by Laura Kemp
Finding her phone, she saw it was a text from Vee! She must have a sixth sense, Kate thought, feeling so excited to be able to tell her of her liberation.
Hi, how’s it going? Need to chat to you. In person. When are you free?
Strange, there was no sign-off and Vee was a serial text kisser. She had probably been disturbed by a customer in the deli.
But Kate was too happy to analyze it. She replied straight away, revealing a plan she’d wanted to speak to her about. What was the harm in doing it in a text?
Hi! Such timing, have just told mother we’re cancelling the wedding to do it our way! Anyway, I’ve found a flat that’s right up your street, you said you were craving you own place, it’s cheap but cheerful, no pressure! Do you want to meet there tomorrow in your lunch hour? Will text address in the morning if you fancy it. X
Then she switched it off because when Jack came back, they could start their new beginning undisturbed.
Chapter Twenty-Four
M
Mikey’s flat, Cardiff City Centre
All he had to do was click on ‘submit resumé’.
But Murphy’s arms remained crossed as he stared at the cursor poised on his screen.
He was ninety-nine per cent sure about it. Everything pointed towards it. Even the rain which was battering his sash windows in the lounge. The hammering sound spurred him on: there’d be no wet Wednesdays in Santa Clara Valley, California. Hot, dry and three hundred and thirty sunny days a year would suit him fine.
The old him would’ve come out in an itchy red rash just thinking about all that Californian UV. But Murphy wasn’t that person anymore. He’d let down his guard, just as Orla had told him to do, to let in the rays of love. He’d tried, but it hadn’t worked. Vee had gone. It’d be sunglasses all the way from now on, son.
Coffee, that’s what he needed, he thought, getting up from his stainless-steel table, imagining himself in his element, ordering soya skinny caps in American delis and cruising to work in some fuck-off truck. Grids. The roads were like grids there, everything was laid out tidy. If he worked hard enough, he’d forget he’d ever had a messy life here.
Rubbing his eyes, they were sore from straining over his Mac for hours, compiling his CV, making sure his application ticked every box and more. One more read-through, he just needed to do that, then he would start chucking it all over the Silicon shop. This job though was the one he wanted. Human factors software developer at Apple’s HQ in Cupercino. Designing software that ‘intuitively meets the needs of the user in health, fitness and biometrics’. Being part of the leap into ‘healthcare wearables’. It could be technology that detects heart problems or makes diagnoses – an area unknown but one which would help people.
Ironically, his interest had been sparked by Dad’s stroke and inspired by Vee.
His hesitation now though wasn’t to do with Dad. He’d done his bit for him, nursed him back to a semi-decent standard of living, trying to stay on the wagon. Got him to a place where he could go back to his flat, where he was coping thanks to Melanie. Nor was it to do with Vee. She’d made it clear she wasn’t going to look back. He’d rung her phone off the line, sent messages and emails but she’d never picked up. She’d disappeared from Facebook. He’d even gone up to the deli but the boss said she’d gone out on a delivery, even though the van was parked outside.
She loved him, he knew it, but he couldn’t make her trust him.
Wrecked, he was. He’d been on his knees since she left that morning. After two weeks together, when he’d glimpsed how it could be, how love had changed his everything, it had all come crashing down. He’d been stupid enough to open up. If only he hadn’t mentioned the past. And what if he had received the letter? They could’ve avoided all of this and they might be blissfully happy. But that was a pipe dream. Kate had seen to that. And he had toyed with the idea of finding her and asking why. But he knew deep down it was because Kate was damaged, just like him. Now he was just bones, filleted like a fish. When before he'd been so alive, head over heels twenty thousand leagues under the sea in love with Vee. He still was in love with her. The only way he could deal with it would be to swim off and come up for air thousands of miles away. Put the Atlantic and the Pacific between them.
No, the reason he was double-triple-checking himself was Orla. When he went, which would happen because he was skilled up and determined enough, he’d be losing the one person who’d never let him down.
