This is Not a Love Story

Chapter Eight

It’s Friday evening and I feel marginally better. I managed to get through the day without any further embarrassment, and now the working week is over. There’s so much free time ahead of me for lounging around and reflecting on my own inadequacies.

I just have to get through a visit from Veri first.

It’s three minutes to seven and if I know my sister, she will arrive precisely on time. There’s actually a chance she’s already standing outside, waiting for 7p.m. to strike so she can press the buzzer with her long, annoying fingernail. I cast a cursory glance around the living room and throw a couple of mugs in the sink. It’ll do.

As predicted, bang on seven, I buzz her up to the apartment. She storms through the door and throws her bag on the table.

‘It’s dark in here.’

‘Hiii, nice to see you too.’ I flick the kettle on.

She sets about tweaking the curtains, opening the windows and turning on the lamps. She’s got a greater range of movement in her skirt suit than I have in my pyjamas. She has a home gym that she religiously pounds at five o’clock every morning. ‘So, you’re fine?’

‘I’m fine...’ I can feel the irritated tension bubbling already. ‘You really don’t need to check on me.’

‘Well,’ she sniffs, ‘I am very busy.’

‘I know. Sit down. Tea?’

‘Honey. No milk.’

I don’t have honey, so I turn my back to her and plop a heaped teaspoon of sugar into her mug.

‘Spoken to Charlie recently?’ I try.

‘Yesterday. He’s fatter.’

She holds her hand out for her tea. I hand it to her and watch as she takes a sip. No comment. She’s evidently not as clever as she thinks she is. I feel momentarily bad for the jolt of satisfaction I get from knowing she is also a complete fool sometimes. Yes, it’s only sugar, but she is oblivious.

‘So. You need to sort yourself out.’ She raises her eyebrows at me.

‘Oh, we’re getting straight into it, are we?’

I grit my teeth and mentally check myself. If I rise to this, neither of us will get out of here unscathed. Also, Mum will go berserk if she hears one of us has thrown a mug at the other again.

‘Look at yourself. Look at this place. You’re not a student anymore, Maggie.’

I literally feel my hackles go up. ‘I’m aware of that, thank you.’ I won’t defend myself, I won’t defend myself, I won’t defend myself. ‘I’m making some pretty big changes, actually. Lots of things on the horizon.’

For fuck’s sake.

‘Oh?’ She squints down into her cup of tea. ‘This tastes funny. Is it Manuka honey?’

‘No, no. Tesco.’

She sighs. ‘You don’t half buy some shite.’

We lapse into silence. I light a cigarette.

‘You need to pack that in.’

‘Yep. Like I said, I’m making big changes.’ I lean on the windowsill.

She snorts. ‘Looks like it.’

Sod it.

I dig around in my pocket and pull out the balled-up list. I throw it at her. She opens it and smooths it out, pushing her glasses down her nose. She looks about ninety, she needs to lighten up. Don’t be horrible, Maggie. She’s your sister.

‘For god’s sake,’ she mutters, tossing it onto the table.

‘What?’

‘Well, what does this mean? That you’ve thought of all the things that are wrong with you but that you have no intention of changing?’

‘ No. ’ I’m reaching explosion point with her. Thank god I put the mugs in the sink. ‘It’s all the stuff I’m going to do.’

She picks it back up again and starts reading in a mocking, sing-song voice.

‘Number one: stop smoking.’ She stares at my cigarette. ‘Great job, well done.’

‘My e-cigarette hasn’t arrived yet!’

‘Number two: lose weight. Not difficult, stop stuffing your mouth with crap. Number three: Exercise.’ She looks at me again. ‘Have you changed out of those pyjamas yet today? Number four: See family more.’ She laughs. ‘I think you have bigger things to focus on than whether or not you’ve scrounged tea off Mum and Dad or not this week.’

‘No, that’s not—’

‘Number five: change your fucking job.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘You don’t need to change your job, Maggie, you need to actually get off your arse and put some effort in.’

‘ You need to piss off ,’ I bellow.

Silence again.

I close the window and scratch my eyebrow.

