Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven
In the weeks that follow I ruminate on my feelings, trying to untangle the adolescent crush from the adult friendship we had formed, to work out where one ended and the other began and somehow split them apart. And would then find a silly video or interesting article in my social media messages, sent from him, and would have to respond the way a normal person would. As though receiving a tiny sparkling reminder, every few days, that we were not only friends, not only on good terms, but that he actively thought about me, thought I would find things interesting or funny and wanted to share them with me, wasn’t sending me into a tailspin.
And the hardest part of this experience was that I still didn’t know if he remembered. I was enjoying my best friend back in my life, and rediscovering George as an adult, building a friendship that I had missed out on for years, with this gnawing unanswered question in my mind. I considered asking him now and again, wondering about ways to slip it into our intermittent text conversations, but I couldn”t. There is simply no good way to ask someone: ‘Do you remember that time I told you I loved you?’
I go over to the Flores parents” house one evening after work, for dinner with them and their children. Lila is visiting her father, Nisha tells me as she takes my coat.
‘Does he see her much?’ I ask as we walk through to the dining room together.
‘Oh plenty,’ Nisha says, her face neutral, ‘he’s a good Dad, he was just a bit of a rubbish partner.’
We walk past the kitchen where Frannie and her father are squabbling over a cooking pot, a cloud of steam seeping out from under the lid, and join her mother and George at the kitchen table where they’re drinking mugs of tea.
‘Darling!’ Frannie’s mum says, getting up and embracing me.
‘Hello trouble,’ George smiles. I try to grin back normally, forgetting which muscles make what facial expressions.
‘How is everyone?’ I ask, ‘I heard Frannie and Roberto having one of their more civilised conversations.’
George laughs and Nisha rolls her eyes.
‘I swear,’ she says, ‘they shouldn’t be allowed in the kitchen together. It’s literally an argument over whether you drain boiled rice with a sieve, or you put the lid on the pot and tip it so the water comes out of the steam hole.’
‘And of course, they’re both wrong.’ Sameera says, shaking her head, ‘If either of them were capable of measuring rice properly it would soak up the water perfectly and they wouldn’t have to drain it at all.’
‘A half-Indian girl who can’t cook rice.’ George shakes his head. ‘Honestly Mother, where did you go wrong?’
‘The worst thing is there’s going to be loads of this horrible soggy rice left over,’ Nisha says, glaring at George, ‘and it’s all your fault.’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
‘Rowena was supposed to be coming too,’ Nisha says, ‘but apparently George forgot to tell her and now she’s busy.’
‘Ah.’ I look at George and raise my eyebrows. He waits until the two of them have turned their heads away before giving me a knowing smile.
We have a secret again, George and I, as we did when compiling Frannie’s birthday playlist, and like last time I feel a quiet exhilaration from it. After dinner, we help clear up, and I find myself in the kitchen with George as we empty and reload the dishwasher.
‘Think they’re buying it?’ he asks, as I hand him forks to put away in a long drawer beside the sink. The edge of his thumb grazes my hand as he takes the cutlery from me.
‘Nobody seems any the wiser,’ I say, ‘do you think you’ll keep up the charade for long?’
‘I’m just waiting for the right moment. I need some more excuses, I need things to happen that are important enough for Rowena to not be able to attend things, but not so important that my parents or sisters will message her.’
‘We can brainstorm a few,’ I say, ‘car breaking down is a no-brainer. Maybe a minor running injury?’
‘She doesn”t run, but she does do pilates,’ he says, ‘what do you injure doing pilates?’
‘What are you two whispering about?’ Nisha says, coming in to wipe down the placemats.
‘Just asking Hydie about work,’ George says, while I flounder, ‘I told you, didn’t I? Lila and I visited Hydie at work a few weeks ago.’
‘Yes, she bought that letter-writing kit.’
‘Has she written the letter yet?’ I ask.
‘She”s not even put pen to paper,’ Nisha says, ‘she keeps saying she”s still thinking about what to say. She won”t tell me who it”s for, so I can”t even help.”
