Something Only We Know (17 page)

‘I share what I have, you know that. She never asked me for anything.’

‘Not much. Only a brand new rucksack, for starters.’

‘Not that again.’ He sounded utterly dismissive.

‘Yes, that. I never pressed you for how much it cost, but I know they don’t come cheap. Not being funny, but when was the last time you treated me?’

‘I give you presents all the time.’

And I blushed, because that was true.

‘I’ll say what I said before, Jen. Chelle was a stranger in a foreign land. She depended on the kindness of those around her. I saw she needed a new rucksack – she didn’t
ask, I offered – so I got her one. A good brand, as it happens, because cheap is false economy and I didn’t want her stuck with another split one six months down the line.’

‘And what if
I’d
needed a new rucksack? What then?’

‘But you didn’t. You don’t need anything.’

‘Don’t I? Don’t I really? A bit of respect and understanding would be a start! To be treated like your actual girlfriend instead of some minority interest. To
matter.
’

His eyes widened, as if he was seeing me properly.

Looking back I think that was the moment I knew I’d lost him.

I sat up on my bed, nauseous at the memory . All around me was my own childish clutter. I wanted to sweep it away and burn it. The scuffed Crocs, the balled-up tights, the jam jar of dusty felt
flowers I made when I was about ten, the wind-up comedy false teeth Ned had given me last Christmas, the fairy lights, the bin stuffed with fashion mags, the bubble mix, my Lobster of Loveliness
mug, the multipack of sherbet dib-dabs, the beagle-ears hat, the tumble of badly managed make up: it was the stage set of a failed life. Open on the carpet was a magazine I’d saved because I
thought Owen might like the tribal-print bean bag I’d spotted on the centre pages. I bent and picked up the mag, then tore it apart down the spine, flinging both halves at the door where they
struck my dressing gown and landed with a soft, unsatisfying thump.

I was so angry I hardly knew what to do. I wanted to seize my bottle of Argan oil and smash it against the stupid wallpaper, draw slashes of red lipstick across the stupid mirror. I’d rip
down the stupid curtains and take scissors to the stupid rug. I’d hire a sodding skip and junk the lot and then climb in on top and wait for the disposal men to come and cart me off too.

As I scanned about for something I could reasonably damage, my eye lighted on the corner of a shoebox poking out from under my bed, a stupid shoebox decorated with stupid ladybird stickers. I
wrenched it free and kicked it across the room so hard it collided with the leg of the dressing table and ricocheted towards me. Then I got down on my knees and clawed off the lid. This was the box
I’d started when Owen and I first got together, a collection of mementoes charting our time together. There were flyers from student events, a photocopy of the letter about Starbucks
he’d had published in the
Guardian
, a drawing he’d done me to illustrate the Vicious Circle of Consumerism. It was in here I’d stored his birthday origami and the card
he’d drawn himself. Towards the bottom of the box was a slim pile of photos I’d printed out, from the early days, the top one showing me and Owen sitting on the stairs at some uni house
party with our arms round each other. I lifted it up for closer examination, even though the act of doing so was like plunging a knife under my own ribs. That was the night he’d told me about
his mum having left while he was still a kid, and how his dad gave him loads of cash yet was always too busy, and about some of the ways the world needed changing. There’d been crazy dancing
going on around us and some sort of fight happening in the back garden, but we felt cocooned and separate and above the clamour. ‘I never imagined I could feel so close to anyone,’
he’d said. ‘I’ve never felt like this before. Is it love?’ And he’d stroked my hair in a wondering, reverent way.

I remembered another night when we’d gone to float tea lights down the Manchester Ship Canal in support of Amnesty, and afterwards he’d taken me back to his room and just held me for
ages. And the day he drove me to Chew Reservoir and we lay on the grass and he told me I made him complete.

I stood up and dropped the print on the bed. Then I tipped everything on top of it. As well as papers, other rubbish cascaded out: pin badges, bottle caps, a plastic pen-topper shaped like a
victory fist. Every one of them had had a special significance when I’d been part of a couple. Now it was just junk. Even the heart pebble he’d given me the day Chelle arrived.

