In Real Life

O
ne night, while Paul was at work, Lauren turned to a blank page in her notebook and drew a line down the middle. PROS, she wrote, on the left side of the page, then CONS on the right. And then she stared at the empty PROS column, hovering the nib of her biro above it. After a couple of minutes, she shifted her attention across to CONS.

Anxious/paranoid
, she wrote, almost immediately.

Bad breath

Never plans ahead

Pretentious

Unimaginative

Works in a bar

Has never given me an orgasm

And then she stopped, feeling a sudden lurching guilt, as if Paul was right there in the room with her, looking over her shoulder. She turned back to PROS. She stared at the empty rectangle. She tapped the bitten end of the biro against her front teeth and looked around the tiny living room of their rented two-bed terrace for inspiration: at Paul's framed
Breathless
poster, at the unhooverable red Ikea rug beneath it, at a giant cream candle that had never been lit.

Would never cheat
, she wrote, eventually.

Lauren woke a few hours later to the sound of the bedroom door slamming against the wall. The main light went on and there was Paul in the doorway, his mouth all sour-looking and his cheeks flushed like someone had slapped them.

âWhat the fuck!' he shouted, flapping something at her.

The thing he was flapping, Lauren realised, was her notebook.

(Occasionally, in the ensuing weeks, she would wonder if she left it lying open on the coffee table on purpose, subconsciously, for Paul to discover at three in the morning when he got in from work.)

âOh shit. I'm sorry .Â .Â .' she began.

âAnxious,' Paul interrupted, his voice quavering as he read. âParanoid .Â .Â . Bad breath.
Bad breath
? Fucking hell. Couldn't you have just
said
something. Told me to get some mints or something?'

âI'm sorry,' she whispered into her hands, which
smelled of Kiehl's moisturiser (a birthday present from his parents), too afraid now to look into his slapped, miserable face.

âFuck's
sake
,' he spat.

And then he groaned, as if a plug had been pulled somewhere inside him, all the anger gurgling away as he collapsed onto the edge of the bed.

Lauren felt herself resisting the urge to get out from under the covers and put her arm around him, maybe kiss him on the neck.

âI didn't mean for you to find it,' she said, not moving, not doing anything.

âThen why did you leave it out like that on the fucking coffee table?'

âI don't know,' she said.

Which was the truth.

That night Paul slept on the sofa and Lauren didn't sleep at all, and as soon as it was even slightly light outside she got out of bed again and began padding around the bedroom in wonky circles, opening the wardrobe doors in horror-film slow motion in case they made the slightest creak. She slipped her gigantic green-and-brown wheeled suitcase from beneath a pile of coats she now hated and began emptying her chest of drawers into it: knickers, teenage love letters, a pair of Mickey Mouse socks with a hole in the heel.

What exactly am I doing? she wondered a few hours later as she wheeled the squeaking suitcase past the lump of Paul's body, rising and falling beneath his dark
blue parka. Over by the front door, she got the distinct feeling that he wasn't actually asleep. To test this theory out, she stood there for a bit, one hand on her suitcase, the other on the front-door handle, like an advert for someone leaving a relationship.

She was waiting, she realised with a kind of foggy embarrassment, for Paul to leap up and plead with her not to go.

But Paul was not that kind of person.

Paul was quiet and bitter and calculating â
add those to the list!
â and exactly the kind of person who would just stay there beneath a coat, pretending.

Lauren waited a full five minutes, counting down the seconds like a game of hide-and-seek, and then she let herself out into the street, which was a luminous milky blue and completely deserted, birds chirping madly in the trees, full milk bottles standing on the doorsteps.

âI think I'm breaking up with Paul,' she told her mum, as soon as it reached a suitable time in the morning to make a phone call. There was an especially long pause on the other end of the line, during which Lauren listened to a boiled sweet clacking against her mum's teeth as â Lauren imagined â she tried to wrestle the smile off her face. Lauren's mum had never really liked Paul.

âOh dear,' she said finally. âOh love, I'm sorry to hear that. Has he done something? He's
done
something, hasn't he?'

âNo,' said Lauren quickly, feeling that same tight,
choking, collar-y feeling she got whenever they tried to talk about Paul. âIt's me. I just .Â .Â . I don't know, I don't think I'm happy any more.'

âWell, you can always come and stay with me if you need a little time to think things over. Or you know, just for a break.'

âThat's what I was hoping you'd say,' Lauren said.

She was calling from the train station.

She'd already bought her ticket.

IAN

2014

C
arol isn't there to meet me at the platform, so I drag my things through the busy departures hall and down a not-working escalator. Outside it's pissing down. I roll a fag beneath the glass lip of the entrance and watch the black cabs pulling in and out of the rank as I smoke it.

This is the first time I've come to visit since she moved here for university, over ten years ago. I'm sorry, Carol, I think. I'm sorry it's taken me so long. I'm sorry for being such a selfish dickhead all the time. Now please let me come and live in your spare room for a while.

On the phone, we didn't talk about how long I might be staying.

I'm hoping for a month or two.

Just as I'm stubbing my fag out, a faded red Corsa pulls into one of the slots in the short-stay car park, just a few metres away. The door yawns open and there she is: Carol, except with weird glasses and shorter hair.

âIan!' she calls, waving at me even though I've already spotted her.

I wave back, feeling my mouth pull itself into a grin.

I begin carrying things over from the pile on the kerb, slinging them two at a time into the boot. First my rucksack and holdall. Then my guitar case and a bin bag. Then my taped-up cardboard box and another, smaller rucksack.

âIs that everything?' Carol asks.

Yep, I nod.

It's everything I own in the world.

There's no radio playing in the car so I listen instead to the sound of an empty Fanta Zero can rattling around in my footwell as we drive out of the city centre, past boarded-up shop fronts with bits of unimaginative graffiti sprayed on them. For some reason, I'd imagined things would look different here. I want to touch the buttons on the stereo, but I must be careful not to piss Carol off. I must remain on my best behaviour.

âWhat's with the beard?' she says, not taking her eyes off the road. âMakes you look about fifty.'

âI've just .Â .Â . not shaved,' I say.

âYou need a haircut, too.'

âI know,' I say.

I hold myself back from saying how strange her new short hair looks.

âThanks for all this, by the way,' I say, just as she flicks the indicator and we turn a sharp left.

âDon't mention it,' she says.