‘Well, I’ve got a dinner to get to.’ She rises from the sofa and takes her bag, throwing one last disdainful glance around the living room. ‘I can’t finish that tea, it’s disgusting.’

* * *

I threw the list away last night. As soon as Veri left, I ate a packet of biscuits, roared out of my bedroom window, tied my duvet around myself like a toga and chucked my resolutions in the bin. I tried so hard not to let Veri’s thoughts about the list get into my head, but she has this effect on me. At thirty-two, she’s the oldest of the three of us, and I’m so used to her being right that it’s difficult to take what she says with perspective. I couldn’t stop wondering whether this was just another silly, immature fad of mine — something everyone in the family laughs at over Sunday dinner.

I’ve calmed down a bit now. Once I crashed from all the sugar I slept for about ten hours, and woke up with a fresh (and guilty) perspective. I had a shower, ate some high-protein cereal and berated myself until I came to the conclusion that yesterday was a blip, Veri is impossible, and I need to start again.

I am now fishing through the paper recycling to try and locate the list.

Eventually, when I am elbow-deep inside an empty cardboard tub of chocolate ice cream, my fingers brush against paper. I pull it out delicately by one corner and put it on the side. It has seen better days. Briefly, I consider writing it out again, but I don’t trust myself not to delete things or give them caveats that make them easier for me, and I am still punishing myself for yesterday. I deserve a difficult path to perfection — I am too much of a disaster for it to be easy.

I set the hairdryer on the list for a couple of minutes. It looks like one of those early secondary school assignments where you’d dip your essay in tea and wrinkle it up to make it look like a war letter from the 1940s. I was always really good at those, although I rarely listened to the brief and just wrote love notes to my imaginary husband in Germany. What a vivid imagination you have, Maggie! Next time, could we try writing more about Hitler and less about your “dandy”? 3/10 . Veri knew more about the war than the teacher did. That’s probably why she’s such a dictatorial bitch.

Who cares about Veri? I think as I waft the hairdryer around the kitchen counter top. I can’t deny that her dismissal of my vow to spend more time with family hurt the most. Maybe she’s half right, though; she has no interest in having a relationship with me, so why should I bother with her? And it’s not exactly like she’s in an enviable position, is it? All she does is work and turn her nose up at everybody. She can’t relate to my situation at all because she’s always made good decisions and had it easy. She makes about five times as much money as me and doesn’t seem to spend it on anything other than pinstripe garments from H me and HMRC have been in conversation and I’m totally sorting it.’

‘Well, good for you.’ I can hear her clattering about with pots and pans and I sense that I’m losing her.

‘So could I possibly borrow fifty quid? Just to see me through ’til payday? I’ll send it straight back on Wednesday, I promise.’

‘All right, darling. I’ll send it over when I’ve made this béchamel. You keep hounding the council until they bring your tax back down, though — and go and pay a visit to that inconsiderate penthouse lady; what’s she thinking installing a wood-burning stove in a city-centre apartment? It’s outrageous! I don’t want you dying in your sleep.’

Well, that’s nice. I will absolutely not be heading up to visit the penthouse anytime soon. Mainly because nobody actually lives there at the moment, but also because anyone who does move there is about as likely to install a chimney as I am to lose five stone and make it in Hollywood.

I wish her well with her béchamel and promise to call tomorrow to speak to my dad before ending the call. My parents are amazing people that I do not deserve. My mum’s a primary school teacher and my dad’s a lawyer, and they live the middle-class dream in the leafy suburbs of Sale. I go home about once every couple of months and stay over, and my Mum cooks and feeds me wine while my Dad quizzes me on why I’m still paying vast amounts of money to live in the city and haven’t yet had my first promotion. I think I’m a complete enigma to them; they just can’t get their head around why I wouldn’t want to get out of the rental market and tie myself down to a property and a mortgage, which, thinking about it, may possibly have contributed to my feverish pursual of a committed relationship when I met Martin. They also don’t get my lack of ambition — how can I not know what I want to do? My Dad cannot understand how anyone can possibly not know what they want to do with their lives.

‘When your Mum and I were your age...’ is his favourite phrase.

‘When your Mum and I were your age, we got straight on the housing market as soon as we got married. It was so exciting to own our own place!’

