Nothing to do with us
‘Oh wow,’ Millie breathed as she took in the crowded conference hall. Her poster was up in the centre of the presentation area and had gathered a fair amount of interest already. The organisers had eventually relented: allowing Millie to just present a poster and not give a talk to the large auditorium. With a poster all you had to do was prepare an A3 sized presentation outlining your findings and their implications. The only problem was that they wanted Millie to stand next to her poster with Anwar and field questions about it from interested conferences-goers and the judges. This particular conference was at the Royal College of Surgeons and it was a big deal. A very big deal.
‘Hey,’ Pav said gently, taking her hand and giving it a squeeze. ‘You’ll be fine. You only have to stand up with it for half an hour, and Anwar’ll be with you the whole time.’ She directed a weak smile at him and gave a brief nod whilst her stomach turned over dangerously.
‘Just concentrate on the techniques we talked about, Millie,’ Anwar put in, shifting next to them and adjusting his tie. ‘You’re going to have to take all the questions not related to the actual CBT.’
‘Yo.’ Kira bounced up to them and shoulder-bumped Millie. ‘You cats getting your conference on or not?’ Kira’s smile faded as she took in Millie’s pale face. ‘Hey, what’s up?’
‘I don’t think I can do this,’ Millie muttered.
When she agreed to go to the conference she hadn’t really thought her poster would attract that much attention. She’d been hoping she could just fade into the background and sidle off after a couple of questions. Yes, her confidence was slowly growing over the last few months, but she still had her limits.
She gave Pav’s hand a squeeze back and Kira a weak shoulder-bump in return, thinking how lucky she was to have these people now. A lifetime of being alone had been transformed into a life filled with people who seemed to actually care about her. She was starting to really believe that they liked her. She spent practically every night with Pav, and the nights when she wasn’t with him were taken over by ‘book group’ meetings (this had by and large metamorphosed into cinema trips, pub lock-ins, pole-dancing escapades, regular gay-bar visits). She was so happy … and so completely terrified. What if the bubble burst? What if they grew tired of having the quiet, weird one hanging around?
‘You’ll be fine, Prof,’ Kira told her. ‘Just stay focused on the info. You’re great with facts and stats.’
Millie nodded and took a deep breath just as Libby approached with Jamie.
‘You good to go, honey?’ Jamie asked after he’d given her a kiss on the cheek and Libby had hugged her quickly. Millie swallowed. They were all there for her. They’d all come to support her. She owed it to them to at least try to be normal, to at least try to push past her limits.
‘Okay, okay,’ she whispered, taking a step towards the poster area. She felt a strong hand on the back, guiding her forward, and managed a few more steps before she froze. ‘I … I can’t …’ She trailed off and her throat closed over. Her only thought now was escape, but as she turned to leave the hand on her back became an arm around her middle.
‘Millie,’ Pav gritted out, the patience in his tone from before now giving way to obvious frustration. ‘Come on. I’ll stay with you. It’s only a couple of questions.’
The crowd around her poster was swelling. All the other presentations were being abandoned now for hers. She tried to pull away but he wouldn’t let her go.
‘I know … I just …’
‘Try, baby,’ Pav coaxed, his attempt to gentle his tone coming out forced. ‘Just give it a go. There’s nothing to be worried about. You can do –’
‘I can’t,’ she whispered, pulling back against his arm. That was when his face changed. It was like the mask of calm, patient, easy-going Pav had slipped, revealing a very different man.
‘Please just fu … please can you just try,’ he ground out. Anwar was in a low conversation with Kira and edging towards the poster now. ‘All you have to do is answer a couple of questions. Any normal …’ He stopped himself and looked away for a moment as he took a deep breath. ‘Anyone else in your position would be pleased that their research was stirring so much interest. Some people would kill for the offers you’ve had to present your findings.’
Millie blinked, then stared up into Pav’s angry face. Something was wrong. There was something else at play here, but she couldn’t think what it was. Not when his fury was radiating off him in waves and her panic had her in a vice grip. That was when it happened. A protective mechanism she’d developed in childhood kicked in. She stopped pulling away from Pav; the fear in her face faded until it was a blank mask, and she straightened where she stood.
‘I’ll be all right now,’ she said, her voice devoid of the terror from before, in fact devoid of anything at all. Pav loosened his arm and she stepped back from him. ‘I don’t need you to come with me,’ she told him, shaking his hand off hers. Without looking back at him she walked towards her poster with Anwar in tow. Numbness settled over her as she turned to face the group that had formed around it.
‘I …’ Her throat threatened to close over but she took a deep breath in and started again. ‘I’m Camilla Morrison and I’d be happy to answer any questions.’
There was a long pause and then the barrage began. One gentleman she recognised as the Chairman of the Royal College of Surgeons had a particularly long list of queries. Once she was in the swing of it, Millie found it wasn’t so bad. Technical questions had never really fazed her and there was so much curiosity around the study that there never seemed to be a lull in which she could become nervous. She noticed Pav, Kira, Libby and Jamie out of the corner of her eye, but steadfastly ignored them all. When the questions finally subsided, she realised she’d been fielding them for nearly forty-five minutes. That, she decided, was enough. She made her excuses and slipped away to the nearest bathroom, ignoring Pav, who was calling her name.
