Chapter Text
Now and again you make complete sense
But most of the time I'm sat here feeling stupid for trying
I do this all the time - Self Esteem
--
“Oh, come on, Lily, can we get a bit of perspective here? How can you not see that you’re massively overreacting?”
Lily Evans snorts, brimming with outrage and dismay. She shoves a ceramic plant pot into the suitcase she’s been rage-filling in a half-crazed stupor for the last thirty minutes. It’ll probably smash before she makes it to wherever her destination is. Usually, she would cushion it by wrapping it carefully in a scarf or a dressing gown, but there isn’t time for any of that because if she stays in this bedroom, suffocating on the stench of their rotten relationship, any longer than she absolutely has to, her lungs will surely pack in for good.
Or worse, she’ll stay forever.
“Overreacting.” She can feel the vein in her forehead dancing around like one of those wacky waving inflatable tube guys on a garage forecourt. She snorts again at the image, then remembers that she’s meant to be apoplectic with rage and consciously turns the corners of her mouth back down into a sneer.
“Overreacting,” she repeats. “Do you know what, Gid? I think you’ll find that I have been underreacting for ten fucking years.” She picks up a balled pair of socks, means to put them in the bag, finds herself launching them at Gideon’s head instead in a move that is both puerile and infinitely more satisfying. Annoyingly, he manages to dodge the improvised projectile, but there’s always the plant pot should things turn really ugly.
“Lily, listen-”
“No!” Her lower lip wobbles but she stands firm, fingers pressed into the soft flesh of her thighs. “No, you skeezy little shit. I have been listening to you. I have listened to you for ten long years. Ten fucking years, Gideon Prewett! Now it’s time for you to close that pretty, dishonest mouth of yours and listen to me.”
Her voice trembles with a mix of fury and fear. She braves a glance at him then; jerks her head up from the suitcase to look her boyfriend in the eye. He’s stretched out on the bed, sprawled lazily across the crumpled sheets, auburn hair falling artfully over his eyes as he fixes her with a disingenuous frown. He’s trying, no doubt, to look irresistible, trying to impress on her the feeling that she is not in her right mind and that this is all just a big misunderstanding.
She spots the purple bloom of a love bite sneaking out above his collar, one she absolutely did not put there, and the shaking of her voice is restored to a calm, assertive purr.
“It’s over, Gid,” she says flatly. “God, it is so fucking over.”
She clutches at a gorgeous silk scarf he brought back for her when he went on a business trip to Bengaluru last November and she wonders, redundantly, whether she’s allowed to like it still; wonders whether he really did spend that trip on his own in a soulless hotel room, or whether he had company; wonders how many times it really happened.
How many times was he with someone else when he was meant to be in a committed and loving relationship with her?
She closes her eyes, sees the perky woman she caught him with, sees her bouncy little breasts and his hands clutched tight around her waist. She is full to the brim with hate and hurt, but even when she searches hard for it, none of the hate is for the perky boobs, or even the woman they’re attached to; every ounce of it is for Gideon. Because she knows, deep down, that it can’t only have happened once, the one time he was unlucky enough to get caught.
She does know.
But for a moment, she looks down at the scarf, at the colours dancing together, that same weft and weave she loved so much yesterday, and she feels like she might not be able to go through with it. She gazes at Gideon as he presses the balls of his hands deep into the sockets of his eyes, as if he’s a real human person who is capable of feeling remorse, or love, or any of the shit that is choking her right now. He lets out a strangled sob and for the first time ever, she finds herself a little bit repulsed by him.
I gave all of myself to you, she thinks, stupidly, uselessly.
She shoves the last of her things into her bag, zips it up and fixes him with a withering glower. “Goodbye, Gid. I’ll come and get the rest tomorrow after work, and you will not be home. Understood?”
She doesn’t wait for a response, spilling out of his flat and blinking up at the streetlights which blur and twinkle in the thick evening drizzle. She’s not entirely sure where to go; this area of Manchester is intimately known to her but that doesn’t translate into having a place where she can stay the night.
