Clarissa's DIY Disaster

by templetodestruction

Summary:

Clarissa Suzanne Jenkins is pregnant. She's been married for a year, this should be one of the happiest moments of her life.

Instead, she is running thousands of miles away, leaving Mark and Amanda to chase her down together, forming an unlikely alliance as they realise they might be following Clarissa for the exact same reason.

So... who is she running from? And who will she run back to?

Chapter 1: Discovery

NEW YORK CITY

Clarissa Suzanne Murray-Jenkins was pregnant. And she was a little tipsy. And she was crying. There were a lot of things she was doing, in the toilet at a bar in New York City. Initially, she’d only ran in to take her ADHD meds. Then she felt ill, and thought a test from CVS wouldn’t hurt (she’d sort of been in denial for a while). It wasn’t her fault she’d seen an old friend at the bar and gotten a drink to save time. Or that the test had been positive. Maybe both of those things were her own fault, but it wasn’t as if she was well-known for remembering the consequences of her actions.

If she had a baby, would it take her name? She’d always told Mark she’d remove the double barrel eventually, but it was paperwork, and that meant paying attention. It was becoming clear she might need stronger meds.

Admittedly, she also just hadn’t really wanted to change her name. She loved her middle name so much it was basically just her nickname, and her surname fit her. Clarissa Jenkins, daughter of Maggie Jenkins, who ran her travel column like the navy. Because if there was one thing she was good at, it was being on the move. Which might explain the marriage, the baby and the fact that she was in New York when both her husband and mother were comfortably in New Jersey any day.

And Amanda. Amanda was at home.
Amanda was going to kill her for getting pregnant.

Wiping her tears so aggressively her eyes got sore, Clarissa left the bathroom with the test in her handbag. Frankie raised his eyebrows. “You look like you got beaten in there.” When she neglected to reply, he tried to reduce his stature from preposterous to only a little spectacularly giant. “Is something wrong? You can’t play me, I’m a felon, I know when I’m being played. Come on Clary, I promise I won’t tell Donnie. Maybe. Probably. Unless it is very juicy in which case… I can't make no promises.”

Clarissa smiled. She adored Frankie and his weird little brother. Really, she adored most people. But Mark should know first- she knew that much. It was simply bad luck that she was a terrible liar. “I can’t let you be the first person I tell.”

At this, Frankie’s eyes bulged out of his head like a Jack-in-the-box. “You can’t leave me on that kinda cliffhanger! It’s absolutely important. Come on! I’ll trade you. I have loads of secrets.”

“I have none.” Her throat closed up. “Well, I have one now. A very special one, that I need to go home and process first before I discuss it with you, Frankie. I’m sorry, I really am, but I’m afraid I have to love you and leave you.” She kissed her friend on the cheek, a gesture that made him simultaneously cringe and yelp out in disappointment.

“You’ll pay for this, Jenkins!”, but Clarissa knew his words were empty.

The subway in New York was clammy and exhausting on a regular day. On what must’ve been the ninth or so week of her pregnancy, Clamanda found it to be a volcanic eruption of sweat, cigarette smoke and the snot of whichever toddlers were yet to figure out how to properly wipe their noses. Instinctively, she touched her stomach, almost taken aback when it was pretty much flat. She was barely showing yet. If she really wanted to, she could go home and pretend nothing was wrong for a good few weeks.

Not that having a baby was something wrong. Well… not quite. It was all so sudden. She was only twenty three. In this plan of her life she’d made as a nine year old, this segment of her life, her early to mid twenties, was supposed to be dedicated to designating herself in the hall of fame. In travel journalism, this wasn’t anything particularly special, maybe making some expose pieces, practicing her survival skills under strict governmental regimes. It was meant to be 5-10 years of her life she could spend fulfilling herself, preferably whilst married, before resigning to a more stagnant journalist job once she relented and had children. Relented was a poor word choice. Decided.

Her phone was pinging with texts. Her mom, reminding her that she wanted to call her tonight. Mr Wilson, asking if she could do an emergency shift at his restaurant (she wished he would stop messaging her when his daughter was literally right there). Mark, asking what specific time she was returning the next day so he could prepare a meal for her return. Gosh, he was sweet. Amanda too had left her a couple things, mostly TikToks that had reminded her of their dynamic with “us” as her only explanation. The last one was a GIF she’d made of Clarissa age fifteen with her horrendous brace face.

After shooting back a quick “you suck, never send that message again” (to which Amanda began to spam the photo), Clarissa turned her phone off and placed her head in the hands, imagining that all the other subway riders couldn’t see her crisis. Whilst it made sense to return tomorrow, aim for the evening, and share her pregnancy to her husband over a warm, home-cooked dinner, there was something in her that simply couldn’t face him. She wasn't sure how she’d phrase it. “Congrats, you knocked me up?” “Have fun seeing me a lot more often?” “You’ll need to buy me a lot of weird foods soon?”

Somebody must’ve made a manual for this. Being a first time mom who is both physically and emotionally unprepared whilst technically being in a happy marriage with a man who wanted a family more than anything else in the world. This couldn’t be an original experience. God, she’d forgotten to take her full dose of meds. Pregnancy was already panning out to be an inconvenient distraction. Now she considered it, was she supposed to stop taking methylphenidate? What if it turned the baby green or something?

No. Were Amanda here, she’d tell her she was being silly, and to stop watching Broadway shows whilst on work trips without her. She’d have to tell her best friend eventually, a prospect nearly as bad if not worse than telling Mark. Every hope and dream she’d long discarded existed in Amanda’s brain- a walking scrapbook of all the lives she’d led and hoped to one day achieve. It occurred to her then that she had no memory of talking to Amanda about having children. The whole idea seemed so distant, so obligatory, she only ever mentioned it when her mother or Mark prodded at the subject.

She was Catholic. She’d never really had to bring it up of her own volition, it was automatically inserted into her life. The train had arrived at the station nearest to her hotel, and she lugged her hefty backpack up to her room with a scowl generally unwelcome on her face. As she flopped onto the bed she’d spent barely a weekend in, it wasn’t the only thing that didn’t feel like hers. It wasn’t like she was living a lie- at least, not wholly. Most things she’d done she took pride in. Something was just… missing, and it definitely wasn’t a baby.

On the bright side, there was always mom.
Mom, who wasted the latter years of her life in the same living room she’d been proposed to in thirty years ago. It wasn’t even like she was particularly old, she just acted as if she was a decades retired millionaire who could afford to complain and judge and forget every detail of her only daughter's life. She always called Clarissa her “only daughter”, which was ridiculous; she didn’t have a son. In the darker times, Clarissa wondered if her mom would’ve preferred her to be a boy.

It only took a lame pot of noodles and an episode of Love Is Blind (Clarissa liked to watch other people making terrible marital decisions to feel comfort about her own) before Margaret Jenkins gave her a FaceTime call. Her top button had long fallen off her cardigan and her necklaces had turned from charming to discolored some time ago, but she’d at least washed her hair before dialing. With a pained smile, she nodded at her child. “You don’t look particularly happy, sweetheart. What fate has befallen you?”

Clarissa looked down at her wrist, only to notice she’d picked off a patch of skin in the time her mom had said hello. She’d only done three tests today. There was a possibility the fourth would come up negative. Was there really any need to cash in all her chips on three pregnancy tests and announce it to her mom? Did she really need her opinions? Or was she completely and utterly lost, devolving into the little girl who clung to her mom’s feet when her father raised his voice?

“I’m pregnant, mom.”

Her mom chewed on her bottom lip, her eyes only slightly bulging out of her head. In her surprise, she looked younger. Clarissa couldn’t help but think the expression was reminiscent of twenty years ago, realising she wasn’t able to bear a second child, and having to keep her cool so Clarissa’s father kept his in return. Margaret sighed in some sort of exasperation or disappointment, and looked straight down the lens, seeing her daughter in all her pregnant panic. “So you and Mark have been busy.”

Clarissa was relieved to chuckle, if briefly, as she shook her head. “Mom! You can’t say that!” It wasn’t even overly accurate. She was so busy travelling, and he spent half the day in the shed woodworking, they barely ever saw each other before they were too tired to do much of anything sensual. It was a miracle she’d gotten pregnant this early in the marriage. With the way things had been going, she thought she was destined to be more barren than the Sahara until thirty at least.

“It’s lovely, darling. I’m happy. Relieved, even. Glad. Do you feel glad?”

When she opened her mouth to affirm her mother, Clarissa found no words coming out. Instead she mustered a shrug. It was the way things were. She wasn’t going to get rid of it. First of all it was an emotional toll on her, Mark and her community that she simply didn’t need to take on. Second… it just wasn’t what a girl in her position did. Other women had the option to do whatever they wanted as far as she was concerned. She just wasn’t other women. She was just Clarissa, and this was how things had panned out. She would beg at the devil’s feet before accepting her own isolation. “I was rather hoping you’d instill a little more confidence into me, mom. You’ve done this before.”

Margaret took a cigarette and lit it. She’d pointedly ignored her daughter’s suggestion in years prior of switching to vaping. It was apparently too modern, cowardly and embarrassing for her. She took a long draw, her breath a little trembling. “I was over the moon when I found out I was pregnant with you. Everybody was. Nobody had been sure I was fertile enough for even a pregnancy, let alone a whole baby. Even your father was on the verge of tears when I told him. It’s different for you. That’s not always a bad thing. It’s normal.”

“When am I supposed to be excited? Once I tell Mark? After the baby shower, knowing the gender? The second I see an ultrasound? Or does it happen the moment I see the baby’s little face, and recognise little bits of my own? Am I supposed to have that intrinsic connection straight away or does it grow over time? How do you confidently name a baby? I’m making a human life that could last eighty or ninety years. I don’t want to be responsible for something someone has for that long.”

The cigarette was stubbed with a harsh crash. “Mark can help you with all of this stuff, you know.”

Clarissa screwed her eyes shut. “Probably. But I called you, mom.”

“Well sweetie, you know I’m not gonna be around much longer to help you out.”

She promptly opened her eyes so that she could stare at her mother with a more obvious frustration. “Mom, you’ve been saying that exact thing for the past five years. You’ve got a long time left in you. Might as well accept it.”

Margaret scoffed. “Yeah, well. Your father didn’t expect to go, did he? Gotta be prepared.”

“Dad should’ve been prepared with the way he drank.”

“Clarissa Suzanne Jenkins, that is no way to talk about your father!”

“If he wanted me to be nice about him, he should’ve been nicer to me. And to you. I don’t know why you care so much, mom. It’s not like he stuck around or helped you to raise me. He sucked. Lots of men do.”

Margaret Petunia Jenkins rolled up her sleeves as if she was preparing to clock her daughter in the face between her glasses. Then, as if she’d recognised it would somewhat counteract her point of being frail and elderly, she sighed and sank deeper into her rocking chair, pulling a matchbox out of her cardigan pocket. Clarissa couldn’t help but roll her eyes. Predictably, her mother had done little to put her out of her misery. Maggie loved Mark. Maybe he was reminiscent of Clarissa’s father. Seeing red at every stop sign.

“I’m sorry, mom. I didn’t mean to go that far. I think it’s the hormones.”

“Maybe. Or you might just be a bitch, darling. Lots of women are. It’s an exchange. Plenty of men suck, plenty of women are bitches. The reverse can also be true. I recently got into feminism. Lots of good books.”

“Okay mom.”

“You ever heard of Audre Lord? Crazy stuff. A lesbian.”

“Oh okay, mom. I’m gonna go now.”

“Isn’t your friend Amanda a lesbian?”

It was an odd question. Contrary to popular belief, Clarissa has a good head on her shoulders. Amanda was definitely unlike most people in that respect, but she had the courtesy to keep her questions to herself. She’d ask Amanda anything in the world, but this one thing just seemed too personal. And once she heard it aloud it became a lot harder to avoid. “I don’t know, really. I never asked. It’s rude. Plus, she was raised religious.”

“Child of divorce though. Not very Catholic of them.”

“You like Danielle.”

“I can like a woman and judge her marital collapse. Two children and she still couldn’t keep her shit together for the sake of them. They’re both a little self-centred. Parents like that would have a daughter who likes other father’s daughters. It’s twenty twenty three, Clarissa, people sin with every breath they take.”

Instead of pointing out that Mr Wilson ran a pizza restaurant, literally organised her wedding and was an all round outstanding man, Clarissa decided trying to debate her mother on complicated issues like these was futile. Her opinions were as rooted as the dying potted plants she insisted on littering her bungalow with. She’d scarcely even agreed to downsize in house after Clarissa moved out, and it wasn’t until her daughter helped pay off the mortgage that she said she stopped regretting the choice. Like her ancestors before her, she tried to live where she died and stick to what she knew.

“Well, mom you’ve been… an experience. I’m going to go now.” Slightly sombrely, she added, “I love you, and please don’t tell Mark.”

“Love you too, sweetheart. I won’t. I don’t even leave the house unless I run out of Killer Kakuru books. Speaking of which, bring some from New York to me if you can. I heard they sell special edition ones there.”

“Gotcha, mom.”

“Bye!” and the line went silent.

Unexpectedly, Clarissa noticed her cheeks were wet. The more she blinked, the wetter they were, and the more her eyes stung. Actually, her nose was beginning to become blocked up, and her head was foggier than a Winter’s morning. During the phone call she’d reckoned she was perfectly level headed, only to realise that she was on the verge of an emotional breakdown the second she was left alone with herself. Which, considering everything else, really shouldn’t have been that surprising at all. Her whole body trembled, and she remembered that the city never slept, and neither would she.

So she might as well leave.
And she did.

Clarissa couldn’t quite explain how she’d managed to end up on a plane. All of it was a bit liminal, somewhere in between a hallucination and a sickness-induced haze. At some point she and her luggage had made it comfortably on board, and with a neck pillow hugging her, she turned her phone onto airplane mode. Even during her journey to the airport it had buzzed like mad. Mostly it was everybody trying to check in to see when she intended to get home, and her mom apologising for forgetting to be nice on their call. Normal stuff, because it was a broadly very normal day.

The flight took off and Clarissa turned on her headphones, looking out the window as she ascended, leaving behind the beautiful New York skyline. Some part of her would miss its comforting busyness, although she knew she’d be back eventually. She sipped on a Ribena shed bought in a grocery store, reminding herself she’d be retiring from drinking for the next eight or so months. It was all a very depressing miracle. No wonder her mother had only brought one child into the world.

Clarissa frowned to herself, then smiled, knowing she was heading right where she needed to be.

West Country, England.

MEANWHILE, IN NEW JERSEY

Amanda Wilson was done. For the past hour, she’d been writing out consent forms, monotonously preparing for sessions the following week. It wasn’t horrendous- she liked her job. She was good at her job. As her therapist had told her constantly, she was a good therapist, and it was only out of necessity that she had her own therapist. Many of her former clients had gone on to brilliant things. One did a marathon for cancer research. Another divorced her coercively controlling husband. A third got a dog that filled some of the gaps Amanda herself couldn’t help to repair. Her first full year was coming to an end, and now there was paperwork.

This meant tears practically came to her eyes when the phone started ringing. Finally what she was good at. Within an instant, a familiar voice was ringing in her ears. “Hello?” Mrs Jenkins cried out, “Hello? Amanda, sweetie, you there?” At a garbled affirmative, Margaret swiftly pushed onwards. “I wasn’t sure whether to pass it on to you or Mark, so this is a three way call. Mark says hello.” Mark obviously didn’t say hello. He was just as confused by Amanda’s presence as she was his.

“Petunia, what’s the problem?”

“I’m getting to it, Mark, sweetheart. Also, whilst we’re at it. Petunia is my middle name, you really don’t need to call me by it. It’s Margaret. Clarissa always tells me you have a middle name problem. Anyways, it’s Clarissa I’m calling you both about, actually. She expressly told me not to tell you, so I’ll side step properly saying anything out loud, but it’s urgent, I promise.” Over the phone, her breathing was heavy and laboured. “Basically, our Clarissa has some stuff cooking in her oven. What’s the phrase?”

Amanda’s throat was dry. “A bun?”

“Yes! Thanks Amanda. She’s got a bun in there. I knew it was something obvious.”

Even hoarser than Amanda, Mark mumbled, “Can you repeat that Petunia? Just… I’m not sure I heard you right.”

“She’s got a bun in the oven. She’s eating for two. A pea in the pod. A joey to her kangaroo. You, Mark, have gotten her knock-”

“Okay. You can stop. I get it.”

Amanda could feel the wind brush against the hairs that stuck up along her skin in a room with no open windows. She could hear a child down the road yelling at her father. The paper on her desk smelt slightly of the coffee she’d spilled onto her hands whilst spell-checking it. Her own shirt clung to her stomach in a way that made her painfully aware of her own sweat. There was a slight reflection in her phone screen that showed her out face, cracked like a porcelain doll with hair fraught from being tugged on over many hours.

Clarissa. With a child. With Mark. Clarissa, who she’d known since more or less the day she was born, was going to give birth herself. Would trap herself in her house for eighteen years, unable to travel for work, quietly seething until it caused her to have some kind of seizure since she could never tell a lie, let alone live one. At least, that’s what she thought. When Amanda had done babysitting as a teenager to bring in some extra money, Clarissa never offered to help. If she had to, she’d usually just shut herself in the kitchen making the kids food whilst Amanda actually entertained them. She’d even struggled to bond with Amanda’s brother Hamish until he’d turned thirteen and gained “sentience”, whatever that meant.

It was rude to say her best friend wouldn’t be a good mother. Amanda just couldn’t picture her being a happy one. In all fairness, she tried not to picture Clarissa’s future at all. Whenever she did, it was as if she had fallen into quicksand, her body progressively paralysed as her own mistakes killed her. What if she’d spoken up? Where would she be for that? Why hadn’t Clarissa let her be next to her during her DIY wedding? Why had she been sat so far away? Was it because she was meaningless, or was it since Clarissa couldn’t look Amanda in the eyes and still say yes to spending a lifetime with Mark instead?

Mark couldn’t stop laughing. It was hysterically pathetic, and Amanda wordlessly listened, as she often did to Clarissa when she got particularly hard to respond to. There was simultaneously a palpable joy and a subtle manic quality to the sounds he made that didn’t sit right with her. “I feel faint.” he uttered in between cackles. “I’m going to be a father. Oh… I’m gonna be a dad. My dad’s going to find that hilarious. Me raising a kid of my own. Petunia- Margaret even, you’re sure, aren’t you? Really sure?”

“Very sure.”

Amanda tried to forget the sheer panic in her brain and focus on the facts. Obviously Mrs Jenkins wasn’t supposed to break it to them. The fact remained that Clarissa hadn’t got the chance. Which begged further questions: how would she have done it? Who would she have told first? Why wasn’t she telling them? “Margaret,” she spoke very slowly, trying not to enter troubled waters, “do you know why she told you and not Mark or I? Is there any reason?” She didn’t need to ask really. She knew Clarissa better than any family members. Maybe herself, on some level. Clarissa wasn’t okay.

“Now that you mention it, she was very troubled over the phone. Lost her temper, a little shaky if you ask me. Half the reason I told you two is because I trust you two to keep an eye on her whenever I can’t. You’re good kids, and you see facets of her she wouldn’t dare reveal to her old mother. Call it a favour.” Amanda nodded, despite the fact neither of them could see her. Clarissa was losing her fucking mind. When she was regularly upset, she cried and turned on herself. When she was in a crisis? She was far harder to predict.

Mark gulped. “Okay, I’ll call her. I just… I don't understand any of this. Why would she be freaked out? It's a baby. That’s gotta be a good thing. A little miracle. And I’m- we…We’re married!”

Amanda rolled her eyes so aggressively she worried they might cause her a migraine. It wasn’t like she was prejudiced against Mark or anything. Something was just… off about the guy. She couldn’t help but feel like he had a couple of screws loose. It was a small enough town for her to overhear some of his father’s worst blowouts. Living in a house with a man like that for two decades was bound to set you off psychologically. And it wasn’t like she didn’t feel for the guy. Everything he had going on was rough. But you didn’t see her complaining. Not once. He had the best girl in the world, and he still couldn’t make the effort to get her.

Amanda took a sip from her water bottle like it was fine wine and sighed. Maybe she was a bit prejudiced, sue her. No man was worthy of Clarissa. “It’s as if you’ve never spoken to a woman.”
Mark sighed deeply and swiped his tongue across his teeth in a boorish way. “Fine then. Speak to me, Amanda. Actually have a conversation with me. I dare you to hear me out.” At this, Amanda snorted derisively. Of course she’d already pissed off Mark. A pin dropping could set him off into a frenzy. How this marriage lasted a year was beyond her. She’d already planned half a DIY divorce, right down to a lawyer dressed up as a handyman. At least then she’d actually get to be in the party, instead of hastily being shoved in a seat because “I’m focusing Amanda, you’ve already given me the ring. You already did the maid of honor thing.”

“Okay, I’ll speak. First of all, don’t call her. She’s not gonna pick up if she’s actually frenzied. She turns her phone to silent mode if she thinks people are judging her. If you want to figure out what’s happened to her, she’s supposed to come home today. We’ll know she’s not coming back in a few hours- and I can almost guarantee you she won’t be. We’ve had location sharing apps ever since she got stalked by this one guy in eighth grade. I can just check her location and we’ll figure out where she’s really gone.”

Mark seemed to pause for a moment, taking all of this in. There was a palpable frustration, but maybe it wasn’t at Amanda. Perhaps he too realised what little of a grasp he had on his own wife and her psyche. All he’d ever said about her was how much he wanted things to work, blood sweat and tears (although they had to come from both ends). A slight tinkling sound came through the phone, and Amanda assumed he was cradling his cross necklace. “Okay. Can we be sure she’s not just staying a couple extra days in New York?”

“I mean, we can’t be sure until we check. But… she’s not the type to linger. You have to at least know that about her.”

“I’ll leave the pair of you to it.” Margaret abruptly left the call, abandoning the two of them to their unspoken distaste for one another. Amanda opened her phone and checked Clarissa’s iPhone. By the looks of it, she was in Airplane mode. Soon enough it would become clear where she was off to. It was an insidious, encroaching feeling rising in her chest that she’d follow her best friend. Anywhere. Alongside Mark… not exactly her ideal vacation. But for Clarissa she’d put up with practically anything.
The two of them spent the next two hours on the phone in dead silence, Amanda pretending to do more paperwork and Mark feigning sending out emails to clients. In reality, Amanda was staring at the little dot that represented Clarissa, and Mark was watching her boots on the shoe rack, imagining them hopping off and running away from him, leaving him alone in his humble home he’d added an extension to recently with children in mind (not that he’d expressly told her that- he thought she’d assume).

“Wait- the dot’s disappeared. She’s definitely not in New York.” Amanda furiously zoomed out, not seeing Clarissa’s icon anywhere in the United States. Trying not to bury her head in her hands, she pinched more, waiting to see the map of the entire world. Once she had done so, she let out an enormous groan. It wasn’t the first time Clarissa had gone cross-continental. She’d been to Europe a good few times to cover things of significance. It was just… what was wrong with her?

“Well, Mark… she’s in Somerset.”

“Where’s Somerset?”

“England. Near the bottom, not that far from Wales. Bristol Airport.”

Amanda racked her brain for conversations she’d had. Clarissa tended not to discuss work with her unless something ridiculous happened. About six months back she’d had to go to Texas due to some kind of a cubic civil war, and she’d spoken endlessly about getting to meet the President and bonding with “a charming, slightly crude gay couple” during her visit. The article had been her biggest at the time too- a big career highlight. Somerset was a little more random. There had been an article she’d done about the anniversary of a tragic fire, that happened to cross over with the premiere of a Somerset-born footballer in the Champion’s league. Just maybe she was following up with them?

Amanda knew one thing above all else. “We have to follow her.”

Mark scoffed. “We? Amanda… She’s carrying my child! This is my responsibility.”

“I’m the one with the tracking device. And if what’s happened so far has proven anything, it’s that I have a better catalogued set of information about your wife. So you’ll need to follow my lead. You can trust me…I have her safety and happiness in mind just as much as you do.” If not more. She decided not to say that part aloud, instead letting the idea linger in his brain. Whilst his brain was already attached to the baby, Amanda was looking out for one thing and one thing only, and that was the girl she loved.

Not the man the girl she loved claimed to love, and especially not the clump of cells that had gotten them into this mess.

“I’m following you?”

“Yes, Mark.” she felt her voice growing into a slight disconcerting bark, “What, are you beginning to feel insecure about the idea of a woman being better at something than you?”

“What? No. No. Don’t make it be like that. I can follow you… on one condition.” Amanda said nothing, so he continued. “When we do find her, and it better be quickly, you step aside and let me speak to her first. I don’t want you getting into her head and making a narrative. I want to speak to my wife, not you using her as a mouthpiece. Do we have a deal, Amanda?”

Amanda was almost impressed by the sheer bitchiness that had slipped into Mark’s tone. Even she struggled to harbour that much resentment. It caused her to consider that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t the only one jealous of someone else’s bond with Clarissa. The thought brought the ghost of a smile to her face she was relieved Mark couldn’t see. She didn’t want him to know they were on almost equal footing. It did amuse her. She had a profound effect on Clarissa. Clarissa trusted her, and Mark resented her for it. She was petty. So was he. “Fine. Deal.”

Amanda and Mark were about to embark on the biggest disaster of their lives, and they knew it.

Notes:

HELLO!!!!!!! Thanks for reading Chapter 1!
I'm very excited for this one, it should be very fun. Soon we will meet Ditch, James, the spirit of New Jersey and perhaps several more fan favourites (perhaps someone old?).
I wouldn't normally do a pregnancy fic, it just spoke to me with this longform. Additionally, before it comes up, yes I know Clarissa could just get an abortion. I don't think she sees it as an option though- but note I, Theo, am pro-choice. Just wanted to clarify.
I promise we will see more yearning soon.
Thanks again!!!! Chapter 2 should be another week or so I reckon.
Theo :) (templetodestruction, here and on tiktok/insta)

Chapter 2: Denial

Summary:

In Somerset, Clarissa keeps running into the fact that love is a drug, and Old Lady Margaery can't prescribe it very effectively.

Meanwhile, Amanda reminisces on how she got here, on a plane with Mark sleeping on her shoulder.

-Somerset-
The grass was particularly green at this time of year, and the eggplants particularly purple. Although, as Clarissa chided herself in her head, here they called them aubergines like pretentious French people. Speaking of which, she could do with visiting Paris. Eating an authentic baguette in the Louvre might help her to clear her mind. The Mona Lisa was so calm she still had the expression after her eyebrows faded. She needed that level of consistency. Right now, she needed something.

Philip, the stout assistant, ushered her through the fields, commenting on the recent competition the farmhands here had won. Since Somerset get over their obsession with beetroots, aubergines had become their dominant plant, and the McMillan family had been the obvious contenders. Even with Apple trying to rob them of their stock, they were having a good yield this year. “It’s almost magic.” Philip commented, in his slightly strange London accent, “It used to only ever be the right side that bore fruit. Now… it’s all serenely normal. But I never ask. There are lots of things I’ve been told it's preferred I don’t ask about.”

On cue, the other assistant Derek began to make his way towards them. “Actually,” Philip muttered just loud enough for her to hear, “he’s had a bit of a promotion recently. Since James left to pursue football full time, he’s the co-owner of the farm with Mr McMillan. Very good pals, they are.” Philip giggled, a private joke clearly. “You didn’t get to see much of him last time you were here, did you?”

“No. And I had to interview him and Mr McMillan separately. They spoke highly of each other, though. How they both went to the same horticultural school a year apart, and bonded over their shared love for the art of farming. How, once his father died, he hired Derek without any sort of trial. He just trusted him- and it was that trust that allowed for them to do so well in the competition and career-wise. It was a very wholesome article, I must say. I normally do environmental tragedies.”

By this time, Derek was directly in front of her, his towering frame only softened by the awkward, bumbling smile plastered across his face. He outstretched his hand and she shook it, taken aback by how gentle he was clearly trying to be. A thought wormed itself into her brain that she quickly shook away, but didn’t wholly reject. “It's so nice to see you back here, Clarissa. What type of visit are you looking at here? If it’s business, I’m afraid we don’t have much on at the moment but we’re more than happy to give you our guest room. Otherwise, it’s pleasure, and that’s much more exciting!”

Clarissa wasn’t fully certain why she was here, really. In her memory, her week in the West Country last year had been gorgeous, a time of relaxation and trying to mimic all of the adorable accents she was surrounded by. Everybody was so far from the American city-adjacent buzz she was accustomed to. It charmed her. Even if the article had made her barely profit from the vacation, it seemed worth it to her. But nowadays there was no incentive to be here. Just… pleasure? Displeasure? Denial?

“It’s for me. A personal trip.”, she eventually landed on. Derek nodded and grinned impossibly wide, leading her through winding maze-like greenery towards the humble cottage the farm was connected to in a curious L-shape. On the way, he pointed out anything he thought worth noting accommodation and aubergine wise. For a seemingly shy guy, he had a lot to say when he was in the zone. She understood why Mr McMillan had so expressly kept him around over the years.

Speaking of which, the man himself emerged from the farm. “Don’t come near me Derek, i’m covered in sheep birthing jui- Clarissa! What are you doing here?” The short blond man blinked rapidly, like he might’ve been hallucinating an American journalist on his farm. “Do we have some sort of event going on at the moment? Don’t tell me I’ve forgotten about the prize pig thing. I despise those sorts of events. Everybody thinks they’re so superior. They never tell you how mean some farmers are.”

Derek rolled his eyes. “No, love. She’s here just to pop by for a little while. I was going to offer her the guest room and a nice cup of tea right now. Once you’ve washed your hands, you could join. You’d like two sugars and cream I suppose?”

It was all slowly beginning to click.

Mr McMillan nodded, and walked into the outhouse to wash his hands. Derek led her into the house. He seemed to notice the look on her face and raised his eyebrows. “Oh!” he exclaimed, his mouth a cartoon ‘o’ shape. “You don’t know, do you? Well, I guess it would be strange if you did, with how remote we are and all. When you were here last time we weren’t really telling anyone anything much about the situation. But… Well Titch and I… we’ve been together officially for about eighteen months, three weeks and four days. And on his birthday last month…”

Derek raised his arm in the air, flailing it slightly in unsuppressed excitement. “I proposed! He said yes, of course. I thought it was only fair, since he’d given me the promotion and been so nice to me lately. I used to always wonder if he’d ever say he loved me back if I got the courage to tell him how I felt. It was weird though. When it came to proposing to him, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he’d accept. It was just the two of us in our living room, with the farm cat looking at us through the window.”

For all their tranquil humility, the ring was nice. Fancier than Clarissa’s engagement ring, that much was certain (she’d insisted on paying for one herself after the wedding, even though they were never technically engaged). Perhaps gay men were just fancier. Or she was an exception. Why had she chosen a dull ring?

“So when’s the wedding?”

Derek bustled in between the kitchen counter and the couch, which he indicated she sit down on with a polite nod. The whole room was cosy, covered in potted plants and accented walls, with what must’ve been vintage furniture. It smelled vaguely of roasted vegetables and honeycomb. They were the type of household to have a beehive. She could picture Derek’s humongous form covered in a beekeeping suit, still under the command of a very indignant Mr McMillan. Titch? What kind of a name was that? “We can’t decide. I want to do it in the Autumn… sorry, the Fall, because of all the crunchy leaves. Titch would much rather we go for the Summer because his mum is usually around more often that time of year. I pointed out that she’ll come no matter when we do it, but I think he’s afraid he doesn’t know how to plan a wedding. Which is silly, because we’re probably going to do it in the gazebo down the end of the field. There’s not even much planning.”

Amanda called things “silly”.
That wasn’t the point.

“Where’s his mom from? And… if I’m asking questions, is Titch his birth name?”

At that precise moment, Mr McMillan himself entered the room, and after kissing his fiance on the cheek, she repeated the question to him. “My mum is Irish. Real Irish Catholic, she is. I assume you know the type in New Jersey.” She nodded enthusiastically. “Very opinionated. I’d much rather let her get it all out before the wedding rather than during, you know? And my name… is the same as my father’s. So for a lot of my childhood I was called Junior, which I hated. I don’t even look like him… we’re not even biologically related.”

“It was James that started calling me Titch when we were little because he always towered over me. My younger brother. And I preferred it, because it made sense. So it stuck. That’s really all there is to it.”

Clarissa smiled. “I like Titch.” She remembered her own childhood, praying some nights that God would give her a sibling. Then she’d have somebody to ramble all her completely nonsensical thoughts to. Another person would understand what it was like to live in her home, to listen to her mom’s resolve slowly crumble in sync with her dad’s coherence. Then it wouldn’t just be her sitting atop the stairs, trying to decipher the raised voices and what they were saying nearby her. About her sometimes.

There had been Amanda, obviously. But Amanda was only around so often, and she had Hamish when things between her parents got rough. She’d envied Hamish, for getting more of Amanda than her. He was on his gap year now, and Clarissa still seemed to be haunted by the fact that Amanda wasn’t seeking her out more.

It was probably an impulse she could’ve controlled, yet it seemed natural to ask the couple, “How did you two know? That you were the ones for each other, I mean. I’m always curious about how it is for other people.” She probably didn’t need to add that last bit. It implied that she was different in her relationship. That she was missing some fundamental element, and was trying to figure out how to revitalise her marriage by funnelling her journalism skills into travelling the globe and interviewing people happier than her.

Which she wasn’t, to be clear.

Derek flipped the switch on the kettle with a chuckle to himself. “I don’t know what he’s going to say. He’s never told me. My answer is very simple. Right around when his father died, God rest his soul, we had a picnic in our gazebo with James and Philip. I’d brought strawberries I’d picked that morning, lovely fresh ones. Titch couldn’t stop eating them. With each strawberry he’d promise it was the last one, and then he’d take another and laugh it off. And he was laughing, and there was a little bit of strawberry on his lip, and his legs were crossed all funny. I just thought ‘I love him’. Everything made sense after that.”

Titch pursed his lips at this story, seemingly trying not to give away how much it had affected him, and settled for elbowing Derek in the side gently. “You tell that story too often. It’s becoming boring”, he lied. “Mine is more interesting. It wasn’t too long after that, we got drunk on Derek’s birthday. Played a lot of games. Gay chicken… it got a bit out of hand and next thing we knew it was the next morning and we were still there. Lines had been blurred, we’ll say. The only chickens present were the ones in the coup down the lane.”

Derek put his hand on Titch’s shoulder, stabilising him. “Don’t get distracted in reminiscing, love.”

“Right. Yes. Thanks, Derek. So it was about noon that next day, and I couldn’t meet his eyes without remembering. And remembering was the last thing I wanted to do. So I just buried myself in my work, digging for all the morning. Then, suddenly, I look over and there’s a little basket of strawberries about ten feet away from me. Philip says Derek told him to bring it. And I go over to investigate. And they're lovely strawberries, because of course they are. It’s the message he put with it that stuck with me though. ‘I hope you still respect me as a colleague, fellow horticulturist and friend. I don’t regret last night. If you do I completely understand, and you can take these as an apology. If you also enjoyed it, interpret them as a request.’ It was a little embarrassing, and definitely unprofessional, but I knew it was inevitable then that we’d be doing it again.”

Clarissa didn’t ask much at all after that. She sipped her tea, tried to avoid looking at her phone (Titch and Derek were mostly phone-free anyways, apparently since they had given so many phones away they’d kind of lost their value). She drank so timidly it was grey and cold by the time she had drained the mug. Soon she’d sleep, and wake up to the news that Amanda had figured out where she was. Why did she keep that damn location sharing app on? She could turn it off now. She should turn it off.

But then she was shutting her out. Cat and mouse was one thing, putting a wall between them was another.

“Thank you so much for letting me stay here.” she said, getting her suitcase to take to her room.

“It's no problem, Clarissa,” Derek insisted, “and congratulations on your own marriage. It’s nice to see things work out.”

“Yeah. Yeah, definitely. “ She went quiet momentarily. “Derek, do you and Titch want children?”

“I don’t know. Margaery said maybe, although she’s not exactly what I’d consider a force of knowledge any more than a source of pain.” He rubbed his thumb to two of his fingers timidly. “I think so. Titch tells me sometimes that he hopes one day we can make our children feel more appreciated than he ever did. He’s very soft, though his demeanour doesn’t give it away. Nor do other things.” He chuckled to himself, looking back up at her. “Why do you ask?”

Subconsciously, she must’ve moved to it, as she found her hand was clutching her stomach. “Oh, it’s just… something that’s been on my mind lately. What with Mark and I being married for a year already. I know you and Titch are a few years older than me, so I was curious what experiences you guys had in that respect. Call it field research. Also, I don’t mean to overstep, but who’s Margaery and why is she making predictions about peoples’ families?”

The next day, Clarissa was walking into a weirdly stuffy tent for mid-March in England. She’d followed Titch and Derek’s directions as carefully as she could, even “do not, under any circumstances, refer to Margaery as old if you like the way your face looks and feels”. The woman crouched like a cat in her chair before her wasn’t particularly old. Probably about early sixties. Something about the way she stirred a large pot in her overlong robes did give her the effect of an immortal witch though.

