Queenie
Page 15
Diana was with her dad, so instead of having the only other young person to talk to, I was in the spare room under seven duvets that my grandmother had put on me before she went out. I lay there, a constant chain of Ferrero Rocher entering my mouth, watching Love, Actually, a film that usually made me roar with laughter through sheer disbelief when I wasn’t heartbroken.
I don’t know how I could feel any bleaker. I hadn’t felt this alone in such a long time. It was fine BT (Before Tom) because I hadn’t known what such closeness was like, to be able to share everything with one person, to have someone love you unconditionally, and to love them, despite each other’s -isms. AD (After our Division) it was truly unbearable.
I heard the front door open and paused the film, holding my breath. “Look who I found on the road!” my grandmother announced to the house. “Sylvie’s here!”
I strained my ears. “Hi, everyone, it’s me!” I heard my mum say very quietly.
“Go up, say hello to your daughter,” my grandmother told her. “She’s eating her way through her feelings, go and take the chocolate away.”
Hearing my mum shuffle up the stairs, I pretended to be asleep.
“I know you’re awake, Queenie. You’ve been pretending to be asleep since you were little, I know the signs,” she said. I felt her sit down on the bed, and opened my eyes.
“Hi,” I said quietly, not wanting to look at her.
“I didn’t get to talk to you properly yesterday. How are you, darling?” My mum put a hand on my leg. Even though I couldn’t feel it through all of the blankets, I moved it away sharply.
“Sorry, I know that you don’t like touching.” She pulled her hand away quickly. “Maggie told me that you and Tom are on some sort of break. How are you doing?” She paused for an answer she knew she wouldn’t get. “And Diana says you’re living in a shared house! You must hate that. You know, if I had the room—”
“I’m fine, Mum,” I sighed, tired of Christmas already.
“It’s okay to suffer, you know,” she said to me quietly. “It’s okay to be in pain, and be hurting, Queenie.”
“I said I’m fine, Sylvie,” I repeated, rolling over to face the window so I couldn’t see how much me calling her by her name hurt her.
“This isn’t like you, Queenie, to be so robotic about things,” my mum said. I heard her stand up.
“Maybe I’m not me anymore.” I closed my eyes, feeling the tears that were about to come.
“Sylvie?” Maggie called from the kitchen. “Can you come and help me, please? The turkey needs a final baste, and my hands are full with the macaroni cheese!”
“Well. You’ll always be my Queenie,” my mum said, leaving the room and closing the door behind her.
* * *
After a ten-minute grace led by Maggie that my granddad drifted in and out of sleep for, we would have eaten Christmas dinner to the soundtrack of BBC News had it not been for Maggie reeling off the list of cosmetic treatments she’s been saving up for and was planning to have done in the new year.
“. . . and then my doctor, and he is a lovely doctor, Dr. Elliot, what he’s going to do is take some of the fat from my stomach, and then he’s going to inject it in this empty part of my bosom, here.” My granddad choked on his turkey.
“Maggie, please, we’re all eating.” My grandmother put her fork down. “Tek water, Wilfred!”
“I’m only saying!” my aunt said, spearing a roast potato on my mum’s plate with her fork. “You’re being quiet,” Maggie said to my mum, shoving the stolen potato into her mouth.
“Oh, I’m okay,” my mum muttered.
“You’re not eating, Sylvie,” my grandmother said. “You get smaller every time we see you.”
“She’s always been small, though. She’s the lucky one,” Maggie said, nudging my mum so hard that all 110 pounds of her almost fell off her chair.
“Nothing lucky about being big or small. You’re all beautiful. All sizes.” My grandmother looked pointedly at me and my aunt. “But still, Maggie, I want you and Queenie to go and get your blood pressure checked. And your cholesterol.” She picked up her fork and began to eat again.
“Granddad, can we put something on the telly that isn’t news?” I asked. He finally looked away from the television and stared at me for a million years.
