SHE’D LEFT HER PHONE in the living room because it was charging. The only free plug was next to Fiona’s chair but that didn’t matter because she was only going to be gone for a minute. The battery was so low because she’d spent the last hour watching online videos, the perfect lesson in procrastination.
She had one essay left to complete, only two hundred words to go. But it had felt like every assignment had throughout her degree. She began each piece of work like a mountain climber, slowly and steadily edging her way up the lower slopes. But there was this invisible elastic band tied to her waist as she climbed. It was slack at first, making the going all too easy. But the longer she worked, the higher she climbed, the tighter it got until by the time she could see the peak, she was at a complete standstill, every word a struggle, every paragraph requiring longer and longer breaks to catch her breath before she could try again, the band threatening to wrench her backwards the entire time.
The only thing that kept her from throwing the laptop out of the window was knowing that once this essay was done, she’d never have to write another one ever again. Sure this was a dissertation, not just an essay, not just an assignment. That was another tightening of the band around her waist, tugging her back. Knowing it was twenty percent of her final grade was another tightening. Then there was the fact that if she failed this, all the hard work of the last three years would be for nought, her chance of a first would vanish like Fiona did whenever the washing up needed doing.
Her laptop sat on the side of the sofa, open, blinking vertical line ready for her to start typing, to get the thing finished, to tidy up the formatting, submit it, get it done.
She still had a fortnight to go until the final deadline. It should have been easy. Two hundred words in fourteen days. She had done the maths. That was fourteen words a day. But she didn’t see it as easy. It was like looking at the sun, it was too bright to stare at, she had to glance at it from side angles with her eyes half closed. Because whenever she tried to look directly at it, she got the horrible feeling that the whole thing needed rewriting. And she did not have time for that. Because 20,000 words redone in a fortnight from scratch was a hell of a lot more than fourteen words a day.
She headed to the bathroom without looking at the laptop. The lounge didn’t connect directly to the bathroom. First she had to pass through the kitchen, wincing at the cold of the tiles on her feet. No matter how hot the house got, and it got far too hot in the heat of July, the chipped kitchen floor remained barely above freezing. Unlike the fridge which never got anywhere near freezing, the motor at the back groaning as she passed it, struggling in the heat as much as she did. She knew for a fact her wine would be warming up in there. The chicken should probably be thrown too. In fact, maybe it was time to defrost the thing, see if that helped.
Later, she told herself. There’s a thousand things that she had managed to ignore all year that suddenly seemed more urgent than finishing the essay. The blinds needed the flecks of mould cleaning off them, the sink needed regrouting, she could do that. The dripping tap. She could look up an online video and learn how to do it. The ukulele Fiona got her for Christmas. When had she last tried to learn a tune on it?
She paused by the fridge, ignoring the noise of it, looking closely at one of the photos, the one stuck on with two magnets. The magnets were memories in themselves, one of Cornwall, the last holiday she took with Fiona, back during the Easter break. It showed the chimney of Botallock Tin Mine next to a few strokes of blue meant to represent the sea. Someone in China had sat and painted hundreds of those a day without ever seeing the place in person. It was a strange thought.
The other magnet was a pineapple, another present from Fiona, this one to congratulate her on passing her first year, a pointed reference to their friendship and to her knowledge of Holly’s love of Spongebob Squarepants, a love that extended to the pyjamas she was wearing, the pyjamas she’d practically lived in for the last three days while she’d been trying to force herself to get the essay done.
No going out, not even for food. Just concentrate on the work. Get it finished. Don’t think about needing to rewrite the whole thing. Go to the bathroom and then get back to it.
The other photos were of nights out at uni, groups of laughing drunken faces, the time she’d danced on that podium, refusing to believe it until the evidence was in front of her on 6 by 4 matt paper, printed out for the world to see.
She looked at the photo attached by the magnets. Her family, her at the back scowling. She knew when it was taken without reading the writing on the reverse side. 1995. She was nine, unhappy at being photographed, wanting to get on with playing in the river behind her. She was halfway through building an enclosed pool to try and hold in the tadpoles that were being swept away by the current. She could still remember the photo being taken. Her father putting the timer on the camera, pre digital, not wanting to waste film, yelling at her to come quickly. Counting down the seconds.
There was her dad, more hair than he had now, fewer wrinkles, the smile the same, the eyes looking tired. It was the last day of the trip and when they got back, he’d tell them he was moving. Maybe that was why her mum looked strained in her joy, her eyes narrowed, though she always said it was because of the sun shining in her face when the photo was taken.
Looking at the photo was like looking at her laptop with the essay waiting to be finished. It was too bright to look at it for long. Do that and she felt a sense of unrealistic nostalgia, a yearning for a past that never really existed, a past where her biggest responsibility was in choosing which cereal to have for breakfast. Be like her mum and have muesli or be like her dad and have whatever sugary chocotastic box he’d brought home that week.