“What do you seek, my dear?” She spoke in a slightly crooning, pitchy voice that didn’t suit her more friendly face.

“I just wanted to talk to you. My friend Derek told me that you helped people who were in a time of crisis. Or just a pickle. Which is what I’m in, to be clear.” Margaery beckoned her closer, and she looked into the cauldron to see a liquid that was vibrant red but smelled strongly like vodka laced with something foul. “I’m pregnant. About ten weeks, I think. It’s sort of becoming a problem, because I don’t know what to do, and I want to find somebody who can relieve the pressure I guess. Margaery, what if I don’t want a baby?”

The sage opened her mouth, reached into her pocket, second guessed herself and smiled awkwardly at Clarissa. “You might have to go to a clinic, dearie. I don’t think I’m qualified for that one actually. I’m more of a… pharmaceuticals type.”

Clarissa immediately recognised what situation she was in. “Do you have anti-anxiety pills?”

“I have MDMA. So yes, I’d say so.”

“Right. What about weed gummies?”

“I’m not a genius but I don’t think that’s good for the baby.”

“Neither is MDMA and you offered that.”

“Touche.”

A bit of haggling later, Clarissa had only gotten so far as getting some paracetamol by offering Margaery some triple A batteries she’d bought at the airport. For all of her eldritch oddness, the witch wasn’t overtly witchy in her business practice. Eventually Clarissa sat down on the grass in the tent and just began ranting about her life to Margaery, who proved a good ear. It hadn’t occurred to her how much she missed venting to people. Usually this was the void Amanda filled in her life. She missed Amanda.

“It’s like how we don’t actually feel wet. We just get cold, and we differentiate between the two based on context. You could throw a wet towel or a cold towel on an asleep person’s face and they wouldn’t know which. In the same way I feel like you can throw a baby at me- or into my body- and I wouldn’t know if I was happy or if I was just sort of assuming I was happy based on the fact that I should be happy. Does that make any sense? You’re not nodding so I’m worried it doesn’t.”

Margaery gazed at her for a good ten seconds in utter silence. “Clarissa, I’ve been alive for two thousand years. I’ve dealt with aubergines, unrequited love, a lot of MDMA, literally every single disease you can name and die of, and you might just be the person I think I can help the least.”

“Sorry?”

“No, I love it. It means I have to get crafty.”

There was a long silence, during which Clarissa checked her phone. Amanda was on airplane mode, last seen at EWR airport seven hours ago. Clearly, they were hot on her tail, but she had time. And an advantage… they didn’t know what she was planning. She could go anywhere next and they’d have no warning. All they wanted was her back.

It seemed rude to mess with that good intent.

“I think your remedy might just be an Uber to the airport.” Margaery sniffed the air. “Either you’re beginning to show or you’ve eaten a bit much lately, I don’t know, but I think you’d do better with a good night’s sleep and your own home. Where are you from?”

“New Jersey.”

"Why are you here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Exactly! Knowledge is power. You’re weak, and you can’t grow a baby like that. Titch and Gangles are thick as shit, but at least they’ve got each other. You’re all by yourself. Like a pea that’s fallen out of the pod and rolled away from the pea… field.”
Clarissa got up to her feet, brushing herself off. Whilst Margaery didn’t exactly make for pleasant company, she had a point, and right now she didn’t want to have to listen to the truth. In this moment, she wanted to grant herself a little more delusion. As she collected her stuff together and took a deep breath, Margaery looked at her. “I have a poem you’ll like. Just let the wind take you along, follow your beat like a song, and if you are smart right from the start you’ll end up smoking a bong."

“... Right. Thanks Margaery.”

“That was an original poem.”

“I couldn’t tell.”

And off she was to Bristol.

She decided it was time to pay a friend of hers a visit. Once upon a time she’d done an article about a small town in Munich being upturned by an old English woman with a lot of drugs and a wellness-based cult. Whilst collecting witnesses, she’d met the woman’s grandson and his friend, who’d solemnly sworn they’d partaken in nothing heinous and had cut Ethel off years ago. Though she didn’t believe them one bit, they made for a good time, and they’d paid for her to have some drinks afterwards, even inviting her to one of their weddings. Whilst she was far too busy, the gesture went a long way, and she hoped that, based on their names alone, she’d find her next targets in her journey for self-discovery.

On the bus she ate a nectarine she had stolen from the fruit bowl in the farmhouse. The juice dribbled onto her hands and stuck to the sleeves of her jacket. She made no attempt to wipe them. In the reflection of the purpled skin, she could see her own face staring back at her, pale and uncertain. She sometimes got the feeling that when she looked in the mirror, she only ever saw half of herself. Deeper than surface level was a whole other part of herself, buried in shame, and shame for feeling so much shame.

As a child she’d loved a fizzy pomegranate juice. Whenever she had friends (Amanda) over, her mom would let them drink it as a treat. One time she got caught by her father trying to sneak some from the pantry in the middle of the night, and had been banned from ever having it again because it proved she “wasn’t responsible enough for treats”. By the time she was a teenager she already preferred actual sodas and didn’t mind the ban anymore. Still, she wondered why it struck him so much that she wanted something.

She threw the nectarine core out of the bus window, and saw it get dragged off the road within seconds towards the large expanse of greenery the motorway was surrounded by. There was something poetic about it- her act of consumption blending into nature. Wasn’t hunger natural? Would we be human if we didn’t want things we weren’t supposed to have?

Titch and Derek existed almost entirely surrounded by nature, and they had grown to be unabashed of their lives, their desire for one another. She wasn’t too dissimilar from Titch really. Losing her father, escaping through doing work, raised in a Catholic family feeling insignificant and unwanted despite being so deliberately chosen by her parents. They were even similar in who they had ended up with. Men they’d met in class, tall, slightly bumbling. Although Derek was more of a gentle giant to Mark’s volatile mountain, it wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to see the parallels.

Titch was satisfied, though.

Clarissa was here, which rather definitely meant that she was not.

 

-In the Sky-

Amanda had spent the last four hours trying to shrug Mark’s head off her shoulder. When the guy fell asleep, she learned he was much like a boulder. Similarly to a boulder, he hadn’t been helpful in booking the flights, getting through TSA or packing a suitcase (she’d had to remind him to bring his toothpaste). How he was expecting to raise an entire child was a mystery she lacked the wit or desire to solve. In the meantime she could listen to his admittedly quiet snoring and wish her earphones were noise blocking.

She’d struggled through two movies already. The first, When Harry Met Sally, had just left her infuriated and jealous. The second, Falling For Christmas, had only recently been released. She and Clarissa had made it their mission to watch any and every Lindsay Lohan movie no matter how awful. Since they’d been busy lately, it had been scheduled for the day after she got back from New York. Today. Amanda pinched her elbow so that her eyes remained dry. It was less of a habit than a fact of life.

Over the past six years, she’d invented many methods to avoid confronting the undeniable fact that she wished it had been her. At first she’d spent late nights watching sermons, repeating to herself that it was a slip in judgement she could fix through some kind of moral journey. Except later those same nights she’d wake up from dreams that would most definitely get her excommunicated by those same preachers. Faith just sheltered her, it didn’t change her. So she tried extremism. She cut her hair, took up chain smoking, listened to Tegan and Sara. Whilst it was somewhat enthralling, it wasn’t quite her scene. Then there was eating her feelings, exercising out her feelings and simply dating literally anyone she could tolerate being in a room with in the hopes that it would distract her.

Every single thing worked for about a week, and then she was right back to square one. You could kiss every guy in New Jersey and none of them would compare to sloppily nearly making out with your best friend at 1am in her bedroom whilst she was trying to recover from her dad’s death with a game of truth or dare. Actually, the women she’d kissed didn’t really have much of an impact on her either, which was insane, as she was one hundred percent a lesbian. That wasn’t even a question.

It was sort of an unspoken thing. Her mom had bought her a leather jacket for her twentieth birthday, and that was the closest she’d ever come to confronting her about her sexuality. Her dad would always ask if she was interested in anybody, and then vaguely whisper “I bet she’s very pretty” like he thought she was half-deaf. Hamish kept vanishing off to other countries and returning with girlfriends then saying to his older sister “you wish you could pull like this”, which she assumed was his language for “you’re a lesbian and a pathetic loser”.

“I knew it!”

Mark slowly raised his cheek to look at her bleary-eyed. “Knew what?”

“The guy in this movie, Lindsay Lohan’s ex fiancé, was gay all along. Or bisexual, whatever. I kept thinking he should get with that forest guy, but this works too. Right at the beginning of the film I reckoned he was gay. And now she’s left him for the guy from Glee, he’s finally taken his chance and gotten with a guy.” Amanda gazed at Mark. Maybe he’d make a good gay guy if given the chance. He was muscular enough to sway a lot of them, and a decent number of gay men were bald. You just needed to be distinctly chiselled and they’d swoon. He simply required a better fashion sense. He was even appropriately bad at empathising with women.

“How far are we from Bristol?”

 

“About half an hour.

“Oh, thank goodness. It’s impossible to get a good sleep in here.”

She stared at him blankly, at his head still resting on her shoulder. “You’re telling me.”

Amanda could remember Clarissa’s eighteenth birthday. She was an Aquarius, January 27th. Pretty much everybody invited was a girl, and she’d made the theme 80s, so they all looked absolutely ridiculous. Amanda herself had styled her hair to look like it was permed, and was just adjusting her neon yellow leg warmers when there was a knock at the door. Clarissa’ spinning so quickly the denim jacket tied around her waist fell off, rushed towards the sound with a small squeal. Into the room strode a boy around their age, looking like the ginger equivalent of Billy from Stranger Things, with sunglasses slipping down his nose.

Clarissa was on the verge of physically swooning, offering repeatedly to hang up his jacket for him, or if he wanted any of the punch, or maybe his legs were tired from the twenty minute walk to her house and he wanted to have a sit on the couch. Amanda could see herself in the reflection of his glasses, pathetically overdressed in her commitment to whatever Clarissa wanted her to do under the sun. She didn’t need to ask her best friend to know who this guy was. It was obvious in his swagger, his slightly unconventional yet incredibly obvious attractiveness and the giggling Clarissa couldn’t suppress.

Having given her a brief though tight hug, Mark pushed his sunglasses into his hair and surveyed the party. “I really like the song. Waiting For A Star to Fall. My mom loved this song.”

Clarissa seemed to jitter at the news that she’d pleased him. “Oh, thank you! I mean, I actually didn’t put it on the playlist. It was Amanda’s choice. She loves eighties music, you guys could talk about that maybe.” She pointed over at Amanda, who was still staring at the pair of them wordlessly. “Amanda, come over here! Meet Mark. I’ve told him all about you, and vice versa. I really do think the two of you would get on, you have lots in common. Hurry up Amanda, he doesn’t bite!”

When she reached the pair of them, she noticed that in heels, she was actually a little bit taller than Mark in all his grandeur. Up close, his muscles looked more aesthetic than functional, and his hair needed to be conditioned more often. The lack of a motherly figure in his life seemed evident to her, even if it was rude to notice. Mark Murray, whose birthday had already happened a few months ago. Who partied by the turnpike and unironically loved craftsmanship. Who sat at the perfect angle for Clarissa to stare at him whilst pretending to pay attention in shop class.

Amanda disliked Mark instantaneously.

“Nice to meet you, Mark.” She outstretched her hand, and for a split second, it seemed like he had recoiled at the sight of her wristband-covered arm. Eventually he took it, and gave her a shockingly weak handshake that didn’t remotely match his physique. It lasted half a second before the pair of them turned to Clarissa to end the interaction with anything possible. Since she completely missed the cue, they instead looked at each other, Amanda chewing on her bottom lip and Mark furrowing his eyebrows.

Mark clearly couldn’t stand her either.

In 2023, Clarissa’s birthday had happened a few weeks ago. As usual, there was a dress code. This time, she’d decided to go for goth. Mark, in his infinite wisdom, hadn't bothered to google the differences between subcultures and had just stuck some smudged eyeliner and black nail polish on and called it a day. Maybe that was unfair; he had taken the effort to buy massive boots and a thick studded belt. It was just… not goth. Amanda had spent hours exploring all the different types of goth and eventually settled on romantic, finally getting her cross necklace back out from her drawer and pairing it with a corset and slightly hooped skirt. All morning she’d styled her hair and face to perfection.

Upon her arrival, Clarissa (who looked drop dead gorgeous in her tumbling maroon vampire goth dress) kissed her on both cheeks, tapped her on the shoulders and scuttled off to go advise Mark not to drink the vodka mixer as it had lemon traces and he was allergic to citrus. Whilst she busied herself talking to Vicky, one of their mutual friends who was already well past the driving limit and sweating her white face paint off, she got to be jealous of the strobe lighting as it danced on Clarissa’s skin. And Mark, who put an arm around her and buried his lips in her hair for a moment. She fit perfectly in his arms.

At Clarissa’s eighteenth birthday, Amanda had just been expecting to have to hate this man for a few months. Eventually he’d fuck it up, and she’d realise she deserved better (after Amanda had to tell her as much), and she’d move on to someone else. It’d still suck, but it wouldn’t be personal.

But it was Mark. It had to be him.

In the times it pricked her skin like a sunburn, eating at her resolve, she put it down to lust. Lust was a simple concept. A deadly sin. Were it simply lust, there was a solution. Repentance was earned, sought, bought in some historical periods. Lust was a disease that rotted you from the inside out. It was ugly, a defect in your feelings. Because how she desired her was lustful, it was inherently blasphemous, filthy, wrong. She must recover, otherwise everytime she looked at her friend she was violating her. It was harder to hate Mark if he was pure, and she was the burden.

Except she loved her. Every morning she woke up loving her, no matter how she rephrased and recalibrated it in her brain as something else. It was wired into her. Not an infection or an affliction but a state of being. A fact of her life she ran from but couldn’t outrun. And if that caused her to turn on Mark, or Clarissa’s mother or herself so be it that was what she did. She loved Clarissa, and if loving her meant letting her be happy, she’d pay for her husband to travel halfway across the world to romantically reunite with her and begin a family together. Loving her was a privilege, a sacrifice and all Amanda knew.

The plane was descending, Mark was fully awake, another movie had been auto-playing for almost half an hour. Were Amanda one of her own clients in a session, she’d tell herself to take a break. Distance herself from the pressures of her life, do some calming activities, talk to other people. She wouldn’t give herself the advice to go to a British farm and relinquish all control she had over her own life in favour of a girl who simply did not feel the same way about her and never had.

People were filing slowly off the plane. Amanda reached for her phone and turned off airplane mode to check her notifications. Upon looking, she found that Clarissa’s dot seemed to be moving further North, away from Somerset towards Bristol. Quite possibly they’d be able to catch up with her if they got a taxi soon. Something in her told her finding Clarissa wasn’t going to be that easy. She wouldn’t let herself be caught with so little fight back. If anything, they shouldn’t let this closeness give them a false sense of security.

Mark, however, had other ideas.

Peering over her shoulder, he began to shake her arm in a way that was much too close and personal to be normal. “We got it!” he announced. “She’s still here! I’m going to see her.” Amanda wondered whether Mark got things on a silver platter with Clarissa sometimes or if he was genuinely just optimistic. Whichever it was, she wished she had that naivety in her. Like a parent trying to regulate their toddler, she pulled his hands off her arm and signalled with her hands that he should calm down and focus on getting off the plane before thinking they’d solved everything.

“Mark, do you trust me?”

“Not really. What are you gonna ask me to do?”

“Would you be willing to spend a night here in Somerset?”

Mark groaned, putting his head in his hand. “Why would we do that when we know where she is? You’re gonna make us fumble the bag Amanda!”

“Ignoring that you just called your own wife a bag, we are not fumbling. We are merely securing the bag, if that’s what you want to refer to her as. We stay, we get information. We plan a journey. We figure out who she knows, how long-lasting her supplies are, places she’s been. She’s doing everything on impulse, but collectively, we know her better than she knows herself, and we can figure out what she'll choose to do before she can herself. Maybe if you find her right away, you’re just proving you don’t care why she’s running.”

Several seconds passed as Mark weighed the idea. Amanda reckoned he was replaying every time he’d misunderstood her in his mind like DIY psychological torture. She was offering him the chance to study her on a silver platter, and perhaps not taking it proved that he loved the idea of her far more than the reality. Soon, he gritted his teeth and nodded at her, the veins on his neck becoming more prominent due to emotional strain. She pitied him almost as much as she despised him. “Only because I care about her, and you seem to be in her head more than me.”

“Great! It’s a sleepover!” she replied sardonically.

It was going to be a very long day.

Notes:

Hello again!!!!

I can't lie, I've written 4000 words of this today, which is more or less the most I've written on any singular day in multiple years. Safe to say, I'm enjoying writing this fic, and also apologise for any and all mistakes as a result of this process. Tune into next chapter for a stag husbands crossover that WILL leave you thinking "if I had a nickel". I hope this chapter wasn't too word-vomit-esque, because I know sometimes I get carried away with flashbacks and pretentious inner monologues. Let me know what all of you think, and another similar length chapter will be coming relatively soon!!!!

Thank you all for reading my loves, Theo :)

Chapter 3: Deconstruct

Summary:

Clarissa is abducted into the world of Ethel, and discovers a side to herself she didn't previously know existed through the art of improv and choose-your-adventure games.

Meanwhile, Mark and Amanda open up over drinks and an episode of Would I Lie To You?

 

OR a character study using psychological torture
(trigger warnings for mentions of gore, violence, temporary character death and blood!!!!)

-Bristol-

The bus journey was quiet, bar the occasional baby crying or teenager playing a TikTok at full volume. Clarissa’s mind was loud. In fairness, her brain was always buzzing. No matter what medication she relied on to maintain her focus, she never found a way to mute it. Sometimes it was like screaming, projecting all of her worst fears and insecurities. On others it was simply infuriating, listing thoughts with no meaning or relevance. This was why she liked the nighttime so much, she could outpour all her own thoughts to her bedroom ceiling or her notes app. It was why she loved sleepovers, somebody could finally hear her brain and accept it.

Sleeping with Mark every night didn’t feel like the eternal sleepover some people referred to marriage as. Whenever she spoke to him he just fell asleep halfway through, or wordlessly put his earphones in, his passive aggressive way of communicating that he’d had enough of her yammering. On the nights he listened, it didn’t seem like he heard her. Every thirty seconds he’d go “oh yeah baby?” until she’d gotten through her point, at which time he’d add “that’s so interesting” or “that sucks” depending on the general tone of the rant.

She’d been lonely all her life. An only child with a father she didn’t trust to tell anything and a mother she didn’t trust not to tell her father. Since he’d died they’d definitely become a lot closer, looking out for each other instead of at one another from a distance, noticing the similarities. But their bond now didn’t negate the seventeen years she’d spent in a house that didn’t ever seem a home. No wonder she was inviting Amanda around so often. Amanda breathed life into a space Clarissa was emptied by.

Anytime she was on the bus nowadays she got reflective. All she could remember was a little over a year ago, sitting right at the back so other passengers didn’t notice her crying her eyes out, picturing Mark driving the car back to his home and refusing to speak to her anymore. She’d adored Mark Murray from the moment she met him, persevered through a four year relationship to reach the proposal of her dreams, just to fail him and herself at the last hurdle because of her own stupid brain.

Not that she wanted to wallow in self-pity. There were lots of factors in why the journey to the wedding had been so tumultuous. Her inattentiveness, Mark’s short temper, their religious duties, Amanda’s resistance to the union until the pair of them had done some self-improvement. Plus, it wasn’t even a big hindrance, they’d still gotten married. It was a tad bit unconventional and poorly thought through, but it was lovely as a declaration of love. All of that could be true simultaneously.

Then why did buses still make her contemplative?

They pulled into the bus stop, and she disembarked with her luggage, getting whiplash from the speed of getting up. Or maybe it was pregnancy sickness. That would be awful.

To say she was ambushed would be a kind word. Borderline attacked, perhaps. However it was properly phrased, two hands coiled themselves around Clarissa’s shoulders and forced her into a car with a force frankly disconcerting for their owner. Not leaving her any time to properly ask what was going on, her assailant buckled her seatbelt and side-stepped around the car into the driver’s seat with a manic laughter that crackled at the end like a voice that had been worn out by many decades of volume.

“Ethel?” Clarissa uncertainly asked the woman. It had been over a year since she’d done her investigative report into the pensioner’s insane antics, and whilst she definitely had a recognisable form of chaos, she physically presented as a very normal old woman most of the time. The only sign of irregularity was the backless nature of the floral frock she was wearing, and the fanny pack of what could only be bottles and syringes based on the outlines they made against her frail frame.

“That’s my name. Wear it out all you like, I enjoy hearing it, dear.” She unzipped the fanny back, hurling her the ability to inject ‘pure fucking adrenaline’ into her body. “You seem to be affected by the pregnancy already. You need a pick me up and spin me about.” She began to make the car hurtle down the road in a way that was almost definitely illegal. “Don’t worry, when they make speeding laws they just didn’t consider me. You don’t seem overly pleased to see me. That hurts- I am a hoot! Plus, Margaery told me you were on your way here. I’m not some kind of demonic entity, I just have ears in lots of places.”

Trying to catch her breath and falling pitifully short, Clarissa shot a glare at Ethel so stubborn that it almost seemed to dissolve her resolve. “Tell me where you’re taking me.” Whilst doing training as a journalist in high-stakes situations, there’d been a briefing on what to do in the case you’d been kidnapped or taken hostage. Clarissa wasn’t exactly known for paying attention, but she remembered the gist of the instructions. A lot of it was managing adrenaline, assessing the situation as a whole instead of honing in on the minute details as she was prone to do. Know when to leave. No story is worth your life.

“Calm your tits.” Was Ethel’s initial response. Once Clarissa bashed her elbow into the crone’s ribcage, she crumbled a little. “Careful! You’re going to send me to an early grave.” Thank god, Clarissa thought, but she let Ethel continue. “When you did your story a while back, I know you got to speak to my lovely grandson Jim right around our big day. His big day, sorry. With Lucy, who was a great client. So pliable, so confused. Full of secrets. No wonder she got her reputation.”

Humoring her, Clarissa asked, “What reputation?”

“You’re a journalist, why don’t you find out.” Seemingly a bit spiteful, she turned on Clarissa. “Why are you here then?”

Prepared for this question, she nodded. People love to see nodding, to feel like they’ve asked something good. In a possible kidnapping situation, she wanted to lull Ethel into a sense of security. Besides trying barreling out of the car onto the motorway holding her suitcase as a shield for damage, it was the only genuine plan she could conceive. “To see Jim and Jamie.”

Ethel mirrored her nod. “Change.”

Clarissa was not trained for this. “What?”

 

“Change your answer. It’s an improv exercise. It’s very easy, not worth paying to see. Go ahead. Change.”

Trying not to activate her fight or flight, she regulated her breathing, remembering that Ethel was approaching eighty, the owner of a wellness cult, and the grandmother of the man she was travelling to see. There was about a ninety percent chance everything was going to be okay, she’d be there within half an hour, and would live to tell the tale with a smile on her face. “Okay. I’m… I’m here to interview you.”

“Change.”

“I’m here to interview myself.”

Change.

“I’m here to look at myself in the rearview mirror and admire it.”

Change.

“I’m here to give birth.”

Change.

“I’m here to birth a genius idea.”

Change.

“I’m here to confess my love.”

No change.

“Right. I’m here to confess my love to my husband.”

Change.

“To myself again.”

Change.

“To you, Ethel.”

Change.

“What am I supposed to say?”

“Your hair is the colour of gold right before it begins to rust.”

Clarissa wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say in response to that. Rather than prod further, which she was wont to do, she kept her mouth shut and her eyes on the road. She’d only been about a five minute walk from Jim’s local pub when she got abducted. How far could she possibly be now? Were they just going in a circle?

As they entered a tunnel, the lights dimmed. Then it got darker. And darker. And darker, until everything around her was pitch black and she couldn’t distinguish her own hands from the knees she clutched desperately onto. This wasn’t normal. Nowhere she’d ever been in her life, and she had been to so many places, had been this obscured. There were no exterior sounds, no other cars, no signs that even the car she was in was moving anymore. She reached out to her right trying to touch Ethel, but found the seat unoccupied. Only she remained.

Equally inexplicably, a spotlight materialised around her. She tried to look out of the car window, hoping to get some explanation of where she was being left or taken. Still no sign of an outside world. In the pocket of her denim jacket was a homemade pepper spray she carried with her at all times. Normally at a time of crisis like this she’d wield it, while readying her phone to dial the cops at a moment’s notice. You couldn’t pepper spray the void, or the isolation that came with it. She couldn’t even really feel the outline of her phone in her pocket anymore.

Slowly, the light around her emerged, showing they were in a cavernous room , entirely empty of furniture or wallpaper, a dull shade of grisly grey that would be boring if it wasn’t for the sheer expanse of it. It looked like a simulation, an artist’s interpretation of corporate greed or something of the like. It was boringly fake, yet vividly raw, a living, breathing thing that looked oddly hungry in the way its edges ebbed and pulsed. On the wall that faced her were a series of wires and cables, attached to two bodies she was all too familiar with.

Mark was bright red in the face, hoarse from trying to shout out to his wife. A device cast shadows on his face, mechanical and quivering. It was like The Chokey from Matilda. Slowly, surely, the box was closing in over his head, its interior spiked. Once it reached him, he’d be impaled over several, impossibly long seconds. All she’d be able to see was a cube, dripping with blood. In front of her appeared two buttons. One said “save Mark”, and the other said “save Amanda”. Clarissa didn’t feel the need nor want to look in the other direction, yet she found herself doing so.

Amanda’s olive skin was drained of all colour, a husk of a being. Her arms and legs were pinned against the wall, her mouth gagged shut. She shook her head, the imitations of words emerging, all utterly indistinguishable. Her shoulders jerked, desperate to free herself from the constraints, but she was held like a marionette, utterly rigid. By blinking furiously, she managed to get Clarissa’s attention. The two of them had been in Girl Scouts together over a decade ago, during which time they’d been taught morse code. Only segments of the information retained. Clarissa strained herself to decipher what her best friend was trying to tell her.

Choose Mark.

A blond man poked his head out from under the car seat, pulling himself into the driver’s position. Nothing about him was human except that he was not an animal. His hair was coarse and directionless, his skin smooth and transparent, his eyes lifeless and bright. All of his clothes were a size too big, and his glasses only amplified the size of one of his eyes, and reduced the other. He wore a wedding ring on his right hand and a cross around his waist. When he spoke it was with a thick German accent in perfect English. “Hello! My name is Wilhelm.”

Clarissa stifled the panic bubbling in her throat. “Is this real?”

Wilhelm raised one of his eyebrows, the other limply hanging on his face. “How could it be real?”

“I don’t know. Fuck!” She looked at the two buttons she’d been offered. Identical in size, shape and color. They each followed a wire towards the individual that corresponded with their label. Were she to somehow cut it, it was assumed that they’d die instantaneously. She was familiar with the trolley problem and its implications. Were she to do nothing, two people died, and she wasn’t responsible. Once she made a choice, she saved a life, ending one in return. Killing somebody. “What happens if I press both buttons at the same time?”

“Whomever you put pressure on first is safe. There is no saving both.”

She looked up at Amanda, who repeated the message. Then at Mark, who continued yelling incoherently. Theoretically, this was a morally easy choice. Having been given the pass to do so, she could save Mark, letting Amanda go after her noble sacrifice in the name of Clarissa’s happiness. It was typical Amanda, to be willing to go the extra mile for her. Clarissa had always known her best friend to behave like that. It didn’t sit right with her, though, that her repayment for so much extra burden would be to die for her. Amanda deserved better.

Then there was Mark. Who’d spent his whole life feeling inadequate, blamed for the death of his mother by a useless, alcoholic father. Who was the first in his family to finish high school. Who ate with her, slept with her, lived with her. Who wanted a child to fit both his father’s standards for him and break the abusive cycles he’d been raised into. Who, despite that, hadn’t really recovered from the abuse himself enough to not partially repeat it. Who she knew had so much more growth left in him, and a heart big enough to be willing to do so.

They were intelligent, kind, capable people who’d tell her they loved her as much as she wanted to hear it. Right now, both of them were squirming, possibly crying out prayers or pleas or curses. Everything rested on her. She was only twenty three. She thought about Jim and Jamie, discussing their experiences (or their claimed lack of such) with Ethel. What had she put them through? Whose fate lay in the balance for them? What were they willing to hide, and most importantly, what had she revealed?

“They say she changes your life.”, a man from Munich had told her, tears forming in his eyes.

Clarissa hovered her trembling hand over the bulbous button that read “save Mark”, searching for the willpower to press it. Wilhelm leaned over her shoulder like a driving instructor, watching her make the decision that changed it all. Her palms were too sweaty to give it any force, not that she was pushing it anyways. She just stared furiously at it, the prospect of a lifetime with Mark and without Amanda hanging over her. She’d hate it obviously, because she’d miss Amanda. No other reason. She’d mourn her friend, but be relieved that at least her husband and possible child were there to help her through it.

She screwed her eyes shut and her hands jutted outwards, each pushing a button. Entirely random. Completely out of her hands. Whichever one survived could know that it was a pure force of luck, and the one killed wouldn’t know a thing. It was the least personal option, the simple choice, the one that had occurred to her the moment she was faced with the dilemma. She could rest easily tonight, after whatever nightmare she was in had finished, with the relief that she’d done everything she could’ve.

Except for one thing.

Clarissa kind of knew which button she pressed first the second she did it. Not through her consciousness, no, she was helpfully convinced she’d been neutral. But somewhere subconsciously, she was aware of her own bias. The millisecond difference had, in actuality, been visible. Wilhelm laughed, a rumbling growl of a sound that she dared not open her eyes to witness. Instead she heard the power surge through one of the buttons, halting the process, and the slow cranking as the other inched towards its target.

She couldn’t help but see it.

Mark twitched, the veins on his body turning blue in his sheer efforts to escape the bounds. He just couldn’t. The two doors were at a right angle, beginning their inwards shift into his face, suffocating and penetrating him. Before they had the chance, Mark Murray made direct eye contact with the woman he’d fallen in love with seven years ago. They saw each other for a couple seconds, both with wet and bloodshot eyes. She waved to him, not sure whether to be apologetic or to cleanse herself of any emotion whatsoever. He spat the gag out in a feat of miraculous strength.

“I don’t regret it.” He told her, his solemnity a stark contrast from the shouting he’d been doing moments before. “But I wouldn’t want any more of it. If this is it.”

“I love you, Mark. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.”

The lid screwed itself shut. His legs continued to kick for several seconds. He let out a bloodcurdling scream that warped itself as his mouth must have become too mangled to make any noise. Eventually, all his limbs ceased to move, dangling as a ragdoll might, abandoned by its owner in favour of the attic. From underneath the box, liquid so dark red it might as well have been black spilled onto the floor. Clarissa wanted to faint, and yet she found herself glued to the sight of the pool of blood forming.

Amanda was dropped to the ground with a thud and a shriek. She hurtled towards Clarissa, a mess of arms and hair and wasted affection. Once she reached her best friend’s side, they did not hug. The two of them simply watched the remainders of Mark’s life as they began to bubble, Wilhelm vanishing from their side. As the blood took a new shape, Wilhelm came to life, a creature created from the fantasies he tortured his victims with. Mark was now false, a memory… “You have completed ze test!”

A test.

She looked to her right, to find Amanda too was beginning to fade. Clarissa held out her hand and Amanda squeezed it, nodding. Much as she was a figment of all of this, her anguish seemed realised to Clarissa, and she wanted to apologise for both going against her wishes, and pushing her away from Mark in reality. Fading away, Amanda gave her an admittedly grim smile. “I promise I’ll forgive you.”

“I promise you won’t have to.”

And she was gone, leaving Clarissa in her isolated hellscape once more, with Wilhelm leering over her, his reanimated form glitching like a computer animation. “It’s a very complicated process, transference of sentience.” he explained like she was a confused student. “Ethel prefers that I’m prepared for it at any given time. I am her lap dog, her knight in shining armour. Her toy, if that’s the mood she’s in. She’s a beautiful soul, but she is blackened by the darkness she sees in others. So am I.”

Clarissa watched the man. On some level she pitied him, imaginary as he was, for his eternal suffering in favor of others’ repentance. There was an earnestness to his words that she recognised. Still, the test was brutal. And it wasn’t like she’d proven anything. All she’d done was rely on randomness. Her life wasn’t changed, it was just a little more plagued by inevitable flashbacks she was now going to have to this exact moment. “The test makes no sense. It’s not a crime to prefer your best friend to your husband.”

Wilhelm grinned at her, showing six teeth too many. “Why do you assume that is the moral of the test?”

“I- stop! I can’t do this! I don’t understand!” She shook her head, a small shriek escaping. “I want to go back! Let me go see Jim and Jamie.”

Though he shook his head, Wilhelm seemed to affirm her request, and the world around her began to twist, warping itself back into darkness. Some part of her was afraid, but the main part was just glad to no longer be staring at the place where her husband’s remains had been. Reality formed around her. She was back in the passenger seat, lamely wrapping her fingers tight around her knees, being driven by Ethel at a speed not recommended by the law nor car manufacturers.

“I am dreadfully sorry dear,” Ethel told her, “I might’ve given you too high of a dosage of my juice. Past a certain threshold, it does get a bit wacky, and that’s coming from the woman who popularised reverse cowgirl. That’s a story for another time.”

Despite very much wanting to use her journalistic skills to investigate what this “juice” consisted of and how exactly one could “popularise” a sex position, Clarissa decided to keep the more niche questions to herself. “Can you tell me where you’re taking me?”

“Of course I can!”

“Then tell me, Ethel.”

“You’re very patronising. I’m going to a lovely garden party for Jim and Julie. Everyone’s invited- which reminds me, I have to make a pit stop and get my goat. He asked to come so politely.”

Over the course of the next twenty minutes, everything was very mundane and as Ethel had described. Bar the oddity of a goat trying to chew her hair from the seat behind her, which Ethel called “teething”, it was so normal it made her wonder if she’d even gotten drugged and hallucinated anything whatsoever. The only sign it had happened was that everytime she closed her eyes for a millisecond too long, she could taste the metallic undertone of a pool of blood forming in the place where Mark had been, and sense the warmth of Amanda’s hand as she promised her it was alright.

She looked at her phone, checking on the pair of them. They seemed to be arriving in Bristol Airport not far away. At least they were alive. She needed them to be alive.

The garden party was clearly not an open invite. Jim himself was craned over a barbecue, flipping burgers without a care in the world. Jamie was sat with a couple other friends of his in lounge chairs, making conversation. A woman she reckoned was Jim’s wife Lucy had a child on her shoulders, and was playing with a second toddler. Everybody there was either related to one of the married couple, or a close enough friend to be considered practically family. A pit in Clarissa’s stomach opened up as she wondered what the fuck she was doing here.

“Nana?” Jim’s tone was one of a combination of exhaustion and terror at the sight of his grandmother. “How did you even know this was happening?” He looked around like the police were going to hop out of a bush and arrest Ethel on the spot. “I thought you were doing community service for…” he took on a hush tone, “taking that shopping trolley full of pig’s blood and painkillers to the strip club again.” Clarissa held her tongue at the mention of “again”, but the small snort that escaped her nose was enough to catch Jim’s attention.

“Oh! Clarissa Jenkins. Nice to see you. Sorry about… her.”

Ethel playfully shoved her grandson so forcefully he choked on his own spit. “Stop being such a loser! I’m wearing my ankle monitor”. She flexed her calf, exposing her highly tattooed legs. “And I was already doing community service. I service the community every day, and have done so for the past twenty years.”

“I wish you’d service the community with a little less… actually I wish you’d serve it with more. Please put on a cardigan, from a side angle you aren’t leaving what I wish you did to the imagination.”

Resigning herself to doing at least one thing that was asked of her, Ethel walked into the house, leaving Clarissa and Jim in a cloud of meat-smelling smoke by themselves. Clarissa, for her part, tried to make up for her rather jarring entrance. “It's okay. I really did wanna come to spend a good time with you guys since I was in the area and you were so generous last time. That said, I totally understand why you wouldn’t want me here. This seems like a pretty intimate thing, and I don’t want to intrude.”

“No, no! Any victim of Ethel is a friend of mine.” Jim insisted, the slight twitch in his eye implying she wasn’t the first to seek sanctuary from her batshit ways in his home. “Also, I guess this is kind of giving away that I lied to you for your article earlier this year. I am sorry, I just didn’t want to… implicate anyone in her antics. She really does change peoples’ lives, normally for the better. Just in a way that is very hard to explain and very easy to stick someone in prison for life for.”

Clarissa swallowed, remembering half an hour ago. “Yeah, you’re telling me.”

