Maya - Chapter six

December 31st 2000

8pm

Clare has just finished painting my nails a vivid turquoise and I stare at them admiringly. “They look mint,” I say happily, hoisting up my towel as it threatens to slip and reveal my breasts.

“They’re meant to be turquoise,” she squeaks, grabbing the bottle of varnish and shoving it under my nose. I frown and raise my eyebrows at her. “Oh,” she exhales, “mint, not mint.” She screws up her nose as she delves into her enormous make up box that’s like Aladdin’s cave to me and rattles around. “Right, I would say do mine but you’re bollocks at nails so I’d fare better from getting Ben to do it.”

“Actually, Ben’s quite good at nails and things.”

“You’re right. Worryingly so. It’s just more evidence isn’t it? I wish he’d just bloody hurry up and get it over with. It’s common knowledge to everyone but him.”

Ben, our only male flatmate, is a young Rufus Sewell look-a-like, all charm and grace but with a viper’s tongue and a talent for painting nails. He’s incorrigibly loud and succeeded in getting us our three bedroom student house at knock-down rates with his amazing haggling skills. He manages to make Sir Alan Sugar look like a newspaper boy.

Our house sits in a quiet leafy street which is laughably donned as one of the most burgled street in the North because of its wall to wall students with their poor security and multitudes of possessions. However it is five minutes walk from two of the best pubs around and actually contains furniture bearable to sit and sleep on, kitsch even. I love living here.

I roll heavily on to my stomach, creasing the green satin duvet cover of Clare’s 1 ft high futon mattress and reach for my wine glass. “Well,” I say, trying to swallow whilst lying down, “I think if he’d ended up choosing a university in London and not Leeds he’d be living it up with a transvestite called Lovely Lucy down Old Compton by now.”

“I haven’t the faintest where that is, but it definitely sounds camp,” she retorts, choosing a pale pink bottle and giving it a shake.

Clare’s from Pembrokeshire and the only time she went to London was when she was eight to visit an Aunty. She was so scared of the tube she refused to let go of the emergency cord when they went into a tunnel at Finchley Road. Apparently this went on for around half an hour and the whole train was forced to disembark because of her refusal to be prised off, even when the driver, underground staff and an off duty police officer had attempted to persuade her. She can be stubborn I have to admit, although I’d always just taken it to be part and parcel of her Scottishness.

After her London fiasco Clare had stuck firmly to the solid turf and fresh air of her Pembrokeshire farm. That was until she met Colin at the local Young Farmer’s association. They dated for two years and he applied to study medicine at Manchester. Clare tried to follow but failed to get onto their Fine Aat course. Lucky escape really. She caught Colin taking her best friend Diane from behind on a hay bale at the Young Farmer’s summer party. She got into Leeds through clearing. And I’m so glad. Her earthiness, humour and choice of make-up are my god-sends.

“Right,” I say, in an attempt to be decisive and spilling wine down my front in the process. “Oops, bugger…..right, so, before I soak myself utterly and need another shower, where exactly are we heading?”

“Fwiquid,” Clare replies. She lowers her glass and swallows, catching my bemused look. “Liquid.” She repeats, smiling. “But before that, Mojos of course.”

"Of course."

Liquid is one of Leeds’ best clubs. Well, best that I’ve found in the time I’ve been here. All 1990s soul and funk and the odd live band; dark and underground. Different to the sticky-floored 2-for-1 wall to wall pill houses they take you to on Fresher’s week. The first time I went there it felt like I’d been let into a little secret. The fact that most of my university also know this little secret is a minor detail.

“A lady is in need of a woo-woo or two before commencing any debauched behaviour,” Claire says, squinting her eyes closed to apply a perfectly straight line of black eyeliner to her upper lid.

“Indeed,” I giggle, excitedly. “And what the lady wants, the lady gets.”

Clare deposits her liner back in her make up case and leans over to paint her toe nails, studying their shape and curve with her brush like the artist she is. Her light brown feather cut falls into her freckled face. She’s a natural beauty Clare; all rugged earthiness and outdoor windswept colour in the cheeks. She’s one of those annoying kind of girls that doesn’t need to wear make up to look stunning. Each stroke with her nail brush sends a smile to her lips and I see the pleasure she gets from this simple endeavour. Looking at her, I’m not sure whether to bring it up now. Clare and I have been laughing and enjoying the relaxation of getting ready together for two hours. Earlier today we spent the afternoon trawling the shops, trying on clothing we couldn’t afford and laughing ourselves stupid at the security guard in Harvey Nichols. Now she looks at peace and I know what I want to say will bring her stress. The thought and question are sitting heavily in my throat and make me feel as though I can’t breathe. I have to ask.

