by Holly Seddon
My flat had two bedrooms, but the second was barely a double and had been partly co-opted by the creep of my clothes and shoes. I had one bathroom. En suites weren’t so de rigeur in those days. The kitchen was designed for someone who always ate out. I loved that flat, loved the feeling of being snuggled up to by other flats on all sides, my own little cube suspended and propped up by other people in their own little safety deposit boxes.
I had a flat-screen TV, which was quite something in 1999. Twenty-four inches of shiny, black luxury. There for me to watch whatever I wanted at weekends, to fall asleep in front of in the evenings, an almost empty glass of wine flopping to the side as my wrist dipped. I was giving up a lot of myself just to share that remote control and I hadn’t wanted to relinquish control for long.
Paul’s life in Bristol had been very different to my London life on a material level. He’d had no disposable income at all, he certainly didn’t have the trappings of a free bar or an expense account. He’d lived in a shared house that had turned a little sour with time. He’d dedicated himself to his job, trying to pour every drop into proving his abilities, for all the good it did him. But there were some silver linings to his poverty too, for me at least. Because while I’d been in London dining out, Paul had learned to cook. He was pretty accomplished at following recipes like a scientist but also had a little handwritten book of his own creations.
While he stayed, he cooked for me if I came home early enough, which was a couple of nights a week. I figured it was a good way to accept his unspoken thanks without making a fuss about it. One time, I’d planned to be home for eight o’clock and told Paul so but then John had caught my eye just as I was tugging my coat sleeves into place and zipping up my bag. Without saying anything, we’d left the office and walked briskly to a nearby hotel and checked in hurriedly. Him sliding his corporate card over the reception desk with one hand, pushing the other down the back of my work trousers and tugging at the top of my knickers.
After a few lost hotel room hours, I eventually got home to the flat a little wobbly on my heels just after 1 a.m. As I slipped off my shoes and walked into the kitchen, I saw the cold dinner on a plate for me, covered in taut cling film. It felt wrong and mean to throw it away so I tucked it in the fridge for the next day but when I woke up, Paul had already binned it and left for work. I apologised when I passed his bank of desks that morning, but he’d waved me away with a smile, saying it didn’t matter.
When Paul passed his three-month appraisal and was given a permanent contract, I offered to help him flat hunt. I bought home a copy of Loot and two bottles of red wine.
I’d poured two large glasses, spread the yellow paper out across my lounge table and asked, ‘So, where do you want to live?’
For a moment, Paul had looked at me wide-eyed, like the enormity of London had just spread out in front of him and knocked him off balance.
‘Where could I afford?’ he said. ‘Where’s nice?’
‘Well, you probably can’t afford nice,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’
I suggested further out in the East End, doing his time in the cheap seats like I had, maybe in a shared house with other young professionals. I pointed to one in Stamford Hill.
‘Jesus Christ, that room’s three times what I paid in Bristol!’
‘Really?’
‘Literally, to the penny, three times the amount of money I paid for a large room near Clifton.’
I must have looked blank.
‘Clifton’s the nice bit, Kate.’
I wondered if Paul knew that my inheritance had paid off my mortgage, whether he felt cheated that life hadn’t given him that kind of leg up. I wasn’t asking for any rent from him because that would have been profit, hand over fist, and that didn’t sit right when I already earned so much more than him. He didn’t exactly ask to stay longer, but we didn’t circle any ads that night in Loot and I silently decided to give him a few more weeks before I’d mention it again.
I hoped that he’d find a work friend like I once had in Lucy, and move in with them. Funnily enough he found a work friend exactly like Lucy: he found Lucy.
I didn’t know they’d started seeing each other at first. I came home late one night and heard the sing-song sound of a woman’s voice and saw two dirty plates next to the sink. I’d poked my head around the living-room door, planning to bid a pantomime mumsy good night, only to see Lucy hide a smirk and Paul’s ears go red.
‘Oh, hi.’
‘Hi, Kate,’ Paul said, scrambling to his feet. ‘We’ve just been working on ideas for a campaign.’
