3
When my body unfreezes, I slump in my chair. I didn’t realise how tense I was until now. I don’t have time to process what has just happened because the door opens again. Apparently, it’s turned into a revolving door at Currys during black Friday sales. This time it’s John and the black-haired woman who sat next to us. Before the door closes behind them, they’re trailed by Becky, the assistant SENCO.
‘Hey, we thought you might need some cheering up after spending half an hour with Mr Boss,’ John says over-familiarly, like we’ve known each other for years, swapped friendship bracelets and braided each other’s hair.
I immediately reach the conclusion that Alex doesn’t behave like he’s got a massive interactive board stuck up his arse only when with me, which is almost comforting. I get the feeling he’s not exactly popular here, which is in jarring contrast to the teenage Alex I knew. Despite keeping to himself in sixth form, he always managed to make the people around him like him.
‘We’ve brought refreshments.’ The black-haired woman shakes a packet of Tunnock’s teacakes in the air.
‘I say choose a seat,’ I answer with pretended joviality, but my hands are shaking from leftover adrenaline, so I clasp them together.
Five minutes later, I learn that the black-haired woman is called Danielle, that she’s a year-four teacher and we’ll be planning together with Alex.
They’re a lively bunch, and they gossip about people at school, dropping names that bear no meaning to me while they’re trying to explain who’s who. I’ve never been popular at school, so this sudden influx of friendly people wanting to talk to me makes me wary and suspicious, but I choose not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
‘He could occasionally stop being such a stuck-up pain-in-the-arse,’ Danielle drops in between two bites of her teacake, reverting to the topic of Alex.
Not for the first time, Becky defends him weakly. ‘He means well. He’s just goal-oriented.’
‘I think he’s a robot on the inside,’ Danielle says meanly. She gets crumbs everywhere, and the neat-freak person in me cringes at the mess on the desk.
‘Ignore her. Becky’s got a thing for Mr Boss.’ John nudges Becky, and she blushes to the roots of her chestnut hair.
‘I don’t,’ she says unconvincingly.
‘You know he’s taken,’ Danielle interrupts.
My eyebrows furrow, and John elaborates. ‘He’s been hitting it off with Jane. I bet that’s why he got his new role. So he can assist her all the time.’ His eyebrows wiggle suggestively.
I feel a bit awkward with the conversation reaching an unprofessional and uncomfortable depth. I carry on listening politely because I don’t know how to change the topic without looking like a hopeless killjoy.
Becky interjects, ‘They’re just friends.’
‘Friends with benefits more like it.’ John throws me a meaningful look.
‘The old minx.’ Turning into a nine-year-old, Danielle titters.
Jane must be in her early thirties which makes her only a few years older than Alex and I. I’d hardly call it cradle-robbing. But a knife twists in my side at the idea, nevertheless.
After they leave, I spend the entire afternoon trying to sort out my logins, scraping a disconcertingly resistant brown substance from the bottom of the teacher cupboard and completing the safeguarding training. Compared to my morning, the rest of my day is almost boring in its uneventfulness.
Six hours later, I’m sitting in a café with my best friend, still mulling over my bad luck.
‘When did we stop going to the Slug it’s that good.
I brief them on the Alex situation and finish with him turning the air con on just to gain the upper hand.
‘I was always convinced Alex was a wanker,’ Lydia exclaims without an ounce of surprise, and her sharp eyebrows knit together as she starts scrolling on her phone.
‘You’ve never met him,’ I point out. Lydia and I met at uni, post-Alex. I was still heartbroken when Lydia took me under her wing. I introduced her to Catherine, my best friend since we were five, and we immediately hit it off and became an inseparable trio.
Lydia shrugs, her sleek brown hair falling over her shoulder, still perusing her phone. ‘He was a penis to you ten years ago, Hols. He should have grovelled after what he did.’
‘I split up with him, you know,’ I interject, ignoring the anatomical descriptor of Alex. ‘We’re not in an episode of EastEnders . We dated. We broke up. He fancied somebody else. We stopped talking to each other. We went our separate ways. The end.’
‘So, you’re telling me that there are no feelings and that you’re only shaken because you didn’t think you would meet him ever again, and not because you still think he’s seriously hot and you want to get into his pants because you didn’t get a chance the first time?’ She says this all in one breath.
Then, she practically rams her phone up my nose, Alex wearing a navy version of a power suit illuminating the phone screen. My stomach coils like a swarm of slippery eels, and I avert my eyes because there’s a risk they will burn holes into the screen if I don’t. It’s nice to know the website is working again.
Lydia pretends to fan herself with a napkin. ‘Is it suddenly boiling in here? Why are the biggest, most evil gits always so hot?’ To my embarrassment, she starts making slinky moves in her chair while singing Hot in Here by Nelly. I have half a mind to remind her that she should keep it PG, but I’ve run out of steam.
