He wants to say more but he doesn’t. ‘That’s fine. I’ll be back in ten minutes.’
I’m left alone until Matt returns. I don’t cry actually, just stare at the sky quite a lot, trying to remember what overcast feels like, what needing a cardigan feels like, what sanity feels like.
We hug when he gets back. I thank him again. Then I slouch my way to the Tube and back to the flat that I left not so very long ago and lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling again.
It’s time to get ready for Joshua. I peeled off my work clothes the moment I got in, so I collect them off the floor and step back into them. I check my phone. There’s an email from Chrissy, reminding me of the upcoming hen do.
‘You can fuck right off you smug, fucking prat,’ I find myself saying out loud, and then laughing hysterically.
I email back. ‘Can’t wait!!!’
I get back on the Tube. I practise smiling like I might mean it. I imagine a different day from this day, and wonder what Gretel would’ve done. ‘Isn’t this weather the best?’ she would say. ‘I had lunch out in the park. It was lush.’ I get off at Leicester Square and fight my way through the sweaty throngs of tourists who don’t know where to go or how to find out, weaving through them with the directional arrogance of a seasoned Londoner. I dodge past the M&M’s shop and wonder why and how it is a) allowed, and b) so popular. I see Joshua waiting for me outside the cinema, and enjoy watching him for a moment in screensaver mode. An anonymous face in this city too full of anonymous faces. He looks up and spots my face. A grin splinters his in two. He is genuinely happy to see her. He cannot hide that at all. I walk forward, smiling back. We meet. We kiss. He slings an arm over my shoulder, and steers me towards the entrance.
‘I’ve been dreaming about this all day …’ he starts, leaning over to kiss my neck. ‘The air con, I mean.’
‘You’re hilarious.’
‘You know that’s not the only reason.’
We kiss again and cause a little bit of a blockage on the packed pavements. I push him away like I don’t want to push him away. ‘Air con. Now.’
‘Whatever you want, O Demanding One.’
‘Not demanding. Just hot.’
He kisses my face. ‘So, did you have a good day at work?’ he asks, just as we push through the double doors and have our skin erupt into welcome goosebumps.
‘Today?’ I ask. ‘Oh yeah, it was great. I had lunch in the park. It was lush.’
The Top 5 Most Common Lies I’ve Told Men
1) ‘I’m fine.’
2) ‘I don’t mind.’
3) ‘That’s fine.’
4) ‘Oh, I hadn’t even thought about it.’
5) ‘Yeah, of course I did.’
Carol has her special voice on. Her soft as a feather dipped in three-minute miracle voice. Her ‘I’m here for you’ voice. Her ‘you can tell me’ voice. It’s quite hard to hear above all the fans whirring around us, fruitlessly combating the heat.
‘What was that?’
‘I said, how are you feeling today, April?’
I cross my arms. ‘I think we both know I’m not feeling great. This wasn’t a scheduled supervision, was it?’ It’s not like me to be so spiky. But I’m not really sure who me is any more. Not so very long ago, I used to be hopeful and optimistic, a tad dramatic but in a cute, jolly way. Now I’m apparently a psychopathic compulsive liar who can’t stop crying.
‘Do you want to talk to me about what happened yesterday?’
I shrug into the wind of the fans. ‘I just couldn’t take it any more.’
‘Take what?’
Seriously, it’s like she’s put her vocal cords into the wash with extra-strength fabric conditioner. It makes me feel as fragile as thin glass. Like I need to be handled with special cotton gloves. ‘I’m so bored of pretending,’ I say. ‘How are any of us making it through each day without screaming? Do you not think that’s a miracle? Don’t you just want to scream and scream until your voice is gone?’
She makes a note. ‘It sounds like you are dealing with some very strong emotions right now.’
‘Aren’t you?’ I stare right at her.
She doesn’t take the bait. ‘April,’ she says, kindly. ‘In our last session we talked about your mental capacity to handle this role, and I suggested the strain may be too much. After yesterday’s indiscretion, what are your reflections?’
‘I know you’re going to take me off shift,’ I reply. ‘Let’s not pretend I have any autonomy.’
She leans forward. ‘April, I’m not here to decide what happens about your role. That’s between you and your CEO. I’m here to see if you’re all right, because, from the sound of things, you’re not all right.’
I start laughing in a witchy cackle until my throat closes up. Then a rush of sadness crashes over me. It hurts to talk. ‘I think I’m going crazy,’ I get out. ‘It’s not just work,’ I tell her. ‘I’m dating a man and I’m pretending to be a totally different person. I’m pretending my name is Gretel. It’s totally out of hand and fucking nuts and yet I’m still doing it. I don’t know why.’ And, under the breeze of half a dozen fans, all the things I’ve been doing spill out. From the messages with Joshua, to the first date, to the having sex and the giant flashback, to last night and pretending it’s all fine going to the cinema, and even sleeping with him again, despite the fact my whole life has disintegrated. Carol’s nodding and putting on her listening face, but you can tell she’s excited by what I’ve just said.
‘I don’t feel like any of my life is mine right now, does that make sense?’ I tell her. ‘So it doesn’t matter that I’m lying to some dude about who I am, or calling out rapists at work. It doesn’t seem real.’
Carol puts her biro down and looks genuinely sorry for me. Which I wasn’t expecting at all. More a telling-off lecture about why being a psychotic catfishing liar isn’t appropriate. ‘When you were assaulted,’ she says, ‘part of you was taken from you, totally without your permission.’ I sniff and clumsily try to push a tear back with the back of my hand. ‘Some disassociation is to be expected if you’ve not had much treatment. April, do you really think you’ve properly processed what happened to you?’
‘It’s in the past, I can’t change it,’ I say. ‘There’s nothing I can do. I just want to move on and be happy.’
How do you process what happens to you when that happens to you? Is it even possible? I changed the day Ryan did that to me, and I can’t go back to before. I left him, and I wrote about it in my diary, and I got my body working again, and I wouldn’t let him win, and yadda yadda yadda, heal heal heal, fight fight fight, survive survive survive, don’t let it define you, embrace the scar, use it to make you stronger, wank wank fucking wank. I’d just rather not have been fucking raped by my abusive boyfriend in the first place, ta very much.
Carol passes me a tissue as I keep sniffing. ‘I just feel all these emotions all the time,’ I tell her, through a tight throat. ‘I wake up and it’s there, like a giant ball of energy spitting into my face, and I don’t know what to do with it so I just keep pushing it away. It’s not like I’m in denial about what happened. But I can’t cry all day every day, even though I want to. It’s not realistic. I don’t know how to make all these emotions go away …’