‘Which campaign?’
‘The um, the one with the—’
Lucy tugged his sleeve to sit back down. ‘Why are you being weird?’ she laughed. ‘Paul invited me round for dinner, we didn’t think you’d be here. Hope that’s not a problem?’
‘No of course not, Luce, it’s nice to see you out of work. I’ve missed hanging out with you.’
She left that dangling in the air and they patiently waited for me to leave. I went to bed stung and trying not to acknowledge it.
Lucy and Paul saw each other on and off for a while. Their sweet sunny normality in contrast to the shadows in which John and I hid. The clandestine hotel meetings, winks and late-night text messages hadn’t seemed sleazy until I’d seen them up next to the tinkle of text messages Paul would get to wish him good night. The way he’d smile when he said Lucy’s name.
Their relationship had a potential trajectory, painted out in front of them. They might move in together, get engaged, buy a flat, have a kid. John’s and my ‘relationship’ would only ever remain a series of less and less exciting bunk-ups. Grinding out a nil–nil draw in hotel rooms that shook when express trains thundered nearby. Ending the nights with tiny measures of minibar drinks in plastic beakers.
I’d been able to ignore the gnawing shallowness of my own situation when I had nothing to compare it to. When it felt like some kind of ‘express’ arrangement, slotted into my busy life like a minimart in zone one.
I stopped instigating the meetings with John, going to the hotel rooms only when he pursued me enough and convinced me. Then he told me that his wife was pregnant. That she’d been ‘off sex’ for months, long past the end of morning sickness. That he wanted me more than ever. I asked him not to tell me any more about it and then cried on the Tube ride home.
Paul started to sleep over at Lucy’s flat, the one she and I had once shared and that she now lived in with one of her cousins. After months of my flat feeling stuffed and over-occupied, it then felt quiet and abandoned. The cold kitchen seemed sadder without the smell of cooking when I walked in. And on the nights when I wasn’t out with clients or pretending to laugh at shit jokes at industry events, I ate toast and felt sorry for myself. I imagined Lucy laughing and opening wine in our old kitchen in Bluebell Road. I could imagine in minute detail the utensil pot from which Paul would fetch the spatula, what the handle of the fridge would feel like in his palm. I wasn’t sure which one of them I was more jealous of but either way it made me tetchy and unkind.
After that first night when I’d seen them together, Lucy rarely came around to my flat to see Paul. She certainly didn’t come round when I was there, anyway. I saw her at work, of course, but I had my own office in a corner of the building and she was still on the same bank of desks she’d occupied when we lived together. We didn’t cross paths deliberately.
I remembered the giddiness Lucy and I had when we got the keys to Bluebell Road. How we would get drunk and watch films like Dirty Dancing and sob that we were like sisters and even as I remember it, I’m mangling into a kind of pink glittery chick-flick montage. In reality, if I force myself to be dispassionate, we had a good few months’ honeymoon period. Then there were a few more months when things started to grate a little, but nothing serious. She was messier than me and I was more turbulent than her, but we broadly got along well for a long time. It was only really work that caused the problems.
&nbs
p; Rather than deal with any issues, I just moved out. Back then, that was my go-to approach. I’d never known another way of working. Every adult I’d ever witnessed left when things were difficult: my mother, my father, even Mick.
Even though it was me who flounced out of our flat and our friendship, I missed her. I still miss her friendship now, actually.
I’m not proud of what I said to Paul about Lucy. It had been a rough day. I’d seen John’s wife waiting in the foyer of our office after work and recognised her from previous Christmas dos. She was round in the middle and looked pink-cheeked and healthy, all golden bouncy hair and big pregnant boobs. I smiled and made small talk, and was just saying goodbye when John appeared. He looked horrified for a split second and I scuttled off like a shamed woman, his oblivious wife waving me goodbye.
I wanted company and distraction from my guilt. I went down to the office bar but the only people drinking there were juniors, no Paul and no-one I really knew. I left to make my way home. Paul had a mobile phone at that point, his first. A big boxy Nokia that he hadn’t answered when I tried to call to offer to pick up a take-away and some wine on the way back.
