Helen Monks Takhar - Precious You

He invited me and most of our old mates to go in on a film he would write and produce. It didn’t take much for us to put our money in; we were all going to be Executive Producers. It proved irresistible to me and everyone else whose dreams had faltered as their fortieth years approached. We put our faith in Iain’s ability, some of us, admittedly, with fingers crossed behind our backs. Because it wasn’t necessarily that we believed Iain was a born auteur. Ultimately, the film fulfilled the belief there had to be something that would provide a final chance to make good on our lives, to snatch victory from the jaws of middle-aged defeatism.

All my savings for the fixer-upper went into the film, and when more money was needed, I wanted to believe remortgaging my Manor House flat to the hilt and adding Iain to the deeds to extract even more from the lender would be the penultimate paragraph on a story that ended marvellously, historically, for him and for me. But no matter what you said about the film, it was not good. It was appalling. It did not rescue us. It died a death and killed our friendships with all those who’d let themselves believe Iain would produce a work of excellence that would generate life-changing money for all investors. Iain said sorry over and over, but there was nothing to say sorry for, not really. He’d made no promises, but he had tried, hadn’t he? We had tried. The one thing your generation excels at is making stuff with your iPhones, pouring your innermost thoughts into your tweets and your blogs until you get better at it and/or something finally sticks. For people like us, things aren’t so easy; and they certainly didn’t come as cheap.

But I admit, I made a mistake. I looked outside of myself for salvation.

It got so that our friends stopped calling us. Part of me was relieved because whenever I saw them, at some point the conversation always turned to The Film. What might have been. What was lost. We had to find new bodies to come back to ours, buying the last round and plenty of coke for those who would venture to Manor House. But soon enough, we found ourselves going home alone together, and at some point a couple of years ago or so, we stopped going out much at all. Then, when we weren’t really looking, we became truly middle-aged.

You don’t need a specific reason to suffer from a mental malaise but I know your lot, always seeking a ‘trigger’ to understand my illness, so, take your pick for mine: the fact I could no longer deny the London life I’d built wasn’t strong enough to save me. It would not put a clear blue ocean of money and creative success between me and the desperate child on a farm in Derbyshire. Nor would it solve the problem of the management consultants circling the magazine, or the failure to move house, or my body starting to do dreadful middle-aged things; chronically dry skin on my shins no moisturiser could address, robust whiskers on my chin I had to pluck away every single day, the first grey pube, then another, and another. I felt so let down by my body, but more by my pathetic attitude to it.

Altogether, things big and small made me feel as if I was breaking down until eventually I was a broken thing. And let me tell you something, Lily, you really learn who your friends are when you become needy and unglamorous. It turns out none of my old girlfriends wanted to know the ill version of me when I tentatively reached out to them again. On a good day, I told myself it might have been different if they hadn’t invested in the film, or if the film had provided them with the stellar returns we’d all hoped were possible. On a bad day, I knew they only loved me when I was flying high. How could I find fault with them when I felt broadly the same?

Iain always smiled as he stirred whatever he was cooking for me. When I was ill, he’d cooked me back to life. It wasn’t that nothing tasted good, it was that everything tasted of nothing: no texture or depth. Iain had to keep me alive like the pathetic rejected lambs my mother forced me to bottle-feed as a child. He couldn’t get out of the habit of hand-rearing me; cooking elaborate, time-consuming, fattening meals; boiling vats of bones all day long, as if he could borrow the distilled marrow of dead animals to give the essence of life back to me in a bowl. That’s what you think we do to your generation, isn’t it, Lily? Steal your young lives for our own self-serving ends?

Iain stirred his stew so vigorously, I noticed while his arms were getting thinner, his stomach trembled above his belt. Mouse-coloured hair, now silvering. But he was still attractive, with well-set grey eyes, a wide symmetrical smile, and a liking for looking at me a little longer than he needed to; he made me feel truly seen. Did you feel that way too when you first met him? What did you really think of him, of us, in those early days?

‘I know what’ll cheer you up,’ my Iain said.

‘Who says I need cheering up?’

‘Some Hungarian New Wave. There’s nothing a little Béla Tarr can’t solve. A spot of Damnation will put it all in perspective.’ He squeezed the last drops of the wine out, having liberated the silver bag from its box, holding it between his torso and underarm like a bagpipe. My partner was what your lot might call ‘an alcoholic’, but you figured that out soon enough, didn’t you? What you’ll never understand is how this wasn’t an issue before you. Perhaps one day your generation will grow to see how life doesn’t cleave along binary lines: hopeless addict/functioning citizen; mentally well/mentally ill; good person/bad person.

‘Well, why ever not?’ I looked into my glass.

‘What’s Gemma really like then?’

I turned on my stool, my back to Iain and the breakfast bar that divided the tiny open kitchen from the living space in my flat. Some instinct made me think twice about introducing you to the conversation, to say your name in my home, to let you invade my domestic space, but still, I felt compelled to speak of you.

‘Oh, she’s alright. Earnest, in an HR-sanctioned way … But she’s landed me with her jumped-up niece.’

‘ Another intern is it? How many’s that now?’

‘Six? Seven? I can’t keep track anymore. Anyway, she flounced into my cab this morning. The 141 decided to take the day off and I managed to flag a cab and this millennial jumps in and eventually tells me she happens to be the boss’s niece. What she doesn’t tell me is that she’s the one who gave Gemma Lunt the bright idea of buying out Leadership. She definitely would have known all about me, but played dumb and let me rabbit on about my job before the big reveal. Creepy or what?’

‘Maybe she didn’t recognise you.’ Iain, already on your side. I glowered at him. ‘Well, anyway, is she any good? Going to make your life easier? Worse? Too soon to say?’

I breathed, ‘Well, she’s clearly privileged. Imagine me at her age having a maiden aunt who could go out and pick up a magazine for me to write for? She’s walked in off the street, jangling her family’s money, fresh out of uni, with the cheek to demand we change the front cover. And she starts writing a piece on the awards off-the-bat. Just like that.’

‘How very dare she, and at a magazine too.’

‘Oh shut up, you know what I mean.’

‘Not really,’ he laughed.

‘When I did work experience, you just assumed you’d be making coffee, doing the photocopying, dodging the boss’s busy hands. Or not, depending on who the boss was.’

‘And when you started out, they still called it “work experience,” it lasted two weeks before you were made “senior reporter” and people still used photocopiers … and sent faxes.’

‘That was probably before she was even born. Fuck, she didn’t even exist when I was at peak possibility.’