The Night That Changed Everything

by Laura Tait

‘Your Facebook statuses. I’ve been meaning to mention it.’

  ‘I haven’t been on it since last week – I don’t want to break the rules.’

  ‘What was it now?’ He rests a finger on the corner of his lips while he thinks. ‘Something like: It’s Thursday night and I’m bored.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Because what you write isn’t the same as what people read. You write, It’s Thursday night and I’m bored but what your friends read is: I’m so lonely without Rebecca, I wish she’d take me back.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  He ignores me and pinches a piece of chalk. ‘OK, so the following are prohibited: Facebook stalking, double texting, Damien Fucking Rice,’ he wraps an invisible noose around his neck, ‘and cry-for-help statuses.’

  ‘And you’re allowed to give me dead arms?’

  ‘But only when you look like a blobfish.’

  ‘You’re going to miss me when I’m gone, I reckon.’

  He smiles. ‘I think you might be right.’

  It’s weird to say it, because going back to the flat is what I want more than anything in the world, but I’d be sad not living with Jamie any more. It can put a strain on a relationship, can’t it? Living together. You’re in each other’s hair, you discover all the other person’s annoying habits. But if anything it’s made us even stronger.

  Probably best to keep this to myself.

  ‘How’s work?’ he says.

  I open the oven to baste the chicken, then hoick myself on to the worktop and answer his question with a fed-up shrug.

  ‘Maybe I should just shut up and get on with it?’ I say. ‘I mean, most people don’t like their jobs, do they? And it’s not like I ever have to take my work home. Unless you count the time Russ hid Tom’s mouse mat in my bag.’

  ‘You should definitely shut up,’ he says, slumping into the couch. ‘But just get on with it? No way. Look at all the shit I went through to do something I love. My parents still aren’t over the fact their only son runs a bar.’

  ‘But what’s wrong with running a bar?’

  ‘It’s not something they can show off about at . . .’ He strangulates his vowels. ‘. . . Cheshire Law Society get-togethers.’ His chest jerks for a single, silent laugh. ‘The irony being, it was their careers that persuaded me I wanted the opposite.’

  Jamie never really talks about his parents, and I feel honoured he’s opening up now to help me sort my life out.

  ‘For them it’s all about how much you earn, your status. They both hated being lawyers – hated it. And yet they worked long hours, didn’t take holidays.’ He stands up and takes in the view of the Thames from his window.

  ‘You remember my eleventh birthday?’ he says. ‘I came round with my new mountain bike?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I didn’t tell you at the time because I was embarrassed, but I never saw them the whole day. I just woke up to find it wrapped up in silver paper in the living room, and they weren’t back from work when I got home from school, so I came to yours.’

  I remember it. We hadn’t been expecting him, and when Mum discovered it was his birthday she rushed out to buy a cake before Kwik Save closed. I never got a whiff of him being upset, but clearly it stuck with him all these years.

  ‘Basically, they put up with being miserable so they could retire comfortably at fifty.’ His tone is matter-of-fact, not bitter. ‘But guess what? They’re still miserable now. What’s the point in making yourself miserable for a day that might never come?’ His chest inflates as he takes a deep breath, and he holds it for a second before letting go. ‘That chicken smells fit, by the way.’

  He comes over to examine the tray that I remove from the oven.

  ‘Rebecca is going to struggle to find another wife like you,’ he says, and when I laugh he gives me a look I can’t quite read.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  ‘This is the first time I’ve been in your company for more than half an hour and haven’t had to give you a dead arm. In fact,’ he approaches the chalkboard again, ‘rule six: cook for Jamie.’

  After dinner Jamie pops out to buy dessert.

  While he’s gone I attempt to recreate the finale to the 2011–12 season, the ultimate happy ending, at the foosball table. It’s 2–2 at the Etihad, and we’re into the dying seconds when an off-balance Balotelli somehow manages to poke the ball into QPR’s penalty box. I’m just about to scream AGUERRRRRO, and declare Manchester City the champions, when the little plastic ball gets stuck under the striker’s foot, and history has suddenly been rewritten.