“As you all know, I do not like anything that is fictitious,” he announced, turning the news up and facing the screen again. “The only thing we should be watching is what’s happening in the world around us. It’s a horrible state of affairs, and you, young as you are, need to stop being so ignorant.”
“Granddad, you know I work at a newspaper. I know what’s going on in the world,” I said.
“You work at the magazine, Queenie, it’s all opinion pieces and clubbing, not real news,” he replied swiftly.
“Wilfred. Don’t start. Nuh even badda start on Jesus’ birt’day. Han’ me the remote,” my grandmother said through tightened lips.
My granddad sighed and pushed the remote across the table to her. She passed it to me, and I scanned the channels as my mum and Maggie went to sit in the front-front room, the one with plastic covers on the sofas and dust sheets on all of the best furniture. Nobody is allowed in there. I still have to clean it every time I come here, though. On my way to the kitchen to get dessert, I stopped by the door to eavesdrop.
“She’s fine, you know she’s tough,” I heard my aunt say.
“She’s not that tough, Maggie. And I appreciate you looking after her when I couldn’t, really I do, but she’s my daughter, not yours.” My mum was crying gently. “And I know her! She’s good at pretending. But I’ve let her down, I should have been better to her, that way she might have been better to herself.” Maggie mmm-ed softly in the pauses as my mum spoke. “I shouldn’t have left her. I shouldn’t have been so controlled by that devil man and left her all alone.”
I heard Maggie sigh quietly. “What’s the point in thinking like that, Sylv? You did it, you can’t change that now. All you can do is move forward with her. Build back the relationship. You and Queenie were close, that doesn’t just go away.”
“But what if it has?” my mum asked softly, fear in her voice.
“Stop worrying about Queenie, Sis, and focus on yourself. Trust me, your daughter is all right. She’s a brave one.”
“Being brave isn’t the same as being okay,” my mum said quietly.
“You have to look after yourself, Sylvie. You need to recover. Why don’t you come to church with me?” Maggie suggested. I was surprised she hadn’t offered the prospect of divine healing sooner.
“No thanks, Maggie,” my mum said. At least we agreed on something.
“Suit yourself,” my aunt said. “Well, look, worry about yourself. What’s the latest on the court case?”
“It’s killing me, Maggie. Every time I have to see Roy, I have to stop myself from being sick.”
“That’s why you’ve lost so much weight,” Maggie commented. “Two and a half blasted years of having to go through this. You need to let me know when the hearings are, I can come along with you.”
“I don’t want you to hear what we went through, Maggie. I’m so embarrassed. The lawyers, they bring it all up all the time. All of it.” My mum sobbed, and I felt tears rush to my eyes. “They’ve finally found his private bank account, though, where he’d put all the money from my house, so that’s something. Doesn’t mean I’ll get any of it back.”
“I hope your lawyer is pushing for something, though.” Maggie raised her voice slightly.
“She is, she is,” my mum said softly. “She said it would help the case if Queenie testified, but I don’t want her to relive what she saw.”
“Don’t bring Queenie in,” Maggie said firmly. “No.”
“I won’t. Listen to this—” my mum spluttered. “Remember when he slammed my face into the steering wheel when I was driving and made me crash? He told the judge I crashed because I was drinking. Lied through his
teeth. He’s mad, Maggie!”
“You weren’t to know he’d be this mad.”
“I don’t know why I couldn’t see it, though?” my mum said. “I was so scared, scared of being alone after Queenie’s dad upped and left me. I thought nobody would ever want me again, and when Roy came along I thought he was a god.”
“He was a master manipulator, Sylv.”
“But I abandoned my daughter!” my mum wailed. “I loved her so much, and I abandoned her.”
I felt myself being pulled back by the shoulder. It was Granddad. “Let the big people speak, nuh?” he whispered. “Nuttin’ in there for you.”
