Swimming Upstream

5

Larsen had been gone for nearly three months when Marion and Doug threw a party at their new flat on Chesterton Road.

“You’ve got to come,” Doug had insisted on the telephone. “We never see you these days.”

On the evening of the party I took a taxi to the address he’d given me. I knocked on the door and took a deep breath. Doug answered. He put his arms around me and squeezed me tight.

“How are you?” asked Marion, as I entered the kitchen.

It was hard to judge whether this was an invitation to tell her how I was coping without Larsen, or just the standard British pleasantry, to which the response “Fine. And you?” would prompt another “Fine,” and allow her to get her drink and go back into the living room.

“Oh, fine,” I said, watching her. Something about Marion’s face told me that she had rather hoped I wasn’t fine at all. She was the sort of person who would slow right down to look at a car crash.

“Drink?” she said. She tipped a three litre wine box onto its side and squelched the remains out of the silver paper and into two glasses.

“So,” she said, finally, “How's things between you and Larsen?”

“Well, we've split up,” I said. I knew that she knew that. I was just hoping that if I started from the very beginning, someone might come into the kitchen and interrupt us before I had to say anything very much else.

“I know that.” Marion looked confused. “I was just wondering if, you know…” she trailed off.

“No.” I shook my head. “If what?”

“You won't mind seeing him?” Marion still looked confused.

“Why should I?” I laughed, rather too loudly. “We're still friends.”

“Oh yes,” said Marion. “Of course.”

I raised my glass and smiled.

“Hello,” said Larsen, coming into the kitchen. He was wearing an old baggy blue jumper that I'd never seen before.

“Hello,” said Jude, from behind him.

I was sitting on the stairs with a bottle of wine.

“Alright,” said Larsen, sitting down beside me.

“Hello,” I said.

“How've you been?” he asked, rather woodenly.

“So so,” I said. “New jumper?”

“Not really.” He glanced awkwardly away towards the living room door. I felt disappointed. I wanted to know how he'd been coping. I wanted him to put his arm round me. I wanted us to talk like we'd meant something to each other.

“What about you?” I asked. “How've you been?”

“Not bad. But Julia's moving in with Brian…”

“Who’s Julia?”

“His new girlfriend.”

“Oh. I see.”

“Yeah… so, I think I'm going to have to move out.” He still wasn't looking at me.

I wondered if there was a reason for him telling me this. I wasn't sure how I'd feel if he said he wanted to move back in again, into the spare room. Of course it was still his house too. And I missed him so badly. Seeing him here, now, feeling him next to me, so close, but acting like a stranger, was almost impossible to bear.

“So, what are you going to do?” I asked.

“Well…”

“If you need to… you know, move back…” I trailed off. “Into the spare room of course,” I added and laughed stupidly. Larsen still wasn’t saying anything. I suddenly remembered his words the night we met. “I never go back. Once it’s over it’s over.”

“How's work?” Larsen asked me.

“Good,” I said. “I did a seven-day shift last week, so I've got a few days off. I'm programme editor from Thursday.”

“You got it.” Without exclamation.

The living room door opened and Jude poked her head round and looked at us. I smiled. She went back inside and shut the door.

“Well, I'm only acting up,” I said. “You know, just a secondment…” I was aware that I was speaking very quickly. I was also aware that Larsen wasn’t really listening properly but I seemed unable to stop myself from telling him and hoping that he cared. “It’s for the lunchtime show, in fact. Greg Chappell's got an eight week attachment at IRN. But in realistic terms it means he's unlikely to come back again.”

“Well, aren’t you on the up and up?” said Larsen. He stood up. “See you later,” he added, and went back into the living room.

I poured myself another glass of wine and considered the up and up. I decided there was no such thing. With an up, it seemed, there was always a down. Laws of gravity, I supposed.

I wandered through the darkened living room and stood there for a moment. The Happy Mondays were blaring out of the speakers. Karen and Marion were dancing together in a manner that didn’t invite me to join them. Larsen was sitting on the sofa, talking to Jude. I spotted the back of Doug’s head on the balcony outside and opened the door.

“Hey. Mind if I join you?”

“Hey.” Doug patted the ground beside him and I sat down. We stuck our legs up against the railings and surveyed the car park below

“So how are you?”

“I’m okay. Thanks. You?”