He knew she’d be gutted, but he also knew she’d say to go for it. Because she was okay, she’d always been okay. The sadness would come from his side: he’d made it his duty to protect her, when in fact she didn’t need it – he’d invented it for his own protection, to keep him human. He’d always feared he’d go over the edge without her.
Yet what he’d learned from this whole mess with Vee was that he had to grow up. If he couldn’t do it in his relationships then he’d do it at work.
That was why it was so important he got a job in the emerging technological healthcare area. Ditch the nerf gun brigade, who’d bring their toys in on Fun Fridays. Do serious work with the very best people in his field. The pride of making the modernistic Apple Campus his place of work. In Cupertino, one of the wealthiest, healthiest, safest cities in the States. Driven to achieve in a team, lunch in the iconic Caffe Mac on site, grabbing a free apple on his way back to his department, going to one of the beer bashes, where co-workers were given beer and snacks on the house. In his spare time, he’d get into the outdoors – bike and hike in Santa Cruz mountains – shop at the mall, find himself a neighbourhood bar. Early nights and early mornings. Go clean.
He had to reinvent himself as an adult.
A gob of coffee, then he was back at the table.
The drumming of the rain and his fingers moving to the keypad. If he couldn’t have Vee, this was what he had to do.
Submit resumé, click.
*
Brighton, February, 2009
‘Isn’t this incredible?’ Jez says, spreading his arms wide through a fug of patchouli smoke.
No, this is the least incredible thing ever, Vee thinks or at least tries to as a heavy techno bassline assaults her brain.
But Jez hasn’t seen her curdled grimace because he’s in an elaborate man-hug with a bald bloke in a top hat, velvet blazer and, yes, obviously, pierced nipples.
‘Brother, sister, we’re so glad you’re here. I’m Top Hat,’ he semi-shouts as two stoned girls come forward and Namaste Vee with prayer hands. The rest of the room is comatose in jumpers on manky beanbags, oblivious to the sunny winter Brighton morning outside, which is hidden by patchwork blankets across the windows. Anarchic graffiti covers the walls and the floor, well, the bits which she can see that aren’t covered in ashtrays and plastic bottles of cider.
‘Welcome to our commune!’ Top Hat says, swirling around laughing, dancing off with his high priestesses of dilated pupils, forgetting they’ve turned up.
‘Let’s find our space, yeah?’ It’s so cold in here she can see Jez’s breath. He gives her a lovely reassuring smile then picks up his rucksack, grabs her hand and leads her out into a hallway. Thank God he’s here with her because she’s finding it hard to see the bright side of this.
Down the corridor she can see a kitchen where an old stand-alone cooker heaves beneath a pile of saucepans. They go up the first stairs, treading over someone skinning up, and try some doors, finding more people as they go: some chanting, others shagging. Vee’s fingers recoil into the sleeves of her cotton hooded top, bought from a blisteringly hot market last week in Sihanoukville. She’d thought it would be fine for the British weather but when you’re in the midst of Cambodia’s sweaty heat you can’t truly imagine how five degrees Celsius feels. Like spikes of ice up your nose. But her body isn’t just withdrawing from the temperature – it’s from the filth, which covers this decaying house like dust. She gets a sight of a grubby avocado-coloured bathroom and again she’s thrown by the difference in w
hat she’d expected – a decent hot shower and a hairdryer – and the reality. If she bathed in there, she’d come out dirtier than she went in.
Shuddering, she goes up the next flight behind Jez and they walk into a large attic which is halved by a purple batik throw hanging from the ceiling. Jez pulls it aside then nods.
‘Here, this is us!’
Vee peers round and sees a sunken mattress on the floor. Mercifully, the rest of their half is empty – no surfaces for more grime.
Jez falls onto the bed and puts his hands behind his head. ‘Home!’
