The Trouble with Rose

6
Back to Normal

The next day, a Monday, I resolve to go back to my normal life. I’ve found that in times of stress over the years, having a regular and predictable routine is the one thing that I’ve been able to depend on. In the last six months with Simon, I let my routine slide a little, let it get scruffy around the edges, but now it’s time to put my life back on track.

As I walk out of my house, I take a deep breath to brace myself for the day. But I needn’t have worried, because the city looks like it is determined to help me in my resolve. On the train to New Cross Gate, to get to campus, I easily get a seat. On my walk to Goldsmiths, a little girl with a cheerful pigtail on top of her head waves shyly at me. As I make my way across campus to get to my department, the March sun plays peek-a-boo on the common, and candyfloss pollen floats on the breeze. I turn my face up to the warmth.

Maybe, just maybe, I can go back to who I was before I met Simon. If I can do that, if I can let go of the image Simon created of me – a tempting picture of someone who knows who they are, for whom something vital didn’t get left behind a long time ago – then maybe things will be okay.

I walk into my department building, humming along to someone who is listening to ‘Cake by the Ocean’ on their phone, determined to make this the first day of the rest of my life.

My optimism is severely tested as I walk through the double-doors.

‘Ohhhhh,’ says an undergrad who I tutor, making a sad face when she sees me. ‘What happened?’

‘Oh,’ I say, staring at her. She is wearing dark red lipstick and thick black eyeliner, a pair of harem trousers and a sports bra. ‘Yes. It’s all fine.’ I smile brightly and give her a thumbs-up.

I keep my eyes focused ahead of me as I walk quickly past the student towards the stairs that lead up to my office. I can do this. This still makes sense. Of course people are going to want to know what happened, and why I’m not on my honeymoon. But as news stories go, I’m sure I’m not the most important of the day. And, in any case, I am not going to let an eighteen-year-old who thinks underwear is suitable to wear around campus ruin my day.

‘Rilla!’ another voice says, as I place one foot on the stairs. I slowly turn around. It is one of my professors. Professor Maxine is French, she teaches phenomenology, and she tells her students: Talk with your body, yes? Your heart, she is the same as your crotch, yes? ‘What happened? Why are you here?’ she says to me now, her face a picture of deep distress. ‘Come here!’ She embraces me. ‘Cry, ma petite! Cry!’

I shake myself like a dog when she lets go of me. ‘Professor Maxine,’ I say, though there is a breathlessness to my voice now, ‘really, it’s all fine.’

I run up the stairs before she can say anything else. I look left and right, and pass by a meeting room in which a few of the admin staff are having a meeting. It is glass-fronted, and I resist the urge to hide my face behind a book as I pass by. The department administrator pauses in the act of giving a PowerPoint presentation whose title reads, What does your work allocation say about you? and does a double-take. No way! she mouths, her face aghast.

Now I’m running. I can’t get to my office fast enough. Why on earth did I think it was a good idea to come to university today? Of course I’m the scandal of the week, and I should have known I would be! I run inside my office, slam the door shut and press my back against it. I look frantically around at the broom cupboard that is my office: the grey cabinet, the posters of philosophy conferences that other grad students have left on the walls, my work desk and chair, my old department-issue desktop, the thick leaves of the aloe plant that a student gave to me as a present.

And then I realize it. I’m alone here, I’m alone in my office. No flatmate, no GIF, no students or professors. Yes, I am alone here and that’s a good thing. I am still feeling the weight of the onslaught, but perspective slowly starts to return. I can stay in here and I can work. I put my bag down, take off my jacket and scan my workspace. I move things around. I place my water bottle and a chocolate-and-orange cereal bar next to my computer, fiddle with the height of my chair, place my spring jacket on the back of it. There, the room looks familiar now. I feel safer, I can breathe.

I automatically reach out to the desk calendar to change the date. And there it is. Monday, March 13th.

I have neatly crossed out the words ‘Office Hours’ and instead written ‘First Day of Honeymoon’. My hand snaps back like I’ve been stung. I stand staring at the words, feeling trickles of something crawling up my spine.

Why, why not even one exclamation point, I think irrelevantly. Why not more excitement at the thought of spending ten days with Simon in Hawaii? Tears prick my eyes and I turn blindly around.