Jim winced, recognising their shared experience. “What big life decision is she trying to alter then?”

Clarissa considered obfuscating the question, but then remembered she had already told a pair of gay farmers, a witch and her own mother, who was a witch in her own way, and decided she was as transparent as a glass bottle. “I’m actually pregnant. Mark’s, of course. My husband if you remember. It’s sort of been a bit of a predicament for me, since I’m not really in the position to settle down and start a family right now, whilst I’m pretty sure he thinks he’s ready and is sorely mistaken.”

“I’ve been there. Lucy’s convinced the next step is kids. I think the next step might be speaking to a specialist, and not the fertility kind.”

Trying to make a connection between them, Clarissa looked at him, “Do you get why Ethel does everything she does for the people she does? There must be a reason.”

Jim shook his head, his eyes refocusing on Clarissa like he’d forcibly rebooted himself. “Do you ever feel like you’ve missed something really obvious? You made a choice that should’ve been exactly perfect, and then you look back on it and just think you must’ve made some kind of mistake because it felt awful? I can’t really explain it. Ethel’s test got to me I guess… although I’m not sure I really received her message. I don’t know… I got the feeling that you might relate to me in that sense.”

Clarissa stared at Jim for a moment, and then at Lucy in the depth of the party, mingling with her friends. Jim was similar looking to Mark, bearded, balding, about a foot taller than her. Lucy wasn’t a far cry from her, blonde, angular, very chatty. They’d gotten married around the same time too. Both, clearly, were borderline disasters that almost never happened. And neither seemed to be bringing a fruitful, peaceful, agreeable result. Not that Clarissa’s marriage was the thing wrong in her life. Not fully.
“Did you have a best man at your wedding?”

Jim pointed half-heartedly to a familiar man to Lucy’s left, who seemed to be forcibly resisting looking at his friend’s wife. “Yeah. Jamie. Michael, but I call him Jamie. You’ve met.”

“Right… and was he sort of against you getting married in the first place?”

Jim chewed on his bottom lip tentatively, putting all of his focus into flipping an already mostly well done burger. “I mean, yes, but he did have a reason. And Lucy and I talked it through and decided together that it wasn’t worth cancelling the whole thing over one mistake. I trust her, like I trust Jamie. We all make mistakes, we’re human. Jamie said that.”

Clarissa hummed, trying to put the pieces together. “Amanda told me I had to learn to be strong within myself before I looked for that strength in someone else.” Had she listened? Properly? Or were they empty words to her, who yearned for validation in his arms more than her own? She liked herself most of the time. She was proud of her achievements, all the things she’d explored and exposed, all the wondrous people she’d met in doing so. At her age, most people hadn’t done this much. Her foundations were strong. She just wasn’t ever happy enough, content enough. Her problem wasn’t her foundations, they were her expectations. Clearly.

She’d expected to let somebody down. It was the test. She knew she could never pick what would make her happy. But for one second, somewhere deep in herself, she’d made the selfish choice, and it had felt good.

Jamie strolled over leisurely, high fiving Clarissa’s slightly limp hand. He was in a good mood judging by the way his plaid-clad chest was puffed out. When Jim looked his way, he flashed him a smile, and the two clapped each other on the back. There was a cadence in the way he moved that was so smooth it was practically rehearsed. Clarissa hated interviewees with this attitude, because it just indicated that they would give nothing away. “So, are the burgers almost ready? And hi Clarissa. How’d you get here.”

Jim scowled. “Yes they are, and you don’t want to know.”

Jamie’s face briefly drained of color. “Jesus Christ. Again?”

The two of them erupted into a conversation full of references and anecdotes she was a million miles away from getting. It was fair enough, she was the unwelcome visitor. She busied herself getting a paper cup and pouring herself some cold water, not in the mood for anything flavorful after what had already been a much too vibrant day. As she did, she noticed a song coming from the speaker that had been placed on the table full of chips, carrots and hummus. Waiting For a Star To Fall. One of Amanda’s favorites.

“You're good to stay in the guest bedroom, right?”

“Yeah if you’re willing to have me.”

“No problem.”

And Mark’s.

 

-A Hotel in Somerset-

Around the third episode of Would I Lie To You? and the second packet of Worther’s Originals, Amanda and Mark decided they probably needed to actually speak to each other to form a plan. Although it made for a good stalemate to watch British comedians tell ridiculous stories about rivalries with children and park benches, it did not get them any closer to Clarissa, laying in Bristol with an equally troubling quandary. Amanda took the pillow they’d been using as a wall between them in their ill-advised double bed, and turned to face him.

“Do you have a map? You seem like the type of guy who carries around a map.”

Mark frowned. “No, obviously not… I left it at home.”

“Okay, that’s fine. I’ll just get up Maps on my laptop. We’re gonna circle every place we know Clarissa has gone to before on a trip, probably for work, but we shouldn’t discount regular vacations just in case. And then we can try and pin the pieces together and track what her course is gonna look like. Obviously we can’t be sure she’ll visit every single one, but if we know the possibilities we can preempt her.” She looked over at Mark, who was staring at Lee Mack. “Mark, are you following the words I’m saying?”

“What? Yeah, I’m listening.”

“Are you distracted by the idea of your wife being pregnant or by Bob Mortimer?”

“Both?”

Over the next hour, the unlikely pair managed to put their heads together and note down every place Clarissa might go. She would stay in Bristol, she had contacts here. Then there was Folkestone, a heartwarming tale of the Eurostar’s shutdown and reopening. Manchester and their budding officer’s capture at the hands of Nigel. Glasgow’s Met Police managing to catch the elusive, ultra-wealthy Lord and Lady Lafayette for committing tax evasion (and murder allegedly). A port in the Highlands with mysterious anthropomorphic sheep caused by a lighthouse. The whole state of Texas had been her base a few months ago, covering the 2 year anniversary of the short-lived Second Cube War and its respective heroes. There was a possible Italian vineyard, a plethora of cults, a criminal cancerous kid from California,a haunting in Hornchurch and a nasty divorce and remarriage in the North Pole. All in all begging the question ‘when did Clarissa find the time to live her own life?’, that Amanda was beginning to pose.

“I guess this is her living her life.” Mark responded simply, zooming in on England. “This is what she finds fulfilling.”

“But when she needs to get away from you, as she does right now, she plans another trio abroad. Like her whole job isn’t one big vacation. She clearly sees it as an escape on some level, otherwise why is it her crutch when times get tough?” She looked over at Mark, expecting some kind of defence or counter attack, to find the man rather limply shrugging, then nodding. It was an odd feeling to agree with him, especially on something that was essentially a personal attack.

It had begun to rain. This wasn’t entirely unlike England in March, although it meant Clarissa, like them, was going to stay put for the time being. Not that she disliked the rain. She was the type of annoying optimist who lay down in her backyard, enjoying the rain on her pajamas in the morning. One time she’d made Amanda join her, and she’d managed to develop a particularly nasty fever as a result. She called Clarissa a manipulator for the ordeal, whilst Clarissa called her weak and compromisable. They both laughed.

It seemed Mark also shared her distaste for the rain. He rolled his eyes. “Do you have anything to do? I was going to go on an evening walk until the weather decided my week hadn’t been bad enough.”

With all the kindness in her heart, Amanda ignored that Mark was basically just asking her to entertain him like she was a ballerina twirling in his music box, she rummaged around in her bag. At the airport, she’d tried to stock them with some essentials. Pot noodles, adaptors for their chargers, thin rain coats. She hadn’t brought any games due to the fact that this was a mission of necessity, and not a playdate with her best friend Mark Murray. She did, however, have booze, which was going to have to cut it,

“Clarissa said you’re funny about drinking. I have a six pack and a dream that when drunk, I’ll be able to tolerate you more. Is that agreeable?”

Mark paused for a second. From what Amanda knew, the sensitivity with alcohol was related to his mom, something even she wasn’t enough of a hater to touch with a ten foot pole. He’d drunk at some birthday parties, but in the times they’d been outside of his own home, he’d been hesitant to go anywhere near the driving limit. It was a godsend for Clarissa, who was free to get drunk off her face, trusting her husband would happily drive her home. Right now though, Amanda was happy to spend some money on her rival. Rival was a strong word. Nemesis?

“Yeah. Okay. You might be nicer drunk.”

Amanda put a couple paracetamols into her drink, swallowing easily (a benefit of being a child that was constantly undertaking maladies). Mark’s eyes followed the drink as it entered her throat. “Don’t worry, I’m not taking it because talking to you is giving me a headache. That’s an unrelated issue.”

“Are you on your period?”

“Excuse me?”

“I just… sorry, that’s not something you’re supposed to ask. I know that. It was leading to a point.” Amanda, still slack-jawed, gestured at him to get to the point in question. “Clarissa hasn’t had her period in a couple months. She usually kept all her sanitary products in a drawer in our room, but I knocked the drawer over last week and it was basically completely empty. Like she wasn’t expecting to have another any time soon. I got the feeling from that that there was something that she was hiding from me.”

“Or in denial about.”

“That too.”

Biting back an insult on the inside of her cheek, Amanda offered Mark the other can and he gingerly opened it and took a sip. At first, they just drank in silence, too bitter about the other’s presence to come up with anything worth saying. Eventually the very literally pregnant pause became amusing to them, and Amanda laughed a little, jolting the tension to a sharp halt. “We suck. You know that, I know that. But I’m tipsy, and I assume you are too, and I think that means I find you fascinating. Like a hamster in a ball on a wheel, a prison within a prison and all that. So I want to treat you.”

“Treat me like what?”

“No. Treat you as a client. I wanna be your therapist.”

“You really do suck.”

She shrugged, indicating that it was up to him. Even though, on some level, she definitely wanted to put a microscope to Mark Murray. His stupid alliterative name, his odd jobs in construction, his ability to shatter her best friend into pieces, the sore spot of his relationship with his father after the loss of his mother. Normally people like him either cling to therapy (often only listening to the terminology, and tuning out all the actual advice) or refuse to seek help until they’re either in the shit or six feet under. He, based on the way he was narrowing his eyes at her menacingly, fit much better into the latter category. “Do I get to ask you questions in return?”

“Fine. I get to veto the stupid ones.”

“I do too.”

“Deal.”

Mark, seemingly deciding that he had to go first, leaned forwards in the bed, looking her up and down like a piece of meat. A cold, rotting, green piece of meat. If they met in any other context, in a world without Clarissa, what would be different? It wasn’t a pleasant thought. A world without Clarissa was impossible for Amanda. It would erase half her childhood, most of her best memories, nights she’d spent wishing feelings away and days she’d spent just staring at her and nodding. There was no Mark without Clarissa. Maybe Mark saw her as an ugly birthmark on Clarissa’s skin. She didn’t care much. She’d love to be a part of Clarissa. “Are you a lesbian?”

“That seems irrelevant to-“

“Plenty of therapists ask this. I just want to know.”

Chugging the rest of the can and swiftly moving on to her third, she made prolonged eye contact with him. There was the ghost of a smirk on his face, this repulsive smugness that he’d caught her red-handed (or short-nailed). She tried so hard to be past the point of shame in what she was, but she couldn’t help being deeply uncomfortable with the question. And the implication. Lying in the subtext was a second, more sinister question. She shook her shoulders and exhaled through her nose. But she answered, because she didn’t back down that easily. “Yes.”

“I‘vs got a two parter.” Mark let her continue, despite her low tone. “Question one is do you love Clarissa?”

Mark made a strangled, indignant sound. “Of course I do. Don’t you dare question that.”

“I don’t. I don’t. My second question is do you like her? As in, is she the person you thought you were marrying, and is that a good thing?”

Nothing. She smiled. “That’s what I thought.”

Though his fist curled, Mark remained stoically still, scheming for an equally diabolical question. Like Clarissa, he was perfectly capable of lying, but a faith or a fear compelled him to just avoid the truth instead. His already thin hair seemed to stand up at the roots. He looked rather like a straw man, brainless to match. Running on frustration, desire and a concoction of self-belief and self-doubt that made him impossible to truly cope with. And he had the girl of her dreams (she really needed to stop getting Clarissa into Wicked, it wasn’t helping with her predicament).

“What’s your favorite thing about Clarissa?” Mark asked. Considering how invasive Amanda was being, this was a rather timid question at a surface level. Yet Amanda couldn’t shake the subtext from her mind. He was going to compare them in his mind. He barely understood, but he wanted to.

Plus, she didn’t have an answer. Everything? That wasn’t wholly true. There were plenty of things she could nitpick about her. Her blind faith, her inability to do a risk assessment (or rather, her ignoring her own findings), her relentless sense of obedience to the life she was expected to lead even though she resented the father who’d carved that path out for her. What she didn’t hate was Clarissa when she was herself. Sure she was distracted, forgetful and noisy, but that was a part of her as real as any other, and Amanda really loved her.

“Her laugh.” she found herself saying. Mark seemed unimpressed by this. “She- she just laughs from her chest, and sometimes it comes out squeaky, or its deadly silent and she’s just choking on her own spit, or it's low and rumbling and kind of a jumpscare. No matter how it ends up sounding, you know she’s laughing because that’s her genuine response, and she’s not ashamed of feeling it.” It’s practically the only feeling she’s not embarrassed of, she wanted to add,

It was weird, explaining why someone was lovable to the man who married them. Mark recognised this, and took another sip of his drink. “I hadn’t given it much thought before, I guess. I thought you were gonna say something really niche, that I wouldn’t even have been around for. I… I hadn’t considered her laugh much.”

From then on, the two fired questions rather quickly, since dwelling on the results seemed only to make them too sombre to function. They quickly delved into many things: Amanda’s parents’ divorce (mostly amicable considering), Mark’s DIY obsession (his Mom loved watching House Doctor reruns) their shared love of 80s music, their religious upbringings (or Amanda’s growing disillusionment versus Mark’s slightly desperate want for faith as it provided him direction and closure). They were now incredibly drunk, but slightly less awkward than before.

Amanda burped, not paying attention to how unladylike she was being. Not that she cared much regularly. Mark just lowered any amount she did give a fuck how she was perceived. He was enough of a force of spite she’d reveal practically anything to him because the expectations were on the floor anyways. It was sort of beautiful how much of an open book they made of one another. “Okay, I’m going to ask you a question, and feel free to reject it and I'll come up with a replacement one… if Clarissa gave you one hall pass with your relationship, who’d you pick?”

Mark narrowed his eyes, his mouth agape. “I- you can’t ask me that!” he protested. “Look, even if I did have an answer, you wouldn’t be the one I’d tell. That’d be Clarissa and I-“ hiccup- “I would rather die.” He seemed to recognise that as a tad bit too extreme, and stared at Amanda contemplating what their relationship was. Whether Amanda would snitch on him. Whether it mattered whatsoever. Whether his marriage was more or less doomed by her intervention. “Fine. Fine… Saoirse Ronan.”

“Saoirse Ronan?”

“Yeah- what’s crazy about that? She’s talented, she’s intelligent, she’s beautiful. And she’s Irish.”

“Honestly I’m most surprised you know how to pronounce her name. You’re the most American Irish-American guy I’ve ever met, and we live in New Jersey.”

Mark shoved her playfully. “I’ll have you know I’ve been to Ireland a whole four times, and only two of them were for funerals.”

“So if you had your sights set on someone like Saoirse, why settle down with Clarissa?”

“I’m not settling! And it’s my turn to ask questions!”

“I said settle down, not settling. And I don’t really care about the system once we get to something that could be juicy.”

Mark rolled his eyes at her, folding his arms, an indignant child refusing perfectly nice food because it wasn’t what he’d asked for. “Fine… Clarissa was nice. She was going through a tough time with her dad, and I empathised. We did our shop class project together, and she wouldn’t shut up, but I kinda liked that about her. When I ran out of things to say, she’d speak enough for the both of us. And I could tell she liked me. When I told my dad about her, he thought it sounded great. He was surprised I could get anywhere near a girl like that, which pissed me off. We had our first kiss the next day.”

Of course. Of fucking course he’d gotten with her partly to prove his masculinity to his father. Being a man really was the prison they made it sound like- although not in the way Mark would’ve expected. Next thing he’d tell her Clarissa reminded him of his mom and he was seeking out a feminine figure in his life to figure out a remedy to his tendency to lash out, as well as someone to teach him basic skills his alcoholic father had missed out. Being a psychology major really was a gateway to more effectively getting mad at people.

Not that she blamed him for everything. She was starting to realise she didn’t. She had no more of a claim over Clarissa than he did. In fact, she had even less. It was a futile fight, because neither of their will powers mattered. Clarissa was a person, with a million beautiful facets, including the ability to make her own decisions (however forced she thought her hand was). Ultimately, this was how the cards had been stacked, and they weren’t in her favour. “That’s… Freudian. Sweet. Very Oedipal.”

 

Mark made a stereotypically quizzical thinking face before realising what Amanda had said and groaning. “Don’t!”

“I didn’t.”

“Did.”

“Didn’t.”

“You think I want to have babies with my dead mom via my alive wife who might hate me!”

You could’ve heard a pin drop.

“You think she hates you?”

Mark swallowed. It was loud, dry and laborious. “I think we’ve done enough questions. Time for bed.”

Though the pillow wall was thick and high between the two of them in their double bed, Amanda felt like it had significantly reduced from what it had been previously. Even if she still harbored resentment for the guy and his inability to get over himself and properly talk things out, he was coming from a good place. He was… a normal guy. A sympathetic, irritating but ultimately trying to be harmless guy. And eventually they’d find a common goal beyond tracking down Clarissa. Finding what made each of the three of them happy.

And the baby. Which was a problem for some other time.

Amanda fell into a deep sleep, with her… temporary ally on her side.

Notes:

hi gang!!!! very sorry about this one, i listened to the Utopia soundtrack a little too much and decided Sorry About My Nan was actually Midsommar.
this is the longest chapter yet, and potentially my favourite, so i'd be curious as to how everyone else feels about it
i'm pretty busy this upcoming week so the next chapter may be a day or two late, but no more than that
also does everyone like the characterisation i'm going for?? these characters only existed for 30 minutes in their canon form so i've really taken a mole hill and made a mountain
i reckon we're about a third of the way through right now??? we'll figure it out as we go
thank you for reading this and i hope you have a lovely day!
theo, templetodestruction <3

Chapter 4: Desire/Devotion

Summary:

On the way to Manchester, both Clarissa and Mark run into their fair share of temptations, and are left with questions of what makes a good marriage, and what faith even means when you're all lost to some extent.

Everybody's a little bit attracted to the forbidden fruit, right?

-Bristol-

It was probably stupid to go straight North, and then circle back if her business in the UK felt unfinished. Then again, every aspect of this trip was a pipe dream come true, so she might as well embrace poor logic with all the love in her body. Which was either too much or not enough. She hadn’t figured out which yet.

Lucy offered her a drive to the station, which Clarissa readily accepted. Having spent a couple days in the company of Margaery and Ethel and their various subjects and accomplices, Jim’s wife would make for a nice change of face. Additionally, she had a delightfully posh, poised and prim way of speaking that gave her a certain magnetism. Accent bias was usually a result of inbuilt classism and colonialism, she’d travelled more than enough to learn that, but it would be nice to treat someone like an Audiobook for a moment, wouldn’t it?

She was a secondary school teacher, as exhausted in work as she seemed to be in marriage. Most of her life was dedicated to marking and meetings, leaving Jim to his own devices (which were much more corporate than his gran made him look). She was the eldest of many children, expected to learn at a young age how to take care of her siblings. Whilst she harbored some resentment during her teen years, she now embraced those more stressful times, especially since her bachelorette party (or “hen night” as she insisted).

“It’s definitely not a cult in the sense that you see on Netflix. Nobody gives her any money or material wealth, she never presents herself as some sort of deity, nor does she expect you to do any worship in anyone’s name. It’s much more like a free, batshit crazy form of therapy or rehab. You go in with things undiagnosed and you leave questioning everything. The interpretation is all up to you. Jim and I decided that we could make things work despite that not being Ethel’s viewpoint. I reckon at least… it’s almost religious.”

Clarissa pondered this. An open ended question. Why did she press the button? Did it even matter? Was it only a big deal because she cared? “Are you religious then, Lucy?”

“No. I mean, I’m ethnically Jewish, and secular enough to have a Bat Mitzvah, but I personally lean more towards atheism. It’s all out there. All of it’s possible, even if we have no precise way to explain the minutia. Once you teach thirteen year olds the golden ratio and ask them to point out all the examples they’ve seen in life and media, it becomes a lot harder to see a higher power. They’re so connected to the world and all its intricacies.”

Clarissa was stumped by her response. Without faith, what motivated her? Why did she seek forgiveness so firmly? If she was so hyper-intelligent and calculating, how did Ethel so deeply affect her psyche?

There was a long pause, until Lucy continued. “It’s Julie, by the way. I changed it, but… it’s still Julie to my friends.”

“Am I a friend?” Isn’t Jim?, she wanted to ask.

“For the time being.”

When they parted ways, Clarissa couldn’t help but notice Julie was a bit misty eyed, and her leg bounced up and down as she watched her passenger close the door behind her. She wondered what she was going home to, why she planned to stay with Jim when it seemed like she was incapable of being fully satisfied with their union. She considered Jamie, and the pained expression he’d had around her, and wondered what she’d done to prompt this guilt within him. How long can you live a half-truth?

She read her own article on the train:

“You just have to live a little,” said Andrew Holmes, 22, a native of the North Mancunian town of Wigan, and a police cadet. Holmes was abducted by criminal kingpin and Oxbridge graduate Nigel Cawthorne during a routine sting operation. He was held hostage in his £3.2M ($4.6M) mansion near St Mary’s Hospital for two weeks. Whilst Cawthorne has denied all allegations of sexual misconduct (“it’s not a sexual thing, I promise”), he has indicated he will plead guilty to charges of kidnapping Sam Holmes, running a drug ring and tax evasion in Manchester Magistrate’s Court on Sunday.

Holmes was joined by his paternal uncle, Commanding Officer Sam Holmes, who reports that his nephew “was a force to reckoned with” once deprogrammed by the Met from developing Stockholm Syndrome. “He did loads of cocaine, you could see so much of his legs. He hit Nigel so hard he almost knocked the Tory straight out of him. It was a sight that would make the entirety of the Holmes family proud. Although, his parents won’t speak to me at the moment, so it’s hard to be sure.”

The Manchester Metropolitan is yet to comment officially, but inside sources have reported that The Lady (the harpoon gun used to eliminate the previous kingpin in 1975) was involved.

It wasn’t a half bad piece of journalism, really.

The train was air conditioned and comfortable enough, which she was thankful for after British spring had established itself to be rather stuffy and dismal simultaneously. People talked, but it was less obnoxious than the subway. Based on the books and conversations they were absorbed in, some were returning to university after a brief spell at home, others were visiting grandchildren, some were returning home from a work conference. She knew of the idea of sonder- everyone leading lives almost entirely separate from yours, incomprehensibly varied. But it was sweet, she reckoned, that for a few hours, they all coexisted, under a shared purpose.

She slept for the most part, too hungry to work and too sick to eat. Given a little bit longer she’d be out of the first trimester. Lots of people had told her over the years the first three were the hardest months. After that it got a lot easier to tell people and get support. Then again, it was also the point of no return. You had to accept that you were carrying a viable baby, and embrace whatever fate that brought unto you. It was such a big consequence for such a small decision. That was why they called it a miracle, she guessed. It didn’t feel like a blessing. Maybe a wake up call.

Too bad she was asleep, and most of the way to Manchester.

A woman tapped her on the shoulder, ensuring she didn’t totally go under. Dark haired and red lipped, she didn’t have to speak to be understood to have more wealth in her pinky than Clarissa had ever known. She wore a shirt, scandalously buttoned town, and suspenders that would’ve looked pretentious on anybody else. Flared suit trousers failed to obscure her combat boots that managed to glitter without there being any substantial sunlight on the train. Twirling a coil of hair in her finger, she asked, “Do I know you?”

Interestingly, Clarissa answered “yes”. It took her an extra couple moments after responding to figure out why. Though she’d only researched for her article on Andrew online, failing to secure cheap enough business class tickets for her work to cover it, she’d pulled off some impressive video call interviews. Andrew himself had leaked so much information his uncle had to run in and hurriedly shut down the chat for fear of “confidential stinging” getting ruined. From prison, she had made minor contact with Nigel himself, though he’d been hesitant to do anything but timid self-defence arguments. Most of the raw perspective she’d gotten of his crimes were gleaned from his assistant, Arabella.

Arabella had managed to swerve out of facing any legal consequences through cognitive dissonance. “He sent me to the conservatory whilst all the deeds were done. My hands are much less red, white and filth-ridden, Miss Jenkins. A girl of my social standing was expected to condone and blissfully ignore behaviour like his, whatever the cost to other people’s lives. It causes me utter pain to say it… I just acted as a cog in the machine that ground lives to chaotic halts.”

Of course, based on the twitch of a smile and the click of her heels, this was only half the story, but Clarissa had written it all the same. Who was she to prevent a force like this?

Arabella was now face to face (or face to nose, as she was quite a bit taller) with Clarissa, so close she would’ve been able to see the hairs on her face if she had any. As it was, she was smooth, sharp and pristine, a diamond like the one she hung on her ear. Only thirty years old, spending the majority of her twenties buddying with the elite, the corrupt and the criminal. Her long eyelashes batted as she took in the response. “Ah… you’re the American woman I spoke to about my… dalliance with the legal system.”

She could dally with my legal system-

No. Not appropriate, Clarissa decided. Whilst there was something unmistakably captivating about Arabella, this was something for her to undress at a later date. Address. She meant address, not undress. How was she managing to trip over words in her internal monologue? That seemed statistically unlikely. Eight months ago, she’d been a tiny square on her laptop screen, negligible. Back then she’d been distracted, focused on the article rather than the subject. It was a little harder now not to focus, and that was coming from her of all people.

“Yeah. Jenkins. Clarissa. You look…” she tried desperately to choose a word that encompassed a kind but very professional amount of interest, “alive.” Close enough. To play it off, she tied her hair into a ponytail, hoping the action would capture Arabella’s attention. Instead, she raised her eyebrows half an inch, her gaze as piercing as it was judgemental. She swung herself into the empty seat besides Clarissa, making the heat of her breath palpable, and the heels of her boots click noisily. They were alone in this segment of the train, most people had gotten off at the last stop. And they were so far from New Jersey...

“I’ve never been more alive.” she sat with her legs spread, taking up space and forcing Clarissa to cower in her wake. “You’ve missed eons. I started a business- real estate of course. Already the second largest in Manchester. I got ordained and officiated 10% of the 1% 's weddings in the past six months. I got my PhD from Oxford, my fourth degree across Oxbridge of course. And the police only threatened to put me on house arrest for fraudulent spending of money once. Such a joyous time.”

Clearing her throat, Clarissa nudged Arabella enough to regain her personal space, an action that made the latter scoff in haughty amazement. It had taken all the strength in her not to be a typical Catholic girl and let herself be messed around, but she was learning it did her better to seek what she deserved. And she didn’t deserve being taken for a broken idiot, no matter how true it was and how devilishly beautiful the woman insinuating it was. She couldn’t get suppressed, not even by homoerotic yearning.

In a chill way.

She wasn’t queer. It wouldn’t make much sense if she were. Before Mark there had been a cycle of guys, all varying levels of toxic and codependent, all either using her or barely worth her time. In spite of their flaws though, she’d liked them. The perseverance of her feelings for men validated them to some extent. Even at his worst, Clarissa couldn’t help but feel a duty to Mark. That was all romance was. A long, continuous and hopeful sense of duty. To them, to your family, to God and to yourself above all else.

She’d met gay people. Titch and Derek were heart-warming. Bubba and Jeremiah were sweet, if a little graphic. A guy from her high school, Clive, had a boyfriend a little further South, which she was perfectly accepting of (to Mark’s chagrin, since he’d had a grudge against Clive for years). Plenty of them were well-rounded, morally grounded, reasonable people. Whilst she struggled at times to empathise with the way that they expressed themselves, she was in solidarity with their cause.
She didn’t dwell much on the fact that they were all men. She knew no queer women.

But if she did, why would it be any of her business anyways? It’s not like she’d relate. She didn’t pry. Possibly, she did know a few.
Maybe.
Again, things to unpack another day.

“Can you not pick any other empty seat, Arabella? It’s crowded with the both of us, and I don’t know if you can tell, I’m pregnant. It would be a little bit distressing if you crushed the baby with a thigh high boot, you know?”

Arabella did in fact budge, though it was with a huff and a flex of her calves that was not missed with Clarissa. “You do understand what privileges I could grant you, correct? I can cope with your snot and emotions, which I can tell you’re prone to. I’m alright with melodrama- they don’t exactly brag about it, but many underground criminals are soft-hearted at their toughest times. You and your closeted issues of all flavours would be hosted amicably in my chalet in Wigan. I used to consider changing cities… it’s simply not worth my time.”

“And I assume you like how posh you sound compared to all of them.”

She chuckled, briskly, barely smiling. “Potentially. The offer stands, Miss Jenkins.”

“It’s Mrs Murray-Jenkins, actually.” The words tasted bitter in her mouth. She tended not to correct anyone when they used her maiden name. It wasn’t exactly pertinent. The only time it came up was when she got letters in the mail or had to go to something more official. In articles, she was still credited as Clarissa Jenkins, so as not to have an inconsistent branding throughout her career. At first, Mark had been a little touchy on the subject. Then she reminded him that it was only her who lost her identity for him, and he put it mostly to rest as far as she could tell. Something told her he resented her reluctance to be a part of him. It had been the name his mom had earnestly embraced thirty years ago. Why couldn’t she be the same? What was with the double barreling and the refusal to change it anywhere but legally?

Mark would never tell her what his expectations of her were. He just got enraged when she didn’t meet them. She did not, however, fail to notice that it always corresponded to Aisling Murray. Not in the questionable way (at least, not totally), although it was undeniably something worth seeing a specialist for. Amanda had told her about treating grieving teenagers who’d lost parents, and they always reminded her of her own husband. Which was probably not a good sign for a twenty three year old man with a job and a mortgage to pay off.

“I’ll leave you to your car crash of a life.” And at that point Clarissa stopped acknowledging her till she left altogether.

Not that she could’ve known car crashes were a touchy subject when she was already thinking of Mark’s mom. It was unfortunate. Then again, she didn’t want to talk to Arabella long enough to consider being in her home. That would unlock wholly new levels of problematic responses to falling pregnant unexpectedly.

It only took another hour or so before she arrived at Manchester, getting a connecting train that landed her in Wigan. It was at this point that she began to realise that she had absolutely no idea where she was supposed to stay tonight. She began to pace around the top of the escalator, reading a map of the city like it would magically inform her of what direction to take her life in. Once she was beginning to drive herself crazy, she was jolted to attention by someone stepping on her shoe.

“Oh, that was an accident, I’m ever so sorry.” This woman was a juxtaposition to Arabella in the way a torch contrasted a lamppost. She was a good nine or ten inches shorter, dressed in a t-shirt and slightly flared jeans with a thick belt that still had the string of its tag attached. Swung over her arm was a faux leather handbag, and her earrings, whilst catching what was left of the sunlight, weren’t exactly anything special. A perfectly attractive woman for her mid thirties, her dirty blonde updo was neat as anything. Most starkly of all though was her accent, which was beautifully native.

“Um hi, do you know of any hotels or hostels in this area?”

Adjusting the baby she was pushing around, she hummed to herself. “There’s one just down High Street. But if I were you, I wouldn’t go near it. Absolutely stocked up with those types.” she winked, smoother than most women pushing strollers were. At her side, her son nodded encouragingly. He was maybe eleven, giant, and wearing glasses so thick his eyes seemed fuzzy with their level of magnification. In his hand was a stick that he’d scraped all of the bark off, and a leaf he’d pulled down to the stem. Clarissa immediately understood him.

“You’re much better off coming back with me.” This, Clarissa thought, must be the Northern hospitality she’d heard so much about. “Obviously, I’d have to check with my husband, but I doubt he’d have much trouble. You’ll have to stay on the sofa bed, provided that’s no trouble. It’s a Friday, so you might be woken up a little early by him coming by on his way to work. Don’t worry, though, it’s just part of the trade. And the little one’s noisy, but she stays with me overnight. You’d be just fine, I reckon.”

It was all a little startlingly welcoming in a way she was broadly unused to. Clarissa grinned, already nodding in acceptance. “That would be lovely. Thank you so much. Just, uh… what’s your name? And where do you live?”

“I live about a ten minute walk from here. Peter,” she gestured at her son, “is just coming home from his dad’s after spending the week there. The littler one is Betty, who turns one next month. I’m Jemima Jeffery, and my husband’s name is David. It’s all very easy to remember I think. Any more questions?”

Whilst Clarissa, as usual, had many questions, particularly several pertaining to the situation of Jemima’s split with Peter’s father, she decided those were better shared at a later time after they’d already locked themselves in as her hosts for the night. She waved at Peter, who waved back enthusiastically. It was all picture book worthy. “No, that’s really everything I need to know. Except obviously how much dinner and staying over will cost. I’m really lenient. I mean, as lenient as a middle class tourist can be.”

“You’re going to pay us?” Jemima raised her eyebrows. “No, dear. We’ll cover it. In return, you can… I don’t know. Help us with the washing up and laundry or something. You really are American.”

“I really am a stranger, Mrs Jeffery.”

“Ah well. I’ve learned recently to embrace the world with open arms, even when things seem dangerous. Why would I stop now?”

Clarissa decided to agree.

The Jeffery family lived in a humble enough home. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, although Jemima was adamant they could convert a tiny office space into a bedroom for Betty once she was old enough to require one. It was whilst she was making her case that David arrived, kissing his wife on the cheek, who turned radish red like they weren’t married with a child together. He looked at Clarissa for a moment, then back at Jemima, then at Clarissa again. “Are you one of her mum friends?”

Jemima tittered at him. “David! You can’t just assume that a woman’s pregnant. She is pregnant, but that’s besides the point. And no, this is Clarissa. She’s a journalist from America, and we’re letting her stay here for the night, because that’s the kind of family we are, I've decided.”

David shrugged. “I mean, it’s not like we’re traditional in any other sense. Hi Clarissa, very nice to meet you.” She shook his hand. The grip was loose, casual, but firm, enough to tell her he was a man who didn’t work an office job as much as he operated with his hands. Based on the callouses, perhaps some kind of driver? Lorries? Trucks? He smelt of dairy, but too cleanly to be any kind of farmer. Who was around baked goods and their delivery? There were plenty of career paths that fit that description. Goodness, she really should’ve considered law, her deductive skills were wasted in journalism.

Over the course of the next couple hours, many things were conveyed. Jemima Jeffery had previously been Jemima Stevens, and Jemima Oswald before that. Though the divorce had been tough on both parties, and Mr Stevens was still recovering from the pain of Jemima and David’s affair, the last three years had been ones of growth. Peter had started at a local secondary school, and was thriving splitting time across both households- although it hurt David to be parted with his son for long. As, most interestingly, Peter was biologically his.

“David was my first love, you see.” Jemima explained, having long given up on feeding Betty in her high chair, and instead focusing on telling her entire life story. “We were high school sweethearts. Everything seemed perfect, until my parents found out about us when they overheard him over the phone promising me he’d marry me one day. They never liked him. He wouldn’t provide stability in my life, they told me. He wasn’t academically gifted like me. He didn’t come from wealth. He had no grandiose prospects. All he’d ever be was a milkman.”

Oh. That made sense. Of course British people were antiquated enough to still be into milkmen.

Jemima put an arm around David, who, despite likely having heard this tale many times, had folded his arms. “I was seventeen, you know? I thought my parents were right about everyone. They introduced me to one of their friend’s children. He was much more oriented towards what they wanted for me. Well off, business-y, intellectual type. Guaranteed to work some boring job that raked in enough to get our kids the new PS5 the second it came out. And so I got that life… I just also didn’t give up on the old one.”

Peter, from across the table, piped up. “Which is how I happened.” He’d been playing with his mashed potatoes for the past five minutes, pretending to be zoned out so he could listen in. Clarissa had done the exact same thing to eavesdrop on her parents when she was his age. At his words, both David and Jemima winced, clearly recognising their son’s maturity.

“Don’t be upset about it, love.” Jemima instructed him. “I’m grateful for you. Every day, I am.”

“I know, mum. Even though I’m strange.”

David patted his son on the head familiarly. “So is everyone. I’m pretty sure your other dad is in a long-term relationship with a Texan bartender with two children of his own, but you don’t see me throwing any judgement his way. We live and we get on. You’re tall, and you’re a prodigy, and you’re destined to do whatever you put your mind to. Whether that’s the family milkman business, or running about, or putting your overactive brain to use. Your options are always going to be open with us.”

Peter nodded. “I know, Dav- I mean, dad…” he cringed. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. I love you.”

