Chapter 6
Now
It’s 6 a.m. and it’s awful. I lie – a defrosting dead person – in the grave that is my side of the bed and try to sleep, but how can I? When my mind, like a TV, automatically switches on and every channel plays a montage of the worst moments of my life. My thoughts, like a radio, crackle awake, spilling gossip about my biggest fears: abandonment, loneliness, rejection. PS everyone hates you. You’re so shit. My wardrobe doors fly open, a theatre, oh no, the hangers like hands, peel last night’s wine and cigarette smoke-stained bright-pink jumpsuit up from off the floor. How are the hangers doing that? The sight of last night’s outfit makes me want to dry-heave like the return of a meal that was the culprit of food poisoning.
The jumpsuit acts out a puppet show of me from last night. A horror, of course. Mia’s wedding where I play The Fool. Thanks a lot. I can never listen to Gwen Stefani ever again now. The veins of my eyeballs are tangled chicken wire, sockets, screws, the palpitations, blinding, the dry tightening in my tomb of a throat, the dread, the sickness, the way my hairs stand on end. My pounding head is a wrecked junkyard car, begging to be crushed by a demolition monster truck to be put out of its misery. I’m such a terrible person; I get drunk at weddings and make it about me. I’m not a good person. I can’t even take care of house plants. I don’t call my nanna enough. More bad-karma debt racking up.
I look for the horned master of this hell to make a deal with, slam to my knees and beg: I’ll change, I promise; I’ll never drink again. I said it before, I know, but this time is different. I don’t need alcohol to have a nice time. I’m sorry. But NO! bellows the demon king; it’s too late; you had your chance and you blew it, bitch. It’s over. Mia’s spoiling bouquet is on the other side of the room, balanced on the washing basket (where I put anything that doesn’t go in the bin) and yet the weight of them is on my chest – flowers for my grave. I can’t look; I roll over, bury my face into Jackson’s sleeping shoulder blades, cling to his t-shirt to anchor me before I’m dragged to hell.
‘Jackson … ’ I whisper, cuddling into his back. We’ve just bought this little flat, our first place together. It hasn’t been touched since the Nineties; it’s brown, depressing and scary. I’m still not used to it, its new shadows and clanking pipes. ‘Please can you wake up?’ I forgot to put my gumshield in last night and I’ve grinded my teeth to sand. The pain of a clenching jaw shoots up to my temples – the anxiety about why I clench a pain far more severe.
‘Jackson?’
He turns to face me, eyes still closed, brows frowned, clinging to his peaceful slumber where me and my festering Hangxiety aren’t welcome. It’s the weekend; he deserves a lie in and I’ve disturbed him. I’m so selfish. Mean. I’m dirt and he’s so clean. He just went to the pub with his friend last night. They had a burger and a pint and called it a night. He barely drinks. He would have showered, brushed his teeth and watched some documentary on his laptop in bed. He’s an angel. I want to rub his goodness all over me. I burrow under his arm for protection; he smells of his usual ‘aftershave’, Deep Heat. His long arms octopus around me.
I feel an overriding sense of love and gratitude for him. Thank God he’s here. When he gets up, he’ll know what to do. I’ll see his hopeful, optimistic fresh-water eyes, his new-day-A-OK smile and feel better. At thirty-five, the growling silver fox in him is already threatening a thrilling presence. Then, apparently, Jackson will look like, in his own words, ‘a GQ cover’. He’s getting handsomer behind my back. I will start paying more attention.
Before the inevitable diarrhoea, I think about instigating sex, pouncing like the girls said to. But I haven’t trimmed my pubes in so long they look like pickup sticks. A bonfire before it’s lit. An upside-down sleeping fruit bat that would prefer not to be woken. It’s only because I’m hungover and needy that the weight of six-foot Jackson on top of me would feel better than the crushing weight of my own demons. But there’s no point: my legs hurt from all that unnecessary winding in heels and, besides, my mind would stray; I’d just be lying there trying to solve the mystery of the Upside Down in Stranger Things. Thinking about how Fergie spells out the word G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S. And you know what I haven’t had for ages? Weetabix. I don’t want to put either of us through that when we’d both rather be eating Weetabix on the sofa than getting pumped.