  I sit on the couch, staring at the framed posters of old liquor adverts that hang above the table. Rebecca gave them to Jamie for his birthday a couple of years ago, before our own history was rewritten.

  Disregarding Jamie’s rules, I switch on my laptop and go to her page, except . . .

  Her picture has vanished, replaced by a white silhouette.

  What the fuck?

  I didn’t know where else to go. The only thing I know is this isn’t how it’s going down, Rebecca deleting me from her life, not answering my calls or texts, acting like she doesn’t have a choice in all of this. So I grabbed the small velvet box and came to the flat.

  I’d planned to ask her to marry me at Beachy Head, but sometimes in life you have to adapt, like when the English quelled the Spanish Armada by altering their formation during battle. That’s what I need to do now, change formation, adapt, because she’d have to listen to me, wouldn’t she, if I went down on one knee?

  My hand is trembling as I slot the key in the lock, ready to talk over her protests, but before the door is fully open I sense the flat is empty, and that I’m going to have to wait.

  I wander around, reacquainting myself with the things we bought together just a couple of months ago. I sit on the bed, I run my fingertips across the walnut surface of the dining table, I stand in front of the couch. It feels like my life is on pause and I’m walking through it, everything static except me.

  It took the delivery men an hour and a half to hoist the couch up the two flights of stairs, and my muscles ached from helping, but as soon as the men had gone Rebecca slammed the door shut and drew me on to the canvas upholstery. The motion of our bodies caused the couch to shift across the wooden floors so that by the time we collapsed, breathless and hazy, it was almost in the kitchen.

  When I set off from Jamie’s tonight I was expecting to find the dishwasher overflowing and to be tripped up by Rebecca shrapnel, but the place is spotless and it’s a blow to my ego. The boxset we’d been watching before she kicked me out is folded neatly on the shelf, as though she’s finished it without me.

  I slump to the floor, back pressed against the cold radiator, and it’s like someone is blowing up a balloon inside of me, filling me with emptiness. I check the time. Just gone eight. There is a text from Jamie asking where I am but I ignore it. I wonder where she is, how long she’ll be. I don’t know when exactly I become aware of a blue light flashing against the wall.

  Eventually I stand and walk over to the source. It’s coming from Rebecca’s laptop. I pick it up with both hands as though to test its weight, and I’m conscious now of my heart working beneath my ribcage, pumping blood into my arteries, delivering oxygen around my body.

  I’ve never so much as looked at the screen of her mobile when it beeped, and I wouldn’t be contemplating what I’m contemplating now if Rebecca would talk to me, but what if I find something that helps me understand what’s going on in her head? An email to a friend or something?

  I freeze.

  It was the sound of a door closing somewhere in the building. I listen for four, five, six seconds. It’s a Victorian house, and though the staircase would have been added when the place was converted into flats, it’s still old enough for every third stair to creak. But I can’t hear anything now. It must have been Angus or Tasha from the flat below, or Carl on the ground floor.

  I examine the laptop again whi
le a hundred different thoughts ricochet around my head. Almost all of them warn me not to do it.

  I hold a lungful of air for as long as I can take, starving my brain of the things it needs to think, and finally I let go.

  I flick open the screen, and what I see is so unexpected that I laugh.

  A dating website?

  It’s open on some fella’s profile but I’m too stunned to look properly.

  Rebecca wouldn’t do that, would she? It’s not her, and Jesus, I’ve only been gone a month. I know she’s not the type to hole herself up with a box of tissues listening to Adele songs on repeat, but surely she hasn’t moved on this quickly?

  I close the laptop and breathe, trying to think of some other explanation, but my imagination is overwriting everything, and it seems to have upgraded to HD, because it’s like they’re here with me in the room, Rebecca and this Pilot_Dan twat. He’s pouring her a whisky from the decanter but for once she doesn’t want whisky. She grabs him by his tie and yanks him on to the couch – our couch – and afterwards they watch an episode of The Killing.

  With my fists bunched I survey the couch to see if it has moved across the wooden floor since I was last here. The idea of her falling for someone new, that I won’t be important to her any more, makes me want to throw up.