Doug nodded. “Roll up?” he offered. I shook my head. “It’s nice to see you,” he added. “I’m glad you came. It’s a shame when people break up and people disappear off the scene.”

I smiled. “By people, do you mean Zara?”

Doug glanced behind him through the window to the living room.

“It’s alright,” I said. “Marion can’t hear. And everyone else knows you and Zara had a thing going on.”

Doug didn’t try to deny it.

“So… have you seen her lately? Zara, I mean?”

Doug shook his head.

“Nice girl,” I said. “I liked her.”

“Me too,” said Doug, and smiled. “Off her head though.”

I laughed, remembering the first time I had met her in the bathroom at Larsen’s house, when she’d told me about the stars talking and then we’d fallen into the bath. “She’s a lot nicer than Marion,” I said.

Doug sighed. “Yeah. Well, she didn’t stick around. After…”

“After what?”

Doug hesitated. “She wasn’t very well,” he said, and then, “You’ll have to ask her.”

“So where did she go? Is she still in Cambridge?”

“No. I don’t know. I think she moved to London.”

“London? Really?”

“She got offered a job there, I think. It was in one of those big hospitals, a teaching hospital she said, in North London. I can’t remember which one.”

We sat in silence for a while and Doug rolled another cigarette. I felt a glimmer of hope and something that felt like pride, in Zara. She had always remained on the fringe of things, her relationship with Doug never discussed. Her occasional presence had been accepted because of Doug. But I hadn’t really noticed, until now, that she had stopped being around, made the break, moved away. It was possible, then, to get a new life, to start afresh, without the blanket of love, friendship and familiarity that had shrouded me for such a long time. Zara had done it. Though, unlike me, she had always had a life away from Doug, outside of our crowd. She hadn’t invested everything into her relationship with him, the way that I had with Larsen. I recalled her having friendships with fellow nurses at the hospital where she worked. And I also remembered her being interested in art, talking about some paintings she’d done, and once or twice inviting me to a gallery. Once she had put on an exhibition of her own paintings and she had invited me to that too. But I had made some excuse and never gone.

I realised now how shallow my friendships had been with all of these women, largely of my own volition. I hadn’t really tried to get to know them at all, in all these years, because for the most part all we had in common was that our boyfriends were friends. That was the glue that had held the group together. And now that I was no longer Larsen’s girlfriend there was nothing left. Zara was the one person that I had felt a real connection with, but I had never nurtured that. I had been too wrapped up in Larsen. I now regretted my inertia; Zara could have been a good friend.

I glanced back through the window into the living room. Larsen and Jude were still sitting on the sofa talking. I noticed that their legs were close together, touching. Jude then said something, and smiled up at Larsen, who laughed, put his hand on her leg and then kissed her, full on the lips.

“Oh,” I said. “Now I get it.”

Doug followed my gaze. “Oh. Larsen and Jude. I thought you knew.”

I stood up. “How could I have been so stupid?”

“Lizzie - wait!” Doug jumped up after me and tried to grab my hands from behind me. I yanked them free and tripped over the step into the living room. Karen turned round and nudged Marion, who turned the music down.

Jude looked up. “Lizzie..” she began.

“How long has this been going on?” I demanded.

“A few months,” said Jude, looking at Larsen for backup.

“A few months?” I repeated. I looked at Larsen. “You mean… from the moment we split up? Or longer?”

“No,” said Larsen, quickly. “No, not longer.”

Jude glanced at him and I knew instantly that this wasn’t true. And I realised suddenly how naive I had been. I should have known that he would never have ended our relationship unless there was someone else waiting in the wings. All this time that I had been reeling from the blow of losing him - imagining him to be doing the same - and he hadn’t felt a thing.

I looked up and Larsen’s eyes met mine briefly, then flickered away.

“Don't go breaking your heart,” I said.

Larsen said nothing.

Doug followed me as far as the front door, but nobody followed me out.

I woke the next morning with a throbbing headache and as the events of the previous night began to crash in on me, I also realised that I wasn’t well. I cast my mind back and remembered that I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime the day before. I’d been too nervous before the party about seeing everyone again. I sat up slowly, then walked unsteadily downstairs into the kitchen. I filled the kettle and put two slices of toast into the toaster. I was rummaging through the drawers for coffee filters when the phone rang.

It was Larsen. “We need to talk.”

