by Zoe Cook
I’m a total mess, she thought. Why can’t I just drink like other people? Have a good time, have some fun, then stop. Why do I always get myself to the point where I can’t remember anything, where I do something stupid? Why didn’t I just go back to Scott’s, like he asked me to? Lucy gasped slightly at the thought of Scott, choking on her tears. She cared about Scott, he was good to her, looked after her when she was tired from work, took her out to nice places, tried to make her happy. And this is how I repay him, she thought, hating herself for being the kind of girl who behaved like that when drunk. ‘Making a spectacle of yourself’, her mum would’ve said. And God knows who saw – all those people in that room; people I work with, and work for, people who I need to respect me! That one image she had of herself leaning over the as-yet-unidentified man, made her feel physically sick, not least because she couldn’t finish the scene, had no idea of how it had played out. She didn’t want to find out from Laura; she didn’t actually want to find out at all. She’d never understood people like Warren and Charlie, who loved hearing about what they’d got up to on a night out. Lucy would rather never know, and wished there was some kind of code of silence about the whole thing. Laura was an utter twat for telling her, telling everyone, like that, but she, Lucy, was the biggest fool, she acknowledged painfully, because this wasn’t exactly a one-off. How many times had she drunk herself into this position? What, two or three times already this year? How did she forget this shame and terror each time?
What the hell is wrong with me?
She took her phone from her pocket and thought about calling Scott, before pressing cancel and letting more tears come at the realisation that he couldn’t comfort her, and that it wasn’t actually fair to expect him to.
Warren took her out for lunch on her own and tried to make light of the whole thing.
‘You were joking around,’ he told her, ‘It really wasn’t as seedy as Laura made it sound.’
But it didn’t matter to Lucy, who pushed her pizza around her plate, struggling to make eye contact, filled with shame and self-hatred.
‘What does this say about my relationship?’ she asked, quietly.
‘Nothing, babe,’ Warren said gently, ‘You were drunk; he was a hot guy. Really hot, actually… and you were just messing about. You didn’t even kiss him. It was just a friendly thing.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Lucy smiled at Warren, ‘Just your average friendly lap dance.’ She almost laughed, but Warren reached across the table and took her hand. The tenderness of the gesture shocked her and she thought she might cry again. ‘You’re a good egg, Lucy. You could do with giving yourself a break sometimes, you know. You’re not so bad’, he said, looking her into the eyes and squeezing her hand in his. ‘Chin up, missy.’
The pizza and a walk back to the office helped to ease the hangover and back at her desk Lucy made a deal with herself. Just get through the rest of today and tomorrow everything will seem better. She kept her head down, worked through a good chunk of her red-flagged emails and counted down to 6pm and home time. It was easy to keep a low profile as Emma was locked in her office all afternoon, which meant little conversation among the team, who were afraid she might be listening through the thin walls. It wasn’t as paranoid a fear as it sounded. When the team had relocated to this huge office from a smaller warehouse building in South London, Emma had enquired about the possibility of installing some kind of ‘listening tube’ that would enable her to hear people at their desks from the comfort of her own office.
Laura caught Lucy’s eye a few times throughout the afternoon and offered an irritating facial expression that Lucy thought was meant to suggest ‘I’m slightly sorry for upsetting you, but hey, you did it!’ She forced herself to smile back. This is the last time I feel like this, she vowed. I’m not going to do this ever again.
The office emptied at an impressive pace at 6pm. Lucy walked out of the door after a quick hug with Warren and the tiredness hit her all over again. The thought of getting on a bus felt like an epic mission and the black cabs driving past her with their orange lights on looked irresistibly enticing. Lucy put her arm out and a taxi pulled over. ‘Balham please,’ she said as she heaved her exhausted body through the door and onto the back seat. Her phone vibrated in her pocket; a message from Scott.
Are you okay? I’m working late, but I want to know if you are alright? it said.
I’m okay, Lucy typed, I’m so sorry about last night. I didn’t mean to get so drunk. I hope I wasn’t as terrible as I think I might have been x. She was relieved Scott was, firstly, still talking to her, and secondly, that he was working late. She didn’t want to go to his perfect flat tonight; she just wanted to go home, run a bath, put on her comfiest pyjamas and take her duvet to the sofa. As the taxi turned the corner onto her road, a wave of familiar, pathetic, realisation hit her, I want Tom, she thought, I just want Tom.