Vee lets her long blonde hair fall around her face to hide her disgust. Home? Hardly! This isn’t how it was meant to be. They’ve had the best time: inseparable since they met on the white sand beach of Sokha, him juggling fire, her collecting glasses for a bar. Except she didn’t realize one of his tricks was to eat flames and she thought he was alight and chucked water on him. ‘Oh, fuck me, I’m so sorry,’ she’d said, brushing his thighs down with her palms. He thought she was hilarious and says he fell for her then and there because she was so unlike anyone he’d met before. They’ve shared a hammock every night for the last year in Cambodia. And it’s the real thing – they’ve known other couples who’ve split up when they’ve got back from travelling. They can’t deal with real life. But that isn’t going to happen to them. Practically married – eek! she wouldn't say no to the idea – they’ve helped to run a guesthouse for the last six months, delaying coming home as there was nothing to rush back for, dealing with difficult backpackers, running housekeeping and the cafe. They could’ve fallen out, it was really stressful when some of his mates from Laos turned up and wrecked the place, but they’ve never argued. He’s just so intuitive and committed. This won’t be forever, living here, he’ll have a plan, she knows he will.
‘Hey, what’s up, rarebit?’
‘Shitholes abroad, I can deal with. We only slept in them. Spent the rest of our time working or on the beach. But this…’
Jez’s face falls into concern. ‘We agreed we wanted to try a commune, yeah?’
‘A commune, yes. Not a squat. I was thinking somewhere more…’
‘Comfortable?’ Jez raises his eyebrows as if she’s being a bit middle class.
She knows he’s only teasing but the accusation unsettles her because she’s not like that anymore: she’s seen the world. Poverty, first hand, where public services are only for the rich. She swore she’d never take central heating, a full fridge and her dressing gown for granted ever again. Not that she’s even close to that yet. Unfortunately. This was not what she had planned when he’d sold her the idea of moving back home, starting a life together.
‘No, not that,’ she implores. ‘More educational, you know, like we said, ideas and people on rotas, working together, cooking, growing veg.’
‘How do you know that isn’t happening here? You’re judging them.’
He’s right. Although Top Hat doesn’t look like he’s on top of anything apart from a drug-induced high.
‘Communes are supposed to be financially solvent co-operatives, places of equality, non-hierarchical. There was that one in Wales I told you about, which is self-sufficient. Low impact, wood-fired kitchens, home schooling—’
‘Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present.’ Jez does meditation fingers then tucks a loose brown dread back into his ponytail.
‘Buddha wouldn’t say that if he had to carry around his own loo roll in case someone nicked his,’ she says, making him laugh. But she’s serious. A little voice asks her if she can make this work…but no, she puts her foot down, because she is committed to Jez. And where else would she go seeing as Kat and Mikey have moved on.
‘Hey, this is the beginning, who knows what we can achieve here? Brighton, it’s where we should be. For my art, for your…’ He wafts his hands around to find the word. ‘…journey.’
‘Teaching, Jez. That’s what I’m going to do.’ Saying it out loud gives her some relief. Because she loved volunteering at the local school in Sihanoukville where the disadvantaged kids lapped up the chance to learn. In her bag, carefully rolled up inside a tube there are drawings and paintings they made her when she left. She’ll stick them up on the wall in here to remind her of what she needs to do - her way to get out of this rank pit. ‘I can’t wait to enrol,’ she says, forgetting her surroundings. ‘I’ll unpack and then we can go and look for jobs and I’ll see what the score is teacher training-wise.’
‘Chill, rarebit, chill. We have all the time in the world.’ He gives her his sexy eyes and she feels herself softening. But she’s not doing it on that mattress. Her sleeping bag is easy to get at, so she pulls it out of its case, unzips it and lays it down where she joins Jez.
‘I really want to be a teacher, you know,’ she says into his chest.
‘I know, rarebit… one day.’ He kisses her neck and his lips give her the warmth she’s been missing since they landed at Gatwick this morning. The warmth she had always craved after Mikey left her so cold. When Kat had frozen her out. Jez had fixed her when she was broken. ‘There’s no rush. Let’s just settle in here, we can live off my trust fund for a bit. I need you anyway as my muse…’
Ooh, she thinks, liking the sound of that, inspiring his art, posing nude but in a tasteful way. A whole body of work devoted to her. His mouth on her belly button, playing with her ring, convinces her that she’s been working so hard that she can afford to take a bit of time off.
