The Cows

‘OK, well, bye. And we should do coffee, I’ve written up a few more ideas, I really think one could …’

But I’ve strapped Annie in and driven away before she has the chance to finish. When I get around the corner, I feel a little calmer. Then I look in the rear view mirror and see Annie’s face.

My little princess is crying her eyes out.

Cam

‘Hello, yeah I’ve been waiting for my pizza for over an hour … Yes, it’s Stacey … What? I spoke to you myself? … Oh, forget it, I’ll call Domino’s.’

She hangs up.

‘That is so rubbish,’ Cam says to Mark, who is also very hungry but not the type to get annoyed. ‘It’s going to take ages to get here now.’

She storms over to the kitchen and aggressively opens and slams shut all of the cupboards and the fridge. They are all empty.

‘Babe, you get so hangry,’ says Mark, infuriating Cam a little with his youthful slang.

‘I’ve been craving pizza all day,’ she says, huffing.

‘Well then, let’s go out and get some?’ Mark suggests, flippantly.

‘What, and bring it back here?’

‘No, let’s go eat somewhere. It’s Saturday night. Date Night!’

Cam goes a little cold. Let’s go eat somewhere? As in, they sit opposite each other? In a restaurant? With clothes on? Making conversation? Is that possible?

Before Cam has the chance to question it, Mark is standing by the door, ready to leave. ‘Come on then, I’m starving,’ he says.

She picks up her keys, slips into some flip flops and follows him out. This is actually happening.

As Mark reads the menu, Cam stares at him. It’s been a few months since they met in the line at Whole Foods, they’ve had sex in every position imaginable, but she has no idea if he even has a middle name. Sitting opposite him now, she can’t think of a single thing to say.

‘I’m going for the meat feast, I don’t even know why I bother to read the menu. What about you?’ Mark asks, putting the menu down and nodding at a waiter.

‘Me? What about me?’ Cam asks, worried he’s asking her to express some feelings.

‘Er, what pizza you going for?’

‘Oh, a Hawaiian, always.’

‘Nah, can’t do fruit on pizza,’ Mark says.

‘Oh right,’ replies Cam, making a face that she thinks shows she is enjoying getting to know the small details of who he is, despite finding this terribly awkward.

It’s not that she doesn’t like Mark, or doesn’t like spending time with him. But she’s actively avoided traditional dating for most of her adult life; it isn’t what she’s good at. She’d rarely choose to sit opposite someone she didn’t know really well for an entire meal. A drink, probably. A coffee, fine. But a meal? A proper date? She’s not good at this. She’s good at being at home, in her pants, making general conversation between sex sessions. In that environment she has props, distractions from intense emotional interaction. But now here she is, sitting opposite her fuck buddy of a few months, realising for the first time that the age gap is actually a thing. She feels conspicuous. Like an older man with a young hot blonde. Out of bed, this feels a bit silly.

They order.

‘So what did you do today?’ he asks, as they wait.

‘Oh, um, I went to the park with my sister and niece and two nephews. We swam in the pond, it was nice,’ Cam says, shoving two olives into her mouth.

‘Ah, nice. I’ve got two nephews. Jacob and Jonah. Both want to be called JJ, so I just call them JJJJ, like Ja-Juh, Ja-Juh, and they find that really funny.’

‘That’s hilarious,’ says Cam, hiding her feelings by spitting olive pips into her hand.

‘They love me. I can pick them both up at once. They call me Uncle Hulk,’ Mark says, holding his arm up, bending his elbow, and flexing his biceps.

Cam smiles. He’s so nice, she doesn’t want to be rude, or mean, but …

‘So how old are yours?’ he asks, being completely acceptable and acting as any normal human being would in this situation. But it’s too much for Cam. She’s not sure why she’s finding this so excruciating, but she is. She can’t do it. She just can’t.

‘Mark, I’m sorry. I’m not feeling great, maybe sunstroke or something. Can we get the pizza boxed up and take it home?’

Mark doesn’t seem bothered. He still gets pizza, he still gets Cam – as far as he’s concerned, it’s all good.

