.

  I am noticing that my forehead and hands are getting wrinklier by the day.

  I’m genuinely baffled as to how most people seem to skip out of bed each morning and get on with things.

  The next day, still shaken, I decide to work “from home,” i.e., my bed. I lie there, prop myself up with a big cushion, and realize I should probably change my sheets. My phone vibrates on my bedside table, startling me.

  Cec: “HELLO guys just a quick update—Chris is driving me to hospital right now! Baby INCOMING—it’s happening!”

  Bea: oh my god!!!!

  Cec: Chris is speeding lol hope we don’t get pulled over

  Bea: Well you have the best excuse if you do!

  Me: Wow! Keep us updated!

  Isla: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

  Cec: Am I ready for this???? I think I’m ready!!!!

  Bea: You are so ready! SO EXCITING CEC

  Cec then goes quiet, so we assume she’s, you know, literally in the middle of it all. I wonder how she’s feeling. I don’t know what it’s like being pregnant (obviously), but nine months sounds, in theory, like a long enough time to get your head around having a baby. But perhaps until it’s out, in your arms, it can’t feel real.

  I hate not knowing what is happening to my friend. The hideous online anecdotes from my late-night googling about birth stories come back to haunt me, even though I try to block them out. Time ticks by painfully slowly the next day at work—I find myself checking my phone every two minutes. Finally, twenty-four hours later, we hear something from Cec. It feels like an eternity. God knows what she’s just been through. Did time stop for her? Or did it go by in a hazy whirlwind flash?

  Cec: Guys, he is here.

  Cec: He’s amazing.

  Cec: I . . . made this! I MADE A HUMAN

  Cec: shares 16 images

  Cec: shares 4 videos

  Bea: OMG He is GORGEOUS! LIKE HIS MOTHER

  Isla: Totally delicious Cec, huge congrats to you both!!! Ahhh those tiny little hands.

  Me: Oh Cec, I’m crying. He’s beautiful. I can’t wait to meet him. Hi Oscar!

  Seeing how happy Cec is, how in love she is with her new baby, gives me knots in my stomach. I’m happy and excited for her, but a slight edge of jealousy creeps in too. I just can’t help but wonder: maybe if I did want a baby, I would still be with Jacob, and my life wouldn’t feel so tangled up right now.

  The flat feels so different without Jacob in it. Outside my window I see bustling outdoor seating areas of cafés, people on bikes with baskets on the front, and greenery from the park across the road. I always hear kids playing, people roller-skating, families laughing, and groups of friends singing. I used to find it inspiring and uplifting when Jacob lived here, to hear life going on outside. But now it’s a stark reminder of how much I am missing out on, as I continue to drink alone in my flat instead of going out on weekends. Everything feels like it’s hit a dead end. No Jacob, no future. I know I have to imagine a different life for myself now, but it just feels too hard. Some days I’m fine; some days I’m really not.

  Time for a bath. Anything to feel better. I remind myself that having a long bath alone is a luxury, something Cec certainly won’t be able to do for a while! I turn on the taps and put on an episode of Desert Island Discs, and then sink into the hot water, letting out a noise of pure bliss. I put more lavender oil drops into the water and exfoliate my face with a ground mix of botanicals to clear away dead skin. It’s harsh and feels like sand on my face. I scrub and scrub and imagine that I am scrubbing away the shit bits of my personality. I shave my legs without concentrating and accidentally cut my ankle. The bath starts to fill with blood and begins to look like a crime scene. Ow.

  My ringtone buzzes with the sounds of Eve’s “Who’s That Girl.” My sister Zeta is calling me. I’d been keeping her in the loop about the Jacob situation—she’s the only person I’ve really been able to talk to, but most of it has been over text. I wipe my hand on a towel and hang half my body out of the bath to answer it.

  “Hey, sis! I’m back from my travels, and I need to see your face immediately. How are you doing?” It felt so nice to hear Zeta’s voice.

  God, I have missed her. She works for a refugee crisis charity and was in Bristol at their HQ helping over Christmas. Then she went off on a trip to Calais and Greece for a couple of months. I can’t believe we are related sometimes—her doing stuff for others all the time. I can’t even get myself dressed at the moment.

  “Please don’t go away for that amount of time again, please. It’s been horrible without you,” I say, the water from my body dripping onto the tiles.

  “You were in my dream last night, Ol, and it was really weird. You kept barking like a dog, and I was so confused about what was wrong. Anyway, you okay?” Zeta laughs, chewing a piece of gum. Zeta and I have always told each other our strangest dreams from when we were very little and shared a bedroom, something I probably wouldn’t necessarily tell anyone else.

  “Weird. I’m fine, but actually I could do with a chat. Big time.”

  “I bet. I haven’t heard the full story of what happened with Jacob. I’ve been thinking about you loads. Wanna meet at the Crooked Cock in a few hours?”