I replay the conversation from last night. I said out loud that we didn’t have sex. What did I say exactly? It feels deceitful.
‘Am I bad person?’ I ask Jackson, as if he can magically dispel my anxiety when he wasn’t even there, the jury lingering in the air around us.
‘Don’t be daft,’ he grumbles in his comforting, nonchalant Midlands accent, barely moving his lips to considerately mask his fish-tank morning breath.
‘Unstable then?’
We share the same Spotify account; he knows I pendulum from Kate Bush to Busta Rhymes to UK garage within ten minutes. It’s worrying.
‘You’re just hanging.’
He’s right. I know that, but in this nest of paranoia I don’t believe him. I’m due on my period so my anxiety is ramping up. Then I’m a fucking bitch whilst I’m on my period, so basically there are only twenty-six weeks in the year when I’m a nice normal person.
‘How do you know? You might be too close to see the signs?’
‘I just do.’ He sits up, at last – this act alone enough to improve my mood – his shoulders pressing into the headboard of our bed. He takes a sip of water, straps his Apple Watch on and reaches for his phone to look at BBC Sport. Without looking up, he says plainly, ‘You would have just chatted a lot of shit and danced. Dancing is good because it stops the chatting shit.’
My God, is he psychic?
‘It sounded like a normal, fun wedding – even if I wasn’t invited,’ he jokes. Still joking, he says, ‘Mia better not expect an invite to our wedding, that’s all I’m saying.’
He never talks about our wedding. He’s a don’t need a piece of paper to say you love someone type of person. Weddings are a waste of money. A scam. A hullabaloo.
‘I thought you weren’t getting married?’
‘IF.’
IFis new.
I’m too sensitive right now to question him, so I sit up too and brave my phone. We scroll in silence.
I see good old Ronks has taken it upon herself to missile the video of me catching Mia’s bouquet across to our ‘Friendship Never Ends’ WhatsApp group. I don’t want to watch it but the idea of them seeing it and me not cringes me even harder. I turn the volume right down so Jackson can’t hear. The look on my face though: lipstick – smudged. Hair in a high-pony like a Nineties WWE wrestler. Sweating like one too.
This isn’t exactly what I saw for myself at thirty to be honest, but here we are.
Thirty. FUCK. How did this happen? It’s really taken me by surprise, like a bath that runs too quick in a hotel room and is about to overspill and flood. I’ve woken from a long hot summer of twenty-nine years and suddenly a brutal everlasting winter is coming and I didn’t prepare for it because I’ve been dicking about, thinking I was immortal and that life had no consequences. Suddenly I’m scrambling around for miracle eye creams; am I meant to be making collagen bone-broths or to be vegan? Why did nobody warn me that UNLIKE ALL OTHER BODY HAIR if I plucked all my brows off as a teenager they’d take an entire lifetime to grow back? And now I’m just desperately waiting for the day they announce that skinny/bald brows are back in fashion. Why didn’t I drink more water? Gallons of the stuff. Why did I drink all that tea and stain my teeth? Nobody needs that much tea in one day, ever. Why didn’t I exercise and tone? I did eat two fistfuls of food as my portion sizes, but my fists were inside generous oven mittens. Or BOXING GLOVES. Why do I still wear the same bobbly bras I wore when I was nineteen? Why do I sleep in a massive oversized t-shirt for a marathon I definitely didn’t run? Why do I own so many fucking tote bags for corporate events I definitely didn’t go to? Why is my whole wardrobe full of clothes reserved for a Cinderella ball that I never get invited to because it doesn’t exist? Why am I excited to go to the Big Supermarket? Like it’s a day out. Only to find myself crying in that Big Supermarket, panic buying, my basket full of dark green leaves, vacuum-packed mackerel and Yakult. Overwhelmed by the vitamins. It’s time to take evening primrose, isn’t it? Burp up repeats of cod liver oil. I could have sworn that yesterday, when the cheap semi-permanent ‘chocolate’ box of a home hair dye kit hit my basket with a hopeful plop, the woman on the front of the packaging, with her perfectly shiny dark chocolate wig, jeered at me through her white-toothed smile and said, ‘You silly, silly girl.’