‘Sure,’ he says, calling over a waiter to ask for the pizza to go. Cam instantly relaxes, and fills the time by getting her wallet out of her bag and counting out some money. ‘I’ll get this,’ she says. Mark happily accepts.

As they leave, Cam thinks again.

‘You know, maybe I’ll just go home alone. I’m sorry, I think the heat really got to me today. Then not eating, and chasing kids around all afternoon. Is that OK?’

‘Of course, babe,’ Mark says, understandingly. He opens a pizza box to make sure she takes the right one. ‘Want me to walk you home?’

‘No, I’ll be OK. Thanks though,’ she says, appreciating how nice and easy he is, and wondering why she can’t bring herself to sit through a meal with him.

‘Will you go out tonight?’ she asks.

‘Probably, I fancy a dance,’ he says, further clarifying the vast contrast in their lifestyles. Cam wonders if he’ll pull later. Someone closer to his age, who also works in a gym, who is happy to chat about stuff. She knows she isn’t allowed to care.

‘Have fun,’ she says as he walks away.

‘Thanks babe,’ he calls back. She walks home, slowly.

Back at her kitchen table, laptop in front of her, half a pizza to her right, and a cup of tea to her left, she thinks about what to write about. She knows her relationship with the world through the Internet is better than it is with it in person, but does that matter? Why should she have to be great offline, when she can be everything she wants to be online? It’s not like she has no contact with other humans at all; there is her family, Mark, and of course she has friends. Sure, she conducts most of her relationships on email, but it’s not like she’s literally alone, like an old person in a home that no one comes to visit. She could go out if she wanted to, she just doesn’t want to.

She sits for a minute, and thinks about that.

Does she want to? Or has she become so consumed with her online profile that she’s forgotten how to communicate face to face? She shakes her head. No … no, that isn’t how it is. The Internet allowed her to be everything she wanted to be. She’s happy living through her fingertips. In her virtual world she is bold, brave and powerful. In the real world, she kind of sucks. Her relationship with the Internet is nothing to be ashamed of.

There, she has something to blog about. Cam gets to work.

Being alone doesn’t mean I am lonely.

I don’t remember the last time I felt lonely, but I am alone all the time. I think it stems from being brought up in a busy household, and living most of my life in my head. The truth is, I probably have the same fear of being surrounded that most people have of loneliness. Being alone doesn’t scare me. In fact, it makes me really happy.

Being lonely is actually quite hard, if you fill your life with things you love. For me, the things I love don’t take me far from my front door. I enjoy walking, and watching movies, and seeing family and those kinds of things. But the rest of the time, when I am alone in my home, my thoughts and work occupy me plenty.

When I am alone, I just get on with things. I do all sorts, ranging from acts of vanity to writing words. As I sit here in my kitchen on a Saturday night doing the latter of those activities, I thought I might share some of the other things I do when there is no one else around.

Sometimes, I might sit at the kitchen table and pluck my bikini line with tweezers. Or I put a little vanity mirror on a table by the window, and use the brightness of the daylight to inspect my pores. I squeeze little blackheads and pluck out dark hairs from places on my face that they shouldn’t be. This leaves me looking all blotchy and unsightly, so I probably wouldn’t do it if there was someone else around. I’ll finish that process with a facemask, that I leave on for ten minutes while I email friends.

I’m brilliant at emailing people. I’d write letters if actual handwriting didn’t give me wrist cramps, because I love the idea of old-school pen pals. I write school friends huge catch up emails, and I send them all the time. And they write back with just a few sentences, and I always feel really proud of myself for being so good at staying in touch, even though I would never make the effort to actually see them face to face. I also spend ages reading all of the emails I get from you guys, and a good portion of my time replying.

I cook myself meals, and sometimes really go to town on what they might be. A few nights ago I made myself a chicken Thai green curry from scratch, including the paste. Then I sat in my window seat and I ate it while looking out over London and listening to Tapestry by Carole King. I followed that by reading almost half of a novel about a North Korean refugee, before going to bed and writing a blog with a cup of peppermint tea. In the morning, I woke up at ten a.m. and finished the curry. Cold. There was no one there to judge me, so I just did it, and it was perfect. I spent the rest of the day doing DIY with my dad.

