Chapter 21 #2
This was a kind of limbo, but moving forward we would need to confront how successful it had been. Or not. There was comfort in the limbo, the sameness of routine that seemed to anchor us in the isolation we were still firmly entrenched in.
The rest of the UK was slowly opening back up, but for us, nothing had changed. Because of how vulnerable Mum was, we were ‘shielding’ until her medical team told us otherwise.
I’d just settled into bed after talking to Jihoon.
We hadn’t talked for long because he was going for an early morning run, but it had also felt like he hadn’t wanted to talk to me.
I didn’t want to force him when he obviously didn’t want to, I just didn’t know what was going on with him.
I had an icky feeling in my gut that seemed to make the rest of me anxious, so when Becka’s name popped up on my phone screen, I grabbed at it, eager to have the distraction.
“Hey, you!” I injected as much pep into my tone as possible.
“Hey babes, you busy?” She sounded as strained as I felt.
“Nope, just settling in for the night. What’s up?”
“Oh yeah, you know. Just wanted to catch up.” There was an unnatural quality to her voice that put me on edge.
Recently, I’d noticed that Becka was also beginning to show the strain of constant uncertainty.
Whenever we spoke, she fluctuated between griping about Pisces – who still hadn’t given her Celine’s job, despite asking her to take on the duties – and being frustrated with Ben, for one reason or another.
“I just got back from a hike, and Ben’s out doing whatever-the-fuck he does, so I thought, ‘hey, what’s my best friend up to’?”
There was a frantic pattering sort of sound beneath her words.
“Becka, are you pacing?”
The pattering immediately stopped.
“Sorry,” she muttered, “still got some energy left.”
She’d started hiking just to get out of the house and do something. When she’d told me, I’d remembered back to the one time we’d gone hiking, not long before I’d left. We’d started on a very low-impact trail, with our protein bars, and electrolyte water, ready to dive into nature.
We’d ended the brief foray into nature’s bosom, not talking, not a single unscratched knee between us, snacks lost and a pair of sunglasses broken.
When I’d recently asked her about this questionable choice of activity, all she’d been willing to admit was that it was largely about getting out of the apartment.
Which I took to mean, ‘get away from Ben’, who was still living in my old room.
She had that antsy quality about her now.
“Becka, is everything okay?”
To my alarm, she laughed. But it was the kind of laugh that was closer to manic than amusement.
“Becka, what’s wrong?” I asked sharply, sitting up in bed.
“Nothing!” She cried. “That’s the problem. Nothing!”
“I don’t understand.”
I peeled the covers off my legs as if I could get out of bed and make my way to the airport.
She made a noise that was somewhere between a giggle and a gurgle.
“Look,” I said impatiently, “hang on.” I pulled the phone away from my ear and pressed the camera icon. I needed to see what I was dealing with. It took a moment, but eventually, Becka turned on her camera.
“Fucking hell,” I gasped, “why does your face look like that?”
Becka looked stricken. Stretched thin and pale, like her patience was all in her face and it was about to snap. Dark shadows smudged under her eyes, making them appear wide with an expression that – if I didn’t know better – looked like… grief?
“Becka, what’s going on, and I swear to God, if you say ‘nothing’ one more time I’ll–”
“I’m not okay,” she croaked, chin trembling. “I thought I was, but I’m not.”
I sighed, sitting back down.
“Talk to me,” I said gently.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said, and she sounded baffled. Becka was always so certain. She had such a no-nonsense approach to life. I’d envied that certainty over the years.
“Can you narrow it down for me?” I coaxed, although I suspected I knew where this was going.
When she’d first told me that Ben was effectively moving back in with her, I’d honestly expected them to pick up where they’d left off but that had been months ago, and since then, all I could get out of her were various monologues of how unsure she was about the whole thing.
“It’s Ben,” she said, confirming my suspicion. “I think–I think this might have been a mistake.”
“What’s that fucker done now?” My eyes narrowed to thin slits as I watched my best friend shrink into herself.
“Nothing-”
“Becka,” I growled, “this is clearly not ‘nothing’!”
