How Do You Like Me Now?

by Holly Bourne

  When the tea is made, we take it into the living room and ease ourselves into the leather sofa. Everywhere I look there are framed photographs of Lizzie and her picture perfect existence. There are the professional shots they got taken of Georgia when she was only two weeks old – put into a flowerpot like an Anne Geddes baby. There’s a collage Lizzie’s made of her and Jake in all their different incarnations – different haircuts, different holidays, different fashions. They’ve been together since they were at school. And over these twenty years I don’t think either of them has once wondered if there’s anyone better out there.

  ‘So, how’s it going?’ I ask, gesturing towards her bump and slurping from my tea. ‘It all OK in there?’

  Lizzie’s hands massage her stomach absent-mindedly, and she smiles. ‘Yes, it’s all good. Though I can’t believe how much I took the first pregnancy for granted. It’s so much harder when you already have another child to look after.’

  ‘Georgia seems excited though.’ My mug feel greasy, like it’s not been washed properly, but I keep sipping.

  ‘Ha. We’ll see. Some of her friends at nursery have had siblings and they turned into attention-seeking monsters overnight.’

  We sip and enjoy the relative quiet. I can hear Peppa squeaking from the other room, keeping Georgia dormant.

  ‘So, how’s it all going with you?’ Lizzie asks, stretching her legs up onto the table, her pink mumsy slippers hanging off her heels. ‘Where you flying off to tomorrow? Haven’t you got that big thing?’

  I nod, feeling nervous just at the mention of it. ‘Berlin, for this TED talk. I’m bricking it to be honest.’

  My sister gives me a sympathetic smile. ‘But you’re so good at this sort of thing, Tor. And you’re used to talking in front of crowds. You’ll smash it.’

  ‘God, I hope so.’ I sip from my drink again. ‘Mum and Dad don’t understand what a TED talk is.’ We both giggle guiltily. ‘Plus,’ I say, perking up and wiggling in my chair, ‘You’ll never guess who’s doing a TED talk on the same day so I’ll get to meet her? Only Taylor freaking Faithful!’

  ‘Oh my God, Tor! You’re obsessed with her. You must be so excited!’

  I giddily take another glug of tea. ‘I just hope she’s nice, and that she likes me. It will ruin everything if she doesn’t like me.’

  ‘She’ll love you. Just maybe don’t bombard her with how crazy you are about her book … I still remember when you read it for the first time and kept sending me your favourite quotes. That’s so cool. And how’s things with Tom?’

  I nod and look into the steam rising from my cup. ‘Tom’s good. He’s in Las Vegas actually, for work.’

  ‘Poor Tom.’

  I shake my head. ‘I know. We had a bit of a tiff before he left …’ I tail off. It was more than a tiff; it had been a full-on fight that had come out of nowhere. I’d jokingly said, ‘no strippers’, which I thought went without saying. Thus the joke. But then Tom accused me of being abusive again for trying to ‘control his behaviour’.

  ‘What if all my colleagues go?’ he’d yelled. ‘What do you want me to do? Tell them they’re sexist pigs and stand by myself outside?’

  ‘Er, yes? Because they are?’

  ‘You can’t control people like this, Tor. What’s happened to you? You used to be so laid back. What happened to that carefree girl I met in America?’

  ‘SHE WAS TWENTY-FUCKING-FIVE!’

  I watch all the unsaid responses cross Lizzie’s face. ‘Oh dear,’ she says and drinks her tea.

  ‘We made up though!’ After hanging him out to dry, suddenly I’m rushing to his defence. I don’t want her to dislike Tom. Because once we work through this bad patch maybe we’ll get married one day, when he finally allows me to talk about it, and my sister can’t hate my husband. ‘Look,’ I get out my phone and show her the message he sent.

  Tom: I never want us to fight. I love you. We’ll Skype when I land. Xx

  Then he’d sent a photo of my book sitting at number thirty-five in a bookshop chart.

  Tom: PS: Look what I found in the Heathrow departure lounge. Always so proud Xx

  ‘See!’ I push my phone to Lizzie’s face.

  She takes it, smiles, then returns it. ‘Well then it’s all sorted, isn’t it? So, you just going to Berlin?’

