The Switch Page 3
3
Leena
I wake up at six twenty-two, twenty-two minutes after my usual alarm, and sit bolt upright with a gasp. I think the reason I’m freaked out is the strange silence, the absence of my phone alarm’s horrendous cheery beeping. It takes me a while to remember that I’m not late—I do not have to get up and go to the office. I am actually not allowed to go back to the office.
I slump back against the pillow as the horror and the shame resettle. I slept terribly, stuck in a loop of remembering that meeting, never less than half-awake, and then, when I did fall asleep, I dreamed of Carla, one of the last nights I spent at Mum’s house, how I’d crawled into the bed and held Carla against me, her frail body tucked to mine like a child’s. She’d elbowed me off, after a bit. Stop getting the pillow all wet, she’d told me, but then she’d kissed me on the cheek and sent me off to make midnight hot chocolate, and we’d talked for a while, giggling in the dark like we were kids again.
I haven’t dreamed of Carla for a good few months. Now, awake, reliving that dream, I miss my sister so much I cry out with a little, strangled, Oh God, remembering the gutting sucker-punches of grief that floored me in those first few months, feeling them again for a heart-splitting instant and wondering how I survived that time at all.
This is bad. I need to move. A run. That’ll sort me out. I throw on the Lululemon leggings Ethan got me for my birthday, and an old T-shirt, and head out the door. I run through the streets of Shoreditch until dark bricks and street art give way to the repurposed warehouses of Clerkenwell, the shuttered bars and restaurants on Upper Street, the leafy affluence of Islington, until I’m dripping with sweat and all I can think about is the inch of pavement in my eyeline. The next step, next step, next step.
When I get back, Martha’s in the kitchen, attempting to wedge her very pregnant body into one of the ridiculous art deco breakfast stools she chose for the flat. Her dark-brown hair is in pigtails; Martha always looks young, she’s got one of those faces, but add the pigtails and she looks like she should not legally be bearing a child.
I offer her an arm to lean on as she clambers up, but she waves me away.
“That’s a very lovely gesture,” she says, “but you are far too sweaty to be touching other people, my sweet.”
I wipe my face with the bottom of my T-shirt and head to the sink for a glass of water. “We need proper chairs,” I tell her over my shoulder.
“No we do not! These are perfect,” Martha tells me, wriggling backward to try to fit her bottom into the seat.
I roll my eyes.
Martha is a high-end interior designer. The work is flashy, exhausting, and irregular; her clients are nightmarishly picky, always ringing her out-of-hours to have lengthy breakdowns about curtain fabrics. But the upside is that she gets discount on designer furniture, and she has dotted our flat with an assortment of very stylish things that either serve no purpose—the W-shaped vase on the windowsill, the cast-iron lamp that barely emits the faintest glow when turned on—or actively don’t fulfill their intended function: the breakfast stools you can hardly sit on, the coffee table with the convex surface.
Still, it seems to make her happy, and I’m so rarely in the flat it doesn’t bother me much. I should never have let Martha talk me into renting this place with her, really, but the novelty of living in an old printworks was too good to resist when I was new to London. Now this is just a very expensive space in which I can collapse into bed, and I don’t notice that what we’re doing is, apparently, “artisan warehouse living.” When Martha leaves I really should talk to Fitz about the two of us moving somewhere more reasonable. Aside from the weird old cat lady next door, everyone who lives in this building seems to have a hipster beard or a start-up; I’m not sure Shoreditch is where we belong.
“You manage to speak to Yaz last night?” I ask, getting myself another glass of water.
Yaz is Martha’s girlfriend, currently touring a play out in America for six months. Yaz and Martha’s relationship causes me high levels of vicarious stress. Everything seems to involve incredibly complex logistics. They’re always in different time zones and sending one another important documents transatlantically and making crucial life decisions on WhatsApp calls with really patchy signal. This current situation is an excellent example of their style: Yaz will be returning in eight weeks’ time, taking possession of a house (which has yet to be bought), and moving her pregnant girlfriend into it before the baby is scheduled to come a few days later. I’m sweating again just thinking about it all.