Oh, NOW you tell me I was meant to be taking care of my mental health the entire time too? Oh, for fuck’s sa—
Thirty years spent as an optimistic feminist and now I’m deemed an adult purely because of my age. I still secretly look at emerging girl bands and, honestly, in my head, I believe with my whole heart that I could slip in as a fifth member and the general public would be none the wiser. I thought that by now I’d have everything sorted and be a millionaire mother of five happy gorgeous children with reels of Super 8 footage of me looking glorious in a big floppy hat at the beach to play as a montage at my funeral to Spice Girls’ ‘Viva Forever’. I thought I’d be living in a mansion, CEO of some ginormous company, and have travelled the world. I’m not and I haven’t. What made me think that taking out that student loan was for fun times? I thought I’d be elected the next poet laureate and I’m not even on the poet laureate choosers’ radars. I thought I’d have a pierced belly button, for crying out loud! At the very least I thought I’d like the taste of anchovies, but I haven’t even become sophisticated enough for that. Even if I was a millionaire, turns out that in London, a million gets you a normal house. Not the house in Home Alone that I just assumed I’d be living in aged thirty. Put it this way – the thought of a child drawing me now scares me. Would they see me as an old woman? And why am I the only one with wrinkles anyway? Oh, because all my friends are secretly running off and betraying me by getting Botox and pretending it’s just ‘good foundation’.
I’m not being ungrateful; I’m just saying it how it is: thirty is the biggest disappointment since Sea-Monkeys. Look, I know I’m not old. I know thirty isn’t old. I get it. I’m just not there yet. I still have to make an ‘L’ to show me the difference between left and right. I still think I’m in a music video when I walk to the train station with my headphones in, listening to the same songs I always did with lyrics about our ‘thirties’ thinking thirty was so old!And oh, now I’m just still listening to that music without a shred of irony like nothing has changed, oh ha, ha, ha. Songs from my youth are making comebacks as samples. Kings of Leon’s ‘Sex On Fire’ probably counts as Dad-Rock. It’s DE-PRESS-ING. Sometimes I find myself googling how old actors were in films who once looked old to me to find out that they were in fact younger than I am now at the time of filming and they look like my friends. The dads in the films I used to watch as a kid look hot, like I’d be lucky to get with them. Fancying the boybands I used to like makes me feel like I need to hand myself in at the local police station.
I don’t feel old in my soul – that’s why it takes me by surprise that my knee cracks when all I’m doing is climbing a singular stair, that my back hurts for no reason other than I laid in a bed and slept. That if I were to ever have too many tequilas and perform a spontaneous roly-poly in a friend’s living room, I’d have to retreat for a week afterwards. That I have to listen to an audiobook so I don’t have to be alone with my thoughts. That I’m still gobsmacked at the price of a Freddo. It’s in the way teenager’s eyes pass over me like I’m nobody; they no longer want to mug me in the same way, never mind chat me up. And all those things I always said I was so sure would come back around … have not.
I message back: ahaha
Even though my face is not smiling one bit.
Ronks replies with a laughing face and sends back a photo of herself glowing at pregnancy yoga. And oh, and here’s that pie recipe I was telling you about.
See? We’re OLD.
Thanks Ronks x
I hope I didn’t tell Jackson I caught the bouquet last night? Cheesy rituals like this annoy him. They’re gimmicky. Tacky. Uncool. He hasn’t mentioned it but he’s obviously seen the massive bouquet of white fucking roses in our bedroom. If he asks, I’ll say I was given them. That they were left behind on the table at the end of the night. I can’t say the truth: that I chased, hunted and killed for them. It’s embarrassing, desperate. It’s out of character. An act of madness, maybe? A cry for help?