It’s typical, really. If she were a morose sort of person, she’d say it’s exactly the sort of thing that has a habit of happening to her: ten years she spent with Gideon Prewett, but it's only been three months since she surrendered her own flat to come and live with him, here, in the vibrant Northern Quarter.
And to make it worse, she had so loved the flat she gave up for him; bijoux but grown up; her first proper adult living space. A home to call her own. She bristles at the thought that somebody else gets to live in it now - she wonders fleetingly whether they’ve managed to fix the leaky tap - while she has no home to speak of at all.
She scolds herself for being melodramatic and continues on her way.
It’s past dinner time and her empty belly gurgles. She pats it amicably and it jiggles in her high rise jeans, just a bit. She ambles to a familiar corner pub, The Witch’s Brew, tugging her wobbly suitcase behind her and wincing at how loud it sounds as it clatters across the cobbles. The pub is the sort of establishment that’s Victorian and beautiful, with turquoise tiles and ceramic lettering bearing the name of a brewery that hasn’t owned the freehold for at least a couple of generations. Even the outside smells like brewer’s yeast. She pauses and lets the acrid smell fill her nostrils like it might help to ground her, to remind her that life goes on and the brewers will just keep brewing no matter the state of her shitty love life.
She pushes the heavy oak door, has to put all her weight behind it, and Linda at the bar greets her with a nod. She’s covered in tattoos and piercings, but she’s a softie if you burrow down deep enough (Lily has made a point of burrowing for years despite significant resistance, and now they’re on first name terms. It’s one of the bigger achievements of her life.)
“What’ll it be, chick?”
“Beer,” she says gravely. “A great big pint of beer, please, Linda.”
“Pints just come in the one size, I’m afraid.” She pulls a pint which foams, then settles, foams then settles. Lily wants to stick her whole face into it. “Rough night?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she shrugs. “I’m sure there are people out there doing much worse. I’ve heard that Amanda Bynes has had a very difficult year.”
She takes the pint, sets up a tab, then makes her way to the second-best table in the pub, nice and far away from the leering old men who like to stare at her breasts as if they’ve never seen a pair of them before; men who like to strike up conversation even when she is putting all her efforts into making her body language as overtly hostile as possible (headphones in, book out, back turned, perma-scowl plastered to her face).
She whips her phone out and rings the person she texted most recently. The person who is almost always the one she texted most recently.
“Alright?” he asks, answering after only half a ring.
“Alright,” she finds herself saying, even though she’s quite a long way off being alright, objectively speaking.
“So?”
“The deed is done. I’m in the Brew and I could use some emotional support please.”
“Roger that,” the voice on the other end is deep and crisp; familiar and reassuring. “Marls and I have been camping out in the Lord Muck for just such an eventuality. We’ll be there in two.”
And then he hangs up, leaving her to stare into her pint, which she suspects contains the last dregs of the barrel because it has an aftertaste that reminds her of an aeroplane toilet. She gulps it down as if it doesn’t.
Her eyelid twitches, as if to illustrate a point about how she hasn’t kept her alcohol consumption within the recommended weekly limits once in living memory, except that time she got salmonella because Remus had taken it upon himself to cook fish curry and she couldn’t even think about beer for a fortnight, let alone hope to keep it down. Or perhaps the little blinky bastard is twitching because of her stress levels (being a twenty-eight-year-old woman will do that to a person), combined with the fact that she can’t recall having eaten anything vaguely green for at least a week and a half.
Thinking about it, she probably has magnesium deficiency. She makes a mental note to buy some cavolo nero from the market, then remembers that she doesn’t have a fridge to put it in.
“Fuck it,” she mumbles aloud. “I’ll have a cheese roll.”
Remus comes in first, and with no airs nor graces about him, gravitates straight to the bar without looking at her. But it’s okay because she knows he knows she’s there. Marlene is right behind him and she slides into the booth next to Lily, humming her greeting. She has a shock of platinum blonde, shoulder length hair, usually worn loose, but tonight scooped back into a tight ponytail, as if she was prepared to roll her sleeves up. As if she was ready to get down and dirty if Lily’s exit had been a bit less clean (it wouldn’t be the first time she had threatened Gideon with violence, but hopefully it’ll be the last).