I wouldn’t feel sorry for her. She’d made her mistakes, and now we both had to live with them. I wiped my eyes quickly and went back up to the spare room and checked my phone. I had a text from Gina.
Are you not checking work e-mail? Odd. Could you please? Need you in earlier. MC.
I logged in to my work account and tried to ignore everything but Gina’s e-mail. I’d made a conscious point of not checking my work inbox every single minute when I was out of the office because I’d read some article about how it’s bad for our mental health. And yes, there are a lot of things worse than worrying about work during the holidays, but I was determined to take my not wanting to work more than I was paid for very seriously.
On Tuesday, 25th December, Row, Gina
Q. Need you in tomorrow (26th) a.m. Just checked e-mail and saw message from printer—Chuck’s edits to the next issue? A mess. Need you to fix before mag goes to print. Check main drive, all there. Pages 32–60. Make changes, file new version. Can’t do it myself as stuck in Suffolk. Text me when fixed. G
I went to close the browser, but my eyes accidentally scanned the inbox and landed on an e-mail from Ted sitting amongst the unopened messages.
I went to open it, but stopped myself and closed the laptop. I am not very disciplined, however, and have mainly made peace with that, so reopened the laptop.
On Tuesday, 25th December, Noman, Ted
Queenie, my head is swimming with thoughts of you. I’ve sat through so many dinners and family parties and I’d swap it all to be sitting with you in our park. Say we can do that as soon as we get back? Merry Christmas. X
Delete. I’ve known a lot of men, but never one to blow this hot and cold. If this was the clarity I’d asked God for, I’m never praying again.
chapter
THIRTEEN
APART FROM SILENT Jean who I’m not sure even left the office for Christmas, I was the only person on my floor. It took me a million years to get inside because the security guard was a weird seasonal one who didn’t believe that I worked for a newspaper.
When I asked why else I’d be here in the middle of the holiday break when I could be at home, his continued line was: “Because you might be a troublemaker.”
I’d forgotten my pass at home, but eventually he let me in after I forced him to take the lift up to the fifth floor and look at the poster of me that was in the cafeteria. I didn’t want to take part in it, but the paper had been doing a whole “we are diverse” initiative and asked if I would be on the supporting images, as I am one of four diverse members of staff who don’t work in the service divisions. The poster shows me, Vishnay from the finance supplement, and Josey from music all standing awkwardly underneath the words THE DAILY READ: NEWS FOR ALL. Zainab in digital had refused to take part.
When, in my induction, the Spanish HR assistant quite literally said to me: “You are very lucky to be working here! There are others like you, except not the same color,” I wasn’t sure that I was hearing her properly, so asked her to repeat what she’d said. “You know! There are darker ones, but they’re in IT.” I’d opened my mouth to respond (though still have no idea what I was going to say), but she jumped in with: “Don’t worry, my husband is black, so I know about you and your people.” She’s gone now. Was she fired? I wouldn’t be surprised.
THE CORGIS
Queenie
Guess where I am
Kyazike
LOL. Happy Christmas. Where are you? You’re lucky you ain’t in Staines, nothing to do here, fam
Darcy
In bed. You’re almost always in bed
Queenie
I’m at the office, THANKS
Darcy
People don’t usually start with the New Year’s resolutions the day after Christmas. Where has this dedication come from?
Queenie
Gina made me come in to sort out something Chuck did. It’s not bad, actually. Unlike you normal people, my family are mainly intolerable. My granddad made us watch the news while we ate dinner
Queenie
Anyway, text company is appreciated while I’m here, thanks
Queenie
Please. Stories, memes, pictures of what you got, anything
Silent Jean kept gliding past my desk silently to go and make tea. What did she achieve by staring at me? After my second hour of trying to make sense of Chuck’s madness and shoving 1K miniature Snickers down my throat, I heard the lift doors open.
Thankful to have the company of somebody who wasn’t Jean, I turned around to see Ted striding through the doors. “What are you doing here?” I asked, less thankful that it was him.
