In Real Life

by Chris Killen

  She was unable to look him directly in the eye as she placed a warm dollar coin in his palm then took the stub of paper from his other hand. She headed quickly towards the PCs, set out in two long rows at the back of the café, sat down and logged on, feeling a little queasy at how tacky and stiff and dirt-encrusted the keyboard was as she typed in the passcode. The tiredness was almost like mania now. It howled through her like wind in a tunnel.

  What are you doing?

  Why are you checking your emails?

  You need to find another hostel to sleep in. Or a hotel. A cool, dark hotel room. A bed with clean white sheets. Go on. You could check in for one night, just to get some sleep. And then stick to hostels after that. Emily isn’t here for another week yet. You could check into hotels, until just before she arrives, and no one would ever know about it.

  She opened Internet Explorer and typed ‘www.hotmail.com’ into the address bar. Her cutesy, Paul-related password made her cringe whenever she entered it, but she was too tired right now to change it.

  As she waited for her inbox to load, she listened to whatever music was playing on the radio in the café; a song she didn’t recognise, with soft, dreamy female vocals, and there was a warm, sweet smell of biscuits drifting in the air, too.

  Canada.

  You are in Canada now.

  Everything is going to be okay from now on, possibly, in Canada.

  Three new emails, her inbox interrupted.

  The first, the newest, was from Paul.

  ‘Things we still really need to talk about’ read the subject line.

  Really? Lauren thought. Because as far as she was concerned, there was nothing left to discuss. It was over. It’d been over for weeks. Boo hoo. She opened the email, but couldn’t quite bring herself to read through it properly.

  She just let her eyes scan over it, immediately able to pick up the general tone: hurt, bitter, possibly drunk. There was tons of it, too. Angry paragraphs spilling down the page. She scrolled through them, feeling so tired, so completely drained, that she might burst into tears.

  She clicked delete.

  The next email was from her mum.

  ‘Just a quick note,’ it said, ‘to wish you a safe flight! And don’t forget, if you need anything I’m only a phone call away! Be safe now and call me once you’re all settled! Lots of love, Mum xxx’

  She felt too tired to reply to that one either.

  The final email of the three was completely unexpected.

  It was from Ian, one of Paul’s ex-flatmates from university.

  Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 19:44:32 +0000

  From: fiveleavesleft@hotmail.com

  To: lauren_cross83@hotmail.com

  Subject: Hello

  Dear Lauren,

  Ian here (Paul’s ex-flatmate). this is just a very quick email to say hi and i hope you are okay and have a brilliant time in Canada. (have you moved there permanently??)

  i hope this isn’t too weird, emailing you out of the blue like this. (i found your address from a group email thing Paul sent last year.) i guess i also wanted to say that i hope you’ll consider me your friend, too, as i always felt we got along well.

  right, anyway, hope you’re having a good day, doing whatever it is people do in Canada. here in Nottingham i’m about to eat a plate of beans on toast and then go to a pub quiz. (exciting.)

  all the best,

  your friend,

  Ian

  What a sweetheart, Lauren thought once she’d finished reading it.

  She felt weirdly flattered, too.

  And as she thought about Ian, the howl died down a little inside her.

  They’d only ever really spoken a handful of times – mostly late at night in the kitchen of the house, at the pub a few times, and once for about an hour at a party – but yeah, she’d always felt like they’d got on well, too, and that whenever they’d talked, they’d really talked, whatever that meant.

  She tried to remember the last time she saw him. It was just before the break-up. They’d all met in that new fake goth pub that had just opened in the city centre and he’d wanted to tell her and Paul some good news; that he was having a demo recorded with his band, and someone from a record label (was it Sony?) was even paying for it. And as he’d told them, shyly fiddling with his sleeve, pulling it down over his knuckles so just the ends of his fingertips poked out, and speaking in his soft, sweet voice, she could feel Paul bristle and stiffen in his stupid, throne-like chair beside her. She could actually feel the jealousy coiling within him; not jealousy about the demo per se (Paul couldn’t play a musical instrument) but jealousy simply that something was going right for someone else.

