Not too bad. Yours? it reads. (The original question, which I helped her to draft, was, Hey, how’s your week going?)
“I’m not sure I’m the right person to ask. I’ve been out of the game so long, I’m more likely to say something that will scare him away.”
“How is Luke?” Rachel asks. “Is he still being difficult?”
It takes me a moment to work out that she is referring to the last time we met, when I told her Luke and I had been fighting. I only said this because she’d been saying how lucky I was to have him, and I didn’t want to seem smug or complacent.
“It’s a bit better, thanks,” I say, and warming to the fiction, add, “I took your advice. It really helped.” Her suggestion was to set some time aside each week to discuss our relationship frankly.
“That’s so great,” she says, squeezing my hand. “Always happy to help.”
I ask her about work, in the vaguest terms possible to obscure the fact I’m not entirely sure what she does. It has something to do with Africa, I want to say an NGO, but couldn’t be certain without checking her email signature, and inwardly curse myself for not doing this before we met. As she talks, I cling to a few key words, which in any other realm would be awful jargon (conflict resolution, mediation, dialogue), but in Rachel’s world — which is actually the real world — are literal and vital.
“I wish I had your conviction,” I say. “You’re so passionate about what you do. You’re making a difference. That must feel amazing.”
She jerks a shoulder. “I don’t think about it that way. Believe me, a lot of it is very boring paperwork. You know,” she says, “not everyone can be a hero, or live the dream — we just need to contribute what we can. Pull our weight, earn a living. There’s no shame in that.”
I sense a lesson intended for me there, doused in disapproval. It’s a tone I’m becoming more familiar with the longer my state of voluntary unemployment lasts.
“I totally agree. Well said,” I say, squeezing her hand this time, and she extracts it delicately to compose a reply to her hot-and-cold lawyer.
Self-expression
“Never really got the point of sorbet,” I say while an advert for a new brand is playing. “It’s neither kitten nor cat.”
“What?” says Luke, grinning.
“It’s not delicious and luxurious like ice cream, but it’s still full of sugar so it’s not even healthy.”
“What was the other thing you said?”
“Neither kitten nor cat?”
“Yeah.”
“What about it?”
“It’s not a saying.”
“It is!”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Luke, I promise you it definitely is. Neither kitten nor cat — neither one thing nor the other. Falls between two stools.”
“Yeah, that’s a phrase. The cat one is not.”
“I’ve said it hundreds of times and you’ve never batted an eyelid.”
“You’ve never said it. It’s not a phrase. Where did you get it?”
“Er, the English vernacular? I can’t believe you haven’t heard it before. You’re the weirdo here.”
His grin grows even wider: I’d be furious if I wasn’t completely certain I’ll be having the last laugh.
“Name one person who uses that phrase other than you,” he says.
“That’s ridiculous. It’s like me saying, ‘Name someone who uses the word “the.” ’ ”
“No, because ‘the’ is a word, which you just proved by using it yourself. Come on: one person.”
“My mum. She says it all the time.”
“Ohhh,” says Luke, smirking. “Okay.”
“You said name one person!”
“Humor me: one more. Anyone who isn’t your mum?”
“Everyone else!”
“There’s a very simple way to find out who’s right,” says Luke, pinching his phone from his shirt pocket with a smug flourish. “ ‘Neither…kitten…nor…cat.’ ” He taps it in and turns the screen to me, triumphant. “Not a phrase.”
I snatch the phone and click through the search results: pages 7, 8, 10, 19, 22. He’s right: there are endless mentions of kittens and cats, but not a single hit for my phrase. “Well…it’s a saying from the olden days. It’s been passed on verbally. It wouldn’t need to be written down anyway.”
“Claire,” says Luke, “that doesn’t sound very convincing out loud.”
“Ring my mum. Ring her right now: she’ll tell you.”
“Oh, there is no doubt in my mind that your mum uses that expression,” Luke says. “But I think you’ll find no one else does.”
“Fair enough — I’d say that too, if I was scared of being proven wrong. Don’t call her.”
“Your mum isn’t talking to you. I don’t think she’ll appreciate me phoning at half past ten at night to quiz her about a phrase she made up.”
I click through a few more search results pages at random: 34, 42, 45, 59. Nothing.
I’ve never felt so alone.
Tube
This man is staring at someone down the carriage with such open desire and longing that I turn to see what the fuss is about. No one has looked at me that way, ever, not even Luke, who’s in love with me.
Identify
In the cafe, the barista smiles warmly.
“Back so soon?” she says, and I laugh, though I haven’t been in for a while.
“Can’t keep away!” I say, and already at the end of my banter reserves, immediately place my coffee order.
Now it’s her turn to laugh. “Fallen off the decaf wagon? That didn’t last long!”
“Ha!” I say as I go to sit down, because it’s less awkward than asking what she means.
I open up my laptop and take a career questionnaire, my new strategy to discover the perfect job I’ve never heard of. I find a check-box affair asking me to identify with one of three options in response to each statement: “1” = “very skilled” and “3” = “not as skilled as I’d like.” Any to do with math or computers are easy: I select “3” with something close to pride. Others—“move and turn objects” or “make very small finger movements”—are so bafflingly vague yet specific I can only assume they relate to a particular field far beyond my experience. I submit my answers with a tiny thrill of excitement.
The results are diverse and surprising: hypnotherapist, customs officer, technical writer, forestry professional. I picture myself, clad in hard hat and high-visibility vest, wandering through dappled woodlands, but the image fades when the barista says, “Oh my God!” as though she’s seen someone returned from the dead. She is looking from me to another customer who is standing at the counter. “I thought you were her!” the barista says, laughing. “You’re the spitting image of each other! Are you twins? You must be sisters, surely!” The girl turns around, confused and smiling, but when she sees me, her nostrils flare.
“Really?” she says, turning back to the barista. “I don’t see it.”
I’m with her — I don’t either — but I’m pretty put out she finds the notion so repellent. I shrug and shake my head apologetically. I’m not sure if I’m sorry for having deceived the barista or for being such a letdown of a doppelgänger.
Comfort
Paul and I meet for an after-work pint. Work today for him meant writing grant applications, and doing Skype interviews for his new exhibition about to open in Reykjavik.
“And how was your day?” he asks once we’ve covered his.