I scooped up the first few flyers and began to tear them up systematically, letting the pieces fall into the shoebox. The sheets ripped in half, quarters, eighths, sixteenths, and then into tiny
unreadable fragments. And throughout, my head rang with voices as if I was listening to a radio play I couldn’t turn off.

‘It’s obvious you like Chelle better than me.’

‘That’s the language of the playground.’

‘I think you’re in love with her.’

Owen let out a deep and weary sigh. ‘Jen.’

‘My God, you
are.
’ In that moment I was convinced I could see it all. ‘Yes! That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Bloody hell. How stupid
have I been? You’ve fallen for her – while I stood back and gave you the space to do it. Christ knows, she’s been trying hard enough. Everybody was warning me but I said no, Owen
wouldn’t behave like that. Owen’s moral code wouldn’t allow it. He’s got principles. God, I’m such a fool.’

‘No.’

‘Oh, I think so.’

I was giddy with indignation and fury. I’d had to reach out and touch the wall to steady myself.

‘Well, you’re wrong,’ said Owen emphatically. ‘I do like her. A lot. Not that way. But listen to me – no, don’t start – because the thing about Chelle
is, she
knew
me. You’ve never understood me, never been on my wavelength. You’ve never truly sympathised with my concerns. Chelle did.’

‘Wait a minute,’ I spluttered. ‘I’ve “never sympathised with your concerns”? Bloody hell, it’s
all
revolved around what you want. I’ve
spent
hours
doing the things that matter to you.’

‘Precisely. That matter to me, not to you. It’s been a chore as far as you’re concerned. A sacrifice. And then you’ve always made it plain you expect to be paid back
somehow, toothbrush rights and that possessive stuff, then you’ve sulked when I wouldn’t deliver. Even though you knew that wasn’t the way I tick. That’s not the kind of
girlfriend I want, Jen. Territorial, jealous. I need someone who understands what truly matters. The bigger picture, the injustice of the world.’

‘
We
matter!’

Another sad shake of the head.

I said, ‘Stop making me out to be a selfish person. I donate to charity. I help if someone’s in trouble. I give money to that guy who sits by The Cross.’

‘It has to be wider than that. If right’s going to triumph, you have to give it all your energy. You have to want to move mountains, not little stones.’ There was this
evangelical light in his eyes and I remember wondering whether he’d gone slightly mad. Perhaps Chelle had leached his sanity too.

‘Owen, I’m going to ask you something and I don’t want you to lie.’

He looked at me full on and my heart contracted with fear. ‘You’d better be sure you can cope with the answer, then.’

‘Did you have sex with her? Just say it, get it over with.’

‘No, Jen,’ he’d said straightaway. ‘I would never cheat on you. And I don’t know how you can even ask me that.’

‘So what’s happening here? Spell it out for me.’

He’d buried his face in his hands, a pose of anguish.

‘I don’t want to say it. I don’t want to hurt you.’

‘You
are
in love with her.’

‘No!’

‘What, then?’

‘All right. This is it: having Chelle here hasn’t made me fall in love with her. It’s made me fall out of love with you.’

There’d been a moment of complete stillness, a hurricane’s eye, before the reality of what he’d said sank in.

Now I’d reduced every sheet of paper in the ladybird box down to tiny scraps that couldn’t be ripped any smaller. I carried it over to my bedroom window. The damp autumn air had
swelled the wood so at first the catch wouldn’t budge. I put the box down and began thumping hard at the frame till eventually it shifted. A final furious push and the glass swung open,
wrenching the hinges. I bent to lift the box, settled it on the ledge, then angled it so that flakes were shunted out into the air. At first they came away in small, hesitant drifts, individual
scraps spinning on the breeze and flittering towards next door’s front lawn. But as I nudged more violently, whole clumps slithered over the cardboard lip to shower down thickly and
vertically like a very localised snowstorm. I can’t explain why it gave me a weird satisfaction to litter my own garden like that. I only know it did.

I carried on tapping and shaking, leaning right over the sill so I could see the shreds of my relationship scatter. There it went, those months I’d believed I was happy, reduced to
remnants, destroyed. Pulped.

And it was at that point, through the swirling confetti of despair, that I saw Ned standing on the drive below, his anxious face upturned towards me.

Two minutes later there was a knock at my bedroom door. It opened a crack and Ned peered round. ‘Can I come in? Your mother’s – hmm – quite interested
to know what’s going on.’

