Chapter 9
Once my parents leave for church I head off to see Yan. He lives a ten-minute walk away in the flat above the pub he’s renovating. I don’t give him any warning I’m coming – payback for disappearing on me last night.
Yan opens the door before I’ve pressed the buzzer. He’s holding a mobile to his ear, and he’s clearly on his way out. ‘Hang on,’ he tells whoever’s on the line. ‘Nell? What are you doing here?’
He looks decidedly guilty.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to lecture you for abandoning me last night. I just fancied company. And maybe some of your famous eggs Benedict?’
‘I don’t have any eggs.’
‘Well, go and get some. I’m starving.’
I sweep past him and start up the stairs.
He frowns, like he’s wrestling a dilemma. ‘I’ll be five minutes. But in the meantime, don’t use the bathroom. Wait in the kitchen and I’ll explain when I get back.’
What’s wrong with his bathroom? Is something broken?
The answer’s clear once I reach the first floor. The shower’s running.
You sly devil, Yan.
Last night’s visitor has yet to leave.
The kitchen’s a few feet away, and the smell of freshly brewed coffee wafts towards me. Of course, food-snob Yan doesn’t drink instant. Bad for his pores or something.
I’m distracted from the delicious smell by the sound of the shower stopping. A few moments later, the bathroom door clicks open.
Not wanting to intrude on anyone’s privacy, I hurry into the kitchen as originally instructed.
And just in the nick of time as, out of the corner of my eye, I spy a glistening male back, broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist where a towel hangs dangerously low on an arse that is world class. His calf muscles are chef’s-kiss, too.
Sometimes, I’m appalled by the amount of objectification I fit into a split-second sneak peek. But in my defence, you don’t see many straight men with bodies like that.
I pour a coffee, and while I stir sugar into my mug as quietly as I can, I hear footsteps down the stairs, followed by the slam of the front door as Mystery Man leaves.
A few minutes later, just as I’m thinking about hunting for biscuits, Yan returns.
‘You okay?’ he asks cautiously.
‘I’m not a Victorian spinster who faints at the sight of a male ankle. Although, I admit I did see a bit more than just an ankle.’
Yan looks horrified, and I hastily add, ‘I didn’t embarrass you or anything. It’s not like I accosted him to ask what his intentions were. I caught a tiny glimpse of him, but he didn’t see me.’
He avoids my eye as he fills a pan with water. ‘You didn’t recognise him?’
I frown. ‘From his arse crack? No, it didn’t look familiar.’
He puts the pan on the hob. ‘That was Mark.’
Was this an ex I was supposed to remember? ‘Mark who?’
Yan adds salt to the water. ‘Mark Marino. From school.’
The world seems to freeze. The sounds of the kitchen stop, and all I can hear is my hammering pulse.
Mark Antony Marino. From school.
I’m not sure I can deal with this. Not now. Not a reminder of the most traumatic period of my life.
‘What’s he doing here?’ I trail off, trying not to sound panicked.
‘He’s crashing here.’
‘In your room?’
Yan lets out a bark of laughter. ‘No, of course not.’
‘Then where? Your tiny box room that’s full of junk?’
‘He paid for a storage unit and spent half a day moving everything out. He also bought a cheap bed, although God knows how comfortable it is. But it’s just for a few weeks – until the wedding.’
‘Tig’s wedding?’
He nods like it’s obvious. ‘I told you, he knows Theo from medical school.’
I help myself to a glass of water and try to compose myself. ‘Why can’t he come for the wedding and leave again?’
‘He gave up his flat in Leeds because he’s moving abroad. He wasn’t supposed to be in the country at all, but he delayed his departure for Theo. He’d already left his job, so now he’s doing locum work at Ealing Hospital for a few weeks. He needed a room and I offered.’
The situation isn’t ideal, but as long as I stay away from Yan’s flat, I probably won’t see Mark again until the wedding, and it shouldn’t be hard to avoid him on the day itself.
I take a sip of water, already feeling calmer. ‘Where’s he moving to?’
‘Venezuela to help train surgeons. There’s a shortage because they keep getting kidnapped and murdered.’
I raise an eyebrow. ‘Still an adrenaline junkie, then.’
He puts down the spoon he’s holding and squeezes my arm.
‘That was his way of coping with all the shit he went through as a kid. He’s not that hot-headed eighteen-year-old any more.’
‘No, but I’m still the bitch that broke his dead brother’s heart.’ My voice catches.
‘He won’t still think that.’
Sudden tears overwhelm me, and Yan pulls me into a hug.
‘I’m sorry, Nell.’ He strokes my back as I try to calm the sea of emotions in my gut. There’s sadness, a little anger, but mostly it’s guilt. A tidal wave of the bloody stuff. I haven’t thought about Leo for years for exactly this reason.
I clear my throat. ‘Doesn’t Mark have anywhere else to stay? What about his mum?’
‘She’s in a care home.’
The news hits me in the solar plexus. ‘Poor Anthi.’
Anthi and Mum came from the same village in Cyprus, although they didn’t really know each other until they found themselves in London, living on the same street. She was like an auntie to us before everything changed.
‘She has rheumatoid arthritis. She needs constant care, and no one else can do it.’
He’s right, of course, Leo died, and Anthi’s Sicilian husband ran off years ago. Which was just as well because he sounded like a violent psycho.
‘So what’s he like now? Out all night and hungover till noon?’
