Chapter 33
Bleurgh. I regret to report that it’s happening again: the inclination to slip into hibernation mode.
But I really, really don’t want to get back into bad habits, don’t want to let life stress get on top of me and throw me off my studies again this year.
So I decide to do something different, and just force myself to carry on as usual while I figure out what to do.
Because, of course, I have to do something.
Whether that’s telling my mum or not telling my mum, both of those things are doing something.
One is disrupting, the other is lying. I don’t particularly want to do either.
The weight of responsibility is an unfamiliar feeling and I do not care for it, I have to say.
Second year has been an absolute scam. First Year was so easy breezy, just bopping around and indulging crushes and finding out I’m actually quite good at art history and getting into Quad Magazine and making friends.
Second year is altogether too real for me, I’m afraid.
Stephen is, of course, blowing up my phone with texts and calls and even emails – not sure he’s emailed me before in his life, but so great is his consternation that he must try every possible line of communication.
I’m letting him sweat, refusing to answer every call but not blocking his number because I want him to have the false hope that I might actually answer this time.
I want him to listen to the ringing and think that maybe I’m going to pick up.
I can tell from his texts that I have not, in fact, misinterpreted the situation.
Mary-Elizabeth, please talk to me.
We need to talk.
Please don’t tell your mum.
Can we please talk?
Have you told her yet? I can’t tell if she’s being off with me today or if it’s just a coincidence.
Oh, Stephen, you absolute idiot.
I’m home alone; both Aleesha and Morgan are out at lectures and I’m just lying on the sofa staring at the ceiling, wondering what to do, when the doorbell rings.
It’s never anything good. Always the Jehovah’s Witnesses trying to convert me.
But it might be a delivery for either of my flatmates, so I grudgingly trudge to the door in my polka-dot pyjamas and chic Moroccan slippers with a pom-pom on the toes.
I swing the door open, ready to receive whatever mystery item the girls have ordered, when –
‘Ah, I did remember right,’ Laurie says with a smile.
‘Oh! It’s you!’ I say, more than a little taken aback. For a moment we just stand there, not sure what to do next. ‘Do you . . . want to come in?’
‘If you’re not busy?’
‘I’m not busy,’ I say, fighting my natural urge to slam the door in his face and run to my room to change out of my pyjamas and put on a full face of make-up. Although something about him makes me feel like I’m allowed to be an unpolished version of myself.
‘I thought maybe you needed someone to talk to.’ Laurie steps into my flat and I close the door behind us.
‘How did you know where I live?’
‘When you slept at mine, before you left you told me your address in case you needed taking home again . . . and I remembered it. Or at least, I thought I did. Turns out I actually did. Sorry if . . . if it’s weird, me coming here?’
I shake my head quickly. ‘Not weird. Nice.’
He swallows and nods, relieved. I gesture for him to sit on the sofa.
‘Do you want a –’ I begin, but he cuts me off.
‘Horrible, lovely, milky coffee?’ he suggests.
I nod. ‘Exactly.’
‘Sounds delicious.’
Standing in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil, a profound sense of peace comes over me.
Laurie is here. Laurie will, if not help, then not make things actively worse.
And more to the point, I don’t need to perform for him, don’t need to impress him, don’t need to chase him.
And I can’t help but wonder what would have happened last night if we hadn’t been rudely interrupted by stupid Stephen being a cheating dickhead.
Would there have been a kiss? No, probably not.
I think Laurie’s too shy for that. But I’m not.
Would I have felt it was the right thing to do?
Or would I have sensed that was too much for him, too quickly?
I’d like to think the evening would have ended on a hopeful note, rather than me dashing off to the tube station, leaving Laurie slightly bewildered in a hail of apologies shouted over my shoulder.
I hand him a steaming mug and sit down next to him on the sofa.
‘How are you today?’ he asks simply.
‘I have been better.’
‘Do you want to tell me what’s going on?’
I sigh, but nod. ‘I saw my stepdad cheating on my mum at the restaurant last night. That was why we had to leave.’
‘God,’ he says, shaking his head.
‘And he saw me through the window and is now ringing me non-stop and texting me and emailing me, asking me to talk.’