Why am I here? I had woken up with the idea that if I could just carry on as normal, then maybe all this would go away. But what is normal now? What is normal for me? In the time I’ve been with Simon, my ‘normal’ seems to have morphed into something I no longer recognize. I stand with my back to my desk, a hand on my mouth, eyes tightly shut. I’m unable to move, unable even to think clearly.

After many minutes, I slowly open my eyes. And there is a thought in my head, a clear one. Focus, I need to focus. I turn slowly around, refusing to look at my calendar. I turn on the computer, I slowly sit on my chair, tentatively now, not daring to move too fast. I open a file I’ve been ignoring for too long – the file in which I have made notes for my MA thesis.

Just as I click on the file, there is a knock at my door that nearly makes me jump out of my skin. I creep to the door, open it a notch and sneak a peek. What looks like the entire undergraduate population of the philosophy department is standing outside my office. I slam my door shut. Another invasion. First the GIF, now this.

I have something of a reputation for saying it like it is, for not being nice, but getting straight to the heart of the problem. And not just about undergraduate papers, but also undergraduate lives, so my office hours (held twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays) are usually full with back-to-back tutorials. I’m employed as my supervisor Professor Grundy’s teaching assistant, so I assist in classes, mark essays and give feedback to students on their coursework. But today, two days after my non-wedding, there is already a line snaking its way out of my office and down the corridor to the common room. Popular or not, my office hours have never been this well attended.

There is a knock behind me again. I close my eyes, willing the student to go away, but the knock is repeated. I open the door an inch, heave a shuddering sigh, then reluctantly gesture in the first student.

‘Oh no, what happened?’ It is Sara, a redhead with Britney Spears pigtails.

I purse my lips. ‘I thought I’d cancelled my office hours.’

Her green eyes are wide. ‘Yes, but then we saw you were in. You look so sad!’ She reaches out a hand.

I stop myself from springing back. ‘I’m fine,’ I mutter. ‘Now, what did you want to talk about?’

I gesture her to the ‘student chair’. Sara settles into it like she’s here for a picnic. She seems to have no questions about her essay or about my feedback, but it still takes me fifteen minutes to get rid of her.

The next student comes in. ‘Oh no, what happened?’ Mimi gasps, as soon as she walks in. ‘I am so sorry for you! Did you literally leave him at the altar? In front of all the guests? At the very last minute?’

My heart is pounding, and I can hear a busy hum from outside the door, the swarm of locusts is expanding further. I decide that my best strategy is to attack.

‘You need to think about whether this is what you want to do with your life, Mimi,’ I tell her, finding her paper on my desktop and clicking on the file. ‘Look at this paper – it’s so awful I don’t even want to use it as a coaster!’

She peers closely at the computer. ‘Well, you can’t,’ she points out. ‘It isn’t printed out.’

‘Totally not my point,’ I say sternly. ‘How much time did you spend writing it? Half an hour?’

This strategy works. I use this form of address with each student as they filter in.

‘Tell your girlfriend how you really feel,’ I say to Jacob. ‘Don’t be a douche-bag.’ He looks mildly hurt at my words, but his natural laziness kicks in and the hurt vanishes. He lounges back in the chair, the front legs of the chair come off the ground and now he is almost horizontal. ‘She’s, like, you don’t talk, and I’m like, whaaaa?’

Several more students come in. Each one asks me what happened, and why I look so awful (one actually uses the word decaying) but I am like an Olympic ping-pong champion, I thrust the ball right back at them.

I have been at it for almost two hours, and am starting to feel more like myself, when Wu Li comes in. She gives me the standard sad face and question. I prepare myself for attack. It is harder to do with Wu Li, though, because she is one of the top undergraduates in the department, and her personal life seems spotless as well, not riddled with broken relationships, binge-drinking, flatmate crises or chlamydia scares like everyone else’s. I search her paper frantically for any of my comments that don’t read, Excellent! Great point! Wow, never thought of it that way! Have you thought of doing a PhD (talk to me about this!).

She’s looking at me seriously for what feels like minutes on end, her eyes unblinking beneath curly eyelashes. ‘Maybe you’re like Nietzsche,’ she says at last. ‘You can only talk about love, but not practise it.’

My stomach clenches. I stare at my computer.

‘But it’s okay,’ she adds sympathetically. ‘Some people are just not cut out for love.’