  “Yes please,” I say. I rinse myself and pull the bath plug out, listening to the bloody water gargle its way down the hole as I rub my back and armpits. My ankle drips over my bath mat, and I stick some tissue to it because—surprise, surprise, adult that I am—I have no plasters in the house.

  The Crooked Cockerel is an old East End pub with a huge chimney coming out of the top and a bus stop just in front. Apparently, one of the Cray twins buried a body in the basement once, or something. It’s pretty much bang in the middle fro
m mine and Zeta’s flats, between Victoria Park and Mile End. Our fave little meeting spot—a pub that isn’t overly done up and does reliably good food without trying to overcomplicate things with a weird hipster menu. Zeta is five years older than me, annoyingly beautiful, and the least selfish person on the planet, to the point where I wish she’d put herself first a bit more. Her looks get annoying because men stare at her, and I often feel like shouting MOVE ALONG or asking them to pay if they want to look or take pictures of her. She’s not a silent mime artist performing on the streets of Covent Garden, awaiting their approval. Being a full-time paid activist and strategist for a large charity takes up all her time. I know she bottles up a lot of stress, but she also hardly ever complains. She never makes me feel bad for whining about my smaller problems, though. She doesn’t believe in whataboutery. (Thank god.)

  I pop on my beaten-up Converse shoes by the door and, as I walk across the road, the bus arrives just on cue. Love it when that happens. I sit down near the front and notice a youngish mum with a thick ponytail get on with a huge double-seater stroller. She has some mini carrots cut up into tiny pieces in a little Tupperware box and gives them to her identical-looking twins. She catches my eye, and I smile reassuringly at her. She looks tired. One of the babies upturns the box of carrots onto the dirty bus floor. The mum scoops them up and puts them in her big Ikea bag. She looks like she’s about to cry. I always smile at other women with strollers because it looks like fucking hard work, and I think there is a special place in hell for people who make new parents’ lives even more hellish. Baby karma is real. The mother with the carrots starts playing “Baby Shark” loudly out of her phone speakers and places her phone in the stroller with the baby. Everyone in the bus is rolling their eyes or shaking their heads, getting agitated at the fact that we all have to sit there and listen to the song. She has zoned out, looking out through the window, her eyes glazed over. She is clearly beyond giving a fuck what people think of her on a public bus.

  When I arrive at the pub, Zeta is outside smoking, in a floral dress and small denim jacket and Doc Marten boots. When she sees me, she outstretches her arms for a hug.

  “Ol!” She ruffles my hair as I wrap my arms around her tiny waist. “I’m so happy to see you!”

  I hug her tightly and feel my throat tighten. I just make a “hmm” sound as she squeezes me, grateful that she’s holding me up for a second.

  We go inside, order two small beers, and sit down in the back-room conservatory. It’s boiling inside, and the light is pouring in, reflecting off the tall fern plants dotted around the room.

  “Blue skies in England at 6 p.m., cheers to that,” Zeta says. She frowns suddenly. “Can you believe they are proudly displaying plastic straws at the counter? That’s embarrassing.” She refocuses on me. “Anyway, cheers to you, to us being together again!”

  “It’s so good to see you. I always miss you when you’re away, but this time, I really missed you.”

  “Sorry for being AWOL at the moment. That is the only downside. It’s my dream job, but the traveling is relentless, and I feel like I’m growing so distant from friends. It’s all right with you and Mum, but it’s hard to keep my life here intact.”

  “I know what you mean, but even when people live down the road it’s still hard to drag them out to socialize sometimes,” I say. “So, how was it—your trip?”

  “It was . . . an experience. I met the most incredible people who are trying desperately to rebuild their lives with practically nothing. It was inspiring. An emotional trip, though.”

  “You are amazing; I’d be too scared.”

  “You’d be fine once you were there, Olive—we all travel safely as a group, with the charity. Come with me one year. It’s motivated me to do even more.”

  “Okay—maybe!”

  “So, what the hell has been going on with you? Tell me everything,” Zeta says, taking a sip of beer.

  “Oh, Zets. Well, as you know, I had an awful fight—well, series of fights—with Jacob, and it’s all over. I’ve been a total hermit. I honestly haven’t spoken to anyone properly in weeks, apart from a few people in the office. And there are some cracks opening up in my friendship with the girls. Maybe they’ve been there for a while and the breakup’s just brought everything into focus . . . I don’t know. I just feel so aware that they’re miles further ahead in life than me. I’m back at square one, and they’re raising kids and buying houses and stuff. It’s hard to tell if I am ostracizing myself, or if it’s the other way around.”

  Zeta laughs lightly. “I understand that. Does Mum know?”