I had sympathy. My own letter to George had been a painstaking effort, and even when it had been finished it had felt silly, which is why I had never given it to him. I wonder privately, as Nisha and George continued talking, what would be in Lila’s letter. Whether she would pour her heart out as earnestly as I had. She was only eight, I had written my letter when I was fourteen, but I knew how keenly a young girl”s love was felt. The ghost of it lingered in the moments I caught George’s eyes over dinner, or when he put a hand in the small of my back to brush past me in a doorway.
‘Remind me. Why did Frannie delete the picture of you if she doesn’t know?’ I ask George quietly, as Nisha leaves the kitchen to find her sister.
‘I said Rowena didn’t like the way she looked in it., George shrugs, ‘a lame excuse, but it’s what I’ve got.’
‘It is pretty lame. I don’t know her but she didn’t seem like the self-conscious type.’ I can’t work out why I’m keeping Rowena in the discussion. It’s as though I need reassurance, just a little more, that George is now single, that I am not having these feelings about a taken man.
‘Oh?’ he gently tosses the dishcloth across his shoulder and turns to face me, ‘you got any better ideas?’
I feigned being deep in thought for a few moments.
‘She’s actually a government agent and has just left for a top-secret mission. She has to hide her whereabouts the night before she left so nobody could trace her.’
‘Oh that is convincing,’ he says sombrely. I notice him biting the inside of his lip to keep from laughing.
‘Or maybe that the dress she’s wearing is one she borrowed from a famous celebrity and hasn’t returned. If she’s photographed in the dress the celebrity might see and start hassling her for it.’
‘Now that one could actually be true,’ George breaks his serious character and laughs, ‘I’ve got a couple of sweatshirts I’ve realised I might never see again.’
‘There you go,’ I say, ‘everything adds up!’
He smiles, but it falters as he looks at me.
‘Sorry,’ I say quickly, ‘I shouldn’t make jokes, it’s only been a month. Are you feeling okay about it?’
He frowns slightly, as though assessing his own emotional landscape, but then his face relaxes and he smiles again.
‘I’m sad to say goodbye to someone I cared about. But I’m also relieved. I’ve known we weren’t right for each other for a while, and every day I didn’t say anything I was both lying and wasting her time. It was the right thing to do for both of us.’
‘Frannie’s right,’ I say, ‘you are too nice.’
George just looks at me quizzically, so I continue.
‘People don’t talk about breakups like that. They make the other person out to be the villain, or a crazy person they had to get rid of. Even if the break up was the right thing to do, people say things they don’t mean while the wound is still fresh. How are you so lovely even now?’
George thinks for a moment, seeming genuinely stumped by my question.
‘You know what?’ he says, ‘I think it’s partly because of you.’
‘Me?’ I say, put out in return by such an unexpected answer.
‘Yes. I remember when you were younger.’
My heart leaps in my chest as I wonder if he’s going to bring up Frannie’s birthday, my confession. I’m not ready. I don’t know what I’ll say.
‘I know you had a tough childhood,’ he says, ‘and I know we didn’t talk about it much, but I remember rescuing you from that curb when you didn’t go to prom. I remember all the times Frannie would tell me that you didn’t know where you were going for dinner, or were left standing at the gates because your parents didn’t communicate about who was meant to pick you up.’
I can’t keep eye contact, I look at the ground, slightly ashamed that he would talk about something so openly when it made me so vulnerable.
‘And I felt so angry on your behalf,’ he says, ‘you know a couple of times me and Nisha would discuss you just coming to live with us. Or going over there and just telling your parents what we thought about them, both of them, the one that fucked off and pretended you didn’t exist, and the one who wouldn’t pull herself together enough to care for you properly. Our parents shot us down the one time we mentioned it to them but I know they were concerned too.’ He pauses, shakes his head.
‘I hated them for you Hydie. But you were never unkind about them. You never complained. You always tried to see the best in your mother, even though she always let you down. I don’t know how you feel about them now, but it made an impression on me.’
He steps forward and, in a movement that seems almost unconscious, places his hand over mine where it rests on the kitchen countertop.
‘It made me realise how lucky I was, how lucky I still am to have good people in my life. Even when people hurt me, or leave my life, I think on some subconscious level I still think of you, in your frayed school uniform at our dinner table, eating the first hot meal you’ve had all week, talking about how your mum painted your favourite flowers on your bedroom door. And I try to see the world the same way you did. The way I think you still do now.’
