Chapter 45
Despite a supposedly ringing endorsement from Jimmy, I didn’t get the job in Chat’s Singapore office as they felt I was overqualified.
I did, however, keep looking, and three months after Cian went back, I found a job as a programme designer at an international language school.
It was another two months before I landed at Singapore Changi Airport.
When Cian and I saw each other, we didn’t run into each other’s arms like you see in the films. Instead, we spent what felt like an eternity staring at each other and repeating the word hi before hugging, breaking away and squeezing onto a packed train back to his place in in Tiong Bahru.
After hours of videocalls, at unsociable hours, his place was familiar to me, yet I was surprised by how much it felt like home.
Though perhaps the home part was Cian in his black T-shirt, trailing me around while slamming on taps and whacking doors open and closed.
‘Is it okay?’ he asked with flagging confidence.
‘I tried to make it, uh –’ he gestured in the direction of the sole plant by the windowsill – ‘homely.’
He showed me the second room, where a single bed was covered in bedding, still creased with rectangles from the packaging. When I looked at him for explanation, he skittered his eyes away and said, ‘I didn’t want to assume anything. I just can’t believe you’re here.’
I couldn’t believe it either. That I had moved continents to be with a man I had essentially only dated for a month.
Though as Cian liked to point out, we’d probably spent more time together in those first months, at his dad’s place, than most normal dating couples do.
Of course, I like to counter this with how we then spent a year and a half not speaking to each other at all.
‘But you missed me during that time?’ he’d rib.
‘No. I didn’t think about you at all. I was far too busy drunkenly dancing on tables with my arse out.’
‘Me too.’
It’s now four months on and we’ve quickly developed a load of bad shared habits, such as eating doughnuts in bed, making each other laugh in the quietest of places, of which there are plenty, and kissing in the streets until locals scold us and we scuttle away embarrassed.
We happily fulfil every expat stereotype, taking evening walks along the Southern Ridges, eating at the same three stalls in hawker markets despite thousands of options, and drinking more than our bodies can handle in the bars of Keong Saik.
We’re yet to be bored of each other’s company, but sometimes our bickering explodes into an argument, and when this happens, the small apartment feels claustrophobic.
And because he shouts at the best of times, and I cry so easily, these fallouts always seem far worse than they probably are.
I’ve learned to walk away, but Cian gets paranoid if I do this and don’t forgive him quickly, which I guess is a hangover from his last relationship.
I don’t know, we’re both still trying to work this aspect of our relationship out.
Living somewhere with four languages is endlessly interesting and I toy with the idea of finally doing a PhD.
I also love to torment Cian about how easily I’m picking up Malay.
When I do this, he gives me his put-upon look and says something like, ‘Stop using your intelligence as your whole personality.’
There are things I find out about him I didn’t know previously, things that make me fall in love with him even more.
Like how he raps as he cooks from his roster of, now eight, dishes, and can rewatch films multiple times and still find them funny.
While other things, like how he loses his glasses ten times a day, is at his loudest first thing in the morning and is always late home from work, stop being cute very fast.
I’m almost at the MRT station when my phone buzzes.
Cian: I’m still at work. Sorry.
Me: I’ll forgive you if you buy me meatballs for dinner.
Cian: I’m not eating horsemeat for dinner. Be there in forty minutes. x
Now with time to kill I head towards the local church a few streets over.
I used to whine about being dragged into churches with Kasie, yet here I am, every few weeks, tiptoeing halfway up the aisle.
While inside, it looks nothing like those grand Romanesque churches in Tuscany, the smell of flower petals, dust and wax is the same.
Perhaps that’s why it’s so easy for me to trick myself into imagining Kasie is here too, sitting a few rows in front, her face soft and blissed out as she talks to God.
When I first moved to Singapore, I had a moment of panic that I’d gone too far from home and left the basis of too many memories behind.
It wasn’t only about the flat on Dickens Walk, it was the crappy Indian restaurant on our high street, the little Tesco, the park near our secondary school where we’d sit and rank the hottest boys in our form group quite seriously until Kasie would be summoned home by an angry call from her parents.
