Authors: Julie Cohen
There’s a certain amount of hazard in looking at old photographs. On the one hand, they’re just pieces of paper, frozen memories. They can’t act; they can’t hurt you in new ways. Everything in that box is finished. On the other hand, once you’ve opened the box, it’s difficult not to look at everything in it. It’s hard not to remember
things you’d like to forget, not to regret choices you wish you hadn’t made. Even the happy photographs are dangerous, if the happiness captured in them is gone.
I know I have photographs of Ewan inside this box somewhere. There’s at least one strip we took in a photo booth in Boots, pulling funny faces, kissing each other. I seem to remember another one taken by one of the members of his band,
Matt maybe or was it Dougie, in a nightclub so dark that you can only see Ewan’s face in a blur. But mostly they are photographs I took myself. I took photographs of Ewan laughing, running, sleeping. I took photographs sitting in the bath with him, in the park with his shirt off in the sunshine. There were several rolls’ worth of film, which I had developed and kept in a shiny plastic envelope.
I captured so many moments because they felt precious to me, because he was so beautiful I could hardly believe it. I took photographs and printed them out to keep, even before Ewan went away.
Is that because I knew they were all I was going to have left of him?
I don’t have as many photographs of Quinn – not physical ones, anyway. There’s one, framed, in our living room: a black and white one
of us on our wedding day, with Quinn holding an umbrella up over our heads. I’m wearing my ivory wedding dress and he’s in his morning suit. He’s kissing my cheek and I’m looking up at the sky. It’s a beautiful photograph, very well composed, and I remember that moment too, the warmth of his arm around my waist, the raindrops pattering on the umbrella and us safe beneath it, the way he laughed
afterwards and told me I had muddy feet.
Over the past ten years, technology has changed. We take photographs on our mobile phones and text them to each other for immediate consumption. My Nikon is digital. I download my photos onto my Mac, but I don’t print them out. It’s too much bother. My photographs of Quinn are electronic information, instantly accessible. I don’t have to look at them because
Quinn is here living with me.
I regard the box. If I could put my hand inside it and immediately find the envelope of pictures of Ewan, I would probably do it. But there are lots of other pictures in there. Pictures of my mother when she was well. Pictures of myself, as a child, holding her hand.
I push the box back under the rafters, and climb back down the aluminium ladder.
I meet Lauren
at her office in the City. Lauren is my oldest friend. My childhood was too itinerant to form any lasting friendships, though I still remember Jodie, with whom I used to eat lunch in Year Four, and Aisha, who taught me how to put on make-up at age twelve, and lots of other girls who were my best friends for a while. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve passed these people on the street since, not recognizing
how they’ve grown into adults.
Lauren and I met in a youth hostel in Mumbai when we were both eighteen, both backpacking around the world, both drunk on the different languages, all the different people, strange sights and smells and tastes. She had dreadlocks then, and small round glasses, and practically bathed in patchouli oil. These days she has had her vision corrected by laser surgery and
wears smart suits and handmade shoes, works as a financial consultant and spends half her time in London or Brussels and the rest of the time flitting around Asia helping the super-rich save money.
As always, when she walks through the glass doors into Reception it takes me a moment before I recognize this sleek, well-groomed woman. In my mind, despite all the evidence that time has moved on,
she’s still teenage Lauren, a little bit overweight, bouncy on her feet, with all those woven bracelets made out of string.
Then she smiles and it’s my friend. ‘Fliss,’ she says, kissing both cheeks. Her skin is cool, her hair straightened. Everything about her is expensive except for the warm way she squeezes my hand. ‘Do you mind if we have our lunch on the go? I need to do my steps for today.’
‘Steps?’ I say, walking with her out of her building. She’s wearing trainers with her suit.
‘Fitness programme. I’m dating a personal trainer in Brussels – Hans. Did I tell you? He is really cute. But sort of a body fascist. Come on, five hundred more steps and then I’m allowed to have a high-protein wrap. I brought one for you, too. You’ll hate it.’ She starts some sort of app on her phone,
and we set out at a pace down the street, swerving around fellow pedestrians.
‘I thought you were seeing that trader, Frank Whatsisname.’
‘He was married.’ She pulls a face. ‘That’s the third American I’ve dated who’s turned out to be married. Remind me never to touch another American again. I’d rather run a marathon, which by the way Hans wants me to do next spring. How’s Lovely Quinn?’