  I sling my right foot against the wall, but the release doesn’t help, it just makes my big toe – one of the few parts of me that wasn’t hurting like hell – hurt like hell.

  I need to get out of here.

  I unhook the signed Man City shirt from the wall in the spare room and shove as much of my stuff as I can into bin bags. I don’t have a lot, clothes mainly, but I want her to see that it’s gone; I want her to feel how I’m feeling.

  Yes, I went home with Natalie, but I was pissed, and I couldn’t do anything because all I could think about was Rebecca, but this, this is premeditated shit, and it makes me wonder whether the whole thing with Danielle played into her hands. Whether this was what she wanted all along, for us to be over?

  I can’t face going back to Jamie’s yet, and I’ll have to call a taxi with all this stuff anyway, so I rest my bike against a bench on the green behind the flat. I sit with my head in my hands, and the frustration and disbelief and longing of the last few weeks is turning into something new.

  Anger. It bubbles inside of me, causing my legs to shake.

  My phone starts to ring, and my first thought is that Rebecca has arrived home; she’s seen the empty spaces where my belongings were, and now she is calling, distraught.

  I look up to the flat but the lights are still off.

  Dejected, I pull the phone from my pocket, and if it was anyone else’s name on the screen I wouldn’t answer, but some primal instinct takes over, an instinct that says this could be the one person who might be able to make me feel better.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ says Mum. ‘Is now a good time?’

  I was stupid thinking it might be anyone else. Mum calls at the same time every week. That’s what thirty-five years working in a school does for you. Her time is divided and punctuated by the rings of a bell.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t expecting you, but . . .’

  ‘Very funny, darling,’

  It’s the same joke I make every week, and there is something calming now about the routine of our conversation, her telling me about some new hobby of Dad’s (car boot sales is the latest), me asking about work. She’s saying something about her role changing, from secretary to administrator, or something, but I’m finding it difficult to focus.

  ‘How’s your work?’ she asks.

  ‘Same old.’

  ‘Oh, well . . .’

  One thing about Mum is that her words quite often don’t correspond to her intended meaning. Over the years I’ve developed my own version of Google Translate in my head, so I can copy and paste anything she says, press return and find out what she’s really getting at. In this case Oh, well . . . means, Do you really think I’ve enjoyed being a school secretary all these years? Which is funny really, because I know for a fact she has enjoyed it, as she loves nothing more than organizing and telling people what to do.

  ‘And how’s Rebecca?’ says Mum.

  I knew it was coming, and I’d planned to answer in the same way I have for the past few weeks. Rebecca is fine, I’ve told her, because honestly, I thought we’d sort this out.

  ‘Do you know yet if she’s coming with you for Christmas?’

  I rest my eyes for a few seconds, then look again at the kitchen window, and that’s the moment when I finally realize what this is: the third phase I wasn’t prepared for.

  Post-Rebecca.

  ‘Actually, Mum, I’ll be coming on my own.’

  There is a short pause. ‘Are you OK, darling?’

  ‘Yes, it’s just . . .’ I try to swallow but my throat feels like it’s been vacuum packed. ‘Rebecca and I have split up.’

  Chapter Twenty

  REBECCA

  Christmas Day

  ‘Buongiorno!’ Stefan bowls into the kitchen, takes my face in his hands and kisses both cheeks. ‘Merry Christmas. What’s going on?’

  ‘What’s going on,’ I explain, mixing the stuffing while Dad wraps pigs in blankets, ‘is we got so fed up waiting for you to turn up, we started prepping dinner. The turkey is in the oven.’

  ‘What’s that?’ He points at my bowl.

  ‘It’s, um . . . a delicious combination of ciabatta crumbs, Italian sausage, turkey liver and herbs.’ I try to pretend I’m not reading straight from the packet, which I chuck at his head when I see him smirk. ‘Cock off and chop the carrots.’

  ‘Discs or batons?’

  ‘Couldn’t care less.’

  ‘On it.’