He comes up for air. ‘God, got sucked into a vortex there, hate this stupid thing.’ He throws his phone into the blankets. ‘Right.’ He springs up. ‘Coffee?’
Jackson works (long, stressful, boundary-less hours) at the ad-company KTPLT (catapult – don’t ask me why they’ve spelt it like that) – where I met him, just over five years ago, after they commissioned me to do some writing. It’s now where I continue to help out making their pitches and treatments poetic. I work from home, occasionally going into the office for a meeting (enjoy free snacks, feel sense of community). I remember the first time I met Jackson, this gentle giant, ducking down to shake my hand. The eye contact – true and deep. Snap. Talking in the meeting room with his colleagues, all strangers to me, Jackson made me feel so relaxed, his hands animated and open. I actually thought, at first, he’d be PERFECT for Aoife. The two of them would get on so well – they’re both kind and funny, with that nonjudgemental frankness that I subconsciously always look for in a person – but when I spoke, it was like I was reading on stage and he’d paid for the best seat, his elbow on the meeting table, his fingers twisting his ear, hanging on his lobe. He was flirting. I remember sharing an idea I had for a trainer ad that was so far-fetched and ridiculous (based on a folk story about how shoes were invented and involved covering the ground with fake-leather) and – for some reason – it tickled him. He laughed easily and freely, his face scrunched up, tears rolling down his cheeks, which obviously made me laugh. The rest of the room like what is going on here? His arms hugging his belly, how a child might, like I’d shot him in the stomach with an arrow of joy and he was protecting the wound from further attack. Every time I went to speak he’d surrender, no more, go away, I can’t take it. I knew I liked him and his Robert De Niro mole right then.
He never laughs at my stories like that any more.
‘You should have seen Mia yesterday,’ I say, grabbing my granola, shoving a handful into my mouth. ‘She looked so happy.’ So happy it was spooky.
‘Well, it was her wedding day?’ Jackson plunges the coffee.
‘It must be hard to be yourself though? With everybody watching. You must feel pressure to put on a show to give people a good day.’
‘Do people do that?’
‘You know what I mean.’
He does not. ‘Then they’re getting married for the wrong reasons.’
‘Why are you being so stabby?’
‘I’m not.’
‘She just looked … they both looked … so happy and in love. That teenage, electric, young love. You could feel it; it was contagious. I thought everybody lost that when they’ve been together a long time and they’re older.’
‘But a wedding is meant to be a celebration of love, so if there’s ever a day for it – it’s then, surely?’ He sips his black coffee, starts building his little protein shake. ‘But I can’t see why anybody feels the need to do a whole spectacle.’ He still hasn’t mentioned the flowers.
‘No, I can’t see why Mia would want to look absolutely princess-divine with the love of her life when she could be slobbing about in a just-shy-of-six-hundred-feet South London granny flat, in a bobbly jumper saying CARBS CLUB.’ I point at said jumper to make him laugh.
I load my spoon. ‘When you turned thirty, were you, like … happy with where you were?’
‘Are you crazy? Course I was. I had just met you,’ Jackson says matter-of-factly. It’s kind of hot actually.
‘Very cute. But you’d just split up with Nicole? And you’d been with her for ten years, so obviously you had a bit of a freak-out?’
‘I didn’t have a freak-out, Ella. Nicole cheated on me.’
‘See? Nicole had a freak-out about turning thirty.’
‘Sorry, why are you sticking up for my ex? Defending her for cheating on me because she turned thirty? I don’t think so.’ When Jackson is pushed, he shuts down and goes into a silent strop and sulks. We’re in the Red Zone. I have to win him back around.
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ Even though I do feel there is some truth in my theory. ‘Sorry. That’s horrible,’ I add.
I try to change the subject to something more light-hearted.
‘I can’t believe you liked me though – twenty-five-year-olds are so annoying!’ But I’m doing more damage than good here because I’m still quite annoying, so I stupidly dig further. ‘I can’t imagine fancying one now.’ Which is obviously offensive.
