‘I’ll need to check and let you know.’ I knew I would have to change jobs if sitting with Dr Ellin once a week were to become something I was required to do. To have that moron poke about in my brain and jump to the wrong conclusions with psychology lessons any monkey could learn from a textbook. The only person I trusted in my mind was V. I stood with the impatience of a child, desperate to be anywhere other than where I was. But Dr Ellin was slow with his handshakes and goodbyes and by the time I left it felt like my blood was fizzing.
Kaitlyn happened to be leaving at exactly the same time as me that evening, which I was pretty sure wasn’t a coincidence. I had planned on picking V up, but I couldn’t think of a reason why I wasn’t going home, so fell into line with Kaitlyn. She chatted away on the Tube, about things I cared nothing for, and I stopped listening, instead watching only her mouth as it moved up and down. There were dark, bluey circles around her eyes and she almost looked as if someone had punched her.
‘I made way too much shepherd’s pie last night,’ she said as we emerged on to Clapham High Street. ‘Do you want to come and help finish it off? It is veggie mince though, just to warn you.’
I hesitated and in the moment I saw the sadness in Kaitlyn’s eyes and the desperation not to be rejected. And what was I going home to anyway? I didn’t think I had any food at all in the fridge. ‘OK, thanks,’ I said.
Kaitlyn lived in a flat in a large mansion block which overlooked the common. I could hear the yapping from inside before she’d even put her key in the lock and I thought her neighbours probably hated her. The dog flew at her as soon as the door opened, leaping into her arms and licking her all over her face, which I found disgusting. She pretended to turn away, but I could see she loved it really, even loved the tiny pink tongue flicking over her lips.
‘Sorry it’s a bit of a mess,’ she said incongruously as we went into the sitting room: the flat was as tidy as it could be. ‘Sit down, take off your jacket. I’ll get you a drink.’
Kaitlyn’s sitting room was almost as white as she was. It was also very sparse, so you got the impression that everything in it had been chosen with care and consideration. The only bit of colour, if you can call black a colour, were the calligraphed words stencilled above the couch. I twisted round so I could read them: Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us.
‘Virginia Woolf,’ Kaitlyn said as she handed me a glass of wine.
V hated any type of slogan and I took to buying them for her as jokes whenever I saw them on cards or embossed on fake metal signs. Her favourite four were:
Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die tomorrow.
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
No matter how long you have travelled in the wrong direction, you can always turn around.
We are punished by our sins, not for them.
Does anyone actually believe this crap, she’d say. I mean, do these random words put one in front of another by a moron make anyone feel better?
‘Who’s your favourite writer?’ Kaitlyn asked, sitting next to me. Snowdrop immediately leapt on to her lap and she began to pet him under the chin. I hoped she was planning on washing her hands before serving the food.
‘I don’t know. Verity likes Virginia Woolf though.’ I couldn’t remember the last time I’d read a book. V used to sometimes jokingly call me a philistine and I felt hot suddenly as I wondered if Angus liked to read. If they read to each other in bed.
‘You said you were on the verge of working things out,’ Kaitlyn said.
I looked over at her expectant face and wondered what it must be like to live in such an unattractive body. ‘We’re talking. I’m confident we can work it out.’
‘How long have you been together?’
I pretended to consider this. ‘Nine years.’
‘So you met at university?’
‘Yes.’ We both sipped at our wine. When you are asked a question you should reciprocate, V told me. ‘What about you? Any significant others?’
She laughed. ‘Well, maybe. Early days, you know.’
‘I’ve only ever lived with Verity,’ I said.
She turned back to me. ‘Yes, but that’s all you need isn’t it, one person?’ I smiled because of course I totally agreed. ‘Sometimes I wonder what it’s all for, all this making money, I mean. I could have bought a large family house with my bonus last year but I didn’t, because what would be the point, rattling round some big old thing, just me?’
I thought of my own house and it made me feel itchy. ‘You could invest it.’
‘I could,’ she said, although her tone was harsh.
A faint smell of burning reached us and Kaitlyn jumped up. ‘Come into the kitchen. We can eat there.’
I followed her through to another white room, with white units running along one side of the wall and a round white table encircled by white chairs in the centre.
‘Open another bottle.’ She motioned to a laden wine rack in the corner. I went towards it and picked out a fine bottle, easing the cork out with a satisfying sigh.
We sat next to each other again, with the plates of steaming shepherd’s pie, and I filled our glasses. It smelt as good as home.
‘I’m thinking about jacking it all in actually,’ Kaitlyn said. ‘Buying a business on the coast somewhere and living a better life.’
‘Whereabouts?’ V had taught me not to blow on my food, so I was waiting for the steam to subside.
She shrugged. ‘I don’t really care. I fancy the sea.’ It smelt too good to wait so I forked at the food, bringing it to my lips. Kaitlyn did the same, blowing hard on it before putting it in her mouth. ‘Why are you smiling?’ she asked.
‘I was always taught not to blow on my food.’
‘My mum told me that as well. But, you know.’
‘What business?’ She looked better animated, I thought.
‘I don’t know that either.’ She laughed. ‘An old-fashioned sweet shop maybe, selling things like white mice and rhubarb and custards, in those big glass jars. And you have to scoop them out and weigh them.’ The food was as good as I had expected and it landed in my grateful stomach like a kiss. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about jacking it all in?’
‘I plan to retire by forty-five.’
‘But that’s ages away.’
‘Fifteen years.’
‘Exactly.’
And it did sound like a long time when she put it like that.
‘Did you know anyone when you went to New York?’
‘No.’
‘How was that?’
‘Awful.’ There was something about Kaitlyn which made being honest with her very easy.
She laid down her fork even though her plate was still half full. ‘Why was it awful?’
‘Mainly the loneliness. I missed Verity terribly.’
Her cheeks coloured slightly. ‘I don’t understand why you went in the first place. I mean, if she couldn’t go with you.’
‘I … We …’ But I stumbled over the words, not entirely sure what the answer to that was. I had momentarily forgotten why V had thought it such a good idea. ‘I don’t know. It was good for my career.’
Kaitlyn kept her eyes on me. ‘God, don’t you think there’s more to life than that. It’s like, what are we all waiting for?’
‘What do you mean?’ I poured us both more wine.
She sat back, holding her glass against her chest. ‘I know this sounds like a terrible cliché, but I saw an interview with Joan Collins once and the interviewer asked her if she looked that good every day and she said of course she did, because life isn’t a dress rehearsal.’ She took another deep sip of her wine and when she looked up at me her eyes were glistening. ‘I mean, I spend all my life behaving like it’s a bloody dress rehearsal, waiting for the real bit to start. And it’s such a fucking waste.’
We sat in silence for a bit and I could feel my heart through my cotton shirt, pounding along its own godforsaken path. I thought of V in her life, sitting with Angus no doubt at their kitchen table, while I sat here with Kaitlyn, and it all suddenly seemed appalling. Because what were we doing? Why were we pretending like this?
I felt Kaitlyn lay her hand over mine and I looked down at the paleness of it against my pinker skin. She was so translucent I could see the blue of her veins pumping her blood round her body and I was struck by how fragile she was, how easy she would be to break.
I pulled my hand out from under hers. ‘I guess I’d better be heading home.’
‘Sorry. I was just …’