The whole thing was bizarre to Clarissa, who’d grown up in a family where the word “divorce” carried a heavier weight than any crime you could commit in a marriage that would prompt you to consider getting one. Her father could’ve taken a hundred men to bed before her mom had the courage to even acknowledge that he didn’t have much time for her anymore. And yet, despite all the shit they’d been through, and put their young son through, the Jeffery family seemed much closer for it.

“Did you like being pregnant with him?” she asked Jemima.

“God no… and the guilt made it even harder. Betty caused me more physical illness and pain, but I felt so much lighter knowing I was going to bed next to her father every night. Lying to my husband night and day, denying his father the right to be there when he was born, to hold him and name him, it ate me alive. Eventually I bottled it all up, turned it into something productive. Dug my heels in and got a couple good promotions at work. Enough to keep me busy until David couldn’t hold it in anymore.” she sighed. “Which I’m grateful for in ways I can’t express.”

Eventually they’d shared practically all the anecdotes they had, and Clarissa lay down on the sofa bed, praying to God for the first good night’s sleep since arriving in England. Soon she’d leave the country, almost as lost as when she entered. But something about what Jemima said had resonated with her. Being pregnant was only worsened by the associated emotional stressors. Whatever she had going on, once she got it sorted out, she’d be ready to have her child. After it was born? That was another thing entirely. But to deliver a baby she had to deliver closure to herself.

She dreamt heavily of her eighteenth birthday, renting out a cheap, shitty hotel room whilst pretending to her mom that she was going to stay at a friend’s house in lieu of her recovering from party the day before at home. The celebratory, sacrilegious night with Mark that followed. Swearing each other to secrecy, both relieved to have avoiding the dread of waiting. She dreamt of Arabella’s boots, and the sound they would make as they unzipped. How many buttons her shirt really had left. What questions she’d ask if she got close enough- of Arabella and herself. Clarissa dreamt of Amanda, with her exuberant voice and winged words. Mostly she just stood, bathed in the light that formed a halo-shape around her head. She’d worship false idols if they spoke to her with the untainted ardour Amanda did.

When she woke up, she blinked six times consecutively. One of her hands had wrapped itself around her opposing wrist, as if confining her. She rinsed her face in the bathroom sink, removing the beads of sweat that had lain in a sheen over her forehead. Clearly, pregnancy was doing horrifying things to her body and mind. A couple months ago, having a salacious thought about anyone, even Mark, seemed incredulous. Was this normal? According to Google, it was a rather individual thing. It wasn’t impossible she was just being messed around by her hormones, and in a couple months, would be perfectly back to normal. Or maybe this was another part of the emotional bridge she had to cross?

It was Amanda’s role in the dream that confused her more than the other, more explicit participants. Unlike them, she was stagnant, clothed and passive. And so was Clarissa. Across the unimaginably wide gap between the two of them, they watched one another, both silent, each sporting a smile. Despite their distance, it was warm, welcoming, wonderful. She’d yearned to hear her voice, even if she knew already that Amanda would simply wish her all the happiness she believed her best friend deserved. She tended not to agree, but it was nice to hear the words coming from her mouth.

She couldn’t shake the sensation that she was supposed to derive a meaning from it, much like the visions Ethel’s injection had given her. All of this spiritual nonsense had to amount to something. Or, at least, it was capable of interpretation. Whenever she wrote a story, no matter how boring, she always had a distinct angle she was writing from. A viewpoint to convince her readers of. It depended on what blog, magazine or newspaper she was writing for, and the resultant demographic. And the context of the situation, whether it was political, geographical or social. It always meant something. No art was meaningless.

Sure, sex dreams and psychological torture were questionable to be categorised as art; fuck it, so were bananas taped to walls. The whole thing was subjective. That was kind of her point.

Was Amanda her angel, protecting her from all evil in her path? Was lust a prayer in a sense? Did she feel guilty for valuing all aspects of her life, or for preferring the only person who’d not only listened but heard and understood her? Was it a craving to rescind into a childlike state, returning to a time where Amanda was her sole point of comfort? Or, like the sex dream she’d accompanied, was it something more adult, more pressurised and uncertain? Could it really be just an empty fantasy?

It was long before she’d regained consciousness enough to have an answer that her fingers had jumped the gun and gotten out her phone. She’d texted Amanda. Her saving grace.

 

-Somerset-

The following day, Mark and Amanda mostly slept off their hangovers and jet lag. Amanda really wasn’t sure how Clarissa adapted so easily to the timezone and environment changes, especially whilst pregnant. She truly was an outstanding woman, in more ways than she could feasibly comprehend. A lot of the day was distant between the two, an uncomfortable gut reaction to their confessions of the night prior. Mark took many strolls around an area he didn’t know, exercising his way out of talking. Amanda responded to emails, telling clients she was ill, and would hopefully be back for next week’s sessions. It sucked to lie, but it sucked more to be a therapist who couldn’t even sort out her own problems, let alone other peoples.

Amanda woke up long before Mark on day 2, and had to spend the first five minutes of her morning untangling his earphone from her hair. Once she’d done so, she began to get dressed and pack up each of their suitcases. Several things made her pause, including some suspicious toiletries in Mark’s ziplock bag, but she kept her mouth shut. Right now, they had to remain on well enough terms. Otherwise there was no point in being in Clarissa’s life whatsoever. As far as she was concerned, they were a tragic package deal.

Turning on her phone to doom scroll like she was accustomed to do of a morning, she noticed that she had three missed messages in her Instagram DMs. It was the only social media she enjoyed being on, as it made it much easier to cyberstalk all her former friends and ex-situationships. Her account was private, locked off to only her closest friends, avoiding the desperate thirst for like she knew the app made people prone to. Except this meant that very few people could message her freely.

Including Clarissa, whose alt account was actually talking to her.

Message 1: Don’t tell Mark I’m sending you this.
Message 2: If you know, also understand that I’m sorry. I’m not sure what exactly I’m apologising for, it only feels necessary. So… sorry. It’s easier to say to you than to him.
Message 3: Meet me at the stadium. I miss you, Amanda.

It was, all in all, bizarre. Clarissa didn’t normally text using capital letters. She was known for her indecipherable vomiting of words in any unprofessional settings. Her use of ellipsis was mystifying, her apologising over running away perplexing and the specificity of “the stadium” a non-starter. Which stadium? Why couldn’t she tell Mark? What was the difference between her and Mark in Clarissa’s eyes, and how would she react to half the things Amanda had discovered about her husband in her absence?

Every city had stadiums.
Every woman made mistakes.

Her response was simple: I’ll see you there. I assume you’ll circle back to Folkestone?

Clarissa’s tone was unmistakable: get out of my brain.

Maybe Mark didn’t need to know quite yet.

The pair wordlessly set out for Bristol, hoping to get an idea of her mindset from her hosts. Amanda only had a full name and a desperate hope, so she wasn’t entirely sure they’d get anywhere close to this possible lead. She was mostly expecting to give up within an hour and just take a long bus ride to the station running on pure adrenaline. Except, inexplicably, the second they got off a few roads from a pub she’d mentioned, they were accosted by a figure. A noteworthy figure.

She tipped her trilby hat at the two of them, an action that caused Amanda to look her up and down and realise she was wearing a rather odd set of clothes for a woman of her age and craned-over stature. The hat made enough sense, and she had a cardigan tied around her waist reasonably enough. It was mostly the lack of visible layers underneath the cardigan that unsettled Amanda. The band of a thong noticeably protruded around her pelvic bone, and possibly netted stockings that were so ripped they exposed most of her thighs.

She turned round to Mark, who looked positively green. “Who the fuck are you?” he demanded, a hand over his mouth like he might throw up.

“Oh… I’m Ethel, dear. You can call me Ninefingers Goldenpussy if you like.”

“No thank you.” the two of them answered in unison.

“Ethel it is then. I assume you’re here for Clarissa.” They nodded, and she rolled her eyes and tottered off towards a car that looked to have been on its last legs years ago, and since had multiple amputations that had themselves become infected. One of the windscreen wipers was made out of a piece of bamboo, and the other a katana. It was all black, from its interior to its exterior. To Amanda, it seemed like the opening sequence of a horror movie she didn’t want any part in. Of fucking course this was who Clarissa had found. “I can show you things.”

“Um… Mrs Ninefingers.” Mark began, rolling on the balls of his feet rapidly. “We’d prefer it if you just told us where Jim and Jamie lived. We’re going to go talk to them. Although a life sounds… intriguing, we’re too busy.”

Ethel sighed. “I see now why I didn’t give Clarissa any choice.

“What?” Amanda asked.

“Oh nothing. Pay me no mind, I’m very old. Whilst you two are boring, and one of you looked like you just got hatched whilst the other looks like the mother hen who hatched him, I accept your terms and conditions. If there’s one thing everyone agrees about me, it’s that I value consent above all else.” She leaned on her cane and her car simultaneously, her grey hair beginning to tumble out it’s messy bun in straggles, making her look a bit like a drowned dead body, gaunt and decaying.

“Where are Jim and Jamie ma’am?”

“Down the road. Take a right, another right and… no, that’s my strip club. Never mind. It’s a right, a left and then cross at the zebra. Don’t get cross with a zebra though. They kick like nobody’s business.”

A good ten minutes of verbally wrestling Ethel, the two of them managed to figure out where Jim and his wife Lucy lived. The pair were very normal, so much so it shocked Amanda that they had anything to do with that clinically concerning crone. Lucy explained to them with a fixed smile that she’d driven Clarissa to the station, who hadn’t told her precisely where she was off to next, although it seemed to be up North. Amanda nodded and added additional questions, trying to place the stadium aforementioned in her texts.

Mark hadn’t spoken for a good minute, and Amanda turned around to see him fixated on Lucy. She hadn’t noticed, and was eagerly typing stadium names on her phone. Trying to knock him out of his trance, she elbowed him, and he whipped his head to look at her with a frown. Unbeknownst to him, Jim was actually giving them relevant information, but he was just caught up in objectifying another man’s wife, who was a good few years his senior and very much not paying him even a moment’s attention.

“What’s her name?” he whispered to her.

“Lucy or Julie. Cut it out.”

“She has two names too?” He ogled her again, clearly thinking of all the similarities Lucy and Clarissa shared, and wondering what else he could find if he tried hard enough.

“Mark, I’m really starting to think you might just need to download Tinder.” For that, he elbowed her in the ribs, and the pair jerked their attention back to Mark, who was explaining the train system over in the UK to the pair of them.

“Thank you so much.” They decided not to dwell on the interaction for too long, just because Amanda was worried she’d snap her friend’s (that felt weird to think of him as) head off if he kept ogling any woman who wasn’t his wife, who was swiftly making her way away from them. She explained what he’d been too besotted to notice. “She’s a procrastinator. She’ll spend a couple days in Manchester then go to Scotland. Then she’ll come back down for the Eurotunnel guy. If we go straight there we can meet her.”

Booking a last minute train ticket was enough hassle to put them in a bad mood. By the time they were shoulder to shoulder in a stuffy bus, and then an equally stuffy three hour train ride, Amanda was ready to positively beat the shit out of whoever was nearest. Fortunately for her, the perfect candidate was fiddling with his Airpods right next to her, seemingly unable to get Bluetooth to work here. “Mark, I'm going to ask you two questions with all the love I can muster. Which, admittedly, isn’t very much,”

He took out the Airpods. “Go ahead.”

“One, are you attracted to Lucy? Two, knowing that your wife is pregnant and it would be very stupid to try to do anything sexual with her vulnerable physically, am I correct that I saw a packet of condoms in your suitcase? Actually I’ll ask a few questions. Who were they meant for? Do you even know anyone here? And how is it genuinely true that you remembered to bring contraception before you remembered to bring your toothpaste? What is your problem, Mark, because I don’t think this is helping!”

Mark put his head in his hands and groaned, the sound muffled by his own wedding ring. He looked small, packed into his window seat with a slightly too tight sweater and clown-size loafers. Amanda thought he looked like someone’s dog when it got caught rolling around in some roadkill’s guts with its tail between its legs. “Amanda… please don’t do this in public…” he pleaded with her. “It’s just been a bit of a weird time, you know? I’m not thinking straight. We can’t fight twenty minutes into this journey.”

“Why would we fight? What answer might you give that would make me prone to fighting?”

“I don’t know… just… I’m sorry? I don’t know, Amanda. I don’t wanna hurt anybody. I just- I miss when I knew what was going on. Things were easy when I loved Clarissa, and she loved me, and you hated me because you loved her. That I understood, because we both had her in different ways. But now, I’m beginning to like you, and you're actually kind of nice to me sometimes, and Clarissa seems to know things about me I don’t. Which I guess was always true, but I worry, you know? I worry she’s outgrown me, and I’ve gotta do something to prove maybe I’ve outgrown her too.”

Amanda put her arm around Mark, who cemented his face in her elbow. The fabric of her cardigan quickly became damp, but she stayed quiet. It made enough sense. His whole life was on the precipice of an irreversible change. A million things were propelling themselves through his mind. She wasn’t very welcome to cheating, it had taken most of her lifetime to fully forgive either of her parents for their disloyalty during their marriage (and that was mutual and pretty short-lived, she couldn’t imagine if it had been one-sided and persistent), but she knew Mark. If there was anybody who cared for Clarissa as much as her, it would be him. He’d never go through with it.

Desire wasn’t an inherently bad thing. To a Catholic though, it wasn’t ideal. Amanda remembered being seventeen, once she’d recognised her feelings for Clarissa, being petrified of having sleepovers with her. She’d go to the bathroom and look at herself in the mirror so it became easier to avoid having those sorts of thoughts. In darker mental periods in college she’d fantasise about Mark and Clarissa, or really how Mark got to experience Clarissa, and put herself mentally in his place.

It had eaten at her, that her friend would be disgusted were she to discover her deepest desires. It was against what they’d been raised to believe in, against the code of friendship and the union of marriage. Clarissa would look back on her wedding with loathing if she knew someone she loved ached in every way seeing her happy with someone else. And every day she wished for a different fate, some other form of punishment or damnation. Because this… lust was too much to bear.

It had eased with time. She’d been with others. suffered and learned from it. She realised Mark and Clarissa were each other’s only adult relationship.

Mark blew his nose on her sleeve. “Sorry. I remember- it’s a stupid story- but I remember being nine years old. Not too long after my mom died. Fourteen months maybe. Our cat, Cosmo, dragged in a mouse. Tiny, baby mouse. He was a useless hunter, kept batting at thin air whilst it scurried under our couch. During the night I heard it squeaking at the top of its lungs. So I got this old shoe box, poked holes in it, and managed to wrangle the mouse into it. It squeaked so much, and I felt awful, but proud of myself at the same time. Thing is, it was too late to go talk to my dad, since he’d be made I was awake at all. So I kept the shoe box with the mouse in my room all night. I thought it was my roommate.”

“The next morning, I told my dad about the mouse. I’d called it Vivian, because that was my mom’s middle name. She’d always said if I had a sister she’d be called Vivian. And my dad opened the shoe box, and got rid of her out into the garden, right at the end so Cosmo wouldn’t notice and grab her again. Except Vivian just stayed still. Dad watched her for a minute, picked her up and tapped her very gently. It was too early in the day for him not to be sober, see. Then he turned round to me and he said ‘Mark, it died during the night. Probably a heart attack or something. Not because you picked it up, most likely. Just the circle of life.’”

“I used to think about it all the time when I couldn’t speak up. It was like I’d finally gotten the chance to save something weak, like I couldn’t do for my mom. And then it was taken from the world, simply because it was small and vulnerable. It’s the circle of life, isn’t it? God sends us obstacles so we can prove our devotion and strength of character. One day, we’ll be rewarded. This mouse, though, made me doubt it, just for a second. More than my mom made me question Him. Because my mom’s death was a punishment for my dad driving drunk, or as he said, for me not stopping him. But what had a mouse done worth punishing? What had I done? I’d tried my best, and I was being punished, and so was she. It fucked me up, trying to spin it into something that kept me close.”

Amanda found her eyes dry and shiny, a blink away from watering. “Then why’d you keep holding on to your belief?”

“If I didn’t, there was nobody else. No God meant I was alone. No mom watching over me in Heaven. No chance at my dad recovering and being there for me. No good will being paid off through my prayers. That seemed worse than death to me. And eventually, my prayers were answered. I got Clarissa, and my father started his journey towards sobriety, and we even have a little one on the way. Except since the pregnancy, I’ve been doubting my framing of my entire life.”

“Which bit?”

“If my prayers were really answered at all.”

Amanda held his hand and held him all the way to Manchester, only letting go when they got off the train.

Time to prove him right, she thought.

Time to fuck over all her hopes and dreams.

Time to see Clarissa.

Notes:

Hellooooooo!!!!

Whoospie (reference), I did it again. I made another chapter the longest chapter yet. I very much didn't intend this gang. If this chapter has pacing issues, it's only because halfway through I realised just how much I wanted to get done, and how much I wanted to get done in the other 6 or so chapters. Sorry about that (also yes, I did add in another day in the middle of this just so Clarissa texting Amanda made sense- sorry I hate a plot hole more than I hate weird pacing).

In other news, I saw SFTH yesterday and... they picked my longform title (I will never shut up about it)!!! Expect The Lollipop Lady's Revenge sometime in the next few months, according to Tom. They also liked my art, which was sick. I promise I'm a normal amount of autistic about them, ignore that this fic isn't halfway done and already almost 30k words.

Thank you so much for reading so far, expect the next chapter in about a week!!! I'm glad I ended on a cliffhanger!!!!!!

Yay, Theo <3

Chapter 5: Direction

Summary:

Clarissa and Amanda finally reunite, and whilst some wounds heal, others may run deeper than previously thought.
Is love really enough for any of them?

And where's Scottish Batman when you need him?

-Manchester-

Clarissa had woken up at about 5am, and very much struggled to get a wink in after that point. She mostly listened to eighties music whilst scrolling years back into her camera roll. Her seeing Wicked the other day on Broadway, a sheep she’d met with weirdly anthropomorphic features, memes she’d found on Twitter and saved to send to people (the older ones for her mom, the recent ones for Amanda, she knew her audience). Selfies she’d taken with various subjects, all of which had her doing the exact same smile. No teeth, curved lips, her left dimple showing. The only pose she knew.

Bar a few examples, of course. In her wedding photos, she was a deer caught in the headlights. Every picture showed her wide-eyed, mouth agape, overjoyed and a little intimidated by the spontaneity of such a permanent choice. In her graduation photos, she was grinning, the slight gap in her teeth visible and her reading glasses hanging on a chain she wore around her neck that had jangled so loudly against her cross it had made her mom complain. It had been an integrated apprenticeship, the best opportunity she’d ever had. All thanks to a friend of her father’s. One of the few moments he’d come through for her.

Clarissa remembered the one time above the age of ten she’d genuinely believed her father was proud of her. Working in the publishing industry longer than she’d been alive, she’d always seemed to be competing for her dad’s attention amongst all the acclaimed writers he worked with on a daily basis. Whilst she’d had a knack for it early on, it had never been sufficient for his approval. There were lanterns that shone brighter than hers. That was a fact of life she had to expect. But, at the age of sixteen, she’d tried something he couldn’t predict. Her school was making their own original musical. Despite not having any vocal training, or much theatre experience beyond drama class, she both auditioned and offered her services in the creative department. Being understaffed and underfunded, they were happy to take on anyone, willing or unwilling. She’d written four of the songs on her own, including the romantic ballad and the aspirational finale. And, strangely, she’d landed one of the three leads. Her parents had come on closing night, the pressure half-toppling her as she had her mic pack fitted. That day she’d asked herself what audacity she had, to invite them to watch her. How high the bar would be. How shaky her vocals were.

Ignoring some mishaps typical of theatre, things had gone to plan. Even if her hand stung whilst she was singing due to rope burn, and her journey to the balcony had involved army crawling under a gate, it was all… fine. She could see them in the audience, fixating on her. When the show was done, she met them in the parking lot. Her mom had hugged her, told her “no, it actually was good”, with “actually” being the operative word. Things looked hopeful. Then, the cherry on the cake, her dad looked down at her with a grin. Stone cold sober, he said, “I really liked it, Clary. It made me get a bit misty eyed, if I’m honest. You can write. And sing, really.”

It had been about ten months before he died, towards the end of sophomore year, and it had kept her going till he died mid way through junior.

By then he’d told his friends about her talent, and they’d helped her to get the degree and job. Towards the end maybe he’d had some clarity, a change of heart. Or perhaps he’d finally forgotten she was his daughter and just started treating her as an employee, a means to profit now his own job was going a bit downhill with his poor health. She’d never asked. He’d never even complimented her a second time. It hit her soon enough that that meant it couldn’t happen again.

The third photo that she looked genuinely herself in was a rather random one. It wasn’t too long after his death, actually; the Summer before her Senior Year. She’d begged Amanda to come round to hers, to make the emptiness a little more worthwhile. The photo itself was taken at the moment the clock struck midnight. Both of them were sat atop a sleeping bag, Clarissa in her striped pyjama set she’d never grown tall enough to outgrow, Amanda in a Victorian nightgown rolled up to the sleeves that Clarissa had always found hilarious. Each of them sported enormous smiles, and peace signs typical of mid-2017 pop culture.

It had been a nice night, from memory. Chatting about anything that came to mind. Which, as it often was with Clarissa, veered towards drama and crushes. Back then it had consumed her somewhat. An easy distraction. Something all seventeen year old girls wanted…probably. Even if Amanda was atypical in that sense, she’d listen attentively, and only hated ninety five percent of all the guys Clarissa interacted with on a daily basis. They’d talked, eaten candy, probably drunk a little bit of her mom’s wine stash. Played party games.

An inch away from each other… She remembered that bit with a little more clarity. Once or twice she’d kissed girls at parties, big ones where it didn’t seem like a big deal. Besides that though, she’d never even flirted with the concept. It had sounded a little ridiculous, daring to kiss someone when you were the only two in the room. Bold, certainly. But it was Amanda. There was nothing she’d suggest that Clarissa wouldn’t be willing to consider worth a try. That was what friendship was about.

About an hour after the photo had been taken, probably. Right before bed. A flash of lips and hands and trailing ideas. None of which had gone anywhere, really. Over sooner than it began. She’d already met Mark. There was no room for internal conflict of any kind, particularly not romantic. She’d kissed Amanda before Mark. So what? Haven’t most people? It was whimsical. It was two children that were almost no longer children engaging in something pure and thoughtless, as they were wont to do.

Plus, her first kiss with Mark was nice too. Longer.

David passed her by on his way to his car, waving politely. She nodded and returned the gesture, thrown by just how invested she’d become in her own phone’s interpretation of a memory from over half a decade ago. Soon, Peter followed, clad in an incredibly dull school uniform and a bag that, even with his stature, made him look quite small. Eventually Jemima descended down the stairs, Betty in her arms, and she deposited the baby on the sofa whilst she busied herself with breakfast.
“Morning Clarissa, did you sleep okay?”

“Yeah.” she lied, “thanks for your hospitality.”

“Oh, it’s no trouble. And you’re pregnant. It’s the least we could do. Now that I mention it, how’s the situation with the baby? Do you know the gender? Is the father as pleased as he ought to be?” She buttered her toast with a deft hand that reminded Clarissa of how much longer she’d been a part of a family of her own than her. Jemima was a well-rounded person, with a job she was soon returning to, a house she’d made bright and colorful, and two children who loved her despite her flaws, and to spite them.

“I’m not sure how much he knows about the whole thing, really. My mom, being my mom, snitched on me immediately. I’m sure of it. I mean, he’s my husband, he should know about the whole ordeal, but…” she sighed, fiddling with her ring idly. “He’s here with my best friend to figure out what’s going on with me. I think I’m seeing her today. To talk things through. She’ll probably want me to go get a scan to find out the gender and all the practical stuff. And other things. She expects a lot of me, rightfully so. It’s just a lot, isn’t it? Because I thought once I was pregnant I’d feel it, and I’d be happy to tell him and-”

Jemima finished the sentence for her. “-And now you’re wondering if you’re cut out for it.”

“Yeah. That.”

She cut the two pieces of toast into half and began boiling an egg. “If you want my advice as someone who’s had a similar experience, I’m not sure how helpful I’d be. In my case, there was the man I loved, and the man I married. And I desperately wanted those two men to morph into one, except they just couldn’t. Life’s tough. I never took a test to figure out which one was the father. I just knew. I don’t think falling pregnant helped me to actually get my shit together. It was more the perfect time to realise what I already knew to be true. Which was that I’d fucked David ten times more often than my husband, and twice as effectively. Logic indicated that there was a problem there.”

Clarissa didn’t have a response to this information, and so settled on staring at Betty, who hadn’t understood a single vulgar word her mother had just uttered. She yawned, and began to play with a keyboard toy. It was obnoxiously loud, and yet Jemima didn’t even flinch. Clarissa couldn’t imagine being that desensitised to children playing. The thought made her a little nauseous. “I mean, I know that the child is going to be mine and my husband’s. I haven’t been…” she sucked in her teeth, “fucking anyone else.”

Jemima chuckled. “No, I’m sure you haven’t. That’s not what I was getting at. More… when you’re pregnant you’re kind of like your own rawest self. Like your id, not to get Freudian on you this early in the morning. Your actions are a pretty real representation of your psyche. You’re here, with strangers, instead of being with your husband. Today you’re seeing your best friend, also instead of your husband. And you told your mum first, despite knowing she’d probably tell them before you got the chance. I feel like that spells itself out pretty easily.”

Betty looked at her with stunned bemusement. “So what? I just failed the choice? I don’t understand. Are people meant to value their husband above their friends? Or choose being with their friends above being alone? Is it bad that I’m comparing them at all? You had to make a choice between two people, Jemima. I don’t. I can have an Amanda and a Mark, and be happy with their coexistence. It’s the baby that’s complicating the whole dynamic. That’s what I’m running from.”

Jemima tapped the egg with a spoon. “Then you’re not gonna get very far, my dear. It’s sort of rooted right inside of you. I just mean you, in times of distress, which very clearly is what’s happening, don’t want to hear what they have to say. And it seems like you don’t like the combination of the both of them in your life, since you’re only offering to see them one at a time like clients. All it indicates is that you’re struggling with having both a best friend and a husband, as well as the little one on the way. Eggs and soldiers?”

She offered Clarissa little wedges of toast and a soft boiled egg of her own, which she took with a nod. Although she was starving, she kept seeming to feel sick every time she ate anything more than a couple mouthfuls. Were she happy with the dynamics in her life already, she would’ve turned to them in times of need. Since she wasn’t, she was searching for her change. A new idea. A way to rejig everything so she finally wasn’t afraid one day she’d wake up and realise she’d wasted a decade of her life.

“How far away is Old Trafford from here?”

“It’s in the city, so about half an hour on a train? Is that where you’re meeting Amanda?” Clarissa nodded. “If I were you, I’d tell it to her like it is. It seems you mean a lot to her and vice versa. She’s travelled halfway across the world just to see you. Not everyone does that. David would do it for me, my ex-husband might. But you have to find someone who does the journey for you, not just for the sake of proving he would. To win. It’s not a competition for you, and if either of them think it is they’re not cut out for any of it.”

“Yeah. Thank you, Jemima.”

“It’s okay, Clarissa. I know I’m a shit role model, what with my track record. But I see the best parts of me in you. You’re more optimistic than me, but you’re a similar age to me when I was pregnant with Peter. I know your fear, and your doubt. The guilt, although in your case you’ve not even done anything wrong. You want to make everyone equally happy all the time, and by trying as hard as you do to make that happen you ultimately do the opposite. Which isn’t to say you’re hurting people. Just that you should figure out what it is you really want before you do.”

In trying to do exactly that, she got herself dressed and thanked Jemima again profusely, getting her number (and slipping her a tenner, for good measure) and hopping on the train into the heart of Manchester. Like most cities, it was stocked full of skyscrapers, crane operators and fast food chains. She found she had a penchant for Five Guys’ peanut butter and bacon milkshake whilst she navigated her way towards the stadium, which was a slightly concerning pregnancy craving, yet not the worst she’d heard about.

It was whilst sat on a bench in the winding path towards Man United’s home base (she’d learned from reading signposts), wrapping a piece of gum up in tissue paper, that she caught sight of her best friend.

“You found me.”

“You made it easy.” Amanda rolled her eyes like usual.

Amanda did not look as radiant as she had in her dream. There was a slight gaunt tinge to her already drawn features, likely a result of sleepless nights and desperate searching. Her hair had passed her shoulders, longer than it had been in years, and the beautiful curls had frayed at the ends. All of her clothes were creased, having spent days unironed being unpacked and repacked in various hotels and airplanes across the world.

Nonetheless, Clarissa clung onto her, a veteran’s lover finally able to embrace him after almost a decade on the battlefield. She breathed in the perfume she’d stolen from her years ago, balling up her fists so she could guarantee Amanda wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Without realising she’d ended up on her tiptoes, and noticed that Amanda wasn’t bending down to reach her. Maybe she didn’t want to harm the baby, or maybe she did harbor resentment.

She opened her mouth, and the words cascaded out. “You’re gonna ask why I chose you and not him. Just today, just this once. Because if he finds out he’ll be furious, and I totally get that. And I assume you do too, and that’s why you agreed. I’ve been trying to dissect everything- all my choices from the last ten years. I’m not done by any means. I just… I really missed you. I know it’s been maybe a week and a half since I last saw you, and you’ve been on my tail practically all of it, but it’s been a bit of an insane week and a half, and I’m a little distraught and I wanted to be able to see you and know that there was somebody who would always be here.”

“You’re not holding on as tight as I am, which makes me think you think I don’t know how much you sacrifice for me. Which I do, I hope.” Amanda did not hold on any tighter.

“I love you, Amanda. I know this probably isn’t what you want to hear right now, because I’ve been stupid. But I’m not. I don’t want to be, at least. You’re my best friend, and no matter what, I refuse to lose that. Not to Mark, not to my mom, not to my baby. You’ve come all this way, and I don’t wanna let you down by saying some bullshit I’ll regret or take back. I wanna be honest. So I’m sorry I got pregnant, and I’m not happy about it, and I’m terrified. I’m sorry, Amanda. But I really do love you at the end of the day, and I’m ninety nine percent sure you love me. You’re here. Even if you might be mad at me.”

There was a tangible something in the air. Clarissa wasn’t able to decipher what. All she knew was that Amanda wasn’t giving her nothing. She never would. Even though she could lie to her, and she did sometimes, Amanda wasn’t going to leave her with the emptiness. She pulled Clarissa off of her shoulder, holding her face and tilting it upwards so they could make eye contact. The angle made her eye bags very visible. It reminded Clarissa that however bad Amanda looked, she undoubtedly was seven times worse. Pregnancy glow aside, sitting on trains for hours at a time couldn’t be healthy.

Focus, Jenkins.

“Of course I’m mad at you!” Amanda exclaimed, rubbing circles into Clarissa’s shoulders with her thumb, as if to keep her grounded. “I hope you would be pissed off if I did the same. No announcement, no call, no explanation. We’re supposed to be here for each other, and it’s pretty fucking hard to do that when you’ve decided you’d rather be in a haystack with gay farmers or nutjob old women instead of just coming to my house. You should be glad I’m furious, because if I wasn't I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t care. I’m here out of care.”

Clarissa noticed she said “care”, not “love”. The word must’ve tasted funny in her mouth or something. It was fine. She’d be in a hearse if she tried to read into everything Amanda did. She tried not to in her regular life. Once she started, she could only imagine the things she’d notice. “You’re right. I mean, you’re normally right. Or you’re a brilliant liar. Even in that case, you’re still brilliant. I’m rambling. Can you just clarify that this isn’t the end of the world, and we’re- I mean… I’m going to solve this, with you around when I need you.”

Amanda was at a crossroads. It reminded Clarissa of when Mr and Mrs Wilson divorced. Amanda had been troubled, borderline inconsolable, like most children discovering the obliteration of their parents’ union. Yet, within a couple hours, she explained to her best friend that it “might be for the best” since they “were much more suited for literally any other people”. She wondered if the two of them suited one another, and how much it would break her if Amanda had the same takeaway.

“I forgive you.” Amanda responded, visibly fighting the urge to take her hands off Clarissa to place them on her hips. “It’s just… overwhelming. And I can’t not voice what I think. Which is a.) You’re taking on too much and need to take a break. Whether that’s going to therapy, being on house arrest or turning off your phone and doing a juice cleanse. There’s also getting rid of the baby, which I know you’re not gonna be amenable to even if you admit you don’t want it. But I’d hold your hand through it, if you needed it.”

“Thank you Mandy. It’s not that I don’t think it’s viable, I just don’t think I- or Mark especially for that matter- could take that emotional toll. Religiously, it’s iffy, and honestly, I’d rather give it away to a couple who can’t conceive, I reckon.” Amanda seemed comforted by this response and its clarity, so she moved on to the next proposition. “Do I really need a specialist? You’re a therapist. I already talk to you.”

“Clarissa, you need someone without a vested interest. I have more than that, and you know it.”

“Interest” was new.

“And then there’s b.) which is my selfish question to ask of you. Nowadays, do you ever talk to me when you’re doing alright? Or am I just the emergency contact when your panic response fails you? If you don’t need me, am I anything in your eyes?”

Clarissa’s eyes were burning. Trying not to blink, she looked at Amanda. The same face she’d met when she was a month old. She imagined a world where their relationship was transactional. Where the last twenty three years had all been one big price Amanda had to pay. She missed when they were young, and she knew Amanda believed in her. She had to believe in her. What was she if she wasn’t Amanda’s best friend? Mark’s wife? Her mother’s daughter? Clarissa Suzanne Jenkins?
She was always her best friend. It was the role she was born for.

“I can’t live without you. God- I can’t believe I’m using His name in vain- but God, I’d kill anyone for you. I promise. If I don’t text you one day, I wake up the next morning and send you a voice memo telling you all about the last thirty six hours of my life. I would’ve asked you to New York with me, but I knew you were busy with work. Clearly, not as busy as I thought, but still… I need to know you’re nearby. Even when you’re on the opposite end of the world. It’s not something I take lightly when I say I love you, Amanda. I haven’t said it to Mark in weeks. Not that it’s a comparison thing.”

Amanda seemed to finally resonate with the words, and she took a step back, forcing Clarissa to let go of her. She wasn’t crying, she never cried, but she wasn’t far off from it. There were callouses in her palms from where her nails had been digging in. On second glance, there was a tragic beauty to her gauntness. Like a corpse bride. Although Amanda was unmarried. She’d never even told Clarissa who she’d dated. No matter who she was clearly seeing, it was an unspoken silence. Which only made it enormously loud.

“I…”

“You don’t have to say it back.”

“I’m scared you won’t love me anymore if I say it.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

There was a coldness in the air that carried the dewdrops, and Clarissa’s glasses became speckled with water. Even through the haze it had given her, she could see the tremor in Amanda's hands, and hear it in her voice. “I don’t know. It’s… you know I’d do anything for you. Which conflates loving you. But you don’t see what I see. If you did you’d hate yourself. You’d hate looking in the mirror, eating food, looking at me. Being around me all the time. Not that I hate being around you. It’s complicated.”

Clarissa swallowed unsuccessfully, the air hanging stagnant in her throat with nowhere to go. It caused her voice to come out hoarse when she said, “Amanda, I know you’re a lesbian. I don’t care.”

Amanda stifled a sound that was somewhere between a giggle and a sob. “You don’t care?”

“No! I mean– no. I care, of course I care. I want to know everything about you. Where you’re going, your favorite color, why you don’t have a favorite color. The things you see on your way to work that made you stop and stare. The driver that you got mad at. All the cats you wanted to adopt but couldn’t because your apartment doesn’t let you get them. And of course that includes who you’re with. It could be literally anybody, and I’d wanna know. Partly so I could be judgemental, but that’s the whole point. I never asked, because… well, it’s scary. I thought you’d burn in Hell for a while. But I like knowing all of you.”

“Even the ungodly stuff?”

“Nobody’s perfect. I wear polyester sometimes. Mark has a tattoo for his mom. We didn’t wait till marriage- I never told you that. Sorry. Your parents got divorced, and were better off. Mine didn't, and they really should have when they had the chance. Ultimately even if I wouldn’t do it to myself, doesn’t mean I’d be any less proud of and for you. And you’re a lesbian. You’re lucky. You don’t get pregnant, you don’t get heaped with men all your life. You’re not married to a man with mommy issues who gets on better with your mom.”

Amanda chuckled. “So you also think that’s a thing!”

“Yeah! Obviously. I mean, I have mommy and daddy issues, but at least I’m not taking them into my adult marriage, you know? Or I’m self aware about it. If we have a daughter, he’s gonna suggest his mom’s name, I’ll bet you all the money I have.”
“He’s not exactly mature. He called letting you come here ‘fumbling the bag’ the other day.”

“He called his own dad an ‘opp’ last month. This is not news to me. I fuckin’ married him.” Clarissa sighed, feeling ten pounds lighter, and sat back down on the bench. After a few seconds, Amanda sat beside her. She leaned on her shoulder, glad how comfortably her head fit there. There were definitely more things worth addressing. Not right now. Eventually they’d both have the courage to confront the full extent of the predicament. Here it was best to gossip and contemplate. “Remind me why I did that.”