Lily hums back.
Remus returns, artfully carrying three pints in deft, long fingers and sliding them onto the table.
“I already had one,” Lily protests limply.
“Who said it was for you?” His lip tilts up at the side in his oh-so-Remus way, and he looks pleased when she huffs out a brave little laugh as he shuffles in beside Marlene. He presses his knee to hers under the table and she fights the urge to cry.
She takes the excess pint and he and Marlene sit quietly for the length of time it takes for a bead of condensation to shimmy down the length of her glass and onto the mahogany table, at which point, Marlene seems to decide that enough is enough.
“So,” she says, voice loud and clear as always. She’s the captain of the local rugby team and there’s a clear reason she got the unanimous vote. “Did he cry?”
Lily looks up. “I’m not sure there were actual tears,” she says. “But he did this horrible, creasy thing with his face that made me feel a bit unwell.”
“Ugh. What a vile fucker.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “A massive fucker.” And it feels unimaginably good to say it aloud, so she decides to carry on. “A massive, frightful... fanny... fucker.”
Remus picks that moment to allow himself a full grin. “Wow. I mean, no offence by this, and I’m glad you had that little cathartic moment, but you are quite terrible at insults, Lily. Like, really, really bad.”
“I’m going through considerable heartache. Allow me this one?”
“Of course,” he concedes. “And hey, every cloud has a silver lining, doesn’t it? At least you’re no longer consigned to live a life where you’re destined to become Mrs Frightful Fanny Fucker.”
“Small mercies,” she nods.
“Was he surprised?” Remus asks. “The Fucker?”
“I think not,” she supplies. “But I got the distinct impression he thought he was going to talk me out of it, right up to the point where my hand was on the door.”
“Ugh.”
“How do you feel?” Marlene asks.
“Sad. Betrayed. Vindicated. A little bit peckish.”
“You heard the woman, Linda. Do you have any of those little nibbly nuts?”
“I feel like we’ve done this,” Remus says fondly. “They’re not called nibbly nuts. They’re dry roasted peanuts.”
“Yes, exactly. Some nibbly peanuts please. And a scotch egg for me. One of those big ones with the chilli in. And some mustard for dipping.”
Linda comes over with the snacks and scoops the empty glasses from the table.
Lily flops her head to rest on her folded arms. “I can’t believe I have to look for a flat again.”
“Stay here if you want,” Linda says. “The upstairs flat’s been empty for a month now and I haven’t found anyone suitable. It’s fine up there - you can have a look if you like. Nothing fancy, mind, but the rent is cheap and the water’s nice and hot. It gets a bit loud on a Saturday night but you lot are usually down here till close anyway.”
“Oh,” Lily says softly. “Actually Linda, that would be amazing.”
“Lovely. You’ll be better than the last tenant anyway. Fewer hypodermic needles, I’d imagine."
“Oh yes. I only shoot up as an occasional Saturday treat,” Lily agrees with a smile.
Linda hums, artfully stacking glasses into a wobbly tower. “I’ll need a couple of days to get it ready. Have you somewhere to go in the meantime, love?”
“She can stay with us,” Remus says.
Us is him and his boyfriend Gabriel. They rent an airy flat near the business quarter of the city and they have a neat little spare room that has often hosted her after a night out when she can’t be arsed to get a taxi home. She shoots him a small, grateful smile and he squeezes her hand beneath the table. His hand feels rough; rougher than usual. She takes a moment to study his face and wonders how she missed that his eczema is flaring up, big time. His cheeks are red and angry and his lips cracked. The skin around his jawline looks raw and she can make out scratch marks on his neck where he’s scratched throughout the night.
She squeezes back.
“I can’t believe I’m single. I haven’t been single since I was pretty much a child. I’m not sure I know how to be single.”
“I think the beer is a good start,” Marlene says. “Don’t worry. I’m perpetually single so I can give you lessons. We should go-”
“Don’t say 'out out',” Remus says dryly. “I am too old and sophisticated to go 'out out'.”