To my ever-increasing alarm, Becka burst into tears. Great, heaving sobs. Somewhere in the middle of them, she manage to prop her phone up, granting me the view of her slumping down on the kitchen island, face buried in her arms as her shoulders heaved.
I watched for what seemed like minutes. Helpless.
Eventually, Becka lifted her face. It was streaked with tears.
I let her catch her breath before I said anything.
“Has he done something?” My voice was quiet thunder. Because if he had–
“Its-not-that,” Becka gulped, forcing words out between hiccups.
“I don’t know what’s going on! He won’t talk to me!
” She wailed, and descended into another fit of crying that it took a couple of minutes before she settled enough to get words out.
“I keep trying to talk to him about… about when he just… left me, and he keeps trying to act like nothing happened!”
Becka grabbed a roll of kitchen tissue, tore off a sheet, and proceeded to loudly blow her nose.
For just a moment, I was back in the tiny flat I’d rented in London, listening to my best friend on the phone as she wailed, inconsolable, unable to understand why the man she’d planned on spending the rest of her life with had just left.
Same girl, same wound. Years apart.
“Like, Ky, it happened!” She cried, looking at me with an expression that bordered on desperation. “One day, he just left, and he never told me why. That happened!”
My heart clenched for my best friend, and this rare moment of total vulnerability.
She and Ben had been together for years by the time he’d left. She’d gone to work in the morning, and by the time she had come home, he was gone. All his stuff had been cleared out of their apartment. He hadn’t left a note, he hadn’t tried to call her. He’d just disappeared.
She’d called me immediately, even though it had been past 2 am for me in London.
The only reason she hadn’t called the police was because we’d reasoned that he must be okay if he’d been able to clear his things out.
Even so, Becka had phoned his parents just to confirm for herself he was still alive.
Once she’d calmed down, she was able to fully comprehend that her first love had just… left
Becka had been left devastated in a way I’d never seen before. It was like she was ground zero and he had been a bomb. In a way, she still was.
She’d taken the attitude that if he could just up and leave, she could clear him out of her life just as easily, but I don’t think she really had. I think she’d just slapped a plaster over the hole in her chest and moved on, feeling it with every step.
I’d seen the change in her. She’d always been wry. She’d always been sceptical, but since then, it had become something sadder. Now, she always expected to be proven right about a person’s bad intentions.
“I know it happened,” I said calmly
“So why won’t he talk about it?” Becka made a sound of frustration, dropping her head into her hands, shoulders hunched. My fingers twitched towards the screen before I clenched my fists, blinking to clear the burn in my eyes.
“He just kept saying, ‘what’s done is done’, and that’s not good enough for me. Even now, after all these years, marriage isn’t on the table for him.”
“Marriage?” I squeaked, “I didn’t know that was a thing you were thinking about.” Becka rolled her eyes, but it was wild, more panic than contempt.
“Yeah, that was pretty much Ben’s reaction to it, too. Like, it’s brand new information that might be something I’d expect after four years together.”
My eyebrows raised, but I held my tongue as I watched Becka look up, blinking furiously.
“He keeps saying, “it’s only been a few months,” but it hasn’t!
” Her voice raised as her eyes lowered to collide with mine.
“It hasn’t been months, Ky. But even if it had been,” she enunciated the words like they had personally offended her, “at what point do you decided to start considering if the person you’re in a live-in relationship with might be the person you want to commit to? ”
Becka paused, and she seemed to be expecting a response.
“Is that something you want?” I worked hard to keep any judgement out of my tone.
Her jaw clenched as she looked down at her fingernails, and when she next spoke, she addressed them instead of me.
“No. Maybe. I don’t know. If he’d asked me before he left, I would have said yes. It was where I thought we were going, y’know?”
This time when she looked up at me, it was like she was begging me to understand, her eyes imploring, and it made me remember all the times she’d said Ben was making her feel like she was going crazy with how he refused to talk about the way he’d left.
I had wondered if she’d felt that way because she was questioning herself for taking him back, despite it all.
“I don’t know if I want to marry him,” she said, “but I do know that I deserve better than for someone to not even put it on the table for me. After four fucking years.”
