Helen Monks Takhar - Precious You

‘Hey. You. You’re not even close to that yet. Not even close,’ his mouth slopped around on the last ‘s’ sound, but he meant it. He still believed in me.

‘And young people knew their place. Fuck, we’re old.’

‘We are that. And aren’t you just a wee bit glad about it?’ He took another gulp from his glass, then watched me swinging around on my bar stool.

‘Go on. What’s really pissing you off about this girl? Is she fit?’

I shook my head. ‘No. She’s not fit … She’s an absolute knockout.’

‘OK, so let’s see now: she’s got youth, beauty, privilege and nepotism going for her. No wonder she’s writing the cover story on day one.’

I said nothing.

‘And no wonder you’re jealous.’

‘I am not,’ I lied. ‘Come on, let’s not let her ruin our evening. Where’s my Damnation ?’

I pretended to look about the flat and again thought of how you would see it. There were indeed all the beautiful things you’d imagined surrounded me: Provençal pots, Ashanti masks, Balinese ceramics, all evidence of a life lived wide and well. Once. I viewed them each afresh with your eyes and saw far too many things. Items fighting for space on bookshelves and display mezzanines I couldn’t face dusting anymore, the cleaner long sacked. A collection of dull silver trays clustered above the door. There was hardly a square inch of wall that didn’t have something on it. No cupboard door sat flush. So many things seemed like they were trying to burst out; I bruised my hips on the corners of overstuffed drawers poking out; I had to duck for cover every time I opened a cupboard, knowing some plate or culinary gadget of Iain’s might fall and hit me. The whole place looked and felt like a life double-backed on itself, looped over and over. Sun-faded Hirst prints. Dusty Moti tapestries from India. Iain’s old gig photography. There was no space anymore. No space for more stuff, no space for new thoughts, no space to create; no real space for the future at all.

I seemed to have collected masks from every corner of the world without ever intending to. So many masks. My own face, now a mask. An exhausted skin caught over a mind struggling to accept it was no longer young. I was beginning to realise something I should have looked hard in the face, then warned you and all women like you about: there’s a big secret only revealed when it’s too late: how you feel in your twenties is an illusion. That unique flavour of power and self-knowledge, you’d never know it at the time, but it dissolves. I should have told you from the off to prepare to save yourself from being caught unawares by the passage of time as I had been. When age moves against you, make sure you’ve built your self-worth around what you’re capable of doing, not the beauty of your youth. And if I’d have done that, who knows, maybe then you wouldn’t have changed my life like you did.

I’d forwarded your CV to my personal email and read it on the bus home. It showed an urbane life. A long list of posh schools, a year out before English Lit at Leeds and what looked like more time out, (travelling on ‘Gem’s’ generosity, no doubt), making you twenty-four to my forty-one. Obscene. The charmed life of a graduate, and a hugely privileged one at that, brazenly stretching ahead of you; a long corridor lined with doors blown wide open by your confidence and your utter gorgeousness. That used to be me , I thought, now it’s other people; now it’s you.

‘What’s her name? Just so I can really get on board when you’re bitching about her.’

I turned my head towards the ceiling, the only clear white space in my whole flat.

‘Her name is Lily.’

‘Lily. They’re always called something like Poppy, or Daisy or Lily. She sounds like a proper Snowflake, love. You might need to watch yourself.’

Damnation is a tale of desire, betrayal and despair. I’d agreed to watch it only to humour Iain really, doing a bit of work on the side. But while he was out-cold after the first twenty minutes, I watched to the bitter end. It spoke to me.

When it was over, I shut my laptop and watched him asleep, or unconscious, his mouth agape in a classic grandad-after-Christmas-lunch way. And I loved him.

‘Iain. Iain ? Come to bed,’ I shook his shoulder and touched his face, trying to wake him in the same way I did every night. But he never stirred when he was like that. He’d come round in a couple of hours and throw himself down on our bed. So, as usual, I left him, crept to the bathroom, locked the door and inserted two fingers into the back of my throat, letting go of all the fat and sugar Iain had put in me.

You see, Iain needed to feel he was doing something, anything, to contribute to our life and my happiness. Food was his medium. In the day, I retained the foods I’d chosen for myself. Come the night, I had to let my partner fulfil his role, but I couldn’t have his food pillowing me out into full-frontal middle age. You wouldn’t understand, but this purging ritual was an act of love. It was one of the many secrets of our long and happy relationship.

When I slept that night, I had the dream where I tried to reach the paddock gate for the first time. I cried out for the child in me; the dreadful sense of my mother’s hate relived for the first time in years.

5th March – The First Day, continued

Stay late in the office. Get a couple of stories up online. Think twice about the picture byline, but I’m actually really proud of what I’ve produced, so I go for it. Asif assumes it’s Gem’s idea, she assumes it’s his. No one tries to stop me.

I get inside my building as I always try to – without the concierge seeing me.

When I came down to London with Gem, I was desperate to avoid staying with her or Mum. They want too much from me, from what my life could be, or maybe now, what it could have been. Everything they say wears me down to less than I am. Especially Gem. She’s so over-invested, there’s no way she could ever get a decent return. She always demands the best by reminding me of the worst, ‘You can do better . You can be better .’ It’s too much to keep up with being the version of me Gem expects at work and at home.

It started the very first day we moved in with her.

We’d celebrated my eighth birthday by getting evicted. Mum had been late again with the rent, the landlord wanted us out and was keeping the deposit. We packed our things and schlepped from where we were in Newham to Gem’s place in Marylebone. I’d been there before and other people will say it was a completely gorgeous place. Huge. But to me it was like travelling to another planet. All I wanted to do was go back to our old flat and my old school where everyone knew me. When we’d visited the Marylebone place before, it seemed like there was too much space. I never felt comfortable. From the moment we had to live there, I knew I was never going to fill the place. I also knew from the off that was the one thing Gem expected. I was there to plug the gaps in her life.

Gem’s challenge was that investing in a relationship to produce children was too high risk for her. The chances of getting what she wanted out of it were too open. Owning a child ready-made by someone else took away that risk factor. Enter me.

I remember us turning up with our backpacks and carrier bags of my cuddly toys. Gem opened the door and scooped me off her step and swung me into her hallway, triumphant. My mum had conceded: she needed Gem’s help to raise me and I was now in her home indefinitely. She would get to be a parent.

‘Welcome home, my darling. I’m so happy you’re here. Now, how about you and I make a deal. You know what a deal is, don’t you, Lily?’