“Okay, so, this new layout,” he started eagerly. “I’ve printed all of the examples that you’ve sent me and thought we could talk them through? Right, so—”
My phone buzzed, and when I pulled it out to look saw the beginning of a message from Cassandra flash up on the screen.
Cassandra
If I say we can talk about it this evening, will you st
I walked back to my desk, sat down, and opened the text.
Cassandra
If I say we can talk about it this evening, will you stop sending me messages? It’s getting tiresome, you chasing me.
“Sorry, Chuck, can we postpone?” I shouted across the office. “I’ll look over those and we can talk about it tomorrow.”
The knot in my stomach tightened as I crossed the office and slipped into an empty breakout room. I called Cassandra. She didn’t answer. I tried again, and got a text.
Cassandra
Just come round later.
* * *
I had tiny sips of tomato soup as I unpacked Cassandra’s messages over lunch with Darcy.
“I don’t understand why she’s being so cold, though,” I said, grimacing as the soup started to churn in my stomach.
“Isn’t she quite cold anyway?” Darcy said. “You know, like a sort of duchess ‘I’m better than everyone because I’ve psychoanalyzed you all to death and I know you better than you’ll ever know yourselves’ way?”
“You’d noticed?” I asked, relieved that I wasn’t the only one who realized that Cassandra was hard work.
“Are you joking?” Darcy laughed. “That’s exactly the vibe she gives off. Poor you, you must be used to it. Do you want some bread with your soup?”
I shook my head. “She’s not that bad—look how much money she’s given me. If it weren’t for her I wouldn’t have been able to afford dinner most nights. Either way, silent treatment for nearly a month, and now she wants to see me? Why doesn’t she just call me? I’m too scared to see her face-to-face.” I put my spoon down. I couldn’t eat any more. “Unless she’s going to apologize for cutting me out of her life for something that was in no way my fault.”
“I’m actually quite relieved she left the Corgis. She’s so anal that she’d put full stops at the end of all her messages. It drove me mad. Can you at least try to eat a bit more? Here, try my burger.” Darcy thrust her food toward me, and I jerked my head away. “If you stop eating properly, you’ll feel worse, Queenie.”
“Eating makes me feel worse,” I couldn’t stop myself from moaning. “Every single thing I eat or drink, I can feel its route through my digestive system the minute it passes my lips.”
“Are you in pain?” Darcy leaned closer to me.
“No, it’s more discomfort. And churning.” I rubbed my stomach, pressing my hand into it roughly.
“Don’t do that!” Darcy pulled my hand away toward her. “Are you . . . pregnant?”
“No, no way. It might be panic or anxiety or something.” I lowered my voice. “Remember, I have my referral letter from stern Elspeth.”
“Yes, that’s a brilliant idea!” Darcy’s face lit up, a possible solution in sight.
“Is it?” I tried another sip of soup. “Isn’t that just admitting that something is wrong with me?”
“So what if something is wrong with you? There’s something wrong with all of us,” Darcy said gently.
“There is nothing wrong with you.” I sighed, throwing the spoon down and leaning back in my chair. “There’s too much wrong with me, Darcy. I don’t think I’ll ever know what it’s like not to worry. About everything.”
“Well, there you go, that’s what you need to talk about. I think you should do it. What have you got to lose?”
* * *
I sat on the bus to Cassandra’s. My stomach was still turning and my skin felt like it was on fire. I tried counting to ten repeatedly to stop myself from having to run off the bus screaming. My breathing was getting shallower, and I couldn’t regulate it. What was wrong with me? I’d done this journey a million times.
I stopped at the florist on the corner of Cassandra’s street and picked up a bunch of irises. I went to the counter to pay and emptied all of my pockets and rucksack onto the counter before accepting that I’d forgotten my purse at work, so walked to Cassandra’s house without a peace offering.
As I got closer, I leaned on the wall and bent over, taking some deep breaths as I summoned the courage to walk up the path and ring the doorbell.
“Are you okay, Queenie?” I looked up at Cassandra’s dad, who had opened the door.