Jackson, instead of biting back, throws it back to me. ‘Why are you so obsessed with age right now? You’re sounding ageist.’ He does that laugh as he says it. The soft laugh he does when he’s saying something contentious.
‘You can’t be ageist against yourself.’
‘It’s just a number, El – get over it. Thirty-five isn’t old, so thirty definitely isn’t.’
I think about the way Aoife, Bianca and I used to cuss out old men who used to chat us up: ‘Ew, no way, you’re like thirty-five!’ That was literally the beginning and end of the entire cuss. And that’s now my appropriate category of men. That’s my genre. That is actually my boyfriend’s age. I want to write all those men an apology.
He adds, ‘If I was a footballer, I’d be washed up by now and I’ve made peace with that.’
‘No! You’d be one of the ex-players in the expensive shiny suits in the studio at half-time saying things like that goal was stunning.’
‘Haha.’ He likes this. ‘Anyway, I’m looking forward to getting older.’ His back to me at the sink.
‘Do you think we should have more … ’ any/some (?!?!) sex, is what I want to say. But I’m not even sure I do want more/any/some sex with Jackson. It’s the rejection/neglect bit that worries me, not the lack of orgasms. Is that bad? I want to be with Jackson. I want to be close to him and do life with him. Course, I’m not going to lie, it’s not ideal to not have sex with my partner, creeping off to bed each night with a Sarah Waters novel under my arm, popping my head round the door like how someone might let their boss know they’re leaving the office for the night. But not everyone has everything. And not everyone has what we have. Companionship. Understanding. We’re a team. We have one another’s backs. It’s someone to sit up with in the dark when you can’t sleep. Someone to root for you. Someone who knows what to order for you from any menu. Someone to face the world with – the bills and bad news. You’re invested, in each other and the big dreams. Each day, we go off on our individual life trails and we meet back up at the end, pockets full of pebbles we’ve collected, and we pour them out on the kitchen table. Look what I found. Look what I did. Listen to what happened to me today. Someone to run weird paranoias past like if I’ve left back door open, or the iron – that I never even use – on. Or if a friend doesn’t reply to my text and I immediately decide they’ve broken up with me.
But I finish my sentence with ‘ … dates?’
‘We’ve just bought the flat,’ he tries. ‘Give us a minute.’
At risk of sounding like a nymphomaniac, I say, ‘You never try it on with me; you never feel me up.’
And he snaps right back, ‘You never try it on with me! You NEVER feel me up!’ Still at the sink, his back still turned.
Can’t really argue with that.
‘Still wouldn’t mind getting shoved against the wall and getting absolutely railed from time to time though.’ I smile.
I’ve got his attention as he turns at this, drying his hands. We both splutter with laughter. He twists his ear. Flirting. He leans against the kitchen counter, folds his arms across his chest, thumbs under his pits in that casual way I like. Tips his head to the side like he’s properly considering shoving me against the wall, like he might actually do it. He’s playing out in his mind what an act like that might look like. His eyes lock onto mine – PING! – a little side smile. There he is. Fit. In the background Absolute Radio plays The Cure and has the nerve to call it ‘new music’. He staggers towards me, ducking down to kiss me, those long arms pulling me in, hands looped around my seated bum. He pulls me closer in the chair; the legs grunt across the wooden floor. Jackson always holds my face in his hands when we kiss. Like in The Notebook. I try to concentrate and be in the moment but can only think of the onlooking houses that can see directly into our kitchen. I found that out the hard way whilst twisting in a forkful of spaghetti only to find I was bolted into awkward eye contact with the choir teacher from across the small garden who was, at the time, eating what looked like a battered sausage.
Jackson bends down before me, his forearms resting across my lap. He butts his forehead into mine with a romantic force. Our faces so close our noses touch, eyes to eyes. He smiles and points out my freckles. They always burst out after the summer. He begins to count, laughs and says, ‘I’ve lost count.’ He dips his nose on the end of mine, nuzzling. Digging his jaw into my neck for what we call nibbles – minutes of teethy animal biting that make me contort tensely and squeal. Jackson’s bites are just the right pressure. Not limp or pathetic. They’re full of intent, accompanied by indistinct murmurs. Strong. He’s like a giant fit lion right now; I’m wanted in his grip.
