Olive

‘Yes, go on, I don’t want to hold you up,’ I said, and ushered her outside. I squeezed Cec, and shivered. She got inside the car in the back seat and waved with a sad, tight-lipped smile. Tiff and Todd were in the front, beaming, clearly happy to be reunited with their daughter. I went back inside and shut the green front door behind me, the one we had all opened and closed thousands of times, and it suddenly felt cold, with no people warming up the house.

I sat on the stairs, waiting for Zeta like a lost puppy. The minutes turned into hours, and I didn’t enjoy having that much thinking time, alone in a house full of memories, reflecting already on a period of time with friends that I would never experience again.

2

2019

It’s been six weeks now since Jacob and I broke up. It feels like a quick snap of the finger, and yet absolutely ages, all at the same time. It’s been horrible and everything feels uncomfortable and sticky. My brain keeps going around and round like a broken record: nine years down the drain. Nine whole years.

I close my windows and put my bedroom fan on to the strongest setting. A cheap one from Amazon that makes an irritating buzzing sound. It’s a muggy day, and my flat suddenly feels boiling.

I have heaps of washing-up that needs doing. Heading into the kitchen, I turn on the red digital radio that stands on the shelf above my sink, and it blasts out BBC Radio 4. I listen while I put on my Marigolds. The tap splashes some water on my face, and I realize I’m crying a bit too – at least I’ve held off longer than I did yesterday.

‘According to papers today, Millennial women are suffering from the paradox of choice. They have a multitude of options that can problematize decision-making! Too much choice! Tweet us – do you feel like having too many options is holding you back?’

I turn the radio off. What an annoyingly chirpy voice.

I have the Sunday blues, but I also feel glad that I have an office to go to tomorrow after a depressingly quiet weekend. I posted some old photos of me sitting in the park on Instagram so that people might think I was busy. In reality, I’m not quite ready for human contact. I’m also ninety-five per cent full of booze and chocolate orange and didn’t move all weekend except for occasionally putting a cold glass of gin to my lips. I am bigger since the break-up – I feel like a woman made of Play-Doh but it feels strangely comforting. I can grab hold of parts of myself I never could before. My body has changed and morphed, and now I’m my very own teddy bear. My skin is blotchier than usual too. I’m needing half a bottle of something to sleep each night. But I think I’ve gone through the worst of it. At first I spent many days festering in bed in my own juices, distracting myself by watching Netflix documentaries about climate change, serial killers, and how the world is totally fucked beyond repair, and surprise, surprise, it didn’t really help. Then I tried reaching for some positivity: old movies, reading my favourite erotica books, and watching old episodes of MTV Cribs on YouTube. I even forced myself to get a haircut, to try and make myself feel better, and the new hairdresser guy gave me a head massage at the sinks that felt so good I burst into tears. Because the only intimacy I can get at the moment is a hairdresser touching my scalp. I messaged the girls about inane things on WhatsApp – I haven’t told them about the break-up yet. Telling them would make it real, and I want to talk it through with them in person. But everyone seems a bit preoccupied; no one really replies on the WhatsApp group beyond a few quick emojis these days anyway.

Bea always says to ‘give yourself a wallowing deadline’ whenever you feel down, meaning that you should wallow intensely, feel it all properly and then decide when to stop. My deadline is up. It’s been long enough now. I have to face life again, whatever that means. I start with having a clear-out. My flat is not dirty, but it is certainly messy – there is stuff everywhere. I have ornaments and vases covering every surface, faux plants hanging off every shelf; there is a fruitless fruit bowl full of receipts, bills and paper clips. I have a pile of books gathering dust next to the TV and torn-out recipe clippings from old magazines stacked up on the end of my kitchen counter that I am not planning to read again. I grab two blue Ikea bags and start loading them up with books, old jumpers, pieces of painted crockery and vases that I no longer need. Giving away things to a charity shop every now and again always makes me feel better, like I’m in control of what I let in and out of my life. I call up the shop at the end of my road, owned by a lady called Mrs Farnham who does next-day charity collections. It rings a couple of times.

‘Hello?’ A croaky man’s voice answers the phone.

‘Er … hi …? I’m looking for Mrs Farnham,’ I say.

‘Oh – nah she’s not in, sorry love. The shop’s not doing collections for a few months while Mrs Farnham is on maternity leave.’