“Remus, my love, there is one at this table whose need is greater than your own discomfort. We are going to go out out. I decree it. Lily is going to put on her best enticing little outfit, and she’s going to have sex in a toilet stall with a handsome stranger.”
Lily scrunches her face up. “Gross.”
“I don’t make the rules, Lily. Just make sure he wraps it up and you’ll be fine.” Marlene runs a perfectly manicured finger along her jaw, thoughts almost audible as she frowns thoughtfully. “Besides, we all know that you are no stranger to toilet sex. Isn’t that how Lideon became a thing in the first place?”
“We didn’t have sex that night,” Lily corrects. “At least not... you know, full sex. There was a bit of under the trouser action and then I sort of attempted to give him a blow job but I’m not sure it was great, given that I’d learned everything from this book my mum gave me when I hit puberty.”
“You’re in an emotionally fragile place,” Marlene says slowly. “So my gift to you is not going into a rant about how penetrative sex isn’t the only thing that counts as sex. Or how if that really is the only thing that counts as sex, I am still a massive virgin even though I’ve had more willing partners in my chambers than I’ve had takeaways. You're both welcome, by the way. But my point still stands. You’re no stranger to a bit of bathroom action. Toilet brush poking into your bottom, that sort of thing.”
“Stop, please. Just thinking of the things I let him do to me is making me feel a little bit sick.”
“For ten years,” Remus chips in, entirely unhelpfully.
“For ten years,” Lily repeats, and then she bursts into tears, fuelled by three pints and an intense wave of disbelief. Remus awkwardly strokes her on the back and it feels lovely. She’s not sure how he always does that. He just has a way.
“I think the worst thing,” she gasps through a new wave of tears. “Is that I can’t undo all the years I invested in him. It’s that sunk cost fallacy thing, isn’t it? We were too far gone and I figured I’d stand to lose so much. I think that’s why I held off on breaking up with him for so long. Because then it would all be a big fat waste.” She wipes her snotty nose on the sleeve of her jumper and they are kind enough to let it slide. “And I knew that all those times I was fucking angelic when people hit on me would all be for nothing. All those years where I had a body like a tall fucking Salma Hayek." She runs out of steam, starts to talk more quietly, almost to herself. "And when I thought that he and I had a future, I was perfectly okay with the sacrifice. But now... God, it feels like it’s all for nothing.”
“Not for nothing,” Remus says, and it feels like he’s speaking from personal experience. “Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but you didn’t know he was a cheating scumbag who couldn’t keep it in his pants. At least this way, you emerge with a clear conscience. At least this way, all of the blame rests with him.”
“Yeah,” Lily says glumly, taking a big sip. “But now I feel like I need to start again. And learn how to be without him after all this time. And even through all my red hot rage, that’s pretty hard.”
“Yeah,” Marlene and Remus say together. And then they go to the bar for tequila shots because there’s not much else for it, even though it’s a Wednesday and all three of them are pretending that they don’t have to worry about the inevitably painful consequences tomorrow will usher in.
“I love his mum,” Lily moans when they come back. “I’m never going to see her again. God, that’s fucking shit, actually. I think she liked me more than she liked him. But now she’s just gone! Out of my life, like we didn’t spend ten years between us making her son just a little bit less of a prick.”
She does a shot and pulls a face like death. It doesn’t stop her.
“And all his friends! Fabian! All the guys who were my friends too. He just gets custody because he knew them first, like I wasn’t their confidante, like I wasn’t their fucking sounding board for years. I feel like nobody tells you about all the collateral loss you go through when you break up with someone you’ve been with for a long time, even if they are the world’s biggest knob-head.”
“Hear hear!" Marlene laughs. "And yet?” she ventures, and Lily isn’t sure what she means at first, but it gets her thinking.
“And yet, I’m cautiously excited,” she says with a half smile, a little afraid of admitting it. A little afraid of how vast and terrifying life feels now that she’s shed the man who told her repeatedly through his words and tiny actions that her life was a small and insignificant thing.
Marlene looks at her proudly. “Good. I think a lot of this is about understanding your own worth. And it won’t help if we tell you that you’re worth the world, but it's true, for the record.”
