Jemma Forte - If You're Not The One

‘Are we going to the beach then?’ said Aidan.

‘Not the building site?’

‘Nah, that can wait. It’s too much of a scorcher. Maybe tomorrow?’

‘OK,’ she agreed, flopping over to her side so she could get up and start getting the beach bag ready.

Just then the phone rang.

‘Yours,’ said Jennifer lazily, though a second later she regretted this when she remembered it would probably be the scheduled phone call she’d arranged with her parents before they retired to bed on the other side of the world.

‘Yup, here she is,’ Aidan was saying, in a fed up, vaguely unfriendly tone which simply confirmed it was them.

Jennifer sat up and reached over for her vest top which she pulled back over her head before taking the phone from him. It was such a small apartment that there wasn’t anywhere for her to go where she could talk without Aidan listening in, so rather than standing up in the tiny kitchen, where he’d be able to hear every word anyway, she just stayed where she was. Never having any privacy did get to her sometimes.

‘Hi Mum, how are you?’

‘Oh all right,’ said the so familiar voice, made tinny from the sheer distance it was travelling.

Jennifer pictured her parents, sitting by the phone together, probably ready for bed in their dressing gowns, in the lounge with the radiators blasting.

‘What have you been up to this week, Jen?’

‘Oh, this and that,’ she replied ‘Working, bit of beach action. You know? The usual really.’

‘I thought you were going to that Surfers Paradise place.’

‘Oh yeah, we were, but we didn’t in the end,’ said Jennifer, turning around so she had her back to Aidan. He was looking grumpy like he always did when she chatted to her parents. It was getting on her nerves.

Three months ago, at exactly the time her mum and dad had been expecting her to be landing at Gatwick, back from her holiday with the girls, Jennifer had rung them from Athens to break the news that she’d essentially decided to throw caution to the wind and take an unplanned gap year. In Australia…

To say they’d been furious had been an understatement. Her dad had shouted, her mum had wept though, as it transpired, it was less the fact she wasn’t coming home which enraged them so much, but more the fact she wasn’t coming back because of a man they hadn’t met.

Their reaction had been so bad that Jennifer had seriously considered giving up on her adventure altogether. Had even thought it might be best just to admit defeat and head home straight away, tail between her legs. In fact she’d just been about to tell them that she was sorry and that she would do exactly that, when her mother had interjected with, ‘One whiff of male attention and you go and lose your head, Jennifer. It’s pathetic when you think about it.’

And that one comment changed everything. For at that point, Jennifer’s mood had switched from apologetic and shamefaced to resolute and determined. She’d been utterly insulted by her mother’s accusation and had said as much to Aidan when she’d got off the phone a few minutes later in order to have a think, on the proviso that she’d call them back with a decision.

She’d left him drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette in a dusty roadside cafe in a busy square and as she’d approached, it was obvious to her that despite trying to appear nonchalant he was in fact really nervous.

‘What happened?’ he’d asked, as soon as she was in earshot.

‘They went bloody mad,’ she replied, still a bit shell-shocked from the whole experience. She jumped as a moped whizzed past, almost knocking her off her feet.

Gathering her wits and checking left and right she finally reached his table, mind whirling as she tried to comprehend what had just happened.

She’d always hated confrontation and miraculously had managed to avoid too many bust-ups with her fairly conservative parents up until this point, which was partly why she was so livid with them now. How dare her mother have talked to her like that? Like she was some stupid, dozy tart who was so needy of male attention she’d do anything to get it. She’d never given them any cause for worry or upset in the past and yet now she was deviating off the path just a little bit, they didn’t have the patience to at least try and understand her reasons. Yes, Aidan had been a massive part of the decision not to go home, but that was life. You met people and things happened and given that they hadn’t even met him it seemed ridiculous for them to have formed an opinion of him already. It was so unfair. They gave her no credit whatsoever.

‘So what’s the score then?’

‘I said I’d call back in ten minutes so we could all cool off,’ she’d replied, avoiding both the question and his stare.

‘And?’

‘Oh I don’t know,’ she’d replied truthfully, feeling unbelievably torn ‘They’re really mad at me, Aidan, and it was awful hearing them so pissed off. Plus, Mum’s desperately worried that if I defer I might lose my place altogether.’

‘Well she would say that wouldn’t she,’ suggested Aidan.

Jennifer shrugged, doubtful her mum was that manipulative. ‘I’m so thirsty I almost feel faint, have you got enough money for me to get a beer?’

‘Yeah, go for it,’ said Aidan pulling some ancient Drachma notes out of his pocket and signalling to the waiter.

A few minutes later, once Jennifer had had the chance to glug back some of her cold lager, he enquired again. ‘So what’s it to be then, babe? Sunshine, the land of opportunity and some hot romance with me? Or back to mummy and daddy and the rain?’

‘I don’t know,’ Jennifer had replied honestly. She felt really conflicted and a bit stupid. She’d probably been deeply deluded thinking her parents would just accept her reasoning for ducking out. Plus, deep down she really didn’t want to throw away her chance to go to university, even if it meant admitting she’d been rash. Their fury had knocked her though and treating her like a child made it harder for her to decide what to do. She was so cross with them.

Realising she needed time to think Aidan dropped the subject so they sat in slightly tense silence, watching the world go by, until Jennifer got up. ‘Right, there’s no point sitting here putting it off. I’d better go and ring them back.’

As she marched back across the busy road to the centre of the square where the phone booth was, her head was spinning. What should she do? She still had no idea, so decided it would probably be best just to see how the conversation panned out.

Her dad had picked up the phone. ‘Right, now I hope you’re phoning to tell us you’ve seen sense.’

This wasn’t a good start in terms of making her feel like returning to the bosom of her family.

‘I’ve phoned to discuss things like an adult,’ she shot back.

‘Well, that’s a start,’ he said. ‘So in that case, surely you can see that running off with some good for nothing beach bum, while ruining your life in the process, is entirely the wrong thing to do?’

It was a shame he’d taken that approach. It was a shame he hadn’t simply asked her how she was and how she was feeling because he might have got a very different response to the one he received and the conversation may have played out another way.

As it was, three days later Jennifer and Aidan boarded a plane to Australia and, although she was experiencing an underlying sense of panic as to whether or not it was definitely what she really wanted, the fact she was proving a point to her parents had become enough to prevent her from changing her mind.

If relations had been bad at that point they’d taken an even worse turn once she’d phoned them again from Sydney, where they’d stayed for the first few weeks before heading to Queensland, at which point her furious dad had demanded to speak to her boyfriend. At first Aidan had refused, which had made Jennifer feel very uneasy. Eventually however, sensing that if he didn’t Jennifer was going to freak out, he’d eventually acquiesced, albeit reluctantly, at which point her dad had given him very short shrift, venting all his frustrations and feelings of helplessness at the person he held responsible for his daughter’s unfamiliar behaviour.