Helen Monks Takhar - Precious You

And I don’t know how, but there you were, right behind him; a millennial spectre clutching an orange Bobble water bottle, complete with a luminous shard of cucumber glowing within. You looked flustered, maybe because you were appalled at the idea of Asif’s buff twenty-six-year-old body against my creaking bones as they had been once. I noted to one day tell you that just because you’d turned his head, you couldn’t undo history. Not even you.

‘Sorry, I thought I’d get a head start transcribing my—I can’t concentrate in my flat.’ You turned to Asif who was by then smirking at his shoes.

‘Don’t worry. I’m off. I’ll bid you ladies goodnight. Don’t work too hard.’

We both started typing and a difficult silence settled.

‘Would you like me to pretend I didn’t hear that?’ you said eventually.

When did young people get so prissy, so unable to take, give, or hear flirting? I had seen this attitude in so many of my interns in recent years. The rebuffed compliment, the blatant distaste when I’ve said something, anything , even faintly sexual. This wasn’t the first time I’d wondered exactly when and why a whole generation became so joyless, so sexless. Then I wondered if your indignation was fired because you’d heard I had a serious partner and believed there was only one way to do that right.

A pause.

‘Shall I tell you something? My partner and I have a code,’ I began. I wanted to shock you now, I had you on the ropes and this would be my one-two jab, to show you up for the wrong-headed innocent you were, give you something else to chew on. ‘There are rules. I meet someone I’d like to have sex with, we discuss our feelings and he signs it off, or he doesn’t. If he comes across someone he’d like to have sex with, I say yes, or I say no. My partner signed off on Asif, once or twice, but then we agreed I should stop. You see, we’re a couple who are first and foremost for each other. That never changes. But if we’re lucky, Lily, we’re a long time alive, and a long time together. People my age are capable of believing there’s more than one way of doing something. My advice to you? Don’t judge what you haven’t tried.’

Suddenly, displaying the full peacock tail of my sexuality, I felt restored; the real me rising from the ashes of the day. But this wasn’t my one-two jab, it was your rope-a-dope: the art of taking blows, letting the other fighter expend themselves before going in for the kill.

‘I wasn’t talking about that, whatever you’re talking about.’ Your face was flushed with righteousness. ‘Racist language in the workplace? It’s a sackable offence.’

You should be careful. How right Iain had been.

And in that moment, I thought I knew what you were. You were here to get me sacked. Plain and simple. Gemma could be the acceptable face of sisters sticking together, middle-aged women doing it for ourselves, but you, her, the faceless head honchos now making up the new board, you all wanted me out.

If only it had just been this.

‘I don’t think I understand, Lily? Exactly what racist language did I use?’

‘I, literally, don’t even want to say it out loud.’

‘Say what?’

‘That racist phrase you just said to Asif.’

‘You have to be kidding.’

You began typing again in silence.

‘Language, between friends, old friends. It’s complicated. Nuanced. Coded. Sometimes, Lily, it’s perfectly possible you might not understand what you’re actually hearing.’

You took a sip of your cucumber water then typed some more. I started to pack my bag as if I was leaving work as normal, trying to act like someone who was definitely not at any risk of being sacked for being racist.

‘There’s a code of conduct?’ you said eventually, voice sweeping up at the end.

‘What, so, we can all work in a “safe space”? There’s a lot more to feeling safe at work than bleeding the joy out of every exchange between grown adults. Trust me.’

A pause.

‘I guess I heard about your time off. I just thought you might need to possibly be a bit more careful?’

‘I wasn’t on holiday. And I was led to believe confidentiality was enshrined in the new Code of Conduct .’

‘I’m sorry. I must have heard Asif or one of the interns say something.’ You tucked your hair behind your ears and looked back at your screen before deciding to power down. I logged off too, watching for a second as the light drained away from my machine, mesmerised by the little white dot in front of me, feeling the exhaustion in my bones, my brain. A sensation rushed in around me with sickening familiarity: the compulsion to lie down and never get up again. I didn’t even notice you’d come to stand by my chair, so when I turned to leave, your body blocked my path. I gasped. Awake again.

‘Katherine. Would you consider going for a drink with me? Tonight? Now? Give me a chance to clear the air? I’m sorry, I think I’ve really overstepped the mark. I’m still feeling my way with this place. With Gem.’

Your black eyes seemed to plead with me. And I thought I saw it again, that loneliness. Your need to connect with another person. Perhaps we would end up getting a burger and talking like we’d known each other forever after all?

‘Alright. OK,’ I said, nodding dumbly, taken aback by the glint of a feeling shared.

You handed me my leather from the nearby coat stand.

‘Shall we?’ you said, smiling.

‘Give me one second.’

I nipped to the loo to text Iain:

Snowflake wants to go for a drink. Don’t worry about dinner. See you later xx

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d sent a ‘Going for a drink, be home late’ text over some spontaneous invitation, maybe one of the girls finding themselves on the Southbank or London Bridge and thinking Sod it, let’s see if Rossy’s up for a drink . Iain knew how good it would have felt for me to be able to say I wasn’t coming home yet. He texted back:

That’s fab. Enjoy xxxx

You and I left the office, and that’s when we really started to talk.

I don’t think I’ve ever really seen you laugh, but you’re very beautiful when you smile. I remember thinking that you smiled a lot that night and how good that made me feel about myself. You were enjoying my company, my stories. You weren’t watching the clock, not like my old mates towards the end. And unlike them, with you, there was no sense of you waiting for the moment when you might, in not so many words, suggest I ‘pull myself together,’ or inevitably get to asking if there was any way whatsoever it would be possible to get some money back after The Film. Talking without these things hanging over the conversation made me feel more like me again. And you asked so many questions that let me hear something of my old voice again. You knew how we all love a great listener, didn’t you?

Looking back, I can see there was a tinge of something pre-rehearsed about some of your questions, and somewhere I clocked you’d all but had a personality transplant since your almost total indifference to me in the cab on Monday. But I jumped clean over my doubts and right into telling you my life story.

Chatting to another woman again about my career, my reflections on life so far, was like slipping into a warm bath. How I wanted to soak away the aches and the pains of the last few years. The imprinting process in full swing as I tried to forget all the friends who’d abandoned me. First, the ones who had babies left me, though I could understand why. I was terrible around children. Who would want the scary lady in the leather jacket who never smiled near their kids? Then, The Film did for some of the women I’d cared about most. That hurt, a specific pain I’d not known before. I suppose it was like being dumped, but I didn’t know because I’d never been dumped. My luck had run clean out. My girls, my main girls were ‘pressing pause’ on me, that’s what they said. But they never came back. Finally, there were a couple of remaining second circle friends who hadn’t invested in The Film. But they didn’t know what to do with me when the beige began to blow in. They left me too. Soon enough, the only things left standing were my work and my Iain.