‘When your Mum and I were your age, we knew exactly what we wanted to do — and we helped each other get there!’

These statements generally don’t go down well. More often than not, I will remind him that they got married at twenty-two, managed to buy their first house for about 20p and knew what their ‘calling’ was from birth. They also weren’t faced with social media and its constant display of perfect lives that are better and more exciting than their own, and the crippling anxiety and indecision that comes with seeing every day what you could do, but having no idea where to start. Do I travel round Asia for six months? Do I aim to rake in enough commission to afford a luxury apartment? Do I teach English as a foreign language in Italy and fall madly in love with a man called Guglielmo who will inevitably cheat on me and destroy my faith in men? How are you supposed to settle when so much is out there?

It doesn’t help that my brother and sister are both successful, well-rounded and well-travelled. It’s like two living, breathing counter-arguments ruining my defence.

I usually take the tram back feeling like I’ve just had the foundations of my entire existence shat on, and vow not to go home again until I’m better; more successful; brighter; shinier. Until my mum calls a few weeks later and says there’s roast beef for dinner on Sunday and I rush back, pimping out my self-esteem for roast potatoes like the animal I am.

It’s 3p.m. and I need a shower. Unfortunately, the timer on my boiler doesn’t work, meaning I have to turn it on two hours before I need a wash and wait for the water to slowly heat up. It then takes a further hour or two to tame my hair, which is like a mane of frazzled pubes if I leave it without intervention.

I flick on the hot water switch; by my calculations I will be ready at exactly 7p.m. This slightly clashes with my six-thirty meeting time with the girls, but I have the excuse that I’m a ridiculously disorganised and catastrophic individual, and they’re usually fine with that.

We’re meeting at the Alchemist in Spinningfields, where one drink will soak up nearly a quarter of my funds for the evening, and then heading to a new tapas restaurant for Spanish food, where three meatballs on a side plate costs as much as I spend on my weekly shop. If I want to enjoy myself and not starve, I’ll have to employ my ‘expensive evening prep strategy’, which involves eating three packets of crisps before I leave.

To avoid the inevitable time-wasting drama later, I head into the bedroom to pick out my outfit. The process goes as it usually does — I open my wardrobe, flick through my dresses as though something new might show itself to me, shut the wardrobe, open each drawer, rifle through my skirts, throw half of them on the floor and then leave the room. I have nothing to wear. Cecilia and Sophie always seem to turn up to every occasion in an outfit I have never seen before, and Anna mixes-and-matches all her colourful skirts and tops to create a new, edgy look each time. I always try on all the clothes that I know don’t suit me, in the hope that somehow something might have changed, before shoving on the mom-jeans-and-cropped-tee combination I’ve been rocking since 2016.

My phone vibrates constantly on the table with WhatsApp messages from the girls about this evening, and I flick through them idly while I half-watch an episode of The Big Bang Theory I’ve seen forty times.

Anna: MAJOR story to tell you all later

Sophie: omg stop, what is it?!

Cecilia: What have you done now?

Anna: I’ll tell you later over a cocktail, it’s worth the wait I promise! First order of business ;)

Shit. I’ll have to get there on time or I’ll miss the original rendition of this fresh nugget from the gossip goldmine.

I step into the shower, which relaxes me in a way I imagine having thousands of tiny, freshly formed icicles pelted against one’s bare skin might soothe the soul, and wash quickly, forcing myself to stay under the water until I can no longer feel my face. I step out of the shower to begin my intense moisturising regime; Martin’s deodorant is still sitting under the mirror, so I wedge it in the bin under the sink.

I pull out my cocoa butter and start lathering it up my legs, but my eyes keep wandering back to the deodorant can, forlornly peeking at me from its make-up wipe nest. I stare at it for a second, and then take it back out again and line it up next to my Dove roll-on. The image in front of me used to be all I wanted: the his-and-hers, the shared space, the casual indicators of a life gone right , with two people under one roof spraying their armpits in harmony as they groggily swerve around one another each morning. But adding Martin (who would hold the can precisely six inches away from his skin, as directed) as my co-star in the fantasy makes a teary wail lodge in my throat.