“Yeah, Yaz is good,” Martha says, idly rubbing her bump. “Talking at four hundred miles an hour about Chekhov and baseball games. You know, Yaz-like.” Her fond smile stretches as she yawns expansively. “She’s getting skinny, though. She needs a good meal.”
I suppress a smile. Martha may not be a mother yet, but she’s been mothering everyone within reach for as long as I’ve known her. Feeding people is one of her favorite forms of benevolent attack. She also keeps insisting on bringing friends from her Pilates class around for dinner in the blatant hope that they might make an honest man of Fitz, our other flatmate.
Speaking of Fitz—I check the time on my fitbit. He’s on his fourth new job of the year; he really shouldn’t be late for this one.
“Is Fitz up yet?” I ask.
He wanders in on cue, pushing up his collar to put on a tie. As per usual, his facial hair looks like it was cut against a ruler—I’ve lived with him for three years and am still no closer to understanding how he achieves this. Fitz always looks so misleadingly together. His life is in a permanent state of disarray, but his socks are always perfectly ironed. (In his defense, they are always on show—he wears his trousers an inch too short—and they are more interesting than the average person’s socks. He has one pair covered in a SpongeBob SquarePants motif, another speckled like a Van Gogh painting, and his favorite pair are his “political socks,” which say “Brexit is bollocks” around the ankle.)
“I’m up. Question is, why are you up, holidayer?” Fitz asks, finishing off knotting his skinny tie.
“Oh, Leena,” Martha says. “I’m sorry, I’d totally forgotten you weren’t going to work this morning.” Her eyes are wide with sympathy. “How’re you feeling?”
“Miserable,” I confess. “And then angry with myself for being miserable, because who feels miserable when they’ve been given a paid two-month holiday? But I keep reliving the moment in that meeting. Then all I want to do is curl up in the fetal position.”
“The fetal position is not as static as people think,” Martha says, grimacing and rubbing the side of her belly. “But yeah, that’s totally natural, sweetheart. You need to rest—that’s what your body is telling you. And you need to forgive yourself. You just made a little mistake.”
“Leena’s never made one of those before,” Fitz says, heading for the smoothie maker. “Give her time to adjust.”
I scowl. “I’ve made mistakes.”
“Oh, please, Little Miss Perfect. Name one,” Fitz says, winking over his shoulder.
Martha clocks my irritated expression and reaches to give my arm a squeeze, then remembers how sweaty I am and pats me gently on the shoulder instead.
“Do you have plans for your weekend?” she asks me.
“I’m going up to Hamleigh, actually,” I say, glancing at my phone. I’m expecting a text from Ethan—he had to work late last night, but I’m hoping he’s free this evening. I need one of his hugs, the really gorgeous long ones where I tuck my face into his neck and he wraps me right up.
“Yeah?” Fitz says, making a face. “Going back up north to see your mum—that’s what you want to do right now?”
“Fitz!” Martha chides. “I think that’s a great idea, Leena. Seeing your granny will make you feel so much better, and you don’t have to spend any time with your mum if you don’t feel ready. Is Ethan going with you?”
“Probably not—he’s on that project in Swindon. The deliver
y deadline’s next Thursday—he’s in the office all hours.”
Fitz gives the smoothie machine a rather pointed whir at that. He doesn’t need to say anything: I know he thinks Ethan and I don’t prioritize each other enough. It’s true we don’t see each other as much as we’d like to—we may work for the same company, but we’re always staffed on different projects, usually in different godforsaken industrial parks. But that’s part of why Ethan is so amazing. He gets how important work is. When Carla died and I was struggling so much to stay afloat, it was Ethan who kept me focused on my job, reminding me what I loved about it, pushing me to keep moving forward so I didn’t have the chance to sink.
Only now I don’t have any work to keep me going, not for the next eight weeks. Two enormous months gape ahead of me, unfilled. As I think of all those hours of stillness and quiet and time to think, the bottom seems to drop out of my stomach. I need a purpose, a project, something. If I don’t keep moving those waters will close over my head, and the very thought of that makes my skin prickle with panic.
