CHAPTER 21
I lay in bed afterwards, wondering how I was going to find any more energy, ever again. Larinda was in her usual position, which involved curling up with an arm across my chest and her head on my shoulder.

“You have no idea how confused you leave me, Carter. You do what you do, and then you get me used to it, then I get to depend on it, and all the time, it’s the time, yeah, ticking away till it’s gone. I know it’s a waste of a question, but…”

I sighed. “Kid, it’s never a waste if you are asking something because you care, aye? And if it’s the usual one, well, I don’t know how to explain it more than I have already. This is right, yeah, me and you, in bed, this is what I want, and it’s great, it’s sweet, it’s more than I could have hoped for, all that jazz, but…but it’s not me and you in bed, it’s you and someone I live in, and it can’t go on”

“But I can’t fancy women, yeah?”

“And I have never fancied men, from inside or outside. Look, have you ever done a long haul flight?”

“Went to Orlando once, when he wasn’t being such a tosser”

“How did you find the seats on the plane?”

“Cramped, no leg room. Why?”

“You find yourself squirming around, trying to find a position you could be comfortable in, and not getting one?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, imagine that, not just for a few hours, but for your life, aye? That’s me. All my life in the wrong seat”

She hugged me with the arm across my chest.

“Yeah, I’ve read all that, all the analogies, like, but it don’t change the fact that you will be different, yeah? Like, not the bloke I fancy”

“But I will be…”

“Shit, Rob, Jill, I know all that, it’s in here, in my head, yeah, but what I’m going to be seeing is like you in a trick mirror, all warped, and in a dress, and I tried, yeah, and it was just wrong, and it’s really getting to me, cause, well, I’m all stuck on you, and it’s not just the shagging, cause it’s you, and I don’t want to lose you, but I don’t know if I can keep you as someone else, yeah?”

I had to tell her. “Larinda, the problem is, well, if I don’t, you know, then I don’t know if I can, well, I don’t know if I can keep going. I’ve had enough”

I could feel her tears now, warm on my chest.

“Yeah, I read all about that, and don’t think I didn’t notice. You got your girlfriend, yeah, but you’re shagging me, and you don’t care too much if she finds out, cause you’re thinking, fuck it, I ain’t gonna be here much longer, and so you don’t need to worry about a future problem because you don’t intend to have a fucking future, yeah?”

Every time I turned around, she had sliced another piece of my camouflage away. Her fingers dug into my chest as I lay quiet, not trusting myself to say anything.

“Trouble is, Carter, that I still want a future, and I am hoping to have it with you, because despite you being a selfish sod, so stuck up yourself about your own shit, you are really the nicest bloke I have ever met. Bloke, woman, whatever the fuck you are, and you leave me so fucked up, because I can’t see myself without you, and then I can’t see myself with a woman, and then you are the same fucking thing, person, and shit, why couldn’t you have been normal?”

I tried to get the words out, but they were sideways in my throat, and she was still speaking.

“See, Jill, Rob, whoever you are, I love you, and I haven’t got a clue what to do about it. I mean, this is exactly what we said in the pub, yeah, but here, like this, it’s so different, it’s just us, and it’s more, like in your face, more real, yeah?”

“I love you too…”

“I fucking know that! I’ve known that for ages. And that really screws us up, because it means that we have no choices left. I can’t leave you, and you can’t dump me, and now you can’t fucking top yourself, just because, yeah? So we have to stagger along, deal with this shit, yeah? You promise, yeah? No running away? I am not wearing black!”

So I promised, and I kissed her, and I did have some energy left, as it turned out, and just before we settled down to sleep in a tangle of sweaty limbs and damp sheets, she murmured in my ear:

“But you do have to do the right thing with that other woman, yeah? We do this, we do it honest, OK?”

Yes. It had to be honest.

The next morning was almost routine, for that was what we were developing. I walked her to the station, I kissed her and set her on the train, and then took myself to work. As she left, she gave me one last instruction.

“Cut me a door key, Carter. You don’t get to lie there in the dark on your own, yeah?”

I was trapped, and it was beginning to feel rather nice. That lunchtime, I got a spare set cut.

Two more traders, nothing too earth-shattering, apart from the usual household bills passed off as business expenses, and I was back at my desk by four. Rachel brought me a coffee at half past.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, you were read the riot act last night, what’s the outcome?”

I sat for a while, trying to divert myself with the important decision as to whether I should drink the stuff through the little hole in the top or properly, like an adult. The thought made me chuckle.

“What’s funny?”

“These cups, kid. They’re like those baby mugs, the ones with the lid on, and here I am, an alleged adult, who can’t get their life on track, and it sort of fits, aye?”

“That bad, eh? She give you hell?”

I thought it through, and in a way Rachel was right.

“Sort of. She doesn’t like where I have to go, but she understands I haven’t really got much choice, so…so she says she’ll try and stick with it, and, well…”

“You are sweet on her, aren’t you? Really fallen hard”

I nodded. “Aye, I am. She’s clever, kind, sexy as all hell, and there’s a person behind the tits and the grin, aye? Her husband, what sort of fuckwit was he, to miss all that?”

“Ah, Jill, girl, you know, I don’t think he did. I sort of get the impression that she’s a bit self-made, stepped away from the hubby-mirror and found who she really was”

“Hubby-mirror?”

“Word I made up. Woman, no self-confidence, yeah, she gets hitched and the only way she has to evaluate herself, see what she’s worth, comes from whatever hubby says. She sees herself only as a sort of reflection from him, yeah? Woman’s value set on Patriarchy terms”

I started to interrupt, and Rachel held up a hand.

“No, hear me out. I know that sounds like some stupid feminist slogan, but it’s what it his. He’s The Man, she’s ‘er indoors, to do as she’s told. Thank fuck he started ignoring her before it got to the stage of ‘He only hits me cause he lurves me’ “

There was real venom in her words, and I realised how little I really knew the woman before me. Years of working together, drinking together, and I knew nothing of her life before we met. Yes, Larinda was right: I had spent so much time eaten up by my own worries that I had missed those of others about me.

“You were…?”

“Married? Yeah, and young, and he told me one day I was too fat, and then I was doing the great white telephone thing cause he was The Man, and it didn’t go too well, and I got too ill, and then one day he tells me, yeah? What do you say to an Essex girl with two black eyes? Nothing, that’s what, because she’s already been told twice. And he did that once, he told me once, and that was once too much, and he got a fucking standard lamp round his head, and I have never, ever judged myself by what someone else says, ever again…”

She paused, panting a little, and stared at me as if preparing to receive an argument.

“Sorry, Rach, I didn’t know”

“Nobody here does, yeah, so schtum, OK? Look, what I am saying is that she is doing her own person thing, but it’s new to her, so don’t bruise her. If she is willing to even consider staying with you when you do the slice and dice shit, then you are lucky beyond words, yeah? But there is one thing, Carter, and if she hasn’t already said so, I will be astonished”

I pulled together a weak smile.

“Siobhan? She already said, Larinda said, that we have to do things honestly”

That brought back the normal Rachel grin.

“See? I was right about that girl! You treat her right, or I will tell you myself, yeah?”

Her voice softened. “Look, Jill, this was never going to be easy, was it? You knew that, yeah? But, fuck it, you are going into it with more than most, so don’t waste it. I’m off home. Got a hot date with a DVD and half a pound of milk chocolate”

Suddenly, she was on me, almost squeezing the air out of me.

“Jill…be lucky, yeah?”