I put it back in the bin and slam the lid.

* * *

It’s 6.45p.m. and I am the only one here. I still haven’t warmed up from my shower — despite cracking open the secret Sauvignon before leaving — and I’m nursing a hot cider alone at a table I’ve managed to bag.

My phone rings and I hold it against my shoulder, keeping my arms around the warmth of the mug. It’s my brother, Charlie.

‘Veri’s here,’ he says before I’ve had a chance to speak.

‘Christ.’ I sigh. ‘She’s told Mum and Dad that I’m living in a cesspit and now they’re worried sick, is that about the gist of it?’

‘Bang on the money.’ He lowers his voice. ‘She’s actually mental, you know? She turned up today with a photo of herself standing outside court after winning some appeal — local newspaper printed it — and she’s only gone and hung it on the wall. ’

I snort. ‘She staying for tea?’

‘Yes.’ He coughs. ‘I’m on the phone, Veri! It’s Maggie. Fine, god, sorry Mags.’

There’s a muffled scratching as the phone is passed over, and then my sister is speaking. I’ve been trapped.

‘There’s a bag of your old clothes here, Maggie. You need to come and sort them out, give them to charity or something. You can’t expect Mum and Dad to just—’

‘Oops, Veri, I’ve got to go. My friends are here. Speak soon! Say hi to everyone for me!’ I end the call.

I feel a gulp of guilt drop down into my stomach. I should make more of an effort. I haven’t cleared my clothes out. I haven’t ticked any items off my list.

‘Maggie, you’re on time!’ Anna wraps her arms around me from behind, resting her head on my shoulder. ‘Jeans and a crop top, nice to see you’re experimenting with your style.’

‘Shut up.’ I slap her arm. Anna looks amazing in a purple, floaty maxi skirt and black, sleeveless blouse. Tendrils of dark hair are escaping out of her loose bun and framing her face, which is flushed red from the cold.

She scoots into the seat opposite me and takes my hands across the table. Anna has always been a very touchy-feely person.

‘I heard about Martin.’ She gives me the type of eye contact usually reserved for wedding vows or telling someone their father has died. ‘I’m so sorry.’

I stare at her blankly. ‘Are you serious?’

She breaks into a huge grin and throws herself back into her seat. ‘Oh, thank god . I was worried you’d be all miserable and depressing about it.’

‘Did you meet Martin? “Miserable and depressing” is his dictionary definition.’ I feel mean saying it, but it’s true.

She laughs. ‘God, two years . How did you do it?’

‘What, break up with him or cope for so long?’ Sorry, Martin. I really do wish you well.

‘Both. Tell me everything.’

Sophie and Cecilia choose this moment to squeeze through the crowds towards us, and as soon as we’ve all hugged repeatedly, complimented each other’s hair and are cradling fresh drinks, I fill them in.

‘Christ alive.’ Sophie takes a long draw of her Martini. ‘All that time having him as an unpaid tenant and it was as easy as just telling him to piss off.’

‘I know. Timing was a bit out.’

‘I can’t believe he proposed to you. How didn’t you tell us this?’ She’s flushed from the drama.

‘It’s weird, it just hasn’t registered with me as something significant. Guess that’s a sign. It was so not what I wanted, or what I ever imagined a proposal to be like. It was awful, honestly.’

There’s a pause as we all process this.

‘So are you on Hinge yet?’ Cecilia breaks the silence.

‘Jesus, no. I’m just getting used to having the apartment to myself again.’

‘You know you don’t have to move in with them on the first night, right? That’s not standard procedure.’ Anna laughs.

‘Touché,’ I snort. ‘But it wasn’t the first night, and he only ended up camping at mine because it was easier to get to work. It’s not like I ever asked him.’ I shake my head. ‘Anyway, I’m going celibate until Christmas.’

‘Yeah, okay.’ Sophie turns to Anna. ‘Right, what’s gone on with you? Tell us everything .’

‘Well,’ Anna puts her beer down on the table and leans forward meaningfully, ‘I had a connection .’

A collective weariness descends on the table.

‘Oh, god.’ Cecilia buries her head in her hands. ‘Where was it this time, in Subway?’