“Honey, I have no clue.”

“I love him. I hope I do. It would really suck if I didn’t. Flawed as he is, I’m hardly a paragon of virtue. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t be the ideal guy for me. With some therapy, we’d be absolutely perfect. One of those Christmas Card Families. Like your aunt Hilda, with her dogs all dressed up as reindeer, and her kids as elves. They must be teenagers now. I wonder if she gives them the choice now they’re older, and they like the tradition. I would make an awful Mrs Claus. I’m too tan for the North Pole aesthetic.”

“Suzy, you’re rambling.”

“I know, I know. It’s hard not to.” At this, Amanda took her hand, and interlocked their fingers. Their palms pressed together in a motion that was clearly meant to be distracting. Amanda had moisturised just before coming, she could tell. The sensation was relieving, and almost euphemistic. It made her painfully aware that she was secretly having a rendezvous with her best friend whilst her husband walked the streets of an unknown city for her. She sought comfort in someone else’s touch, someone else’s words, someone else’s warmth. Her lesbian best friend, who she loved and who loved her. it was easier not to read into that aspect.

It probably wasn’t a wholly conscious motion when Amanda did it. More than likely she was following a routine in her head, living out a plan. Or a fantasy. Not that Clarissa considered what she was fantasising about if she could avoid it. Nonetheless, Amanda caressed her hand, bringing it up to her face. Clarissa didn’t even see it, her head still leant against her best friend’s shoulder. All she knew was she felt lips pressed to her knuckles, heard the slightest pursing of lips and an intake of breath as Amanda realised she had kissed her hand for the first time in a year.

“Mandy…” her voice was low, warning. “Don’t.”

Her breathing was labored. Amanda hadn’t lowered her fingers from inches away from her face, awaiting Clarissa tugging them away. She didn’t. The freeze frame lingered, a thought neither of them voiced. Clarissa considered whether Amanda had played out this possibility in her head before, then cleared the idea away before it could weigh her down any further from his reach. His reach… God’s or Mark’s or her family or whoever she was trying to convince she wasn’t positively losing her mind in Manchester of all places. “Just leave it.”, she whispered.

“Okay.” Amanda let go of her hand, and it hung still in the air, unable to move on. “You can’t let it linger. It hurts.”

Clarissa wasn’t sure if Amanda was referring to her hand. She didn’t ask. “I know.”

Amanda put an arm around her. It was less dangerous. “Look, I’m not gonna force you to do anything. You know what I think. When you’re ready to confront it, then we can do that together. For now, go to Scotland. Go see fucking Batman or whatever it is you need to do. Then you go to Folkestone, have a reality check down there. Then Mark and I are gonna catch up with you for real. He won’t let you go like I’m going to in a minute. By then, you better know what to say to him.”

They pinky swore, and hugged one last time on the bench. Amanda’s leg crossed over Clarissa’s, and the pair held on for several seconds too long. Then, quicker than it had begun, the meeting was over, and Amanda had vanished into the streets of the bustling city. Taking a minute to catch her breath, Clarissa stretched her neck, rolling it around in hopes it would rearrange her brain. Everything was swirling around in a befuddling heap. Her palms were caked in sweat, the inside of her cheek stained with blood. From stress or restraint, she wasn’t sure. Even more unsure was she of what she was restraining herself from doing.

Glasgow had a chill this time of year. It made it a lot more difficult to find anywhere to hide from the cold. She knew where the police station was, and when she’d visited, there had been a local inn they mentioned frequenting at the end of a long week. Fortunately for her, it was late on a Friday afternoon. With a distinct pep in her step, perhaps sparked on by seeing Amanda, she strolled into the inn and made contact with the barkeep, who was a boulder of a woman, similar in age to Clarissa

“What can I do for you?” her accent was thicker than Glawegian. Highlands, maybe?

“Just a lemonade, thank you. And a room for the night, if you have one available.”

“Oh, an American! I’ve always wanted to visit. Where are you from?” she busied herself getting a glass ready. “And that should be fine. I’m Poppy, by the way. My aunt runs this place.” Despite her stature, Poppy had a steady grace that seemed more appropriate for a farmhand than a city-dwelling barkeep.

“New Jersey. And hi Poppy, I’m Clarissa. Where are you from? You don’t sound native to this city.”

“Wow, for an American you do have a good ear for accents! You’re right. I’m from Inverness. Right near the coast. It’s in the family business to farm sheep. But there was a whole ordeal with the lighthouse keeper, his assistant- who was my half-brother- and his complicated relationship with me, so I headed off here. It was my sheep, Mario, that really pushed me towards it. He kept encouraging me to go for a change. Somewhere new, he said. I mean he bleated a lot too, but I’m pretty sure that’s what he was getting at.”

Clarissa opened her mouth and found she wasn’t prepared for this. She’d heard stranger things in the field, she’d met Ethel and Margaery (and was about to try to reunite with Robin). Still, there was something insane about talking to a completely regular bartender, someone she’d never intended to interview or study whatsoever, and finding out that she seemed to have a line of communication with her sheep that included some sort of human words and sentences that didn’t sit right with her. It was beginning to feel like a long, pregnancy-induced psychosis of a week. In retrospect, it also rang a bell. Maybe she'd met Poppy's family already. What in the world was wrong with her line of work?

“I’m sorry. That was a bit TMI, wasn’t it? I’m pretty new to the job, see, and I get excited whenever I meet new people. Women, mostly. I’m learning that men are very boring. And like lying a lot about my height when they meet me. They keep telling me I’m six foot seven, because they swear they’re six three and can’t be more than a few inches shorter than me. It was funny the first couple times, but since the sixth or seventh it’s started to feel like I should’ve just stuck with knowing the one.”

She liked Poppy. Maybe she just had an affinity for people who were steadfast, or odd, or in some way noticeably othered. She reminded her of Amanda somewhat, a tall woman who decidedly judged quick and knew how much she had outgrown all the men her own age (not just physically). She was pretty too. Dyed blonde hair that curled in all the right places, a rounded face with a sharp chin, and a long, smooth nose that buttoned at the end. Very little makeup. Maybe some mascara and concealer on her under eyes. Clarissa reckoned God had simply made beauty more accessible to women, since so many of them oozed it.

“You’re all good, Poppy. It’s my job to listen to people. And yours too, I guess.” Her lemonade was handed to her and she took a gratuitous sip.

“Oh my God, that can’t be! Mrs Jenkins!”

She whipped her head around to see the origin of the voice, and saw a stout, rotund man with a police cap on his head that failed to cover up a bald spot. He was wearing some amalgamation of a uniform and the outfits parents give to their small children when it's time to paint things in class. His badge caught the low light of the inn and flashed, revealing the title “Head King of the Glasgow/Gotham Metropolitan Police Force”. Whilst wordy, highly questionable and more than a little arrogant, it did ring a bell. “Hi! I did an article on you.”

“Indeed you did. My team’s flawless capture, arrest and fine against Lord and Lady Lafayette. The time that we saved Batman and Robin, the twat. People around here talk about that to this day. There were celebrations up and down the street when we apprehended them. Sure, we couldn’t get them any prison time for the multiple murders they definitely did, but we convicted them of tax fraud, which is a feat in itself. I liked your article on the whole ordeal. Very succinct. Could’ve spoken more about our system, but that’s neither here nor there.”

She really did keep having conversations. “Yep. Can you wait a minute?” She finished her lemonade, thanked Poppy (who informed her that the Head King was known by the staff for his long tirades about his own achievements, namely the one arrest with evidence they’d actually made in the last three years), and joined him at his table. “How have the several years been for you and your squadron? Good, I hope.”

“Mixed. Good days and bad. Which is what mixed means, really. Self-explanatory. But we still have a higher conviction rate than Batman.”

“That’s nice.”

“And he’s not even that special. Him and Robin are literally just orphans. They’re humans like anyone else. Not even particularly special humans. I’M more special than they could ever dream to be if you ask me. There’s witchcraft in my family. I’m a witch. Batman would make a shit witch. Robin, an even worse one."

“Isn’t the word for that wizard?”

He slapped the table, clearly already a little tipsy. “Fucking shut up, that is so insensitive!”

“Oh. Sorry.”

He shrugged, realizing he was probably overreacting a teensy bit. “There are plenty of reasons we’re the superior crime fighters in this city, I’ll have you know. We do a sort of trial period. Involving lots of tests. One of the biggest ones, we instruct our mums to go and get themselves lost or trapped somewhere. Leave a set of clues, make it a whole mystery. It makes for a good team building exercise. People trust you if you’ve saved their mum. Almost everybody wants their mum safe, you know? They’re the closest thing you have to a safety blanket or a god. I know we’re a bit of a shit force, but I do believe we have an understanding of the human condition HE lacks.”

Clarissa totally did agree, and found herself nodding like a bobble head. All her life she’d been trying to save her mom. From her dad, from guilt, from living vicariously through her daughter for the remaining forty odd years of her life. It made her wonder who was saving her. Whether it would be this child growing in her that helped her to realise the futility of clinging onto domesticity and tradition. Or was it, like her wedding, meant to be a DIY job? On the other hand, “Mr Police Chief, isn’t that a bad example though?”

“Why would it be?”

“Because Batman couldn’t save his mom, and that’s kind of his whole… deal?”

He frowned at this, folding his arms and caving in on himself momentarily. He kept opening his mouth to voice a rebuttal, and then shutting it when one didn’t arrive. Eventually he waved her off, and she got up to leave. Recognising this was the end of the interaction, he held up his hand so she’d wait an extra couple seconds. “Hang on, I just wanted to ask a favour of you. Tomorrow we’re actually conducting a psychological test, or a questioning. Trying to get through to a tough nut to crack. You’re a journalist, right? You could help. I’d pay you. I really don’t want to have to see that tacky cape and his freaky little sidekick.”

Clarissa considered the offer. It wasn’t manual labor, and so would have no effect on the baby. It was just for a few hours. Plus, she sort of needed money, a journey like this gave her the need for thriftiness. “Okay. See you tomorrow.”
Jemima and Amanda were right. She needed to figure out what the fuck it was she wanted. If that was police work in Glasgow alongside Batman, so be it, that was what she’d do.

 

-The Train To Scotland-

There were a handful of reasons Amanda had chosen to study psychology, and pursue a career as a therapist. Her whole life was chock full of traumas to be dealt with in therapy. The train wreck of her parents’ marriage and their subsequent divorce had warped her perception of love and family for years. Being the daughter of a pizza restaurant owner, she’d seen his patrons, their lifestyles, their shattered dreams. It hadn’t exactly helped her relationship with the town she grew up in, or food for that matter. Once that almost landed her in the psychiatric hospital at sixteen, it was almost immediately followed up with the unhelpful discovery that she was a Catholic lesbian who had a crush on her lifelong best friend, whose dad had just died. Who looked to her for platonic reassurance in her darkest times.

It was difficult to pinpoint when she’d done the whole ‘childhood’ thing. One moment she was a toddler, and the next she was borderline inconsolable, then she was a qualified psychotherapist diagnosing grieving middle aged women with clinical depression. She’d been in and out of the doctors growing up, diagnosed with prosopagnosia (face blindness) at seven when her parents noticed she couldn’t tell her two teachers apart when recalling her day to them. Over the years, they’d helped her devise ways to cope with it. Taking photos, drawing pictures, becoming familiar with peoples’ other features, clothes and smells and the like. Keeping a diary of all the people she’d met, and their distinct features. Most of the time she avoided mentioning all the other elements of her life. It wasn’t worth professional help. She could handle it.

Now she offered others said help, she recognised how much trouble she could’ve saved herself if she’d advocated for herself. Or somebody bar Clarissa had ever noticed. It had been Amanda’s initiative that got Clarissa diagnosed with ADHD a couple years ago, in repayment for the latter’s help over the years. She’d been the one to remind Amanda who everyone was, who’d check she’d eaten all the pizzas her dad offered them, who invited her round when times got tough between her parents.

They’d always been each other’s biggest supporters.
It would be silly to abandon her now.

Mark had been fidgeting for hours. He’d tried to scrutinise her for a while, scan her with the robotic lens he lacked. Once he’d predictably given up, he’d resorted to spinning his wired earphones around his hand again and again, like a pathetic cowboy. It was evident he understood something was up, a communication outside of his parameters had occurred, he just couldn’t clock quite what it was. He didn’t know his wife had reached out for her first. She pitied how his ignorance wasn’t even blissful. “Did you like the extension?”

“What?”

Mark mimed a house. “The one I built. Suzanne showed it to you, didn’t she? Spare room and an office.”

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah, it’s cute.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “What do you want me to say, Mark? That both she and I knew exactly what you were trying to communicate? ‘Oh, look, we have so much more space, it’s almost as if it’s perfectly fit for you to start working from home whilst we fill this room with a lovely little housemate?’ I don’t think she’s as oblivious as either of us give her credit for. Whatever you were trying to get across, she’s clearly not interested. I wish I knew what she WAS interested in, but I don’t reckon she knows either.”

“What would you do? In my position, I mean. If she was your wife, what would you be doing right now?”

Finally, he was speaking her language. She’d run this scenario in a million different variations over more than half a decade now. What if Clarissa was her wife? FIrst off, they wouldn’t be here at all. They’d have split their lives between New Jersey and the road, and would travel together when possible. Amanda could do half her sessions online, it would still work. They’d be long distance maybe a month of the year, but they’d ensure they called every night. Kids and marriage wouldn’t be priority, since they were basically already married in common law, and the eyes of every person who knew them. Clarissa would make the two of them tea, and Amanda would drink it even though she hated tea. Because she liked how much Clarissa enjoyed doing things for her. And Amanda would convince Clarissa to get a cat, even though she thought they were “disturbing and cruel”. Eventually she’d come round to the idea, especially once she saw how much Amanda’s eyes lit up at the sight of the little furball. They’d go to New York, watch musicals, talk everything through twice over. She’d force Clarissa to go to therapy, Clarissa would force her to treat herself every once in a while. It would be just like their friendship, except she wouldn’t have to ache every time she yearned to reach out and just hold her for the rest of eternity.

This wasn’t what Mark was asking her though.
“Oh… probably chase her down. Prove that you’re not fucking around. Don’t put any pressure on her, just find her and stand your ground. You need to know what you want. Whether that’s raising a kid with her, giving it up and getting a divorce, or opening up the marriage so you can fuck whoever else you want to. You having your shit together will make her do the same. She doesn’t want to be leaving you hanging. I don’t think she has much journeying left in her. Wait till she’s in Folkestone; we can close in there. I’ll leave you alone.”

He smiled, like he could tell her demeanour and composure were on the brink of shattering into pieces. “I know it’s not a choice. I like you, I do- a good portion of the time, at least. I don’t want it to be some kind of competition between the two of us for the rest of our lives. There should be some work around to it. Whatever that is. I just… it keeps recurring to me in my mind that it does boil down to something. Were she to make a choice between you and I, who do you think she’d choose and why? Be honest.”

Amanda could recall the last time she’d been asked who she thought would be chosen. She was eleven, sitting in her living room, surrounded by cardboard boxes. In the arm chair, cross legged, was Hamish, slowly fiddling with her guitar until it fell completely out of tune. Not that she minded much. The noise provided a distraction from the sounds of their mom installing her stuff into a moving van. During one of her absences, her seven year old brother looked at her, and very earnestly asked, “Who do you think she’s going to take with her? You or me?”

At the time, she’d snorted and reminded him that there was no choosing. A custody agreement meant they’d spend time split between both of their parents, neither being favoured by one particular parent. Nowadays, she sort of understood why he’d felt the need to ask.

“She married you, Mark. For now, she’s made her choice in that department.”

“And if one day she changed her mind, what then?”

She remembered how warm Clarissa’s hand had felt against her lips. The illegality of the touch. The slightest sigh that had escaped her throat. How much her stomach had dropped. She had felt the pulse in Clarissa’s wrist, noticing how much it rose. She’d been able to wonder what thoughts her best friend was having, so far away from everything she knew and was forced to accept. Who had she been dreaming of? Not that it mattered. Not now. “I don’t know, I’m not a visionary. Division of assets, probably. The rest- we’ll cross that bridge once she jumps off it.”

Mark chuckled dryly. “If she jumped off a bridge, would you?”

So did Amanda. “I think I already have.”

Notes:

HELLOOOO!!! thanks for reading Chapter 5!

I'm gonna be posting more in the next few weeks I reckon, since I'm (mostly) on Summer break. I am doing some work and holidaying, but this is normally peak productivity time for me. This chapter took a while as I was busy getting drunk and swimming in ponds with my friends (very coming-of-age movie, I know). This may not be my favourite chapter thus far, but I do love Clamanda. My ACTUAL potential favourite should be chapter 6 (provided I can squeeze everything I want to in and don't make it a 2 parter, which is very possible). I reckon we're at the halfway Mark (smart reference) now, although again chapters do seem to be getting longer as we go. This is now officially the longest Clamanda fic on ao3 and they haven't even come close to getting together yet...

Anyways, thank you so much for reading this, it's so much fun to write, and see you all next week! Hope you enjoyed!
Theo <3

Chapter 6: Death

Summary:

Clarissa interrogates a cult leader, and contemplates what she's devoted to, and what she values.
Then she gets to see a family four years into the grieving period.
She's beginning to worry that some part of her is dying.

(BIG trigger warning for mentions of past suicide and current suicidal ideation, this is the Cardboard Stegosaurus crossover chapter after all)

New Jersey, 13th February, 2017:
“Clarissa?”

Clarissa looked at her father, biting down on her tongue. This time last year, he’d been built like a beach ball, a result of excessive drinking. Now it was more like a string cheese, slowly being peeled apart. He was sat up in his bed, hands constantly hovering over the emergency call button so he could prevent anyone from calling the nurses on him. As far as he was concerned, he was doing perfectly fine. Sam, or Sandy or Sally or whatever he reckoned her name was on the day was just a worrier. All women were, he claimed. Fragile little things. “Yeah dad?”

“My daughter’s name is Clarissa.”

She sighed, wondering why she’d bothered getting excited at all. “Yep. That’s her name.”

He hummed, seemingly proud of himself for recalling this. He kept looking out the window, through the gaps in the blinds, out at the rainy parking lot. Like he was expecting something or someone. Some part of his daughter reckoned it was Death itself. Another assured her it was some memory she wasn’t privy to. Really, her dad had never opened up to her about anything significant. All she knew was that he drank to calm himself down- to forget. And, to his credit, he had now forgotten practically everything of use.

“She’s so naughty, she is.” he ruminated. Surprised by something so definitive, Clarissa drew her chair a little closer to the bed, prompting him to finish his thought. He blinked deliriously. “Reminds me a bit of myself at her age. Staying up past her curfew, handing in her homework late. My father used to hit me for behavior like that though. She’s lucky that I’m not as hard on her. You know, it was Maggie that told me not to. I used to slap her across the wrists when she put her elbows on the table. She was tiny. She said I was scaring both her and Clarissa.”

Clarissa didn’t remember this vividly. She knew her father had mellowed out a little bit when she was four, after a fight, but she didn’t know why. Clearly this was what he was referring to. She also hadn’t known anything about her paternal grandparents. Both died very early on in her life, and her maternal ones were warm enough to make up for their absence. It hadn’t been a thing she’d dwelled on much… her father’s childhood. He’d always been simply a middle aged man to her, washed up from the get go. She’d forgotten he was once vulnerable.

“How old’s your daughter now?” she asked, testing the waters.

Mr Jenkins' mouth twitched, as he squinted through the window again, straining his deteriorating vision like the answer would physically manifest before them. “I don’t know… tworteen, maybe. Is she in high school yet?” He slurred the words like alphabet soup in his mouth. Only a year or so ago, every sentence he said was fully intelligible when he was sober. Now it sounded like English was his sixth or seventh language. Clarissa couldn’t help but compare the father she’d had, and the mess of a man she was faced with now. She wasn’t sure which one she preferred.

“She’s seventeen, actually. Junior year.” she told him.

“Really!” he slapped his knees in amazement. “The years have flown by, haven’t they?”

The walls were a clinical pale blue. As were his bedsheets. The whole building reeked of sterilisation, bleach and boiled cauliflowers and rotting flesh. Were it not for the friendly staff offering her cups of tea constantly, she would’ve kept her visits short and sweet. It hurt, to see what had become of him, and yet it was kind of like a car crash, or wilting flowers kept in a vase on the mantlepiece. You couldn’t help staring at dying things, morbid as it was to admit. The man she’d grown up fearing was now like a spider, more afraid of her than she could ever have been of him. She couldn’t tear her eyes away.

“They tend to do that, yeah.”

“How old am I then?”

Clarissa’s heart sank.

His birthday had only been a week ago. It wasn’t too long after hers. They’d decided to take him out of the hospice for the day, so he could experience some semblance of normalcy during his last ever birthday. Not that Clarissa or her mom or any guest voiced that fact. It was the elephant in the room, the tiger they took to tea. It was implied in every gift that was far better suited to the women of the house, every birthday wish that seemed more like a goodbye. The way the song was sung in a slight minor key.

He’d already forgotten. They’d plastered the living room with balloons, all reflecting the number he was turning, in a desperate hope he’d recognise the celebration was about him. Whilst he did, he kept asking his wife who half of the partygoers were, and whether he’d eaten the cake yet, and whether his parents were on their way. Mrs Jenkins had told him Richard and Elizabeth had just gotten into a spot of traffic and would make it soon. They’d been dead almost twelve and fifteen years respectively by this point.

“I feel like I’ve forgotten something.” he’d told his wife at the party.

“Yeah, Bill? What’s that?” she asked, an arm around his shoulder.

“Tell Clarissa she can blow out the candles. Her and Amanda. We told them they could.”

Both Clarissa and Amanda shared a fleeting confused look from opposite ends of the room. Neither of them recalled being told this. Probably because it had been double digit’s worth of birthdays ago. Amanda looked surprised to have been remembered by Mr Jenkins in the first place, and was clinging onto her own father’s arm, seemingly disturbed by the idea of such a lack of lucidity. Mr Wilson squeezed her forearm, the same height as his daughter, and kissed the side of her head.

Bill also watched the movement. “I feel empty, Margaret.”

“Do you now?”

“I just… I’m not myself anymore.”

The room fell still.

Back in the present, a week later, Clarissa stared at the shell of a person. The father she’d hated was dead. The father she’d loved was dead. All that lay down, meekly croaking out sentiments, was an artist’s interpretation of her father. He’d been put through a shredder, and these were the paper tatters. This… thing was meat and bones, clinging onto what mortality he had left. It was pathetic, pitiable and provoked a deep anger in her. Anger that she’d never get to hug or confront her real father. That her real father had randomly left one day without warning or goodbye, and left this husk in his skin.

“Dad, you’re fifty three. Just.”

On his fifty second birthday, he’d been fine.

“The Lord musn’t favor me.”, Mr Jenkins snickered like there had been a joke. “To do this to me.”

“I can’t imagine why.” Clarissa couldn’t help being sarcastic, even if her father was much too ill to recognise her insincerity. He’d been a shit father, and a worse husband. He’d lied, yelled and fought, claiming that as long as he didn’t leave her and her mom for anyone else he was satisfactory. Every Sunday he’d gone to church and prayed like he was somebody who sought forgiveness for his actions. It had irked her to no end to see his hypocritical piety. Especially since it had rubbed off on her.

“Does Clarissa have a boyfriend or a husband?”

She jumped a bit at his change in tone, and shook her head. He tittered. “I told her mother I was worried about her. So hard working, she barely has time for boys. Margaret told me lots of girls these days are like that at her age. All activists and businesswomen. Catholic businesswomen, the joke writes itself. Apparently she is into boys, though. She’s not a… you know. I was worried, what with her friendship with the girl Amanda, that there was something a little off about her. I was prepared to -”

“Dad!”

“IT’S BILL!” he roared, although he was quickly placated by something in his periphery. “Never mind. It’s only… sin is sin. She’s capable, but that makes her vulnerable. To temptation, to illucidation.” It threw Clarissa off that he could use these big words but had recently described a singular glass of water as weighing three kilograms. “I only have one child. Struggles with fertility. My wife, mostly. I don’t wanna fault her for that. Even if the Lord made her body almost unfit for her purpose, she still produced a child. She’s a fighter. So’s Clarissa. I just hope that, like her mom, she comes round and makes a family eventually.”

She looked at the small armchair in the corner of the room. She’d slept in it once or twice. It was bright red, an unfortunate choice for a place full of people dying. It was covered head to toe in cushions, striped and spotted and splayed facing out. Intrusively, her brain asked her if it was worth picking one up and trying it. Nobody would know. They wouldn’t check for cause of death, would they? He was already long gone anyways. She’d just have been easing the process into happening. He didn’t recognise her. It wouldn’t even be personal. Except for her. For her, it would be a vulgar combination of sympathy and revenge.

Of course, she never came close.

“Your daughter isn’t a…” she pursed her lips and sucked in her teeth, crossing and uncrossing her legs several times in the foldable chair she liked sitting in whilst visiting. It wasn’t necessarily a filthy word. Once upon a time there had been an island, and there had been a poet. It came up in an English class. There was nothing inherently dirty about the word. The implication it carried was a different situation entirely. In the same way thinking about killing her father and actually smothering him to death were two contrasting courses of action. Realisation was acceptance. “She’s not a lesbian.”

“Good riddance.” Bill said, not properly responding to his daughter’s plea for validation.

The conversation was dry after that. He didn’t avert his eyes fully from the window for more than a few seconds the entire hour she was there. Eventually she figured out that he was looking in the parking spot that used to be reserved for his older sister when she worked here. Since her retirement it had gone to another employee, whose car was readily tucked in. Clarissa pondered her aunt, Suzanne, and wondered what she’d have to say about her dad’s condition. Probably nothing nice. “She’s gone, isn’t she?” Bill asked wearily.

“Suzanne. She’s dead, isn’t she, Clarissa?”

Clarissa swallowed, not sure how to respond to her father’s impromptu lucidity. “Yeah. Yeah, she is, dad.”

“She’ll be missing me. I should go home. Her car’s at home.”

Whilst it didn’t entirely make sense to her, Clarissa wondered if “home” was Heaven to him now. She made her exit swiftly, letting a nurse know of his sudden grasp on reality. The nurse, only a decade or so older than her, gritted her teeth. She informed Clarissa of the concept of terminal lucidity: regaining a consciousness briefly before death. Maybe days, maybe just hours or minutes. It couldn’t be guaranteed that was what he was experiencing, plenty of WKS patients went through the same thing.

“Do you want to stick around, knowing that this might be his last moments?” The nurse asked, slightly too professional to be speaking to a teenage girl with much compassion beyond the inherent amount.

“No, thank you. Call my mom. She’ll appreciate it more.”

Despite raising her eyebrows, the nurse complied.

Clarissa went home and called Amanda.

 

Glasgow, April 1st 2023:
After a sleep impossibly worse than the night before, Poppy directed her to the precinct, where the Head King explained what her task was. “I heard you dealt with some cults back in the day. This is sort of like that. This man, Dillon Parker, is a cult leader we reckon. The only charges we can actually pull him up on is tax av-evasion. That and any possible sexual pressure he may be putting on members of his… organisation, although none of them seem to want to speak a single bad word about him. They say he’ll know. One of them mentioned he’ll respond with force. Or the Force? It wasn’t clear.”

Clarissa, still half-asleep, shrugged. “Am I doing this alone?”

“I can send my best detective, Johnson, in with you. I’ve told him to trust you. If you want to kick him out, you have that option.”

“And what do you want him to confess to?”

“Anything punishable really. He’s been ravaging the streets of Glasgow slash Gotham with his antics for almost a year now. We’ve been trying to get proof or a confession the whole time. All we need is that little bit of pressure to crack him. I assume journalists are good at that, or at least a Hell of a lot better than some of my men are.”

Clarissa agreed, hesitantly, and met with Johnson. He was a young, sturdy officer who, for the brightest tool in the shed here, still seemed a bit too dim to offer her much. He shook her hand with juvenile enthusiasm, and the two of them entered the interrogation room. It was poorly lit at the edges, all gray, so as to spotlight the perpetrator, sat at a wooden chair in the center. He was late thirties, with long thin auburn hair that looked a wash away from well-managed. One of his hands was cuffed to the chair leg, and the other waggled his fingers in a patronising wave.

“I see Dougie’s still trying to break me.” He had a booming, South-East English voice that seemed a bit of a performance. Right then, it had a sardonic lilt.

Johnson scoffed indignantly, puffing out his chest like a child’s impersonation of a lion. “It’s Douglas, and I’ll have you know I am a qualified officer of the law.”

“Who’s the woman then? Your supervisor? She looks far too young to be your mum, but God knows you need an adult around when you’re at work-”

“I will- fucking-” he sighed, pinching his nose. He gestured to Clarissa with his spare hand. “This is Clarissa Suzanne Murray-Jenkins. She’s a specialist in these sorts of cases. Ones where all we need to do is prod and everything spills out. Like milk and keys. She’s the best set of keys the whole world has. Hence her American accent you’re soon to discover. We brought her here from the East Coast specifically to pull you apart. You should be trembling in your boots- or your Nike’s. They’re nice, they are.”

“Thank you.” Dillon flashed the man a smile that told Clarissa he didn’t believe a single lie Johnson was telling. Mr Parker was more than aware that the Glasgow Police weren’t going to ship an American expert in for something so mind-numbingly simple. She was their right place, right time helping-hand. “I’m glad somebody out here is qualified. Makes a nice change.” He looked her up and down, with an unabashedness Clarissa wasn’t used to. There was a self-assured smug smile curving its way along her mouth. It reminded her of the Cheshire Cat. “And a visual non-pareil at that.”

Johnson looked at her. “I think that’s French.”

She snorted. “Yeah, I got that. He’s saying I’m pretty.”

He writhed in the chair, slithering to and fro. “And intelligent? It’s my lucky day. You know, a few years ago, women scarcely looked in my direction. I was just Dillon, the mechanic who watched too many old movies and read in his garage. I was boring, with a meaningless life to match it. Chasing a dream that wasn’t real. You’re American, you know what I mean. Nuclear family and whatnot. Now I just snap my fingers and half a dozen women are fetching me a glass of wine. There’s nothing wrong about that.”

Whilst she hadn’t predicted an incel, she wasn’t wholly taken aback by the notion, and stretched her fingers accordingly. Making a split-second decision, she pointed towards the door, politely suggesting Johnson’s exit. Whilst the man seemed put-off, he ultimately wished her well and left her alone in the cramped room with the suspected criminal. She pulled the bow around the waist of her dress tighter, watching his eyes follow the movement. Perfect. Maybe he’d notice the bump, but when were men ever ones to care? It was just another reason to underestimate her.

“So what’s your goal? To ascend? Be God? Bring world peace? All of the above?”

“Little taste of everything. They call me High Visionary. Rolls of the tongue, doesn’t it, Clarissa Suzanne?”

Hearing her name spoken so slowly, like liquorice, was fascinating. As a case study on what drove a man to the edge, Dillon made for an incredible one. Ostracised by his own mundane existence, he clung to fantastical ideas of magic and vision, whatever that meant. He fed into other peoples’ deep insecurity and feeling of insignificance, thereby validating himself and easing the self-doubt that had made him into this monster. Except he didn’t seem to her to be a real threat.

There was a cabinet on the wall. One of the assortment of keys the Chief had given her was sure to correspond to its contents. It was glass, likely bulletproof, and stocked every weapon the human brain could comprehend. Guns, knives, blowdarts. It seemed excessive, and more than a little poorly thought through to be placed in a criminal interrogation room. Nonetheless, there was a hatchet promisingly in her eyeshot, as well as enough ammo to play russian roulette till an army died.

She fiddled with it until it unlocked, and loaded the hatchet. Her father had been a fan of hunting, as much as a working class man could be, and had sometimes gotten her mom to cook the livestock and woodland dwellers he had brought to a brutal end. When she was seven he’d handed her a gun for the first time, explaining to her that it was man’s greatest discovery since fire. “You can end any human life with this, Clary.” he’d told her, anticipation tangible in his tone, “All of that destruction, and we still choose not to wipe one another out every single day.”

With firm hands, she handed the loaded gun to the suspect, whose eyebrows might’ve reached the Sun itself. Holding up her own hands, she watched as he inspected the gun, admiring the paint job and its more modern features. He spun it around, so it briefly pointed directly at her heart. She wanted to be afraid. For her life, for the baby’s and the sheer stupidity she was exemplifying. She wasn’t scared. In fact, she was perfectly content with how the situation was unfolding, and that was much more terrifying in itself. “Have a go if you like.”

“You’re fucked in the head.” He told her, smirking. “I like you.”

“I know you could do it. For everybody who’s ever undermined you. To teach them a lesson for not seeing what made you abnormal. What gave you your power.” She wasn’t entirely certain why she was taking such an authoritative tone. She wasn’t sure why she’d come here in the first place, kicked Johnson out the room, and not acknowledged the obvious fact that she, in this incredibly vulnerable physical and emotional state, was the ideal victim for a cult. One wrong step, one oversight, and he could wring her dry.

“What do you believe in, Mrs Murray-Jenkins?”

She raised her hands in a surrender, but refused to take the weapon back. “God. The law. Morality and humanity. All the institutions you abhor.”

Dillon waved the gun at her as he gestured. With any movement, his carelessness could end her life. She remained unflinching. “I mean, I don’t even care, y’know? Fine me all you want, I can find the fucking money. But what I’m doing with my followers isn’t a crime any more than you devoting your life to your God is. They don’t want me here? I accept that. I’ll just move somewhere else… Shropshire, maybe, I hear they’re all miserable there. Needing a change. And my pre-existing lot will follow me anywhere I go. They worship me.”

She saw the hunger in his eyes. It was the same way she used to look at her father. “Dillon, I promise you, you’re not going to get what you want out of this. Everyone’s going to grow tired of you eventually. Return to their actually meaningful lives. You can’t just run around from place to place expecting fulfillment and answers. Sometimes your life is just fucked, and it’s time to go home and get to the root of the problem. Or you can wallow in misery in bumfuck nowhere in particular. It’s your funeral.” She was getting used to being a hypocrite.

“Does He satisfy you? God?”

“Normally.”

“Then why are you here doing a policeman’s job? You’re pregnant, American and unqualified for this. You see no value in your own existence. I find your lack of faith disturbing for someone who claims to be so pious.”

“That’s a Star Wars quote.”

“And? Everything in fiction has to exist somewhere in reality. 1984 and Big Brother, you know? People want a purpose. I give them purpose. Do you really have a purpose? Has all of this” he wrinkled his nose in disgust, “stuff… has it given you any sense of self? Or are you just a pile of skin and bones? You want direction, guidance. You turn to God for that, and what does he offer? No physical form, no voice, no line of communication. But then, you seek me out, and you find more than a man. You see it, don’t you?”

She did see it somewhat. That was the only bit that caused her real, earnest fear. What did she mean? If, right now, Dillon pulled the trigger, who’d be affected? Mark would see it as his mother all over again, but then he’d be free to find a woman who actually knew what it meant to love him. It might kill her mom, although she had very little to live for as it was, with the immobility of her lifestyle. She’d see her dad again, discover what he thought of all she’d done in the last seven years. God might not be best pleased that she relented this much. Then again, where had He been every other time she irreparably ruined things?

Amanda. She couldn’t abandon Amanda. They’d spent their whole lives joined at the hip. Leaving her alone at this point would break both their hearts. Assumedly. Were she to go now, she’d miss everything Amanda was yet to do. Clarissa wouldn’t get to be the maid of honor at her wedding, the godmother to her children, the woman who beat her at bingo when they invariably got sent to the same care home since they were only ever able to put up with each other’s presence.

She’d never get the chance to admit that maybe there were things beyond that. Things she’d never confronted, things she’d wasted years cowardly side stepping. Amanda might never know how much she loved her.

Clarissa held out her hand. Without any pretense, Dillon handed the gun back to her. She was right. It was an easy double bluff. He wasn’t a pacifist per se. More of a regular person, barred by his own ethical humanity not to take a life in cold blood. Only when pushed would he make such a reckless move. She had no Force against him. Even when clutching the gun in her own palms, she couldn’t do anything with it. Like her, Dillon had much ahead of him. The opportunity to turn things around, perhaps. Maybe not for himself, but for others.

“So? What do you confess to?” she asked him, an olive branch.

“I’ll take tax evasion. No bother. Nothing more.”

She sighed, pulling her reading glasses up her nose so she could scrutinize every crease in his forehead as he furrowed his brows. “You’re not a visionary. You’re a deer in headlights, and I’m pressing the breaks to let you run back into the forest. If I were you, I’d take it before a massive truck heads on over.”