“Yes! Sorry, Jacob, just a little . . . out of breath. I ran here,” I lied. “Is Cassandra in? Please,” I asked, walking through the front door.
“Yes, go up, she’s in her room. Exciting times ahead!” he said sadly, his tone not matching his words. What did he mean?
“Now, can I get you a drink?” Jacob asked, guiding me into the house. “I know you like my hot chocolate!” Did he know about Guy? He wasn’t talking to me like he knew. Though parents were meant to stay adult and impartial throughout these things, weren’t they?
I tripped over a box as I made my way through the hallway. I fell over another as I got to the top of the stairs. I stood outside Cassandra’s door, my fist poised to knock, and looked at the brass C screwed into the wood. My stomach rolled over. I wasn’t ready for conflict.
“Come in,” I heard Cassandra say. My hands were so sweaty that after two failed attempts at turning the doorknob, I eventually managed it with my sleeve over my hand.
I stepped into the room and stood in the doorway, puzzled by more boxes seemingly containing the contents of Cassandra’s room. “Where are you off to?” I asked.
“Leaving,” she snorted. “Moving. With Guy.”
“Are you joking? To- to where?” My legs started to shake, so I lowered myself onto the stool by Cassandra’s dressing table before I remembered that it was only decorative and could break under my weight, so stood up again. Breaking family heirlooms was not the way to forgiveness.
“To Winchester.” Cassandra smirked, as if she’d just told me she’d won something I’d really wanted.
“What? Where’s Winchester?” I furrowed my brow.
“Of course, you’re terrible at geography,” she snickered. “Hampshire.”
“Okay, but why are you moving to Winchester with Guy, Cassandra?” I pressed. Why was she saying this as if it were the most natural thing in the world?
“Well, you’ll know he’s a junior doctor, I’m sure.” Cassandra flipped her golden-brown hair viciously. “His next placement is at a hospital there. Didn’t he tell you that when you were fucking?”
“No.” Little spikes of anger pulsed through me. Why was I still being blamed? “I didn’t know that,” I said, my voice calmer than my disposition.
Cassandra crossed to me and shut the bedroom door. It closed with a quiet click. I felt trapped.
“Really? You were lying on your back for him all that time, did you never actually talk to each other?” She narrowed her eyes at me and crossed her arms tightly.
“Oh, come on, that’s not fair,” I groaned.
Cassandra cocked her head at me, demanding a response.
“Well, maybe, but I wasn’t ever listening. We weren’t having a relationship!” I tried to explain. “It was just about the sex. And remember, I stopped doing i—” She lifted a hand to cut me off.
“Anyway, I’ve decided that I’m going to be adult about this,” she said smugly. “He loves me, and he made a mistake. And, you know, you were just sex. An outlet to release tension when he was having a wobble about his career.” She sounded like she truly believed that. “We’ve looked into it, there are psychiatry courses I can do at a university not far away. The houses there are cheap compared to London, and my dad has agreed to help us get our feet on the ladder.” She smiled and went back to her spot, removing books from her shelves and placing them into one of the twenty cardboard boxes
in the room.
“Do, your parents, do they know what happened?” I asked breathlessly, hoping that I could call them in to help put a stop to this madness. “Surely if they did, they’d tell you that you were mad.”
“No, and they don’t need to,” Cassandra said viciously enough to make me pull back. “Guy’s said that we can start having a good life together, and I believe him.”
“Cassandra, let me get this straight.” I was trying to make sense of the nonsensical. “You hear me talk about some boy for months. Like, the duration of the time you’ve been with him. You aren’t sleeping with him; then you come to my house and watch him walk out of my bedroom with your own two eyes, and your next step is to cut me out and leave London with him? I came here because I thought you were going to apologize, but instead you’re telling me that you’re making a choice, and you’ve chosen him? You don’t even know him!” I pleaded with her.
I crossed the room and placed a hand on hers to stop her from packing her life away.
