Chapter 14
I’m mortified. I’m elated. Did that really just happen?
I turn around and Leila is standing in the corridor behind me. She’s watching me with her arms folded.
“I thought he wasn’t your boyfriend,” she remarks.
“He’s not,” I answer.
“Then what was that?” She points behind me to where we were just standing. I guess she saw us.
“We used to date,” I mumble, pushing back past her into the living room.
“No shit.” She follows me.
I sit on the sofa and bury my head in my hands, trying to make sense of the past five minutes. Of the past twenty-four hours.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
All normal social conventions are out the window between us and by this point I couldn’t care less. “He’s not my boyfriend, but . . . I want him to be,” I moan through my hands.
“So, seems like he could be.”
My head springs up. “What do you mean?” I can’t help hoping as much, after that hug, but I don’t want to get too excited.
It’s possible that years of yearning have driven me insane and I’m reading too much into it.
Like the time he gave me his last piece of gum and I talked about what it might mean for a month. I need someone else to validate me.
Leila surveys me from across the room, obviously sensing my emotions are heightened again and wary of coming too close. “I mean, my friends don’t hug me like that.”
Sweet validation. I could kiss her!
“He has a girlfriend,” I say.
Leila shrugs. “Things end.”
“I broke up with him. I broke his heart.”
“Mistakes happen. People forgive each other.”
I get the sense that Leila sees everything in black and white.
It’s very jarring. Back in the day when I still shared this kind of stuff with Angie and Dami we’d be analyzing every detail of the hug.
Or, as it would come to be known, The Hug.
We’d analyze what we suspected Max was feeling.
We’d analyze how I was feeling. We’d analyze what my next move was and whether that was OK given his relationship with Fran and how to go about it sensitively.
(Or, at least, so I wasn’t literally standing outside his window playing Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” on a boom box and dancing around in my underwear.)
“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” I defend.
“Do you want to be with him or not?” Leila asks.
“Obviously,” I say.
She shrugs again. “OK,” she says, as if there’s nothing else to say.
I am bewildered by this tall child showing up in my life, acting like she has all the answers and bossing me around.
I didn’t ask her here. I didn’t ask for her opinion.
We don’t even know each other. And I’m the older one.
Why is she the one giving me advice? Does she think she knows better than me, will be able to do life better than me, just because she had a well-balanced upbringing with two sane parents and I had . . . well . . . my mother?
“Look, I’ve actually got to go. I have . . . things to do.” I stand up.
She purses her lips. “Didn’t you quit your job?”
“Other things. And, er, I need to go . . . yup, now,” I add, moving toward the kitchen counter and reaching for the keys Max left in the bowl. “I’m already late. Late for an important date.”
Late for an important date?
“OK, can I use the bathroom first?” she asks.
I look at my wrist. There isn’t a watch there. I rub the back of my hand as if I was just inspecting a freckle. “I’ve really got to get cracking, but you can let yourself out.”
Get cracking?
“Oh, OK, bye,” she says.
I know that I’m behaving like a crazy person, but I need to get away from her and her cold, logical take on my life, which she has walked into without invitation, has commented on without permission, and has no idea about.
I have to start putting my life back together and she is not helping.
She’s making my brain feel even more scrambled.
“Bye,” I say more softly. I add, “It was good to meet you. I’m sorry you came all this way but . . . you came at a bad time.”
“Yeah,” she says. She might be about to add something else but I turn too quickly. I practically run to the front door and into the hallway. When I get into the lift I realize my legs are shaking.
First things first, I’ve got to check up on Mum. I dial her number.
“Becky, you’re up early,” Mum says.
It’s ten o’clock. I ignore this.
“How are you?” I ask. “How’s the foot?”
“I’m very drained of energy. It’s tiring just trying to move about.”
Even though she kicked me out, and it’s not like I’m not helping her by choice, I feel bad.
“Can Gavin stay with you?”
“I’m managing,” she says.
Mum and Gavin have been together years now, but you wouldn’t know it.
He comes to big events, and obviously he was at the hospital yesterday, but they’re not actually hugely involved.
They see each other once or twice a week to go to the cinema or for a coffee.
Mum claims that she “doesn’t like to rely on him,” and it feels like they’ve been in the early stages of dating since they first met.
It’s never struck me as being strange until now.
I guess I’ve never seen her actually need help before.
“Mum, I know you’re very independent, but this is an unusual situation. Gavin loves you. I’m sure he’d be happy to . . .”
“Honestly, Becky, I’m fine.”
I don’t push it. There’s a silence. I’m not sure what else to say, since neither of us wants to reference the conversation we had yesterday.
“Did your sister find you?” she asks. She unsuccessfully tries to keep the curiosity out of her voice.
“Yeah. She did.”