Then I found this place and as soon as I slid into one of its teak pews, I wanted to text Kasie and tell her, I’ve found God. An old joke she used to chastise me for making while stifling a smile.
The congregation here is mostly Chinese, yet no one pays me any mind, except for an elderly church warden who always chats to me. Each time he sees me he invites me to Mass, stressing how welcome I am, except for on Sundays when the service is in Mandarin.
I still miss Kasie, though the pain is less cutting now, sometimes even less real. It’s as if I can’t believe she was in my life in the first place.
None of my friends here know anything about her, and the person I’m closest to never met her. Though whenever I bring her up, Cian will stop what he’s doing and pay careful attention, as if I’m confessing something hidden about myself.
Eventually, I get up and make my way across the city to Ikea, because I am now the type of person who spends my Friday evenings pricing up furniture.
‘I’ll pay any amount of money to sleep further away from you,’ I tell Cian as I drag him around the showrooms.
He folds his arms and stares at me across a king-sized bed piled with eight pillows. ‘I thought you liked that I was hot.’
‘Not in this climate.’ Because even with the air conditioning cranked up, sleeping next to Cian is like having a human-sized hot-water bottle. I slip off my sandals and jump on. ‘Come and lie on the bed with me.’
‘I’m not getting on the bed with you.’
‘I really want you to.’
He gives me a sulky look.
‘As my boyfriend, it’s literally your job to come to bed with me.’
‘Stop objectifying me,’ he says before walking off.
He changes his mind about meatballs for dinner. Though we both agree that the experience of being in a Swedish shop in Singapore makes us pine for England.
Usually, when I’m homesick or sad or overwhelmed, Cian will lie on top of me, almost crushing me with his weight and saying, ‘Tell me when you feel better,’ while he answers work emails on his phone.
It’s not often I feel this way and, despite being almost seven thousand miles away, I seem to spend an excessive amount of time with my parents, from videocalls to ‘catch up’, to virtual bingo and pop quizzes.
They’re also planning on coming for a visit IRL soon, to see me and Cian, who they love, and of course to film a special South East Asian version of Off with the Es.
Though Mum is quite stressed about how her hair will cope with the humidity.
When Cian’s homesick or stressed with work, which is often given that being a cloud network infrastructure engineer really is the same thing regardless of location, I’ll watch cartoons with him till he falls asleep on the sofa, sitting upright and fully clothed, like the weirdo he is.
I know he misses his dad and whenever he’s beaming at his phone, I can guarantee it’ll be a message from Brendan.
Usually some gym-based meme I don’t get or a blurry photo of Wuffy/Stormzy urinating on the bikes in the garden.
When we get home from IKEA, Cian moans about being hungry again and I agree to make him something, yet fail to find anything in our tiny kitchen.
‘Cian!’ I holler, when I realise he’s moved everything around in the cupboards.
‘Yes, Nana,’ he says as he comes into the kitchen. ‘What are you shouting about?’
‘Where’s the sriracha?’
‘It’s here, obviously, in the bottle cupboard, along with the sauces, maple syrup and whisky.’
I lean on the counter with my phone in hand and browse my small group of online connections.
Kasie’s mum hugging her two permanently grinning grandchildren, Eric at a riverside pub with his designer wraparound sunglasses, Nicole, purple-haired and tiny between her two fast-growing children. I hit like on them all.
‘How’d he get his biceps to look like that?’ Cian says over my shoulder as I hover on a photo of Ikenna with the hashtag #boxfitburn. Cian curls his arm around me and hits the like button. ‘What are you doing?’ I complain.
‘You were perving on that photo for ages.’
‘I was not.’
‘There’s drool on your screen.’
‘I was not perving on Ikenna.’
‘You weren’t looking at the dog. That dog is still the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.’ Cian takes the sandwich, on the too-sweet bread I’ve grown to love, and opens it to check the contents before giving me a side eye.
Never was I able to fully picture my life here, even when I’d booked the flight and knew it was truly happening. But that’s because I don’t think I was ready to think beyond one day at a time. I don’t think I felt I had a right to.
Cian looks at me, then puts his fingers on my forehead and says, ‘Stop frowning.’