Chapter 33
‘Zoe?’ Eric whines from the hallway. ‘Are you awake? Are you alone?’
Cian left my place in the milky light of the morning, the blackout blind having not been shut the night before. I woke up as he moved about the room, then felt his hand on my arm as he told me to go back to sleep.
‘Zoe?’
‘Go away.’
There are a few seconds of silence, then he tries again. ‘Zoe?’
I put on a dressing gown and confront him. ‘What is your problem?’
Despite Eric saying he would sleep at our parents, he looks like he’s done anything but. ‘What happened to you?’ I laugh.
‘Mum happened,’ he says. ‘Here.’ He hands me a large tinfoil wrap of something. ‘Your birthday cake. It’s like Mum’s version of a horse’s head in your bed. You need to do some serious damage control today.’
The balloon arch lies burst on the floor and a few balloons have floated off up the hallway. Mum answers the door in the red kimono she wears around the flat. Without make-up her lips are pale and her eyes small, presenting a version of her I’ve not seen since I lived at home.
‘Morning,’ I say.
She puckers and pulls her head back. ‘You came to get your bag, did you?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I also came to say sorry.’
‘For what?’ she asks, sharply.
‘For being a terrible daughter.’
‘You’re not a terrible daughter. Don’t be laying it on so thick.’
‘I am. You do this amazing party for me, and I run off.’
She steps back and I follow her into the flat, which smells of cigarettes and a hundred spilt glasses of wine. ‘You’ve not tidied up yet?’
‘I think I drank for ten hours straight yesterday.’ She refastens the belt on her kimono and flops on the sofa. ‘After you left, your dad got the Chinchón out and started mixing sours. You know how that goes.’
Unfortunately, yes, I do.
She presses her fingers to her temples. ‘We were all hammered. A few people stuck around. Ruth from downstairs showed up at some point with a massive bag of weed; don’t ask. Oh, and Ikenna.’
‘You were smoking weed with Ikenna?’ My mind struggles to form the picture.
‘Bloody hell he can talk. I was relieved when he had to get home for the dog.’ Mum grabs a glass of water and swallows loudly. ‘He showed me a photo of it. Ugly thing.’
I take the empty glass from her hand. ‘Do you have any party food left?’
‘Tons,’ she says while gently lying down.
In the kitchen I empty glasses and drain abandoned beers; the sink gets what’s left of my signature drink, and bin bags are filled with post-party debris, which includes half a prawn ring and a packet of wet playing cards.
Despite the noise, when I check on Mum, she’s fast asleep, cocooned within her collection of decorative sofa cushions.
Once everything is tidy, I make us both plates of spinach pastries, guacamole and cucumber sticks and nudge her awake. ‘Where’s Dad?’
She wipes her eyes and sits up. ‘Gone Christmas shopping.’
Apart from the crunching of cucumber, we eat in silence. Therere’s so many things to be said, I’m just not sure what they are and whose turn it is to say them. Do I need to apologise more explicitly for running off yesterday, or does she need to apologise for what she said.
Eventually, I turn to her. ‘I feel like I’m doing this all wrong. I understand moving on is what I’m meant to be doing. Or should have done, months ago. Yet I still don’t know how to do it. How to not be like this.’
Mum puts her own plate down and stares at me; it’s quite disconcerting, because without all the make-up she looks so much like her real self while also like a stranger. ‘No one is telling you to forget Kasie, and I’m sorry if that’s how it came across from me. I truly am.’
I lower my head.
‘But you need to get your fire back,’ she says while clicking her fingers. ‘You used to bug Kasie about it. You were obsessed with getting her out of her shell, encouraging her to do things, see things, live more.’
‘Because Kasie needed a push to do anything.’
‘You need a push,’ Mum says. ‘You need a kick. Your career, your social life. I struggled to know who to invite yesterday. You used to have loads of friends.’
‘They were mostly people I went out partying with, not real friends.’
‘All I could think of was Nicole and Ikenna. And Cian,’ she adds, throwing me a questioning look. ‘Who you said you weren’t close to.’
‘No.’