He smiled. “You’re a proper brain. Shame you’re never gonna use it for any good.” He shook his head at her offer. “I’m good. You’ll leave soon. Doug’s brain is supple. He can give me an in. The police’ll be on my side. The air ambulance too, since I’ve always liked the idea of flying. I’ll pay the fine to satisfy whatever religious significance you’ve given it. Because I like you. And then I’ll pack up my things and head on South. Just a note before you go, sweetheart. Sorry for the pet name, I don’t mean to be crass. You’re much my junior. I just think it’s worth telling you: it’s very hard to convince people to do things when you don’t believe in them yourself.”

In silence, she put away the gun and left the room, closing the door so softly barely a creak emerged. On her way out, she told Johnson that Mr Parker was confessing his guilt of tax evasion, though was unlikely to budge on anything more sinister. It didn’t surprise her that he’d hoarded groups of people. He didn’t lack charisma, he had a brilliant mind, and walked the line between imagination and reality. He warped the boundaries, made them liminal. Rarely did she meet someone who she so instantly recognised as a waste of prodigal intelligence.

He could’ve gone to Oxford, been life-changing, but he’d become a washed up mechanic who started a cult.

She could be a world-class journalist soon, but she was destined for a life of domesticity raising a line of beautiful, blond children with their father’s eyes.

Now it was time to hear about Marie-Claire Harlow, who’d been able to live her dream to its full potential, and still killed herself.

Life was fascinating like that.

Cliff had been the first proper overseas story for her, and he’d almost been the reason she quit working here altogether. There was something so stagnant in the way he’d lived his life that it pained her. To see this man raising a child, trying to start anew troubled her. She was reminded of her teenage self, trying to connect with her mother after her dad’s death to find her unresponsive for almost six months, spending most days staring at his armchair or his toothbrush or his jacket still hung on the coat rack. She was reminded of the picture Mark had painted her of his own childhood, constantly trying to impress his father but making no more impact on him than the clink of a can opening and the memory of the woman he’d lost.

In a state like her current one, he seemed an inevitable pit stop. The final definitive trip. To bring everything full circle. It was time to find closure and answers, to find out what had happened to the humble family of two after their epiphanic excavation. The train and bus journeys were monotonous, mostly consisting of her chewing her nails (an old habit she’d dropped once she was in high school for the most part) and scrolling through her old messages. She had a problem where she was only ever active online in the middle of the night, long past Mark falling asleep. She wondered if she should be taking more pills, or if her body was trying to tell her their lives were just incompatible.

She texted Cliff on the number he’d given her last time, and he readily responded offering her the spare room for the night. She’d only been nineteen, less than a decade older than his son. In the week she was investigating, she’d become a bit of a surrogate daughter for the man who seemed so lacking in family. The pair had warmed to her, and she’d even followed them on FaceBook to ensure that she kept a hopeful eye on them. Not that she’d had much time to, it was just nice to be attentive when she had the chance.

For a relatively bleak, rainy time of year, Folkestone made for a change. A lively, colorful seaside town tucked in in Kent, a much posher area than this place suggested. It was gorgeous, full of grassy cliffs and humble fish and chips shops. Last time she’d eaten the British delicacy almost every night (and spent most mornings regretting that choice). As a slightly older version of herself, she appreciated that it was a town that veered more towards retired folk. She could envision how somebody accomplished might feel like they were dying here, in spite of all its charm.

Upon her arrival, Cliff drew her in with a loud guffaw. “If it isn’t Clarissa! How are you, dear? I’ve got the kettle on, would you like a cuppa?” It was Saturday, and the house was in full use. The TV was loudly blasting some YouTuber she didn’t recognise, and in the next room Alexa was playing slightly smoother classical music. On the sofa was Chip, who’d grown about a foot since she’d last seen him. He was beginning to fit his legal name, Bradley. He was more of a rock than a chip. Fourteen.
“Hiya, Miss Jenkins.”

“You can call me Clarissa.”

“Oh, that’s nice.” There was a hint of French in his accent. She wondered if it meant his seizures had eased, in favor of simply being bilingual. He pointed at the TV. “FriendlySpaceNinja? He does TV show reviews. It’s a bit like journalism if you think about it. He does all these rants about Emily in Paris. Means I get to feel a bit more French than Netflix execs, you know?”

“I’m good, thanks. Does sound interesting though. And tea would be lovely, Cliff.”

Whilst his father busied himself with tea-making, Chip paused the video and offered all the exposition he knew she yearned for. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Are you pregnant? Sorry, I know that’s not what you’re supposed to ask in case you’re not. Don’t tell dad I asked. Anyways, it’s been nice for the most part. Lots of figuring things out. Couple yard sales, which took some convincing. Pierre comes to see us every now and then. Creeps me out a tad, but I understand why he’s so weird. Same with dad, really. You’ve picked a sort of weird time to visit, actually. Yesterday was the four year anniversary.”

She looked at the date on her phone. So it was. She frowned apologetically, standing up as if to leave and stay out of their hair, but Chip only shrugged. “My dad wouldn’t have let you in if he thought he couldn’t handle it. You’ll be fine. It’s only that we’re doing our annual trips around. Earlier today we went to the channel tunnel, scattered some more of her ashes in the sea. We’re building it up over time, so there’s always some of her with us, and some of her floating through all the rocks. Tomorrow we’re climbing the cliff she jumped off.”

Clarissa raised her eyebrows. “So you know-”

“She jumped? Yeah, I figured it out. Mix of kids at school showing me articles about it and my dad’s ramblings. It sucks. I found out she left a couple notes, one for my dad and one for me. He took six months to read his, and mine says it should be opened on my eighteenth birthday, which isn’t for another three years and seven months. I hate knowing she still has something more to say to me and I don’t deserve to hear it yet. The envelope’s covered in dinosaurs. I used to be really into paleontology, see. It’s like the sister science to geology.”

“What are you into now?”

“Wildlife conservation. I just picked my GCSEs. French, geography, history and DT. Maybe I’ll be an environmental lawyer, or one of those annoying people who throw soup at the Mona Lisa. Could be fun. I don’t know. I don’t want to be a duplicate of my mum or anything. A lot of people think that’s what I am. I’m not, though. I just want to do something that makes the world around us a better place. If that’s keeping animals safe, that’s what I’ll do. I want people to be happy with the state of things no matter where they go.”

Clarissa patted him on the shoulder, seeing Cliff enter the room and hand each of them a cup of tea. It was stronger than Derek’s, which didn’t bother her. Cliff ruffled his son’s hair, seemingly having overheard the end of what he was saying. “He’s very bright, he is. The Einstein of the animal kingdom. Or politics or geography or whatever it is you like. He’s vague, you see, Clarissa. To me, at least. I only ever get him to open up to me when we’re hiking. Which, luckily enough for me and unfortunately for you, we’re doing tomorrow.”

“Yeah, Chip said as much.” She stirred her tea absentmindedly, watching it lighten slightly. “Does that mean I’m invited to join?”

Cliff scoffed. “‘Course you are! What kind of a host would I be if I trapped you in my house for four-five hours?” Clarissa decided not to point out that it might also be poor etiquette to demand a guest spend their day visiting doing a mandatory, physically demanding activity with two relative strangers, since she did want to join in. She'd seen the cliff whilst writing years back, and it hadn’t been anything she wasn’t used to. Pregnant or otherwise, it was well within her limits. “I’m relieved to have a third person with us, really. Pierre would, but he’s busy discovering the new solution to offshore drift or whichever genius project he’s involved in these days. He’s a great lad… very workaholic. Lots of French people are, in my experience.”

Dinner was fish fingers. It was an odd choice of meal for an adult man to her, but then again, she wasn’t British. She was the outsider, the alien. There was no room for her to judge, when all eyes were, deservedly, on her. Studying her reactions to all the things she’d never consider, like a fish finger sandwich or Classic FM. It returned her back to the idea of sonder, all these disconnected lives happening simultaneously, occasionally intersecting to separate again. It has driven her to journalism of all the writing forms. Often, it slipped her mind that she was other people’s sonder. The visitor. The spectator. The spectral presence that ghosted in and out of their lives to lead her own.

That evening, she took a long bath. She scrubbed the exhaustion out of her, and lay, staring at the Millenial Gray ceiling, contemplating her next move. Amanda had texted her “M has agreed to Folkestone. Expect us around 7PM Sunday. Don’t fuck it up :)”. She usually ended messages with a wink, or a sardonic smiley face that was supposed to convey frustration. This was perhaps the latter, or a much more sinister honesty. She was excited to find out what Clarissa thought, because her opinion mattered to the two of them. They’d followed her so far just to hear what she wanted.

Dressed in sweatpants and a hoodie, Cliff gave her a tour of the upstairs so she didn’t get lost heading to the toilet in the middle of the night. There was Chip’s room, which he and Cliff had painted the shade of green the Mediterranean Sea sometimes took on. It was littered with stuff- newspaper clippings, homework, drawings. Lots of energy drink cans overflowed from the trash can. A tell-tale sign of a child seconds away from burnout. She knew the smell. She’d lived in it. Then there was the bathroom she’d bathed in, the spare room she’d sleep in (salmon pink with floral curtains Cliff insisted his mother had forced him into purchasing along with the house). And, finally, Cliff’s own bedroom.

Both sides of the bed were well lived in, one bedside table littered with spare change and figurines, the other with tablets and assortments of rocks. Clarissa wanted to ask who had taken her space, if Chip slept besides his father on occasion or if Cliff himself alternated every night to provide enough warmth for the both of them that no longer existed. But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t like the answer, whichever one it was. Last time she’d been here there had been a glass half-full of water next to an amethyst, slightly condensed around the edges. He’d told her how it had stuck with him, that she never finished her drink. That maybe she’d expected to come home and drink the rest. How it always confused him that she did that. Whether it was just another way to reduce his suspicions that anything was wrong. Or if it was merely a slip of her mind, a coincidence like most things in death. At the time, Clarissa had just written in her notes that he was going through “a tumultuous period of mourning”, since the reality was too heavy to explain properly.

The cup was clean now, and on the dresser instead. A piece of jewellery ready to be slipped on, or a trophy polished to perfection. There were framed photos dotted around. Cliff and Chip on the one year anniversary atop the same cliff. Chip on his first day of secondary school, blazer reaching his knees. Pierre and his colleagues having lunch with the family after settling their argument.

Then there were the ones with her in. Her and Cliff celebrating the tunnel’s completion, their wedding, the day Chip was born, her graduating with her PhD. Dr Marie-Claire Roche (later Harlow) was definitely captivating. Tall, soft-featured with a slight gap in her teeth that made her smile radiant. Clarissa had been enraptured by her life story when researching the case. Spending her childhood in Senegal, moving to France for sixth form, falling in love with geology, being the prodigy of her small university and the woman behind the idea of the Eurostar. Everywhere she went, people adored her. She worked all over the globe, learning six languages and winning various awards, as well as four degrees (2 Bachelors, a Masters and a PhD, all by 32). Meeting her eventual husband building her magnum opus, who was called Cliff.

In her forty five years of life, she definitely hadn’t wasted much.

“A couple weeks after you finished your article, we held her funeral in France. There were six hundred people, who all had these vibrant stories about her. Even if they’d only known her for one dig, or she’d taught some lectures at their university or she was in their graduating class. They’d all been impacted by her. It really got to me. I started fundraising for a charity supporting people who suffered with Bipolar, BPD and Depression like her, and we raised fifteen grand. Half the donations had little messages. I’d read them every night, and just be glad that somebody like that was my other half, and half of my son.”

Clarissa wiped her eyes with the side of her hand, and mulled over it. If she died today, what stories would people tell about her? She’d finally be the subject of an article, instead of its writer. Her mom would organise the fundraiser, putting some anecdote of her as a toddler being stubborn. Some of her middle school teachers would donate; she’d always been a star student to them. High school was a little more tentative but plenty of them could shell five dollars to talk about her performance in the musical, or how she ran the student newsletter like the Navy. Mark would be the biggest supporter, since he’d put a bucket at the funeral and his clients were fond of her. All of his money would be somebody else’s, that he’d brought to her like a lost puppy robbed of its owner.

Amanda would be the actual biggest donation. Except she’d do it anonymously, with some vague message alongside like, “For you, because you were silly enough to leave”. She wasn’t exactly loaded. It would be the majority of her weekly pay check. Who needed hot water, she’d reason, when her own best friend couldn’t be bothered to hang around with her. Since she was tech-aware, Maggie would put her in charge of the webpage, and Amanda would waste hours reading messages and stalking their writers’ Instagram pages. Searching for any trace of Clarissa she’d missed in her own life.

Why did she know that?

Why didn’t she doubt it for a second?

Would she do the same for Amanda?

It was time for bed.

The next morning they rose bright and early, with no time to properly gather together anything beyond hiking equipment. She ensured she packed extra snacks, water and painkillers, and lumped the rest of her stuff into her suitcase. Upon her return, she’d be met by her husband. It threw her, that they were in such close proximity and yet they’d never been further apart. Chip and Cliff were in good spirits, double checking constantly that her pregnancy wouldn’t prove to be an immovable obstacle in the way of their memorial trip. She promised it wasn’t, wondering if deep down, she was hoping it would damage her, because then at least either there’d be no more baby or no more her.

Probably a bad outlook when accompanying the family of a suicide victim, she thought, leaving the house with the pair.

It was a slow, progressive incline. Truly nothing compared to some mountains she’d been up on her travels. They were relaxed enough to make small talk. She learned all the ins and outs of Year 9, the girls who’d been caught vaping in the toilets and the boys who thought they were cool because they all wore North Face jackets all year round and had matching buzzcuts. She enquired about relationships, to which he went pink in the ears. It wasn’t that the blossoming bisexuality of a teenage boy was any of her business, it was merely entertaining to hear about the life she could’ve had if she was a little less repressed.

So entertaining in fact that nearly all of the way up, she managed to twist her ankle when a rock slipped from underneath her shoe. Like every time, it was a problem with her focusing ability. She hadn’t been paying attention, glued to Chip’s story. And she was pregnant, already struggling with an abnormal exertion of her body. She sank, yelped, and took a seat on the nearest flat plane of grass. The father and son demanded to get a look, analysing the injury. Deeming it manageable, Chip told her, “Give it an hour, you’ll be good as new, ish. Enough for the decline.”

His father agreed. “The rest is a bit steep. I’m sure we can get you back down without any difficulty, but your foot will only get worse if we push it. Just wait here for about twenty minutes whilst Chip and I finish the hike and place some flowers. I promise we’ll be prompt. Then we can make sure all three of us are heading down together to avoid you getting lost or damaging it any further. In the meantime, I have an ice pack and a card with the emergency number for hikers in this area if you need it.”
Clarissa shook her head, getting up to her feet with a slight wince. “No. No thanks. Don’t worry about me. I wanna get to the summit with you two.”

Chip sighed, looking to his dad for help. “You really shouldn’t.”

“Shouldn’t I? I mean, how many times am I gonna get to do something like this? And I’m already ninety percent of the way up. Giving up now just means the whole thing wasn’t worthwhile.” She could hear it, even if she was pretending not to.

So could Cliff, who placed his hands on her shoulder and yelled as softly as any man ever had. “Clarissa, you’re twenty three! Your life’s not ended. You could have six more babies, six more jobs, six more husbands or wives or spouses of indeterminate gender! All you have is time to grow. I used to think my life was over when Marie-Claire died. I’d look at Chip and just hope that he could do all the things I had planned to do with her. But I’ve found that it’s wonderful to do things for her- things she’d be proud of. You don’t give up because you’ve had a hard time, you keep going so that the hard times are blemishes, mistakes to learn from. I’ve had awful times, with and without my wife. Twenty seven more years of hardship than you. And all I can tell you is that sticking with something that isn’t going to fulfil you is the same as giving up. It would be a waste of the rest of your life, and you’ll spend the next sixty years regretting it. There’s always another mountain. There isn’t another lifetime.”

He let go of her with a small tremble. “She wrote that. In her note. That she’d had one shot, and so did I. There’s no time for what-ifs.”

Chip hugged his father from the side, tears prickling in his eyes. There was a maturity to the movement that he’d lacked four years ago. Clarissa wondered if she’d been as comforting for her mom back when she’d lost a parent. Probably, actually. She needed to give herself more credit. “I can give you my phone if you want. You can HotSpot my data while I’m up there. Call someone or something. People might wanna hear from you, you never know if you don’t check.”

Finally, Clarissa relented. “Sure. Tell me about it afterwards.”

Handing her his phone, Chip grinned, ignoring the tears of all three of them. “Will do. See you then.”
“See you then.”

As their silhouettes shrunk and vanished behind rocky peaks, Clarissa connected her phone to the hotspot. Suddenly, she was flooded with notifications. Most of them were work related, a few were her mom apologising for telling Mark and Amanda about her pregnancy. Some were more distant friends asking where she was, and if she’d be in the state anytime soon, a question she wasn’t sure of anymore. The “family members of WKS victims” support group on FaceBook has been continuing their morbid discussion without her for years already. Everything was so busy.

She had so much going on.

She hovered her hand over the call button, then decided against it. For one moment, she needed to just stare at the cliff edge, focus on it, and decide not to take a step towards it. She needed to want to live.

She needed to want to live for herself.

Notes:

hello!!!!
my laptop is dying (genuinely, possibly permanently) so i must be quick. sorry this is so depressing, i promise i'm okay. and clarissa will be too!! no major character death here. i spent half of this week reading when gangles met the titch (great fic btw, would recommend as long as you dont mind heartbreak), which may be evident in the specific tragedies happening here. anyways... clarissa and mark reunion coming soon. i promise i'll be quick !

thanks for reading and i hope this was entertaining, even if it was a tad joyless, thanks!!!
theo :)

Chapter 7: Destination

Summary:

Mark and Clarissa finally reunite in Folkestone. This should be the restoration of order, the resolution, the perfect, cookie-cutter end.

But life, Amanda, and a few new ideas make that impossible, don't they?

-Folksetone-

Mark was drumming the beat to an old song on the back of the seat in front of him, absently. It took him going over the rhythm four or five times before he clocked that it was Let’s Get It On. Potentially not the go-to for a Sunday afternoon, religious man as he tried to be. Amanda seemed to have noticed too, and knocked her ankle against his from the seat next to him. He decided to ignore her. There could be hundreds of things his wife’s best friend knew better than him, but he liked to think he knew superior music.

This was the song that had been playing when he first met Clarissa. Not met per se, they were already in shop class together. He just hadn’t taken much notice of her before. She wasn’t his typical type. Not sporty, not tall, all academia and theatre and spontaneity. He had been so organised back then. They’d both been partying near the turnpike. Him with his football friends, celebrating a recent victory. Her at a friend’s birthday, all girls because that’s the type of person Kelly was.

Ordinarily, he strayed far from alcohol of all kinds. With his mom’s passing, it kind of gave him the heebie jeebies. His preference was to drink far from cars, driving or any kind of risky behavior. On this particular night however, he’d decided he would get the bus back, for the sole purpose of enjoying the night with his closest friends. So he was absolutely blasted; who could blame him? They were seventeen, carefree and far from the cautious eyes of their parents. Just him and his boys.

And the girls not far away. Who had caught sight of the group of them, and were pointing and giggling. There were a few he recognised, the town being small enough that there weren’t really many other high schools they could be from other than his. Some were his classmates, who gave him little waves. One girl was his kindergarten girlfriend, and the pair of them narrowed their eyes at each other, still a little hurt by the way things had gone down ten years ago. It was one in particular, though, that seemed to be staring directly at him.

She was blonde, curvy and a head shorter than Kelly, who was commandeering the group. In her hands was a ball of string, which she kept unfurling like an overexcited kitten. She was slightly further away from the rest of the group, who were all holding paper cups or cans of various drinks. This girl was sombre in her sobriety, different. And, he realised after a second, she was hastily making her way towards him, ushered and cheered along by her various friends. “Shut up, Ally!” she told one of them, finally within his earshot. Her voice was measured, yet confident.

“Hi.” she said simply, putting the string in her skirt’s tiny pocket, causing it to look like her thigh had a tumour. “I’m Clarissa… Suzanne. We’re in shop class together?”

“Which one?”

“Huh?” he wasn’t sure if he was talking weird or the music was too loud, blasting the most sexual Marvin Gaye song over what was otherwise a very mundane conversation.

“Is it Clarissa or Suzanne?”

The girl chuckled, staring at him like she could see right through. “Most people call me Clarissa.”

He must’ve been pretty drunk, because in response, he folded his arms in an only delusionally cool gesture and shrugged, “Suzanne it is then.”

She paused, a little thrown by his attitude. Then, smelling the stench of beer in the air, she nodded. He’d definitely missed a train of thought, something he reckoned might be a pattern with Suzanne. Immediately, she came off as introspective, more of a mysterious figure that would wind his brain up into a ball more knotted than the string poking out of her pocket. He’d been with a couple girls, although nothing very serious. Nothing his dad couldn’t pick apart with a few choice insults. Maybe someone tougher to crack was the solution.

“How long are you planning to stay for?” she asked, checking her phone. “It’s almost midnight.”

He swallowed, and a burp came out. Covering his mouth and apologising, he mentally scolded himself. That was the exact type of stuff his dad did. Here he was, trying to make a good impression, and he’d already regressed into being like his alcoholic father. As always. Oscar Murray would reiterate till he turned blue that Mark was destined for moments like this, tripping just before the finish line with any girl worth his time. Or, really, any girl whose time he was worth. Which seemed to be slim pickings, that this girl may not even be a part of. “Excuse me.”

“You’re excused.” She averted her eyes out of courtesy. “If you’re leaving in the next half an hour, I can give you a lift back.” She seemed to remember some information he wasn’t privy to, and stretched out her arms. “I'm the designated driver for anyone who doesn’t want to take the bus. Haven't had a single drop of alcohol, I swear. And I’ve had my license for a whole year. I’m a very cautious driver. My dad used to say that women were worse drivers. But uh…. He never saw me drive. So he just hadn’t met me yet.”

It was a ramble. Clearly she was a spewer when it came to words. This wasn’t a big issue for Mark, he sometimes preferred to sit back and appreciate someone else carrying the conversation. There was also a slight panic in her voice when she’d offered him a lift, like she’d said a trigger word. This must’ve meant she knew of him and his mom. Not that she was doing this act of kindness as some sort of virtue signal- she didn’t appear to him to be that kind of girl- just that she’d remembered his trauma. It was sweet, if misguided.

And she was talking about her dad funny.

“I can leave whenever you want,” he told her. Maybe it was a bit too forward, but once it left his mouth, he couldn’t exactly undo it. Besides, Suzanne took pleasure in his response, and bowed her head, scurrying off back to her friends for a second. On her return, she handed him something from a backpack that kept the partying girls’ company.

“This is a keychain with a little button on it.” Mark raised his eyebrow, trying to convey to Suzanne that that kind of wasn’t the aspect he needed an explanation for. “Uh… so you press the button and it sends a little beep to my corresponding one.” She wiggled a contraption attached to one of her assortment of bracelets. “And I’ll know that either you need help or you wanna leave ASAP. I can head right over. It works within a kilometer radius, and the beep is different lengths based on how far away you are. I’ve been handing these out at parties lately, although people never seem to understand them.”

Mark looked at Suzanne for a long time. “You’re really smart.”

Her cheeks went bright red, noticeable even in the relative darkness. “Well, I wouldn’t say that. I just pay attention. Like you, actually… you’re really good in shop class.”

“It’s the only one I’m any good at. I don’t get math or any of that.”

“That’s fine. I don’t either. Math is shit.”

Mark could tell Suzanne didn’t swear often from the way she jumped at her own words. It endeared him. She was a proper Catholic, like he was hungry to be. This was exactly the type of girl his mom would’ve pictured him with growing up. In almost every way it was perfect. He tossed the keychain up in the air and caught it, examining the craftsmanship. She was good, if a little messy. DIY was his domain though. For now he could enjoy the gesture as it was. “Yeah,” he grinned sloppily, “math is shit.”

Twenty minutes later, she’d started driving him home. None of the girls were bothered to be driven, all wanting to hang out for a little longer. Mark’s teammates were just stunned enough to see him with a girl, they didn’t even bother to call him a pussy for leaving so early. Sat in the passenger seat, staring at the tiny girl getting him home via putting his address into Maps, he felt on top of the world. Or, at least, on top of the turnpike. He was too drunk to hesitate much. “You’re Clarissa Suzanne what?”

“Jenkins.”

“Oh… oh!” he pointed at her accusatorily. “You’re Mr Jenkins’ daughter! He- he-” he clutched at the words, trying to find the right description. Bill had been a publisher. One of the town’s biggest factories, its only known industry, was publishing. There’d been a history in it. Some people argued it was entrenched in Industrialism, others colonialism, some witchcraft. Whatever had spawned it in, Mr Jenkins was infamous for his efficient management strategies, and his collapse mentally. First through drinking, then through the consequences of drinking.

Suzanne didn’t take her eyes off the road. “Yeah. He died a couple months back. February fourteenth. Not a great Valentine’s Day gift, in all sincerity.”

Mark put a hand on her knee. It jerked involuntarily. He wondered if it was a subconscious guilt or merely a reflex. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. You weren’t… providing him beer.”

“I still feel like- I have a responsibility. Because you’re in mourning. And when I was grieving my mom I could barely go to school or anything. To be fair, I was like eight, and my dad wasn’t helpful, but I know that when one of your parents dies, it's like you don’t have any direction. You’re wandering around, and the little guiding light’s gone. And you want to blame somebody, especially yourself. Even though if it was anybody’s fault, it would be the person who pushed them into it. Which for you is your dad, I guess. I don’t know, it feels weird that you’re the one who has suffered and like… I’m leeching off of it by getting a lift.”

Suzanne sighed, exhaling a lot more breath than she’d taken in. For a seventeen year old, she was strangely lethargic. “Stop being like that. It’s a lift. We’re only like five minutes away from each other by car. Don’t turn this into a thing where you owe me.” It was different to any other girl he’d spoken to, who expected bouquets of flowers, dinner paid for in full and teddy bears from arcade machines. She was driven, mature, a little intimidating when she wanted to be. Sort of the opposite of the average housewife in the town.

His dad would be crazy impressed if he pulled this one off.

“Why can’t I pay you back for it? I’d be open to dinner sometime. Which restaurants do you like around here?”

Leaning back in the driver’s seat a bit, Suzanne scrunched up her nose in a thinking expression. “There’s Wilson’s Pizzeria. My best friend Amanda’s dad runs it. Hence her name being Amanda Wilson. She’ll be so mad if I tell her I drove a drunk boy I barely know home at midnight. Either because stranger danger or… boys. What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her, I guess.” Momentarily, she looked at him, her eyes narrowed. “You’re not any danger to me, are you?”

“I doubt it. My dad says I’m weak.”

Suzanne frowned. “I’m not asking what your dad says. Would you pose a threat to me?”

“No. Wilson’s Pizzeria sounds nice. So does your friend.”

“Yeah, Amanda’s great. Apparently my dad thought she was dangerous, but I can’t see it. She’s so kind, and open-minded, and I’ve never met anyone else who’s so ready to meet me where I am, you know? And she’s funny, but not in the really obvious way. It’s all just little side eyes and snide comments. She’s a little blunt, so you need to be straight up. She likes honesty. Sometimes I think she’s hard to please but she just wants the best for the both of us. Like the realist to my optimist. When I can be bothered to be an optimist, that is.”

Mark mulled it over. By the sounds of it she scarcely needed any comforting. She had it all figured out. A best friend, a sense of self, things she was skilled at. A solid friend group, a familial relationship that was actually substantial (although splintered). Next to nothing he could offer her would be enough, by the sounds of it. How were you supposed to please a girl who was unavoidably greater than you in every possible way? Not that she was flawless, she wasn’t. Her inattentiveness and inability to stop talking was bound to irritate him sober. Right now though, it was charming enough to put him at a standstill.

“We’re almost at your house, Mark.”

“Did I tell you my name?”

“No? You’re in my class, though.”

“Right.” It felt mean now that he hadn’t remembered her name. “Suzanne, can I move next to you in shop class? It might be nice to have someone else who cares about the class.”
She nodded, still blushing but less than she had last time. “It’s Clarissa, by the way. Suzanne’s my middle name. Some people call me Suzy.” The way her voice went soft on the “some” told Mark it was someone really special. It was an important nickname. Probably not one he should steal.

“I can call you Suzanne, just to be interesting.”

“You’re already interesting to me.” She stopped the car. “We’re here. Outside your house.”

He hopped out the car, tapping her on the shoulder in thanks. Some part of him wondered whether Marvin Gaye was offering him a prophetic vision, or setting him up for failure.

At twenty three, he remained unsure. The eight hour journey had washed them up at their destination. Folkestone was… a British town. They all blended together in his mind. There would be the grass, the gray skies, the fish and chips shops. Dotted around would be either mountains and beaches or factories and skyscrapers, or some fusion of the aforementioned. He couldn’t grasp Clarissa’s desperation to explore every crevice of the world. Most of what he wanted was right where he started. Bar the opportunity to meet more people, he struggled to picture the appeal.

Cliff’s house was ominously empty in spite of the two occupants. It felt like there was somebody supposed to fill the gaps. Pretty quickly, he realised there was a reason for that. Amanda got caught up in conversation with the teenage son, with her usual psychoanalytical approach. Chip seemed to like her, for some reason Mark couldn’t place. Meanwhile, Mark scrambled up the stairs to the spare room, searching for any sign of his wife. Other than a hastily made bed, nothing was left.

“She went on a walk.” Cliff told him. “I told her not to since she injured herself this morning, but she insisted. I gave her directions to the corner shop down the road. I know the owner. Told him to keep an eye on her for me. When you find her, I reckon she’ll want to go straight home. She’s in a bit of a state.”

Whatever a “state” was, Mark agreed. Cliff then lowered his voice, despite nobody being upstairs or within earshot. “She also must’ve taken off her ring when having a bath last night, since I found it by the sink. It had actually fallen in. You two are lucky we keep the drain mostly in, otherwise it’d be in the sea by now.”

Mark took the ring from the other man, not saying a word. He practically dragged Amanda off the sofa and out of the door, thanking their hosts as an afterthought. As she dragged her loafers on in the middle of the cobbled pathway towards the family home, she muttered something under her breath about him being unable to sit still. Personally, he found it ironic, as Amanda was willing to run the world for the girl who zoned out in regular conversations but couldn’t handle him being a little tetchy.

“You’re in a rush!” she commented snarkily, dusting herself off.

Mark put his hands on his knees and bent down like he was talking to his dog, despite her barely being a couple inches shorter than him on a bad day. “Shouldn’t I be? Aren’t I meant to care? I don’t get what you all want me to do!”

She pinched the bridge of her nose, and noticed the ring in his balled-up fist. “Sorry… I’m being harsh. I’m tired, so are you. It’s not good for us. What is it you want to do?”

“I think we should find her and get it over and done with.” he seethed. Trying to calm himself, he covered another point he was worried about. “Amanda, I was reminiscing on the bus and there was something that I couldn’t figure out. Back when Clarissa and I got together, she carried around this big ball of string? Blue. She called it Lilac. I’m sure she mentioned its meaning and I’ve only forgotten in the years since. I just thought that you’re sentimental…” he left out that he partly thought that it might be something women spoke more about with their friends, “what was it for again?”

“Huh, let me think.” Amanda hummed and hawed, an archeologist digging for treasure. “Oh… oh! Harry. When Suzy was born, my mom knitted all the time. Big pregnancy and postpartum habit. I think it was a way of preventing depression. She’d go to these groups for new moms and knit everyone anything under the sun in hopes that they’d like her and she’d have some friends she could actually relate to since my father, bless him, wasn’t the most helpful. Eventually she met Margaret, and when she had Clarissa, my mom knew the only correct response was to knit her a teddy bear. For a while we called it Beary, because it rhymed with Clary, which was what her dad called her. Not that you’d know that. But eventually she named it Harry, since it also kinda rhymed. She couldn’t sleep without him, especially during rough times. Once we got a bit older he functioned more as a stress toy, and he began falling apart. By the time her dad died he was mostly just string, and she’d carry around the string and use it to help her focus. When you guys met she probably wanted to focus on you.”

“She put the string away.”

“Then I guess you had her attention.”

Mark didn’t know what to say. It was true. Back then, it had just been obvious. Perhaps it was an entrenched sense of obligation. Maybe she really liked him. Potentially he really liked her too. It all had faded now. There was no definitive answer, bar the ring she’d forgotten and the ball of string he’d forgotten. Both of them were losing track of the thing they’d fought so hard for years ago. This union used to mean something- at least, he thought it had. He’d spent nights half-asleep trying to convince himself it was the kind of relationship He bestowed upon the worthiest. And yet they’d forgotten. How worthy could they possibly be?

It was a very easy route to the corner shop. Amanda, for the first time in the trip, fell behind. On some level he was flattered that she respected his marriage enough to give them space to sort their shit out. On another he was a little disappointed that she needed to in the first place. Most people were able to balance a husband and a best friend, even if said best friend was- well, Amanda. There were lots of things he could take away from this brief detour from regular life in New Jersey, and one of the most evident was that Clarissa was torn. So was he.

Speaking of the devil-

She wasn’t the Devil. Pretend that thought didn’t happen. Oh dear.

Clarissa was sitting on the brick wall surrounding the “corner shop” (tiny 24/7 grocery store). It was only a few feet tall, yet her legs dangled, swinging back and forth. Next to her was a bottle of soda he didn’t recognise. In her lap was some string- Harry- and a packet of Revels, which she was picking at absentmindedly. The whole thing was childlike, and drastically contrasted by the slightly poking bump on her stomach that her tight button-up shirt was doing a poor job hiding. Once her head raised, realising she was being looked at, the dryness of her lips became more prominent.

Amanda walked in the opposite direction. As she did, the clouds started spitting out rain, like a warning or a purification. Mark stretched his neck, preparing for the worst, and took a step towards his wife, who pocketed the Revels and rose to her feet. Their height difference appeared more drastic now than ever. He reached out to cup her cheek in his hand. Though she stilled, meeting his gaze, her look was so burningly bright he couldn’t match it. There was an unspoken blaze behind it.

“I’ve got you.”, Mark said.

“Yeah… I’m sorry.”, Clarissa said.

He pulled her in for a kiss.

 

-Folkestone-

As their lips touched, trembling and soft, she thought that it must’ve been a perfect reunion. The spitting rain, the gentle breeze, his hands on her waist. It was all a scene plucked from a cinematic tearjerker. And she played the part perfectly well- to a fault even. She wrapped her arms around his neck and revelled in the way he searched for her lips even once he’d found them. The only issue was that it was her second reunion of this journey, and it didn’t feel half as revelatory. Celebratory. Real.

This was a gesture they’d enacted before. Aged seventeen, on her doorstep. Aged eighteen, in a hotel room amongst more amorous actions. Aged twenty two in a pizza restaurant surrounded by people they loved in a cacophony of confusion, congratulatory cheer and slight disappointment. By now it was either rehearsed or biologically natural, depending on the way she looked at it. Whilst she’d known Amanda more than half her lifetime longer than Mark, she’d always managed to surprise her. With him, Clarissa seemed to regress.

As they broke apart, her lips burned, like he’d scorched them. The cold breeze soothed the sensation, and she ran her thumb across her bottom lip to the same effect. Mark was seething, the same way he had been storming off the turnpike a year ago. Now it seemed like he struggled to muster the anger, that he was trying to stifle a secondary feeling that accompanied it. Disappointment? Jealousy? Apathy? She should’ve asked, she knew she should’ve. But she couldn’t bring herself to want an answer.

He pulled a gold band out of his jeans pocket. “You accidentally left your ring in the bathroom at Clive’s.”

“Cliff’s.”

“Same difference.”

He grabbed her wrist from where it swung by her hip and pulled it up to his fingers, his nails travelling along the crevasses of her knuckles. They were warm, sweaty and despite the smallest tremor, forceful. He raised the ring, which had the type of crust a sink accrues over a day or two dusting its surface. Unlike everything else against her skin it was deathly cold. Mark began to hover it onto her fingers but she pulled back with a start.

“My fingers are too fat for it.”

“Huh?”

“Pregnancy. I’ve put on weight. It doesn’t fit properly.”

It struck him as a half-truth, she thought. “Still… no reason to leave it at Clive’s.”

"Cliff’s, Mark. And yeah, I hadn’t meant to leave it. Thank you. Once I’ve had the baby it’ll be fine. Or we can rescale it.” There was something delusional about discussing six months from now. Making it seem like a stable time in her life. Like they’d be concerned about rings then. “I think it was the principle that bugged me out a bit. Seeing that it fit less. Reminded me that I was changing, you know? My body was transforming and so were our lives. We could do anything about this kid, and we’d still have changed for it.”

It struggled to reconcile in her brain. The gathering by the turnpike all those years ago with her school friends, laughing over something stupid and getting distracted mid-sentence by a boy she vaguely recognised who could do with a lift home. The man that walked the aisle towards her, pelted down it really, with a desperate cry and a slight sob as he accepted a lifetime by her side. Here, now, the soon-to-be father of her child who kept trying to meet her eyes but couldn’t quite hold her gaze. It had been seven years and she still wasn’t sure if she shouldn’t have offered to drive him home from his party.

