Swimming Upstream Read online

  It took a long time to get up the stairs. I pushed open the door and caught my breath, inhaling the rubbery scent of hot machinery, of newsprint and of freshly ground coffee, the smell that defined the newsroom. The printer that gave us the feeds from the General News Service was clunking and whirring noisily in the corner of the room. Simon Goodfellow, the lunchtime reporter, was sitting at my desk. He peered over his shoulder as I entered and stood up, slowly.

  “Good lord, that looks painful,” he commented, but didn’t offer to help.

  I sank down into my chair, exhausted. On my desk was a letter from Phillip marked “Private and Confidential”. I glanced briefly round the newsroom. Everyone was milling around, carrying out their daily routine except Simon, who was looking curiously at the letter in my hands. I stuffed it into my handbag and pushed it under my desk. I logged onto my computer, and started to type up the news feeds for the lunchtime bulletin, which Simon had left for me.

  It was an extraordinary coup for the government, their fourth consecutive victory and one for which the Sun newspaper was taking full credit, following their provocative headline the previous day urging the last person to leave Britain to “turn out the lights” if Labour won the election. It was clever all right; it fed right into the paranoia of the national psyche. That headline was for anyone who worried about trade unions taking over the country, about immigrants stealing their jobs and their women, about reds under the bed. I quickly typed up the rest of the national bulletin and then began to search for a local story. There was nothing from the police today. I glanced again through the feeds that Simon had left me.

  “And finally,” I typed. “A farmer in Whittlesford is lobbying parliament this week with a petition signed by four hundred Kent and Sussex farmers against the proposed Channel Tunnel link.” I stopped writing and spun my chair round.

  “Why?” I asked Simon, who was now sitting at the desk behind me, eating a pork pie.

  “Why what?” He looked defensive.

  “Why,” I asked impatiently, “does a farmer in Whittlesford give a flying one about the Chunnel link?”

  Simon didn’t answer.

  “It's going from London to Paris,” I elaborated. “There's no detour planned via Whittlesford.”

  “So?” said Simon. “Maybe he's coming out in solidarity.” I knew that this was a dig at Larsen’s left-wing politics, with me as the object of torment. I hadn’t told anyone at work that we had split up. I certainly wasn’t going to tell Simon.

  I folded my arms. “Am I going to have to delete this news item?” I asked him.

  Simon grinned. “The farmers - united - will never be deleted,” he recited, punching the air with his fist. He chuckled and rocked back in his chair.

  “It's not funny Simon. This is supposed to be a story. Either it is or it isn't.” I stood up and went over to the desk where all the information came in from the General News Service.

  “Listen to the clip …” Simon began.

  “I don't have time,” I said, edgily, sitting back down at the computer screen. “If it's going in I need it now, finished.” I was aware that my voice had risen by at least a couple of octaves.

  I could hear Simon getting up and moving around behind me. He leaned over my shoulder and placed a pile of carts onto my desk in front of me, then left the newsroom.

  I glanced at my watch, picked up the carts and my crutch and stepped into the studio.

  When I came out Greg Chappell, the programme editor, was waiting for me. He smiled and sat down at the desk behind me.

  “That was quick,” said Greg, when I came out again. “You had another two minutes to play with there. You'll be giving those lunchtime listeners indigestion.”

  I slumped down into my chair. Greg put down his pencil.

  “Look,” he said. “Don't let him get to you.”

  “That's easy for you to say,” I muttered. “I'm fed up of doing Simon’s job for him and then feeling like an autocratic old nag for minding. It's like working with my brother.”

  “I didn't know you had a brother,” said Greg, trying to be tactful, trying to change the subject.

  I hesitated a moment. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to have a discussion about my family. “Yeah. Just the one. His name’s Pete.”

  “And he wound you up, right?” Greg continued. “That's what being a brother is all about. It's in the job description.”

  “Yes, well, it's not in Simon's, is it?” I said.

  Greg looked at me sympathetically. “You need to get out of here. You need a new start somewhere else. You've outgrown this place.”

  I felt a glimmer of hope inside me, something I hadn't felt in a while. “Do you really think so? I thought I was only just getting somewhere.”

  Greg wheeled his chair over to mine. “Look, Lizzie. You've got loads of potential. You could easily get a job in town.”

  “I already am in town.” I was confused.

  “I'm talking about London,” he laughed. “One of the independents, or the BBC stations even. You're hardworking, you've got what it takes. Don't keep selling yourself short.”

  I eyed him suspiciously. “You're leaving,” I said. “Aren't you?”

  “Yes,” said Greg.

  “When?”

  “End of the month. It's an attachment, but...” he trailed off.

  “So who's going to cover for you?” I asked.

  “Well who do you think?” Greg smiled. “I thought Phil had told you. He said he had.”

  “What?” I turned and grabbed my bag from under the desk and ripped open the letter. “I thought I’d got a warning…”

  “But listen to me, Lizzie, you can do more. Don't let it be forever...”

  “It's enough,” I grinned. “For now.”

  I got up, flung my arms around him and kissed him on the cheek. “You've just made my week. Month. Year,” I said, hugging him.