‘Do you want to talk to him?’
I shrug. ‘I’m waiting to figure out what the right approach is.’
‘And I assume your mum doesn’t know?’
I shake my head. ‘Nope.’
‘Are you two close?’
I shake my head again, take a sip of the coffee. Perfectly horrible in its own special way. ‘Not really. We have a bit of a difficult relationship, and I think this would absolutely tip it over the edge if I told her. Like it would be my fault, you know?’
‘And do you think not telling her would damage your relationship too?’
‘Exactly. I think if I didn’t tell her, and she found out that I knew . . . I don’t think she would be able to forgive me for that. I think she would think I was judging her or . . . mocking her, somehow, for having this knowledge about her that she didn’t have. It’s complicated.’
‘No, I understand,’ Laurie says gently.
‘I think maybe . . . what’s rattling me the most is that I don’t know anything.
Like I don’t know anything about anything!
All my life I thought my mum was the problem with all her flirting, but actually it’s my stepdad who’s .
. . who’s . . . the cheater,’ I say, barely able to believe it myself.
‘What’s even the point of me? This whole year has just been one thing after another proving to me that I don’t know the first thing about relationships and dating and romance, can’t give good advice to other people and can’t make good decisions for myself! I’m useless!’
Laurie’s brown eyes soften. ‘You’re not useless. You’re the least useless person I’ve ever met.’
‘Really?’ I ask pathetically.
‘Really. You’re so dynamic . . . always trying things. You don’t need to know everything. You just need to keep trying. Doing what you think is the right thing to do.’
‘The right thing to do would be Stephen telling her. Whatever way she finds out, it’s going to be quite shit for her – they’ve been married for, like . . . ten years? So he’s not just some random boyfriend. But him telling her would be the least shit approach.’
‘Can’t you tell him that then? That you’ll tell her if he doesn’t, and that will negatively impact your relationship with her, and this is something he could do for both of you to dampen the blow?’
‘I . . . I had thought of that, but hadn’t thought about it from the angle that it would be helping me as much as anyone else. Maybe that will appeal to him – if he thinks he’s doing me a favour after putting me in this situation, you know?’
‘It’s worth a try,’ Laurie says, nudging my knee with his, and amid all the anxiety and stress about my mum and Stephen, I feel .
. . warm. Calm. Safe. Excited, too, by the feeling of Laurie’s knee against mine, the warmth and the presence of him, being able to breathe in his clean, powdery scent, but mostly just . . . good.
‘I think you’re right. Thank you, Laurie. Thank you for coming over,’ I say, and with a sigh I rest my head on his shoulder.
We sit in silence together, and the longer the silence lasts, the closer our legs move towards each other.
This is not necessarily what I was expecting to happen when he came over today.
But maybe it’s happening. My heart starts beating fast and I’m overwhelmed with an urge.
‘Laurie,’ I say, my head still on his shoulder, very much not looking at him.
‘For some reason I really want to kiss you now.’
‘I . . . I think that would be OK,’ he says, taking a deep breath.
I raise my head off his shoulder and lean towards him, our lips almost meeting when –
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Another knock on the door. What timing! What pure-evil timing!
A confident, strong rap of the knuckles.
I would be very surprised if that was Stephen – he doesn’t have the guts to knock on a door so assertively – but I will be very pissed off if it is.
‘Laurie, I’ll be back in a second. Don’t go anywhere, I’m just going to see who that is. ’
He nods and I leave him sitting on the sofa. On the assumption that it’s not Stephen, I pause in the hall for a second and send him a text.
Tell Mum TODAY or I will. And stop calling me, I don’t want to talk to you. Got it?
Surely this time it’s got to be the postman?
But when I impatiently open the door, my stomach drops.
‘Felix?’ I ask, trying to style out my surprise. What the hell? As if Laurie being here wasn’t weird and unexpected enough!
‘Look,’ he says, ‘I was in the area photographing some brutalist architecture and remembered you lived around here, and it made me think it was maybe worth a try coming to see you in person. I wanted to talk to you about coming back to the magazine. I know I fucked up, I know I hurt you,’ he says, his eyes an approximation of softness and sincerity.