‘Yet when you were in a state last night, it was him you went to.’
‘I didn’t go to him.’ I bite the inside of my bottom lip and think of Cian attempting to dry my hair. ‘He found me.’
‘It was him who had your phone.’
‘I don’t want to talk about Cian.’
‘Eric says you’re close.’
‘Eric needs to stay out of my business.’
‘Fine. We won’t talk about Cian. We’ll talk about you.’
I lay my head against the back of the sofa and when I close my eyes, I can see Muntz in Up, smashing his lantern under the house and setting a fire. ‘I really do need to leave the flat, don’t I?’
Mum is silent for a while then says, ‘Only if you think it’s time.’
Danni, of course, found out it was my birthday over the weekend and stuck a balloon with a giant ‘30’ on my desk. It attracted people over, as if in search of a tray bake, and by half ten Nicole accidentally burst the balloon.
‘I keep having the same dream,’ I tell her as we hide in a breakout room over lunch.
‘Good or bad?’ she asks.
‘Not sure. There’s a house and it’s on fire and I’m running towards it.’
Nicole grimaces. ‘Sounds pretty bad, hon.’ She types something into her phone then says, ‘Dreaming about fires means you’re burnt out. That’s an obvious reason. Or you’re stressed.’
‘Maybe both?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Whose phone is that?’ she asks.
‘Mine. I changed the ringtone and it’s hard to get used to.’ It’s Cian calling, and as I answer I’m hit with a wave of anxiety.
There’s traffic then silence, rustling then his voice. ‘Hi. Uh. Are you in the office?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you coming out for lunch?’ he asks.
‘I wasn’t going to. I can though, if you’re around.’
‘Can you meet me?’ He sounds distracted. ‘I’m in the square.’
Nicole gives me a curious look when I hang up. ‘Everything okay?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘This is the problem. I never know with him.’
I hate the square. I once read the ground beneath it was hollowed out to help build nearby Tube lines, and instead of being refilled, it was fashioned into a two-storey car park. Now every time I walk here, I picture a giant cavity beneath my feet.
When I see Cian, I slow. At times I’ve found it frustrating how little his expressions give away what he’s feeling, but as I watch him now, I realise it’s all in his body, in his stiff shoulders and fussing fingers.
When he spots me, he smiles, yet the smile changes as I get closer, becoming smaller and sadder. ‘What are you doing?’ he asks, gesturing for my hands. I hold them out and he takes them in his own.
‘It’s not that cold,’ I say, despite the chill scraping up the back of my wool coat.
Cian pulls off his gloves and shoves them at me in a way that tells me not to bother objecting. I pull them on, enjoying how they’ve held the warmth of him.
The sky is light grey, though without all the leaves on the trees it feels bare, like there’s too much space above us, too much exposure. Cian’s skin looks too pale, his hair too black. ‘I should have said to meet inside,’ he says. ‘I didn’t think.’
‘It’s fine,’ I reply, my breath visible.
He drops his gaze to our feet and his forehead wrinkles.
Why would he do it like this? Break up with me in the middle of a freezing cold park while people shuffle past with Pret bags.
‘Zoe, I . . .’ He doesn’t raise his head to speak. ‘I got offered a job.’
‘That’s great,’ I say, braced for a bigger impact.
He purses his lips and takes my hands again. ‘I wanted to tell you this might happen. I tried to bring it up. Before. I tried. I had my interview this morning. No –’ he looks off to the side – ‘I had my third interview this morning.’
In this moment, I know. ‘It’s abroad, isn’t it?’
He confirms with a small nod at the ground, then finally makes eye contact, one of those deep stares I can’t fight my way out of.
I attempt to pull my hands away and he keeps hold of them.
‘I stopped applying when we . . .’ He trails off. ‘This is a job I applied for months ago. I did two rounds of video interviews and didn’t hear back. I was pissed because I wanted it. But then, there was us.’
There was us.
‘Turns out, they’d temporarily pulled the role, then they contacted me to see if I was still interested. I met them last week. And today I got the official offer.’
I close my eyes before asking the question I don’t actually want the answer to. ‘Where is it?’