I stumble blindly up from my chair. ‘I need to make a phone call,’ I say to her, holding the door open, my voice sounding strangled and choked. She gives me a sympathetic, knowing glance on her way out. I slam the door shut for the third time this morning. I need to get out of here!

But my options are limited. I can either leave through the door and face the fifteen or so shiny young faces that are still waiting on the other side of it, or I can climb down through the tiny twelve-inch-square window in my office, adopt my father’s way of dealing with confrontation – i.e., avoiding it like the plague.

My friend Tyra walks in as I stand there, hands tangled in my hair. She stares at me aghast. Tyra was invited to my wedding, so she doesn’t need to ask, Oh no, what happened? She quickly closes the door shut behind her.

‘Rilla—’ she says. ‘You look terrible. Your hair, your skin, your shirt is buttoned all wrong and’ – she looks down at my feet – ‘you’re wearing mismatched socks!’

I look at her, panic clear on my face. ‘I shouldn’t have come today—’

She walks over to me and places her hands on my shoulders. ‘Rilla. For crying out loud, get yourself together! Who cares what anyone thinks?’ She quickly buttons my shirt right, pats my hair, and squeezes my cheeks to get some colour back into them.

I collapse on my chair and lift my head to stare up at the ceiling. ‘I never want to see anyone again.’

Tyra perches herself on my desk and swings her legs, stylish in her orange jumpsuit and platform sandals. She is watching me, her caramel skin beautifully offset by an emerald scarf and enormous silver hoops.

‘Rilla, what’s going on?’

‘With what?’

‘You know what. All of it!’

I shrug defensively. ‘I couldn’t go through with it, okay? Why is everyone staring at me like I’ve lost a limb? I made a mistake getting engaged in the first place.’

She nods slowly. ‘Well, I could have told you that.’

I look at her sharply. This is the first time since I left Simon at the altar that anyone has expressed this opinion. Everyone else in my life is convinced that I’m a terrible person, that I hurt Simon and I ruined my life. I narrow my eyes at her. I want to ask her what the hell she’s talking about but, characteristically, her rapid-fire brain is already moving on to the next thing. She’s looking at my computer screen where she can see the notes I’ve made for my MA thesis.

‘Any progress?’ she asks, trying to read what I’ve written.

Federico was wrong about what he said to my family. I have not been thrown out of my MA, I’ve only been given a warning. I need to produce more work, have more to show for the last three years. I’m doing an MA in philosophy, writing a thesis on multicultural perspectives on love. I want to know, I genuinely want to understand how some people are so good at love and others aren’t. Yet the more I study it, the less I seem to know.

I shake my head. ‘Nope, no progress.’

She inclines her head to study me. ‘You’re good at this stuff. I don’t get it. What’s stopping you from writing something, anything? You can do it in your sleep.’

I cluck impatiently. ‘And act like I know about love?’

She raises a stylish shoulder. It was Tyra, my best friend during the three years of my undergraduate degree, who convinced me to apply for a scholarship to do an MA at Goldsmiths. She’s writing an MA thesis on sex in black feminist literature. Soon she’ll be moving on to a PhD. She’s nearly done and I don’t even have a clue where I’m headed.

‘Do it, finish it. What’s stopping you?’ she asks.

This is a really good question. I have pages and pages of notes, hundreds of pages. Yet, I am no closer to finding a thesis topic.

The years of my degree, a BA in English Literature, weren’t easy. I was haunted by a recurrent unease with my life, maybe even with being in my own skin. I felt restless and unsure with just about everything. But I was able to focus on one thing – the degree itself. On the books we read and the papers we wrote. Once I completed my degree, though, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I felt like I had no anchor, that even the relative grounding that my degree had given me had been stripped away from me. What were my skills? What was I good at? What did I want to do? I’d never been in love with any job I’d had over the years – teaching chocolate-making workshops, selling vintage clothes, working in a pub. So when the scholarship was offered to me, I had said yes. It felt like a lifeline.

‘I can’t write anything at all. I feel like I’m pretending I know things that … I’ve never known.’

‘Why does everything need to be perfect? This is the problem with you. Either something is perfect, or it’s total shit.’ Tyra raises an eyebrow.

I shake my head. ‘That’s not true.’

‘It so is. Take your MA, for instance. It could be about, say, Jane Austen’s perspective on love. That would do. But no, the woman has to find out everything on love that’s ever been written anywhere in the world. Compartmentalize, Rilla. Write the thesis. It doesn’t have to be perfect!’