  The howling started up once more inside her.

  A hotel room, just for one night!

  Before logging out, though, she clicked reply.

  Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 09:22:09 +0000

  From: lauren_cross83@hotmail.com

  To: fiveleavesleft@hotmail.com

  Subject: Re: Hello

  Ian,

  Thanks so much for your sweet email, it really means a lot. I felt we got on too, the few times we talked, and I’m glad that you consider me a friend. I know things didn’t end that amicably between P and I, and I don’t know exactly what or how much he’s told you, but anyway, thank you very much.

  No, it’s not permanent! I’m here for a year on a working visa. A friend of mine (Did you ever meet Emily? Tall girl? Always wears things with mirrors on them?) was going already and said come along, and slightly unimaginatively I thought, fuck it, why not?

  I’ve only been here for a day or so (I’m still recovering from the jetlag; it feels a bit like someone’s injected me with soup) and this is the first time I’ve stumbled into an internet cafe so apologies if I veer into incoherence at any point, but yes, it’s been really, really ace so far! Thank you for asking! Everything is so much cleaner and nicer and brighter and happier here, which is exactly what I was hoping for. A new start and all that. And I’ve even made a few friends, too – some impossibly blond Norwegian boys that I tagged along with at the airport.

  Anyway, enough about me. HOW ARE YOU??? Please tell me that you’re dating Avril Lavigne and riding around everywhere in stretch limos by now? (Also, how did the pub quiz go?)

  Again, I can’t say enough how nice it was to hear from you and how much your email meant to me. It’s really cheered me up! So, um, thanks. And please stay in touch, you.

  Also your friend,

  L xx

  Lauren clicked send, logged out, then wandered groggily towards the man at the counter, with his big, wet, stubbly smile.

  As she stumbled out of the café into the hot white light of Monday morning, people bustling past her on the pavement, clutching cups of coffee, she thought: Maybe I should’ve gone out with Ian instead.

  IAN

  2014

  Is three floors enough of a drop to kill you, I wonder as I dangle myself out a bit further over the banister. I look down into the shadowy darkness at the centre of the stairwell. At ground level are three locked bikes and an abandoned, shelfless bookcase, which is what I would land on, I guess, if I just let myself fall over the edge.

  I relax my grip and the thick wooden banister digs into my stomach.

  And then a new feeling churns in there, too; a sudden, worrying, puke-or-shit-myself feeling, and I pull myself away from the edge and pick up my shopping bags and hurry back into the flat.

  * * *

  After I’ve puked up most of the Babybels, I go and lie down very still on top of the covers and plead with my stomach not to do it again.

  I lift Ways to Happiness to my face.

  I look at the back cover, at Dr Jennifer McVirtue’s photo. She’s a blonde-haired American lady with kindly-looking wrinkles around her eyes and a fluffy white cat on her lap.

  I turn to page one, Introduction.

  You’ve probably picked up this book because something in your life is not quite the way you would like it t
o be.

  In the living room, I hear the TV click off and then the sound of Carol and Martin walking slowly down the hall towards the bedroom next to mine.

  Maybe you don’t even know what’s wrong, only that SOMETHING BIG needs to change.

  ‘We’ll have to be quiet,’ Carol whispers.

  ‘Don’t worry, babe,’ Martin says at full volume.

  Well, do not fear, for in this book I will equip you with all the tools you will ever need to find – and maintain – the pathways that will lead you towards a tranquil garden of happiness within your own life.

  Carol’s bedroom door opens then closes.

  I flick forward through the book, trying not to listen to Carol asking Martin to unzip her dress or to Martin grunting his reply, and I try not to think about my queasy, churning stomach. I scan through the book, but I can’t seem to locate the exact sentence or paragraph in Ways to Happiness where Jennifer McVirtue (PhD) explains in clear, concrete terms exactly what you have to do to feel better.

  The words begin to swim around the page, so I close the book and drop it on the floor.

  I’m never going to meet someone.

  I’m never going to have sex again.