  ‘I’ve got to do a thing in Paris on my way back.’ Two sold-out shows in two capital cities. Telling people how to live their best lives, when I no longer have a clue.

  ‘You’re so lucky!’ Lizzie sighs and readjusts herself, curling her feet under her bump. ‘Your life is so much more interesting than mine. Having kids is so dull. The most exciting thing I did this week was look down Georgia’s bum hole with a torch to see if she has worms.’

  My face screws up. ‘I didn’t know that was even a thing. Anyway, it will all be worth it when you’re older and she comes to visit you in the old folk’s home. Whereas my face will get eaten by cats. Did you know, if you die alone with a cat, they go straight for your face? Right away?’

  ‘Tor, that’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard.’

  I point to my face. ‘Enjoy this while it lasts,’ I tell her. ‘It will end up in the colon of a cat. You won’t be jealous of my Berlin trip then.’

  She cackles and her entire belly rolls as she does. ‘Oh bollocks, you’ve woken him up.’ She hoicks up her top, revealing her veins again, and starts whispering calmly to her bump. ‘There, there, did Auntie Tor upset you? It’s OK. Shh, shh.’ I watch as she settles her unborn child, as her stomach obeys her nurturing voice. When the squirming under her skin stops, she looks up. ‘You’re not going to die alone anyway, Tor. You and Tom will get around to having kids, won’t you?’

  I open my mouth to say something but I don’t know what it is. I’m interrupted anyway by the closing music of Peppa Pig and the thundering sound of tiny feet.

  Georgia appears at the door, grinning wildly. ‘BABYCHINO!’ she shouts at us. ‘I WANT A BABYCHINO!’

  I shake my head at Lizzie. ‘She can’t pronounce my name properly and yet she can ask for a babyccino?’

  ‘What can I say Auntie TorTor? She has her priorities right.’

  *

  I join Lizzie and Georgia on their excursion to the park-with-adjoining-café. Mum and Dad are out all day and spending time with a toddler is preferable to spending any time in my own company at the moment. When I’m alone, I just start randomly crying, and sometimes I scratch at the skin on the top of my thighs until it bleeds. So we smother Georgia with gloopy white sun-lotion, load her into the buggy, and push her through my hometown and into the local park I used to go to.

  Things are still much the same. The play equipment is new, but all the trees are where the trees used to be; all the benches are where the benches used to be. I push Georgia on the swing, and I congratulate her for going down the slide, and I watch her carefully as she balances on the logs, and I tell her she isn’t big enough yet for the zip wire. Lizzie sits on a bench with her eyes closed to the sun, stroking her tummy and shamelessly letting me babysit.

  I am good at this, I decide.

  I am looking after a small child and I am good at this.

  I could be a good mum. A great mum. I’m so creative and caring. I don’t get too flappy and look how much Georgia loves me. Imagine how much my own actual child would love me. A selfish part of me longs for that – the unconditional love a child would always bring. Oh, I do want children. I do I do. I want to grow one in my stomach and see what my body is capable of and feel so much love for something that it eclipses every other part of my life. I watch Georgia navigate the roundabout and I remember seeing her for the first time. I’d turned up with flowers, feeling weird that my sister was somehow now a mother. Lizzie had met me at the door and we’d hugged and I’d asked her how bad childbirth was, and she just shook her head. ‘Where is she?’ I’d asked, and Lizzie had pointed to a tiny cot in the corner. I’d walked over and peered in and there … there was Georgia. Th
e love had arrived clear, unwavering, and instantaneous. I’d never felt love like it. Before then, love was something I’d only ever grown into with time – like with Tom. But, with Georgia, my heart immediately and instinctively grew more room for her. Just like that. And, if it was like that with just a niece, how much more powerful would it be with my own?

  Georgia has left the roundabout for the slide now. She shuffles to the top and pushes herself over the edge. ‘Weeeee,’ I coo, reaching out to catch her lumpy little body at the bottom. Oh, I do want them. I need to talk about it with Tom. We need to finally bring this up in tangibles – when and how we want to go about doing this. We could be good parents. We don’t even have to get married if that’s what scares him. Oh I want a child, I want one, I want one …

  Georgia has to wait for her second turn on the slide and this is unacceptable. She pushes the boy blocking her path and he tumbles too quickly down the metal chute and bangs his head as he lands on the red tarmac. The boy erupts into tears, his mum rushing over and glaring at me. Georgia, unbothered, flies herself down the slide again, but I pull her off at the bottom. I make a big show of telling her off. ‘You cannot push, YOU CANNOT, THAT IS NAUGHTY.’