‘Maybe.’

She’s looking at me now, not saying anything.

I frown, determined to give her the silent treatment, but then I give up. ‘Fine, just tell me. What did I do wrong with Simon?’

She widens her eyes, looks about the room, seemingly looking for an answer to my question. ‘You got engaged three months after you met. You were getting married three months after that. I mean, duh, you don’t need to look far for what went wrong! Anyway, look, what’s the big deal? We all make mistakes. Love and marriage and all that, it’s not for everyone. I mean, look at me!’

‘Love and marriage and all that,’ I repeat stupidly.

‘Come out with me Friday. We’ll pick up some blokes, go on, say yes!’

This is Tyra’s answer to any problem. I don’t say anything. She jumps off the desk, gives me a kiss and knocks on my forehead with a bony knuckle. She waves her fingers, mouths Friday and disappears out of the door, leaving me staring blankly at my computer screen.

I should appreciate everything she just said. Tyra is the one person who doesn’t believe I’m the worst person in the world after what I did to Simon. Yet, the voice in my head is saying: It’s Tyra, she’s supportive, she cares, but she also tends to wash her hands of sticky situations, to fix things and move on quickly. She likes to think she knows what people should be doing with their lives. Come to think of it, not so unlike my GIF. A minute after she leaves, she sends me a text message and I expect it will reiterate what she has already said to me. But it doesn’t. It says, Prof on prowl. She means Professor Grundy, my supervisor. If Professor Grundy finds me in university today, she will not let me go without an interrogation, an interrogation that will make my undergraduates’ sad questions seem like a birthday party. In fact, it would be safe to say that her cross-examination wouldn’t be out of place in a prison camp.

I squeeze my eyes shut for a second, then stand up, picking up my bag and my coat. I feel exhausted, weary to the bone. Some people are just not cut out for love. This seems to be the consensus today. And I’m really not sure they’re wrong.

7
Not Romance

When Simon and I first met it wasn’t at all romantic. We met at the police station, that was the scene of our first meeting. Wait, I know what you’re thinking. You’re saying to yourself, Ah, another one of those times. But it wasn’t one of those times, because I wasn’t the one in handcuffs, Simon was. I was only there because my fellow philosophy students had decided to volunteer some time with underage kids in custody. I was the first one frisked and I was waiting for the others to finish their turn and join me. Into the waiting area came a constable, leading a man in handcuffs. You guessed it, it was Simon. The constable was trying to establish what to do with him, so there was a lot of waiting about. No one could figure out what to do with the man and everyone had a different point of view about it.

I was leaning against the wall, looking at the floor. There is no point looking a hardened criminal in the eye, even a dead sexy one, so I was determined not to look at him. Nicely fitted jeans, a shirt the colour of mushroom soup, those deep blue eyes and hair that fell onto his forehead. No, it would definitely be a mistake to look at him.

‘I’m completely innocent, I promise,’ he said.

I smiled politely. He gave me a charming smile, so I quickly looked away again.

‘I can see you don’t believe me. But you see, the thing is, I just happened to be at the wrong taco stall at the wrong time.’ He made a face. ‘It just goes to show.’

I looked up after ten seconds. I couldn’t help it, there was something about those eyes.

‘Goes to show what?’

He smiled again. ‘That just because a man makes the best fish tacos in London, it doesn’t mean he isn’t a crook. The man was handing me a bag of tacos, my mouth was watering, my heart was racing. I had been waiting for that bag all morning. No, wait, all my life. And then guess what happened?’

I couldn’t not ask. ‘What?’

‘A copper turns up out of nowhere. The fish taco man – Paolo – who I thought was my friend, I really did, handed me another bag. Free nachos, I thought. On the house, made in the house, this day can’t get any better. Though at the time, of course I didn’t know I was going to meet you.’

I gave him a crooked smile and, to save my life, I couldn’t stop myself from twirling my hair behind my ear and placing a foot jauntily behind me on the wall. What was the matter with me? I was going to end this day in a body bag at this rate.

‘But the bag wasn’t full of nachos. Nope. It was – you guessed it – a bag of coke.’

‘Coca cola?’ (I’m not proud of it, but I said it. So there it is.)

He stared at me. ‘Cocaine.’

‘That makes a lot more sense.’