“I needed to file something. ‘Best Boxing Day Goals.’ ” He looked oddly proud of that headline, as though it contained any wordplay. “Quiet down here,” Ted observed. “What are you doing here?” He sat in the chair next to mine.
“Gina asked me to come in and fix something. She can’t do it herself because she’s ‘stuck in Suffolk,’ ” I said breezily. “Anyway, I should just get on with this.” I turned to my screen, so thrown by Ted appearing suddenly that I couldn’t remember what I needed to do. What can you do in this situation but pretend to type? What if heartbreak had made me genuinely mentally unwell?
“You’re pretending to type,” Ted assessed.
“I’m doing very important work here,” I assured him. “Please leave me in peace.”
“You didn’t reply to my e-mail.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Queenie.” Ted put a hand on mine. “I’ve missed you.”
“Don’t do this again.” I pulled my hand away and carried on looking at my screen. “Do I need to remind you that there’s CCTV in this office? And Jean is over there!”
“Can I convince you to go for a little, er, jaunt with me?” Ted asked quietly.
I got up and walked toward the bathroom. I could hear Ted following me, and sped up. Silent Jean looked up from her desk, scared as though I were charging toward her. I crossed the office and made it into the disabled loo. I locked myself in.
“Queenie, come on,” Ted whispered through the door.
“Come on nothing. Leave me alone, please. What you’re technically doing is stalking. I could get Jean to call the police.”
“What, that woman who haunts the building? That’s a bit dramatic. Come out of there, please. I need to explain.”
I unlocked the door and tried to push it open, but felt something against it. I shoved against it with my whole weight.
“Ow!” It only opened partway. I put my head around the door and saw Ted on the floor leaning against it. I remembered when Tom used to console me outside the bathroom door, and shook my head to chase the memory away.
“I didn’t think you’d open it, stubborn as you are,” Ted said, standing up slowly and making a big thing about stretching his legs out. “I’m an old man, Queenie.” He forced a laugh.
“You’re only six years older than me, Ted. And I’m only coming out because I need to finish my work.”
I stepped past him and walked over to my desk. He must have finally got the message because he didn’t follow me.
I finished correcting Chuck’s numerous errors at five, filed the new version, e-mailed Gina, and grabbed my stuff to head out of the offic
e. I was close to the lift when someone grabbed my hand. I snatched my whole body out of their reach.
Ted placed his hands on my waist and pulled me up and into the lift.
“Cameras!” I reminded him. “What if someone is watching!?”
He stood directly behind me and kissed my neck. “Let them see,” he whispered into my ear.
“Fuck it,” I purred, melting into him.
We got up to Ted’s floor, and as soon as we stepped through the lift doors he took a sharp right and opened the door to the disabled bathroom.
“After you,” he said. My heart beginning to beat faster, I walked in like some sort of idiot incapable of independent thought. Ted followed and locked the door behind him. He kissed me and pushed me against the wall, unbuttoning my shirt with confident hands. I undid his coat and he shrugged it onto the floor. I tried to undo his shirt, but he took my hands and moved them down by my sides.
“No, stop, leave it. I need to keep it on.” He tore my shirt off and threw it on the floor before unhooking my bra and dropping it at my feet. He took my breasts in his hands and squeezed them roughly, staring at me as he sucked one nipple and then the other. I guess it’s like that thing when a woman is meant to maintain eye contact with a man while she sucks his dick? I’ve never done it because I think that it’s weird. When you’re on the receiving end of the stare, it’s just as weird.
“I can’t believe I’m finally seeing your tits,” Ted panted.
“And did you think it would happen in the work toilets?” I asked, using humor to give me some distance from what was happening. If I didn’t want this, why was I letting it happen? Surely I wanted this?
He lifted up my skirt and pulled my tights down to my knees as he continued to stare a little too intensely into my eyes. With two fingers he began to knead at me through my knickers. “I love that. I love feeling you. Do you like it?” he asked.