  Then it’s her turn to erupt into tears. Not just tears – hysteria. She throws herself onto the ground, limbs flailing, her screeches turning the entire attention of everyone towards her tantrum. Lizzie jogs over and tries to stem the flow with Bessie the rabbit and a small box of raisins and promises of a babyccino. Nothing will calm her. Georgia screams and screams into the sky and everyone is looking and Lizzie looks so stressed and exhausted and embarrassed and she says sorry to all the other parents and I can feel my stomach bubble with … ergh …

  No, I don’t want a child.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Maybe not ever.

  *

  I have a lovely, long-overdue, catch-up dinner with my parents. It’s tradition that I always stay the night before I have to fly somewhere. Dad insists on lighting candles and putting on Norah Jones and we have a quiet evening discussing Georgia’s various development milestones. I watch my parents as they wash up together afterwards. There is such intimacy in the way they hand soapy plates to one another, Mum letting Dad do the stacking of the dishwasher because he’s better at arranging things. I ache for what they have. I ache for the relaxed way in which they love each other. That it’s a given: them, together, forever. They don’t wonder or worry if there is someone else better, or, at least, they don’t seem to. I think of the mental energy this must free up. How much space you must have in your brain when it’s cleared of thoughts like: What are you thinking? What did you mean when you said that? Is this it? Is this the best love I can hope for? Is this what my life will be every day? Are you The One? Do you hate me as much as I hate you? Why are we doing this to each other?

  With the table cleared, and the dishwasher gurgling, they pour out another glass of red wine each and we settle by the candlelight. I’m filled in on the important developments in the neighbourhood. Rose-from-next-door’s melanoma has been caught in time. Over-the-road have gone on their third holiday this year already because he’s got such a good pension. Do I remember Natalie who I used to play with around the corner? Well, she has moved to Australia with her husband. After two glasses of Merlot, I am warm enough and secure enough to talk to them about it.

  ‘Mum? Dad?’ I begin, swirling my drink in my glass.

  ‘What is it poppet?’ Dad asks.

  I pause and swill the crimson liquid around some more. ‘How did you know you were each other’s One?’

  They both laugh at exactly the same time. Mum reaches over and puts her wrinkled hand on top of mine.

  ‘What is it? What’s so funny?’ I say.

  ‘It’s just I don’t think I ever thought about it,’ Mum replies, before turning to Dad. ‘Did you?’

  ‘I knew I got on better with you than I did with anyone else.’

  ‘Yes, me too. We just got on.’ She turns back to me. ‘Your generation are way too preoccupied with this sort of thing. I think if I’d looked at your father thinking, “are you The One? Can I spend every moment of my life with you?” I would’ve freaked out and got on a train to Timbuktu.’

  ‘Hey,’ Dad protests. Smiling and soppy from wine.

  Mum laughs again, but her grip tightens on my hand. ‘Have you had another fight with Tom?’ she asks softly, rubbing the top of my thumb.

  I gulp down the last of my wine. I wish I hadn’t brought it up. I have to ration how much I complain about Tom. ‘Just a small one … he’s in Vegas for work. I didn’t want him to go to a strip club.’

  Both of them pull a face. ‘He’s not going to one, is he?’ Dad looks mortally offended by the idea, reassuring me that I am in the right about this. Dad is a man and doesn’t go to them. It is not ‘inevitable’ that men will do this. Only some types of men … my long-term boyfriend, for example.

  I shrug and my gut tightens. I picture Tom grinning as he tucks money into another woman’s underwear. I picture him laughing with his disgusting work friends about which one is the prettiest. I picture him telling them I objected, but that he came anyway and them all cheering for him. ‘I don’t know,’ I answer honestly. ‘He said he didn’t want to go, but everyone at work was going.’