Was she more like her mum or her dad? She had her mother’s eyes. Above them was her father’s unmanageable hair, fine and prone to falling out if she brushed it too hard. Stop it, she told herself, walking away from the fridge with conviction. She could do all the thinking she wanted in a fortnight. Get the essay done first.
When she was finished in the bathroom, she washed her hands, the smell of lavender rising from the bottle on the edge of the sink, still lingering on her fingertips when she returned to the lounge.
“You’re so easily distracted,” Fiona had said to her more than once. “You’re like a little kid.”
She blew a raspberry every time, one more private joke amongst all the others that the two of them had, the shared secrets of a friendship that she worried might not last beyond graduation. Fiona had already said she would have to go back to Berwick, where her family lived. Sure, it was reachable in a day trip but could that compare to living across the landing from each other? A single knock away from a conversation at any time of night or day? She couldn’t do that with Fiona in Berwick and her in York.
Holly shook her head as she walked into the lounge. It was just like her to get distracted by thinking about how easily she was distracted. She saw Fiona holding her phone, looking guilty.
Why does she have my phone? Holly thought.
A minute later she had her phone back, the laptop still open, easy to ignore as she listened to Fiona explaining how Match Up worked.
“So you can change the settings but it’s linked to your online stuff.”
“Where did you get these photos of me?”
“Off my Facebook profile, you tagged me in them, remember?”
Holly looked down at the first image of herself. She did look kind of pretty in that one, her hair hidden by the straw hat she was wearing. She flicked to the next. Rowing on the river. “Lucky you didn’t use the one where I fell in.”
“I thought about it but we might find some drowning fetishist and you know what that would mean?”
Holly shrugged. “No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“You’d sink into his arms.”
“Ouch.”
“You love me really.”
“Despite the quality of your jokes.”
“It’s because of them, be honest.”
Holly had already forgotten about the essay. She’d moved down to her profile, reading things about herself that she would never have written.
“I’m up for trying anything once? I love doing new things? I’m a vixen in the sack? Tell me people haven’t been seeing all this. Oh my God, Fi. I like being tied down. You didn’t.”
Fiona nodded. “Trust me, this is how to do it.”
“But all we’ll get are perverts who are only after one thing.”
“How many have you got?”
“You know what I mean. I don’t just want some guy who wants to make me a notch on his bedpost.”
“That’s the beauty of the internet. We weed out the ones who are clearly mental, or still live with their mothers.”
“Didn’t your last one live with his mum?”
“That’s not the point. The point is you write that to get interest, then you narrow them down until you pick one to meet. Or more than one if you’re so inclined.”
“I’ve never been kissed, Fi. I don’t think I’m quite ready for a threesome just yet.”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant you could see a few people at the same time, see who you like the most. Look, pass it here.”
She moved from her chair to sit next to Holly on the sofa, curling her legs under her, taking the phone and holding it so they could both see the screen.
“What are you doing?”
“I’ve already picked a few possibles for you. See, if you press here, it brings up the ones you’ve said yes to.”
“What does saying yes mean?”
“It means they can send you messages. Richie, aged twenty-five. “Hi, want to see my cock? Okay, so we can delete him.”
“Are you sure? He sounds like perfect marriage material. Tell me that little paperclip doesn’t mean he’s sent a picture.”
Fiona nodded. “You’ll get that from some of them. Just delete them.”
“Well, hold on. There’s no harm in having a little look, is there?”
“You dark horse!” Fiona giggled as she pressed open and the screen filled with an image that made them both wince.
“That’s not pleasant,” Holly said. “I take it back, delete him, block him, send him to the seventh circle of internet hell.”
“It’s done, it’s done,” Fiona said, swiping at the screen. “He’s gone.”
“It bent in the middle, did you notice it bent in the middle?”
“I was too busy worrying about the colour. Who takes a photo of their genitalia and then diligently chooses which filter to apply?”
“Richie does, apparently.”
The next man was more polite. He’d asked how she was. “What do I put?” Holly asked but Fiona had already deleted him. “What did you do that for?”
“A few rules to live by, Hols. If they can’t think of a good opening line, they’re not worth your time. You’ll get a million of them saying hey, how are you? How are you is the dull person’s mantra. You want someone with a bit of life to them, a bit of spark. Like this guy” A notification popped onto the screen, the app vanishing as MUM appeared in its place in big green letters, taking the place of the image Holly had just seen, the image of a guy who looked pretty good. Under his photo the message symbol had been flashing. She would have hit it to open and read but that would have to wait.
“I better take it,” Holly said, grabbing the phone and hitting answer. “Hi, Mum, how are you?”