‘Except for Voldemort, I guess,’ I add in a semi-pathetic attempt to distract her. Lydia makes a confused face, so I elaborate, ‘Voldemort. Definitely not hot.’
‘A matter of opinion.’ Lydia shrugs.
‘Have you told Vicky?’ Concern softens Catherine’s words.
Vicky and I lived on the same road when we were children. It was one of those unlikely, whirlwind friendships where Vicky was uber-popular and pretty, and I was a mousy nerd with a taste for vintage dresses that nobody understood at that time. Vicky was loud and confident and encouraged me to take up space , but she also never approved of Alex and had some pretty strong opinions about him. I shake my head to answer Catherine’s question.
‘Can he really make you fail your ECT period?’ Catherine changes the topic. She’s the voice of reason that finally stops Lydia’s pretended fornication dance.
‘If he does, you don’t go down without a fight. You take him down with you,’ the public relations Lydia announces.
I’m usually level-headed, so I refuse to lose my composure over this. ‘I’ll complain if he does. There are procedures in place for a reason. I won’t let him ruin the only good thing I have going for me right now.’ That wasn’t so bad. It sounded almost convincing to my ears.
‘Thanks. You’ve just dismissed our nine-year-long friendship in one sentence.’ Lydia pretends to be deeply hurt, clutching her breast like she’s seconds away from cardiac arrest. ‘But I have to admit that your life has been a shit-tip.’ She shrugs when I look at her sternly.
‘What about the dog? Have you heard from him lately?’ Lydia asks, referring to Aaron.
‘I’m going to meet him at our bungalow on Saturday.’ I wince. ‘His bungalow,’ I immediately correct myself.
‘You’re sure it’s a good idea to meet him there?’ Catherine glances in Gabby’s direction. She has now recruited two more boys to build a tower out of foam blocks. She’s got them wrapped around her tiny finger.
‘We need to go through the furniture costs and agree on a repayment plan. I’m hoping that my presence will unnerve him and he’ll agree to everything I want.’ My statement is frosted with ice, but on the inside, I’m hurting.
‘You don’t have to pretend to be strong with us, Holly.’ Catherine touches my elbow. ‘He betrayed your trust in the most cowardly way.’
Avoiding the weight of her stare, I start fiddling with the abandoned sugar sachet on the table. Catherine always knows what to say, but I won’t let myself go. I haven’t cried over a guy for ten years, no matter how dire things have been, so I’m not going to start now.
I clear my throat. ‘I just want to start my life again. To rewind. If I admit how hard this is and that my heart is broken, I’ll fall apart,’ I say matter-of-factly.
‘He’s broken your pride, not your heart, Hols. You just have to glue the pieces back together and do something you can be proud of,’ Lydia says with a steadiness customary for my best friend.
‘Next, you’re going to say feel all the feels.’ I laugh flatly, but my mood has slightly improved.
‘I’ve been reading Eat, Pray, Love , so now I’m full of wisdom and deep proverbs, but it might potentially be the tequila I had for lunch.’ Lydia shrugs again, and Catherine shakes her head but laughs.
You have to love those two.
After two more coffees and a slice of coffee and walnut cake, the sugar and caffeine finally hit my body. After spending a few hours with my best friends and discussing anything from Catherine’s PhD and her immediate chapter submission deadline while trying to tame her little dragon and Lydia finally finding a good Chinese takeaway near her flat, my head is almost clear, and I feel less sorry for myself.
I’m almost composed by the time I get home. That is until the lightbulb in the shower dies unexpectedly while I’m washing myself. I end up groping in the dark while second-guessing which one of the bottles on the side is shampoo. I end up washing my hair with a body scrub, but who cares at this point?
I come out shivering and dripping wet to find that the showerhead somehow ended up spraying water onto the floor and half of the bathroom is now damp. I spend the next hour drying the disgusting, geometric lino, and when I eventually manage to peel it off to let it air, I discover another layer of much older toothpaste-blue lino decorated with five squashed spiders and a bruise-coloured stain outlining the shower corner. If I carried on uncovering the layers, I wouldn’t be surprised to find a dead body or a dinosaur fossil. The seedy studio is exactly a place where I would hide a cadaver if I were a murderer.
The rest of the evening is mundane enough until I get a call from my mother.
‘Darling. How did your first day go?’ Her high-pitched, overly enunciated voice screeches through the receiver. I push the phone away and turn on the speaker.
‘Fantastic, Mother.’ I instil some cheer into my tone.
‘You don’t sound particularly thrilled. I didn’t think that school would suit you.’ After I got the post, my mother didn’t waste a minute to google the hell out of the school, as Lydia would put it, and tell me that it was too prescriptive for my nature, whatever that means.
‘I’m fine,’ I repeat.
