Chapter 13
Ella was jittery with nerves as she walked into the coffee shop. But fair was fair. Roly had applied for Jobseeker’s Allowance, so now she had to uphold her end of the bargain and go through with this.
Andrew was already there, smiling up at the waitress who stood by his table, charming her no doubt.
He was such an incorrigible flirt. For a moment, she was tempted to turn and run.
She’d thought it would be easier to suggest meeting for a coffee in the afternoon; it would feel less like she was asking him on a date.
But now she wanted a darkened bar with alcohol to soften the jagged edges of her nerves.
Then Andrew looked up and saw her, his mouth widening in a smile, and the moment passed. When she reached his table, he stood and kissed her cheek, then called the waitress back to take her order. By the time their coffee arrived, her anxiety had melted away. It was just Andrew.
‘You look really well,’ he said.
‘Thanks. I am.’
He was as handsome as ever, the smattering of freckles across his broad nose and high cheekbones still giving him a boyish air.
She studied his face wonderingly. He seemed almost a stranger now, yet she used to kiss that wide mouth, those full, pouty lips.
His thick dark hair was cut shorter now; his curls didn’t flop over his forehead in the way she used to love.
She could still feel its softness brushing against her fingers.
‘It’s great to see you again, Ella. I was glad to hear from you.’
‘You didn’t think it was weird, me contacting you out of the blue like that?’
‘No, not at all. It was a surprise – a nice one. I’ve often thought about you – considered calling you. But I wasn’t sure how welcome that would be, so I could never get up the nerve.’
She smiled, startled by the admission.
‘So, what are you up to now? Tell me everything.’
She told him about her job at Citizens of the Wild, their dress-up Fridays and karaoke nights, the climbing wall in the break room…
‘Sounds like your worst nightmare.’
‘I know, but I’m actually really enjoying working there, and the people are so nice. It pays well too.’
‘What do you do there?’
She shrugged. ‘A bit of everything – general admin, some book-keeping. I work on marketing a lot, running ad campaigns and managing the company’s social media accounts. It’s interesting.’
‘So you’ve sold your soul to Mammon,’ he said with a smile.
For fuck’s sake! ‘No, I haven’t. There’s no pact with the Devil involved.
It’s just a regular office job with regular people that allows me to pay rent and stop living on benefits.
’ He’d always done this, she remembered now.
When they were students, he’d made a virtue of being broke, not only scrounging money off her, but trying to shame her for having it to give in the first place.
For some reason he thought being skint automatically gave him the moral high ground, even if it meant leeching off someone else’s hard work – just as long as he wasn’t the one ‘selling out’. It had always pissed her off.
‘Being sick has given me a different perspective. It’s made me more appreciative of—’
‘The superficial things in life?’
Oh, grow up! Instead of rising to his bait, she said ‘Yeah, maybe it has. Because the superficial things in life can be pretty great – being able to buy some new clothes or to go out for a meal, not having that constant nagging worry about how you’re going to pay your bills or buy your next cup of coffee. ’
He wouldn’t know about that, because being broke was just a posture for Andrew.
It was something he played at. He had no idea what it was really like to live with that constant background hum of anxiety that intermittently escalated into full-on panic, like intervals on a relentless treadmill.
He’d probably never experienced the dizzying feeling when you logged into your bank account and held your breath as you checked the balance.
‘Being high-minded and above all that is a luxury some of us can’t afford. ’
Maybe Andrew had done all the growing up he wanted to do. It occurred to her that he’d pursued an academic career partly because he couldn’t let go of the student life he loved. He’d wanted to stay in college so he could carry on as he always had, being nobly skint and flirting with undergraduates.
‘Sorry. I’m not having a go. I’d just hate to see you waste that first-class mind of yours.’
‘I’m not. I do intend to go back and do my PhD eventually.
’ She was being unfair. She knew working in academia wasn’t about an unwillingness to grow up.
After all, it was what she had wanted for herself.
If things had been different, she’d be in the same place he was now.
Andrew had always been her biggest supporter, spurring her on to achieve more, encouraging her to keep her eyes on the prize and not let herself get side-tracked from her goals.
He’d pushed her to fulfil her potential, and she’d felt like a better version of herself when she was with him.
‘But it’ll be a while before I can afford to do that.’
‘Well, just don’t get too used to the money or you might find it hard to go back to being a student.’
‘It’s not just about the money, though. I want to do something less intense for a while, to ease myself back into work.’
He nodded. ‘That makes sense.’ He took a gulp of coffee.
‘Really? You’re not going to give me grief about it? Even when I took a summer job at Top Shop, you gave me a load of shit about acting in bad faith and being a “slave to the man”.’
‘I was a young idiot, in love with Sartre and the sound of my own voice.’
She smiled, surprised at the self-mockery. Maybe she was wrong, thinking he hadn’t grown up at all. He didn’t used to have that kind of self-awareness.
‘Honestly, sometimes I’ve fantasised about doing that myself – just getting some mindless clerical job for a while and taking a break from all the pressure.’
‘So, what about you? What have you been up to?’
‘Still pounding the hallowed halls of academia. I have a temporary lecturing post and I’m doing a lot of research at the moment on theories of punishment and social control in relation to social media. I’m presenting a paper on it at a symposium next month.’
‘Well done. It sounds like you’re achieving everything you were aiming for.’
‘Oh, and my doctoral thesis was the basis of a chapter in a book co-authored by Cyril Leavy. It was published last year.’
Cyril Leavy had been Andrew’s thesis supervisor. ‘Congratulations! I didn’t know.’