‘Oh, I see! Is there no one else there that might be able to help?’ I ask, politely.

‘No, love, I just told ya. Shop’s shut while she’s off. Shouldn’t say “off”, should I? Sounds like a holiday.’ He laughs.

‘Right,’ I say.

‘Ring back in a few months, I reckon.’

I groan, and hang up.

The following day, I pick up a takeaway coffee in my favourite little café, Kava in Soho, next to the .dot offices. It’s my usual morning routine before work. I quickly check my emails at the end of the bar. The press releases I receive get more and more bizarre by the day:

• Amal Clooney Gets Bunions, So Now Everyone Wants Them

• Four Steps to Having Skin Like Paul Rudd

• The Best Bacon-Scented Sex Products (Including Lube!)

• Home Remedies to Grow Back Those ‘Barely There’ Nineties Eyebrows

Delete, delete delete.

I have a quick scroll through Facebook while my latte gets frothed. Who are all these people? I don’t recognize any names. A girl who I remember being really fun at school is now married to a boring basic banker. Another friend from university who I vaguely remember as sleeping with the entire football team has now become a nun and has written a painfully long caption to explain her ‘difficult’ exit from the online world. Everything is changing. I scroll past photos of five different toddlers, their faces covered in yoghurt, chocolate mousse and baked beans.

I have a quick cigarette outside on the pavement with my coffee in my hand and lean back to relax for a moment, my old faux-fur turquoise coat touching the brick wall behind me. I take big puffs of my cigarette and inhale loudly through my teeth – going against orders from my dentist who has recently told me off for smoking. An anti-fur fashion campaigner suddenly strides up to me with stickers and a placard. He waggles his finger at me and says I shouldn’t be wearing fur.

‘It’s faux fur actually – from a charity shop in Copenhagen.’ I exhale some smoke and tuck my long black hair behind my ear.

He wafts the smoke away and opens his mouth to begin his unnecessarily worthy spiel. ‘Well, actually—’

‘You’ll find I am quite ethical, as a person,’ I interrupt, tapping my ash on the floor. I know I’m being spiky and defensive, but this is not what I need this morning. I’m going through a break-up for god’s sake. People have no manners.

‘I’m afraid it’s not good enough. Faux fur is made up of synthetic microfibres that never really break down or decompose. Worse than real fur, in some ways. And don’t get me started on sequins.’

‘Well, are you perfect? I bet you wear leather.’

‘I don’t wear leather, I’m a vegan.’

‘I bet you secretly eat bacon sandwiches when you’re hungover.’

‘I don’t, actually.’

Jesus, what is happening? I’m just trying to drink my coffee and have a cig before I go to work. Life’s hard enough without a vegan campaigner banging on and on.

He continues: ‘Please take this leaflet and read more about it and please consider your life choices.’ He wanders off, to go and find someone else who’s doing life totally wrong.

‘Maybe I will, maybe I won’t!’ I call after him, ripping up the leaflet.

This is living in London. No rest for the wicked. No physical boundaries. Constant interruptions. Everyone is so on, on, on. Everything is up for debate and you are always in someone’s way. Having said that, I might moan about London, but I also couldn’t live anywhere else, ever. Growing up in the countryside in Somerset was idyllic in many ways, especially as I met Bea, Cec and Isla at school, but I also found it incredibly boring. Zeta, Mum and I would cook every night together, eating dinner in our small conservatory overlooking the garden, and knew all of our next-door neighbours and their business maybe too well. The air was fresh, and the days were quiet. But, for me, the countryside seems like somewhere you go to disappear and die. Fast-paced city life is in my blood.

A young girl with a long green tartan coat and reddish curly hair walks slowly past me, then turns on her heel, pauses and then comes up close.

‘So sorry to bother you, but are you Olive Stone?’ she asks, half whispering.

‘Yep, that’s me.’ I take a slurp of my warm coffee, trying not to act totally surprised that I’ve been recognized. This never happens.

‘Sorry, I just wanted to say, your recent piece in the .dot, was … amazing. Really fascinating.’

‘Oh, thank you!’ It feels sad to admit, maybe, but this has really puffed me up. I had written a cover story for .dot magazine called ‘Are Men OK?’, which had just yesterday been further dissected by a journalist at the New York Times. It was a proud moment for me to have my work discussed by other journalists. I had written about the trend of men faking going to work, based on true stories of people’s husbands who had pretended to go to work for a whole year (putting on a suit and everything). They would go and sit in the park or sit in a café all day, while running up huge debts on credit cards to cover up their desperation and deception. Some of their partners hadn’t known until it was too late and it had totally ruined their lives. It was genuinely worrying. I found thirty-five different case studies – even one that was linked to a friend of a friend.