‘And I’m not asking for us to get back together, not yet anyway, but the mag just isn’t the same without you.
You’re so fucking good on that podcast and it drives me mad that we lost you, you know? ’
‘OK . . .’ I say slowly, trying to take it all in.
‘Can I come in?’ He looks back over his shoulder, huddled against the rain.
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘Come on,’ he says, reaching out and brushing his hand against my arm. ‘Just for a bit.’
I position my body defensively in the doorway, a sure sign of something to hide. ‘No,’ I say, shaking my head casually.
‘Why? Is someone there?’
‘What does that have to do with you?’ I ask him, but the creaking of the floorboards in the living room pique his interest. Felix, the epitome of entitlement, pushes the front door open, unable to contain his curiosity.
At the sound of the door banging against the wall in the hall, I hear Laurie walk out from the living room.
‘Oh!’ Felix laughs coldly. It’s like a switch has been flipped at the sight of Laurie. ‘Oh, this is wonderful, Laurie O’Doughboy swooping in for sloppy seconds? Of course he is, that’s his trademark move.’
‘What did you just call him?’ I snap, ignoring the rest of what he said.
‘Sorry,’ he says sarcastically. ‘Schoolboy nickname.’
‘Felix, go,’ Laurie urges him flatly, like Felix’s mean words are just washing over him, like he’s heard them a million times before.
Laurie doesn’t care about winning, about getting one over on Felix, about proving that he’s superior in this situation.
Laurie isn’t interested in being the alpha, being the big name on campus. He just wants Felix to leave.
‘As if you get to tell me what to do,’ Felix says bitterly, pushing past me and towards Laurie, squaring up to him.
‘Don’t come any closer,’ Laurie warns him.
‘Or what?’ Felix laughs. I just stand there, with literally no idea what to do and convinced, once again, that whatever I do will prove to be wrong.
‘Felix,’ Laurie says firmly.
Instead of listening to him and just turning around and leaving, Felix simply can’t take being told what to do and everyone needs to know it. ‘Or what?’ he says again. But this time, he pushes Laurie in the chest. Just gently. But a push nonetheless.
Before I realise that Laurie has been stretched to his limit, he’s already punched Felix. I gasp and cover my mouth with my hands, having never seen someone get punched before, much less right in front of me. Felix falls to the floor, but scrambles up quickly, keen to show he’s not beaten.
‘I’m going to fucking report you to the provost, you psycho,’ he spits at Laurie, a trickle of blood running from his nose.
The punch was one thing but this, I’m afraid, is too much for your old friend Mary-Elizabeth. ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ I say in a voice so icy that Felix literally does a double-take. ‘There’s more than one kind of violence and you’re hardly blameless yourself.’
For just a moment, the veil slips and a flicker of recognition passes across Felix’s face. ‘All right, all right, I’ll go,’ he says, holding his hands up in mock defeat. ‘You two can have each other.’
He slams the door behind him.
Laurie and I stand in silence for a moment. I’m completely shellshocked by the whole thing and have absolutely no idea what to say.
‘I can’t believe I did that,’ Laurie says, looking at the ground. ‘I . . . I don’t do that. I’m not a violent person.’
‘He provoked you!’ I say, in absolute disbelief that Laurie thinks he was the problem in this situation.
‘The temptation was always there, being so much bigger than the other boys, you know, when they would wind me up or bully me . . . but I never gave into it. And now I have,’ he says quietly.
‘Laurie,’ I say sharply, pulling on the sleeve of his jumper. ‘Look at me.’ He looks up, his brown eyes mournful. ‘If you didn’t do it then I would have done. Felix Balfour is a menace, and someone needed to take him down a peg or two – it just so happened that it was you.’
Laurie shakes his head, pulls his arm away from me.
‘I don’t want to be this person, and now I am.
I don’t hit people, do I? But now Felix has made me a person who hits people, and I hate myself for it.
’ The bitterness is audible in his voice.
He turns to the living room and re-emerges a moment later with his coat.
‘Take care of yourself,’ he tells me from the doorway, before opening the front door and stepping out into the rain.
In a daze, I walk back into the living room and sit on the sofa. I reach for my coffee cup. It all happened so quickly; the mug is still warm.