Confidence

by Rowland Manthorpe

  Rose had taken the umbrella with her, leaving Ellie to shelter in the doorway of the pub. Her idea was gathering mass in her head. Why shouldn’t she criticise Nietzsche? He certainly deserved it. She could almost grasp the first line. If she didn’t spill it now . . . ‘I’ll come in for a bit.’

  The Shackleton’s bar was a square head in the middle of a male-pattern baldness carpet. Two oldie men sat on either side like a pair of sticky-out ears: Regular Steve and Regular Pete. Michael the Slovakian Giant loomed behind the bar.

  ‘The girls!’ he said. ‘How are you today?’

  Rose scowled. ‘Michael, don’t start. I’m not in the mood.’

  ‘Hey, Michael,’ said Ellie, going straight to the low table next to the game machine – her table. Paul, the owner of the Shackleton, had once told her that the electric blue leather armchair there was his ‘signature piece’. She took out her laptop, then thought better of it. She should write this out longhand. Her bag was full of lint, scraps of paper and chewed pen tops, as if some large rodent had been nesting there. Eventually she found a biro and the back of a lecture handout.

  And, yes, as soon as she had them, here it was: the blankness. It was so inevitable she could barely summon up the energy to panic. It wasn’t worrying, it was boring, like the third day of a bad flu.

  Ellie doodled, hoping to draw the ideas out.

  ‘You won’t be wanting this, I assume.’ Rose placed a Slovakian-sized white wine in the middle of Ellie’s pad. ‘A goblet of inspiration for the Ellie,’ she did her Michael. Ellie picked up the glass to move it. It seemed ungrateful not to take a sip. A glass of wine could be just the thing right now – it would stop her overthinking, keep her in this more positive frame of mind.

  ‘That’s my girl!’ Rose perched on the arm of Ellie’s armchair. ‘You don’t have a drinking problem. You’ve got problems. Therefore you drink.’ Rose ducked suddenly behind the table. ‘Hold up. We’ve got a trespasser.’

  Ellie looked up. A dark-haired boy was ordering at the bar. He was wearing deck shoes, low-slung Jack Wills tracksuit bottoms and a green American Apparel hoodie. This weird imitation of American college style was the uniform of posh twats across uni. In the Shackleton, he looked like a CBBC presenter doing a piece on the dangers of underage drinking.

  ‘I feel violated. Didn’t he see the sign? “No twats allowed.”’ Rose sipped her Diet Coke. At work, she used it like a drip, a constant supply of low-fat fuel. ‘Shall I get Michael to turf him out?’

  ‘Oh fuck.’ Ellie paused her biro mid-swirl. ‘Rose, it’s today.’

  ‘What’s today?’

  ‘It’s the first day of semester. They’ll all be back.’

  Rose gave a shudder that turned into a shiver of cold. ‘But why isn’t he at the Mitre making racist jokes and saying, “Hahaha banter!”?’

  The boy had paid for his drink and was standing at the bar, not sure what to do with himself.

  ‘I blame you. He’s probably one of your friends.’ Rose did a plummy voice. ‘“Mummy, we were at halls together. He had the balcony next to mine.”’

  There were two universities in Rose and Ellie’s uni town: Ellie’s, founded some time in the 1800s, which required AAB at A-Level, and Rose’s, founded some time in the 1960s, which required, well, less. Idiots at Ellie’s uni called Rose’s uni ‘the Poly’. When, in a rash moment of early sociability, Ellie had gone to the Varsity football match between the two, the fans round her had chanted, ‘Your dad works for my dad,’ and the fans at the opposite end of the stadium had chanted back, ‘I’d rather be a poly than a cunt.’ It was the closest the two sides ever came to mixing. When Ellie had told her former housemates she was moving in with someone from the Poly, they’d reacted as if she’d announced she was marrying a horse.

  Ellie looked more closely at the boy. He did look familiar.

  ‘Oh ho! You do know him! What’s he called? Tarquin! Yoo-hoo. Over here!’

  ‘Don’t,’ hissed Ellie.

  ‘You’re old friends, you should catch up.’

  The boy had turned and spotted them. He lolloped over with a surprised smile.

  ‘I hate you,’ Ellie told Rose.

  ‘Was he one of your first-year mistakes?’ yelled Rose.

