Exciting Times(24)

When I closed shop with Joan before seeing the third play, she asked what I was up to. I said: off to the theatre. Joan’s face said: I’m clearly paying you too much, and Joan’s mouth said: enjoy.

*

My days off were Sunday and Monday. In the staffroom I complained with everyone else that working on Saturdays was killing my social life, but I didn’t have one. That was fine. I liked having space to think. Besides, the rush-hour train served for company. I settled in under a man’s armpit, felt the stud of a woman’s handbag digging into me, and thought: I am a part of something.

Weekends were harder. The flat was louder without Julian. The taps dripped like waterboards, and the neighbours argued next door. Some mornings I didn’t leave the bed because then I’d have to brush my teeth, followed by a series of actions that amounted to living my life as the person I was. I was unable to drum up positivity about either dental hygiene or the rest of my day, so I told myself I was disgusting and lazy and I’d be late and they’d fire me, and then I got up. If you were really sick you couldn’t just harness your self-loathing like that, so I knew I was fine. And Edith was becoming something to look forward to.





19

The Sunday after my third theatre date with Edith, I went to see Miles at his flat in Kennedy Town. Julian had asked me to. I suspected he wanted to make sure I was getting out of the flat, since he’d never gone much himself. But it would have been childish to tell him I knew what he was up to.

The main room in Miles’s flat was painted mustard and stuffed with clashing furniture. For an academic’s home, there weren’t many books. I guessed from the Kindle on the table that he was moving with the times.

We talked about his university, and then how it compared to where I’d gone. Miles said Julian had told him I’d got a ‘very good first indeed’, and asked if I’d thought about academia.

‘It seems interesting,’ I said, ‘but I don’t know what I’d write about.’

I couldn’t tell if Miles was quoting or paraphrasing the ‘very–indeed’ construction. Julian sometimes went sarcastically antiquated, which showed he meant what he was saying or he wouldn’t bother sounding like he didn’t. Miles, though, might say ‘very–indeed’ quite naturally. My degree was a fact, being a number, and Julian’s opinion couldn’t change its value. But I often thought about things that were silly to think about.

‘Is your book going well?’ I said.

‘No,’ Miles said, ‘but it’s never going well.’

He asked if Sudoku interested me and said he had a book of puzzles if it did. We played in silence. Soon I got bored and sharpened his pencils. He kept them in a box on the table.

‘You’re a gem,’ he said. ‘Julian’s done well for himself.’

It was the most explicitly Miles had ever alluded to the relationship. I felt short-changed that my lead-whittling abilities had triggered this acknowledgement.

Then I wondered if I’d really just come to add texture to dinner with Florence – to see if Miles mentioned anything about her taste in decor, for instance. This seemed depressing if true. If I was stockpiling curlicues for Florence evenings while doing nothing to improve my real situation, it would mean I cared more about my interior life than the tangible one. Julian didn’t daydream, and thus was off in London with a real job while I was a TEFL waster – though he read so much that maybe he did have an imagination and was just better at controlling it. I’d never know if other people were as graphic as me in their daydreams and we all just pretended we weren’t. I’d once googled ‘what do serial killers think about’. There was surprisingly little overlap, but I hid my thoughts anyway. The more I imagined things, the more personal they felt.

‘It can be challenging making friends when you’ve first moved here,’ Miles said, snapping me out of it. ‘A lot of my exchange students find it quite isolating.’

‘I have one or two,’ I said. I thought: one here, one there. The word ‘friend’ did Herculean work in terms of describing me and Julian. And now I had another friend.

*

A new class of ten-year-olds started on Tuesday. To break the ice, I asked why they wanted to learn English. They looked at each other across a room so small they could barely pull out the chairs, and seemed unsure that the premise held.

Lydia Tam introduced herself, then said, ‘My Chinese name is –’ before another girl dug her in the ribs and said she couldn’t give it here. Their motives for studying English were, from most to least commonly cited: school, travel, to watch movies, and to talk to me. This last was from Denise Chan, a lick-arse, but you couldn’t call your students that.

Next came Fergus Wong, who wanted to learn English because everything had an English name as well as a Cantonese one.

‘You’re crazy,’ said Denise. This seemed to be what Hongkongese ten-year-olds said to someone when they didn’t understand what they meant.

I hated wielding authority. The kids could tell that, and responded poorly whenever I tried. So I let them talk, and thought: Edith Zhang, Zhang Mei Ling, Edith Zhang Mei Ling. I said the words to myself like I was unwrapping something.





20

April

When Julian had been gone just over a month, Edith and I went to Cinema City JP on Paterson Street. The movie was dubbed badly in Cantonese. We knew what would happen before the opening credits. Edith liked that: formulaic plots were easier to follow while she edited documents on her iPad. We sat away from everyone else, the film started, and her keyboard clacked like chattering teeth. She didn’t tell me how much her firm paid her, but I guessed it was a lot.