‘No! It was on the bus.’

We all groan. Anna has profound, spiritual ‘connections’ with people on alarmingly regular occasions. She says she can feel a person’s energy when she locks eyes with them, and sometimes they just ‘ click ’. Five months ago, she had a moment with the man who ran the local chippy (Barry, sixty-four years old, bald) and ended up going back in there every day for two weeks waiting for him to acknowledge their chemistry. He never did, and she put on over a stone from all the battered fish, so she conceded that they had ‘met at an unlikely time in their lives’. We assume that by this she means that if they had met forty years earlier, before he’d got married and was still available — and, apparently less importantly, before Anna was even born — they might have hit it off.

‘I’m serious! Just listen. I was getting on the V1 on Oxford Road, and as I showed him my pass he looked at me and I felt it. I really felt his energy and I know he felt mine too. We stayed like that, just gazing into each other’s souls for what felt like forever.’ Anna dabs at the corner of her eyes. Nobody speaks for a moment.

‘Well,’ I offer eventually, ‘that must have caused significant delays to the schedule. Bet the people at the next stop were fuming.’

‘I mean, yeah, I suppose so. Honestly, we would have stayed like that all day if it weren’t for that selfish woman whingeing about missing her hospital appointment.’

‘God, Anna,’ Sophie looks concerned. ‘So, erm, how old do you reckon he was?’

She asks it casually but we are all holding our breath. Anna has yet to have a ‘connection’ with someone of an appropriate age. She skips our generation entirely every single time, developing infatuations with seventy-year-olds from Tesco or eighteen-year-olds in the college crowd at the bus stop.

‘He’s thirty-two.’ She smiles proudly, knowing we can’t argue with a five-year age gap.

‘Aw, well done you! I’m sure he was lovely. Don’t worry, you’ll find the right one soon enough.’ Cecilia pats Anna’s hand and moves to get up to go to the bar. At uni, when Anna had her first ‘connections’, we used to encourage them; tell her to follow her feelings and go after it. Nine years later, though, there’s been very little success and quite a lot of damage. We’d all like to avoid a repeat of the chippy man’s effect on her cardiac health, so we brush it aside and try to move on.

But something seems different this time.

‘Wait!’ I shout, a little too eagerly, and Cecilia pauses halfway between sitting and standing. ‘How do you know he’s exactly thirty-two?’

Sophie raises her eyebrows in surprise. ‘Yeah... how do you know that?’ Anna has never once had an actual, real-life conversation with the victims of her infatuation, unless you consider asking for salt and vinegar a meaningful exchange.

‘I asked him.’ We all gasp. ‘When we were in bed together.’

‘Oh my Goooooooooooood !’ I scream.

Cecilia is standing fully upright now, screeching, ‘What? What? WHAAAAAT?!’ and flapping her hands around. People are staring. Sophie looks stunned.

‘Shut up. ’ Anna’s smiling coyly, ‘He asked me for my number when I got off. This is it, guys.’

We all spend the next two drinks (donated to me by Sophie) getting progressively more vocal and excited about the fact that Anna has finally gotten laid at the hands of someone she actually feels something for and asking for graphic details of every second. She is incredibly descriptive and we love it.

Two hours later and we are in the restaurant, irretrievably pissed and full of paella. The waitress has brought the bill and it comes to ￡283.98.

‘We splitting this four ways?’ Sophie reaches for her purse.

Anna and Cecilia nod. Shit. The girls had cocktails and ordered loads of tapas dishes, while I stuck to bottled beer and a small paella, counting the total in my head to make sure I could afford it. ￡284 divided by four is like, seventy quid? I don’t have seventy quid. I have twenty-eight quid. Oh god, oh god, oh god. This is when a credit card would come in handy — but I know that this is also when a credit card would begin to ruin me. Sometimes, I fill in the online application, and then, as my finger hovers over the ‘submit’ button, I think about the vastness of the debt I could (and would — really, truly would) plunge myself into with no financial barriers between me and the endless things I want.

Sophie catches my eye. ‘Actually, guys, shall we just tot it up individually? We all had different things so it makes sense.’