  I’m never going to stop feeling sick.

  When did I even last have sex?

  I count backwards.

  Was it two years ago? Three?

  Nope.

  It was four years ago, with an angry girl I met at a house party in Forest Fields.

  And when it was over, I apologised and she got up almost immediately and just before she pulled her jeans on I saw the condom stuck to her bum cheek and didn’t even say anything.

  Just then, as if on cue, I hear Carol and Martin begin to shag.

  This is a new low.

  I am having the worst time out of anyone in the world, ever.

  PAUL

  2014

  On the bench outside the brick and glass structure of the New Writing Centre, Paul smokes one of his remaining Marlboro Lights, assuring himself that once the packet’s finished he’ll go straight back to nicotine gum. Sarah doesn’t ever need to know. He’ll wash his hands and clean his teeth and have a shower before she gets home this evening.

  Each time Paul allows his mind to wander in the direction of Alison Whistler, he feels a small twinge in his stomach.

  What will happen next?

  Will she mention their chat?

  He drags on his cigarette. Tongues the lump. Drags on his cigarette. Tongues the lump.

  At about five to one, people from class start drifting past him into the building. ‘Hi,’ he says as each one passes. No Alison, though. He drops the cigarette onto the tarmac, grinds it out with his shoe, looks at the time on his phone. Three minutes to go. He takes another cigarette from the pack and lights it.

  At one minute past, Paul heads up the stairs and into the seminar room. They’re all there, waiting, everyone except her.

  He walks around to his table at the front, drapes his blazer on the back of his chair, and looks across at the one empty seat where Alison Whistler should be sitting. What if she’s reported him? What if she was trying to trap him into behaving inappropriately? What if she was chatting to him in front of a whole crowd of students, all piled into her bedroom, gathered round the laptop screen, laughing and telling her what to say? What if she’s writing an article about pervy lecturers for the student paper?

  What if everyone in class knows?

  ‘Okay, everyone,’ Paul says, feeling the words catch in his throat. ‘I thought we’d do things a little differently today and just go straight into Craig’s story. How does that sound? And then if we have time at the end, maybe do a few writing exercises. Alright?’

  The class look up blankly from their horseshoe of desks.

  He glances at dowdy, moody Rachel. She knows. Of course she knows. They’re friends, they probably tell each other everything.

  Just then, the door opens and Alison Whistler strolls into the room.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she says. ‘I spilled my coffee.’

  Paul can’t speak.

  He feels himself blushing, and his mouth losing all its moisture.

  ‘Right, okay . . .’ he mumbles.

  Alison takes her seat at the far side of the room like nothing is out of the ordinary. She pulls out her plastic document wallet, her notebook, her biros, her phone.

  ‘Okay,’ Paul says again, composing himself as much as he’s able. ‘Craig’s story . . . “Guardian of the Tombs”. Did we all print it out and read it through, yeah?’

  No one says anything.

  Somehow Paul gets through the two-hour workshop. He involves them all in a discussion about Craig’s story. He improvises some writing exercises afterwards. And he glances at Alison only occasionally, just once or twice, and she looks back blankly, as if nothing whatsoever has gone on between them. Maybe it hasn’t. Maybe Paul’s reading way too much into this. Maybe she chats online with all her lecturers. Maybe that’s just what people do nowadays.

  After class, he feels a tangible wave of relief when she gets up and leaves the room, chatting and laughing with Rachel.

  Paul sits with Craig in his office and they go over his story, Paul pointing out how more conflict and tension could be introduced to improve it.

  ‘It starts off strongly,’ Paul says, ‘but then you never really fulfil that early promise. The guardian figure. He’s an interesting character, but couldn’t he do something a bit more unexpected? It just all gets a little . . . predictable.’

  Craig nods.

  Paul can feel him soaking up every word he’s saying, taking his advice on board like it’s fact. And as Paul speaks he thinks: What the fuck do I know? What right do I have to tell anyone how to write anything?

  After the short tutorial, he and Craig walk down the stairwell together and out through the exit, and there, sitting on the bench in a pair of aggressively tight black leggings, is Alison Whistler.