“We think your best years are ahead of you,” Remus adds.
“Yes! And, speaking as a passive bystander who loves every single bit of you, you are not exactly over the hill. Honestly, Lily, you’re fucking gorgeous and funny and you make the best cheese on toast I’ve ever tried. It’s about time you found someone who makes you feel properly marvellous.”
Remus says nothing to that but he pats her on the shoulder and heads back to the bar, supporting in the way he knows how; through the silent supply of bad alcohol.
--
Lily is running late. Which is nothing new. Lily runs late rather often; she’s known for it among her group of friends, who often lie about the time they plan to meet, skew the schedule so that when she arrives half-an-hour late, she’s actually on time.
It’s not that she doesn’t want to be punctual. Honestly. She tells Remus all the time and he does that thing where he cocks his eyebrow, not believing her for a second. But there are just so many things to distract that make leaving the house all that much harder: the herculean task of finding matching socks, carefully pulling mascara clumps from her lashes, remembering where in the name of Godric’s arse she put the car keys.
It’s all hard.
She leaves her temporary dwelling (made much nicer by the addition of a new duvet cover and a couple of throws), drives too quickly and turns the radio up too high. Hail pings off the windscreen to serve as a reminder that winter is coming, but no matter. Nothing will come between her and her reproductive health, certainly not a bit of shitty weather and decidedly mismatched socks.
She struggles to find a parking space and ends up dumping her little Renault Twingo in a side road nearly a kilometre from the doctors surgery, ends up running there in an odd little trot, doesn’t have the fitness for it, and by the time she’s hurtling through the double doors, her usually pale skin is a blotchy, mottled red, her shirt plastered to her back with sweat.
The interactive check-in kiosk is broken, so she joins the lengthy queue for the reception desk and tries to breathe less loudly as her heart threatens to break cleanly out of her chest. She checks her watch, by now distinctly irritated. There are five minutes till her appointment. Five minutes till she needs to drop trou in front of a perfect stranger. But it’s- fine.
The queue moves agonisingly slowly. And by the time the woman in front of her - Hilda from Green Street - has finished, she’s definitely late.
The receptionist looks at her with thinly-veiled contempt. “Yes?”
“Oh. Yes, hello there. I have an appointment for-” she looks around conspiratorially and lowers her voice to a whisper. “For a cervical screening.”
The receptionist, nonplussed, takes her details and looks up, distinctly unimpressed. “You’re late.”
“Yes,” Lily agrees. “Yes, well the thing is, I was on time. Except, your kiosk was broken.” She curls her hands into loose fists and tries to ignore the incessant twitching of her eye. “Had the kiosk not been broken, I would have been-” she finds herself withering under the other woman’s glare. “On time,” she croaks, suitably abashed.
“The recommendation is that you arrive fifteen minutes early, Ms Evans. Take a seat upstairs, please.”
Feeling about as big as a dormouse, Lily makes her way up the stairs and perches awkwardly between two elderly ladies with perms.
Happily, the nurse calls her in pretty quickly, and before she knows it, she’s shed her pants and her legs are parted unglamorously, a thin sheet of paper protecting her dignity (although she’s not sure what the point is, given that she and the nurse are about to get very intimately acquainted indeed).
“Are you sexually active?” the nurse asks, tilting her head.
“Right now?” Lily feels a little called out. “Erm, not exactly, no.” It doesn’t feel appropriate to go into details of her non-existent love life and recently broken heart.
“Right. Are you a virgin?”
Lily is so taken by surprise by the question that she lets out a loud, derisive laugh.
“I’ll take that as a no,” the woman says wryly. “We’ll do a chlamydia test at the same time,” she says, without judgment. “Just in case. Okay, so I’m going to insert the speculum.”
Lily hums her assent.
“Might be a bit cold.”
“Mm.”
There is a moment of discomfort, then she pulls away and it’s all done for another few years. Or so Lily thinks.
“Have you had any odd symptoms lately?” the nurse asks. “Any unusual bleeding or pain during sex?”
“No,” Lily says. “Why, is there something wrong?”