Anna and Cecilia look at Sophie and then quickly glance at me and pretend that they didn’t.

‘Oh, yeah, definitely! Much better idea.’ Cecilia grabs the receipt and starts tapping at her phone calculator, squinting with one eye.

This is awful.

‘I’m sorry, guys. I’m so poor.’ I can feel tears welling in my eyes and know that a beer meltdown is on its way.

‘Oh my god, Mags, don’t be so stupid! It’s not right to split the bill when we’ve all had such different stuff.’ Anna smiles warmly at me.

‘Thanks.’ I’m sniffling now. ‘I feel so poor and fat and lost.’

‘Nooooo!’ They chorus.

‘There is absolutely nothing wrong with you!’ Sophie barks. ‘You’re funny and beautiful and fantastic, don’t say things like that.’

‘I just feel unhappy all the time. I had ideas of what being twenty-seven would be like and it just... it just wasn’t like this.’ For god’s sake, I’m blubbing. ‘It’s six years since we graduated; you’ve all settled into careers and mortgages and relationships, or at least one of the above, why haven’t I? I want to lose weight and get a job I love and wear gym clothes and walk up a flight of stairs without feeling asthmatic. Why aren’t I doing any of these things?’ I gulp. ‘I don’t even want to get married! I don’t want a man. What if Martin has completely ruined me forever? What if I end up completely alone and join some kind of nudist cult or buy six ferrets or something?’

Cecilia looks at me worriedly. ‘You’ll find your way, love. You just need time. Maybe try being a bit more... proactive?’

There’s a moment of silence as they gaze at me. I sigh heavily and pull the list out of my pocket, throwing it onto the table. All three of them physically recoil.

‘What is that? Is that an old tissue?’ Sophie peers at it. ‘Why is it brown ?’

‘It’s a list of everything I need to change about myself.’ I flatten it out on the table and Anna picks it up by a corner, holding it out so they can all inspect it.

‘Good for you!’ Cecilia snatches the list out of Anna’s hand. ‘Stopping smoking is a great start.’

‘I can’t do the stopping smoking until my e-cig arrives.’ I frown. ‘I haven’t tried any of them yet.’

‘Well, if your mood’s this low, why don’t you start with the exercise? The endorphins are so good for the mind. Come to boxercise with me!’

‘No cardio. Can’t do cardio,’ I whimper.

‘What about a local walking group?’ Sophie offers.

‘Don’t like the rain. Or creepy walking people.’

‘Yeah, really, Sophie?’ Anna grimaces. ‘That’s literally the most hideous thing you’ve ever said.’ She leans forward and grabs my wrist. ‘You have to try yoga. It’s so calming. It’s not cardio, either, but it’s dead good for your body.’

‘It’s too expensive.’

‘Mags,’ Cecilia raises an eyebrow at me. She does this: lets me be pathetic for a frankly generous amount of time, and then slices through the bullshit when she’s had enough. ‘Come on.’

I swallow.

‘It’s not expensive,’ Anna continues, diffusing, reaching out to grab my hand. ‘They do a beginners course at that Namaste place in the Northern Quarter, ￡50 for six weeks or something.’

‘Maybe.’ I sniff. That sounds like an all right idea, actually. I can imagine myself being all chilled and stretchy. I could be one of those people who does downward dog at sunrise and drinks herbal tea from a clay mug. Very zen. Hm. I’ll think about it tomorrow. I look away from Cecilia’s gaze.

The waitress is back and we all tell her how much we want to pay. I die of embarrassment momentarily and then we leave, standing outside in the cold March air.

‘This was so good.’ Anna wraps us all in a group hug. ‘Let’s do something next week?’

‘Only if you don’t turn up stinking like the number 46 again.’ Sophie smiles.

‘Excuse me!’ Anna steps back. ‘We would never have sex on the number 46.’

‘Mmm, sure.’

We laugh, and keep walking to the taxi pick-up point, where the girls will get their Ubers. I link my arm through Cecilia’s and she gives me a squeeze.

‘Only on the V1, V2 and V3,’ Anna continues, and we all groan. ‘Leather seats on those. Much more romantic.’