‘Would I be able to email you and send you my CV? If there is ever any work experience?’ Curly Hair Girl asks.

‘Yeah OK,’ I say, with my cigarette hanging out of my mouth, writing down my email address on a scrap of paper, balancing it on my knee.

‘Thank you so much. Meeting you has made my day.’ She pauses and tilts her head to look at me. ‘You know, some people, like my friends who read your writing, often say you are quite unlikeable. But I like you.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah, I think it’s really inspiring. That you put yourself out there. And that you don’t care about the reaction.’

‘Right. Thanks … I think!’ I say. I didn’t know I was unlikeable. Back-handed compliments really mess with my head.

.dot magazine launched just under two years ago; a new feminist-focused online magazine for younger women that was the brainchild of the founder of a big tech giant in America to try and fill the gaping void left by so many mainstream glossy magazines suddenly going bust. Every viral story that puts .dot more firmly on the map gets more mentions and click-throughs. And for every big story I write I seem to get another promotion, which sort of feels addictive.

I can get away with murder these days – but only because I’ve worked really hard to climb the ladder at .dot over the years. I’ve lost count of the number of days I’ve walked in with unwashed hair, latte in hand, forty-five minutes late. Gill, the editor-in-chief, is normally out of the office and as I am the second most senior to Gill, no one would ever say anything to me about my lateness. I almost wish someone would, to be honest. I’m doing well at work, getting to the point where I’ll soon be more than happy with my pay cheque, and it often seems like the only part of my life that I’m sailing through with some element of ease. I think I am in that rare and temporary point in life where I am an ‘old young person’ and a ‘young old person’. I’m bang in the middle: young enough to be cool, old enough to have some experience of how shit life can be. I know I won’t be this age for ever, but right now it’s working out for me – career-wise, anyway. Now all I have to do is figure out how to freeze time.

I walk into the office, the freshly hoovered soft carpet beneath my Converse trainers. Someone has tidied all the papers on my desk into a neat pile. Everyone in the open-plan office notices me walk in and immediately looks more preoccupied with their work. This still weirds me out. I feel so out of control in my personal life, and yet, in this office people are somehow intimidated by me. Having any sort of influence or power at work is still a huge novelty. I pause. What is that music blasting through the speakers? I have it, it’s R. Kelly’s ‘Ignition’.

I walk over to Judy, a junior subeditor who is wiggling in her seat and bopping her head to the music.

‘Judy – R. Kelly is a sexual abuser. Can you turn it off, immediately please?’

Judy stares at me blankly, and turns the volume right down, but not totally off.

I go and sit at my desk, kicking off my shoes. Bloody office politics.

‘Here are some packages, Ol,’ our receptionist Colin says, chipper as usual, dropping a heavy pile of parcels onto my desk. ‘Feels like clothes inside.’ He presses down on it with his thumb.

‘Yeah. Thanks Colin,’ I say, not looking up from my desk.

‘Not excited about your new garms?’ he says, sitting down on a swivel chair and crossing his legs.

‘No. I ordered them from this American website, they took months to arrive, and … well, now I don’t even need them any more.’

I’d ordered them for Jacob’s brother’s wedding, months ago when we were still together. These clothes arriving is just another sad reminder of everything that’s changed.

‘Fair enough. Hey, wanna know something depressing?’

‘Not really.’ Read the room, Colin.

‘It’s not proper depressing – more like, funny-depressing.’

‘All right, go on.’

‘I’ve just downloaded this app that tells you how many books you could have written if you calculate all the tweets you’ve written over the years. I’ve tweeted 5,000 times,’ he tells me. ‘So that’s 700,000 characters. So that’s definitely like two books.’

‘Why would you do that?’

Colin gets out his phone and goes onto my Twitter page.

‘Wow—’

‘No. Stop.’

‘You’ve tweeted 52,000 times. So, you could have written, like, fifteen books by now,’ he says, deadpan.

I want to whack my head on the desk. I imagine blood going everywhere, splashing onto Colin.