This is my life now, and how it has been for a really long time. I am alone, but never lonely. I don’t know if I could ever be lonely, because I love being alone. I think when you’ve truly mastered the skill of enjoying your own company, happiness just comes.

Cam x

She uploads the piece and tears off a huge piece of pizza. Usually she feels a sense of calmness when she’s written a good article, but Cam can’t quite shake the jitters she’s feeling from earlier. The weakness she feels when she’s in the wider world. How can the virtual her and the real life her be so different? Taking the pizza with her into her bedroom, she slips between the sheets and eats it. Looking around her room, she thinks how nice it would be to have a small armchair in the corner, one with a fun print on it, just for show. Maybe she’ll go looking for one tomorrow, that would be the perfect way to spend a Sunday. Still chewing, she lets out a massive pizza-perfumed fart, turns off the light, and falls fast asleep.

Sunday

Tara

Annie and I are snuggled up on the sofa watching a movie, like we always do on rainy Sunday afternoons. My phone beeps and I jump up like a wasp just landed on my leg, giving Annie a huge fright. Suddenly we are both off the sofa, and standing in the middle of the living room.

‘What, Mummy? Who is it?’ she asks, a little frightened.

‘It’s just Sophie,’ I say, glumly. And sit back down.

Did he text yet?

No.

Need cheering up? You can come over? Bring Annie. Carl is here, but that’s OK.

Maybe later. I’m too busy dying of shame right now x

OK, well come if you can. I like Carl seeing me with kids x x

I consider telling her about the guy who filmed me on the train, but I don’t even know how I would explain that to Sophie. It’s giving me the creeps so badly, I’m really trying to block it out of my mind. But I keep visualising him in his living room wanking away to it, or even worse, posting it on his Facebook page so all his spotty little mates can wank over it. It’s so weird to think that someone out there has that footage and I have no idea who he is. Oh God, me having an orgasm, on camera. It’s just the worst thing I can imagine.

Maybe he was just taking a photo? The newspaper didn’t fall off my lap until pretty near the end. It might not be as bad as I think. I just have to forget about it, pretend it didn’t happen, or it’s going to taunt me for the rest of my life. There is nothing I can do about it now, so I need to focus on the other things in my life, like the fact that I totally imagined how much Jason liked me. Urgh. Today is not good. Annie wants to do stuff, and I feel so low I can’t get off the sofa. There is a standoff.

She was so upset about leaving the party early that she refused to come out of her room yesterday afternoon. I felt so gross that after some pitiful attempts to coax her out, I just lay on the sofa eating Pringles, like a teenager going through a breakup. Eventually I took her up some dinner and let her eat it in her room. Why is it that kids find eating away from a table so exciting? She came downstairs after that, and we played Snap until bedtime. When she was asleep, I got back to my carbohydrates and a bottle of wine. That’s probably why I feel even more horrendous today.

‘You said we’d go to the park today,’ Annie says, not even looking at me, arms crossed as she stares at the TV. We have Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on, we’ve seen it a hundred times.

‘I know. Sorry, Annie. Mummy’s not well. Come on, what do you want to watch, anything you want, I don’t mind?’

‘I don’t want to watch TV. I want to go out.’

I look at my phone again even though it didn’t make a noise. Why hasn’t Jason texted me? Maybe he thought his message had sent? But then he’d be waiting for an answer from me and he’d look and see it hasn’t. No, he decided to stop writing. But why? I want to text him again, say something cool, easy, funny? But I can’t bring myself to. The least I can do for myself is retain some level of dignity by not saying anything else mortifying. Annie huffs loudly.

‘I’m bored inside, it isn’t even raining,’ she says, staring at my phone like it’s another child that is taking me away from her.

‘OK, I’m sorry, I don’t feel well,’ I say.

We sit in silence for a few more minutes. I know she isn’t watching the film, I’m not either, but we both stare at the screen anyway.

‘I’m hungry,’ she says, eventually. ‘I want to go to the park and get an ice cream.’

‘Can’t we just have one day where we sit around doing nothing?’ I realise I’m sounding like the child and tell myself to grow up. I am a mother, not a lovesick teenager. I must parent and stop moping. I skulk into the kitchen. There is a plate of chicken in the fridge, I think it was from Thursday night’s dinner; it should be fine. I flop a big dollop of mayonnaise into it and stir it up, then squash it between two slices of bread. I sprinkle a few Pringles onto the plate next to it, and pour her a glass of water.

