to nothing with no one but Iain, and this could be exposed at any second. I’d sometimes manage to arrange phone interviews for 9 a.m. on Mondays, so I could block out their weekend lives and avoid their social and creative endeavours showing up my dead existence. If anyone got to ask me The Monday Morning Question, I’d recently taken to out-and-out lying, telling the interns, ‘We caught up with some old friends.’
That Monday, my anxiety was soaring when I caught the glow of a taxi’s light far up the road. I watched it furtively at first, until I realised I was the only one inching towards the edge of the pavement to hail it. Of course, none of the bus stop lot had the money for a black cab. No money, but plenty of time. Their lives were rich with activities and all the time they had to do them: arts, crafts, queuing for artisan toast, curating photographic records of their fizzy lives on social media and generally being creatively incontinent. I felt the hum of self-belief and productivity whenever I was around younger adults and it left me feeling singed.
I double-checked behind me for any would-be competitors for my cab. I saw you.
You were something quite different.
You had their air of creative confidence, the one I could only assume comes from parents who cheerlead your every trifling achievement, but you seemed to carry a hunger about you too; some neediness in your eyes. Out of nowhere, I got the sense you were a young person with whom I might possibly have some common ground.
Because unlike the others, you seemed like you were bothered by being late for work. Less like them, more like me. Such an odd sense of time and age I felt you emit: undeniably as young as them, but somehow seeming older and more desperate, like me, all at once. And do you remember, you wore that tiny leather skirt? I have one just like it and I used to wear it to work too. Your skin was as pale as mine, but fully taut and shimmering, except for a dirty stripe of oil on the right side of your forehead. I couldn’t take my eyes off you. You were like looking into a mirror, or more like a window into a different time in my life, not long past, but just out of reach. I wanted to know more about you, to see if you really could be anything like me. When the taxi began to pull over, I began to wonder if I should invite you to share it.
I glanced back at you again. A finger on your left hand fiddled with the string tag on the yellow laptop case you held against the front of your thighs. You switched your weight from hip to hip and occasionally flicked the nails of your right thumb and index finger under your chin. I took the door handle and turned around to take you in one last time, before the ebb and flow of a London day separated our paths. A thought needled its way to the front of my mind: your face would return to me throughout the day and I’d have to exorcise you by telling Iain over dinner about The Girl I Saw at the Bus Stop Who Reminded Me of The Old Me.
But you were watching me.
As you looked over, you bit your bottom lip, painted hot orange like the sunrise in summertime, and flicked your nails against your skin again before moving your black eyes off me to the non-existent bus on the horizon.
I could let you in to my cab, but I wondered what we would possibly talk about. Or maybe you’d just sink into your phone, like people your age do, and I wouldn’t get to talk to you at all. And how would you pay your way? People like you never have cash on them, so would I give you my bank details so you could transfer your share of the fare? Was that wise? Was that cool? Wasn’t there an app for that, one I’d be embarrassed to say I haven’t downloaded or even heard of yet? Or would you ask to meet me somewhere at lunchtime to give me my twenty quid? Would we then end up having a burger? Find ourselves talking for ages?
Go on, girl, you show ’em what us old ravers are made of, I could hear Iain say.
No.
No, I should leave it.
I didn’t need to over-complicate what was already shaping up to be another day I’d want to forget. I opened the taxi door and readied myself to leave you on the pavement, but suddenly you were there, right behind me.
You made me jump.
‘Hi there, you must be heading south? Mind if I get in?’ When you spoke to me, your mouth split to reveal the most fantastic teeth.
‘Yes. I mean, I’m heading to Borough, but—’
‘Perfect. Me too. Wait a sec, sorry, I’ve just realised, I literally don’t have any cash.’
Behind you I saw the bearded and big-haired gaggle were agog that you’d thought of hitching a ride and they hadn’t. If I refused you, I feared a group of them would initiate some kind of collective action, gathering their grubby coins together in a bid to get in.
‘It’s fine, just get in.’ One of you had to be better than three or four.
‘Is that alright? You’re absolutely sure?’
You gained and double-checked my consent. It was a technique you would use again and again on me when I didn’t understand what I was agreeing to. One of your many gifts.
‘Sure.’
I obediently slid over to the far seat to make room for you. You bent low to get in, your head suddenly so close to mine I could smell you’d just washed your hair. It was still wet at the roots, cooling the blood in your scalp. I was about to tell the cabbie where to go, but your youthful scent made me falter.
‘Borough, please. I’d avoid Old Street if I were you. Dalston then Gracechurch?’ you said. Smiling, you waved your phone in my direction. ‘Good for you? I’ve just seen there’s a burst water main near City Road. I mean, if you’d rather go your way?’
I saw your screen was blank.
I looked to the driver for some response, but was distracted by the faint reflection on the glass screen in front of me: a decidedly middle-aged woman, short ink-black hair framing a smudgy face. I was struggling to recognise myself again. I hadn’t admitted to Iain yet, but in the build-up to that day, I could feel my illness creeping back with its full force, exactly how it had when the last crash happened fifteen months ago.
An extended Christmas break, followed by six weeks pockmarked by regular sick days, followed by my GP signing me off work as a beige cloud surrounded me, washing the colour out of everything. Recently, that familiar filter of dread which had only recently lifted felt like it was on the descent again. If I went back to my GP, I suspected he’d want to put me back on my antidepressants again. But Citalopram had given me weeks of terrible side effects so that I suddenly needed help to achieve even the basic requirements of life: eating, concentrating, remembering both what had happened that day and things I’d done years ago. I felt sleepy constantly, primally drawn to dark rooms, my bed or under a blanket on my sofa, like an old animal looking for a quiet place to die. Eventually, getting to work became impossible and the pills made all of it worse, with a mouth like cotton wool and a supressed sex drive to boot. My GP said I’d only need to take it for a few months to ‘jump start myself again’. My former masters at work were understanding, and anyway, they were too distracted by finding a buyer for the struggling business at that point. I doubted whether the new owners would be so sympathetic, or their attentions as diverted.
When Christmas rolled around again last year, I’d been off for nearly ten months. I knew I had to bed myself back in before the new team took over. I had to persuade them and anyone else who was looking that I was back to ‘normal’. By January I’d come off my pills and was back at work, but in my heart, I knew I hadn’t been ‘fixed’. The beige cloud was lying in wait to blow in again; I could see the faint shape of it growing larger on the horizon the day I met you.
Lily, when you came along you were like a flash of hot pink, cleaving through the paper bag tone threatening to take over my world again. I think this is why it was so easy for you to do what you did. If you ever flattered yourself by thinking for one moment you’d sent me to rock bottom all by yourself, you really have no idea what state my life was already in.
I knew the route to Borough you’d suggested would add at least ten minutes to my journey to work, meaning I had no chance of making my first meeting with