“Don’t.” She yanked her hand away as if mine were made of fire. “This isn’t a choice between you and him, don’t be so self-centered,” she said. “It’s about me. I’ve found someone that I want to be with. He gives me stability. I can’t carry on with the only consistent thing in my life being your problems.” She let those words hang in the air. “I’ve met someone that I love, he loves me, and we’re starting a life together.”
“But he was cheating on you, the whole time,” I said. “This wasn’t a drunken kiss in a club! Don’t you think you deserve better than that?” Cassandra picked up a roll of brown tape and turned it around in her hands, looking closely at it for the edge.
“Do you know the thing about you, Queenie?” She found the edge and picked at it. “You’re damaged goods,” she said. Her words hit me as if Apollo Creed had punched me in the chest. I sat on the edge of the bed. “You’re damaged goods, so you self-destruct,” Cassandra repeated calmly. A good thing she repeated it, too, because I couldn’t believe what I’d heard the first time. “No wonder Tom escaped when he did. He was too good for you.” As her words continued to strike me, I could feel my heart fragment a little bit more.
“You’re so closed off that actual love is out of your reach, so you settle for sex. With anyone who’ll fuck you. Your self-esteem is a joke.” She placed the edge of the tape on the cardboard and extended it, sealing the box. “With a mum like yours, it’s no surprise.” She smoothed the tape down on the box. “So. Take care.” She lifted the box and put it atop a pile of others.
“Cassandra, we’ve been friends for, what, almost a decade?” I said, my voice breaking. “Why are you saying this? How can you say this?”
“It’s all true, isn’t it?” She shrugged. “You’re always saying I psychoanalyze you too much. Think of it as my final diagnosis. You can let yourself out.”
I stood up. What was the point in trying to change her mind?
“Good luck with everything, Queenie,” Cassandra said as I walked out of her room. “Oh, and you have my bank account details. I’ll send you your tab.”
chapter
TWENTY-ONE
“SHE’S A BITCH for that, don’t you dare listen to her. She’s more of a prick than that Welsh ting, and he’s a major dickhead.” Kyazike and I stood on her balcony smoking. She had one eye gazing out on a sparse and wintry London, the other looking through the window at the living room door in case her mum came home and caught us.
“Why don’t you save yourself this drama, fam? Why don’t you just date black guys?” Kyazike asked.
“Why do you think?” I asked, shutting her down.
“Sorry, no, I know. I should have thought before I said,” she said, flustered.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap,” I apologized, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Remember the first family party you took me to?”
“The one where my cousin Elias tried to move to you?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “And I was so stressed by it that I started crying?”
“Yeah, and we had to pretend it was because you had period pains,” Kyazike recalled.
“I just can’t do it, Kyazike. I’m scared of black guys. I’ll always, always think they hate me.”
“I get you, I get that,” she said reassuringly. “But that’s pure nonsense, my strong, beautiful black queen,” she added in a thick Ugandan accent, the one she borrowed from her mum when she wanted to hammer a point home.
“Maybe Cassandra is right. Maybe I am damaged goods, that’s why all of that stuff with Tom, and Ted, and all the others,” I said, ignoring her compliment. “And the king of it all, Roy. He made sure that any self-esteem I had was crushed into nothing.”
“Nah, I’m not having that!” Kyazike shouted so loudly that her voice echoed around the buildings. “These men, they ain’t worth all this. And Cassandra?” Kyazike kissed her teeth. “She’s just vex because her man found good sex somewhere else. She’s taking it out on you, fam. All of that psychology nonsense she chats, and she can’t even do it on herself. You think that relationship is gonna last?” She kissed her teeth again. “She’s lucky I don’t spin her jaw, how can she talk about your mum like that? The stuff with you and your mu—”
“Kyazike, don’t,” I warned her, then screamed and ducked as a pigeon that had nested on the balcony flew over my head.
“Sorry,” she apologized. “Anyway, I give it two months, she’ll be belling your phone telling you how she needs help moving home and how she’s sorry she didn’t listen and takes back everything she said. So don’t think about it for now. Put it out your head, fam. Come, we go inside, it’s a blitz.”