“Congratulations.” He said to fill the silence.

“You too, Mark.”

“What do you wanna name it?” She registered vaguely his use of pronouns. Even he, in his infinite humanity, wasn’t attached to the baby. Maybe he was disillusioned- with the marriage, with the journey to find her, with their own maturity or something she’d been too absent to discover. Whilst she knew a lot about her husband, Clarissa had the impression neither of them truly understood the other. Little effort, as far as she could tell, could be made to alter that.

“I don’t even know the gender yet, let alone the name. There could be twins in there for all you know.”

“It could be twins?” There was a twinge of frustration in his tone as if it was Clarissa’s fault conception wasn’t an adjustable process. “I’m not an… a baby guy.”

“OBGYN.”

“Yeah I’m not an ob-gin.”

In spite of the circumstances, she giggled at his mispronunciation, gathering her stuff together so they could begin the walk back to the bus station. Though reluctant to face being alone with Mark in their own home, within thirty minutes of her mom and Amanda, she didn’t have anywhere else to run to. Sure there were more stories to follow up, but she didn’t have it in her anymore. Not yet. She’d looked off the edge of the cliff, and decided that life, in all its complications, was worth facing up to.

“I’ll get a scan. In a few weeks we’ll know the sex. For now, it’ll just guarantee there’s only one in there and it’s healthy.” They walked shoulder to shoulder, their hands brushing and never fully connecting. Mark had always had a bit of numbness in his upper arms, she wasn’t sure he even noticed their proximity to one another. At some point they’d been the type of couple who walked down the street holding hands, Clarissa fidgeting with his fingers as he scanned the street in search of signs (he hadn’t been gifted with directional skills, Lord knows how he’d have navigated this far without Amanda’s help).

“I already booked the flight home,” he told her. “Three AM. To get home for 11. Or… earlier. Time zones. Clocks moved forward the other day… so it’ll be 6. We can sleep off the jetlag all tomorrow. We’re lucky we’re both freelance. Amanda did some online therapy on her laptop while we were looking out for you.” There was an ease in his step that had the opposite effect on his wife.

It was also the first time since their reunion that Mark had mentioned his travelling partner. Instinctively, Clarissa searched the street, trying to find her best friend. Mark told her she’d planned to meet them at the bus stop and had gone ahead. On some level, Clarissa thought this might be the time to tell him about their meeting at Old Trafford, although she was walking on egg shells around him already. Anything resembling a wrong step might send everything clattering to the ground. She was fortunate the ring thing had blown over quickly.

He looked at her for a long time, the cheerful facade not reaching his eyes.

"What's wrong with me?” he asked her bluntly.

Clarissa swallowed dryly. It was a loaded question: what was wrong with Mark? Medically, not too much. He’d always insinuated his dad had done some damage to his body, and sometimes she reckoned his limbs short-circuited in reflex. Probably something some pseudoscientist like a chiropractor or osteopath had fixes for. Possibly a physio, although he worked out plenty. Most of the things that might be seen as problematic about Mark were psychological and emotional, two things that had gone hand in hand in worrying merriment over the years. She slowed their pace a little.

She was a terrible liar. Too much so to say “nothing at all.”.

“Nothing that’s really your fault.” she settled on. “You have your quick temper, your tendency to have selective memory, your snippiness, especially with women. You don’t always stand up for yourself when people have malintent towards you, and sometimes lash out at the people who care the most.” The words tasted bitter in her mouth, and she loathed the expression it was landing her in return. “But I love you, because you try. Every day you keep trying to make something your younger self would be proud of. And your mom. I think she would be.”

The statement made Mark glare at the pavement, caught in between tearing up and yelling. “And what’s wrong with you?”

This being what she’d expected him to ask, she scoffed. “Most things. I mean, I’m pregnant, which so far has been a bit shit. Not to insult a fetus, it’s just a bit inconvenient. I suck at lying almost as much as I suck at telling the whole truth. I don’t even know what the truth is at this point. Basically all I can figure out is I’m a pushover, I have absolutely no sense of self, poor decision making skills, a terrible attention span, an impulsivity problem and very loud intrusive thoughts I’m beginning to think should be medicated against.”

Picking apart each thing she told him, Mark screwed his eyes shut. To compensate, Clarissa put her hands on his shoulders, guiding him as a sheep dog might towards the bus station. There was something comforting about finally helping him, like a thank you gift for all the patience he had finding her here. It reminded her of driving him home all those years ago, the gratification she felt watching him walk through his front door. Knowing he was telling the truth, and would soon enough move to sit next to her. And he had.

“You don’t want a baby, do you?”

Clarissa squeezed his shoulders. “I don’t think either of us are ready.”

“Does that mean no?”

“It means I’m waiting for your opinion on the matter. We’re a team- much as I know I kind of abandoned the team for a bit just now.”

Mark scowled, everything he’d ever wanted appearing in a present with a bow on top at his doorstep, and yet knowing his house might be too small for a present of this magnitude. Clarissa didn’t like putting the responsibility on him, a burden to carry, but she’d also made her decision; until she valued her own life, there was no point in bringing another life into the equation to fuck up. Whoever would actually give the child a good life, they could have it. Everyone deserved a good family.

He opened his eyes, shrugging her help off, twitching. “If it’s a girl I’ll call her Vivian.”

Why was he speaking like she had no part in the matter?

“After your mom's middle name?”

“No. After a mouse I named after my mom’s middle name.”

“Right.”

“And for a boy, maybe Christopher. Seems fair we each get a dead parent.”

Clarissa shook her head vehemently. “Absolutely not. I’m not naming my child anything near my father. The only thing he needs dedicated to him is a therapy session.”

“Really? You hate him that much?” Mark reeled in discomfort, thrown off by the bitterness in her tone. Their walking had gotten more in step with one another, and yet she felt they remained a continent apart. “I just… didn’t think that you harbored many bad feelings about him, s’all. You’ve mentioned that he was less than perfect, but it didn’t sound like anything too crazy to me.”

“Yeah, because you’re used to Oscar. Anything that isn’t aggravated assault looks pretty tame by comparison. Plus I only told you half the story, same as you did with me. Doesn’t insinuate this is a marriage built on trust, when I’m not even sure what you’re afraid of.” She cleared her throat and shoved her hands into her pockets. “I’m really sorry. I think I’m being a bit of a bitch again. I should hold my tongue, but it feels more smart to be dumb right now. To get it all out rather than assume and complain with no reason.”

“I don’t owe you any information. My own fucking business what my life before you was, isn’t it?”

Clarissa balled up the fabric inside her pocket in her fist, wishing he was easier to talk to. She was a little incredulous at being told he didn’t owe his wife any information. Not that she was a paragon of sincerity, it was just a warped perception of marriage that made her wonder what the point was in trying to salvage it. “You owe it to yourself to process it, though. So you’ve gotta admit it all to someone. Doesn’t have to be me. Amanda told me I should get therapy. I think she’s right, and I think you should too.”

This was the natural end to the interaction, intentions clarified. As was often the case, Mark had to add a cutting remark. Today it was, “Should’ve left you in Somerset. I hate you sometimes. I hate that you've done this!”

And she hurt like a kicked dog, but she kept walking. This was her home, her safety and her unconditional duty. To defend the only world she knew. One where her prison was her sanctuary, her lover her killer, her miracle her ruin. A life she’d been confined too since the day she was born, and one she’d remain bound to until she dared to collapse her entire existence’s intention. The “purpose” the Lord made her for, as her father had so eloquently surmised on his deathbed. She kept walking the path her mother had created for her, in silence, submitting for a second. Just for relief.

On the flight back, Amanda had booked the window seat. Once she saw Clarissa’s face, she seemed to change her mind, saying she’d go on the outside whilst Mark took the middle. There was no intrusion in her expression, understanding that it wasn’t her business, even if she’d run after her until now. She didn’t need to ask any further questions to know her best friend wanted to look at her escape as it shrunk into the horizon. It wasn’t her ideal 8 hours. Still, like with everything, she’d find a way to cope.
Mark folded his arms. “You can take the middle. I’ll go on the outside.”

Amanda scanned him, seeming to have developed a line of communication they’d lacked a week ago. “Fine. If you’re sure, and only then.”

He stood his ground. “It’s not like I can’t hear every word you’ll say.”

She relented, taking the middle seat and patting Clarissa on the arm. Clarissa nodded in acknowledgement, keeping her face pressed against the window. In fact that was basically all she did for the next eight hours, neglecting the snacks her friend had bought her in the airport WHSmiths and the repeated offer of one of her headphones to watch a Lindsay Lohan movie (she’d initially suggested Labor Pains, then recognised it might not be the most appropriate choice, and swiftly replaced it with the safer Just My Luck, again to no avail).

About ten minutes before they were scheduled to land, Clarissa whipped her head round to face Amanda, suddenly jolted from her daydreaming. She squeezed Amanda’s wrists and spoke in a hushed tone, seeing Mark’s sleeping figure over her shoulder. “Titch and Derek!”

“What? The gay farmers? What about them, Suzy?”

She gestured frenetically, trying to convey some emotion Amanda wasn’t prepared for. Normally there was a protocol for how to say these sorts of things. Professionals, abstract concepts she could compare it to. Very few things shared any similarities with what she was going to pitch.

“So, they’re engaged, right? They’ll be married by the time I give birth. And they’ve lived together for about six years I reckon? On the same farm, at least. It’s pretty profitable these days, enough for them to be able to move in anybody they’d like, especially since James has moved out for football. They’re sickly sweet, and seemed to have a much better grip on life than any of us. I reckon they’re about thirty now? One of them’s twenty nine, maybe. Point being, they’re prepared. Derek told me he thinks it’s probably in the future for them. There was a little glimmer of hope in his eyes, and he told me he was glad things worked out with me. I think he meant the pregnancy. Maybe he didn’t. Whatever.”

Amanda reclined in her seat, pausing to think. The cogs turning in her brain were almost audible as she put the pieces together. For the past twenty years, she’d considered herself fluent in the language of Clarissa. Every insane thing she offered up made sense in a nonsensical way. Connecting the pregnancy, the farmers, their relationship and the possibility that Clarissa was having some kind of pregnancy-induced psychosis. After about ten seconds, she looked Clarissa dead in the eyes. “Are you suggesting you give away your baby to a gay British farmer couple you barely know?”

Clarissa opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again. “I mean I’m not NOT suggesting that. We can go back to the UK in a few weeks or so, ask them if they’d be ready for the responsibility. Get to know them better. Then make sure I give birth in England so the baby ends up able to register as a citizen. That should make the process smoother, right? And they’d give the baby a much better life than I could. And- before you ask- I know that it seems counterintuitive as a Christian to be giving my flesh and blood to a gay couple, but it’s not like I’m sending him to the cast of Kinky Boots. I’d trust you to hold the kid, the same could apply to them. If they were up for it, of course.”

Whilst it was not the best way to convey an idea this big, right as the pilot announced to put seatbelts back on, Amanda somewhat respected the fact that she couldn’t immediately poke a hole in Clarissa’s plan other than its intrinsic craziness. Much as she really wanted to bring Clarissa down to Earth like the plane was about to do, there wasn’t much she had to fight with. The click of her seatbelt signalled half a defeat on her end. “Just because I haven’t thought of a counter yet doesn’t mean I don’t think that’s idiotic.”

“I was kind of counting on that. I need somebody to ground me.”

“On this occasion it might have to be Mark."

“Huh? Did someone say my name?”

Both women jerked their heads towards Mark, who was beginning to regain consciousness in his seat that had remained buckled in the whole time. Each of them briefly considered giving a meaningful response that conveyed the sheer weight of the conversation they were having, but neither had the heart to drain his bleariness in an instant. Instead, Amanda merely shook her head and rubbed his arm with her thumb soothingly. “Don’t worry, nothing that should concern you right now. Just focus on waking up, we’re home.”

Between the trio, they’d gotten about 11 hours of sleep. 5 of them were Mark’s, 3 were Clarissa’s, 3 were Amanda’s. It wasn’t great. It’d have to do for now, as the three were flung across the airport and into an Uber taking them home. Now Clarissa finally sat in the center, shoulder to shoulder with the exact conundrum that she’d been tortured with for the past week. Not that she even thought it was worth making into a decision. There was a world in which she got to love both of them in different ways.

How and which might’ve been the bigger question.

Amanda squeezed each of their hands in a goodbye, groggily dragging her feet towards her house, leaving the couple alone once more. Neither of them exchanged any words, holding their breaths for the final fifteen minutes of the journey. The tension wasn’t necessarily awkward; it was heavy. With expectation, confusion, and the avoidance of full clarity. A pent up thing they liked to think had only been going on for a couple months, despite its roots dating back to seven years ago.

Dumping their suitcases and bags by the shoe rack, Clarissa collapsed on the sofa, while Mark paced the open-plan living and dining room. The walls were covered in things- photos of places she’d visited, artefacts he’d found whilst remodelling peoples’ homes, paintings sourced by some of Amanda’s more artistic friends. It was littered in memories they’d built over the years. It was only while seeing it in that moment that Clarissa noticed it: most of these memories had been made while they were apart.

Mark looked up at her, an epiphanic hope in his eyes. Clarissa was instantly nervous. “What is it?”

He nodded decisively, taking conviction in his response. “We should have sex later today.”

“What?”

Notes:

hi guys!!!! me again.

sorry for the slightly late upload, an unexpected volunteering position and insomnia made me too exhausted to finish this in time. this shouldn't be a problem for next chapter fortunately, as i've already done about a third of it lmao.

ALSO I made a pretty crazy miscalculation saying this would be about 10 chapters and 60-70k words. my bad, we are looking at closer to 15/16 chapters and 100k words most likely. making us about 45% through now. whoopsie!!!! accidentally made the longest thing I've written in 3 years my bad.

this fic has been doing really well all things considered, so i wanted to thank everyone for reading, and make the obligatory note to please leave kudos, comments, and subscribe if you want more stuff like this!!!! i feel like a youtuber but i'd really love to chat to everyone about this fic and make more of it.

that all said and done, thanks for reading, hope you're enjoying, and see you next week!
theo :)

Chapter 8: Deflowered

Summary:

Whilst Mark's suggestion sounds insane, maybe some physical therapy isn't the worst idea.
At least, it brings about some realisations.

Meanwhile, Amanda has her own concerns, that she might finally be about to share.

(trigger warnings for discussion and implied descriptions of sex, with possible dubious consent at times)

-Mark and Clarissa’s Living Room-

Mark narrowed his eyes. “I said we should have sex tonight. Once we’ve slept off a bit of the jetlag, maybe.” When Clarissa didn’t offer any response, settling on simply staring at him slack-jawed, he mustered the kind of smile you see in hostage videos. “It’s not like we’re getting much through to each other with words, is it? All the pent up feelings aren’t resolving themselves anytime soon. I just think it could be an easy way to force some of them out into the open? Work out the tension, you know? Test the motor of the engine?”

 

Clarissa did not know. Catharsis brought about by unattainable levels of climax. It sounded irritatingly nothing. To have travelled all this way for her, to misunderstand her at the very first hurdle. Typical Mark and Clarissa, she guessed, twiddling her thumbs and looking up at him blankly. “I’m pregnant, Mark.”

He rolled his eyes like she’d said something nuts. “And? Pregnant women can have sex. Right before the due date it’s actually encouraged by doctors so you can induce labor. I’m not crazy, Suzanne.”

“Kind of a crazy thing to say.”, she pointed out, deciding not to keep her interior thoughts unspoken. She really did want to communicate, even if it ripped her apart to see his face fall. “Also, did you google pregnancy and sex just so you could ask if we could do this? Mark, politely, what kind of mindset are you in? Can I trust you to consent to things when you’re half in a frenzied rage and half in a manic joy over welcoming the baby you know I’d rather not be cooking in my stomach right now?”

Mark resumed pacing without a glance towards her, doing a bizarre cross between nodding, shaking his head and shrugging simultaneously. With a cumulative sixteen hours of sleep in the last three days, even he was beginning to get stumped by his own logic. “Okay… okay. Fine. You have a point. We probably shouldn’t hop right to it like- like rabbits. They’re the ones that have sex, right? Anyways, I just keep circling back to the fact that we barely do any of this stuff. Which is kind of a big deal, in an adult marriage.”

“You don’t have to say adult marriage like that.” she replied rather bitterly, not appreciating getting treated like she was basically the same age as her foetus. “I know that there are lots of facets to marriage, that being one of them.” She tried to ruminate on the interaction thus far and discover some new compromise. Wonderingly, she stared at her own hand, trying to figure out if she was too exhausted to suggest getting something over and done with and forgotten within the hour. Probably not worth the risk of carpal tunnel.

“Tomorrow.” Mark said to the room at large. It was a statement much more than a question based on his intonation. That in itself should’ve been off-putting, but this was more or less what hers and Mark’s marriage was built on. Vaguely wanted gestures of emotional and physical intimacy begrudgingly reciprocated, two dancers eeking out every move of the routine they’d spent months choreographing and rehearsing. A careful competition to see who would duck out first, which one was willing to admit defeat.

“Tomorrow.” Clarissa responded, accepting the challenge.

Aside from eating and going to the toilet, she spent the following day in a hungover-like state, drifting across her home and attending to things, napping intermittently. Pregnancy had added an extra twenty pounds to her flesh and bones it seemed, so she lugged them around like her penance. There was still crust in her eyes, sleep dust from yesterday, that she neglected to brush away as she knew she’d only crawl back into her bed or the couch soon enough. This zombie-like state would’ve been devastating if it wasn’t so similar to being around in her home with Mark most days.

They didn’t speak. Occasionally he’d greet her on the way back from the bathroom by peppering her jaw with kisses, trying to set the mood, except she’d shrug him off and go right back to bed. She’d mumble something that could be interpreted as, “soon”, and drift off. Each time she’d fall asleep, she’d feel the heat of his eyes trained on her, watching her rest, expecting to will his way into her dreams. Sometimes he was, sometimes he wasn’t. It was all a little blurry and hard to interpret, for which she was rather relieved.

Once she was able to confidently refer to herself as alive and conscious, Mark pinned her wrist against the dining room table as she chewed on sunflower seeds, scanning her with his eyes. There was a definite primal hunger in the way he relished her appearance, slightly bedraggled and worn as she was, and his spare fingers drummed on the oakwood like a scene taken straight out of The Jungle Book. She wondered if she was like the boy, hypnotised by the predatory daydream laid out before her. Or if she too was expected to be in this state.

“Now?” Again, it was a rhetorical question. It was going to be now. He’d already taken her.

“Now.” she responded anyways, enamoured with the illusion (or delusion) he’d created where this was some elaborate, beautiful scene stolen from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Something her tone made him falter momentarily. “Really?” She saw it in his eyes- the child who’d grown up never being wholly sure that his father loved him, let alone was trying to raise him. Who’d seemingly named mice after his own mom just to feel like she was reflected somewhere in his household. There was a doubt that reminded her just how fresh they really were to this world. Only five years ago they had no idea how they were meant to do all of this. In fact, in the past five years, they’d only even had one another to learn from.

It was an odd thought to have so late into her marriage. Not that a year and a bit was late per se, just that she’d never really considered it on a deeper level. For someone with her upbringing, it wasn’t even a question. This was how the world worked. She should find a boy, preferably from a similar family dynamic, and they would marry straight out of school and raise a family together. The less previous life experience the better really. Anything before Mark was a sin.

But there hadn’t even been anything before Mark. He’d been her first. Maybe not her first kiss, not by a little bit. Or her first relationship, although all her prior ones were very short-lived. He was, however, her first sexual experience. And her only one. Everything she knew about that facet of existence was learned and filtered through him. What made him feel good, what made him uncomfortable, what he expected of her. The best sex of her life came from the same man the worst did. There wasn’t even a good way to distinguish whether any of it was overly good, because she had no metric.

“Really.” she affirmed, silencing the reminder with a slightly cajoled ‘hey, maybe this is the solution and you’re actually in the music video universe where sex appeal prevents the apocalypse’. Though even she thought she sounded dubious, he shifted his grip to actually hold her hand and walked them through to their bedroom, kicking the door shut with his foot as they went. The sound of it slamming signalled that this was truly going to be a wild ride.

Not pausing to take in the atmosphere, he pressed her against the bed, kissing her tongue-first. One of his hands clasped her to the bed, the other crept up underneath her pyjama shirt, balling the fabric up in his fist. As the first time he’d connected physically with his unborn baby, it wasn’t exactly endearing and wholesome. He didn’t even seem to realise, tugging her bottom lip with his teeth to try and derive a stronger reaction than he was getting. She placed a hand on his chest sympathetically, holding his t-shirt in a way that wasn’t quite pulling it closer or pushing it away.

Once she was secure, her clothes were off, then he pulled away to remove his own. Little preceded the main act, and she expected little to follow. Sometimes he’d simply hold her in place for a while, securing her beside him. Otherwise he was mostly only tactile when he wanted one outcome. Which, as a rather distant partner, she didn’t mind, although she would’ve appreciated the care. She would’ve appreciated some acknowledgement of her own desires, but he’d never asked, so she’d never volunteered. Chicken or the egg, she wondered.

“Say you love me.” he demanded through slightly gritted teeth. She couldn’t decipher whether his tone was motivated, dulcet, or slightly breathy in a way not explainable by physical exertion. It wasn’t something he always did, but this wasn’t the first time he’d made this request of her under these circumstances.

“I love you.” she replied earnestly. She really meant it. She loved him. What she didn’t love was the way he nodded like he’d performed some kind of scientific experiment he’d been working on his whole life and the lab rat had finally survived. The subtle implication that this was his equivalent of getting her under oath.

“Say it again. Louder.”

She corresponded.

“Then do this for me.”

There were things he liked that she… tolerated. That she endured? It sounded like suffering when she framed it that way. Nothing was necessarily unwelcome, it just wasn’t asked for. Or particularly enjoyed for that matter. Which was fine; there were things she was always curious to try that she simply didn’t suggest out of politeness and the natural lean towards submission that was placed upon her. He led, she followed. Sometimes that took them into realms of his desire that she’d rather not explore- she still silently remained on his tail.

Plus, this was their first time in a while. Even when they had conceived the baby, it had been during a dry spell. On some level, Clarissa thought she kind of owed Mark a certain amount of passion. A reward for patience and resisting temptation to stray. That was what her mom has always told her. To be glad that in spite of all the other beautiful women, he had chosen her, and lusted for her in all the ways, regardless of whether she enthusiastically reciprocated. Not that her mom meant it sexually. She tended not to discuss anything remotely intimate like that with her. They’d barely even had ‘the talk’ back in the day. All she’d been told was that one day, once she was married, she’d be able to have kids with a “special hug”.

During her first period, she thought she was dying. During her first sexual encounter with Mark, she had somewhat of the same fear.

It reminded her of oobleck, sleeping with him. When she conceptualised being with Mark, being consumed by him, she melted. She was pliable to the dream she’d had at seventeen, that suddenly they’d discover a rhythm. Yet, the second his skin brushed hers she became tentative, hardened and cold. It became tenfold as difficult to provide all the things he wanted. She’d catch herself flinching at certain touches, playing it off as being turned on. Ultimately, she just struggled to find it in her to be pleased by him.

To conjure up the lust he craved to see reflected in her eyes, she cast her mind back to the dream she’d had a few days ago. The fantasy of being wanted, being seen, being chased and challenged and cherished with no lingering fear. Rather than focusing on the face of her unconscious’ pursuer, she zoned in on how they felt, their smooth skin, their coaxing encouragement, how they tangled around one another, limbs indistinguishable. A kiss on the nape of her neck, a roll of their hips, a hand winding its way through her hair to rest on her jaw. They’d tell her, “You’re so fucking pretty.”

Mark told her, “Keep going.”
At least somebody was doing a good job.

In her mind’s eye, there was a VHS style glitch covering the face of her preferable partner. Still, she could gauge a fair amount from touch alone. It wasn’t gentle entirely, there was roughness, but it was all perfectly balanced, taking pauses like they were inspecting her reaction to every individual touch. Their body sprawled, longer than hers (although that was barely notable, most people were), and their thigh was hooked across hers. With such a soft, low tone, it was hard to make out anything except a strong New Jersey accent, a familiar and warm timbre. All open, direct. Nice, even. They knew her and her body, and still felt the need to remind her she was heard, and doing well.

She itched to look up, to at least press their torsos together to answer the question that remained. But she didn’t, not needing the answer when the only thing audible in the room was Mark, and her occasionally heavier exhales. Otherwise she’d ruin the whole event, and possibly the olive branch that was meant to be salvaging all they’d built together.

One of the only situations in which Clarissa could lie confidently was in the bedroom. To whomever she needed to. Right now it was Mark, when she did what she was best at and got so distracted by her own imaginary scenario that she managed to get to where he was. She could easily pretend that she’d had her eyes shut but was eternally looking out for him, servicing him because she was listening out to the affirmative sounds he’d make. Maybe it was a ruse, or maybe that was the necessary sacrifice you made for a life-long commitment. Sometimes you did whatever it took to fake the attraction until it magically slotted into place the next time. Or the next. Perhaps the time after that.

Catching his breath, he lay down beside her. She looked at the cross necklace on his bedside table and pressed her lips to his shoulder, able to see the clock. It hadn’t been particularly long since they’d started, which didn’t surprise her much. Could this have been what her mom was picturing for her when she’d enthusiastically told her Mark was marriage material? Showering separately and making their beds without a second glance to one another. She tried to imagine that they’d made an effort, but couldn’t muster the idea.

Whilst pouring herself a glass of water, she chewed up her bottom lip at the thought of Amanda. Alone, in her apartment, maybe equally torn up considering Clarissa. Maybe she’d expected them to engage exactly like this upon returning, and that was why she hadn’t sent a text asking after them. Or she’d immediately gotten engrossed in scheduling like the workaholic she always claimed Clarissa was. Potentially she’d actually been healthy and properly focused on getting in sleep instead of lounging around with the proposition of emotionless sex hanging over her.

She sent across a text: you doing alright at home?

It sounded a little pathetic, talking to her best friend like they were acquaintances making small talk at a bar. Whatever, it wasn’t like Amanda would notice.

Amanda: yeah for the most part, what’s wrong???

She stood corrected.

Clarissa: the usual, mark and i tried to work out some of the kinks between us

Clarissa: very literally

The typing bubble hovered for ominously long.

Amanda: I see… and what conclusion have you come to?

Clarissa heard footsteps coming towards her and instinctively turned her phone screen to face the floor. Even though she’d not said anything incriminating, it seemed her brain was operating covertly. Mark didn’t notice she was doing anything out of the ordinary, so she returned to the chat.

Clarissa: i’m already escaping again

Clarissa: not physically, just retreating inwardly

Amanda: even during ?

Sex was a bit of a tightrope with the pair of them. Although they could make the occasional double entendre for the other to giggle at, they tended to avoid the subject when possible. It was a can of worms, where all the worms slithered around your neck, and every time you cut them in half, the same flesh reappeared soon enough. Whatever seemed totally innocuous always packed a punch. Perhaps it was that they silently resented one another in the department. Clarissa had long assumed that Amanda was getting better in that department, and Amanda had clearly been convinced Clarissa was having a whale of a time with Mark, at least in the bedroom. Neither of them wanted to hear about everything they were missing out on- or Clarissa did. She couldn’t explain that in any better terms, much to her disdain.

Clarissa: you said it first

Amanda: not to be crass

Clarissa highly doubted Amanda didn’t want to be crass any time.

Amanda: but how doesn’t he do it for you? like is this a constant?

Clarissa: are you asking in a therapist way or as my best friend?

Amanda: i’m asking because nobody else has the courage to, including you

Clarissa: you wound me

She paused texting for a while, deciding to spend a minute or so surveying Mark. He was loading the laundry, distinguishing between things that should and shouldn’t be washed together. One of the very few benefits of him losing his mom and having a single, alcoholic father from a young age was that Mark had developed a pretty strong set of survival (or really just domestic) skills. He could cook (a couple nice meals every once in a while), clean clothes and surfaces and build. The latter was the family business, but it was still neat. Upon moving in, it had been a miracle, and she marvelled at him last year as he drilled paintings in, and built their extension recently. The same extension she loathed, since she knew she was doomed the second it was born in his mind.

He moved with a lithe youth that he’d maintained from his teen years. Now he had enough scruff to cobble together an auburn beard, hair steadily thinning but clinging on for dear life, and muscles that could be seen through his navy blue shirt. He wasn’t wearing his ring, although that wasn’t overly surprising since he’d only recently exited the shower, and often got paranoid that it might go down the drain. It confused her how anxious he was about the materialistic aspect of their marriage. The rings weren’t the most expensive things they owned by a longshot. She didn’t even care much for the itemising of her commitment. Sure, it was a familial heirloom, but so was every value she had ingrained into her. Yet to him, it seemed that the second they stopped wearing them, they ceased to love one another.

He’d trained his affection, maybe. Honed it in and physicalised it in the hopes it would suffice. She wondered sometimes if he regretted marrying her. It wasn’t like she saw herself as flawless; in fact it was quite the opposite. She heard her own stupid decisions, her whining stubbornness, her refusal to accept simple truths. Her individuality that was a ruse, because if she was truly an empowered woman like she imagined herself, she wouldn’t be wrapped up in any of this in the first place. Probably she’d live day by day, unmarried, childless, never settling down until she truly saw the need.

Was she weak to return home to a man who so obviously was desperate to love her?
Did he even love her?
Why couldn’t she just ask?
Why did he keep asking her?
How did she love him?
Was it correct?

Clarissa: he holds me like he’s afraid he’s losing me

Clarissa: and he wants me to be the person he’s always seen me as

She remembered how they met, and how she must have looked. Sweet, considerate, deep in mourning over her theoretically lovely father, and still finding time in her busy day to help him get home and save him the bus fee. The little gadget she’d given him. His own manic pixie dream girl, who was here to bring him some purpose in his otherwise stagnant life. And then he’d gotten so wrapped up in her mess it was too late to rescind once he’d realised she was irreversibly fucked up.

Clarissa: but i’m not, and i can’t pretend to be

Amanda: yeah

Clarissa wasn’t sure how she’d hoped her friend would respond. She knew it was stupid to expect a rebuttal, since Amanda had constantly reiterated that Mark didn’t know how to handle her. Not that it was his fault. Maybe it was a little bit of everyone’s faults. Possibly it was their parents. Frankly there wasn’t enough time in the world to trace back far enough in their family histories to find the root of the problem. She knew her father had been screwed over, and people didn’t simply act like that without provocation.

Amanda: would you like to come over tomorrow? after work. have some coffee?

Clarissa looked at Mark again, who was adding in the laundry detergent with a flick of his wrists, and smiling to himself in satisfaction. In his periphery, he noticed her gazing at him and startled. Recovering, he waved at her, and she gave a little salute back. It was tremendously awkward in a way that might’ve been cute for a couple in their dining room if they weren’t both doe-eyed. They were almost petrified of causing the other any alarm, equally aware that whatever they’d tried an hour or so ago, all it had made them was more concerned.

Clarissa: coffee sounds nice thanks <3

 

-Amanda’s Apartment-

Amanda was working, and working hard at that. She typically scowled whenever she saw Clarissa burying herself in stories, trying to live vicariously through her interviewees rather than accepting the blandness of her existence in her hometown. For now, she allowed herself the privilege of being a hypocrite, giving her clients’ advice that she had certainly not followed recently. Even though it caused a bitter taste in her mouth to tell a teenage girl, “Don’t obsess over things you can’t control”, she still chose to wear her suit jacket and play the part of a responsible adult who was over her high school love.

Clarissa texting her had been the only use of her phone all day. For as long as she’d had a cellphone, she’d clicked priority on all of Clarissa’s notifications, so while she was finishing responding to emails for the evening, a loud buzz put a sharp halt to her professionalism. There was a brief second where she considered airing her- just for a couple hours, just to prove she was over being depended on- but ultimately she crumbled pretty quickly. Eventually, she could raise this lack of discipline with her own therapist and get it dealt with. In the meantime, nobody was stopping her from inviting her worst temptation into her home.

It occurred to Amanda that her whole apartment was messy beyond belief. Usually she was a type A, practical organiser, but when she returned from her British holiday she simply dumped her luggage at the earliest convenience and left it strewn across whichever piece of furniture she hurled it at. Presuming she’d get round to it after work the next morning, which she evidently hadn’t. Were this some elusive, significant guest, she’d have tried to polish everything, maybe scrubbed down her bookshelf that was accruing dust in all shelves except the slightly shitty rom-coms and sci-fis she used as her cliche escapism. Since this was Clarissa, she threw the debris into a pile near the utility area and hoped for the best.

Her quality of living was hardly something Clarissa was going to judge her for. She’d done some far more gratuitous and borderline insane things that were much more worth her disgust.

It was far easier to act like she hadn’t learned anything from the trip than to confront it. Mostly, it was the meeting at Old Trafford that struck her, and appeared in her dreams no matter how many times she woke in the middle of the night. The way Clarissa had insisted she loved her, even if it wasn’t in the way Amanda wanted her to reciprocate. She’d blasphemed for her, which for Clarissa was practically the same as killing her own mother in cold blood. And she’d been so reluctant to let her kiss her hand, when not long ago it would’ve been a somewhat normal (if joking) greeting for them.

She’d compared her and Mark to Amanda’s aunt Hilda with her Christmas cards.

The door reverberated as Clarissa knocked. Waiting a moment to answer, Amanda fixed her hair and exhaled. It was only a chat over coffee. Even if it did seem like she was talking Clarissa off the ledge. Which direction she was directing her, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that, casual an event as this was, it was time to fess up a little bit.

Clarissa looked weathered, but somehow gorgeous as ever. Around her torso was a jacket that resembled a sheepskin rug, that obscured any signs of pregnancy. Her flared jeans were a reminder of the nostalgic whimsy she’d been a bit robbed of recently. A fashionable version of cowboy boots gave her enough height to come up to Amanda’s chin (she was wearing slides, and a rather flimsy robe over her sweatpants and sweater). Hair swinging to and fro as she shook the rain off like a dog, she embraced Amanda swiftly, letting go just as fast.

“My aunt Hilda is a Mormon.” was Amanda’s greeting for today.

“Huh?”

“You mentioned her Christmas cards a while back. How you envied it. And I haven’t stopped thinking about it because I knew there was something off about it, then I remembered that they’re LDS. Not just her. Literally all that side of the family are mormon. I don’t really know how they found it, after spending so long in Italy generations back. It’s just how they are. They all vote red every year, go to BYU and get engaged within two months to the first person that they wanna have sex with. That’s why the kids are still in the cards. They’re all identical.” Brainwashed, she decided not to add, seeing Clarissa’s growing hesitance.

She stepped through the doorway properly, falling down onto one of the armchairs in her living room with a small thud. “Like Russian dolls.” she vaguely agreed, kicking her shoes off. “I think the baby’s a girl. I can’t explain it, maybe it’s heavenly intuition, although I haven’t been chatting to any angels as of late. Or motherly intuition, even if I don’t feel like one. It keeps running around in my mind that if I raise this kid- with Mark- all she’ll ever see is the same thing I saw. Not that Mark’s an alcoholic dick. Not yet, at least. Give it time and she’d be a cross between him and I. Watching her mother devote herself to a bitter old man out of a sense of obligation and misguided love. Watching her father grow cold and neglect his fatherly duties because he can’t confront himself.”

Amanda took the armchair opposite, sliding off her shoes, and holding out her hand to take Clarissa’s jacket. She threw it onto the couch, not caring about messiness now.

“So that’s how Derek and Titch fit in? They offer an alternative.”

Clarissa rustled in her pocket, prising Harry, which she wrapped around her hands like manacles. “Theoretically. I need to get a better scope of them. Ensure they’re prepared, that they’re recovered in ways we’re not. That they’d want her. I feel like I’m letting Him down, but something did catch me off guard when I was visiting them. It was the briefest of things, but Derek was talking about the passing of Titch’s father and he said ‘God rest his soul’. He mentioned his- Titch’s- mom being Irish Catholic too.”

“So what, they’re gay Catholics?”

“Titch seems to be religious, at the least. Derek did a pretty bad cross. But it was comforting, when I was thinking things through last night. That I could know that she was somewhere far away, somewhere better, but she might still believe in Him. They’d teach her to be more open-minded with her faith. She’d never run into situations like ours, where we’ve been friends for almost a quarter of a century and I know nothing about all the stuff you get up to.” She looked Amanda up and down slowly, something that made her skin crawl. “Do you have tattoos?”

“Just the one.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a quote: ‘I’ll give you a pizza my heart.’”

“The slogan of your dad’s pizzeria?”

“It was actually his wedding vows first.” She laughed to herself, remembering hearing the story for the first time as a child and not believing her dad would be so silly. But that was just how he was. “I know things between my parents crumbled, rightfully, but it’s a good phrase, isn’t it? Love doesn’t have to be some sombre thing that tears you apart. Sometimes it’s sharing a bit of pizza and falling for each other while you have pepperoni between your teeth. And I grew up seeing it everywhere. It’s my tie to home.”