8
Her wardrobe was a mess. Clothes had fallen off their hangers into heaps at the bottom. She reached through fabric until she felt the box. The shoebox was covered in wrapping paper: a garish pink-and-orange print she’d picked when she was thirteen, thinking it was exotic. Lucy carried the box onto the sofa and cocooned herself inside her duvet. Opening the box released the smell of paper and ink she only let herself take in a couple of times a year. She’d thought about throwing the box away as many times as she’d opened it, but always ended up shoving it back in the wardrobe. Amongst the letters, scraps of paper, notes passed back and forth by her and Nina in lessons, postcards from her older sister’s travels, she found the wallet of photos.
There was Nina, all long limbs and beautiful long hair, running away from the camera towards the beach, being chased by Kristian. Then Lucy’s childhood dog, Spencer, a big, fat Labrador, lying on the sand looking happy as her brother, Richie, crouched next to him, all of two years old, bucket in hand and a mischievous grin on his face. Photo after photo showed the view of Hideaway from various high points across the Bay. From Tom’s palm-treed terrace, it looked almost Mediterranean, the sea a vivid greeny-blue. The photos from Lucy’s garden, with the rugged cliffs in view, looked more traditionally Cornish. Her favourite photos of Hideaway were those she’d taken from the café. In these you could really see how the bay had earned its name. Once you were in the town you felt totally cut off from anywhere else – as if you were in a secret cove, unreachable from anywhere but the sea. The steep, winding road that linked them to the real world seemed to give up towards the beach, and from there it was just cobbled streets of tiny shops and cafés with stripy awnings. The view from the café always reminded Lucy of something from a Famous Five book: Keeper’s Island sitting in front of them enticingly, but otherwise nothing but water and sand and the two cliffs either side closing them off from everywhere else, hiding them away.
She skipped past photos of Claire, feeling guilty about how long it had been since she’d seen her older sister. She didn’t live all that far away and when Lucy had first moved to London, Claire had tried to hard to help her settle, to be friends. Lucy should have made more of an effort, she knew that, but it felt like it had been too long now, like she’d made an issue out of nothing by her inaction. Claire would be angry with her, anyway, like she always was when Lucy did spend time with her in those first few months in London. Claire was so bloody sensible and collected, and together, and Lucy just wasn’t. The thing was, Lucy knew Claire’s intentions were good and that she cared, but it physically hurt Lucy to be near her. The reason she’d left Cornwall was to escape the memories and seeing Claire brought them all crashing back in. And Claire knew too much. She could always see when Lucy was struggling and could never stop herself from bringing it all up all over again. Sometimes Lucy just wanted to pretend things were fine when they weren’t. She didn’t want to try and work through the fucking pain all the time – she knew it didn’t work anyway. So she quickly shuffled the photos of Claire to the back of the packet of pictures, focusing instead on the hideous shots of her and
Nina in some of their first trips into Plymouth, where they’d clearly tried to dress ‘fashionably’ but had fallen seriously bloody short of the mark. Nina was wearing an orange poncho with pom-pom trim and baggy jeans, Lucy didn’t look much better in what looked remarkably like a ski jacket and denim skirt. They looked ridiculous and she laughed to herself at the sight of them.
Then, inevitably, she reached the glossy photo she’d tried to deny she would find.
Scruffy brown hair swept to one side, in surf shorts and a ripped t-shirt, Tom smiling at her, his blue eyes looking as though he was thinking something naughty, Lucy thought. She remembered standing there, on the beach, taking the picture. She’d thrown the rest away, but she could never bring herself to destroy this one, it was too perfect. It had been taken the summer before she’d left Cornwall, just a normal day on the beach, he’d been surfing all morning and she had taken the mick out of him for his scruffy t-shirt. He’d pulled her into him, ‘You love it, Luce, I know you do,’ kissing her neck and hair playfully. ‘I love you,’ she’d replied, kissing him back, and then she’d asked him to stand for the photo. Wrapped in her duvet, on her sofa in London, she could hear the seagulls circling the beach that day hoping for tourists’ fish and chips. She could feel Tom’s wet, salty skin on her body as he held her waist. She could smell the sun on his hair as she pushed it away from his eyes and kissed him. Lucy put the photo down and tipped her head back to stop the tears. It was a long time ago, she told herself, a different life.