* * *
I check the time on my phone. Ethan’s over an hour and a half late—he probably got cornered by a partner as he was leaving work. I’ve been cleaning the flat all afternoon, and finished up in time for his arrival, but now an extra two hours have passed, during which I’ve been pulling out furniture and dusting chair legs and doing the sort of excessive cleaning that gets you a spot on a Channel Four documentary.
When I finally hear his key in the door I wriggle my way out from underneath the sofa and brush down my gigantic cleaning-day sweatshirt. It’s a Buffy one: the front is a big picture of her face, doing her best kick-ass expression. (Most of my clothes that aren’t suits are gigantic nerdy jumpers. I may not have much time to indulge in cult telly shows these days, but I can still show my loyalties—and frankly it’s the only kind of fashion I consider worth spending money on.)
Ethan does a dramatic gasp as he enters the room, spinning on his heels at the transformation. It does look great. We keep the place fairly tidy anyway, but now it’s sparkling.
“I should’ve known you couldn’t even manage one day off without some sort of frenzied activity,” Ethan says, swooping in to kiss me. He smells of rich, citrussy cologne and his nose is cold from the chilly March rain. “The place looks great. Fancy doing mine next?”
I swat him on the arm and he laughs, tossing his dark hair back from his forehead with his trademark lopsided flick. He bends down and kisses me again, and I feel a flash of envy as I sense how buzzed he is from work. I miss that feeling.
“Sorry I’m late,” he says, moving away and heading for the kitchen. “Li took me aside to talk through the R and D numbers for the Webster review and you know what he’s like, can’t take a hint for love nor money. How are you holding up, angel?” he calls over his shoulder.
My stomach twists. How are you holding up, angel? Ethan used to say that to me on the phone each night, when Carla was barely holding on; he’d say it on my doorstep, turning up just when I needed him, with a bottle of wine and a hug; he said it as I wobbled my way to the front at Carla’s funeral, gripping his hand so tightly it must have hurt. I couldn’t have got through it all without him. I’m not sure how you can ever be grateful enough for someone leading you through the darkest time in your life.
“I’m … OK,” I say.
Ethan comes back in, his socked feet looking a little incongruous with his business suit. “I think this is a good thing,” he says, “the time off.”
“You do?” I ask, sinking down on the sofa. He settles in beside me, pulling my legs over his.
“Absolutely. And you can keep your hand in anyway—you’re always welcome to chip in on my projects, you know that, and I can drop in with Rebecca how much you’re helping me out, so she knows you’re not losing your edge while you’re away.”
I sit up a little straighter. “Really?”
“Of course.” He kisses me. “You know I’ve got your back.”
I shift so I can look at him properly: his fine, expressive mouth; that silky dark hair; the little string of freckles above his high cheekbones. He’s so beautiful, and he’s here, right now, when I need him most. I am beyond lucky to have found this man.
He leans to the side to grab his laptop bag, slung down by the sofa arm. “Want to run through tomorrow’s slide deck with me? For the Webster review?”
I hesitate, but he’s already flicking the laptop open, settling it across my legs, and so I lean back and listen as he starts talking, and I realize he’s right—this is helping. Like this, with Ethan, hearing his soft, low voice talk revenue and projections, I almost feel like myself.
4
Eileen
Things are rather a rush on Friday afternoon—Dec left mouse entrails on the doormat. It was a kind gesture in cat terms, I’m sure, but a bother to wipe off the bottom of my favorite shoes. I arrive at the village hall just in time for the Neighborhood Watch meeting, and a little out of breath.
The Hamleigh Neighborhood Watch is an unofficial association, but a thriving one. Crime is something that very much concerns the inhabitants of Hamleigh-in-Harksdale, despite the fact that in the last five years the only crime I remember occurring was the theft of Basil’s lawnmower, which turned out to have been borrowed by Betsy, who swears she asked Basil first. Whoever you believe, it’s hardly an epidemic of illegal activity, and a weekly two-hour meeting is almost certainly a bit much.