‘Can I make you a tea? Also, this new eye cream got delivered today for you all to test out.’ He hands me a gold cardboard box. ‘You do look a bit tired my love.’

‘Cheers,’ I say, blankly. ‘And yes, two sugars please.’

I’m seeing Bea, Isla and Cec tonight. Maybe I’ll take a few boxes of freebies from the office for them; they always seem to love free beauty bits and bobs. I can’t wait to see them. I feel like a shell of my usual self. I guess I haven’t fully processed the break-up yet. I need some perspective from my mates.

Suddenly my eyes fill with tears. I’d given myself a good talking-to in the mirror this morning. I’ve done my crying, enough’s enough. But clearly the well’s not empty just yet. I take myself off to the best place to have a shameless cry: the .dot toilets. They are the newest and fanciest part of the whole office. I take a box of tissues with me and try to cry quietly on the seat of the loo. Twenty minutes later, there’s a tap on the glazed glass door.

‘Ol? Ol … it’s Colin.’

‘Oh, for god’s sake, Colin – not now.’

‘Sorry love, it’s just … your tea is cold and Gill has said she needs you for a meeting.’

‘Oh crap.’ I look at my phone. Yes, it’s 10 a.m. already, time for our weekly features meeting.

‘Can I come in?’

‘How do you know I’m not doing a poo?’ Colin and I have this type of oversharing relationship. We’ve become quite close friends over the years; he often plays a role in cheering me up or lightening the mood and I have been there to listen to his terrible dates with awful men.

He laughs gently. ‘Oh babe, I could hear you crying from outside.’

‘OK.’ I sniff. I let Colin in and he wraps me up in a big hug.

‘Are you OK? Is it Gill? Is she being horrible?’

‘No … no. It’s … me and Jacob. We have … well, I have … ended things.’ I sniff.

‘Oh no. I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s OK.’

‘Is it … OK?’

‘No, not really.’ I wipe my nose. ‘I mean, I just can’t stop crying. I’ve been coming in these loos for a sob every day since it happened; can’t believe no one’s noticed yet.’

‘Do you wanna talk about it?’

‘Maybe soon. Not feeling up to it right now.’

‘I get it. Don’t worry. Shall I tell Gill you’ve got something else on? I’m sure she’ll understand.’

‘Actually, that would be great, yes please. Thank you. I just need a bit more time in here, getting myself together.’

‘Of course.’ Colin squeezes my hand and gives a sympathetic smile.

Grief can knock you sideways. I miss Jacob so much. I feel almost sick at how much I could do with a hug from him right now. I’m constantly trying to fight back tears. I can’t imagine anyone ever loving me in the same way. Or seeing me naked, for that matter.

After another thirty minutes, sobbing and squeezing out tears, I look in the bathroom mirror and blot away at my face with toilet roll, removing any signs of dampness. Then I apply more kohl liner around my eyes. Since the break-up I’ve felt so worried that we’ve made the wrong choice by ending it. I guess this is being human: we can never be 100 per cent sure about any decision we make.

Jacob moved out ‘officially’ only recently, after living in his brother Sam’s spare room for a month. The idea was that we’d try living apart at first as some sort of ‘break’. But it sounded a lot like a break-up from the start. It’s been the shittiest time of my entire life. I am stewing in it, sitting in the negativity and depression like a big squishy chair that I can’t get out of. Every meal I cook reminds me of him. Everything on TV. Even replacing the loo roll or making the bed in the morning. Everything. I wish I could just delete everything and start again, like picking a brand-new player in a video game.

I leg it out of the office at 5.30 on the dot, itching to get to tonight’s dinner. I desperately need to feel the safety net of my best pals, who will allow me to rant and shout and cry and snot bubble. That’ll make me feel better. They have always stood up for me. Once, back in the day when you could still smoke inside, they all tapped ash on my ex-boyfriend Billy’s head on the dance floor. He was a horrible, verbally abusive arsehole. All the ash just piled up in his hair while he danced. I bet it stank for days.

