Chapter 9 #2
Sarah was relieved to hear that the conversation after she’d left Amy’s flat had been relatively amicable, or as amicable as could be given the circumstances.
Amy’s description of her Saturday night out raised Sarah’s eyebrows a few times, particularly Amy’s friend trying to chat up women for her and how it all ended in the night club toilets.
“How do you feel about that?” Sarah asked.
“Honestly? It felt cathartic. I'm not sure I'd ever do that again with a random woman, but in the moment, with everything that had happened on Saturday, it felt like an affirmation of me. If that makes sense?”
Sarah nodded, thinking inside how much she wished that she’d realised that she was only into women five years sooner than she had.
That sort of night out, with friends who were delighted that you’d come out, was something she envied.
Instead, she lived her life in secret, a straight, hardworking wife and mother in appearance to all of her friends.
None of them had the faintest idea about the true Sarah and the lengths she went to to hide her true sexuality.
Sunday for Amy had consisted first of a hangover, and then later a many hour long talk with James where they’d gone over everything, again and again.
In the end, while he’d been reluctant, they’d agreed that the only answer was to take a break so that Amy could explore her sexuality properly.
It sounded to Sarah like it had been one of those exhausting but necessary conversations, the sort where both people know each other so well that they have argument and counter-argument already to hand, and the sort where both participants owe it to each other to hear each other out.
“And what is James doing during this break?” Sarah asked.
“He can see other people too. I wouldn’t be surprised if his ex from uni turns up again, they’ve stayed in touch and I could see there was still chemistry there.
But we’ll see. To be brutally honest, the chances of both of us being single and me having decided I’m actually straight six months from now are zero.
Sounds harsh but I’ve got to be realistic. Whatever I am, I need to explore it.”
Sarah nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. Fairer on him too. You’re not going to try sharing your flat, are you? I mean you said you have a spare room but that would be weird.”
“We talked about it and came to the same conclusion. We’ve kind of kicked the can down the road on that one, I’m going to stay in the flat until I fly on Thursday, he’ll then stay there while I’m away, and then when I get back we’ll work something out.
I can stay with friends for a while if need be.
We need to keep the flat for the next six months otherwise our break starts looking like something more permanent. ” Amy shrugged. "Optics matter."
“You’d be welcome to stay with me,” Sarah blurted out, immediately realising how wildly impractical that would be. “I mean… for a bit… you know, if it helps…”
Amy looked at Sarah, smiling kindly. “You know, you’re really cute on the rare occasions you get flustered.
” Amy reached a hand across the table and took one of Sarah’s in hers.
“It’s a very kind offer, and I can see the benefits.
” Sarah could see Amy blushing slightly as she said that.
“But I think it would be impractical with, well, with your mentoring scheme and with your family too. And I don’t know what the dynamic between us would be. ”
“The offer is there regardless. Even if it meant me lending you my bed and me sleeping on the sofa.” Sarah genuinely meant it too, she felt responsible for them getting caught on Saturday and wanted to help sort it out.
“We both know that within five minutes of you going to bed on the sofa I’d either be on there with you, or you’d be in the bed with me.” Both women smiled at that.
“This kind of brings us nicely to the topic we’ve been skirting around,” Amy continued. “Namely you and me.”
Here we go, Sarah thought, the moment of truth. And she still didn’t know what it was that she wanted, only that she wanted it to involve Amy.
Smiling, trying to keep it light and breezy despite the nerves settled in the pit of her stomach, Sarah said, “Yes, we need to talk about us. I’ll be honest, my head has been spinning and that’s not normally like me.
I knew that I liked you a lot when we first sat down to talk about mentoring, but I had no idea my feelings would develop like they have.
I’m a little scared if I’m completely honest.”
“Scared?” Amy took a sip of her wine, her gaze fixed on Sarah’s. “Why?”
Sarah took a deep breath. She couldn’t read Amy’s expression right now at all, and that scared her even more.
She realised that honesty had to be the best policy.
“Because… this isn’t like my other mentoring relationships.
This has got real. That happened to me once before, and I ended that quickly, but this feels different.
Back then I’d just come back to work after having kids and I was craving something wild.
I’d realised that I was still into women while I was stuck at home and there was an outlet there, something I seized but had to walk away from before it got too real. It was a fantasy played out for real.”
Amy simply watched her, giving Sarah the room to continue.
“And now, it’s different… I’m not acting out a fantasy.
I knew when we first talked that I liked your personality and I was physically very attracted to you, but you were going to be just another mentee.
I mean, you were.” Sarah paused to find the right words, then continued.
“But you aren’t. I really like you, I mean really.
Your personality, the way you think about things, everything.
And lunch on Saturday brought that home to me.
I want to spend time with you, and not just in bed together or at work. Am I making sense?”
Amy nodded. “Yes, I think so.”
“What I don’t know is what version of you I want to be with. The version where we talk for hours, or the version where…” she lowered her voice,” … you do to me what you did to me on Wednesday. Or somewhere in between. I don’t have a clue.”
Amy sat looking at Sarah for a few seconds that stretched into a few more, an impossible to read expression on her face.
For Sarah it felt strangely thrilling, she was usually the one with the mastery of awkward silences and controlling the conversation, but it was clear that on this occasion they were talking on Amy’s terms.
“The mentoring. You’re my mentor, so can I tell you a story?”
Sarah, taken by surprise, hesitated. “A story?” she said eventually.
“A story. And then I have a question for you.”
“Uhh… sure.”
Amy picked up the wine bottle and topped up both their glasses, before taking a deep drink from hers.
Sarah watched her and realised for the first time that night the tension beneath Amy’s exterior…
she hid it well, and Sarah had thought that what she could see was tiredness, but she saw then that it was more than that, it almost looked like… like what? Anger? Disappointment? Fear?
“Back when I first started working at our firm, coming towards the end of my second year, my last training seat before qualification. I was really enjoying it. Not the hours so much,” here Amy smiled and Sarah nodded…
that was something every trainee had in common.
“But the rest of it. The work, the people, the excitement of being involved in things that my friends and my family read about in the papers a few weeks later. It was worth it. Still is.”
Sarah nodded slowly, watching Amy take a breath, and already she felt a knot forming in her stomach at her own memory of it…
she knew what the end of a trainee’s second year meant.
It was the moment that everything converged, two years of long hours, of proving yourself and trying to play the politics that you had no experience for, all leading to a single decision that would shape the rest of your career: you either qualified into the department you wanted or you didn’t, and if you didn’t then you had to go somewhere else, another firm, with the knowledge that you’d come up short.
Sarah had seen brilliant trainees broken by the pressure of it.
For the ones who made it, it was the foundation upon which their entire career was built.
For the ones who didn’t, it was a door closing that was very hard to reopen.
“I wanted to qualify into that area, so I did what we tell every trainee to do… I worked hard, I spent as much time as I could networking and taking on extra responsibilities, I did all I could to make myself such an obvious candidate to qualify into that department. The associates I worked, the more junior ones who’d gossip with a trainee, all reckoned I was a shoe in. ”
Sarah had an inkling where this was going. “Amy, you don’t need to…”
“Yes, I do. This is important. And you need to listen.” Amy’s voice was steady but Sarah could see the tension beneath it.
"There was one of the senior associates who oversaw the trainees, he was next up for partnership and I think the partners were giving him partner-y tasks so that he could prove he deserved it. In all fairness they must have been impressed because he made partner not long after. He’s left the firm now, he’s somewhere else.
I’m not going to name him, that wouldn’t be fair.