Chapter 17
Adam
Okie flies through the two-hour A Level maths exam in just over 45 minutes. I check it over and make small corrections in the margins before writing ‘96%’ on the front in red biro.
I grin. ‘This is really good, Okie.’
Okie smiles back.
I shuffle through the other papers he’s completed since our last session, one of which had only one error. I straighten the booklets into a pile and take a sip of my water, figuring out my wording in my head before speaking.
‘You sat your GCSEs a month or two ago, didn’t you?’ I say, as casually as I can.
Okie nods. ‘Six weeks and two days.’
‘That’s brilliant. How did you find it?’
‘I had my own room.’
‘OK.’ I haven’t been able to find any evidence of these kinds of provisions for A Levels, particularly not when they’re taken privately. It’s what I’ve been worried about.
‘How do you think you’d have felt doing the exams with other people?’
Okie shakes his head but doesn’t say anything.
‘What about it would be difficult for you?’
‘The noise,’ he says.
‘Exams are really quiet,’ I respond. ‘In fact, you have to be completely silent during an exam, so you wouldn’t hear anyone speaking unless they needed to ask the teacher something.’
Okie looks at the table.
‘Also, because you’ll be taking them at a different time to everyone else, it’ll be even quieter,’ I push. ‘There won’t be as many people there as there are at school.’
Okie taps his fingers on the table. ‘I want to go to university.’
‘Absolutely.’ I nod, and then take a second to weigh up my next move. ‘The next set of exams is in November. Do you think we could work towards that?’
He thinks for a second. ‘OK.’
‘Great!’ I have to stop myself from cheering. ‘That’s great. If I get the dates of them all, we can work from there. How does that sound?’
Okie nods and begins packing up his things. I sit back in my chair for a second. Private fees run at around ￡75 per exam. That’s a huge amount of money, considering Okie will have to take at least two papers for each of his subjects. At the moment, I’m paid ￡35 an hour, twice a week to tutor him. It’s still five months until the exams take place...
‘How did it go?’
I hadn’t noticed Mr Adayemi enter the room. He sits down at the table and places a coffee in front of me.
‘Good. He seems happy with November.’
‘I’m glad.’ Then he frowns, and I see how tired he is.
‘I’ve been thinking about how much the exams cost,’ I blurt. ‘They’re not cheap.’
‘No.’ Mr Adayemi smiles. ‘Nothing seems to be.’
‘I was thinking... well, I’ve got quite a lot of work at the moment. And really, most of my time with Okie is spent watching him zoom through past papers. We could reduce my fee, and—’
‘No.’ He shakes his head fervently. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘I’m not saying I’d work for free.’ I pull out a piece of paper and a pen. ‘Look, I’ve worked it out. If you paid me 50% less, you’d save ￡35 a week. It’s about ten weeks until the payment deadline — that’s ￡350. It might not cover all of it, but it’d help, wouldn’t it?’
Mr Adayemi looks angry for a second. ‘We aren’t a charity.’
‘God, no.’ I hold my hands up, mortified. ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. I just want to make things easier. It’s such a busy time of year for me, I wouldn’t usually have this many students, and—’
‘You’re a kind man, Adam,’ he interrupts, tracing a finger down the side of his coffee cup. ‘But this is too much.’
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out an envelope, identical to the one he hands me twice a week. Inside is ￡35 in cash. He stands up and places it in my hand, signalling that our conversation is over. ‘We’ll be fine. Thank you.’
* * *
As I cycle between places, I always think of Katie. Even when we were together, I’d use the quiet time to wonder about our future, or reminisce about our past. I’d think of what to cook her for dinner when she got in from a long shift, or imagine our next holiday and where we’d be spending Christmas.
This time, as I weave my way towards Hugh’s, I think about all the people attached to her who are now also lost to me. Her parents, her brother, her friends... My life is so tightly interwoven with hers that her leaving has stripped me of part of my identity.
With yesterday’s hangover not quite a distant memory, my mood is lower than I can cope with alone, and a visit to Hugh is exactly what I need. I pull up outside his home and chain my bike to the railings before taking a dollop of hand sanitiser on my way inside. The smell makes my throat feel thick.