‘Good.’
‘How’s Annoying Mother-In-Law?’
‘Also good.’
‘Stepford Village?’
‘It’s not that bad. It is a bit Stepfordy. But it’s very sweet.’
‘And the book?’
‘Slow. It’ll get there.’
‘Any news?’
Lauren likes certainties. She’s not the type to be visited by memories of her past or buffeted by unexpected emotions. When I met her in that youth hostel in Mumbai, she already had her mental checklist of
What Lauren Will Do With Her Life. She’d deferred her entry to the Sorbonne to study economics for a year, so she could travel the world and experience everything. I, on the other hand, was travelling because I had no idea what else I should have been doing.
If I told her about the sudden feelings I was having about Ewan, the phantom smells and the mad being in love, she’d want to investigate
them. She’d want to find a rational explanation, and I’m not quite ready for that yet. Besides, Lauren absolutely adores Quinn. ‘Love him,’ she told me in private, after the first time I’d introduced them. ‘Keep this one. He’s good for you. I’ll marry him if you don’t.’ But I knew she wouldn’t; she’d told me that at the age of thirteen she’d determined that she would only marry a man who had as much
personal wealth as she did.
‘Not much news,’ I say.
She passes me something wrapped in cling film, and I unwrap it and take a bite. I immediately spit it back into the wrapper. ‘That is really, really gross.’
‘I know.’ She chews hers. It requires a lot of chewing. ‘Hans loves them. Zero carbs.’
‘Is he your financial equal?’
‘He’s independently wealthy. Old money. Here, have a protein bar.’
The protein bar is slightly more palatable. My ballet flats aren’t quite up to the pace that Lauren is setting, and I’m obviously not as fit as she is, either. It’s safe to say that Quinn is not a body fascist. Besides, I’ve spent most of the past few weeks sitting in my room, staring at a blank sketch pad. Or wandering in the rain after having feelings I can’t explain. We power-walk up Bishopsgate
into the gardens.
‘Do you remember Ewan?’ I ask her.
‘Ewan who?’
‘Ewan McKillan.’
She stops. ‘The one who broke your heart?’
‘Well, I don’t know if he broke my heart as such …’
‘He broke your heart. I recognized the symptoms. You washed up in Paris a complete wreck. Spent an entire month wandering around the Père Lachaise cemetery. The bastard.’
‘Ewan didn’t break my heart on purpose,’
I say. Lauren never even met him, after all. None of my friends met him; Ewan and I were a unit unto ourselves, until we weren’t. ‘Our timing was wrong. We couldn’t be together.’
‘As I recall, he got some other woman pregnant.’
‘That was before he’d met me. He didn’t know she was pregnant when we were together.’
She snorts. ‘According to him. It’s hardly star-crossed-lover stuff, Fliss. He
was a creep. You were better off without him.’
‘Did I really seem heartbroken? Properly heartbroken?’ It seems so distant now. The heartbreak, that is. I try to remember how I felt that autumn, wandering around the tombs, watching the cats frolic on the tombstones. I can think it in words, but I can’t feel it any more.
‘You were a skeleton. You hardly ate anything.’
‘To be fair, I spent a lot
of time living on love before that. I can’t remember ever eating with Ewan in the same room.’
‘Too busy shagging. And shagging isn’t real life. A man who you can’t eat with is a man you can’t stay with.’ I point at her high-protein wrap, and she grimaces. ‘Point taken. Anyway, we do eat, Hans and I. It’s just never anything nice.’
‘Ewan was my first real love,’ I say. ‘He was beautiful and exciting.
I’d never met a man like him before. When I was with him, I felt … that we were meant to be together. That I was exactly where I was supposed to be, and everything was right with the world.’
‘Which obviously wasn’t true at all, since you’re not still with him. Good riddance, I say. Anyone who can make you so unhappy doesn’t deserve a single moment of your time.’ We’ve reached a bench with a bin
beside it. Lauren chucks the wrap in the bin and sits on the bench, and I join her. ‘Fuck it. You’re right. I’ll ring Hans and tell him it’s over.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ I say, alarmed. But Lauren is already reaching for her phone.