This was why she shouldn’t look at the photos, she remembered, as she put the box down on the floor and used the sleeve of her pyjama top to dab at the tears prickling the corners of her eyes. Why did he have to send her that email? Why did he need to bring it all back up again? She tried to blame the feelings on him reaching out to her about the summer, but of course she knew, really, that she was simply eternally trying to move on from him, from how much she had loved him. She loved him so much it had ruined anyone else for her, because no one was ever going to compare. And he was just a fucking memory, not even a real person in her life any more. He had let her leave; he had been fine with it. He had not spoken to her for five fucking years.
She tried to put him out of her mind and concentrate on her plan of action to make herself a better person. She decided she’d start running again, eat healthily, really focus on her career. She wasn’t going to spend her life in London thinking about summers in Cornwall years ago, and she couldn’t allow herself to think about Tom – it was just the tiredness – and that bloody email, that was all. You can’t be in love with a memory, she told herself.
Even you’re not that bloody stupid.
9
‘Lucy? Lucy! It’s Sophie.’
Lucy blinked slowly, her head throbbing with pain. She suddenly became acutely aware that she had no idea where she was.
‘Sophie?’ she asked. ‘What are you doing here?’ Her own voice trembled and sounded as if it was coming from someone else. Sophie was her next-door neighbour, a couple of years old than her – a primary school teacher who she sometimes had a cup of tea with when they bumped into each other. She outstretched a shaking hand and felt gravel. She tried to lift her head, but Sophie placed her fingers firmly on her chest and told her to rest. She was lying on the ground, she realised now, and the hard, stony surface beneath her felt suddenly uncomfortable.
‘You just fainted, I think’ Sophie said. ‘It’s okay, you’re okay. Just lie down and get your breath back.’
Lucy opened her eyes again and looked down at her muddy running legs and running shorts. She remembered jogging from her house, to the park, feeling good.
‘I was running,’ she told Sophie.
‘I guessed!’ Sophie smiled at her.
‘I’m okay,’ Lucy protested, trying again to sit up.
‘I’m not sure that you are,’ Sophie said, kindly. ‘Lucy, we need to get you home.’
‘Yeah, I need to go to work – ‘ Lucy started.
‘You’re not going to work, Lucy, I called your sister from your phone and she’s coming to look after you. She told me once when you first moved in that I could call her if you ever needed her. I thought she was just being an over-protective sister, but it turns out you did need her after all!’
Lucy was suddenly, fiercely angry with Sophie for calling Claire. It was a ridiculous over-reaction. She began to argue again that she was fine, pulling her weight up with her arms, as she felt her heart pound and her eyes fill with sparkles, her head becoming heavy.
Lucy woke this time on her own sofa, wrapped in her duvet as she had been the night before. From the kitchen she could hear the sounds of cupboards being opened and closed, someone boiling a kettle, fetching mugs. Claire appeared in the room with two cups of steaming tea and Lucy felt tears running down her cheeks at the sight of her older sister.
‘Hey you! It’s okay,’ Claire said, handing her a warm mug and sitting next to Lucy on the sofa. She smelled of expensive perfume. ‘Before you start panicking, I’ve called work, they’re fine. They know where you are and no one’s cross, okay?’ Claire blew over her tea to cool it. ‘Lucy, I’m worried about you, fainting like that. And you’re so thin. Is this why you’ve been ignoring my calls?’
Lucy knew she’d lost weight recently; her clothes were hanging from her collarbones and hipbones slightly, but, if she was honest, she liked it. She saw it as an achievement; she got a boost from feeling hungry and thin.
‘I can go in this afternoon,’ Lucy began.
