Marlowe was always going to succeed in whichever field she chose to pursue so you can imagine our surprise when things took a turn for the unexpected, a few years ago, one summer afternoon in July. It was the hottest day of the year and London had quite literally come to a standstill. The smell of Hendrick’s gin filled the air, and for the first time in a long while a drought had threatened to take hold across Britain.
We’d been invited to one of her parents’ infamous barbecues. They owned a townhouse in West London and for one afternoon a year it became home to the who’s who of the slightly elder, more intellectual social scene. At that time, we used these occasions as an opportunity to stock up on free booze before going to a club later that night, but this time things unfolded rather differently. I arrived late, as usual, and expected Marlowe to be in the garden barefoot in jeans amidst a sea of Panama hats and beige summer suits, but this time she was nowhere to be seen. I made my way through the bodies cluttering the house, loud in idle chitchat, and arrived at the bottom of the stairs where I pulled out my phone to text her. As I began to type, I looked up towards the top of the dark staircase to see her seated in a crisp white T-shirt and denim skirt, a distinct shine on her bare shins gleaming through the shadows.
‘Jess, up here,’ she said, signalling me into the bathroom.
I followed her across the marble tiled floor and there it was, lying on the sink, lodged sideways between the hot and cold taps, the end of the future as we knew it and a building block of a dilemma for Marlowe. A pregnancy test that read positive.
‘Jesus,’ I whispered. ‘Is it yours?’
‘Of course it’s mine,’ she snapped, grabbing it to shake it.
‘I don’t think shaking it is going to help, Mars.’
She sat down gently on the bathroom floor and drew her legs towards her. I took hold of the test to double-check its result and took a deep breath to replace the ones I’d since lost. She looked up at me with glassy eyes.
‘What am I going to do?’ she said.
And what do you say to the perfect girl, the girl who irons her underwear, who wears white and doesn’t spill, the girl now pregnant and crying. I didn’t say anything. Instead I just sat down on the cold floor tiles next to her.
‘I can’t have a baby, Jess. I’m twenty-three years old,’ she whispered.
I noticed her hands were trembling, her chipped orange nail polish rubbing against her two front teeth. Girls like Marlowe weren’t supposed to get pregnant. She was supposed to spend her days practising law, not the alphabet. I squeezed her warm hand that was still damp from tears. At that point there was a knock at the door, one of the other partygoers, oblivious and persistent, who clearly needed use of the bathroom.
‘Just a minute, please,’ I shouted politely.
There was a brief pause before they knocked again.
‘In a fucking minute!’ Marlowe shouted through her tears.
Together we sat side by side on the cold, tiled floor, knowing that in just one afternoon, everything had changed.
In the modern world, there are many options open to women in the wake of an unplanned pregnancy but for Marlowe it seemed the most preferable answer would be marriage. The carefully arranged wedding was six months later and after much debate, they had promised as a family that she would have the baby first and start her career later. But as with most things in life, it didn’t really work out that way. Now George was travelling all over the world while Marlowe stays at home. That little blue line we had once gathered around with baited breath is now called Elsa.
Before Marlowe’s parents had led her down the road of commitment and common decency, she was a permanent fixture on our nights out. She drank like a trooper, never danced but always turned up in an eclectic mix of designer and vintage clothes, accompanied by a desperate claim that she had purchased them all in the sale. We still see her, usually for relationship or career advice or when we need a sensible opinion and a healthy meal. And despite her newfound love of the quiet life she still comes out to the big celebrations: birthdays, new jobs, new hairstyles. To put it bluntly, Marlowe is the moral lighthouse in our slightly less sophisticated world. When she announced she was getting married I cried tears of joy, Amber cried tears of sadness and Sean began sketching her wedding dress.
And finally to me, a girl who loves Mexican food and bowling and low-budget horror films, gently flying solo into the abyss: no brothers, no sisters, two parents who years ago deemed it better to carry on life apart, on separate continents in separate time zones with separate hearts. Perhaps I’m only now realising as I stand here, not quite young and not quite old, that their situation might not have been an easy one. That a family doesn’t necessarily work better together.
I’ve learned that after a while, it can get pretty tricky to always make the right decisions, to do what everyone else expects of you and to make people happy. We discard the days, the weeks, the months, the years on the journey towards the destination as somewhat unimportant compared to the magical days of a future where we aim to one day be. But they will suddenly merge together and we will realise that this day, this week, this month, this year, these little, insignificant things culminate to form our lives, all joined together, like a map of the stars but instead right here on earth: a thousand lives crisscrossing, at times colliding. But the secret is not to avoid the collision. If the horizon blurs and the plans fade, just think of the places travelled, the things seen and the strangers now known as friends: it all happened because you once made what you had thought to have been a mistake.
Chapter Two – The Art of Intent
Cause…
Battle commenced one windy Friday morning last September. There was something in the air that day; I felt restless, almost as if suddenly, and without warning, my life wasn’t enough any more, any sense of pride or ambition had vanished. My mind ached like a lead weight. This wasn’t me. That was the only thing at this point that I actually knew to be true. The historical swirls of self-doubt that continually crept in weren’t going to win this time. Not that morning. Not today.
I was at the beginning of a food shop at the supermarket across town and, as I walked briskly through the automatic doors, I stopped for a moment to look up at the final leaves on the trees, clinging on with the same sense of stubbornness. I had decided in a combined haze of high spirit and spirits to push aside the idea of law and pursue my dream of becoming a photographer. It had me taken two years at law school to arrive at that decision and the leap hadn’t felt quite as wonderful as I had imagined. The disapproval of my father, moored somewhere off the South of France with his latest girlfriend, was evident. A short conversation resulted in us both hanging up the phone, which was surprising, as I thought he might relate given he felt the exact same sense of inadequacy about family life. Naturally, I had come to the conclusion that from that point on, I was on my own.
As I dragged the bags of shopping up the steps to our flat, I felt as if the air had been knocked out of me. The big supermarket was quite the commitment in terms of travel but a worthy respite from the express shop around the corner which, although convenient, was half the size and half the value. They even had a car park with trolley bays. I noticed this and despite not having a car was reasonably impressed. These days, I had time on my hands to appreciate such details. I pulled open the door and struggled inside, my fingers throbbing from the weight of the tinned goods. There was a note from Amber on the kitchen counter that read: ‘Please buy milk.’ I picked up the five-pound note and slid it into my jacket pocket.
After unpacking the contents of my bags into the fridge and cupboards I noticed the grey clouds heaving above me through the kitchen window. It couldn’t rain now, I thought. My day hadn’t been productive enough to be shut indoors. Quickly I pulled on my leggings and trainers and set off into the light downpour, determined to complete a run, determined to succeed at something that day. But in a few short minutes the light shower turned torrential. I stood at