‘There,’ I say, offering it to her. ‘I made you a sandwich. Chicken mayo, yummy. Eat up and then we’ll go out.’

She takes a few bites and swallows hard. ‘It tastes weird, Mummy.’

‘Oh Annie, please will you stop being so grumpy and just eat the sandwich!’ I snap, instantly regretting it. But I feel so tired, and embarrassed, and I need to wallow in all of those emotions until they go away. I look at Annie, she looks so upset. ‘Oh baby I’m sorry, I …’

‘You’re SO mean!’ she shrieks as she throws the plate on the floor, the sandwich popping open and mayonnaise splattering everywhere. She storms out of the living room and flies up the stairs. Her bedroom door slams and makes the house shake. That’s the first time she’s ever done that, I couldn’t feel more terrible. I throw a tea towel over the mayonnaise and pretend it isn’t there. Covering my face with my hands, I tell myself I have to be strong, this is not Annie’s fault, our weekends are precious, and I can’t waste one just because I am a total loser. We’ll go to see Sophie, everything will be fine. I’ll make up for yesterday. I have to be strong.

I look at my phone again as I plod up the stairs.

Still nothing. Why hasn’t he texted me?

Stella

Last night was shit. Halfway through my stir fry, Phil came back and sat in the living room with the TV on so loud I could barely think. I stood in the kitchen for ages, calming myself down. I wanted to go in there and rip the TV out of the wall and smash him over the head with it. Why is it him that’s so annoyed? Is it his whole family who died? His body that is under threat? I stared at the back of his head from the kitchen door and mouthed everything I wanted to scream at his face. He is supposed to be the strong one. He is supposed to take care of me, to make me feel better. That is the person he was when we met. That is who I thought was moving into my home. He was the one who persuaded me to get the test, with his ‘I’m here for you, baby’ and ‘It’s better to know.’ And now we have the result, he is the one who isn’t man enough to deal with it.

But I held myself back. And I thought about what I want. And I don’t want to be alone, and I want to have a baby. So as I so often do, I swallowed my pain, I took off Alice’s lovely skirt, I went and sat next to him, put my hand on his leg, and I told him I was sorry. For what I should be so sorry for, I’m not entirely sure. But he turned the volume down, and he accepted a plate of food, and we sat and we watched a movie side by side.

Now, a day later, we are at the kitchen table, eating the roast beef that I just prepared in a further attempt to stop him leaving me. I am running out of conversation; no friends to catch up on, no work gossip, no family news, and I’m trying to avoid the b and the c words.

‘Did you know that if you Google “What if I die with no legacy” the first four results are about what happens to your Facebook account after you’ve died?’ I say, with a small piece of meat stuffed into my left cheek.

‘I didn’t. No,’ replies Phil, taking a sip of red wine.

‘Apparently, now you can nominate someone to be your “legacy contact”, and then they can take control of it after you’ve gone. So basically I’d give you my login and then you could change my pictures and accept friend requests and stuff.’

‘Why wouldn’t you just shut the page down?’

‘Who?’

‘You?’

‘Well, I’d be dead,’ I reiterate.

‘OK, then why wouldn’t the legacy contact just shut the page down? A Facebook account is no good to you when you’re dead, is it?’ Phil says, bluntly.

I take a moment.

‘What if it’s all you leave behind?’

‘Well that would be pretty depressing, wouldn’t it?’ says Phil, obviously hoping this conversation stops soon.

‘Maybe that’s all I’ll leave behind,’ I say, pushing him to respond.

‘OK, Stella. Do you have to talk like this?’ Phil blurts, standing up from the table and taking his plate over to the sink. He drops his head. ‘I can’t have more of these casual conversations about death, it’s wrecking my head.’

‘Sorry,’ I say, even though I’m not. I creep behind him and put my arms around his waist. We stand like this for a minute or two, Phil’s body stiff and uninviting. I undo his belt.

