It was only when I met Patrick in my final year that the desolation began to melt and I felt there was a purpose for me after all.
‘I never intended for it to happen. You have to believe that?’
‘Still doesn’t make it right.’
Who was the one to make the first move? I couldn’t imagine Patrick diving in for a kiss, or perhaps he had. All teeth and awkwardness, like a teenager whose balls are so swollen they take over from any rational thought.
My brother, Robin, had called a week, perhaps two, after I left. Telling me how he’d bumped into them both at a party. At how they had sat, huddled under a rug on the rooftop while Patrick pointed out the constellations. About how he was unable to look at anyone else.
My little brother thought he was doing me a favour. Telling me not to waste my life on people who didn’t feel the same way. But he didn’t see me lying on the bathroom floor, night after night, wetting the tiles with tears.
‘I’m not asking for your forgiveness, Jane, because I didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘He was my boyfriend, Elle.’
‘And you slept with someone else.’
‘Because of you.’
‘You slept with Carter because of me?’
It sounded ludicrous. I knew this, but it was her fault as much as mine. If she hadn’t been at that fundraiser then maybe we would have stood a chance. If she’d never met him. If I’d never met him. Who knows? Maybe things could have been different.
Or maybe it was the wake-up call I needed.
‘It doesn’t matter anymore,’ I said.
‘Which part?’
She meant us. Her and me. Best friends forever, wasn’t that the way it was supposed to be? Because you can’t stop a heart that’s made up its mind. But how does it choose? How does it know? How can we stop it from breaking?
‘Do you love him?’ I looked at her and found her eyes already locked on mine. Staring. Searching. It made me want to gouge them out, stop her from ever looking upon anyone ever again. Stop her from invading my every thought.
‘Love is a little word that people throw around too much without thinking about what it actually means.’
So that was a no. Or at least she hadn’t quite decided yet if he was worth anything more to her than a part-time distraction.
‘Does he love you?’
I have no idea why I asked this. No idea why I invited her to add more weight to the feelings of inadequacy multiplying like some kind of swarm inside me. The feelings of rage and frustration that, no matter what I did, I would never be good enough. For I had tried and tried to be someone more, someone other than me. To have for myself what so many others took for granted.
She looked away, gave a half-hearted shrug as she tossed her cigarette to the ground, grinding out the embers with her shoe. ‘You know how he is. Outward expressions of emotion don’t exactly come easily to him.’
He’d never actually said the words to me, but I thought he didn’t need to. I thought his agreement to be part of my life, to bind himself to me, was proof enough that he was mine.
Stupid to think I was worthy, even more so to hope he wouldn’t be drawn to her. He was blindsided by her beauty, but I was confident she held little other appeal. He was so far removed from her world, too intellectual, too well-read, too disinterested in the fabric of society and all the show of wealth Elle held dear.
But it was his very otherness that made her want him.
‘Are you still seeing Carter?’
‘He’s moved to Hong Kong.’
‘Was it serious between you?’
As serious as casual sex ever could be. Sex that had become more aggressive, more urgent, every time I turned up at his flat in the middle of the night, with gin on my breath and demons in my mind. Sex he wanted to turn into something more, but I knew my heart wasn’t ready for that.
Carter claimed to be leaving for the sake of his career. But part of me admitted I had pushed him away. One more person incapable of loving me.
‘How’s your placement going?’ I asked and her face reassembled itself into a genuine smile.
‘It’s incredible. To see them every day. To know I’m part of their developmental journey, that I’m making a difference in their lives, it’s just so special.’
So it would seem one of us at least had found their calling, their raison d’être, their place in this world. Who would have thought the prom queen would end up teaching five-year-olds their ABCs?
As I sat there, letting her words fall over me, watching the true delight on her face as she spoke about her pupils and all their little foibles, the beginnings of an idea seeped into my mind. Slowly at first, then with greater presence, as if unsure of its weight, its significance.
Elle loved children. Despite the battles with her own mother about how to live her life, Elle had never made any secret of the fact she wanted babies. Lots of them. But Patrick didn’t. He and I had both agreed they were an unwelcome distraction, the very antithesis of what was needed in order to be successful. That there was no guarantee which part of your gene pool would make its way into the bodies of your offspring, so why take the risk of having a mediocre one?
There was still time to win him back. To change the hands of fate. To show him that while Elle might fulfil all his basal male fantasies, she wouldn’t make sense in the long term. I would forgive him for straying. Allow him his moment of weakness. A reflex reaction to learning I had slept in another man’s bed.
Every moment of every day gives us a choice.
Anemone: When Aphrodite wept over Adonis’ grave her tears grew into anemone flowers
Five years ago
‘I can’t go in there.’ I shook my head back and forth, bare feet tucked up underneath me and my stilettos tossed into the far corner of the bathroom.
‘You have to.’ My mother rolled her eyes, swivelling her wrist round to linger on her watch, a deliberate reminder that we didn’t have time to dwell on my little emotional outburst. Always the same. Always doing something she didn’t approve of. Always making her clean up my mess.
‘Why?’ Couldn’t I just stay in here a moment longer? Wrap myself up into oblivion and pretend none of this was even happening?
‘Because you chose this for yourself.’
She turned her back to me, showing me the zip along the length of her dress, the clasp of her necklace jiggling as she started to wash her hands. Slow, repetitive movements as she sluiced water between her fingers. There was no need for her to clean her skin. It was simply a way of keeping those hands from reaching out to me.
‘How can you say that?’ Would she ever offer me anything resembling a normal reaction? Simply support me, placate me because I was her daughter? Why the constant need to remind me I wasn’t what she expected?
‘You chose her as your friend. I warned you against it for this very reason.’
‘Of