We stare at one another in silence for a few moments, but Nisha and Frannie walk back into the kitchen bickering about the entertainment value of a reality show, and as though waking from a trance, George and I come back to ourselves and finish tidying the kitchen, while his sisters pour glasses of wine and continue talking as though nothing has happened.
I stay late at the Flores’ house. Roberto and Sameera say goodnight and the four of us gather in their living room and I sit on their long deep sofa, Frannie lounging across and putting her legs affectionately in my lap. George and Nisha each take a squashy armchair on either side of us. The TV buzzes low in the background as we chat. The noise is mostly Frannie and Nisha discussing the wedding. As she talks Frannie lifts her left hand above her and turns her wrist, so her engagement ring glints in the light. The way it catches the light sparks something in my brain.
‘Frannie, I found my Star Girlz bracelet last week.’
She stops and lifts herself up on her elbows to look at me.
‘No way. Did my Mum tell you she found mine? I won’t get it now but she found it in a box of school things. I thought I’d lost it for good.’ She lolls her head back and I can tell that the wine has made her slightly tipsy.
‘God, I loved them so much,” she says, ”I still listen to them sometimes. On a bad day, I’ll blast that song Meet Me At Midnight, and think about my party. Do you remember? When we were kids, and it came on and we all went mad and rushed onto the dance floor?’
I remember, but I can only give a stiff nod. I see a blurred sliver of George in my peripheral vision and, though I don’t dare look across, I swear I can feel his eyes on me.
‘It’s funny,’ Frannie continues, ‘I think back on that time and I can’t believe how things have changed. I swear it was five minutes ago and we’re all completely different people. Well,’ she glances at Nisha, ‘most of us.’
Nisha scowls at Frannie and inadvertently looks so much like her grumpy teenage self that the rest of us burst out laughing, and after a few moments she relents and joins us. We laugh until creaking from the room above us reminds us that their parents are asleep. We check the time and realise that I’ve missed the last train home. I start fumbling around on my phone to book a taxi, but Frannie gently takes it from me.
‘Just stay here,’ she says, ‘you can sleep in my room.’
‘Is there space?’ I ask. Though their house is large, Frannie as the youngest always had the smallest room. I could fit on the floor beside her single bed as a child, but even as a teenager, it had become cramped.
‘Sure there is,’ Frannie says, ‘If you sleep on the bed, I’ll curl up on the floor next to the wardrobe.’ Even as I picture it I can see that Frannie lying there would put her at least partially sleeping under the bed.
‘Better solution.’ George says, he looks tired, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand. ‘Hydie sleeps in my old room and I bed down here on the sofa.’
‘That works.’ Nisha says clapping her hands matter-of-factly.
‘I don’t want to kick you out of your room.’ I say.
‘It’s not a problem,’ he says firmly, ‘I’ll just come up with you to get pyjamas and a pillow.’
The four of us troop upstairs, the mother in Nisha kicking in as she insists on pouring each of us a large glass of water. She and George go into their rooms while I follow Frannie to the bathroom. It’s been redone since I was last there. It had been done in dark blue tiles with shimmering marbled streaks of silver and teal. I had often pretended it was an enchanted lagoon. Now it’s been redone with decor in eggshell pink.
‘There’ll be a spare toothbrush somewhere,’ Frannie says, digging in the cupboard beneath the sink of their bathroom, ‘Mum always keeps a stash for when we forget them when we stay over.’ She stands up with a small plastic capsule which she clicks open and unfolds to reveal a small toothbrush. ‘Her only rule is you have to take it back and use it. Otherwise it’s wasteful. We keep them for travel, so you can bring it when you come to Spain again.”
I take it gratefully and borrow the skincare in the travel bag she and Nisha keep on the windowsill to wash my face. The bag of serums, creams and toners sits beside small tubes of face wash and moisturiser that are in the gunmetal grey of men’s skincare.
‘Is that George’s?’ I ask.
‘It is,’ Frannie says, ‘If we did one thing right as sisters it’s getting him using skincare. And Theo borrows it if he ever stays over. No man in my life goes un-moisturised.’