He eventually arrived home hours after me, by which time I was slightly drunk, tired and very emotional.
With little preamble, I made a smart-alec remark about him being under the thumb, spending all his time with his ‘boring little girlfriend’. He’d balled up his fists by his sides, but said nothing and instead faffed about unloading the dishwasher in a manner I found to be condescending and passive-aggressive. Because, frankly, I would have found anything he did right then condescending and passive-aggressive.
‘So is this it then?’ I jabbed again, as I watched his back hunch over to reach the last of the cutlery.
‘What?’ he said, wearily.
‘You’re going to move in with Lucy and get married and have boring little babies?’
Paul shoved the forks into their place and slammed the drawer shut with the loud metallic whoosh that made me jump.
‘What is your problem with Lucy, Kate? She was your best friend once.’
‘So were you,’ I bit back, regretting it.
‘What? Look, I know you and Lucy had some silly tiff about—’
‘It wasn’t silly,’ I said, getting upset and hating it. ‘She was horrible to me.’
‘That’s not the way she tells it.’ My eyes widened at that. ‘Look,’ he said, holding his hands up to placate me. ‘I know it’s weird for you, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise it would be a problem but I’m trying to be discreet.’
‘So what’s the appeal then?’ I said. ‘She’s not got much going in the personality stakes, so is it her body? Her arse? That big pair of tits?’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Paul rubbed his hand over his face and gritted his teeth. ‘Look, you’re obviously tired and emotional, why don’t we—’
‘Is it just that she took an interest, and no-one else has? You must have been desperate to sink that low,’ I snapped, instantly regretting it but too drunk to back down.
For a moment, Paul said nothing. All I could hear was my own idiot heartbeat. I opened my mouth, to take it back or make it worse, I wasn’t sure.
‘Firstly,’ Paul suddenly raged, yanking on his index finger so it looked like a bent reed, ‘she’s not the first woman at TMC to take an interest but your head’s too far up your arse to notice that.’
I felt a wave of nausea as I realised just what a disastrous cul-de-sac I’d swerved down.
‘Oh, I’m going to bed,’ I tried.
‘No, Kate. Secondly, I appreciate the assumption that I spent the last decade celibate but you’re not the only person I’ve ever had sex with, you know.’
‘Sure,’ I started. ‘I bet you’ve slept with tonnes of women, that’s why you resorted to stealing my friend.’
‘You need to go to bed, Kate.’
‘I want you gone in the morning,’ I said.
‘Okay, Kate.’ He used the same soothing tones he now reserves for Izzy.
I tried to slip out before him the next day but he’d beaten me to it. When I got to the office, he was already in a shut-door with Colm, their heads together, a big flip board covered in the scribbles of ‘brainstorming’ in front of them. At lunchtime, I noticed Lucy hovering by the creative team but leaving alone; Paul and Colm sharing a big bag of crisps while they stayed locked away for most of the afternoon.
That night, I came home to find Paul using his new favourite toy – a pasta machine. We ate pesto tagliatelle in silence and as I cleared the bowls, my back to him, I said, ‘I’m so fucking sorry.’
‘You were a real arsehole,’ he said, softly.
‘I know.’
He and Lucy broke up a few weeks later. ‘She was a bit boring,’ he shrugged as he told me over a Chinese take-away. ‘I felt like I had to be nice all the time,’ he grimaced. ‘If I ever said anything a bit spicy she’d look horrified.’
‘A bit spicy?’ I laughed.
‘Yeah,’ he smiled, affecting Mick’s voice. ‘A bit blue. A bit rough around the edges.’
‘I went to the university of life, son,’ I joined in.
‘I got a degree in hard knocks, mate,’ Paul added.
He never did move out and neither of us mentioned it again but I still feel sick remembering. I didn’t mean any of it. Not a word.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
1989
Although Paul and I had one A-level subject in common, we were in different classes at college and our timetables rarely synched up. We travelled in on the bus together, at first comparing our experiences, slightly giddily dropping the names of new friends. But it was only a small college and before long, many of those friends were the same and we were both on the fringes of the same loose social group.