“Nothing that I can see. Bit of discharge, but that’s probably your normal.” She pulls back. “But this is a good opportunity to talk about any issues if there’s something on your mind?”
“I have pain,” Lily says straight away. Gideon always found these things unseemly - women's things - made it clear he’d rather not know about them, and she rattles the words out quickly, pushing through the veil of shame.
Because the nurse wouldn’t ask unless she wanted to know, would she?
“Like, a lot of pain during my period.”
The nurse nods, scribbling something in her notebook. She’s wearing big hoop earrings and green eyeshadow and Lily thinks she’s splendid, trusts her right away. “Has the pain increased?”
“Yes,” Lily nods. She doesn’t have to think about it. “It’s got to the point where over the counter painkillers don’t seem to be very effective. I fainted last time. It wasn’t very nice.”
The nurse nods again. “Do you have heavy periods?”
“Yes.”
“Any spotting between periods?”
“Yes. Sometimes. And sometimes, I get two periods in a month, but the second one isn’t... like a proper one.”
Gideon had hated that too, when she’d broken the news that she was out of action for the second time in a month. His disappointment had always seemed to take precedence over Lily’s discomfort and the gnawing feeling she had that something wasn’t quite right with her anatomy.
“Have you ever spoken to your GP about this?”
“Erm. Well, no. I didn’t... well, I’ve just learnt to live with it really.”
“Will you let me book you an appointment? It might be nothing,” she says, seeing the panicked expression on Lily’s face. “But your periods shouldn’t make you miserable. They shouldn’t rule your life.”
“Oh,” says Lily, whose periods have made her miserable since the day they started. “Erm, yes. I suppose so. Thank you.”
She relays the incident to Marlene once she gets to work.
“Ah,” Marlene says wisely. “You see where you went wrong, don’t you?”
“I do,” Lily nods earnestly. “I laughed when she asked if I was a virgin.”
“Yes. You laughed when she asked if you were a virgin. Which implied to the nurse that you were so far off being a virgin, it was a matter of great amusement.”
“Yes.”
“And now you’ve had to do a chlamydia test.”
“Yes.”
“Which may actually be positive given what we’ve recently discovered about the shag habits of a certain eschewed ex.” She pauses. “So actually, maybe this is all preordained.”
A swell of panic rises up in Lily’s chest. “You think he’s given me something?”
“Probably not,” she shrugs. “But it’s good to know for sure, isn’t it? It’s all treatable if he has.”
“Mm,” Lily agrees vaguely. “Regardless, I have to have a doctor’s appointment now. Because of my dodgy periods.”
“Dodgy how?” Marlene asks, eyebrow raised.
“Painful. Unpredictable. Misery-inducing.”
Marlene’s entire body language changes then. She sits up, brow furrowed. “You’ve never told me about this.”
“Oh. Well it’s not exactly office-friendly chit chat, is it? Tell me, Marlene, is it normal that my womb is malicious and probably wants to kill me?”
“Fuck that. You’re my best friend. If your uterus is in a state of distress, I obviously want to know about it.”
“I thought Remus was your best friend?”
Marlene’s face twists in thought. “This was so much easier when Regulus was around. He was my best friend, Remus was yours. Nobody had to choose sides.”
“Very true. But now he’s been gone ten years, maybe it’s time we brought someone else into the fray. I’ve heard good things about that Benjy Fenwick guy. Think he’s in the market for a new friendship group?”
“Ha. We’ll give it some thought.”
Lily squirms in her chair. “Ugh, now I know that something might be wrong, I’m hyper aware of what’s going on. Like, I’ve just got a really increased awareness of my downstairs lady region.”
“God. Are we going to have to do a lesson on female anatomy? Did you know that women are less likely to get a timely diagnosis because they don’t know how to describe their genitals? All because we somehow instil in children that there is something somehow shameful about having a vagina while a penis is a badge of honour and we laugh when boys swing them about in public or urinate in funny places.”
“I didn’t know that, no. But I don’t need a lesson.” She falters. “I’ll google it.”
“Make sure that you do,” Marlene chides. “Make sure that you do.”