‘Well, it wasn’t exactly a bestseller.’ There was that self-deprecation again. It was new and she liked it. ‘I’m really glad we’re doing this. I wanted to call you so many times. But I always chickened out.’
She frowned. ‘Why?’
He shrugged. ‘I felt shitty about the way things ended.’ He glanced away. ‘I should have talked to you, instead of… disappearing, basically.’
There’d been no drama in their break-up. Andrew hadn’t shagged her best friend or dumped her for someone else or even ghosted her. He’d just quietly slid out of her life, so gradually she couldn’t even say exactly when it had ended.
‘It must have been confusing for you. I mean, it’s not as if we’d been having problems in the relationship.’
‘Hadn’t we?’ She could hardly remember now, but she seemed to recall arguments. ‘Anyway, it wasn’t that hard to figure out. It was my illness, wasn’t it?’
He grimaced.
‘I’m not accusing you of anything,’ she said quickly. ‘I mean, I get it. It was kind of impossible to be in a relationship with me then.’
‘That makes me sound like such a dick.’
‘No! It’s understandable. We were young. It was a lot for a twenty-something to be lumbered with. Believe me, if I could have run away from it, I would have.’
He sighed. ‘I guess I just didn’t like always being the asshole, you know?’
She frowned, puzzled.
‘I mean, you were sick. You couldn’t help it, and you were dealing with this huge, life-changing thing. My problems seemed – were – ridiculous in comparison. If I’d had a bad day or, I don’t know, got a terrible haircut—’
Ella laughed. ‘Oh my God, that time you got the mullet!’
He grinned. ‘Okay, that was a ridiculous problem. But I never felt like I could talk about my bad day because you’d always had a worse one.
You’d had a whole year of them. I couldn’t complain about a bad meal in a restaurant or a horrible train journey because you couldn’t even go to a restaurant or get on a train.
It was like there was no room for my feelings – no space for me to be a bit down or disappointed. ’
‘I get it. You didn’t feel entitled to your feelings.’
‘This is going to sound like such a cliché, but it wasn’t you. I didn’t like who I was in our relationship.’
‘You were tiptoeing around me the whole time. It sounds like it was all about me.’
‘Because it had to be all about you, I understood that. What you were dealing with was… all-consuming.’
That was true. It had eaten away at her entire life, swallowed everything down whole, including her relationship with him.
‘I guess I was just too immature to deal with it,’ he said with a shrug.
‘You didn’t have to. It wasn’t that I was any more mature or brave or anything. I just didn’t have any choice.’
‘Still, I felt so guilty for abandoning you when you most needed someone. I wish I’d handled it better, been there for you. I wouldn’t blame you if you hate me.’
‘I don’t hate you.’ She smiled. If she was honest, she’d been more relieved than anything when he’d dumped her because making an effort for him had been exhausting and it meant she could finally give up.
They’d stopped going out because it took too much out of her, and she’d conserved all her energy for the nights they’d spend together.
She’d tried to be a good girlfriend – engaged, sympathetic, interesting, sexy – but as her illness progressed, it became more and more of a strain, and one she couldn’t afford.
Sex had become a chore that she avoided as much as possible and got through increasingly rarely in an attempt to preserve the relationship, her nerves jangling with the strain of trying to enjoy it when really she just wanted it to be over so she could sleep.
When they broke up, any sadness she’d felt had been far outweighed by the bliss of being able to surrender to vegging out in front of the TV.
‘Don’t beat yourself up about it,’ she told him now. ‘You were young, you’re supposed to be immature.’
He looked at her wonderingly. ‘You’re amazing.’
‘Really? Based on what?’
‘Sorry?’
‘What’s so amazing about me? Be specific.’
He laughed. ‘I’d forgotten how exacting you can be.’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t like those vague meaningless compliments. How did you reach this conclusion? Show your work.’
‘No, I like that you don’t let me get away with lazy thinking – keeps me on my toes.’
‘So tell me – what’s so amazing about me?’
‘Well, this for a start – your intellectual rigour, the way you don’t just take a compliment lying down.’
She laughed. ‘I’m glad you like that because, believe me, it’s not a popular attribute.’
‘You’re also kind and wise and forgiving of human frailty, and I like that underneath your tough, snarky exterior you have an incredibly good heart. You have no time for sloppy sentimentality, but you’re upfront and honest about your feelings. You’re the most authentic person I’ve ever met.’
‘Wow! I do sound kind of amazing.’
‘And I like that when a guy gives you a compliment, your response is to challenge it and interrogate his reasoning.’
‘Yeah, I could have just said thanks.’
‘But then you wouldn’t be you.’
‘So I haven’t debunked your proposition that I’m amazing?’
‘No, you’ve rather confirmed it. This is exactly what I love about you.’
Love. Not loved. She was taken aback by his casual use of the present tense. ‘So where are you living now?’ she asked.
‘I have an apartment in Stoneybatter.’
‘Do you… live alone?’
‘Yeah, I do.’
‘So, are you seeing anyone?’
‘No.’ A slow smile crept across his face. ‘I’m not.’ He reached across the table and took her hand, and she felt a spark of something she hadn’t had in a long time.
Could this really happen, she wondered. Could they pick up where they left off?
‘How about you?’
‘Hmm?’
‘You mentioned paying rent. So you’re not still living with your mother?’
‘No. I’m actually living with Roly Punch.’ She raised her eyebrows in a can-you-believe-it expression.
‘Oh!’ He jerked back, releasing her hand.
‘Oh no, not like that!’ She grabbed his hand. ‘We’re not shacking up or anything. We’re just… housemates.’
‘How did that happen?’
‘Long story.’
He gave her a slow smile. ‘I’ve got plenty of time. Another coffee?’