  ‘Hi,’ said the boy, settling down with his pint. ‘It’s Ellie, isn’t it?’ He pointed at himself. ‘Charlie. Haven’t seen you for ages!’

  The last time Ellie and Charlie had spoken, it was late one Wednesday in autumn of the second year. Nobody knew it, but everybody sensed it – this was the best, freest, most exciting time of university, the time that everybody would look back on with hazy satisfaction.

  Charlie and Alistair were rounding another suburban corner.

  ‘We’re lost, aren’t we?’ Alistair shook his head.

  ‘This must be it!’ Charlie pointed at a bass-pumping terraced shack.

  ‘Do you think we need a password or something?’

  ‘It’s a student squat party, not an Excel spreadsheet. Come on.’

  Past the untamed hedges, a handful of people were smoking weed on the steps. The door was wedged open, framing a hallway crammed with bodies. Drum’n’bass boomed from the front room.

  ‘Do you know anyone?’ Alistair muttered.

  ‘This is awesome. Let’s get a drink!’

  Ellie and Maggie pushed their way out of the dance room, sweaty and elated. They ducked down, wriggling a low path to the kitchen: a smoke-filled, fairy-lit cacophony, which spilled out to a garden, bonfire blazing. Edging through the mass, Maggie pulled a plastic bottle of White Russian from the fridge.

  ‘So much milk.’ She held her stomach. ‘So much dancing!’

  ‘But your bones are going to be like iron.’ Ellie swigged from the bottle. ‘You will basically never die.’

  Charlie was suddenly disgorged from the crowd, and landed beside them on the cardboard-covered linoleum. ‘Can I have some?’ he asked, as Alistair followed. ‘Also what is it?’

  ‘It’s all your dreams come true in a cool, calcium-packed drink.’ Ellie passed it over. ‘Didn’t expect to see you here. Do you guys know Maggie?’

  ‘Cool party,’ Alistair greeted her.

  ‘Ach, it wasn’t really me,’ Maggie smiled. ‘Owen and Giles are the brains and brawn of this operation.’

  ‘Is it true Justin made hooch?’ Ellie pulled out a plastic pouch and began rolling a cigarette.

  ‘Yeah! Jesus, it was so much fucking effort! And my God it smelt.’

  ‘Yeah, my dad makes sloe gin sometimes,’ said Alistair shyly. ‘It’s like his pet.’

  ‘So you guys decided to give Rehab a skip tonight?’

  ‘Yeah, just for a change. It’s a real relief not to be there actually.’ Charlie dug out beers for him and Alistair. ‘Do you ever find clubs are like doing circuits? You don’t really get to talk to anyone.’ He opened his can. ‘Like you two – I know you both, I know your names, I like you. But when do we ever actually get the chance to chat? Are we just going to leave after three years, never having got further than “Hello, how are you?”’

  ‘I totally agree.’ Ellie licked her cigarette paper. ‘So how are you?’

  ‘Yeah, fine. How are you?’

  ‘Fine, yeah.’ There was a pause. ‘See you later, then.’

  ‘Exactly. I’m done with this acquaintance crap. We’re going to push through this barrier right now. Tell me something about yourself.’

  ‘Can I have my cigarette at the same time?’

  They squeezed over to the doorway, passing Owen carrying bags of ice on his shoulder. ‘Maggie, wanna smash some of this?’ Alistair hung back to help, Ellie and Charlie settled on the back doorstep.

  ‘Something about myself . . .’ Ellie lit the rollie. ‘Okay, so this week is in fact my first week as a single person since I was fourteen.’

  ‘Ah-ha! A serial monogamist.’

  ‘Is instant judgement part of this game?’

  ‘No, but statements of fact are all
owed.’

  ‘Fair play.’

  ‘So. Bad break-up? If you don’t mind my asking.’

  ‘Not for me.’

  ‘You did the breaking up, then?’

  ‘So far, I’ve always done the breaking up.’

  ‘That many times?’

  ‘Mmm. I’m not massively proud of it.’

  ‘So what are you going to do with your new-found freedom?’

  ‘Well, obviously,’ she laughed, ‘get rid of it as soon as possible. There’s kind of already a . . . thing.’

  ‘Wow. You don’t waste time.’

  ‘Or I do – on like, an industrial scale. Anyway, what’s your story?’

  ‘Hmm . . . what’s my story? I’m going to pick a new topic. Here’s a little fact about me: I do Politics.’

