Lisa Owens - Not Working

“Er, the English vernacular? I can’t believe you haven’t heard it before. You’re the weirdo here.”

His grin grows even wider: I’d be furious if I wasn’t completely certain I’ll be having the last laugh.

“Name one person who uses that phrase other than you,” he says.

“That’s ridiculous. It’s like me saying, ‘Name someone who uses the word “the.” ’ ”

“No, because ‘the’ is a word, which you just proved by using it yourself. Come on: one person.”

“My mum. She says it all the time.”

“Ohhh,” says Luke, smirking. “Okay.”

“You said name one person!”

“Humor me: one more. Anyone who isn’t your mum?”

“Everyone else!”

“There’s a very simple way to find out who’s right,” says Luke, pinching his phone from his shirt pocket with a smug flourish. “ ‘Neither…kitten…nor…cat.’ ” He taps it in and turns the screen to me, triumphant. “Not a phrase.”

I snatch the phone and click through the search results: pages 7, 8, 10, 19, 22. He’s right: there are endless mentions of kittens and cats, but not a single hit for my phrase. “Well…it’s a saying from the olden days. It’s been passed on verbally. It wouldn’t need to be written down anyway.”

“Claire,” says Luke, “that doesn’t sound very convincing out loud.”

“Ring my mum. Ring her right now: she’ll tell you.”

“Oh, there is no doubt in my mind that your mum uses that expression,” Luke says. “But I think you’ll find no one else does.”

“Fair enough — I’d say that too, if I was scared of being proven wrong. Don’t call her.”

“Your mum isn’t talking to you. I don’t think she’ll appreciate me phoning at half past ten at night to quiz her about a phrase she made up.”

I click through a few more search results pages at random: 34, 42, 45, 59. Nothing.

I’ve never felt so alone.

This man is staring at someone down the carriage with such open desire and longing that I turn to see what the fuss is about. No one has looked at me that way, ever, not even Luke, who’s in love with me.

In the cafe, the barista smiles warmly.

“Back so soon?” she says, and I laugh, though I haven’t been in for a while.

“Can’t keep away!” I say, and already at the end of my banter reserves, immediately place my coffee order.

Now it’s her turn to laugh. “Fallen off the decaf wagon? That didn’t last long!”

“Ha!” I say as I go to sit down, because it’s less awkward than asking what she means.

I open up my laptop and take a career questionnaire, my new strategy to discover the perfect job I’ve never heard of. I find a check-box affair asking me to identify with one of three options in response to each statement: “1” = “very skilled” and “3” = “not as skilled as I’d like.” Any to do with math or computers are easy: I select “3” with something close to pride. Others—“move and turn objects” or “make very small finger movements”—are so bafflingly vague yet specific I can only assume they relate to a particular field far beyond my experience. I submit my answers with a tiny thrill of excitement.

The results are diverse and surprising: hypnotherapist, customs officer, technical writer, forestry professional. I picture myself, clad in hard hat and high-visibility vest, wandering through dappled woodlands, but the image fades when the barista says, “Oh my God!” as though she’s seen someone returned from the dead. She is looking from me to another customer who is standing at the counter. “I thought you were her!” the barista says, laughing. “You’re the spitting image of each other! Are you twins? You must be sisters, surely!” The girl turns around, confused and smiling, but when she sees me, her nostrils flare.

“Really?” she says, turning back to the barista. “I don’t see it.”

I’m with her — I don’t either — but I’m pretty put out she finds the notion so repellent. I shrug and shake my head apologetically. I’m not sure if I’m sorry for having deceived the barista or for being such a letdown of a doppelgänger.

Paul and I meet for an after-work pint. Work today for him meant writing grant applications, and doing Skype interviews for his new exhibition about to open in Reykjavik.

“And how was your day?” he asks once we’ve covered his.

“Good!” I say. “By which I mean, obviously, entirely unproductive. But on the way here I had the most comforting thought: I’m one day closer to knowing what I’m going to do with my life.”

Paul gulps down a couple of inches of beer, belches tenderly onto the back of his hand. “Sounds encouraging. So, what, have you narrowed it down to an industry?”

“No: what I mean is, even though mentally I’m no clearer, I’m still technically closer.”

“What? How do you figure that one?”

“Well, I can’t be any further away, can I? Time doesn’t go backward,” I say.

He laughs. “Yeah, but — and I’m sure this won’t be the case, but in theory —you might never work out what you want to do. You might just settle for something like last time, or take a corporate job for the big salary. I stress: theoretically .”

“Okay, but…even if I do that, either way I’ll have made a decision, and thus will know what I’m doing.” My eyeballs are burning: I haven’t blinked in a while. “So either way I’m one day closer. Right? I’ll drink to that!” I tilt my beer in for a “cheers.”

“Yeah…I mean, I guess…” he says, clinking without feeling. “In the same way we’re all one day closer to death.”

This park is full of twentysomethings heading to brunch, the price of which will make their visiting parents (who struggle to keep up with their offspring’s strides) triple-check the bill, but remain insistent that This Is Their Treat as they reach for their wallets.

Luke and I are in the Co-op buying dinner. We’ve been here for twenty minutes, done three circuits of the shop. It’s part of a new two-pronged initiative: to expand our culinary horizons and cook at home more.

“What do you want?” Luke says, not for the first time.

“Anything,” I say. “You tell me.”

“What are the options again?”

“Limitless!” I say. “Imagine a dish and I’ll cook it.”

“Pasta, then,” says Luke.

“Except pasta. I already said I don’t want pasta. But anything else, you choose.”

“Pizza,” he suggests, and I wrinkle my forehead.

“I thought we said we’d try new things. Go wild, be creative.”

He says, “I give up. You decide.”

I pick up an eggplant and put it in the basket.

“With what?” Luke asks at my shoulder.

“Please. Don’t. I’m shopping on the spot here. I need a bit of space.” Extending my arm, I sweep him away.

Without a word he goes and stands by the flower buckets at the automatic doors, watching my every move. I pick up some tomatoes, some cheese, some chicken, put back the eggplant, pick up a cabbage, a pepper, put back the cabbage, put back the cheese, and then abandon the basket in the toiletries aisle and the two of us slope off to get takeaway.

You don’t get to wave me across; the law says you should stop, and I don’t have to thank you.

As a kid, I watched a lot of videos. If I was on my own, I would keep watching after the film had finished, past all the credits to when the screen went blue, right up to the point where auto-rewind kicked in, certain I’d be rewarded with some special private message for persevering where no one else would. With books, I’d read from cover to cover — acknowledgments, lists of titles from the same publisher, the forms to fill out for overseas orders.