‘I want you,’ I say gently as I take his flaccid penis into my hand and try to work it into something functional. I don’t remember ever having to do this at the beginning of our relationship. It’s standard now.

After a long silence, it’s finally hard. ‘Come to bed,’ I say, taking him by the hand and leading him into the bedroom.

As I take off my jeans and knickers, Phil lies down. He pulls his trousers down a little but leaves his underwear on. I crawl on top of him. ‘I might need a little help,’ I say, seductively putting my fingers into his mouth. He sucks them and turns his head to the side. I run my wet fingers around the opening of my vagina, a move he taught me, that he used to like to watch. I position myself above him and lower until he’s inside me. He keeps his head to the side. I move slowly up and down, not taking my eyes off his face. I try harder, making the noises that used to turn him on. I lean forward and kiss his neck, then his cheek. I kiss the side of his mouth as I groan and move faster, but he refuses to look at my face. He’s managing to retain an erection but he’s not moving, he’s not offering anything. I keep going, ramping up my speed a little but getting nothing back from him.

‘Phil, come on,’ I bark, frustrated. ‘Just fuck me, will you!’

Phil pushes me off and onto the bed. I roll and face the other way, covering my face with my hands. It’s too embarrassing to bear.

‘I’m sorry, Stell,’ he says, sincerely. ‘I’m just really full.’ A lie.

He gets off the bed, does up his jeans as he goes into the living room. I hear the TV go on.

Tara

Sophie and I used to work for an agency that supplied waiting staff for posh people’s parties. We’d serve miniature Yorkshire puddings with horseradish cream, or other such pretentious tiny things, to London’s society crowd. We dealt with a lot of pretentious arseholes, but we also got to snoop around their houses. Huge Notting Hill townhouses and massive Sloane Square apartments. They were another world from what we were used to in Walthamstow. Our families did well by our local standards, we were the upper end of the scale for where we were from, but nothing in comparison to the people who had these parties. They seemed like something out of the movies, and they lived in a London that we didn’t recognise as ours. We used to laugh about how we would be if we lived that way. We fantasised about wearing wild dressing gowns, marabou slippers, wafting around our mansions with glass after glass of champagne. It was a ridiculous dream, but every time I arrive at Sophie and Carl’s house, I realise she is living it.

I pick Annie up so she can ring the doorbell. It’s Victorian, so quite stiff. Her little fingers struggle to push it, so I put mine on top of hers and say, ‘One two, three.’ We hear the perfectly tuned, beautiful bells of Big Ben that their £400 doorbell bellows out whenever anyone pops round. Sophie’s voice booms out of a speaker, ‘Hang on, just upstairs,’ but as she says it, we hear heavy footsteps walking towards the door. Annie holds onto me a little tighter, which makes me feel so good. She’s been angry with me all day. But in that way that kids do, when a shred of fear from the outside world creeps in, she knows her mummy is the one to make her safe. I squeeze her back, happy to be a team again, as the door slowly opens.

And there is Carl. All six foot two of him. His dark hair neatly cut and parted at the side. His fifty-one-year-old, well-looked-after body hidden underneath a cream V-neck jumper, with a checked shirt poking out from underneath. I’m not sure what you’d call the trousers he has on, a casual chino? This is him when he’s relaxing at home, but he still looks smarter than most of the men I know when they’re at work.

‘Hey Carl, so nice to see you,’ I say, stepping inside and kissing him on each cheek. I feel under surveillance, like I could say something incriminating to piss him off. I remind myself I am a parent, that he is not my husband, and it actually doesn’t matter if he likes me or not. But still, I feel judged.

‘Hello Tara, Annie; welcome. Sophie is somewhere, come in,’ he says, warmly, reminding me that most of my opinion of Carl comes from Sophie’s paranoia.

‘Hiiiiiii,’ says Sophie, coming down the large staircase. She looks fully the part and as beautiful as ever. All casual in black, but impeccably styled.

‘Aunty Sophie!’ says Annie, letting go of my hand and running over to her. They’ve always got on great. Sophie is childlike by nature, so connects well with kids. I am pretty certain this would not be the case if the kids were her own. It’s another reason why marrying Carl suited her. He has three boys by his first marriage, and no interest in having any more.