  ‘Oooh. Do you like it?’

  ‘We-e-ell, I like The West Wing. You know, two a.m. negotiations, snappy dialogue walking down corridors. Politics at uni is more . . .’ He gestured a level somewhere near the sky. ‘Hard to reach. What do you do?’

  ‘Philosophy.’

  ‘Hmm, think-y. And?’

  ‘I actually love it,’ she shrugged. ‘Genuinely just really like it.’

  ‘That’s all right – nothing to be embarrassed about. I wish I loved my degree.’

  ‘No, I know. Anyway, I feel like my admission was loads more personal than yours. You’ve got to even this out.’

  ‘Okay. So I’ve just started – what would you call it – seeing someone.’

  ‘As in shagging but not going out?’

  ‘Seeing someone. Exactly.’

  ‘And do you like this unspecified person?’

  ‘Um, so it’s a she.’ A guy clapped a hand on each of their shoulders to spring out into the garden. ‘She’s nice. Really good-looking, if that doesn’t sound too boastful. Fun.’

  ‘Sounds like a catch.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess.’

  ‘Are you thinking of taking the commitment plunge?’

  ‘Well, that’s second year. Everyone’s doing it.’

  ‘Is that so bad?’

  ‘Not bad, but it makes everything a bit . . . Like the music’s stopped and everyone’s stuck with whoever’s next to them.’

  ‘Hopefully it’s slightly less random than that.’

  ‘Sure. I mean, you must like your new . . . prospect.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s a lovely guy.’

  ‘Well, that’s great. I mean . . . lovely.’

  They broke eye contact, smiling at the muddy edge of the lawn. A couple of girls started doing a jig round the fire.

  ‘So, if you had to give it a score out of ten—’

  ‘If I had to,’ Ellie laughed.

  ‘Yeah. No choice, life or death.’

  ‘Out of ten, how much do I like this person?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Are you playing this game?’

  ‘I’ll go next.’

  ‘No way. If we’re going to do it, we’re got to go together.’

  ‘All right, on three then.’

  ‘As in, after three, on the fourth beat?’

  ‘Yeah, exactly. One, two, three, then you say a number.’

  ‘And you won’t get confused and say four?’

  ‘Is four your number?’

  ‘No, no, I didn’t say that. I’m just checking—’

  ‘That I can count. You’re right, it’s important not to assume. Trust me, whatever number you say, I will be able to compute it.’

  ‘Okay, fine.’

  ‘So are you ready?’ They looked at each other, fists clenched as if to play paper, scissors, stone.

  ‘One.’

  A neighbour leaned over the fence to ask who was in charge.

  ‘Two.’

  They didn’t want to, they said, but they’d call the police if it came to it.

  ‘Three.’

  Charlie was feeling rather strange. Everything was too vivid: the fruit-machine lights, the twenty-four-hour news, the pint glass in his hand. He was hyper-aware of his new state of independence, as if he’d just realised for the first time that his heart was beating, and lungs breathing, and that those things were keeping him alive. He was on his own; he’d done it. It was hard to believe that he could make such an enormous change in his life, simply by saying so. It was frankly rather frightening.

  ‘What are you doing in here?’ asked Ellie. She looked quite odd. In fact, if Charlie was being completely honest, he’d say (not out loud of course) that she looked a little bit like a homeless person. He wondered what on earth had happened to her in the last year.

  ‘She means,’ said the dark-haired girl, ‘why aren’t you hanging round in the Union playing drinking games and discussing where you’re going skiing?’

  Charlie looked at her properly for the first time and almost gasped in shock. She was so thin. Seeing her was like watching a football leg-break in slow motion replay: Eduardo nicked the ball away from Martin Taylor, who caught him with his studs high up on the shin, and his leg simply snapped. Charlie tried to focus on the space around her. ‘Actually, my . . . ex-girlfriend lives on this road.’

  The black-haired girl barked a laugh. ‘Bit of ex-sex?’

  ‘Er—’

  ‘Ignore Rose,’ Ellie interjected. ‘She can’t help being a dick.’

  ‘That’s me,’ snorted Rose. ‘Predicted First in Dickishness from the University of Give A Shit.’

  ‘She’s going to be super-employable,’ Ellie added brightly.

  Rose, thought Charlie, did not look like a Rose. He was slowly starting to get used to her appearance. He could almost look at her without wincing.