I felt bile suddenly rising in my stomach and my forehead prickled. I said, “I'm really not feeling very well.”

Larsen didn't seem to have heard. “Okay, Lizzie, I don't blame you for being upset. But there are things we've got to sort out.”

It was as if we were having two different conversations. Which wasn’t that surprising after all, as we were clearly having two entirely different experiences of breaking up. His was soft, cushioned; Jude and his friends had broken his fall. Mine was cold, empty and bereft. I was freefalling in space and time, with nobody standing by to stop me hurtling headlong into obscurity.

I sank down onto the sofa. “This isn't a good time.”

“Let's face it, there's never going to be a good time, is there?” he said gently. “I know you probably don't feel like talking to me right now, but you have a right to know what's going on …”

I laughed ironically. “I kind of figured it out for myself, actually. But thanks for your concern.”

Larsen paused for a second, then continued. “And I want you to hear it from me.”

“There's more?” I croaked.

“I didn't plan this, Lizzie.”

I didn't say anything. My head was pounding and a wave of nausea was sweeping over me.

“I'm not saying I'm not equally responsible,” Larsen was saying. “But it just happened and that's that and if you can try and understand ...”

My stomach contracted and my jaw tightened. “I have to go,” I said.

“Lizzie, wait. Look, I can't stay at Brian's for much longer.” He paused. “I'm going to need to move back into the house. I’ll buy you out.”

“What? You can’t afford to buy me out. You can’t even afford to pay the mortgage!”

“Maybe not, but…Jude can.”

“Jude? You have got to be kidding.”

“Okay. Her parents can. That’s what I meant. They can buy you out.”

“Her parents? Why would her parents do that? You’ve only been together a few months!”

“We need the house,” said Larsen. “Jude's pregnant.”

The room was moving. I placed the receiver down, lurched up the stairs to the bathroom and was horribly, violently sick.

Three hours later the sickness still hadn't stopped. I couldn't even lie down in bed in between bouts because whenever I did, the room started spinning. I was desperately thirsty but every time I tried to drink my stomach muscles contracted so violently that I could almost feel my stomach lining getting ready to rip. I lay in the bathroom for what seemed like hours, my cheek resting against the cold white enamel of the bath, my legs curled up underneath me.

I had lost all track of time and was almost dozing off on the bathmat when I heard a noise downstairs and a voice called through the letterbox.

“Lizzie?! Are you there?”

“Mum?” I lifted my head up, relief flooding through me.

“Lizzie? Are you home?”

“Yes!” I called, as loudly as I could, but my voice was so hoarse that all that came out was a whisper. I levered myself up onto my feet and almost threw myself down the stairs. My stomach immediately started to tighten.

I fiddled with the latch and flung the door open. “Mum!” I screamed.

I could see that my mother had been about to leave, her car keys in her hand. She turned at the sound of my voice “Oh, you are there. Are you all right?”

“I’ve been better. A lot better, in fact.” I sank to the floor and clutched at my stomach.

“What's wrong? Are you ill?”

“Just a bit.”

“Oh Lizzie, what's the matter?”

“Don’t know.” I hiccupped. “Can't stop being sick.”

My mother pushed open the front door.

“Come on. Let's get you into the car,” she said. “We'll soon get you home.”

I shook my head. “I can’t move.”

My mother stepped over me, fetched a bucket from under the kitchen sink and pulled my jacket off the coat peg by the door.

“Up you get,” she said, firmly.

She took hold of me by the shoulders, tugged me up and pulled my arms into my jacket, through the sleeves, from the cuffs, the way she used to do it when I was little and had my mittens on bits of elastic inside. She steered me out of the front door and towards her car. One of my neighbours walked past and stared at me. I realised I wasn't looking my best. My hair was unbrushed, my face unwashed and I was still in my pyjamas, with my arms now round the bucket. I didn't have the energy to care.

“How long have you been like this?” she asked, hoisting me into the front seat of the car.

“Forever, I think.” I slumped back and fastened my seat belt. She started the engine. I watched the windscreen wipers, flicking back and forth. My head was spinning; I felt as if I was in space.

“You should have called me before,” she reprimanded.

“I know,” I said.

“You never know when to ask for help.”

“I know,” I said.

“You're too independent for your own good, sometimes. Just like your father.”

“I know,” I said.

“Silly girl,” smiled my mum, and stroked my hair