Thankfully, I am now in charge of the Neighborhood Watch, with Betsy as Deputy Watcher (it was agreed that Betsy could not be Lead Watcher, given her aforementioned criminal history). We’ve made the meetings much more interesting. Since we’re not technically a Neighborhood Watch, just people who like watching our neighbors, there’s no need to stick to any rules or regulations. So we stopped pretending to talk about crime, and just focused on gossip, village scandal, and complaints about rival hamlets. Next, we introduced lots of free biscuits, provided cushions for the seats, and created a sign saying “Members Only” for the door of the village hall when we’re meeting, which has had the effect of making everybody who isn’t a member of the Neighborhood Watch jealous, and everyone who is a member feel smug about being “in the club,” as it were.
Betsy calls the meeting to order by tapping her gavel on the village hall coffee table. (Goodness knows where Betsy got that gavel from, but she’ll take any given opportunity to tap it. The other day, when Basil was being particularly belligerent at bingo, she tapped him on the forehead with it. That shut him up. Though Dr. Piotr did pull Betsy aside later to explain that, given Basil’s recent stroke, head injuries would be best avoided.)
“What’s our first order of business?” Betsy calls.
I hand her the agenda.
March 20th Neighborhood Watch Meeting
Welcome
Tea round, biscuits
Dr. Piotr: parking outside the GP surgery
Roland: are we still boycotting Julie’s? Move to reassess—no other good places to buy bacon sandwiches
Betsy: clarification on whether culottes are indeed “back in”
Biscuits, tea
Eileen: golden oldies film night—move to ban all films with Jack Nicholson in them, can’t stand any more, there must be another older gentleman who can act
Basil: update on the War on Squirrels
Any crime?
Biscuits, tea
AOB
Basil does the teas, which means they’re all atrociously weak and half of us still have teabags floating in our mugs because he’s too short-sighted to notice which ones he’s not fished out. Betsy has brought a very good range of biscuits, though. I munch my way through a ginger snap while Piotr talks earnestly about “those of us who park our mobility scooters across two car parking spaces” (he means Roland) and “consequences for other patients” (he means Basil, who always complains about it).
I think of the list on my dining-room table and idly try to imagine making love to Dr.
Piotr, which results in a piece of ginger snap going the wrong way and the Neighborhood Watch meeting briefly descending into panic as everyone thwacks me on the back. Betsy is just preparing to do the Heimlich maneuver when I get my voice back and inform them that I’m quite all right. And that, should a time arise when I am actually choking, I’d prefer it if Piotr was the one doing the maneuvers. We exchange an amused glance over Betsy’s head as I say it. With a flicker of hope I wonder whether the look might even be a little flirtatious, though it’s been a while and I’m not exactly sure how you’re supposed to tell.
Betsy gets predictably miffed at my comment, but is soon distracted by the discussion of whether culottes are fashionable. This one arose because last week Kathleen told Betsy they were all the rage, and Betsy bought six pairs off of the shopping channel. (Kathleen, at thirty-five, brings down the average age of the Neighborhood Watch considerably. With three children under six she’s so desperate to get out of the house she’s signed up for every village activity going.) Betsy has had a crisis of confidence about her new purchases and needs a poll to be conducted. This is her favorite way of ensuring nobody can judge her for doing something—if it’s decided democratically, it’s everybody’s fault.
The Neighborhood Watch rules that culottes are indeed back in, though I believe Basil thinks they’re some sort of French vegetable, and he was the deciding vote.
After round two of biscuits I make my case regarding Jack Nicholson films, but am overruled: Penelope is a surprisingly ardent fan. Next Basil blathers on about squirrels for a while, which is always a good part of the meeting in which to catch some shut-eye if you need it, and then it’s time for more biscuits and the most important point on the agenda: “any crime.” Otherwise known as “new gossip.”
“Eileen, Betsy says you’ve sold your car?” Penelope says, blinking owlishly at me across the circle. Penelope is built like a tiny little bird; she looks so frail I’m always nervous she’ll snap something, but really she’s made of pretty strong stuff. I saw her shoot a cat with a water pistol the other day when it was after her bluetits’ nest—she got it right in the eye.