  “Good,” said Greg. “In that case I forgive you for you for not caring that I'm going.”

  “Of course I care,” I protested. “I'll really miss you, you know I will. But this is great news for both of us.”

  I swung round and logged back into the computer.

  The following Friday, I picked up the phone and dialled Catherine’s number. She answered after a couple of rings.

  “Lizzie!” she said. “I am so glad you rang! That’s so spooky. I was going to call you tonight.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I’ve been thinking about you all week, how nice it was to see you again.” Something in her voice didn’t sound quite right. “How are you? How’s the foot?”

  “Much better, thanks. I had to have a few days off work. But I’m back now, and in fact I’ve just been promoted.”

  “Congratulations!” Catherine sounded genuinely delighted. “Let’s go out,” she said. “Tonight. We’ll celebrate!”

  “Oh, I’m not sure. My ankle’s still not great. I mean, it’s better than it was, but... I’ve broken up with Larsen,” I blurted out.

  “What? Are you serious?”

  “Yes. Sorry. I didn’t mean to just dump that on you.”

  “You’re not dumping anything, Lizzie, we’re friends, remember?”

  “Of course. Thanks.”

  “I’m so sorry. I thought you and he were..? Well, the way you described him, he sounded great.”

  “He is great,” I said.

  “So why, then?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s me. How long have you got?” I laughed, ironically.

  “Right. That settles it. We’re going out. Tonight. Celebration or commiseration, it’s your call.”

  Your call. I remembered Larsen saying that to me, the night we met, when I was talking about leaving college. I wondered how much of anything that had happened in the last seven years really had been my call. And I realised with sudden clarity that this was no-one’s fault but my own.

  “Come on,” Catherine persisted. “You can stay at mine, that way we can get a cab
back together. We’ll have a great time, don’t worry.”

  “Go on, then. Why not?” I was wondering what it was about Catherine’s voice that sounded different. She sounded kind of high. “So, are you okay, then?” I asked.

  There was a pause. “What have you forgotten?” Catherine asked, and I realised she wasn’t talking to me. I could hear a voice in the background, getting louder, shouting. It was clearly Martin. “Well, of course I would have washed it. Calm down. Hang on, and I’ll help you look.” The phone went dead for a moment and then Catherine was back on the line. “Lizzie, sorry, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you back. No. I’ll see you at eight. The Free Press. You know it? Near Parker’s Piece. Okay?” And then she was gone.

  Catherine was waiting outside the pub when my taxi pulled up. She helped me out onto the pavement and threw her arms around me and held me tight, and I realised that she was the first person who had touched me since Larsen left. I felt suddenly and pathetically grateful for her friendship, but realised that she was equally pleased to see me because she was holding me so tight, for so long, that I nearly lost my balance. When she stepped back I realised that she was trying very hard not to cry.

  “Catherine? What is it?”

  She waved her hand in the air. “Oh, nothing. Ignore me. I’m just being stupid. Let’s get a drink.”

  The pub was warm and inviting. The familiar pub smells of hot chips and roasted peanuts mingled with cigarette smoke and the sour stench of ale. I sat down at a table while Catherine went up to the bar and ordered the drinks. A small fire flickered in the open grate beside me and I leaned forward briefly and warmed my face in its amber glow before shrugging off my coat and sinking back into the cushioned leather of my armchair. A group of students, deep in conversation at the table next to me, suddenly let out a loud roar of laughter. I glanced over at them and wished for one strange moment that I were back there with them, with a chance to do it all over again, the whole student thing, only properly this time, to integrate myself fully into that other world and with those people. Maybe that was where I had belonged after all; maybe the past seven years had been a mistake. Maybe fear and insecurity at leaving home to study - at starting a new life on my own - had caused me to go the entirely wrong way through the sliding doors of fate into the club on Mill Road and into Larsen’s life.

  “So where’s Martin tonight?” I asked Catherine, when she returned. It didn’t take Einstein to work out that her low mood was something to do with him.

  “He’s coaching. The team’s got a tournament in Manchester,” she said. “It starts early tomorrow, so they’ve got to go tonight.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah. Just a silly argument.”

  “Does he mind you going out with me tonight?”

  “Of course not. He’s fine about it. It’s nothing, honest. Anyway, I want to hear about you.”

  I took a sip of my drink and thought back to Martin’s shouting in the background when Catherine was on the phone to me. He had sounded really angry. I also recalled the unpleasant way he had treated Sean, the junior staff member at the swimming pool. And then there was his flirting. But maybe it was all something and nothing, like she said. I didn’t know enough about their relationship to pass judgement, yet alone interfere.

  “So, come on then,” she said. “What happened? With Larsen?”

  “I don’t know where to start,” I said. “Except that everything I told you about him is the truth. He’s a lovely guy. He’s funny. And kind. And I was crazy about him, you know?”

  “Was?”

  “Am. Was. I don’t know.”

  “Are you sure it’s over?”

  “He’s moved out,” I said. “I haven’t heard from him since he left. It’s well over a week. Ten days to be precise. I haven’t gone this long without speaking to him since the day we met.”