‘Let’s enjoy the now,’ he breathes on her skin.
‘Mmm,’ she murmurs, trusting him that they have all the time in the world.
Chapter Twenty-Five
V
Cathays, Cardiff
Vee hesitated before she buzzed the intercom of the old grey stone building in the student part of Cardiff.
The street in Cathays made her itch: it was grubby, littered by cartons from the takeaway next door and old newspaper which performed death throes in the wind.
Kate was already here, her car was squeezed into a residents’ only space – it was down to Vee now.
She could walk away from all of this, just as she’d done with Murphy.
Still in ruins from finding out he had slept with Kat when she’d supposed to have handed over her letter, Vee wasn’t a fountain of tears and woe: it was worse than that. Deep, in her bones, like rocks, dragging her down. She had lost part of herself to Murphy, again, not just her heart but her soul.
To think they had reached a beautiful place: this was the torment of her situation.
Ignorance had been bliss. Would she still be with him if she’d never found out? Yes, undoubtedly. Forever she would’ve revelled in the magic that after all that time, they’d come back together and fallen in love. How it had been meant to be. La la, bloody la.
Who was she kidding? Finding out later down the line would've been worse. Thinking back now, both Kate and Murphy were guarded whenever she brought up the other's name. How did she not pick up on it? As for forgiving and forgetting, could she accept people made mistakes, as Murphy had said? Process the hurt and put it behind them? Maybe that was what love was: to be grown up, to say ‘okay, what’s done is done, let’s do now’.
But what they had, what they had had, was soiled. The trust had gone.
She had no choice but to disentangle herself from both of them. However painful it was proving to be.
Pierre had offered her time off – he was on a high from his friendship with Bea, who would come in every day ‘just to see if Polish cheese here’. Vee suspected Pierre was withholding it to make sure he saw her. But no, she had done her damsel in distress thing with Jez: she would get through this, she wouldn’t surrender to it. Because she had decided she would never put a man or a friend first again. That was the lesson she had to learn, to fulfil herself. Throw herself into this awakening, which had come to her in grief.
Her saviour would be teaching, that was what she had wanted to do all
along. And so she had started researching grants and post-grad courses, working out if she could afford to live away in a house share and study in a new city, away from here where there were too many memories of betrayals. It would be tight but an evening job and Pot Noodles might do it. The course to qualify was only a year – she could cope with that, and afterwards, she could apply like mad for jobs. It was a sacrifice worth paying – and she longed to leave, to run.
Of course, Kate knew none of this – Vee had agreed to come to this viewing as a means to an end: of getting them both together without the potential for an audience, somewhere empty where they could unload.
Weighing it up on the doorstep, she decided to face Kate – to get the answers which had been in her head. To find out if all of this effort she was putting into their friendship was out of guilt, cunning, or both. Because she couldn’t believe Kate was all bad. She never had. And she was intrigued to see what Kate thought would appeal to her with this flat, because she had described it as ‘perfectly you’.
She pressed the button of flat 2a, her heart pounding. Waiting to be buzzed in, she did concede that this grand building with arched windows and an unusually large communal garden was appealing. When the door clicked, she went into a cool parquet hallway where a spiral staircase, which looked original, took her up onto the second floor.
The door was wide open and she went in, taken by the light which made it seem larger. She was immediately disarmed: it did feel very her. Quirky yet comfy, and, she realized, full of potential. But she had to stop those thoughts because she wasn’t here as a client.
‘Like it?’ Kate said, with her eyebrows raised in hope, as she appeared from the kitchen. ‘It’s an old school. Converted into flats. You used to want to be a teacher, didn’t you?’
Vee’s stomach dive-bombed at her insight.
‘It’s small. Bijou, we call it. Bedroom, through there, bathroom, kitchen and this is the lounge. Great connections, cheap and the city centre’s just a walk away.’