‘Maybe you should contact your old principal and ask whether they have any vacancies.’ I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. She doesn’t disappoint. ‘I had a little peek at the website, and they’re looking for a pastoral support assistant.’
‘Mother, I’m a teacher, not a pastoral support assistant.’ I try not to roll my eyes because my mother has a sixth sense for those sorts of things.
‘If you say so,’ she says briskly. She’s on a mission. ‘Anyway. This reminds me, have you spoken to Aaron?’
I don’t understand how my work situation reminds her of Aaron, but I can’t find the will to question it. My mother’s thoughts work in mysterious ways.
‘I can’t sleep or eat from all the stress. I don’t think I’ve closed an eye or had a proper bite of food since you two broke up.’
My mind is immediately transported to two weekends ago when she dozed off in an armchair after polishing a slice of Victoria sponge the size of my head. I ended up watching Salvage Hunters to the noise of her snoring.
‘Your father and I are devastated, aren’t we, George?’ she continues shamelessly.
My dad grumbles noncommittally in the background. At the sound of his voice, a frown works its way onto my face, furrowing my brows.
I check the time; it’s seven o’clock. He’s probably annoyed with Mother because she’s interrupting Pointless . After a prolonged pause, he eventually yeahs . She must have given him one of her exasperated looks.
‘How did your pottery class go?’ I hurriedly enquire, steering the topic from me because I know my mother lives for four things in her life.
Number one is two-for-one bargains in Haskins Garden Centre. Number two, dissecting all the life choices I’ve made since I was a teenager. Number three, annoying my father with rhetorical questions when he’s watching the TV while simultaneously discussing number one or two. Number four, always the most rewarding because it can’t be combined with any of the above and on which I’m now relying, talking about herself and her hobbies.
She takes the bait. ‘Thank you for asking. The pottery class was so invigorating, makes your mind run away with it. Very mind-filling. The pottery teacher was very handsome too. Before I forget, I gave him your number.’
I wonder whether she’s referring to mindfulness until her words bring me back to reality and I choke on the crisp I’m chewing.
‘Your personality might clash less with an artistic type. Somebody who is a bit more fluid and understanding of your unusual taste in fashion and decor.’
I ignore her insult and zone in on her giving out my personal information to a complete stranger slash potential serial killer.
‘You did what?’ I squeak, sounding like Gadget Hackwrench from Rescue Rangers . I try not to panic and bite my lip before I swear on the phone. Despite my mother’s frequent proclivities with my personal life, I’ve never sworn in front of my parents. Maybe it’s time I started. I abandon the bag of crisps on the table.
‘He was very nice. Very good teeth. Mind you, not as nice as Aaron’s. You can always tell a lot about a man by their teeth.’ I purse my lips together. ‘Maybe you can invite Aaron over for dinner on Sunday,’ she carries on without a pause.
One has to admire my mother’s attention span of a mayfly. I’m so bereft of words by her constant one-eighty turns that I can’t quite decide what to comment on first and whether there’s any point at all. I decide to tackle one issue at a time.
‘I’m not inviting my ex-boyfriend to Sunday lunch.’ My patience is waning thin, and an edge is creeping into my voice.
‘I still don’t understand why you broke up with him. He was such a nice boy.’
I don’t deem it prudent to tell my mother that Aaron is many things but definitely not nice . If only things were as simple as they are in my mother’s world.
Something about the way she says boy makes me think of teenage Alex. I never invited Alex to meet my parents. After I saw Alex’s cramped studio he lived in with his mum, my stuck-up, upper-middle-class family with a big house and a perfectly mown lawn, a professor dad and a stay-at-home mum, sat uncomfortably with me. I understood that my lifestyle was a privilege.
Where Alex pretended not to notice that my parents were well off, Aaron always made me feel bad for my parents’ money and never understood why I didn’t ask them for any.
My dad’s grumbling in the background pulls me out of my thoughts. ‘Leave her alone, Cassie.’
‘I have to go, Mother. I’ll see you on Sunday, OK?’ I finish the conversation before my mother starts dissecting any more of my life failures.
‘OK, darling.’ She makes a disconcerting noise that sounds like she’s sending me a kiss over the phone or chewing on an extremely tough sweet. I hang up before she gets a chance to go on another tirade.
Becoming every teacher’s cliché, I end up drinking a big glass of red wine and scrolling through my and Aaron’s pictures from last year’s holiday to Italy. I have a sudden urge to print the pictures off so I can draw horns, a monobrow, a split tongue, a wart or a pig’s nose on his stupid face. Instead, I end up reading through the King George’s Academy’s website until I land on the photo of Alex that Lydia found earlier. I study him for a long moment, his impenetrable green eyes boring into me unapologetically. I close the website as a decision crystalises in my head.
Alex belongs in the past, and I intend to keep him there.