The Art of Keeping Faith (26 page)

13th January

Midnight

“Thank you.”

It’s his opening line and it was worth waiting up for.

“Happy Birthday, Benjamin.”

“Thank you, and thank you again for your gift. I was not expecting that in a million years.”

“What were you expecting?”

“A blow job.”

“How? You are there and I am here?”

“An I Owe You?”

“Well I am glad I managed one better than an I Owe You blow job.”

He giggles down the line.

“Is that really how you felt, the first time you saw me?”

“Yep.”

“I love you Lilah,”

“I love you, Benjamin.”

“Oh, Lilah, by the way, I did think you were winking at me!” he chuckles down the line.

This was my favourite bit of the article to write. Recounting standing against the wall at the Freshers’ Ball when every time I opened up both of my eyes there were two Ben’s on stage. I spent a good few minutes chuckling to myself every time I managed to make two of him, or the extra one disappear. I was sure at the time he knew.

“Did you?” I ask him.

“Ha, no not really I was just so bloody pleased that I found you again after all those months of looking. You probably could have been comatose and I still would have tried to snog you.”

“Ha! You dirty pervert.”

“Only when it comes to you.”

“So tell me about your birthday.”

“Nah, boring, you tell me about your day!”

So I do. I tell him all about meeting Zoe Benedict and going to thank her at the publishers after she published my article online, and effectively saved my birthday bacon. I tell him all about my trip back to Uni to pick my modules, and the dosser course I have managed to get on this term: History on Screen, which basically involves watching old, shit movies. And I tell him all about the short-and-sweet-but-easy-to-keep New Year’s resolutions I have finally managed to write.

I have decided to keep them vague and brief therefore allowing greater flexibility in not breaking them.

I will not drink—as much

I will try to be on time

I will try and study slightly more often and not leave it to the last minute

I will try not to be jealous of skinny American girls hanging around my boyfriend.

I do not tell him the last one. It slipped my mind.

14th January

9.30 a.m.

Fuck it, it’s nine-thirty, but I have not had time for my pre-lecture nicotine hit.

I will just a have a quick one before heading in.

9.40 a.m.

“Sorry I’m late,” I announce to the room in general. There are only ten people, and I try not to make eye contact with anyone as I head to a seat at the back before changing direction to the front row. If I am going to do this whole study malarkey I may as well sit at the front. Meredith who is already settled in the back row gives a little giggle.

“Ah, Miss McCannon, how privileged I feel to have you two terms in a row.”

You have got to be kidding me.

Professor Pilchard pops his head up from behind a projector he is fiddling with.

“Don’t worry about sitting down, Delilah.” Pilchard tells me with a wave of his hand.

Really!! He can’t be throwing me off the course already for being ten minutes late.

“Let’s move seats everyone. There are only a few of us, no need to be strangers, we will be spending a lot of time together watching movies and all sorts over the next few weeks.” He rubs his hands together with glee and I feel my stomach give a little drop.

This is not going to be a doss lecture at all.

Is there anything worse in the world than thinking you had something easy and then finding out it was going to be really hard?

Yes, there is. It’s called History on Screen with Professor Pilchard and it is going to be hell.

To make matters even worse, who should I end up sitting next to?

That’s right. Bloody Barbie and her miniscule slut underwear, which thankfully I cannot see through the plunging neckline of her sweater, but I am sure it is there all the same.

Bloody great.

15th January

It’s a good thing my belated New Year’s Resolution regarding my alcohol intake only specified ‘Try not to drink too much.’

I failed and then some.

It was only partially my fault.

After the disastrous History on Screen lecture where Professor Pilchard attempted to make me understand the term Mise-en-Scene by waving his hands at me and going purple in the face, I snuck off to the library.

Once there, I spent an hour idly flicking through books from the film and television section (haha! One floor lower in the library—I may like this subject after all!). It was then I noticed the date on my phone.

I like to spend my time in a state of ignorant bliss where I am not normally aware of what the date is, or even for that matter what month it is.

However, yesterday one date was really niggling in the back of my mind, 14th of January. Why would that ring a bell? I cast my mind back to that first week of spring term last year. Ah, the snow. Snow days with Ben, one of my most favourite things in the world. This was back during the time when we were not supposed to be together. In fact I had told him already to go and live in the States, but we were unable to keep our hands off each other.

Nice memories, but it didn’t explain that nagging sensation making me feel that I should be remembering something important.

It was only as I was heading out of the library and glancing over the cold and bleak campus that I suddenly remembered.

Meredith.

The 14th of January was when she found out about her baby. It was the day she came into my room covered in snot and tears and laid on my bed as all of our lives spun and tilted, putting us all on different paths. It was the day when her words and tears broke my heart but later, Ben, in the silence and still of his room, was able to piece it back together and stick it with glue in such a way that I would never be able to separate myself from him.

Meredith.

I dashed home, stopping briefly at the off-license to grab some wine and fags, before screeching to a halt outside our flat and running through the door straight into Meredith who was sitting on the hallway floor on the telephone.

“Thanks, Ben,” she is saying into the phone. “Lilah is home now do you want to talk to her?”

She got up from the floor and handed me the phone but I grabbed her hand and held onto her so she could not leave.

“Ben, I can’t talk now.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

“Love you, Lilah.”

Then I hung up the phone and grabbed my best friend into the tightest hug I have ever given anyone.

“I am sorry I didn’t remember this morning.”