‘He’s a cardiothoracic surgeon.’
This isn’t news to me, not really. I vaguely kept up with what he was up to, but it’s not something I’ve properly digested. That Mark Marino – an angry, rebellious, walking middle-finger – now saved lives for a living.
‘Doesn’t mean he doesn’t party or sleep around.’ He broke a lot of hearts at school.
‘He’s not a delinquent tearaway any more, shagging teachers or whatever else the rumour mill churned out.’
‘Vandi swears she saw him doing Miss Martinez standing up in the sixth-form toilets.’
‘Your mate Vandi has an overactive imagination. He wasn’t all bad. He looked out for me when I needed him.’
I begrudgingly accept he’s right. When the school bully used to jump Yan for being gay, Mark would always pile in to defend him because his mum ran a dance studio and he took lessons, so somehow that made him ‘gay’, too.
Yan might have appreciated Mark’s readiness to use a bit of force, but Mum didn’t.
‘It’s his Sicilian side,’ she would mutter after hearing about another dust-up.
Because of course, the genes from our end of the Mediterranean couldn’t possibly be at fault.
‘Leo’s a sweet boy – he took after his mother,’ she’d say, ‘but Mark is too much like his father. Charming but unpredictable.’
‘He’s the perfect flatmate – he works all hours, hardly uses the kitchen or living room, and is super tidy. He should be charging me.’
‘You just like the idea of him walking around in a barely-there towel.’
‘If you like, I can work out his shower routine.’
‘He’s not my type.’
Yan laughs. ‘Honey, he’s a heart surgeon with great hair and rock-hard abs. He’s everyone’s type.’
There’s a reason why someone becomes a therapist. Prod a little, and you’ll probably discover they suffered a trauma when they were growing up or were up close to someone else’s struggles – an alcoholic parent or one who was addicted to drugs or gambling.
Often, they experienced loss at a young age.
It’s certainly true in my case.
Leo was my first boyfriend, but he died when we were both sixteen.
He was born with a heart defect that meant he got tired quickly and picked up infections easily.
Most of the time, you couldn’t tell he had anything wrong with him.
He came to the same school as the rest of us and did roughly what we all did, except got out of PE whenever he wanted, which I was always a bit jealous of.
He had frequent trips to hospital – usually on a Saturday morning – which got him out of Greek school. And again, I envied him because, good God, why did Greek have to have thirteen tenses and why did we have to learn all of them?
It wasn’t the hole in his heart that killed him, not technically, but it weakened his immune system, so he had to be careful. He got a lung infection – not uncommon for him – but this time, it went to his heart. He died within days of being admitted to hospital.
I didn’t visit because I’d broken up with him and he told his mum he didn’t want to see me.
We’d argued because he’d gone to a Black Eyed Peas gig without me.
I kicked up a fuss even though I didn’t particularly like the band, but it felt like a big deal at the time.
I needed a break from him, and I thought he would understand.
But he was devastated. I was going through some stuff and wasn’t being rational. Some girlfriend I was.
I felt so bad that I eventually decided to take him back. I planned what I would say on the tube to Hammersmith Hospital, how I’d ask him to forgive me, but when I walked through the doors of the cardiac ward, Mum was coming out.
She looked at me with red-rimmed eyes and shook her head.
Everything went still inside me.
No, no, no.
‘Oh, Nella,’ Mum had wailed. ‘There’s nothing worse for a parent than to lose a child. Nothing.’ She stopped as a sob overtook her. ‘Your dad’s in there with Anthi, but I had to leave. I’m no use to anyone like this.’
She tried to pull me out of the door I’d just come through, but I stood my ground.
‘But I need to talk to him. He can’t be gone. Maybe they made a mistake. Maybe if I go in there, he’ll hear me and wake up.’
‘You can’t go in there, darling. The only thing we can do is be strong for Anthi.’
She pulled me again, and this time, I let her take me through the exit.
I didn’t argue. I didn’t tell her that I was hurting too much to be strong for anyone. That I needed someone to be strong for me. But I said nothing because at that moment, I knew I didn’t deserve anyone’s sympathy.
I could have stopped it, but I’d left it too late.
Leo had died because of me.
His death – and the guilt I felt about breaking his heart right before – almost derailed me.
I fucked up the first year of my A-levels, and school wouldn’t let me continue.
I would have been happy to walk away from education altogether, but my parents wouldn’t hear of it, and to be honest, a few months working in a crummy shoe shop, knee-deep in other people’s smelly feet, convinced me to take seriously my parents’ suggestion I go to Richmond college and do different A-levels to the ones I’d been planning.
So instead of English, History and French, I took English and Psychology, knowing I could get an easy pass in Modern Greek from Saturday school and have enough points to get into university.
A new start at a new college was exactly what I needed.
I wasn’t the girl who broke Leo’s heart before he died; I didn’t come with any baggage.
It was kinda cool having teachers you could call by their first names, so against all odds, I did okay.
Mainly thanks to my psychology teacher, who was patient and kind and managed to set me on my journey to recovery.
I learned to understand myself: that I found it difficult to set boundaries, both with Leo and with my family, and that I tended to put other people’s needs before my own.
Why I’d developed these bad habits didn’t matter.
The important thing was to recognise them and try to change them.
I’m not there yet, not by a long shot, and I still struggle with residual guilt, but psychology changed my life. And I’ve never forgotten that.