“Clare,” I nervously begin, twisting my glass around in my fingers. “Do you think…do you think maybe he’ll be there?” I almost whisper it and my heart starts to beat at an increased speed. Just the thought of bumping into him is filling me with a mixture of terror and excitement. The tension in the room has tightened and I know Clare’s face has frozen, her body remaining bent down toward her toes, her mind weighing up her response. She doesn’t know whether to bite back at me or be sympathetic and I know that it is hard for her. I’d be the same in her situation, if things were different and so, so often I wish they were. Then I could be the solution finder rather than the problem.

“Babe, I hope for your sake he’s not.” She lifts her head and looks at me searchingly and I’m relieved she has chosen to be soft with me. I hate Clare’s disapproval but her opinion and support means so much that I can’t yet bring myself to silence our conversations about him. I realise the plain truth about Ollie. I know he is bad for me; an infectious disease that runs into my bloodstream and can’t be fought. Everyone knows it: Clare, Ben, me. He is probably the only one that doesn’t. Ollie lives in his own self-contained circle that protects his self awareness like bubble wrap on a china cup. He’s not a bad person; he has never hit me, shouted at me or stood me up. He turns up on time to take me out, knows what my favourite chocolate is and remembered my birthday. It’s not even his fault, it’s just the kind of person I become in his presence that is such a shadow of me, who I am and want to be. I become insipid. I become helpless. I become weak. I hate who I am when I am with him – as soon as I am away from him I want to cry and scream to purge myself of the invalidity that consumes me. There is just some sick, unknown pull that keeps magnetising me back toward him. In a bizarre way it’s hilarious; it’s not as though he’s even good looking or an amazing sexual experience. Perhaps it’s some strange period novel perversion to be the quiet woman or some weird version of self harm. And infuriatingly, nauseatingly, exasperatingly, I bloody know all of this! I have been over it in my head a million times. I have examined it, reflected on it and analysed it from every angle yet still, still, I wonder and want him to be at the club.

“New Year, new start,” Clare says, looking at me hopefully. “A chance to start again Sash. The fact that you chose to spend tonight with us and not him tells me that’s what you really want.” She stands and examines her face in the mirror and reaches for the blusher in her make-up bag. She’s right and desperately inside me I want to find the resolve and genuinely make this New Year a new start.

I recall last New Year; the stuff of a dozen songs, the amazing evaporation from one century to the next. As 12 pm crept in, I stood aloft a slightly boggy moor in Scotland wearing around nine layers of clothing and two pairs of gloves. I had made the local Rohan shop very happy indeed and with the rain drizzling down, I couldn’t shake the smell of wet dog. It was just me, Ollie, our ‘deluxe’ tent and a scattering of sheep. No shiny wine glasses chinking together, no roars of laughter at silly alcohol fuelled behaviour, no post-party analysis whilst consuming as much greasy fry up as our stomachs could handle; the serving of normal 18 year old mayhem was utterly absent. Instead, we clunked together two red plastic beakers of bucks fizz that had been opened by Ollie, in alpha male overload, slamming the bottle neck onto a nearby rock. I had forgotten to pack the corkscrew, not being adept at packing for the outdoors and having been left to do the whole thing by myself at the last minute.

“Oh Sasha, trust you to balls it up. Now we’ll be picking glass out of our tongues for the rest of the evenings,” he’d laughed, ruffling my hair.

He’d persuaded me it would be romantic and ‘special’. Instead, it was absolutely freezing and stuffed to the brim with a tense undercurrent that once again he had railroaded me into doing something I really didn’t want to do. I hadn’t complained. He’d tried to give me a new experience and so I figured it was me; I was the problem. I just didn’t understand the beauty of where I was. I wasn’t mature enough.

My friends were outraged that I was spending the Millennium New Year with just Ollie and leaving them behind, and I really didn’t want to. Deep down I wanted to be with him and with them. But there didn’t seem to be many compromises made where Ollie was concerned, well, not on his part anyway,

I stand behind Clare at the full length wooden mirror and examine myself over her shoulder. I’m wearing my long silver and black dress which has no back and thin straps and so wearing a bra is an impossibility. I’ve tamed my frizzy hair with an hour of serum and straightners and it looks surprisingly sleek. The silver eye shadow I bought earlier today compliments the dress and after I removed some of it with a cotton-bud and applied mascara I don’t actually look like I’ve been punched. For a moment I manage to detach myself from my own self perception and I see a new person whom I don’t know. She looks nervous and thin but steely. She looks like someone I might like to be friends with if I met her at work or in a class. She looks older than 19 year old me and wiser than I am.

Clare notices the length of time I have been staring and gently prods me with an eyelash curler. “Oi, stop perving at yourself and drink up. There’s a new year somewhere to be had.” The last dribble in the wine bottle is shaken and trickles into my glass. “You look great Sash, all thin with perky boobs. Beautiful! Ready for it all!”

“Ready for what all?” I reply, unscrewing the bottle’s cap and refilling my glass.

“I don’t know. I’m trying to be philosophical. I guess I just mean ready to face a challenge or two. Hey, you’re not crying now and that’s an accomplishment!”

We raise our glasses to the air and clink, sipping the cold, sweet liquid.