“Lilah, it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. I am shit. I am the worst friend ever, always wrapped up in my own drama and problems. I forget that you have been through much more than I can even imagine.”

“Nah, I think you have got some credit of your own.”

We both start to giggle and I grab the plastic bag full of clinking bottles off the floor.

“Wine?” she asks.

“Oh yes,” I confirm with a smirk. Of course it’s bloody wine—this is me in an emotional situation. “Wine and a take-away?” I suggest.

“Wine and dancing,” counters Meredith.

Oh, God.

“Wine and dancing it is.”

At ten o’clock we were all done up and standing in the queue for Fez freezing our tits off.

Meredith who was rather tipsy by the time we started to get dressed decided to put herself in charge of my wardrobe. So basically I was semi-clothed whilst standing in a long queue on a cold January night.

Thankfully Richard and two of his football buddy friends walked along and rescued us. Well actually I hid, but Meredith did not have this problem. She launched herself into their path to find out where they were going and why they were not waiting in the queue like the rest of us plebs.

Turns out they are on the door list and just walk in. I have no idea why. Why, oh, why would kicking a ball about for the local Uni football team put you on the door list at a club? I wouldn’t mind, but half of them are overweight and the other half can’t play longer than thirty minutes without collapsing on the floor with cramp—it seems this does not matter.

Anyway we went in with them. Rich even insisted on paying for us—which was quite sweet and meant that Mer and I had even more money for shots. Hurrah!

I am low on funds for the first time in a while, the wine on the way home cleared me out so Meredith and I had to empty out Tristan’s small change jar. Thing being, Tristan does not have small change in his small change jar; he has fiver’s in there, two pound coins and all sorts.

We came out with fifty quid! Haha! Which we then spent on vodka.

So needless to say we drank a lot. Danced a lot. Cried a lot and then got escorted home by Richard who decided to do the big brother/little brother thing because neither of us could stand up. Well we could but it involved giggling and leaning on each other.

Now I am in the library suffering with the worst hangover I am proud to say I have had since the beginning of the year—see I am making progress.

Later

“Lilah, coffee.”

“Uh what?”

“Lilah, here have a coffee.”

Richard is thrusting a dangerously hot coffee under my nose.

Aw damn it I must have fallen asleep in the library again.

“How’s the hangover?” he asks, perching on the desk next to me.

“Bad,” I confirm giving a discreet wipe of the desk to remove any dribble.

“I’d say. Do you remember the cab journey home?”

“Yeah, of course I do. I was not that bad!”

I was. I was completely blotted and only vaguely remember falling into a cab which had surprisingly luxurious leather seats.

“So you remember that the cab was not a cab at all but some poor business man who you flagged down and then clambered into his car, smearing your kebab everywhere.”

I look at Rich to see if he is teasing. I don’t think he is.

Shit.

“I did not do that.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No way. Never. That would be dangerous and silly.”

“Yep, and then you gave him a fiver for driving us all the way home even though by that point you’d realised he was not a cabbie.”

“Oh, my God. That is so embarrassing.”

“So my question is, do you plan to drink that much very often?”

“Why?”

“Because I am not sure I can allow you to go out by yourself. But at the same time, I don’t think my liver can take it.”

“I am twenty-seven years old! Are you implying I’m not mature enough to go out unattended?”

“That is exactly what I am saying.”

“Bite me.”

“That’s exactly what you said to that guy last night when he asked you very politely to get out of his car because he was not a taxi.”

I think about this.

“Okay, please don’t ever let me go out again by myself.”

He makes a snorting noise, which makes me giggle, which in turn makes my head hurt all the more.

“I won’t.”

“Good.”

He moves from his perch next to me and slams his bag down on the other study desk the other side of mine and I go back to staring at the pages in front of me.

I must have sobered up a little; I have no recollection of getting these books down from the shelves at all.

Later

Just been given a bollocking by Tristan. Apparently I am a bad influence on Meredith as she only ever gets herself into bad situations when she is with me.

I think that is grossly unfair.

It was Meredith after all who wanted to go to the Fez in the first place. It was Meredith who managed to hitch her way in with the football team, dragging me along as a very unwilling partner. And it was Meredith who insisted on stumbling across the traffic light to Kebab King because she wanted a Number Eight Special.

The Number Eight special appears to be road kill but at the time it looked appealing so I ordered one too, with extra garlic sauce.

The extra sauce was a mistake, I woke up this morning still in my skimpy outfit with white stains streaked down the front of it.

Okay. It might have been my fault that we got into a car that was not a cab. And yes, once we realised our error I still insisted that the guy drive us home for a fiver. But if she had not got me that drunk in the first place I would never have done a thing like that.

Everyone knows that I can’t drink shots anyway. Ten shots of black Sambuca is going to be bad whichever way you look at it. Especially when it is on top of three bottles of wine and a packet of crisps.

16th January

Midnight

Ben:
Nice dancing!

This is sent with a YouTube link.

Crap.

I don’t want to look.

Let’s not forget that I was in the Fez with the football team and Richard, who is starting to take on a personal bodyguard role in my life for one reason or another.

I look anyway.

It’s a cringe-fest of note, but thankfully it is just Meredith and I attempting to do the moonwalk to Billy Jean.

That’s okay. I can live with that.

Although I am sorely tempted to stick Barbie’s mobile phone up her arse so she can’t film me with it anymore.

What is her problem?

Me:
Glad you think so. Want me to perform in one of your videos?”

Ben:
Definitely, although with less clothing please.

Me:
Dirty pervert.