  Ellie pointed out a heap of loose sheets and a laptop. ‘This is where I work. Not real work, uni work. Although Rose does actually work here.’

  Charlie, whose parents paid for his fees and accommodation and gave him £100 a week in spending money (and who didn’t know about his overdraft, let alone credit card), had never had a job at uni. He had never done paid work of any kind, except for the stuff he did for his dad as a summer pseudo-allowance. ‘Cool.’

  ‘So how are you?’ said Ellie. ‘You look a bit different.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ Charlie ran his hands through his hair. Last term (during his second major Sara crisis) he’d made an effort to remodel his appearance, moving away from his non-style-style of checked shirts and jeans, and towards something more contemporary. Typically, he’d ended up looking to Sara for advice on the finer points, prompting his housemates to ask whether he also needed help with feeding himself.

  ‘Did you two know each other before he joined the boy band then?’ said Rose.

  Charlie was finding her a bit much. Unable to think of a comeback, he went for an all-out admission. ‘I’m kind of all over the place to be honest. I just split up with my girlfriend.’

  ‘Oh.’ Ellie’s eyes widened. ‘Right now?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Shit, sorry.’

  ‘Cut to the nitty-gritty,’ demanded Rose. ‘Were you cheating on her? I can see that, Charles. You look like a ladeez man.’

  ‘God, no. I wish.’ Charlie felt a wave of guilt about Anita Wilkins, and had to take a moment to remind himself that no crime had been committed.

  ‘What was it then?’

  Charlie puffed out his breath. ‘I’m not sure I can even explain.’

  ‘Welcome to the blue leather suite of truth.’ Ellie spread her arms mystically. ‘Look around you. Nothing is too depressing for the Shackle.’

  ‘Look who you’re with.’ Rose flourished her hands towards the bar. The massive bartender waved. ‘Nothing is too disgusting for us.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Charlie shifted in his seat. Usually he never talked about Sara with anyone (apart from Ben, of course, who didn’t count). It was strange to think that he didn’t have to live by that rule any more. He could say whatever he liked. Charlie didn’t even have to claim he was in love with Sara, or that he ever had been. He could simply stop p
retending – it was both refreshing and disorientating. ‘This might sound pretty awful, but I’m starting to wonder if I was ever really into her at all. Or if I just convinced myself I was.’ Ellie and Rose nodded sagely; he knew they’d understand. ‘That probably makes me a shit bloke.’

  ‘Probably,’ Rose agreed.

  Charlie barely noticed; it was such a relief to speak the truth. ‘It’s like on day one, I knew deep down it was never really going to work. And instead of being honest, I got into a relationship with her, and stayed in it for most of uni. I’m not even sure why.’

  Ellie sipped her wine. ‘If it’s any comfort, she probably did the same thing.’

  ‘Strangely, that’s no comfort whatsoever.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Ellie smiled. ‘Anyway it sounds like the romance of the century. You should really make a film.’

  Charlie managed a laugh. The joke helped: he had about fifteen years of experience in enforced banter, regardless of emotional capacity for it. ‘Hang on, though.’ A memory came to him just in time. ‘I think we all remember the romance of the century. Broomfield Halls, Block B, two years ago? Lucas hasn’t forgotten. That night with you changed him for ever.’

  Ellie screwed up her nose. ‘I doubt that.’

  ‘That’s not how he tells it. He’s actually been trying to make a film about it, but he hasn’t found the right lead yet.’ It was rather satisfying to see Ellie’s face reddening.

  ‘Do you know Ellie’s boyfriend Justin?’ said Rose archly. ‘Or is he too “little people” for you?’

  Charlie bowed his head, letting Rose’s jibe pass over him. He didn’t know Justin, but at the same time he was pretty sure he could sketch him out. Justin would be exactly like the boyfriend-from-home that Ellie turned up with at freshers’ week: some inexplicably unattractive nonentity, who wasn’t funny, or good at sport, or even particularly nice. Lucas was incensed, Charlie remembered. It was the sheer inequality of it that appalled him – it made a mockery of the whole system. After he’d slept with Ellie, Lucas had referred to it as ‘Equality Training’. (‘Shame about the Trainer,’ he’d said. ‘He really ruined that session. It was so disappointing, I made an official complaint.’) ‘I don’t actually,’ said Charlie, before asking Ellie flippantly, ‘Are you into him?’