Chapter 23 Misfortunes go up to eleven
Misfortunes go up to eleven
I should have gone to the toilet whilst I was still at Toby’s.
The journey back is about fifty minutes, and normally, I would have been thinking about what to say to Dad on my return.
But now all I think about is how to sneak into the bathroom without being seen.
The Tube away from central London is surprisingly empty at this time of the day.
A man sitting across from me is chomping down on a half of a watermelon.
A woman to the left is playing songs by Kate Bush out loud.
The carriage might be empty, but it’s full of characters.
Really helps with the need to pee and the screaming that’s happening inside my head.
It starts raining when I walk home, of course it does.
I don’t bother with the umbrella, contorting my body to reach for it would just increase my desperate and all-consuming desire to piss, as well as the fact that I think I deserve to get rained on.
The shrubberies by the houses look mad at my walk of shame, rustling their judgemental leaves, but I keep walking, jingling my keys.
The door is unlocked, presumably for me. The smallest step makes a floorboard creek.
‘Fuko?’ Dad’s voice from upstairs. ‘It better be you, or I swear—’
‘It’s me.’ I drop my head. The door to the toilet downstairs is ajar, but the crossness of my father’s tone makes me think needing to pee is the least of my concerns.
He rushes down, fully clothed for work. ‘Have you lost your mind? I was worried sick. Do you know how many times we called last night?’
‘I am sorry. The phone was on silent.’
‘No, sorry won’t cut it, madam. What on earth possessed you to stay out on a Tuesday?’
Hanako’s face pops up on the first floor’s landing.
‘I—’ I try to find the words. Obviously, I am not going to say that I stayed at a boy’s house.
‘Yes?’
‘I was fired.’
‘What?’ The two of them gasp.
‘They fired me. I got really drunk and stayed at a friend’s house.’
‘Which friend? I called both Sashka and Leon. They haven’t heard from you,’ he shouts but with notes of genuine curiosity. He is right. I do only have two friends. Did. Ouch.
‘Fawzia, from work,’ I lie like a teenager. ‘She was there when they fired me. So I just crashed at hers.’
‘Why did they fire you, Fuko?’
‘There was a security breach from my phone. And I didn’t let a man in to an event because he wasn’t wearing a costume, but apparently, he was some big man in the industry and complained about it.’ I do not mention the picture of John touching the small of my back. Dad wasn’t a big fan of him.
‘And, what, you just accepted it? Those two things are not grounds for firing.’
‘They said I wasn’t right for their company.
This is not the 90’s, they won’t keep me just because you’ve got something, kid.
What was I meant to do, Dad?’ I feel stinging in the corners of my eyes.
I don’t want to give him hope by saying I was temporarily suspended, because there is no hope. I deserve to be fired.
‘So, what, you decide to drink the problems away? That’s not you, Fuko. You don’t stay out all day, you don’t drink, you are the responsible and mature one. You don’t do foolish things like this.’
His words are a dull knife, lodged in between my ribs. If only he knew how foolish I can actually get. How bad things actually are.
‘I need the bathroom.’ I push past him.
‘We will talk when I am back from work. I am very disappointed in you, Fuko.’
Tears stream down my cheeks. Hanako tries to say something to me, but I shut the door behind me to sob in the shower for ten minutes. There is a hickey below my collarbone. What a sad reminder of my shitness.
I brush my teeth. Where did it all go wrong? I shouldn’t have sent Sashka to flirt with Toby on my birthday. I shouldn’t have gone to Japan. I shouldn’t have applied for this job. I shouldn’t have developed these feelings for Toby, and then everything would have been fine.
My own bed feels small after the luxury king of last night. I dig my face into a pillow and don’t move for about ten minutes.
Hanako knocks and walks in without waiting for an answer, still in her PJs. Her exams finished last month, which I forgot about completely. She sits on the bed next to me and says, ‘Hey.’
‘Hey. What do you want?’
‘Sorry that Dad shouted.’
‘I deserve it.’
She looks around, her mouth opens and shuts a couple of times. ‘I need to tell you something.’
‘What is it?’ I turn my head to the side. She looks nervous, which prompts me to sit up and run possible conversations in my head.
‘It’s something that might come as an unfortunate surprise.’
She’s about to tell me about her girlfriend. I reach for her hand, forgetting about my own problems for a minute. ‘You know you can tell me anything.’
‘I—’ She bites her nail. ‘I...’
‘Yes?’ I nod with encouragement.
‘I think’—she takes a deep breath—‘I won’t get into uni.’
Her words don’t quite reach me, probably from my hangover. ‘What? What do you mean you won’t get into uni?’
‘I failed all of my mocks in November.’ Her voice wavers. ‘And the actual exams are harder than the mocks.’
This must be a joke.
‘What are your predicted grades?’
‘D, E, U.’
‘D, E, U?’ I shout her grades back at her. By Asian standards, not a single pass. ‘Hanako, what the fuck, how are they that low?’
She shrugs, staring at the carpet of my room.
‘I don’t understand.’ I shake my head. ‘You were always good at school. You had good grades. You won some maths contest in year nine.’
You were always so lucky.
‘How could you possibly be failing so badly?’
‘I am not like you, Fuko,’ she snaps at me. ‘I don’t have the skills and the motivation to just keep going. Dad keeps saying it, that I should be more like you.’
‘He’s never said it.’
‘He always has. Even now when he was having a go at you, who do you think he was comparing you to? Me. You were always the perfect child, the one that does all her homework and cleans the house.’
‘Why did you not say something sooner? We could have found you a tutor. Why did you wait weeks before your results day to tell me this?’
‘Because I couldn’t tell anyone. Not Dad, not my perfect sister. I thought maybe now, you would...’ She doesn’t finish her sentence.
‘This is so irresponsible, Hanako. How could you just throw away your future like this? I just don’t understand.’
‘No, of course you wouldn’t.’ She stands up and leaves, slamming the door behind her.
Anger and disbelief are churning in my head. I have failed her. She is not going to get into uni because I was too preoccupied with finding a job to notice her struggling. Dad is going to lose his mind when he finds out on the results day, which is two weeks away.
If only Mum were here.