Hugh is watching Moana again — it’s as if no time has passed. I pull up a chair and sit next to him, gently squeezing his arm to let him know I’ve arrived.
He squeals and waves Hei Hei in my direction. The stuffed rooster looks to have been in the wars since my last visit.
‘Me and Katie broke up, Hugh,’ I murmur, my eyes fixed unseeingly on the screen. ‘She’s moved out.’
Hugh claps.
‘I should have seen it coming. I mean, I guess I did see it coming. I told you, didn’t I, that something felt off?’ I sigh and put my feet up against the railings on the side of the bed. ‘She’s coming to get her stuff soon. Hopefully I’ll be at work, but there’s a weird part of me that kind of wants to be there? I sort of want to know if she’s sad about it, or if she regrets what she’s done. Is that sick? I mean, what if she doesn’t? What if she bounces in all happy and breezy? Then what? I’m just torturing myself.’
Hugh sighs loudly. I don’t know whether he hears the sadness in my voice, or whether it’s because Moana’s grandma has just popped her clogs, but it makes me feel better.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, so I pull it out and see another Tryst match notification on my screen. The little flame icon has been a permanent fixture in my notifications bar since the boys swiped right for every female in Greater Manchester at the pub the other night. I haven’t opened the app, and I go to clear the latest notification when I pause.
I could just check, couldn’t I? What’s the harm in it? It might make me feel better, seeing that there are other women out there.
No. I can’t. What would be the point? I’d match someone, go on a date, and then — what? I don’t want anybody else.
My finger hovers over the notification. Suddenly, I think of Chloe.
You’re so bloody careful , Adam. You know the sensible choice isn’t always the right choice, don’t you?
I click on the icon and my screen lights up with a giant ‘H’. It disappears, and a picture of a woman appears. The message box in the corner shows that I have thirty-two unopened notifications.
I tap through, and see an inbox full of names, each of them next to a message: New Match! Say Hello!
Sarah, Anna, Freya, Jessie, Eve, Olivia, Beth... I scroll down the list, my head spinning. This is weird . ‘They don’t know anything about me!’ I say out loud.
I go to my profile, and my own drunken face greets me, filling the screen. Underneath is written: AreyOu the x axis to my Y? I can be you’re triangle dadddy.
I laugh out loud and take a screenshot, sending it on to the boys before swiping back through to the app.
My own face is making me feel uneasy. I go to the homepage, where there’s the same picture of the girl I saw before. Underneath is a love heart and an ‘x’. I tap the ‘x’, intending to close the app, but she disappears off to the left and a new girl takes her place.
Oh, god — have I just rejected her? I press the love heart for the next girl without looking — I don’t want to upset her, whoever she is — and another picture slides onto the screen.
I pause, my finger hovering over the heart.
‘I know her,’ I say, holding the phone towards Hugh. ‘Where do I know her from?’
Hugh pushes the phone away — it’s blocking his view of the TV — as the door behind us opens and the woman on my phone screen walks into the room.
‘Afternoon, Hugh! Oh, hi, Adam.’ It’s Becky, the nurse I met last time. My face flames, even though I locked my phone before she could have seen. ‘It’s good to see you again.’
‘You too.’ I smile, trying to calm myself. Have I just willed her here? Did she get some kind of notification when I saw her profile?
She chats about the weather as she tidies the room, and I try to look at her through single eyes. Objectively, I can see that she’s pretty, with blonde hair piled messily on top of her head and alarmingly blue eyes. She’s telling a funny story, and her laugh is contagious.
‘. . . and I said, “it’s not like it can be hot forever , Mum!”’ She giggles, and I haven’t been listening, but I join in anyway.
I smile. ‘She sounds great.’
‘She is.’ Becky blushes, and drops her gaze. ‘Sorry, look at me going on. I’ll leave you two to it, and I’ll be back in a bit to do your meds, Hugh.’ She catches my eye again as she backs out of the door, and then she’s gone.
I wait a few moments, and then go back to my phone. I tap through to Becky’s profile. In the first picture, she stares up at the camera, her lips slightly parted, blonde hair cascading over her shoulders. In my mind I see Katie, Chloe.
You’re so bloody careful.
Before I can think twice, I swipe right.