I don’t volunteer any further information.
It will be killing Mum that she can’t be nosy about it.
It’s bizarre to think that, for once, she has no idea where I am or what I’ve been doing.
Part of me is satisfied. Part of me wants to run home and never leave the house again.
Maybe offer her a tracker she can put around my ankle.
“OK, bye then, I guess,” I say, unwilling to give her any insight into my present state of being but unsure what else to say.
“Bye.” She hangs up and I feel a pang of homesickness.
Which is ridiculous, given that I’m only on the other side of the Thames.
The lift opens onto the bottom floor of Max’s building.
Sunlight penetrates the long, almost floor-length windows and London waits for me outside.
What does an unemployed twenty-nine-year-old woman with no friends or funds to speak of do on a Thursday morning?
The answer is painfully obvious.
She gets a job.
I make my way through the throngs of people, leaving Leila behind as fast as I can.
I pace toward the Brixton tube station and down underground, even though I have no reason to hurry anywhere .
. . It’s just how one moves in London. Once I get to Oxford Circus my feet take over on autopilot, leading me up the escalators, past the tube poster of the Soho Theatre production with the actor who looks like Angie if she were a bloke, out the far right barrier, past the man who sells me Extra every week and says, “Someone’s got a hot date. ”
I’ve been doing this commute every day for five years and I’ve never once felt out of place while traveling it.
These are my frantic Londoners with their heads down, my grotty tube station walls, my gum-covered floor.
I’ve never once questioned whether I belong here. But today I feel like an outsider.
Somehow the Becky that showed up for work on Monday isn’t the same Becky that’s here today.
I don’t think I changed in less than a week.
I think somehow, slowly, I’ve been changing bit by bit, every single day, only it took me a while to notice.
But now I’ve noticed it, I can’t just slot back into my familiar surroundings.
I shake my head. I don’t have a choice.
When I arrive outside We Work, You Win I’m suddenly unsure of what to do.
I’ve still got my building pass, but can I just walk in?
Am I technically still an employee? Margaret probably hasn’t even had time to process my resignation yet.
Maybe I could just breeze straight past and sit at my desk like usual and pretend to know nothing about any letter?
It’s only been a few days and yet, as I step inside the bright, shiny reception, it feels like years have passed. There’s no way I can just walk in. I head over to the reception desk, which I haven’t visited since my first week working here.
“Can I help you?” One of the guys ushers me over, looking me up and down suspiciously. I glance at myself in the mirror behind him and remember I’m wearing Max’s tracksuit bottoms and Adventure Time hoodie. Fuck.
I start taking off the hoodie and then see the “Live, Laugh, Love” T-shirt underneath.
Fuck.
What’s a better look to go begging for your job back? A cartoon for mid-thirties stoners or a motto considered to be motivational and life-affirming by people who live in Essex?
I try to see myself through Margaret’s eyes. She is more shocked by slovenliness than a fake tan or giant lips, so I guess I should opt for the second. I continue taking off the hoodie.
“Can you call Margaret Robson and tell her Becky Alderton’s here? She’s at We Work, You Win, fifth floor, extension 117.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“She’ll know what it’s about,” I say.
He considers me for a moment before calling, but does pick up the phone.
“Hi, I’ve got Becky Alderton downstairs.
She said you’d know what it’s regarding.
OK, I’ll send her up.” He puts the phone down and gestures toward the barriers.
“The guest entrance is on the far left. Margaret’s on floor five. ”
My hackles rise. I already told him which floor it was.
I know this building inside and out. I consider using the employee entrance with my pass just to make a point, but you’re supposed to hand them in when you quit and I don’t want them to notice that I still have it and confiscate it. I’m weirdly attached to my pass.
I wait by the loser guest entrance until he remembers to buzz me in. In among feeling annoyed by the know-it-all receptionist who’s probably worked in this building ten minutes, I’d forgotten to feel nervous about facing Margaret, but as I get into the lift I start freaking out.
What am I planning to say to her? Mine and Margaret’s relationship is one of zero confrontation.
I do the ludicrous things she tells me to do without arguing and she’s perpetually disappointed in me for losing my youthful enthusiasm.
We’ve survived this way for years and now we’re about to be forced into a situation where we absolutely cannot ignore the elephant in the room, i.e.
, that I don’t really want this job but I need it.
Floor three.
WHY did I think this was a good idea?
Floor four.
And why didn’t I prepare what I would say on the way here, instead of listening to Who Shat on the Floor at My Wedding?!
Floor five. The lift doors open and I frantically hit the ground-floor button. I need more time to think. Maybe I can just ride the lift up and down while I strategize . . .
Before the doors close again, I see Margaret standing by the noticeboard. She catches sight of me and it’s too late.