‘Oh. He’ll be busy now anyway, doing his Pilates class. Okay, as soon as I get back this evening, I’ll ring him. He’s got a half-hour slot between half eight
and nine.’ She turns to me. ‘Anyway, look at you now, Felicity. Everything’s really right with your world these days.’
‘Do you think so?’
She looks me up and down. It is always a little disconcerting when Lauren does this, because it’s hard not to feel that she has evaluated every single part of you. Fortunately, from years of long-distance and close-distance friendship, I know how kind she
is inside.
‘I’ll tell you something,’ she says. ‘Seeing you and Quinn together has almost made me change my checklist.’
‘Change your
checklist
?’
‘I said
almost
. Listen, when you invited me to your wedding, to be a bridesmaid no less, I won’t say I wasn’t surprised. A church wedding never seemed like your thing. Nor did settling down in a country cottage. But on your wedding day, it was so obvious.
Everything was perfect.’
‘It rained.’
‘The two of you are meant for each other. Anyone can see it. You’ve put on weight, you look contented.’
I tug down my top. ‘His mother is a good cook.’
‘You’re calmer than you used to be. More grounded. Quinn adores you. He looks at you as if he’s won the lottery. I always thought that it should be one hundred per cent equal between a man and a woman –
income, background, ambition, everything – but you and Quinn make me think I might be wrong.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘We’re not equal. Quinn is much better than I am.’
She laughs. ‘See what I mean?’
‘Don’t you feel …’ I begin. I’ve never said this aloud before. ‘Don’t you feel that love like that is a responsibility, though?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Like how you said I’ve changed, for example. What if
I’m calmer and I’m slowing down because that’s how Quinn expects me to be? If I’m changing to please him, but I’m not
meant
to be that way at all?’
Lauren shakes her head. ‘You’d rather be miserable and moping around with a broken heart?’
‘No, but—’
‘Listen,’ she says. ‘Forget about the dickhead ex-boyfriends who broke your heart. You’re past that now.’
‘Yes, but the thing is, Lauren—’
‘Hi,
Lauren,’ says a guy, walking past pushing a cart of sandwiches. He’s got curly hair and is wearing a T-shirt saying
TWO SLICES CATERING, LET US MAKE YOUR NEXT PARTY EPIC
!
‘Hey, Bill,’ she says. I watch her as she watches him walk down the path.
‘You really have changed your checklist,’ I say.
‘What? No, I said I
almost
changed it. He’s just a bloke I say hi to.’
‘I didn’t spend all that autumn
wandering around the cemetery,’ I tell her. ‘I spent some of it looking for my dad.’
‘Did you find him?’
‘No. I don’t know what he looks like.’
She touches my hand. ‘This proves what I’ve been saying, Fliss. If you’re happy, you don’t go looking for a dad you’ve never met. You stay with the man who loves you and you settle down. And you’re happy with Quinn, in a way you never could have been
happy with Ewan, whoever he was. Right?’
My mother met Lauren a few times. After the second time, she tapped her chin with her finger and said, ‘There’s a woman who knows where she’s going. I wonder if she’ll know when she gets there.’
‘In a different way than I was with Ewan,’ I say. ‘I’m happy, yes.’
But after I say goodbye to Lauren at the door to her building, I don’t go straight back to
Paddington to get the train home. Instead, I take the Central Line to Stratford.
It has changed completely since I was last there. The station is new, and Westfield shopping centre hunkers like an alien spaceship. I take a slow circle around and try to guess the direction I used to take, ten years ago. In the end, I decide to cross the road and follow my instincts.
I was a student, and I walked
from the underground nearly every day. It was a hot summer, hotter than it is now, though it’s June. The streets seemed crowded with cigarette smoke and steam. As I walk, I begin to see landmarks that I recognize, placed between the new buildings or old buildings used for new purposes. This is the small grocer where they stocked hair henna and chai tea, where the owner was friendly and greeted
me in broken English. The vegetables outside look tired and wilted, covered with a fine layer of grime. The pub has been bought by a chain and renovated into something with chalkboards and pictures of burgers in the windows, but the building is the same. I pause on the pavement outside, remembering flashing lights on fruit machines and the taste of sweet cider. It used to be a horrible pub of soiled
carpeting, yellowed walls and cracked vinyl, but there was a small wobbly table in the corner which was not visible from the road. I wonder if it’s still inside.