When we’re finished we step out of the bathroom to where George and Nisha are waiting. They’ve both changed into pyjamas, Nisha in a camisole top and shorts, George in a soft white top and navy sweatpants. Nisha holds out a bundle for me.
‘It’s an old top of George’s,’ she says, ‘you won’t get much from old sleeps-in-her-pants over there.’ She nods over my shoulder to Frannie.
‘Aside from nightmares if you happen to be getting a drink while she walks to the bathroom.’ George mutters, grinning and ducking as Frannie throws a washcloth at him.
‘Thank you,’ I say, before crossing the hall to George’s room.
‘Make yourself at home,’ he says in the doorway as I stand awkwardly on the carpet clutching the shirt I have been given, ‘it’s all clean, I washed them last time we stayed here.’
He holds a hand out. ‘Just one thing, try each of those pillows and whichever one you like least throw over here.’I press into them gently, deciding they are identical, and pick up the one closest to me and throw it underhand across to George who catches it deftly.
‘Thanks,’ he says, ‘If you need anything give me a shout.’ And when I nod he says, ‘No really, if you need anything, ask me. Nisha is an appalling person when she’s just woken up, and Frannie will be basically naked.’
I laugh and he reaches in to close the door.
‘Goodnight,’ I say.
‘See you tomorrow, trouble.’
The door closes softly and I hear his footsteps creeping softly back downstairs.
I didn’t see George’s bedroom much when I was a child. I spent most of my time in Frannie’s room listening to music and painting my nails, or occasionally creeping with Frannie into Nisha’s to go through her makeup and jewellery. My abiding memories of George’s room were slices glimpsed through a door left just open: Blue wallpaper, a wooden desk piled high with homework, video games and sports magazines, and a single bed made up with a bedding set covered in red and blue dinosaurs.
The room is different now, the walls are the same pale blue, but the wooden desk is tidy, with just a small pile of books and a hooded jacket draped over the chair. The bed is now a wide double, and the bedding has been replaced by something sombre and slate grey. Something in me is sad that the bedding has been changed. There was something so endearing about the thought of George, fifteen, then seventeen, then twenty years old, still curling up to sleep in the bedding he had slept in as a little boy. I change quickly, incredibly aware of undressing in someone else’s house, someone else’s bedroom, and then I gently slide into George’s bed in just his shirt and my underwear. It feels bizarre to me, even though the sheets are cold and the bedding is slightly stiff, having clearly not been slept in for weeks at least. I lie awkwardly on my back with my hands holding the top of the sheet like an old lady clutching her purse, almost embarrassed to make myself too comfortable. I replay the conversations we had in the evening, the sudden, unexpected rawness of the things he said in the kitchen. We had been laughing, trading jokes, and then all of a sudden he had become so sincere that it had felt intimate and uncomfortable.
I wasn’t sure what to make of it. It had been flattering, I suppose, to hear him say that I was such an influence on him, but to hear him discuss my childhood out of the blue had left me feeling exposed. Perhaps, I consider, he was just saying these things because he was feeling emotional. However stoic he was being, he was still fresh from ending a relationship with someone he had cared about. Someone who would have been there that night if he hadn’t chosen to break it off beforehand.
I realise as I think this, that if Rowena had been there, it would have been her and George sleeping up here, with me relegated to the sofa. I try not to think about it too much. I fail. I wonder if talking about her tonight brought back memories of evenings spent here together. I wonder if they too had shared jokes in the kitchen, shared drinks on the sofa with his sisters, and dug through the bathroom cupboards for toothbrushes. Had they made gentle fun of Frannie’s refusal to wear pyjamas and Nisha’s grouchy moods? And instead of George saying goodnight and going downstairs, had they gone together into this room and shut the door behind them? I try not to think of them curling up in this bed. I hold no ill will towards Rowena, am aware that I have no right to feel jealous or upset at the thought of her and George together, but still, the thought tugs at my brain, sags over me like a raincloud. I turn off the light and lie in the dark, feeling very alone, haunted by the spectre of someone else’s relationship.And then I hear the gentle tapping at the door…