I stared at her, willing my face not to say something I wouldn’t want put into words.
Instead, I changed track entirely and said, “Damn right, sister. Know your worth.” Becka snorted and lowered her face.
I pretended not to notice the thumb she dragged under her eyes.
If she wanted me to acknowledge it, she wouldn’t have hid it.
After a moment, Becka raised her head, and I could see the metaphorical bricks she was placing in her wall, building herself back up.
Eventually, she took a big breath in through her nose, let it out slowly, and turned to me.
“I don’t want to do this again,” she said, and even if she was outwardly calm, I heard the tremor in her voice.
“It was bad when he left, but this… it feels like he’s still gone.
It’s like, he’s here. He’s in the kitchen or he’s working in his room.
He’s physically here, but he never really came back, and I still don’t know why.
I’m living with a ghost, and it’s starting to make me feel like one. ”
“Becka,” I murmured, “don’t do this to yourself.”
“I’m not,” she said sharply, and then, “I won’t. I can’t. If he won’t talk about it, then its over. Whatever this is, whatever it was, or ever could have been.”
“What will you do now?” I asked.
Becka nodded decisively, and I watched in awe, and concern, at the way she straightened her back.
“What I should have done months ago.”
“I wish I was there.” I swallowed thickly.
Becka looked back at the screen, fixing me with a steely gaze.
“Babes, even from five-and-a-half thousand miles away, you have been here for me. Stop beating yourself up for being exactly where you need to be physically.”
I shrank back, slightly, but nodded.
“What can I do?”
“Not let me do this again.” Her chin trembled, but in the next moment I saw her jaw clench.
August
Becka kicked Ben out. It was quiet. She packed his things one day while he was running errands, and then when he got back and saw what she had done, he proved her right all over again when he didn’t put up a fight.
I sat with her for hours that night, listening to her cry.
But then it was done.
Jihoon called me every day, though it felt like we barely talked. I asked him about his day, he asked me about mine and then I put my phone on the bedside table and watched over him as he slept as I quietly went about my day.
He wasn’t okay, but I didn’t know how to help when it felt like he was pushing me away.
I had asked, I had pressed. He’d told me, “I need to work through something myself, jagiya. Please don’t ask me about it.”
And as much as that hurt, I wanted to respect his boundaries. So, I didn’t ask. And it killed me.
Somewhere between Becka’s bravery at reclaiming her emotional agency, and my Mum’s assurance that I could do whatever I put my mind to, I found the courage to find something for myself.
I decided to apply to do another course at university.
After all, everyone was right when they pointed out that it wasn’t like I was doing anything else with my life.
But this was my life, so I needed to act like it.
At first I’d sort of gone through the application on a whim, but as I went further and further through the process, I found a kind of motivation that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I was waking up, and it felt bloody good.
It felt like purpose.
I waited weeks, growing more and more anxious with every day that passed, no longer able to lose myself in other people’s dramas, so absorbed with this path that I’d chosen that I’d even started learning what I could while I waited.
I checked out books on journalism from online libraries, I subscribed to dozens of writers who I admired on social media. I read more magazines and papers than I had in years.
Until, one day at the end of the month, I received an email.
Subject: Offer of Place – Online BA (Hons) Journalism (September Intake)
Dear Miss Thompson,
Thank you for your recent application to our BA (Hons) Journalism (Online, 2-Year Accelerated Route) course beginning in September 2020. We are pleased to inform you that your application has been successful, and we are delighted to offer you a place on the programme.
Your portfolio, including your recent Loop articles, together with your A level qualifications, demonstrated the strong writing ability, curiosity, and commitment that we value in our students. We believe you will make a valuable contribution to the course.
In the coming weeks, you will receive a welcome pack containing further details about enrolment, timetabling, and access to online learning resources. Please confirm your acceptance of this offer by replying to this email at your earliest convenience.
Congratulations once again on your achievement. We look forward to welcoming you in September and supporting you as you develop your skills and professional practice in journalism.
Warm regards,
Jenny Walton
Admissions Team
London College of Arts