*****
‘You okay, love?’
Millie jumped slightly and looked away from her reflection to see a lady in a cleaning uniform behind her with a concerned expression on her face.
‘Yes, yes – fine,’ Millie said. ‘Er … thank you. I’m fine.’
‘It’s just you’ve been staring in that mirror for a good ten minutes without moving a muscle,’ the cleaner told her.
‘Have I?’ Millie blinked and stepped away from the sink.
‘Bad day?’
Millie blinked again, then looked back at her reflection in the mirror. The numbness was lifting. She frowned as she remembered Pav’s tone, his angry words. Something was different. Something didn’t make sense.
‘Yes … yes, you could say that,’ she muttered, giving the concerned woman a brief smile. ‘Thanks for asking though.’ She straightened her shoulders and walked towards the door. Her whole life she’d been restricted by her limits, running away from problems. Well, this time she was going to get some answers. She wasn’t going to run away. Once out in the corridor she collided with Kira.
‘Hey,’ Kira said, steadying Millie with both hands to her upper arms. ‘You okay? Well done out there. That was some sick –’
‘Where’s Pavlos?’
‘I … uh, I think he’s sorting something for tomorrow.’
Pav was giving a big presentation in the main hall tomorrow morning. Millie had been helping him prepare for it for weeks. She knew it off by heart herself. Kira linked her arm through Millie’s. ‘Hey, let’s go and cause some trouble at the bar now you’ve smashed your poster.’
Millie was being led down the hallway when she heard Pav’s voice around the corner. Something niggling at the back of her mind told her to stop, and she came to an abrupt halt.
‘Without my help she wouldn’t even have attended the bloody conference,’ Millie heard him say. ‘So don’t –’
‘Yes, yes, we’re grateful to you for convincing her, but –’ the deep voice of an older man started to say.
‘It was a lot more than just convincing, Duncan. It was a good few months of painstaking coaxing. You’ve no idea the effort my friends and I have put into this. She was totally pathological before we got involved and loosened her up.’
‘Well, I guess she did at least present something,’ the deep voice said. ‘But that doesn’t mean you automatically get twenty minutes to talk. Cut the presentation down. Allow some time for questions.’
‘Look,’ Pav’s voice held all the frustration and anger of earlier. ‘You may have only let me into the presentations because I agreed to get Dr Morrison here, but you have to admit my findings have real merit. I need at least fifteen minutes.’
Millie slowly turned to look at Kira and it was the first time she’d ever seen the other woman anything less than totally at ease. In fact Kira’s face was frozen in horror. Millie tried to take a step back but Kira grabbed both her hands.
‘Listen to me, Millie,’ she said, her voice almost frantic. ‘It wasn’t like that. I mean, okay, at the start Pav wanted us to try to get to know you partly because of the conference, but mostly because he was worried about you. We were all worried about you.’
‘Pathological,’ Millie whispered, looking up to see Pav’s normally tanned face now ashen and staring at her from down the corridor. He must have heard Kira’s voice and come around the corner. Everything made sense to Millie now. Of course these people didn’t really want to be her friends. Of course there was an ulterior motive. How could she have been so stupid?
‘But now,’ Kira moved into Millie’s space, blocking her view of Pav. ‘Now Professor X, you’re our friend. None of that is about this stupid bloody conference. Since when did I give a badger’s arse about Pav’s surgical career.’
‘What’s going on here?’ Libby walked up behind Millie and touched her lightly on the shoulder, but Millie flinched away and took a few steps back.
‘I’m going to go,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t … I’ve got to …’
As she backed away Pav seemed to snap out of his shock and started moving towards her.
‘No,’ he said, his voice hoarse. ‘No, don’t leave. Please, baby, you know that this was never about the bloody conference. You know that, right?’
Millie kept backing away but gave a quick shake of her head. She felt numb again. The pain would come, but now she was numb.
‘Okay, I’ll admit,’ Pav went on, his voice frantic, ‘I wanted you to agree to come here. I wanted to be given that slot. But that has nothing to do with you and me.’ He moved to her and cupped her face in both his hands, leaning his forehead against hers. ‘Are you listening, Millie? That has nothing to do with us.’
Millie stiffened, then put both her hands on his chest and pushed him away, jerking her face away from his hands. She took another few steps back and wrapped her arms around her middle to try and control the shaking.
‘Leave me alone,’ she managed to get out in a hoarse whisper. ‘Just …’ she backed away further ‘… just leave me be.’
As she turned and walked away, Millie realised why she’d lived within her limits before, despite the crippling loneliness. After her childhood, she’d assumed that she’d become used to rejection, become hardened to feelings of loss. But, as she was discovering now, the pain was just as bad as an adult, and if she’d lived within her limits she would never have exposed herself to it.