Chapter 46 Twenty-six years old
Twenty-six years old
Sam
“You need to get a job,” Kath tells me when she drops her keys in the bowl by the door.
It’s two hours later than her shift was meant to end, which seems to be a recurring theme.
I’ve been living in her spare room for two months, and I can count on one hand the number of times she’s actually got home when she was meant to.
Part of me is still surprised she let me move in.
Apparently she needed someone to cover the rent and I was easier than finding a stranger.
I don’t know how she scraped by month to month during the pandemic, though I know she took on a lot of extra shifts.
Kath said she didn’t have time to organise interviewing people and I’m not going to question a good thing.
Not until she’s ready to share more. I’m just happy she was ready for our friendship to step up to this level again.
The first couple of months after we reconnected were little more than occasional texts.
Those slowly turned into the odd coffee, then walks through the Heath, and eventually invitations to dinner at her flat.
I let her set the pace for all of it, careful not to push for a friendship she might not want anymore.
If she decided she never wanted us to be friends again, that would have been something I’d have to accept. Every step forward felt like a gift.
“Thank you for always cooking dinner for me, Sam,” she continues, unwinding her scarf. “But you need to get out of the house.”
I mumble a hello, turning back to the stove where my sauce is simmering.
I’ve become obsessed with cooking, spending mornings perusing cookbooks and afternoons watching cooking shows.
There’s an amazing corner of the internet that seems to be made entirely of videos about people baking bread.
It’s been fun to learn to do something completely new.
In a way, it’s like swimming. Make one mistake and the entire stroke, or recipe in this case, falls apart.
No wonder we always let Seb do all the cooking in our house, he’s by far the most methodical of all our friends.
Cooking also makes me think about my mum.
She loved cooking. I only wish that we could be doing this together; trialling new recipes, washing up whilst chatting, tasting something and tinkering with the ingredients.
I’ve been speaking with my dad a lot on the phone and he’s been sending me pictures of her old cookbooks—helping decipher some of her scrawled handwriting on the pages.
He even found an old photo of me aged seven making a cake with her, covered in flour, with Crunchie sitting at my feet begging for food.
Kath does have a point though. She usually does.
I go to the gym, have a daily walk on the Heath, and cook.
But that’s basically it. I also do my therapy every week.
Which is exhausting, but great. Each time I think I’ve pulled back a layer of emotions, there seems to be another one waiting to be analysed.
I haven’t even vaguely tried to job hunt yet.
Between sponsorship money and bonuses from breaking records, there's enough in the bank for me to coast for quite a while. Being Kath’s housekeeper suits me just fine in the meantime.
I like to make sure that we always have the cereal she likes in the mornings ready in the cupboard, and that the laundry is done during the day so she doesn’t need to do it in the evenings.
Making her life easier is important to me.
For years, she was the one quietly doing that for me, and I want to return the favour.
And, selfishly, making her happy makes me happy.
“I know I need to find a job or something.” I turn to her as I reduce the heat on the sauce.
“It’s just that I don’t know what to do.
I’m someone with a literature degree who’s never even had a part-time job before.
Well, other than working shifts in the university library, but I’m not sure if that counts. ”
And I’ve only ever been a swimmer. It was my whole identity. Without it, I’m not sure who I am.
Her face immediately softens. “You don’t need to have a whole life plan now.” She gives me a hug. “But I think it would be good to have some routine.”
She’s right. It turns out that going from training six days a week, often multiple times a day, to doing nothing is not something that my body enjoys.
When Kath goes for her runs I go to the gym, but I’m starting to miss the quiet of being underwater.
I just don’t know if I miss it enough to want to go back.
The last time I went in a pool was Tokyo Olympics, and thinking about swimming still causes my heart to pound and palms to sweat.
“We could look for something part-time?” she offers. “Do you want to do anything swimming related, or something completely different?”
“Completely different.” I start to plate up our food. “I finally get to have long hair. Maybe I should grow a ponytail and join a band.”
She laughs. “Oh really? What instruments do you play? I’ve heard you sing, and you couldn’t do vocals.”
I smile at that. Hers certainly aren’t any better than mine, but I let it slide.
When I sit down and take a proper look at her, I realise that she looks exhausted.
More exhausted than usual. Not like herself at all.
The Kath I grew up with was always out doing things, or helping friends when they needed it.
She was the most extroverted person I knew.
But now we barely see anyone else. I wish I knew how to fix this.
Whenever I meet up with people at the weekend, I try to bring Kath too. But she works every third weekend, and then sometimes ends up doing an extra day—either covering for someone who’s sick, or filling a gap on the ward. It feels like she’s always at work.