  “So is this not what you really want?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “It feels like a release at times, like I can breathe again. We were just so merged into each other. Or I was merged into him, more to the point. It’s like we were the same person. It was suffocating. Even our initials were the same: Larsen Tyler and Lizzie Taylor. He loved that, things like that, our sameness. He thought it was great, how close it made us. And that was what I wanted, too, in the beginning. I let it happen. It was so secure. And he had a ready made life, friends, everything was there, set up for me. All I had to do in return was love him, and believe me I did. He loved me back and it was everything I needed. And when he got up on stage… well, being his girlfriend, basking in his reflected glory… it was intoxicating. It was the headiest thing that ever happened to me.”

  “So what changed?”

  “I just don’t know. Me I suppose. Like I say, I felt stifled, suffocated. As if I just wasn’t being myself, as though I was living his life, not mine. But now … it’s lonely without him. It’s strange. I keep thinking he’s just gone away on tour and he’s going to come home any minute. Except that all of his stuff is gone. Except he just doesn’t - come home, that is.”

  Catherine took my hand across the table and squeezed it. “It must feel awful. Even if breaking up with him was what you wanted. It must be really hard.”

  “It is,” I said, looking up at her. “And there’s nobody I can talk to who understands. How can you know something’s not right but still miss someone so much?”

  “I understand,” said Catherine. “It’s like being torn in two.”

  “That’s it. That’s exactly what it is. There is the bit of me that is him and me, and the bit of me that is just me. And the bit of me that is just me wants this, this new path, this new start. But the rest of me… is missing that closeness. Missing him. So much.”

  Catherine gave my hand another squeeze, and bit her lip, pausing for a moment before she asked, “So when did you first notice that the bit that was just you was not getting a look in?”

  I looked into my empty glass and thought about that for a moment. “The truth?” I asked her.

  Catherine nodded.

  “Around seven years ago.”

  “You mean..?”

  “Yes. Right in the beginning. I switched degree courses. For him. My second year at college was meant to be my year abroad. I had picked Paris as my study placement. The city. Where better to learn French? I was so excited. It wasn’t that far away. I thought: it’s only a year. We can visit each other. He can come and stay. I can come home in the holidays. But when I told him, he said that it would be the end of us. He gave me an ultimatum. He said I was either in this relationship or I was out. So I dropped French and switched to Politics, and moved in with him instead.”

  Catherine didn’t say anything for a minute. “I can understand that,” she said finally. Which was not what I had expected her to say, at all.

  At closing time, Catherine decided that we should go to a nightclub.

  “I really want to dance,” she said. “Do you mind?”

  I wasn’t in much shape for dancing, but I didn’t want to go home just yet either and was still feeling so happy to be with her again that I would have gone for a wet weekend in Cleethorpes if she’d asked me.

  “I’ll watch you,” I laughed.

  We paid our entry fee and found a seat near the dance floor, where I sat sipping a gin and tonic while Catherine disappeared into the crowd and the dry ice. I watched the flashing purple and yellow lights and the spinning silver baubles that hung from the ceiling and soon spotted Catherine amongst the other dancers, all swaying and jerking to the rhythm of the night. Catherine danced without inhibition and looked happy, lost in the music, as she swung her hips from side to side, her arms in the air and her long dark hair swinging round her face as she moved. I smiled as more than one man watched her, then came towards her and began to gyrate around her, trying to catch her attention. She didn’t seem to notice, or simply turned her back and danced away. Eventually she got tired and came back and sat down beside me but the music was
so loud that we soon gave up trying to talk to one another. We sat and stared at the lights and the dancers instead.

  I started to wonder what Larsen was doing right now. He would be at a gig, probably; in fact he would be finished by now and packing up, drinking backstage with the other band members. And no doubt some girls, who would have found their way backstage too. Either that or he would be with the others, Brian, Jude and Doug - our crowd. Maybe they were all down the pub still, at one of the many lock-ins, playing cards, laughing, singing along to the Juke Box or an acoustic guitar. One thing was for certain, he wouldn’t be on his own.

  A wave of insecurity washed over me and I realized that that was where I wanted to be too, right now - at a lock-in in the Jugglers Arms, with Larsen, not here with a bunch of strangers, with this deafening music thudding and vibrating through my body. But I couldn’t admit that, not even to Catherine. If this - going out to a nightclub with a friend that wasn’t Larsen’s friend - was the first on my list of new experiences, a step forward into my new life, I didn’t want to fail at the first hurdle. Besides it would come across as a slight on her company. More than that, I just couldn’t say it out loud that I had made a mistake in letting him go. Because that would make it true.

  “I can't believe we're doing this,” I yelled, downing the remains of my third gin and tonic.

  Catherine didn't answer. I looked round and realised she was asleep.

  A young guy appeared next to me. He must have been all but twenty. He mouthed something at me and raised his eyebrows.

  “What did you say?” I hoped he wasn't asking me to dance.

  “Do you want to dance?” he leaned forward and shouted into my ear, nearly bursting my eardrum.

  “I can't.” I looked up at him, apologetically. He seemed nice enough, in a gangly kind of way, but I suddenly felt panicky. I didn't want to lead him on.