‘Yeah, I bet she is.’

He stepped forward, onto the remains of the broken magazine. I saw he was wearing the tartan shirt Hel had bought him last Christmas, and his thick boots and jeans. His fringe was ruffled from
where he’d jammed it under his cap while he worked. ‘So. Ah. You OK, Jen?’

‘No.’

‘What’s the story?’

I sat down on the bed and started to cry in earnest. At once he came forward and plonked himself next to me. ‘Jen? Jen. Oh no. Shit. What can I do? Have you got a tissue?’

He began patting his pockets and bringing out all kinds of useless articles: a conker, a small spanner, a wrapped barley sugar, a fifty pence piece. Meanwhile I let myself weep, not the kind of
elegant crystal tears my sister sheds, the ones that slide silently over her porcelain skin, but soggy trails that made my cheeks go blotchy and my nose run. My mouth was twisted down and I was
making whimpering noises like a dog. I knew my make up would have smeared, but I just couldn’t stop.

After a minute or so I managed to gather my wits enough to bring my hands up and shield my messy face from Ned. He responded by lifting my hair out of the way and tucking it behind my ear.

‘Don’t,’ I said.

‘I’ve found you a hanky. It’s almost clean.’

I reached out and took it blindly.

‘Can you tell me what’s upset you, Jen? Is it Tweed-knickers again?’

‘No.’

‘Chelle? Owen?’

I let out a moan.

‘Shit,’
I heard Ned say under his breath. ‘What’s he done now?’

‘Finished with me.’

And off I went again, into a fit of fresh sobs.

‘What? Oh, Jen.’ He twisted round and gathered me into his arms. I pushed my face against his shirt and lost myself there while he rocked and shushed and patted me and murmured that
it would be OK. No it won’t, I thought. It’ll never be OK again. I let him say it though, because what was the alternative?
That’s it, love. You’ve blown it. Your
life’s knackered.
Ned smelt of wood shavings and disinfectant and Swarfega, and his body was warm against mine. I wanted never to move from this position.

After a bit I heard him go, ‘Would it help if I told you he was a tool?’

‘He’s
not.
’

‘He must be to have upset you like this.’

‘Well, he’s not.’

‘Is this anything to do with the Limpet?’

I loosened my grip and moved away from him. ‘Sort of.’

‘I knew it.’

‘Not the way you’re thinking.’

‘How, then?’

Through the open window came a whining drone that I guessed was probably the mini hoover at work: Mum clearing up my paper storm before the neighbours complained. Even from here I thought I
could detect a martyred tone to the motor. God knows what she’d have to say when Ned left and I was forced to go downstairs for tea. I’d have no defence. It was a stupid gesture from
the outset. I could just have thrown the stuff in the bin and been rid.

‘It was like this,’ I said. Then in a small voice I told him what had happened.

I tried hard not to begin crying again, and I more or less succeeded. Ned sat and listened without interruption. Occasionally he sucked in his breath, or frowned, but mostly his expression
stayed the same: concerned, disturbed, sorry. When I was finished, I asked him what he thought.

‘I refer to my previous judgement.’

I flushed miserably. ‘Don’t say that. I know you and Hel’ve never much rated him, but he’s my first serious boyfriend. I know it wasn’t perfect – what is?
– but it was getting better. It would have worked out eventually. I loved him. I thought he loved me. I was kind of
banking
on him.’

‘What you said needed saying, though. He needed to be told. You know he did.’

‘And look where it’s got me.’

‘You’re too good for him, Jen, that’s the critical issue. Sorry, I know you think he’s some kind of saint, and probably I should keep my mouth shut—’

‘No, you’ve got it back-to-front.
He’s
the good one. It’s because he’s so good that he couldn’t see through Chelle.’

‘But he didn’t deserve you. He never let you be yourself.’

‘He was trying to get me to be a
better version
of myself. The thing is, he’s so generous—’

‘Bollocks. Sorry, I’ve had enough of this. It’s all right him giving away a pair of expensive trainers to a tramp in the street when he knows his dad’s just going to buy
him some more the next day. The reason he’s so generous, the reason he never bothers about money, is because he always has it. Not like the rest of us, having to count every penny.’