  ‘Good to see you, son,’ Dad says, patting Stefan on the back.

  ‘You too, Marco.’ Stefan double-kisses Dad. ‘Shall we just shove all this in the oven with the turkey and crack on with presents?’

  So shove it in we do.

  We’re not one of those families who take it in turns to open our presents – we rip the paper off simultaneously, so the process starts at 12.03 p.m. and ends at ten past.

  ‘Last one,’ sings Stefan, throwing me a red envelope. Inside is a card with a picture of a snowman with coal for his eyes and mouth and a carrot for his genitalia; and inside that are two tickets to see Erasure.

  ‘Amazing!’ I grin. We both love Erasure – my brother had a battered old tape that stayed with us in every car in every country we lived in growing up. One of my earliest memories is us both singing along to it as we drove back from France to visit Granny for Christmas.

  ‘They’re at The Roundhouse in April.’

  ‘Can’t wait. Want me to leave your ticket here or should I keep them together?’

  ‘Oh, they’re both for you. I got us two each as I’m taking someone and thought you could bring . . . someone.’

  Ben. He was going to say Ben.

  ‘OK, cool.’ I force a smile. ‘Thanks.’

  Stefan and Dad exchange a look. My family have stopped asking how I’m feeling about Ben. Probably because my answer was always the same: I’m fine. Thing is, I’m not entirely sure any more that I am fine. It’s nearly two months since we broke up. Isn’t time supposed to be a healer? It feels more like a paper cut that has grown into a knife wound.

  ‘You hit the wine early today.’ I can tell Dad is trying to sound casual as he glances at the glass I’ve just lifted. ‘You usually have your first with dinner.’

  ‘Neither of you interested in who I’m taking to the gig?’ Stefan interrupts. Dad and I both look at him. ‘My boyfriend, Jonny.’

  I swallow my wine and then, inexplicably, burst into tears.

  The confusion on Dad’s face is understandable – Stefan never has boyfriends and I never have tears. Even as a kid, if my brother was picking on me or I was upset that we had to move again, I’d either go off on my own and sulk or go into an angry rage. Stefan cried more than I did.

/>   ‘I’m just . . . so . . . happy for Stefan,’ I manage to blurt out between sobs.

  ‘That’s a bit weird, sis,’ says Stefan, his eyebrows knotting.

  Dad puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘What’s wrong, love?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I insist. ‘Tell us about Jonny, Stefan.’

  ‘Well, he works with me,’ my brother begins, sounding uncharacteristically soppy.

  I honestly don’t know what’s wrong with me. I am happy for Stefan, but this isn’t about that. I guess it’s about Ben, and him seeing other people, and not even calling me on Christmas Day. He hasn’t contacted me for weeks.

  And it’s about having a spare ticket to Erasure and not having anyone to invite, as Jamie is all I have left and he’ll be at work.

  I never really had close friends before I met Danielle and Jamie. It took me too long to open up to people and then we’d move somewhere else and the connection would be lost.

  ‘People have been saying for ages, We should really set you up with Jonny, you’ll get on really well,’ Stefan is saying. ‘And I thought, Why? Because we’re both gay? That automatically means we’ll fancy each other? But it turns out we do fancy each other.’

  I was set up once. Sally – the one girl from sixth form I stayed in touch with, because she went to the same university as me – set me up with her friend Tommy. It never went anywhere and then Sally and I stopped hanging out much. I think she felt stuck in the middle.

  We still occasionally meet for a catch-up, though. I wonder if she likes Erasure?

  This is so much easier for Ben, I think angrily, wiping away another stray tear. He’s so natural at meeting people. Plus, he’s already bagsied the bar for New Year’s Eve, so he’s the one that will get to see Jamie.

  What am I meant to do for New Year? I want to stay in, get a takeaway and have an early night, but I can’t bear that pity in people’s faces when you reveal you’ve no plans.

  ‘Anyone smell burning?’ asks Stefan, who has been throwing balled-up wrapping paper at the wicker bin in the corner the whole time he’s been talking.

  ‘The turkey!’ we all cry in unison, jumping up and running through.