‘Singapore.’
Why, in all that musing about getting older and feeling left behind, did he never tell me he was actively pursuing a life on the other side of the world?
‘How long are they giving you to think about it?’ I ask.
There’s a perceptible shift in his expression and it hits me: he didn’t need any time to think about it.
When I pull my hands this time, he lets them slide free of his own.
‘You’ve already accepted. Haven’t you?’ It comes out as a question, though really, it’s a plea, because I want to be wrong about this.
‘I accepted.’
The cold shock of it makes me feel sick.
‘I accepted,’ he says again, and it hurts even more to hear it this time because if only I’d opened up to him, he might have turned it down. ‘Now I’m freaking out because I’m not sure I’m ready for a move of that size.’
‘You were ready months ago when you applied. Why wouldn’t you be ready now?’ My voice is calm, level, the opposite of how I feel.
‘I’m not in the same place I was in when I first applied. I didn’t know what I wanted. It was the same last year; I was unhappy and grabbing at things. Thinking if I bought a house or married Vic it would fix everything.’
So rarely is she mentioned that hearing her name now, twisted up amongst everything else, makes this much worse.
‘I was unhappy for so long. My relationship was nose-diving, and I didn’t realise, because I don’t pick up on clues.’ His voice speeds up. ‘I’m worried I’m doing it again. With you. I’m unhappy and it’s because I’m not picking up on clues.’
‘I’ve made you unhappy?’
‘Your doubts,’ he says. ‘Your doubts about me. I can feel them, I always have. But Zoe, I’ll stay if you think this, us, is worth something; then I’ll stay.’
‘I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to make myself more worthy.’
He backtracks. ‘That’s not what I said. I’m trying to say if you decide you want me, then I’ll stay.’
If I decide I want him? I’ve always wanted him. The idea of me deciding implies that I ever had any choice in how I felt about him.
‘Say something,’ he says.
‘You could have told me at some point. You could have . . .’ stayed away, I think. You could have ignored me, you could have done anything other than allow me to get this close.
Two delivery drivers cycle several feet apart from each other while conducting a halting conversation about wages. Cian and I separate to let them past and for a split second I imagine simply turning around and walking the other way.
Cian steps back towards me. ‘When I asked you what you wanted, you couldn’t tell me.’
‘It’s because I don’t know.’
‘No one’s going to think you’re a bad person for wanting things for yourself, for thinking about your life.’
‘I am thinking about my life.’
‘What do you want, then?’ he asks, agitation growing.
‘I don’t know.’ I know I want him, but I’ve not allowed myself to think about what this means, what it would look like.
Even him asking me this question hammers the reality of how different we are, that he’s someone who wants things from his life and relationships, while I’m happy simply going along and being with him.
‘I don’t know what I want,’ I tell him. ‘I just know I’m not ready to be with you in the way you need me to be.’
He puts his forehead against mine, his hand on the back of my hair. ‘Don’t do this. Tell me you want me to stay.’
My eyes close and I imagine saying the words that would keep him here, keep him as mine, though at what cost to him?
He needs someone else, someone to share a full life with, someone who’s ready to take big steps and do all those things I know he wants.
He needs someone who’s sure. ‘Cian, I love you. So much. That’s why I can’t be the one who makes you unhappy, who stops you doing things. ’ I step away from him.
‘Do them with me.’ His voice breaks. ‘Come with me.’
‘I can’t pick up my life and follow you across the world.’
‘It doesn’t have to be Singapore. It can be somewhere else, anywhere else. Just not here.’ His shoulders drop. ‘Shit. I can’t stay here anymore. I can’t keep plodding along like this.’
‘We don’t want the same things,’ I say. ‘You’re asking me to move away with you and I can’t even sleep in a bed with you overnight.’
He steps back, like I burnt him. ‘You’re not going to think it over? You’re saying no and that’s it, we’re done.’
‘We shouldn’t have started this. Why did we let this happen?’
Cian stares at me, and for a second he seems confused as to why I’m not sure. ‘This was always going to happen.’
I don’t know if he means us getting together or us falling apart.