I’m sweating slightly on the Tube on the way to our usual dinner place, Jono’s, a family-run Italian restaurant in Clerkenwell. We stumbled across it one drunken night years ago at uni, and it quickly became our go-to. We always have the same table, a big corner booth looking onto the street. The atmosphere is warm, busy and friendly. We love Jono, the owner, who is always there with a massive smile on his face. He knows us so well now after a decade of the same orders: spaghetti alle vongole (Bea), risotto ai gamberi (Cecily), gnocchi (Isla) and capricciosa pizza (me). We have had countless heart-to-hearts inside, plus countless arguments, countless tears and laughing fits. There are so many trendy new hipster restaurants opening all the time in London, but Jono’s will always have our heart. If I’m ever late I know the girls will have ordered my drink (a glass of Fatalone, large), and it will be waiting for me when I get there. The others are never late. Compared to my friends, I guess I do feel a bit … behind. I think it’s a metaphor for my life.

I rush through the streets of Holborn, panting a bit and stomping past slow tourists who mindlessly dawdle along with no sense of direction. I try not to get run over by an angry cab driver with a cigar hanging out of his mouth who very nearly turns my entire left leg into a squashed pancake. Then a bus goes past me very slowly, wafting toxic fumes up my nose and splashing through a giant puddle which sprays dirty water onto my Converse. ‘Arseholes!’ I shout. Then, an old woman goes over my foot with her wheelie suitcase, leaving a line of dirt on my shoe.

As I approach the familiar doorway to Jono’s, I realize my heart is pounding slightly and my skin prickling – that old underlying anxiety flaring up. It hits me that I haven’t seen the girls in a while, and it feels weird. I breathe in through my nose, and out through my mouth a few times. Everyone has just seemed slightly less available, a creeping sense of busyness and life admin and to-do lists, of time being squeezed.

When I arrive, the three of them are sat there, and something immediately feels off. Jono is pouring some tap water into their glasses. They all look like someone’s died. Has someone died?

‘Hi guys,’ I say, panting and whipping off my coat. ‘Only fifteen minutes late this time, I’m getting better! Sorry. Everything OK?’

‘Hey Ol …’ They all give me big smiles as I go around the table kissing them, saying how lovely it is to see me. I can’t help but notice how tired they all look.

‘Everything’s fine. It’s just … we’re not quite on top form tonight, Ol,’ Isla says.

‘What’s up?’ I say, putting my coat over the back of my chair, and sitting down.

‘Well …’ Bea takes in a deep breath. ‘Cec is obviously about to give birth any day now, I’m absolutely knackered from being up all night with a vomiting child and Isla has really bad cramps … we’re not a fun bunch, I’m afraid!’

Cec is in the loo right now. She is weeing every five minutes, apparently.

Isla has suffered with severe cramps and endometriosis issues all her life. Bea has three wild kids who are always plagued with something. This latest ailment sounded like the actual bubonic plague. And Cec, to be fair, is about to pop.

‘OK,’ I say, trying to hide my disappointment. ‘That’s fine! Sorry to hear the kids are still poorly, Bea. Shall we have a quick bite then, and maybe just one quick drink?’

‘Well,’ Bea looks awkwardly at the others. ‘We’d actually just decided that maybe we should give this one a miss and head home. Sorry, Ol.’ Jono sheepishly puts the bill on the table: £3.00 for some olives, £0.00 for the tap water.

I try and hide it, but I feel winded. ‘Oh, that’s a shame.’

‘I know but,’ Bea’s phone lights up, ‘there’s some drama going on at home and I really have to leave. We’re all pooped.’ I look around the table at their forced smiles.

‘My doctor has told me to rest,’ Isla says.

‘Poor you, of course,’ I say, squeezing her hand.

Cec walks slowly over to us from the direction of the toilets, and Jono shouts, ‘Bella mamma!’ at her as he waves his hands towards her ginormous bump.

‘Hey Ol,’ Cec kisses me on the cheek, bending awkwardly.

‘We’ve told Ol that we’re gonna give tonight a miss,’ Bea says.

I know I should be understanding, but we haven’t seen each other properly for ages and I really needed some advice and support from my best friends.

‘I’m so sorry, babe, I will make it up to you,’ Cec says. ‘Chris is driving over to pick me up right now, bless him. I’m not feeling great. Does anyone need a lift my way?’ She plants a kiss on my cheek and puts her cardigan on.

I hope Cec’s husband Chris doesn’t come into the restaurant. He makes my skin crawl.

‘No worries, guys. I appreciate you all dragging yourself out after work. We tried, eh?’ I keep my cool and, once they leave, Jono orders me a big glass of wine on the house. Funny how Jono can pick up on my emotions, but not my own friends. But to be fair, they do have a lot on their minds.