I’d never been in a group before. Moving as a homogenous lump through the corridors, bunking en masse to go to the crappy nearby pub where they never asked for ID, working on projects together, failing projects together.
We called the teachers by their first names. This was mind-blowing. Not only did the teachers wear jeans and sit on desks, but we used their first names! And none of my classmates grilled me on my virginity or my sexuality or where I’d last holidayed. We just chewed the cud and mucked about and enjoyed each other’s company. It was easy, and light, and I wondered what the catch was.
Sometimes, I felt like Paul was trying to create a little silo of two. He’d whisper private jokes or reference things from Little Babcombe that made no sense in the Yeovil air. But I resisted. Not to be cruel, or difficult, but because I liked the social element of college and I didn’t want to be saved from it, or left behind by the others.
Paul and I passed our driving tests in quick succession, him taught by Mick, and me by a driving instructor with strong body odour. I credit that body odour with giving me the extra incentive to pass quickly.
My father bought me a car. A brand-new Ford Fiesta, with a tape deck and a radio and not much else. I loved it. As Paul didn’t have his own car, I gave him a lift in the mornings, missing the raucousness of the college bus a little.
For Paul, the college experience wasn’t all that different to school, but for me, it was like landing on another planet. No school uniform, no cane, a patchy timetable with hours to spare each day. And everyone, for the first time in my life, treated me as one of the gang. There was no pecking order. While there were cliques and tribes, there was something for everyone.
My group of friends was not the cool group. We were probably, if I look at us in a cold light, the nerds. Bookish and earnest, fans of indie music and alternative comedy. We used quotes in conversation endlessly, soaking up KYTV and Blackadder and spewing out the best lines the next day, yelling them over each other. We wore band T-shirts and talked about making trips to Bristol to watch gigs, which never happened, although Paul and I did dine out on our feted trip to see The Smiths some years earlier.
My closest friends were Gem
ma, Kirstin and Sammy. Gemma was a tiny little brunette who wore Morrissey-style glasses and thick eyeliner. She was a vegetarian, which I considered pretty avant-garde, and drank pints of cider like they were water. Kirstin and Sammy were non-identical twins, one blonde with blue eyes (Kirstin) and one mousy brown with green eyes (Sammy). You would never have known they were related. Kirstin wore slogan T-shirts and slashed stone-washed jeans; Sammy wore tie-dyed dresses and old hippie stuff bought for pennies at the Save the Children and Spastic Society shops.
A big difference between Sunnygrove and Yeovil College were the boys. In that there were some. The one I had my eye on, almost from day one, was called Will. He had shaggy dark-blond hair and rode a Yamaha DT 50cc motorbike, the kind anyone’s allowed to drive with just a provisional licence and a helmet. I thought he was James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. Will was in my English literature class and because he was also taking drama, I very nearly asked to take that as well, just so I could watch him more closely.
Sometimes Will would come to the pub with us, his bike helmet under his arm. He often had a book of poetry in his pocket, Ginsberg or Ferlinghetti. I would watch Paul as he eyeballed Will. Paul’s head was filled with Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti, and Ezra Pound not to mention Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin. But pockets trumped heads and Will was known as the poet. I’m sure it made Paul want to spit.
Is there anything more powerful than teenage lust? I would have crawled over dead bodies to get close to Will.
Despite the biker jacket and the poetry, he was pretty much the most cheerful person I’d ever met. Smiling, unpretentious. He asked questions about everything, unbothered about seeming stupid. He asked big basic questions. And he was tactile with everyone. If Paul had touched other guys’ arms or other guys’ girls they way Will did, he’d have been slugged in the guts.
After working together in English, deciphering a chunk of Chaucerian filth from the ‘Wife of Bath’s Tale’, Will asked me out. Just like that. I’d been thinking of hints to drop, ways to trick him into spending time with me, lies to tell to seem interesting, and he just came out with it. ‘Fancy going out sometime?’ Did I?!
