“Maybe I just don’t like anything enough. This dick, right, Jonathan — who replaced me at work? He loves the job; he’s obsessed with the agency — get this: he’s even started organizing a networking drinks thing himself.”
“How do you know?”
I know because I check his social-media accounts almost daily, not to mention my old employer’s online activity. “I get wind.”
“So, good for him! He’s found his thing. Doesn’t that prove it’s possible?”
“But why wasn’t it my thing? It’s not just Jonathan. My old colleagues, my boss, Geri — they all care so much more than I did. They would scream whenever anything good happened at work.”
“Maybe you’re just not the screaming type. You liked it when you started there.”
“Not the way they did. I always felt like a fake.”
“I remember you getting excited about stuff,” Sarah insists. “That graffiti festival you did for the vodka company. That was great.”
“Street art,” I correct her. She’s right: it had been a coup, and led to my promotion from “assistant account manager” to “account manager.” “That was fun. But at the end of the day, I got some people talking about vodka. I mean really, what difference does that make to anyone?”
Sarah pulls the band from her ponytail. I can smell the shampoo as her hair tumbles down: Herbal Essences, the same brand she’s used since we were fifteen. “But it was fun! That’s fine. You don’t need to change the world.”
“I know. But don’t I need to think what I do is worth something? That was great for my early twenties; isn’t it time to get serious now?”
“Didn’t you want to be a psychiatrist when we were younger? That seemed like a good fit,” she says.
I set down my glass and stretch out on the sofa, looking up at the ceiling. “I did, before I realized it was medicine, which meant I’d have to do science, so I ditched it.” I’d got the idea from an American young-adult novel about a girl whose parents were both psychiatrists. It must have sounded precocious coming from a twelve-year-old, and got a guaranteed laugh from adults, so became my stock answer for a number of years.
“And nothing’s appealed since.”
“Well, not specific jobs. More like a general lifestyle idea. Glass corner office, sushi and coffees delivered to my desk, great clothes, poring over something — photographs? — spread out on a table.”
“Okay. I think I see where you went wrong. All those vague, title-less jobs have already been taken by characters in New York — based romcoms.”
“This might sound very naive, but I really didn’t think when I took my old job that I was embarking on a path that could be my career. I was still a child! I just wanted to pay the bills and make the most of wine o’clock on Fridays. I thought I had all the time in the world to study more, retrain, travel.”
“Oh my God, you sound just like my mother, Claire.”
“I’ve always thought Ruth talked a lot of sense. You should listen to her more.”
“Yeah, but she’s sixty-four! You have so much time!”
“No, I don’t! What if I want to have a baby in the next few years? So I start something new, barely get a handle on it, then have to go on maternity leave while people five years younger zoom past me?”
“You could have stayed and zoomed. You need to recognize that you’ve made a choice.”
“More and more I find myself wishing my parents had been farmers,” I say.
Sarah closes her eyes, shakes her head. “No.”
“It would’ve solved everything. Think about it: I’d have land, security. And skills! I’d have so many good skills. Milking cows, planting crops, raising hens.”
She relents. “It’s not too late. Sell your flat and buy a few acres somewhere. Luke can retrain as a vet — there’s got to be some overlap.”
“Why don’t you come? We’ll need to have lots of babies to run the farm when we get old — you can teach them!”
“I’m in. What about Paddy?”
“Of course Paddy too. He’d be perfect for, um…”—I do my best, but it’s tough finding a use for “industrial interior designer” in this bucolic setup—“building barns…?”
“I know: he can convert the old outbuildings into a B and B! For an extra income stream.”
I point at her. “Perfect.”
Sarah clasps her hands, beaming — mission accomplished — and I decide to try and set my Paddy-doubts free. She clearly thinks the whole world of the guy.
Saturday morning
Two a.m.: three bottles down, we’ve cracked into the amaretto, and reached the end of our fourth potato chip salad (salt and vinegar plus cheese and onion — the unbeatable classic).
“I should go,” I say, making no effort to move.
“Do you want to stay?” says Sarah. “I can pull out the sofa bed in your old room.”
It would be so easy. All evening I’ve been flooded by a tender wistfulness for our early twenties years in this flat: dinner parties on the sofas with plates balanced on knees, endless cups of tea, gin and tonics while we got ready to go out, hobbling home many hours later barefoot to devour round after round of peanut butter toast…
“I’d love to, but I’d better not,” I say, struggling up and sending a shower of potato chip crumbs to the rug. “Imagine poor Paddy arriving with all his stuff tomorrow to find me passed out in your spare room. That’s not how you want to start your new life together. Anyway, the night bus goes right to my door.”
Sarah stretches her arms up for a hug.
“There’s always a bed for you here if you want it, Clairie.” She hasn’t called me that since we were about twelve years old and I feel a sting of sadness — but also gratitude, that she is still by my side after all this time.
“You’re the best,” I say, gripping her to me in a soft, fragrant hair-and-cardigan bundle.
Saturday morning II
I wake up and lean my forehead against the cold window. In the dark, I make out rows of parked double-decker buses: big, silent beasts like sleeping whales.
The doors are open, though the driver’s nowhere to be seen, and dazed, I make my way out of the depot to the road, where I wait fifteen minutes on the pavement for an unlicensed car service to drive me across the city to my flat, and charge forty-six pounds for the privilege.
Hairdresser
Six-plus months and who-knows-how-many split ends: I can defer this haircut no longer. Though I’ve been going to the same place for five years, my visits are so infrequent and my presence clearly so insipid, I’m greeted like a new client every time.
“Tell me,” demands my stylist, Giulia, a fierce, tiny tattooed person whose asymmetrically cut hair is bleached white and buzzed so her scalp shows through on one side. When I release mine from its ponytail, it drips forlornly down my back.
“Well, it’s clearly a disaster. Look at these ends,” I say disloyally, like an embarrassed parent siding with a disapproving teacher. I take a random section between my fingers and hold it up for inspection. Giulia agrees with a frowning nod, and under the too-bright lights and ubiquitous mirrors, the ambitions I had for a big change desert me. “So…I guess just tidy it up, take off however much you need.” I karate-chop a hand to my chest. “Here? What do you think?”
She pouts. “Do you want all one lengse, or do you want the layer?”
“What do you think?”
A shrug. “All one lengse is easy for me.”
“Right, but will it look better? In your opinion?”