I love you,he says.
And I love you.
We kiss again.
And that’s it. He’s off on his routine. Oh. I can already hear the electric toothbrush purring. Him spitting in the sink. Returning in his offensive costume change: running stuff. Oh, the betrayal. He plops his exhausted trainers on the floor, sits at the table next to me and rolls trainer socks onto his very long feet. He knows he’s annoying me with his cleanliness and gumption. Smug little shit.
‘Coming?’
‘Do you really want a breathless pug snuffling next to you?’
He laughs. Too loud. And doesn’t even say anything to make me think I’m not a breathless pug. Then he downs his coffee, bangs the empty cup assertively on the table and zips up his windbreaker. With that ‘right’ again, slams his hands on his thighs and stands to leave.
‘Don’t you want to just go to the café and eat a fat breakfast instead?’
‘Nope.’ He pats his belly like just the idea has put half a stone on.
‘Have fun.’ I pour out more cereal.
‘Do some writing?’ he says caringly. ‘That makes you happy.’
‘Yeah, maybe?’ I say. Knowing the only one of us that work makes truly happy is Jackson.
The door slams and I’m alone in the granny flat with my laptop. It’s a horrible place here: a chaotic desktop of KTPLT campaigns I don’t believe in and unfinished projects. My inbox now just a squat-den for barking estate agents, newsletters I swear I never signed up for and links to reset all my forgotten passwords. The blank page is so threatening. And there’s my book, waiting for that final tidy and sprinkle of magic. 99,081 words. I can’t open it today; what if I think it’s shit and make irrational edits? I have to protect my work from myself.
Instead, I type into Google: is it OK to be with someone your whole life and not have sex?
Great, that will be Viagra adverts for the rest of my life then.
I type: I love my boyfriend but I’m not sure I’m IN love, advice?
The advice? bit is weak.
Links pop up for therapy and intimacy counselling. A holiday – yeah, no shit, thanks. Role play. Bedroom kinks. Maybe this will reignite our bond? Lead to our path of tantric sex and roly-poly sixty-nines. I begin to slide into a rabbit hole. Does this count as porn? What if I click onto an illegal advert by mistake and see something I can’t unsee? Will the police come? Or will my bank details be suddenly leaked? Or what if a pimp gets ahold of my pictures and puts them on the heads of porn stars and then uses them as collateral and wants 50k to take the pictures down? I don’t have that kind of cash.
I slam my laptop lid shut.
I know. I’ll tidy the flat. Win back some control. Something productive. Fresh start. As of right now. No drinking – I’ll get an app and everything. DAY ZERO. Pledged. Healthy eating. Get a Filofax.
I should probably face Mia’s browning flowers. What am I meant to do with them? Put them in water? Hang them upside down to dry them out or dash them in the bin? Is it unlucky to throw out wedding flowers? Will I get cursed?
The second the stems touch my palm, it happens. I think of him. His name, an apple that falls from the tree in the garden of my thoughts, the heaviest, dustiest book from a shelf in the library of my mind. LOWE.
My heart stops. I swallow the feeling. He does this – occurs to me from time to time. It always makes me feel the same: sad for myself and bad on Jackson for even thinking of another guy. But hold on, did I text him last night? What was I thinking? Oh, God, where is my bloody phone? I throw clothes and towels in the air without strategy. Pins and needles shoot through my hands. Heart rate rises. Found it, right on the drawers where I left it, of course. I check to make sure I didn’t send a message. Please. Please. Please … Nothing. Thank FUCK.
My phone pings in my hand. It’s Dad; his texts read like Post-it notes.
Vi said caught bouquet!? New suit?
Bloody Instagram!
I text back: no, Dad. You don’t need to get a new suit.