‘It’s 4pm, Luce,’ Claire set her tea down on the stained wooden coffee table Lucy had picked up from a flea market in East London. ‘You’re not well. You need to rest now and later we’ll talk about everything else.’ Lucy didn’t know what Claire was referring to by ‘everything else’; she sipped her tea, closing her eyes as she drank.
‘Scott,’ she said, ‘I need to call Scott.’
‘Sophie, called him first,’ Claire replied. ‘After she saw you faint on the street, she came and helped you. You’re lucky she was there, that she saw you. Anyway, Scott couldn’t come, he’s too busy at work, so she called me.’
Lucy saw Claire look away as she finished her sentence and sensed there was more to this story. It felt, suddenly, acutely clear in her mind. Scott didn’t want to come. Scott had had enough of her dramas and wanted out. Her mind ran through the last few weeks and how badly she’d treated him. When she thought of his nice face and his sensible apartment, and his Jo Malone diffusers, she realised again that she didn’t truly want any of it.
‘He’s coming over to see you this evening,’ Claire said, and Lucy knew instinctively that it would be their goodbye. She thought about what things of his she’d need to pack up for him, ready for him to take away. Not much: a toothbrush, some clothes, a toy she’d bought him as a gift from her girls’ holiday to France in the summer. She felt a pang of guilt at the thought of that holiday and the night she had spent with the handsome Frenchman after too many champagne cocktails. How she’d bought the silly toy the next day with a raging hangover and a familiar sense of shame at what she’d done. She’d not been a very nice girlfriend to Scott; it was time to let him go.
When Lucy opened her eyes again, it was dark outside her heavy cream curtains, and Claire had turned on a lamp by her sofa, sending a warm orange glow through the room. Scott was on his way over. Claire had spoken to him and told him Lucy would be ready for him at 8pm. Lucy looked at her phone. It was 7:45pm and she had four text messages, which she couldn’t face reading. She got up from the sofa, her legs weak and her body aching slightly in a way she found strangely comforting, like proof of her own existence. In her bedroom she found a dress to pull over her underwear – Claire must have undressed her – and she felt momentarily embarrassed by the picture in her head of the scene. She pulled on thick black tights under the short, loose-fitting grey dress and pulled her hair up into a messy bun. She could see why Claire was worried: her face was drawn and gaunt and the hollows in
her cheek, which looked pretty good with the right make-up, looked sickly now they were bare. Her eyes, she could see herself, looked sad, too big and grey. She swept foundation over her skin, then bronzer and applied mascara. The doorbell went and she heard Claire answer, greeting Scott as the stranger he was to her – they‘d been together for almost a year and her older sister had never met him, Lucy realised.
‘I can’t keep doing this,’ Scott said, after he’d checked she was alright.
‘I know,’ she said, plumping a cushion to avoid eye contact.
‘I’m really sorry, Luce,’ he reached out to put a hand on her leg. It felt unexpectedly patronising.
‘You really don’t owe me an apology,’ she said, meeting his eye now. ‘I just don’t think we’re quite right for each other.’
‘Yeah, well, I tried,’ Scott sounded bitter suddenly. ‘Nothing I did was ever enough.’
He stood to leave. Had he expected me to fight to keep him? Lucy wondered, too tired to really care. The relief she felt at the sight of him making his way to leave was proof that this was the right thing.
‘You’ll be okay,’ she said, hugging Scott at the door. She handed him the bag of his things.
‘I’ll drop your stuff off soon,’ he said, pulling away from her. ‘Look after yourself. Oh. And Lucy –’ his face changed. ‘It’s really time you grew up and quit all this drama and nonsense.’
He didn’t look back as he walked to his car.
Lucy knew that in time she’d miss him, miss the familiarity of his niceness, his solidness and his physical company – the guarantee of human contact when she needed it. Claire hadn’t asked questions after Scott left. She’d run Lucy a bath and tidied the flat. She had obviously taken time off her own work as a barrister to look after Lucy and hadn’t thought twice about coming to help her at a moment’s notice. She was so kind, Lucy thought. Kinder than me; I don’t think I would have done it for her. She found Claire in the kitchen, wiping the walls with kitchen roll and cleaner, a wisp of mousey brown hair fallen from her ponytail sticking to the back of her neck with the exertion.