  “Well, I haven’t really wanted to burden her with it all. Seems like she’s only just getting her own life back on track. I didn’t want to remind her of, you know, men leaving . . .” I still feel a tightness in my chest whenever I mention Dad.

  “Hmm, yeah, I know what she’s like. She’s never really been any good at saying the right thing.”

  “Yeah, precisely,” I sigh. “I’ve just been trying to keep my head down and get on with things. Even if I do feel a bit lonely.”

  “Well, I’m here now.” She squeezes my arm.

  We all admire Zeta, but she’s always away whenever there’s a family occasion. She’s never been around for Christmas, as she’s always doing charity stuff. This is the only thing I resent about my sister, that I have to spend so much time alone with Mum. Having a sibling is meant to lighten that load.

  “Do you think it’s fixable—you know, with Jacob?” Zeta asks. She clearly always liked him.

  “I don’t think so. The same conversation kept rearing his ugly head. The ‘baby chat.’ I knew it was going to come to a full-blown make-or-break moment. It was like a ticking time bomb we both knew was there—it was only a matter of time until it exploded. It got to the point where it was all he could talk about, and there were only so many times I could shake it off or sweep it under the rug or put the conversation off for another day.”

  “I see,” she says, biting down on her top lip with her bottom teeth.

  “Yeah. It suddenly felt like kids were at the top of his agenda. You know his two older brothers have kids, and it’s all very family, family, family with them. With their perfect little Instagram accounts and group family shots and stupid matching outfits . . . the bloody Brady Bunch. I knew he wanted them, but I didn’t know he felt so time-pressured. I thought it was usually the woman who felt some sort of ticking biological clock. I thought I’d feel something, and then that would push us along. I didn’t realize he’d be obsessing over the idea the minute I turned thirty.”

  “Oh, Ol.” Zeta moves closer to me and puts her arms around me.

  “You know how much I love him.” I start crying in the middle of the pub. How embarrassing.

  “I have a question.”

  “Yeah?” I sob.

  “Do you think your fear of having kids might be linked to Dad leaving us?”

  “What . . . no!”

  “Sorry. It’s just a thought.”

  “Why can’t a woman just not want a baby and for that to be the end of it?” I say, feeling agitated.

  “I know, I know—sorry. But, do you think you’ll ever change your mind?”

  “I don’t know, Zets . . . I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, though—in fact, it’s all I seem to think about—and I just can’t picture myself with a baby. I just can’t.”

  “I know it must have been very painful to break it off, Ol, but you’ve done the right thing. You can’t force yourself to be somebody else for him.”

  I reach for a napkin to blow my nose into it, hard.

  We end up getting raucously drunk after that. Zeta clearly needs a bender after the intensity of her charity trip, and I just want to forget about the ins and outs of the Jacob nightmare. We do a mini pub crawl down the street and end up in a basement karaoke bar singing an old All Saints song.


  When I finally stumble home, I stick some chips in the oven and stretch out on the threadbare sofa, scrolling absentmindedly through Instagram. It is a newsreel of updates of baby Oscar and jolly family album photos of Bea with her kids playing dress-up. I “like” them with a drunken thumb.

  The night out has been a reminder that I have no one to go out with anymore, apart from Zeta occasionally, but she’s hardly ever here. I realize that I miss these carefree, spontaneous nights. I crave them. I don’t want to forget that we are still young. It’s clear that our lives are at a major crossroads. We are no longer sitting at the traffic lights, though; everyone is already zooming off in different directions. I wish everyone and everything would slow down just for a moment.

  9

  2012

  We were sitting in the sunny beer garden of The White Horse. The outside area was modern and welcoming, lined with deck chairs with striped cushions and big patio heaters. The insides of the old pub building were really in need of a paint job—undecorated since the smoking ban, the pub still reeked slightly of stale smoke, and the once-white curtains remained an off-yellow color. The girls and I had spent many drunken summer evenings in here. There was normally a cheesy tribute band playing in the evening, or a big football screen with people milling about, spilling their beers, or loud, cackling birthday parties. Last time we had a night out here, Fleetwood Bac was the featured act, and I drank and danced with a fake Stevie Nicks until we were both sick in the toilet. This, however, was a more low-key lunchtime affair: Jacob, Cec, Isla, Mike, and I were all seated around a big wooden picnic bench. It was just warm enough to sit out, but it felt nice because the evenings were getting lighter, thanks to the clocks going back. Mike had just bought a round and was carrying all the pints over on a wobbly tray. We then noticed Bea come in with her big baby carriage, pushing everyone out of the way.

  “Excuse me! Coming through,” Bea shouted loudly.

  I went up to her and kissed her on the cheek. “So good to see you,” I said. I was acutely aware that I hadn’t seen Bea for ages; it was longer than we’d ever been apart before, and I found myself feeling a little awkward around her. A sort of social anxiety, even. A distance.