  My parents say nothing. They’ve learned not to. For I ring them so many times, telling them about something Tom has done and asking if it’s OK that I feel this upset – saying enough is enough and I can’t take it any more. Then they admit that They Think I Can Do Better, and that it’s been clear for years that We Don’t Make Each Other Happy, that I Need To Leave. Then Tom buys flowers and apologizes and becomes the man I know he can be. He regenerates into the emotionally-intelligent, kind, caring, soulmate that he was when we first met. He promises that things will be different, that he’s never met anyone like me. That he can’t believe he has such a beautiful, talented, successful, creative, kind woman as his partner. That he’s never felt this way about anyone so that must mean we are supposed to be together. And over and over again I melt into his promises. Because it’s so much less painful to believe him, than to leave. And I betray Mum and Dad and their support.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll sort it out,’ Dad says. He will not meet my eye.

  We share out the rest of the bottle and they ask me about my flight. They are excited about my trip, and my TED talk. Though they ask again for me to explain what it means.

  ‘Hang on to all these things you are achieving,’ Mum begs me, as I excuse myself to go to bed. ‘Don’t let your problems with Tom ruin how happy you are.’

  I’ve gone to bed too early and can’t get to sleep.

  My alarm is set for 5a.m. and I’m annoyed I drank three glasses of wine as I’ll need a wee in the night. After an hour of twisting my duvet into contortions, I give up. I turn on my reading light and look around my old room – more a shrine to my success now, than a childhood bedroom. The dusty, pink paint is littered with blobs of random discolouration from where I Blu-Tacked different posters to the wall. Mum and Dad have collected everything along the way – all my achievements. They’ve framed key newspaper articles and arranged all thirty-two foreign editions of my book on a specially made display shelf. Their pride leaks from the walls and I marvel for a moment at where life has taken me. The little girl who lay in this bed and kissed her Spike from Buffy poster every night before bed could never have imagined what this room would become.

  I wonder if Tom went to a strip club …

  No. My parents are right. I spend so long thinking about Tom and worrying about our relationship – and worrying about what Tom thinks about our relationship – that I miss so much. I will not let this argument stew in my head. I lean over and pick up my old Taylor Faithful book. I’ve been trying to re-read both of her books before I meet her in Berlin. This is her slightly newer one. It’s called: Love Me As I Am.

  Because even gurus need a guru, right? Taylor Faithful is mine. I stumbled
across her first book, Spiky Around The Edges, when I was twenty-three and it became my life raft. My lighthouse beam to follow. She is uncompromisingly difficult. She refuses to mould herself to fit around the gaps in others. This book is all about looking for a man who loves her for exactly who she is. And she found him. And she got married in red and didn’t change her surname and they’ve agreed they don’t want a baby. I want all that. Maybe not exactly all of it, but I want the relationship she has. It sounds so perfect in this book, so easy.

  I want any relationship that isn’t mine.

  Then why aren’t you leaving, Tori?

  It is the question that haunts me. The question I do not have an answer for, only a delay tactic. The thought of leaving Tom is as bad as the thought of staying with Tom. I never thought I’d be one of those women who stays in a relationship because she is scared, but maybe I am. Or maybe this is just a bad patch and we’ll work through it. His lack of commitment and refusal to discuss the future has been poisoning us for years now although I’m sure, in his head, everything is somehow my fault. What’s so hilarious is I’m not sure I even want commitment. I don’t know if I want marriage and kids and till death us do part and watching the small amount of hair Tom has left disappearing entirely. Part of me wants it only because he’s not willing to offer it. I feel I cannot know if I want Tom until he wants me. I know this makes me a total failure as a modern woman in every possible conceivable way – but that’s the truth. Who the hell is this woman I have become?

  I hear Mum and Dad’s going-to-bed noises creak across the landing. They talk in hushed voices, thinking I’m already asleep for my early flight tomorrow. There is gargling and the turning on and off of the bathroom light, then the click of their bedroom door closing. I start reading my book again, running my finger over the sentence that I keep coming back to:

  ‘You can be difficult, and yet someone will find it so easy to love you.’

  I do not know what to do about this sentence. This sentence that I know tells me everything I need to hear. I am not ready to act on this sentence and make the decisions that need to be made because of it. But it dissolves in, like honey in hot water. And I know, one day, this sentence will change everything.