“How was the hospital?” I ask cautiously.
She’s stopped talking to me about it. I know that she saw a lot of people die over the last few years, held the hands of people whose relatives couldn’t come to the ward, did horrible hours and didn’t take breaks.
I also know that she lived alone during that time, which must have been awful.
But she never talks about it. At least not for more than one or two sentences.
Kath doesn’t answer and instead finishes laying the table before sitting opposite me and scooping some food onto her plate.
She gazes at the table, absentmindedly twirling her fork in one hand. Then she shakes herself and starts eating.
“This is delicious, Sam,” she tells me. “Maybe you could become a chef.”
“Nah,” I tell her. “I want to keep it as something just for fun. Something I do for myself. Or for us.”
She continues eating, looking distracted.
“I could cook for a dinner party with our friends?” I offer. “What about having Josh, Ben and Claire over? I know they would love to see you. Or Tom?”
“Maybe.”
She doesn’t sound enthusiastic. She looks pale. Her summer freckles are nearly faded.
“When did you last take a holiday, Kath?” I ask, curious. She hasn’t taken any days off since I’ve lived with her.
“May. Oh, and I took a day off to watch one of your races. I had some leave left.”
“I think before I find a job, we should take a holiday,” I say. “I’m paying for the flights. Consider it backpay for years of emotional support and unpaid chauffeur work.”
“What? No! I can’t let you pay for a holiday,” she protests. “The feminist gods would smite me. Gloria Steinem would appear in a puff of smoke and revoke my membership.”
“Just tell me when you can get two weeks off,” I say, waving her off. “This’ll be my post-Olympics project: holiday planner. You’re doing me a favour, it gives me something to do. And anyway, I checked. The feminist gods are fine with it as long as you keep bossing me around.”
She looks dubious.
“You need a break, Kath,” I tell her gently.
I’m not entirely sure how to make her feel better. But taking a break is definitely a step in the right direction.
“Now tell me how work was,” I coax.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” She pushes food around her plate but doesn’t eat.
“That’s alright, you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I tell her, and she gives me a half-smile and nods with slightly glassy eyes.
“Maybe later,” she offers. “I just want to have a nice dinner with you.”
So we do.
We talk about old TV shows, the one pasta dish that Tom keeps on making that no one likes anymore because he’s made it one hundred times, the new school her dad’s moved to.
After she finishes with small talk, she pauses.
Silence lingers between us. So much silence that I wonder if she’ll speak again or space out and move on, like she’s done every time before when work comes up.
I open my mouth to speak, but I’m interrupted by a barrage of words that tumble out of her all at one.
“I… I… God.” And once she starts to open up she begins to share everything.
An hour later, I’m sitting on her bed while she cries about a patient who reminds her of someone who died during COVID.
I’ve never seen Kath like this. She’s always been the happy one.
The person who bounces through life with her lists in hand.
It makes me even more determined to take her on that holiday.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers when she stops crying.
“Never apologise about this.” I push hair out of her eyes. “This is what friends are for, Kath. What I’m here for.”
“I just really struggle to stop thinking about it, and then I can’t sleep,” she whispers.
No wonder she looks so tired. I know that feeling. Though my issue was being woken up by my anxiety and then being unable to get back to sleep.
“Do you want to try my meditation app with me?” I ask her. “I’ve found it useful. Though it takes a bit of practice.”
She nods and I fish my phone out of my pocket, flicking it open and turning on one of the guided breathing exercises.
“Ready?” I ask her.
We shuffle round on the bed so we’re both lying back, me on the right hand side, her on the left and the phone on the bedside table.
I press play, and the recording starts, instructing us to breathe in and out in time.
I let my mind drift. I acknowledge my feelings and then let them go.
The instructions continue in the background and my breathing settles.
When I wake up, I realise it’s just gone midnight and I’m still in Kath’s bed. Shit. I turn my head to look at her. At least she’s asleep. I ease myself up, trying to make sure that I don’t jostle her, and peel the spare blanket off her chair to cover her.
“Stay,” she mumbles just as I’m about to leave the room, and I freeze.
“Are you sure?” I whisper.
“Please,” she mumbles. “Just this once. I always slept better with you anyway.”
I pause. It’s the please that destroys me.
She doesn’t know how hard I’m fighting myself. How many nights I’ve lain awake wishing I could go back and unsay everything that threw us apart. How much I hated myself for everything I did, because if I hadn’t done it maybe things would be different.
I’m terrified of blowing it all up again. Terrified of how much I still love her after everything I’ve done, and of how much I don’t want to break this fragile new version of our relationship.
But it’s Kath. She needs me. So I pad back to the bed and tuck us both under the blanket.