  ‘Can I have a quick word?’ she says, standing, taking a drag on her liquorice paper roll-up.

  Paul feels himself blush again.

  ‘See you then,’ Craig murmurs shyly. ‘Cheers.’

  As he walks away, Paul wonders whether Craig could possibly have picked up anything weird between him and Alison. He waits for Alison to speak, and realises that she, too, is waiting for Craig to walk out of earshot. Once he turns the corner at the end of the path, she sits back down on the bench. She looks at Paul, her eyes wide and black, her shiny dyed hair blowing around in the wind, visible goose bumps on her thin, pale arms. She’s like a cartoon, a sexy cartoon. After a pause, he sits down too, his leg only a few inches from hers.

  ‘You wanted a word?’ he says, noticing an embarrassing tightness to his voice which he hopes she doesn’t pick up on.

  ‘Hi,’ she says.

  ‘Hi,’ he says.

  part two

  first world problems

  LAUREN

  2014

  So? How did it go? Alyssa texted. It wasn’t even nine in the morning. It was raining, again, and the bus was cramped and vinegary, and when the man in the seat to my left opened his copy of Metro, his suit-jacketed elbow jabbed in my ribs like he was trying to tell me something.

  I cancelled, I began to text, then deleted it.

  Fine, I wrote instead and pressed send.

  Really??? Alyssa texted back, almost instantly.

  No. I cancelled at the last minute, I replied.

  I felt the man’s elbow jabbing at me again, forcing me to scooch even further towards the window. I shifted around and glowered at him but he didn’t notice. There were two articles on the page he was looking at: one about gay rights activists in Russia, the other about a boy with sculpted facial hair’s ‘X Factor dream’ being over. My phone buzzed on my lap again.

  WTF, Alyssa’s reply said. He seemed nice!

  ‘He’ was a guy called Carl, who worked in Alyssa’s husband’s office. She’d shown me his Guardian Soul
mates profile on her phone one night last week. He was thirty-four and he liked long walks and political theory and the films of Pedro Almodovar. His hair was so dark we both suspected it might have been photoshopped.

  I’d only agreed to swap phone numbers to get Alyssa off my back about internet dating for a while. It seemed to be all she talked about recently: ‘It’s not weird any more,’ and, ‘I know someone that actually found someone through it,’ and ‘What if I managed your account for you and just let you know if anyone nice or hot messages?’

  Why did we have to be such fucking girls all the time, I thought. Why did we always have to be defined by whether we did or didn’t have a boyfriend or a fiancé or – in Alyssa’s case – a husband of six years who sat around playing Xbox whenever he wasn’t working?

  I didn’t want to get annoyed or fall out with her over this, but at the same time, whenever the subject came up, it felt like she was prodding at a wasp’s nest deep inside me.

  Please leave me alone, I typed, then slipped my phone into the pocket of my jeans, determined to ignore it from now on. I watched the raindrops slide down the outside of the window.

  The man next to me turned the page.

  Girl, 13, dies of ruptured stomach from legal high, the paper said, as the bus turned the corner and the sea swung into view. There were tiny coloured specks of fishing boats bobbing on the horizon, and every time I saw the Channel it made me think about how I still wasn’t used to living here yet and didn’t think I ever would be, which in turn made me wonder what you were doing, right at this exact moment, if you were also on a bus to work somewhere.

  The man turned the page.

  162 die in factory blaze in Bangladesh.

  He turned the page again.

  Dog of the Day! Milo (7), Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.

  I could see the stack of bin bags from halfway down Bingley Road. There were even more than usual; piled up to shoulder height, glistening with raindrops, they filled almost the whole doorway, completely obscuring the ‘Please do not leave donations on the step!’ sign I’d made and tacked up on Saturday night. I had to drag the bags into the street to get the shutters open, and one of them caught on a shard of broken pint glass, spilling its contents into the road: Dora the Explorer pyjamas, stained soft toys, and a few cardboard baby books so damp they’d almost turned to mush.