We went back inside and rubbed our hands together. It was a cold February afternoon, and the air held a harsh chill.
I threw myself down on the sofa, yelping as my skin touched the cold leather. Kyazike handed me the razor blade and lowered herself to the floor. “Beg you hand me that blanket?” she said, holding her hand out.
“Can we at least turn that fan heater on?” I begged. “My fingers are shaking so much that I might scalp you.”
“Are you going to pay the electric bill?” Kyazike asked, turning to look at me.
“It’s your head, Kyazike,” I warned her. She crawled across the room and turned the heater on. We both sighed with relief as the hot blast of air hit us.
“Are you going to get rid of that pigeon nest? It can’t be hygienic to have them living there like that.” I gestured to another bird as it landed on her balcony.
“I’ve tried to poke it with the broom, but it’s stuck firm. Those pigeons are crafty, they’ve built it on a corner we can’t reach. But I’m going to get closer. I just need a white suit.”
“What? Like a white trouser suit?” I asked.
“Nah, not my Sunday best, Queenie, one of those CSI suits they wear when there’s been a murder. Trust me, I will have those pigeons up.”
“Sorry, yeah,” I said, my head all muddled. “CSI suit.”
I took a deep breath. “Kyazike. What do you think about counseling?”
“The pigeons aren’t stressing me that much, fam.” She laughed.
“No, I mean, like, when people are having a bad time. Do you know anyone who has ever been?”
“Queenie. I’m Ugandan. You think anyone in my family is allowed to say they need help? You bury that shit and you move on. If I told my mum I need counseling, she’d ship me over to Kampala in a cargo barrel.”
“I’m thinking about getting it,” I said. “I don’t know. I feel, like, awful, all the time. It’s not shifting. This frosty woman at the clinic wants to sign me up because she thought I was going mad. Well, first she thought I was being pimped out, but then she realized that I was just having sex for fun,” I rambled. “But that I probably wasn’t having that much fun.”
“Well, do it if you need to, innit. I don’t think I’m the best person to talk about all this feelings therapy fluff with.”
I carried on with Kyazike
’s hair while she told me about a guy who kept taking her on dates and then promising her shoes or similar. I couldn’t keep track of what she was saying because I kept getting snatches of panic that would rise and fall in my chest and had to concentrate on quelling them while trying to pick up keywords from the story.
“Are you listening?”
“Sorry, yes! The shoes?” I said.
“Yeah, so eventually I was like, ‘Stop dropping hints, why do you wanna know my shoe size?’ He says he’s in Selfridges buying me shoes as a late Christmas present, so I rushed there in case he was gonna get me a pair that I don’t like, like the guy who bought me the nude Louboutins that were nude, but for a white girl.” Kyazike shook her head in disappointment. “Anyway, I get there, I’m trying on the shoes, I hand them to him, fine. Twotwo’s, we’re at the register and he’s trying to haggle with the store girl, then he tried to pay with four cards, none of which were in his name!” Kyazike turned to look at me. I looked back at her flatly. “Are you all right, fam? You usually love my stories,” she said, disappointment and worry etched across her face.
“I’m fine, just sleepy,” I said. “Sorry.”
“All right. Anyway, I’m locking it off, fam. He’s some wheeler-dealer! I’m not asking for much from my Mr. Right, you know, but believe, employment is essential. Plus, this guy’s phone only seems to be on when he wants to link me, and the dates are all spontaneous. Like he’ll call me and say, ‘Come out for dinner,’ like I’m constantly sitting at home ready with my eyebrows drawn on. Like makeup isn’t expensive.” She kissed her teeth. “Maybe I should try white guys like you. They’d treat me better.”
“You think?” I asked her, the last few months of gross mistreatment flashing before my eyes.
“Yeah. They wouldn’t like me, though.” Kyazike shrugged. “I’m too black for them. They don’t want a dark black girl.”
“Don’t be stupid. I’m proof that they don’t want us, whatever shade.” I sighed heavily. “Why can’t I just have a happy ending, Kyazike?”
Queenie Page 21