‘That is the only reason I’m in here and Paolo isn’t. Anyway my lawyer is going to come and get me out any time. And then I can take you to dinner.’

I smiled.

‘I’m Simon, by the way.’

‘Rilla,’ I said reluctantly. He was a very charming drug dealer; he must be very good at his job. I really should be careful not to talk to him, or even look at him. Anyone whose arms look so sexy and muscly with folded-up shirtsleeves deserves to be behind bars, I thought sternly. We were standing in a bland corridor, with police officers walking to and fro and there was still no sign of my fellow students. I pretended to look at my mobile.

‘What are your three worst things in the world?’ Simon asked.

His hands in handcuffs, he was now leaning against the wall opposite to me. His hair fell all the way to his eyebrows and his eyes were deeply set.

I thought about it. ‘Vomit. Slug slime. People who smile all the time for no reason.’ I meant the last one to be pointed and cruel but he didn’t take it personally.

‘Mine are snot, religion, bigots and One Direction,’ he said.

‘That’s four things! Anyway … what’s wrong with One Direction?’

He stared at me with round eyes. ‘I knew you couldn’t be perfect. What is wrong with One Direction? Where would you like me to start? What is wrong with them is exactly the same as what is wrong with the world. For instance, have you ever looked at their—’

At that moment, the door opened and the constable basically dragged Simon through it. ‘I’ll wait for you,’ he called as he disappeared.

The next two hours are better forgotten. Three of us led a workshop in ‘Using Philosophy to Make Better Life Choices’ or some such bullshit. The youth offenders who had been bullied, coerced or bribed into being there mostly ignored us, sent an occasional paper aeroplane our way, munched endlessly on gum, and didn’t hesitate to laugh in our faces. One of them farted throughout the whole thing. Only it turned out that he hadn’t been farting, but had in fact done a crap in his pants. The smell was unbearable, especially since it had leaked through his clothes onto the chair he was sitting on. This led to our workshop coming to an early finish, but then the room had to be locked down – with all of us still in it – until the matter was cleared up. Those were two hours of my life I was never going to get back and no one could convince me that I had made a jot of difference in the lives of these damaged young people. Never again, I was telling myself, never again.

I walked out of the police station filled with rage and loathing for all young things. Someone peeled themselves off the wall outside and I screamed. It took me several moments to recognize him. Yes, beautiful as his eyes were, I had forgotten all about Simon. A body bag, for sure, I thought now. That is how this day is going to end.

How, then, we actually ended up with my legs wrapped around his hips against the toilet wall of an Ethiopian restaurant in Kentish Town later that night, I have no idea. Probably because when he saw me come out of the station, he handed me a tissue. I hadn’t realized I had tears in my eyes. Tears of rage because the young gentleman of the doing-a-shit-in-your-pants fame had, as we were about to leave the room, come up to me and written an X on my notebook. With excrement.

If Simon had been nice, given me a platitude about how though it was difficult to work with young offenders, it would change their lives, I probably would have walked away. But he said, ‘The little shits. The only thing we can hope for is that they’ll kill each other in prison.’

That really is the only way I can explain it.

There is something about Simon – there was something about Simon! Simon is no longer in my life – I have to get this straight in my head! There was something about him, something assured, something sure of its place that I have never had. For example when I walk into an unfamiliar room, with unfamiliar people in it, I scan it. Is there anyone there I know? Are there groups of people who all know each other who won’t want to talk to me? People who maybe have known each other for years, people who went to school together, who have common references? People who seem to know what to say and how to say it, people who can talk about anything or nothing and it makes sense to them. I wonder, will someone come up to me, an older woman probably, talk to me kindly and extra clearly because – given my brown skin – I’m probably a foreigner? And yet if there is a group of Indian people in the room, they will think I’m not Indian enough. These are the thoughts that go through my head when I enter a room.

But Simon, he’s probably thinking, what’s on the menu, is there anything more substantial than salmon and horseradish canapés? He could talk to people about anything really, but he didn’t seek people out either. He was comfortable in his own skin.

There are two kinds of people in the world. Room-scanners like me, and people like Simon, who never worry about things like that.

For a while, with Simon, it had started to seem like I could be more carefree too. Less troubled by my place in the world, by the rivulets in my past that refused to find a home. Less troubled, more assured, more able to navigate the world.

Yes, it had seemed like that for a short while.