Clarissa smiled fondly, either at the memory of eating pizza with Amanda every week at Wilson’s, getting mad when her best friend always gave her the biggest slice, or just at Amanda in general. The smile broke Amanda’s resolve slightly. She’d promised herself that she was gonna open up, letting Clarissa feel like she was finally not using Amanda as her emotional outlet. The tattoo was somewhat of a bridge, beginning the journey towards repairing their slightly fragmented relationship. But it was time she knew more.

“I did have a girlfriend for a while. Matilda, though she preferred Matty. Photographer, busy city type. Big into me. And it was mutual. I thought that maybe I was finally over…” she looked at Clarissa, steeling herself suddenly, “everything. It was so easy, those first few months. I wasn’t her first proper girlfriend, but she knew I was hers. I think she really loved that, my trepidation. My naivety. I could tell there was a light in her eyes whenever we tried something for the first time, her revelling in my uncertainty. It was during that relationship I stopped going to church on Sunday. So I could worship her instead. Plus, she told me it was making me miserable, trying to balance faith and her.”

 

Clarissa hadn’t moved a muscle. She just raked her eyes over Amanda’s body, searching for signs of anything out of the ordinary. “Where’s this going? Why are you telling me this?” A third unspoken question, “why didn’t you tell me back then?” went unspoken, as they both knew the truth. It would’ve broken Clarissa, to see her best friend doing something so sacrilegious, to be with a woman. A woman other than her. She’d have been torn apart thinking about Amanda and Matilda every night. For so many reasons.

“Trust me. Listen.” Clarissa did. “It went smoothly for about four months. I didn’t even notice how invested and intertwined I’d become. All my friends were hers, I was on her arm at every exhibition she ran- provided it was out of town- and I’d met her parents, who adored me. I felt so special, to be in this little world where nobody cared that I was a lesbian, and everyone celebrated the love we shared. At the time, you were in the most rigorous bit of your apprenticeship, and all our friends were in different universities. Nobody else was giving me that appraisal.”

Amanda waited for Clarissa to interrupt with further questions. When none came, she continued. “Four and a half months in, she told me she was into ethical non-monogamy. All of her artsy friends were. I’m a psych student, not a sociology one, so I did some research into what she meant. Basically, she wanted to go around with other people, other women than me, and do whatever she wanted with them. With my consent, of course. Except it all sounded insane to me. She told me I was only hesitating because of catholic guilt, that if I was really going to get past my ‘trauma’, I would agree to it. ‘Not everyone’s like your parents, Amanda’, she said. ‘Some people do well by exploring every option’. ‘You shouldn’t be making me choose between you and my happiness like this, really’.”

Clarissa hummed, offering a much smaller reaction than Amanda had expected. “Carry on.” she instructed Amanda. There was a quiet, building expression on her face that made Amanda uneasy.

“Okay. So I asked her what she would do if I was really monogamous. If I had a problem being with other people. In response, she shrugged. ‘Just don’t fuck anyone else then’, she told me, ‘leave it to me’. Then, I did. I tried flirting with someone else, but I just felt silly. The whole idea seemed silly to me. We were happy as a couple, I thought. What had I done wrong if after less than half a year she was already seeking out other people? What was wrong with me? I’d thought she was endeared by my inexperience. Clearly, it was a novelty that wore out quickly.”

“She started to seem cruel to me. I told her…” Amanda swallowed, realising she’d never come close to telling anyone this part of the story. Not even her therapist. “I said not to give me hickeys, because my job needed me to look professional, and it was Summer. I didn’t wanna wear a turtleneck. At first, she agreed, saying I could give them to her. When I asked to clarify how to do all this with a girl, she demonstrated it on me. She started laughing. I didn’t know why. Eventually I realised she’d left marks. I remember her saying ‘wow, I didn’t expect it to be THAT purple’. I didn’t like the emphasis. It meant the mark in itself was intentional. But I laughed along with her. Made a joke. Didn’t know what else I could do. Nobody in my life knew I was a lesbian, who was supposed to listen to me whinge?"

“Anyways, I broke it off after she had sex with two of her friends, who were our mutual friends, on her birthday. I’d literally seen her that day. She didn’t even think to invite me. I had nothing on. It was fucking embarassing, you know? Having my friends joke to me the next morning about all the things they’d done with Matilda. Things I never was comfortable doing with her. A couple I’d tried doing to satisfy her, but evidently failed. I was mortified by the whole thing. My first actual relationship at twenty years old, and I’d been so awful at it that she chose literally anyone else over me.”

Clarissa leaned back in her seat, unblinkingly. It was only while staring at her best friend that Amanda realised her face was drenched in an amalgam of sweat and tears. She’d never laid out the whole relationship like this before, never heard the bigger picture like a third party might. There wasn’t a definitive feeling it evoked within her. Possibly more shame, for letting herself get degraded, for being a therapist who hadn’t even noticed she was being manipulated. Some residual anger, that she’d failed to get the chance to send Matilda’s way. They hadn’t spoken in over two years. So much time had past, and it still made her miserable to recount.

Holding out a tissue, Clarissa let out a low, long breath, either losing or winning some internal battle of her own. She was waiting for Amanda to be finished. “Why are you telling me this?” she repeated. It was the coldest she’d ever been.

“It made me realise how lonely my existence was. I never went back to church. I did start going back to the restaurant though. Asking my dad if I could do shifts. He refused not to pay me. I started calling my mom more. I never came out, but they knew. I tried to cement my own life. You had yours with Mark, and I thought it was perfect. I mean, from your perspective. We- we both know I didn’t like Mark much.” she chuckled wetly, dabbing her cheeks with the tissue. “I think I wanted to tell you now because I wish I could have then. And I wanted you to know that life is messy. For everyone. Relationships are messy. That-” she cut herself off deliberately.

“-That it’s okay to know when to leave? To jump ship?” Clarissa answered for her.

“Yeah. In more profound terms, yeah. If that’s what you wanna take away.”

Finally, Clarissa made a substantial move, holding out for Amanda’s hand. When she complied instantaneously, Clarissa interlocked their fingers, and used her thumb to rub circles into Amanda’s knuckles, like a suture for a stab wound. The motion was unfamiliar, it usually being Amanda offering comforting gestures, but incredibly welcome. It had been a while since somebody cared for her. Therapists had their own therapists for a reason. Who provided an ear for the mouthless ear?

It was at that moment that she noticed it: Clarissa was furious. An emotion she so rarely expressed. And it was a hot lividity that turned her cheeks pink.

“I don’t really know what to say, Mandy. I’d say I want that girl dead, but it wouldn’t help much, would it? Had you told me all of this years ago, I hope I’d react the right way. I really do. I just don’t know. I can’t believe I missed something like this. I mean, I knew you were up to things, meeting new people I’d never understand. But–” she cracked her neck, taking a second to stretch out her tension. “You drive me crazy, Amanda. You well and truly do. Every time I think I’ve figured out how to love you, you make me question it.”

Amanda desperately wanted to break the atmosphere. “It’s a pretty low bar, honestly. Just don’t be like Matilda.”

Clarissa wasn’t convinced that easily. “You’re bringing it up two years later, so it’s not nothing. You’re still- I don’t know. Afraid? Apprehensive? Guilty? Whatever it is you feel, it’s not resolved. I want to comfort you, and tell you everything that I think you are, but I don’t know if that’s condescending. Honestly, I feel stupid. Because I did notice back then that you weren’t yourself. I told my mom ‘Amanda’s in a funk’ and she told me to bring it up and I didn’t because I thought anything you didn’t tell me wasn’t worth asking about.”

“Don’t.” Amanda replied, somewhere between soft and self-deprecating. “I knew you didn’t want to hear about my exploits.”

“It doesn’t matter what would’ve happened then. I hear you now. I want to listen now. Right now, there’s no baby, no Mark, no nothing. It’s you and me. Like it’s always been. Whatever we are or aren’t or could be or will be is irrelevant. All I know is that I love you, and you’re my favorite person in the world, and you have been since we were three, and I doubt that’s gonna change any time soon. You don’t deserve to be the victim of someone else’s fucked up fantasies. Wherever she is now, I hope she knows she made the biggest mistake of her life not recognising what a blessing she had.”

Clarissa squeezed her hand, coaxing Amanda into talking more. Unlike Clarissa, Amanda knew when to stop a train of thought. She didn’t want to think about the implications of being Clarissa’s favorite person. She wasn’t going to consider that Mark was thrown aside, that the pregnancy was tossed away, in return for her. Especially, she wouldn’t consider whether or not Clarissa thought she was making a mistake by not taking Matilda’s place. Instead, she smiled half-heartedly. “I think she lives in San Francisco now.”

“She’s lucky she lives on the opposite end of the country, or I’d knock her lights out. My dad taught me some self-defense back in the day. I’m like a green belt.”

“Suzy, you’re tiny.”

“And? They call me pocket rocket.”

“Nobody calls you that.”

“They should.”

Without a care in the world, Amanda kissed Clarissa’s hand again, a silent thanks. In response, Clarissa shivered, then smiled. Neither of them said another word. They just sat opposite each other, holding hands, their feelings at a total equilibrium. Whatever they were embarking on, this was the foundation on which they lay. Even after Amanda had had her heart broken, first by Clarissa herself then by something more objectively disgusting, she stuck with her. Despite her marriage, frayed at the edges as it was, Clarissa was right there with her.

It might not have been a “now”, a “soon”, or even an “ever”.

It was just “us”.

“It’s time you talk to Mark.” Amanda told her, because she knew how fleeting this peace would be.

“Can’t you be there with me?”

“It’s kind of imperative I’m not.”

“Okay. Would you let me stay here if things didn’t- if- you know why it might be something I have to ask. Would you?”

Amanda let go of her hand, considering. They didn’t do sleepovers, not since freshman year of college. They’d had their own, separate places, their own lives. Secrets, in Amanda’s case. She thought about how different it would be to share a place with her. To see her first thing in the morning, to see her with her hair wet from a shower, to see her pour cereal (milk first, like a heathen, she’d learned when they were ten). To be her roommate, her solace, her host. Somebody who wasn’t going to take advantage of her at her most vulnerable. Who could provide her space, even when they were so intimately living together. Could she bring herself to do it?

“Yeah. If you’re okay with leftover pizza for dinner every now and again, I can’t think of a reason I shouldn’t agree.”

“You’re lying.”

“I am.” She sucked in her teeth. “But I think it’s gonna be okay.”

“Me too.”

Notes:

hello everybody from theo on holiday!!! that's right, literally nothing can stop the clamanda grind!

just watched the new longform (loved it ofc), and now i'm delivering on one of my favourite monologues i've written perhaps ever (featuring zero projection from me, the author)
i really hope this wasn't too much or too out of nowhere (i may be editing the fic, beta reading etc. as i go on previous chapters now - please give feedback!)
anyways, next chapter is a little less planned, so it may be a full week's wait away.
for now, hope you enjoyed, thanks for reading, and please kudos/comment/subscribe for my fragile ego!!!!

thank you, theo <3

Chapter 9: Dreams

Summary:

Mark is birdwatching in his yard.

Clarissa decides it is time to change their lives.

It's migrating season after all.

 

(tw for references to domestic abuse and mentions of vomiting)

Notes:

thanks for 500 hits! this chapter is mostly dialogue (and one scene, like Free Churros in Bojack or episode 3 of Adolescence), so be prepared for that

-Mark and Clarissa’s Home-

 

Mark was scrolling through the channels thoughtlessly. Cooking was too tense, home improvements too much like his job, chat shows too dull. The news made him hate everyone, teleshopping made him hate himself, sports made him hate people he didn’t know in real life over literal balls. Most soaps had become watered down, most thrillers were predictable, most comedies had Adam Sandler for some reason. Films being reshown were at least eighties classics, but all ones he’d seen so often it’d just be an exercise in reciting a script front to back with visual accompaniment.

If he went into his backyard, there wasn’t much going on either. Since building the extension, it had more or less turned into a glorified little green square. His shed stood opposite, a joint project between him and his father in a rare act of investment in his son’s life sparked by the wedding. It was pretty absent of decoration or embellishment, aside from a birdfeeder he stocked up every couple days. Since it was April there weren’t many birds around, but he adored when the parakeets stopped by with their lime feathers.

Taking on the family business hadn’t been much of a big deal to him. It was perfectly lucrative as far as towns went, he got to have a strong relationship with the locals as such a frequent presence in their homes, and it meant he didn’t have to go to the gym often to maintain a good physique. Besides shop class he’d never been a good student, a solid C his entire school career. When he graduated, it made sense to do what he’d always been trained in, the only thing his father had ensured he’d known.

But he had always held a soft spot for animals. Maybe there was a world in which he’d gotten a biology tutor, studied harder, and gone into something of that nature. Wildlife conservationist, veterinarian (if he could stomach putting pets down), or just running some kind of cat cafe. It wasn’t exactly the manliest, most patriarchal route, and it may have led to his wife being the breadwinner of the pair, but it might’ve suited him well. It wasn’t the kind of missed opportunity that kept him up at night, since it was more or less wholly impossible, but it was a fleeting daydream in the quiet moments like this, awaiting the presence of a single pigeon or seagull.

Instead of it arriving, he was interrupted in his birdwatching by the sound of a key turning in the door. It was about 6PM, and she’d been gone three hours or so, making it a jarring though somewhat expected return. He resolved to stay standing, leaning against the extension’s exterior wall, and wait to see if she came to join him. It was simply too nice of a moment to desert with husbandry. Eventually he heard the sound of shoes being unzipped and placed on the rack and a coat being hung, followed by footsteps.

Seconds passed, and the two of them looked out at the yard together, stood five feet or so apart. She was halfway out the door, seemingly not worried to say too much straight out the gate. They both witnessed as a single, fat blue jay snagged the last of the birdseed from the feeder, chirping in delight as it took its goods away. Maybe it had a family to return to. Mark frequently found himself narrating their stories, the animals in his backyard. It was his equivalent to Clarissa’s job. This made him reckon he didn’t quite take her job seriously. Or he took birdwatching so seriously it made his actual career choice feeble by comparison.

“Almost migration time.”

Clarissa blinked slowly as the two of them looked at one another. She looked calm. “Huh?”

He repeated. “Almost migration time. Lots more birds’ll show up in the next month. Tropical ones, usually. Similar to the fridge magnet.”

She placed her hands on her hips in a way that lacked judgement. It was more just to give them a place to rest, so she’d stop burying them in her pockets. He wondered if Henry was stored in there. Had she been purposefully soothing herself, to be steeled for this moment? What did any of it mean? Mark made no effort to try and decipher Clarissa. She’d never been so tranquil when returning home. It unsettled him, though. She’d been to Amanda’s. That could be a recipe for disaster. Even after getting to know his wife’s friend, something about her still troubled him. “Mark, where do you picture us in twenty years?”

“Here. New Jersey. Maybe a bigger place, or maybe I’d build it a little bigger?”

“No. I mean- yes. But what I mean is… where in our lives? What do you imagine will happen to us by then?”

The onus was being aggressively hurled his way, and much as he wanted to dodge, he knew the only acceptable thing to do was respond. Worst case scenario, she disagreed. So what? He was a decent debater, and she often agreed with him logistically. “Sort of what happens to everyone eventually. Kids- three if we’re lucky- and I build them a play place in the yard. By then they all keep saying they’re too old for it, but every time they’re round I insist. You’re haggling so the eldest can get good college accommodation, and pretending you don’t hate that they’ve left. We get a dog or two, for the kids. And me. You complain, but you come around. I’m still out working. The usual.”

There was a glimmer of something in her eyes he didn’t read. “Am I? Working.”

He shrugged, not having pondered it significantly. “Maybe? I guess, if you can do it remotely, I don’t see a problem with it.” There was an inscrutable expression she made that irked him. “What, Suzanne? How was that the wrong thing to say? Explain it to me, because I can’t have all this let’s-analyse-our-marriage-on-some-random-Wednesday-without-actually-saying-anything-at-all bullshit that you keep spewing. Either you tell me, or you let me birdwatch in peace, okay? I feel like I’m fuckin’ crazy out here.”

Slowly, she stepped fully out the door, and sat down on the patch of grass cross-legged, motioning for him to join her. Which he did, grunting as he did so to get across how out of his comfort zone this was. There was a reason he’d said no to therapy. All this chit-chat seemed like nonsense to him. Don’t sugar coat it. You’re fucked in the head, or you’re not. Simple as. Right now, he was certain she was nowhere near telling him the latter. Still, understanding this wasn't the time to interrupt, he gestured that she begin.

“It’s stupid when I say it out loud, and it’s bitchy and nitpicky and all that shit that my mom says out loud and you just think in your head. I’m not an idiot, I know you do, Mark. My point is that everything is kinda a given for you. That I’ll agree to three kids, I’d still wanna live in this neighborhood in twenty years time, that I’d be a helicopter mom because that’s what your mom was like. Your response now is the same as it would’ve been if I asked you how you’d imagine being forty three when you were thirteen. Me being in your life makes no difference to your plans, because in your mind, I just slot right in silently. And you know what the part that really bothers me is? You’re probably right.”

“How?” He was surprised to be validated by what was otherwise a rather scathing pulling apart of his words.

“I would agree. If you pushed it. Rather, I had done, until the pregnancy. I molded myself into the cookie cutter wife in your ideal world. Who carries your kids, who abandons her dream job at the drop of a hat to suit being a mom. Who’s a really good mom, who cares, who does what her husband isn’t emotionally intelligent enough to. You'll confess to a fourteen year old preacher boy that you think I make for a terrible wife, but you’ll never say it to my face. In your mind’s eye, before your mom died, everything was perfect, and you’re recreating that for yourself. I’m throwing a spanner in it if I complain. So I didn’t.”

Mark saw amber. “Is it me then? Am I ruining your life?”

“No. Not quite. Not like you’re thinking. I wish you’d listen to everything I say before making up your mind-”

“It’s pretty hard to do that when you’re telling me that I think you’re a worthless bitch!”

She raised her voice. “Mark, I know you don’t think that! Listen to what I’m saying! Fuck. I didn’t rehearse this, so it might come out messy. What I’m trying to say is that you had this idea of who I was from the day we met, this idealised version of me. Who was too good for you, but who was going to save you. Change it all. Give you back the life your parents took from you. And I saw it- that hope. And I had it too. God knows, I had it too. I wanted to make my dad impressed, but I knew what my mom needed me to be. And in some nightmarish combination, we mixed together that pressure into a- a pressure cooker of sorts.”

“I don’t get it, Clarissa.”

“I’m getting to it. Basically, I’m not who you think I am, and I’m not who my mom wants me to be. I don’t even think YOU’RE who you think you are. You’re not your dad, you’re not a stupid alcoholic in the making who needs to hurt people to prevent himself from hurting yourself. You need to be your own person, separate from the fantastical world you’ve invented. There’s still time to figure it all out. You’re nice, Mark, you have the potential to be a good husband and a good father one day-”

“One day?”

Clarissa dug her heels into the dirt. “Yes, Mark. One day.”

“What about you, then?”

 

“I don’t know. I don’t think I’m a good wife now. I’m pretty awful at all of this. I don’t wanna settle down, I don’t wanna live in one place all my life. I can’t do the nuclear family thing, I’m not cut out for it. For lots of reasons, I think. I’m not sure if I’m ever gonna make a good mother. Possibly one day I could be a good wife. I’d like to think so. But all of this- pregnancy? I’m not supposed to do it. I can’t raise a kid, because I don’t want to. I wouldn’t be like your mom, or my mom, or anyone you know, because this is a small city and a pretty terrible frame of reference! I’d just be absent. Emotionally, physically, mentally. I can’t do that to a kid.”

He looked at the daisies. As a tiny child his mother had taught him how to make chains. He’d forgotten since. One time he’d peeled off the petals one by one. She’s looking down on me, she’s looking down on me not. Once his father caught sight of him, he grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and politely told him he wasn’t to be going around “like a pussy” anymore, and to act his age, which was nine. Now he pulled on from its stem, pulling it apart with little regard for any children’s games. “Is that what you’re building to? You wanna give up the kid?”

“I thought it was worth considering. There’s that farmer couple I spoke to in Somerset, Titch and Derek-”

“You’re giving my baby to a couple of gay motherfuckers in Somerset?”

“I- what am I meant to say Mark? About YOUR baby?”

“That you love it! That it’s a miracle, a gift! You’d be happy if it had your eyes and my smile? I don’t know, Suzanne, something nice! I’d really like it if you were happy. It’s not like you didn’t marry me expecting this turnout. I’ve never hidden that I want kids. Sure, we didn’t say it, but we didn’t need to. Clearly, you need more things to be spelt out, and whatever, that’s fine. I can tell you every thought that enters my fucking head if that’s what makes you happy. Sometimes I wish you fucked me more, sometimes I think you’re a bitch, and sometimes I think you’d be happier with Amanda! Is that what you want? To hear that I want a dog, and I want three kids, and I want what my parents used to have? I can shout it from the rooftops if it makes you happy. Who cares if I want things? Who cares if I want things I might not deserve?”

He couldn’t hear the birds chirping anymore over the sound of his own voice. When he looked over at Clarissa, he saw she was crying. This wasn’t an inherently unusual sight. It was the trembling that concerned him. It wasn’t just her shoulders shaking, the way people sobbing often did. There was a tremor in her hand she hadn’t noticed, and her knee bounced against the floor in a way that sounded painful. Even the bump, which seemed to grow by the day, went up and down.

He suddenly realised how small she was.

“Mark,” she spoke lowly, “you deserve what you want. If it really is what you want, you deserve it. Whoever told you otherwise is an idiot.”

He was shaking a bit too. The sun hadn’t set yet. It seemed feeble, to be so big, and forget.

Clarissa wiped her eyes, sniffed, and put a hand on his knee, forcing him to look at her. There was fear in her eyes, but also a quiet acceptance. “I can’t give you what you want.”

Suddenly he realised why they were sat in the garden. In his space, amongst the birds. She wanted him to see what he had without her. She wanted him to be calm so that she could get through her point, which had failed. She had known him for seven years, and didn’t know him well enough to be sure that he wouldn’t freak out on her. Mark might not have known himself well enough to know the answer to that. He hoped he wouldn’t hurt her. He knew that pain. He hoped he wouldn’t inflict it.

“Never?” He felt like a child being denied the big swirly pop at the fairground.

“No.” she winced at the words as she spoke them into reality. “Never. It wouldn’t be fair on either of us.”

Holding his breath, he shuffled backwards, creating a rift between them. Offering them space in a relatively small garden. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. There was probably a breathing technique to reduce anger, but he didn’t know it. Clarissa seemed equally lost, scanning the area. She sniffed the air, perhaps to reduce the crying, and wiped her tongue across her bottom lip. She’d always been odd. It was one of the things that drew him to her. A charming mystery he’d never bothered to solve, seemingly to his detriment.

They’d been back for less than three days. It was humiliating to a degree. Going all that way to prove what a good couple they’d go on to be, finally getting her to come home and almost immediately having the rug swept from under him. There was the urge to assume the worst, that she’d been planning to do this from the moment she’d taken a positive test. Or months, possibly years in the making, This was a torturous, drawn out way to embarrass him in front of everyone who he’d fought to gain the respect of over the past twenty three years.

Then again, it wasn’t like Clarissa would be free of judgment in that scenario. As she admitted, her mother had been desperate to see her live this life. Her father even more so. By jumping ship on him this early, she was disappointing her alive parent, and disrespecting the other’s memory. He wasn’t stupid enough not to notice how slim the opportunities were for women in communities like theirs. Clarissa would be lucky if the women of the town only spent the next six months mocking her failed marriage, whispering about alleged extramarital affairs.

“Did you love me? Seven years ago?” he asked her, quieter than before (although compared to her, every word he spoke sounded like a megaphone announcement).

“Mark, I love you now.”

“Then why?”

“Because I can’t make you happy.”

“What if you loving me makes me happy?”

“It doesn’t. Not enough.” She sighed, her shoulder shivering as they sagged. “I don’t think you love me much either. Not me in reality.”

“What’s that s’posed to mean?”

“You don’t love who I’m turning out to be. Fine, I don’t much either. I have things to change. Even after that, I’m not the woman you wanted to marry.”

“No.” he agreed, to his own disbelief. It was true, though, wasn’t it? She was nothing like the girl he wished she’d been. Almost everything about her was contrary to what he’d prayed she would be. The longer he followed her words, her paper trail, her heart, the more undeniable it became that he’d missed everything. All the little things piled up, and he’d ignored them. He’d literally spent the past two weeks having them listed out in front of him. “What about Amanda?”

“What about Amanda? This isn’t about her.”

“With you, it’s always about her, isn’t it? Or is it just vice versa? She knows you. Like, actually does. During the vacation, we kept talking about you, and she remembers all these things about you. All the stories you do, your laugh, your ball of string Henry. She remembered why it was called Henry for crying out loud. That woman knows you better than I ever have and she still sticks around. You still want her to stick around. What’s she got that I don’t? What’s the difference? And don’t say some bullshit like I don’t see what’s right in front of you.”

“The string’s called Harry. Not Henry. Like Clary. Short for Clarissa. My name.” She stressed the final few syllables. He wasn’t sure why.

“Exactly.”

“Here’s a comparison for you, since you want one: Amanda likes me. She called me Suzy because she couldn’t spell my name as a kid, and didn't wanna call me the same thing my dad does. You call me Suzanne whenever you’re mad at me. Which is most of the time. Basically whenever I say how I feel. Amanda gets mad at me whenever I keep how I feel from her.” Clarissa made her voice somehow even smaller. “You’d be happier marrying me if I didn’t speak, and Amanda lets me send her voice memos every day telling her what she’d missed.”

“I’d be happier if you were mute?”

“You’d hate yourself, but it’d fix the marriage.”

“No it wouldn’t. You’d still be miserable.”

She smiled, but it was bitter. “I’m glad we agree, then. As long as we’re together, one or both of us is going crazy. It’s not fair to either of us to keep it up any longer.”

“So it’s easy with her?”

Rolling her eyes, she looked at him. “What do you want me to say? Amanda’s been here my whole life. There’s been peaks, troughs, little wavy lines. Secrets, lies, betrayal. It’s not a walk in the park every single day, but we make it work because we like each other. Most childhood friends grow up into different people and give up when the going gets tough. We didn’t because we genuinely enjoyed being together. Some things we’re still repairing right now, but it’s working because we want to be our best selves for each other.”

“And what? I don’t wanna be good for you?”

“Mark, you don’t wanna be good for yourself. You need to stop living for a fantasy. It’s about time we both stop doing that. We’re twenty fucking three. We should be at the club, you know?” She smiled, then wiped her mouth like she’d committed some indecent act. Mark was glad to see she didn’t seem as scared anymore. “I met all these people in England and Scotland, people who’d been through loads. Affairs, moving across the country, leading cults, losing wives. Things I’d never truly understand. But what I did get was the fact that they persevered. Kept going, adapted, really lived. If they’d given up there’d be no story for me to return to.”

“Is that our story then? Clarissa’s failed DIY marriage, her fucked in the head husband and her obsessed lesbian best friend?”

While she looked hurt by this description, she wiggled her hand in a gesture of uncertainty. “Right now, maybe. Next year it might be something completely different.” She opened and closed her mouth a few times, eventually deciding her anecdote was worth telling. “Ethel drugged me. We played improv games and I hallucinated this scenario. For ages I was trying to figure out what she was trying to convince me of. I still think I’ve missed something key. But in every way I set it out, I keep coming to the conclusion that she knew I’d want a conclusion. She knew I needed meaning. I lacked it. She knew I wasn’t listening to my brain, and she knew I had to confront it head-on. Change.”

In any less serious interaction, Mark would ridicule the fact that Clarissa had just claimed an elderly woman had given her enough hallucinogens and improvised comedy to convince her to rethink her marriage, but instead he found himself obligated to just shake his head in an utter loss for words.

“You died. In the vision. And I let you. I watched your blood form in a little, dark red pool. It felt like Romeo and Juliet. I should’ve done some sacrifice of my own, died with you right then and there. But right before, you’d told me ‘I don't regret it. But I wouldn’t want any more of it.’ It stuck with me, what you were saying. I mean, I said it, with you as my mouthpiece I guess. I tasted the metal in my mouth, and I swallowed, and I moved on. It didn’t haunt me as much as I worried it might. Which was her point.”

“You wouldn’t care if I died?” He moved forwards in confrontation, then remembered, and reeled himself back in. “Or is this another thing I’m not smart enough to get?”

Clarissa folded her arms, clearly frustrated, either at him or at herself for being unable to make this translate for him. “Of course I’d care. And you’re not stupid. Don’t misconstrue me as saying I hate you. It’s the opposite. What I think is… by saving myself I’m saving you too. I was freeing you, and myself, from the constraints you were in. To see you in pain hurt, and I regretted it, but you’d already told me you weren’t sorry. So I think I was rationalising it. Don’t be apologetic for doing the thing that seems brutal. Ultimately, you have to be, to be happy.”

“Selfishly.” he couldn’t help but add, admittedly sourly.

“Maybe.” she conceded. “That’s the sacrifice, isn’t it? Choosing yourself. Ourselves.”

He thought about the day he told his father he was moving in with Clarissa. Oscar was strewn across their couch, root beer in hand (on the snail’s pace road to recovery), watching The Property Brothers. When he saw Mark was getting an old suitcase out of the shed, he waggled his fat finger, asking why he’d need that. “You never go on vacation.” he pointed out, “Even when I’m sick and tired of your nagging.” Then Mark informed him this was a permanent removal of his stuff, and he got very quiet. For about five minutes, he allowed his son to wordlessly carry the suitcase upstairs and load it with clothes.

“Mark! MARK! C’mere Mark!” Once he did, he found his dad had sat up, and was trying to work a root beer stain off his shirt by licking his thumb and scratching at it. He offered him a tissue from the box, and he refused, stating it as “givin’ up” and “not the Murray way”, a phrase Mark was still yet to figure out the meaning of. Eventually he seemed proud of his stain removal work, and looked up at his son with a burp. “You’re growing up aren’t you, son?” He nodded. “Feel like a big man yet?” He nodded slightly less enthusiastically. “Are you feeling ready for the commitment?” Very small nod. “Is she the girl for you?” Something mistakable for a shrug.

“You’re ten years younger than her when she died.” he mused. “And only one year younger than her when she got pregnant with you.” They tended not to say her name aloud, in case it was like evoking the Devil and they remained haunted by her spirit (not that that wasn’t more or less happening regardless). “She’d been so excited. Hated her own parents. Couldn’t wait to escape. Especially her mother. Right bitch, she was. Banned her from skirts below the knees and parties after sunset till she was twenty one. Except she was a little spooked by living on her own with me. And when she found out she was expecting you. She kept asking me, ‘Oscar, do I know anything at all?’. And she knew plenty by the time she needed to.”

“What are you saying, dad?”

“All I mean is that you’re young. So was she. We didn’t realise until we were by ourselves how much bigger it was. Being alone. I think about it all the time, all the other possibilities, had we done things slower. We wouldn’t have lost her parents’ support. Then we’d have had enough money to give you a brother or sister. She wouldn’t have had to go through postpartum without a proper therapist and I wouldn't have taken up two jobs. There’d have been less beer, less partying to forget how little we’d made of such a big world. And without the beer…”

“Mom might still be here.”

“You be careful, Mark.”

“I will.”

“And Mark?”

“Yeah, dad?”

“I’m sorry you got stuck with this.”

“Okay.”

Staring at Clarissa, only a year and a bit later, and wondered what the selfish choice was to him. At the time, he’d thought his dad was trying to get into his head, and manipulate him out of moving out and effectively abandoning him in the home he bought with his late wife. He’d assumed the choice of leaving his father was correct, however selfish it might be. And he was right. The distance had saved him to some degree, and Oscar Murray now attended AA and talked to other widows and widowers in a weekly meeting. He was in the town amateur church choir.

But he’d tuned out the rest of the warning. He’d ignored the implication that his parents’ lives- his mom’s life- had been far from perfect. He’d focused on his father’s dream scenario, and treated it like an inherited generational trait. The easiest way to cling onto his mother and who his father once was. He’d never met his maternal grandparents, his mom had never told him about the fractured relationship. He hadn’t known about their economic struggles until he was far older. He didn’t like to consider the idea that the selfish choice was to rely on others, and his parents never took it.

Maybe it was the brave choice. But his mom wasn’t a coward, she was unlucky.

So was he. So was Clarissa.

He imagined what could be. The future he might live out if they stuck together. Maybe Clarissa would meet his mother’s fate, crushed under the weight of her own independence and her husband’s inability to save her. Maybe they’d be more like the Jenkins family, living out their lives silently resenting what they’d built together, in love but tortured, until one of them drank so much they forgot the whole ordeal. Maybe they’d be like Amanda’s parents, cheating on one another so constantly it became their norm, driving their children insane.

Here, Clarissa was giving him the chance to make something else of things. Like seven years ago, she was driving him home so he didn’t have to pay the bus fare and experience half an hour of his drunk friends yelling over any actually interesting thing he said. She was doing something that forced him to see her in a new light. Back then, it had been as his mystery girl next door, out of his league yet inexplicably checking every box in a way that would annoy his father to no end. Now it was as a grown woman, not angelically virtuous, just… a person. Somebody offering him a way out.

“If I choose myself, what comes next? And you? What are you planning to do?”

She breathed a long sigh of relief at the genuine curiosity of his question, and bowed her head in thought, finally breaking their eye contact. It was a sign of trust they both needed. “Well, that’s kinda what I was gonna ask you. There’s the big predicament that’s what to do with the baby. My first priority is mostly to solve that. Derek and Titch were my main contenders, but I haven’t even asked them. I was waiting for your opinion. You can say no and I’ll listen. If you really wanna raise the kid, that’s your prerogative, and I can help financially and emotionally. Alternatively, if you’re into the plan, I’d happily invite you to come back to Somerset with me to investigate the option in depth. I know they have… alternative lifestyles, but is that really the end of the world?”

He tossed the idea a little. “No. Not really. I mean I hate your old high school friend, Clive, but that doesn’t mean that’s all of ‘em. Amanda’s nice when she tries really hard.” It was a difficult pill to swallow, the prospect of handing over your flesh and blood, half your DNA, to complete strangers in an act of blind faith. “I don’t know if I’d be able to do the fatherhood thing by myself. I saw my dad. But at the same time, it’s pretty fucking nuts to hand the thing over to some people who live thousands of miles away.”

In spite of everything, Clarissa chuckled to herself. “Yeah. It is crazy. I feel crazy pitching it. I just have this feeling, like a divine intuition or something, that this child is meant for a couple like them. Hard-working people with a supportive community: open-minded Christians. People who’ve struggled and worked through it and succeeded. Happy, healthy people. Not US, you know? I have this insane inkling that they’re gonna come around to the idea and we’ll live to be glad of it. Plus, they have a landline. We’d get updates on them.”

It was a funny feeling. Something like relief, a dash of fear, a hint of still simmering down anger, the permanent guilt, and the urge to laugh. At his wedding he had a similar set of pangs in his stomach. Except then he’d pretended to only be obnoxiously happy, faked being over everything simply because she said sorry. In this moment, he did let out a giggle, and then clutched his stomach, feeling the bile rise. Tears showed their faces, and he made no move to wipe them away. There’d be a landline. A fucking landline between him and his first born child.

“Would we name it?”

“Maybe. They’re friendly folks. If it’s them, I reckon we’ll have a lot of leeway.”

“So you go get a scan, find out the gender. We visit the two of them again, try and get them to come around, then we just hand it over once you’ve popped it out? Is that legal?”

“It’s a process. Mostly, I think if both parties are happy about the arrangement, it’s really only paperwork to get in order. Also I think I should give birth there. For citizenship.”

She’d put a lot of thought into it. Much more than he had, googling the occasional “can pregnant women have sex?” and “do pregnant women gain weight in their fingers” and “are women more emotionally distant when pregnant?” (and, embarrassingly, “does eating spicy foods hurt foetuses?” when Clarissa had suggested ordering Mexican food last night). Though it didn’t surprise him, she always outsmarted him in all departments. Even as an unfit mother she was a prepared parenthood planner in comparison to him.

When was one day? When would he be good at this?
“Am I ordered to do anything now?”

“Not really. Besides coming with me to talk to Titch and Derek, you’re not obligated to be any part in this. I know it’s driving you crazy as it is. Other than the pregnancy, I’m not sure what to tell you. You can stay here, that’s for sure. I’m gonna move in with Amanda for the time being I reckon, since- don’t make that face, Mark! It's nothing like what you’re thinking. She’s been my rock my whole life, of course she’s gonna be around in a time like this! I’ll sleep on her couch or something. This house is yours. You’ve made it.” She tried to muster a smile at him that he half-heartedly returned. Both of them knew she was right.

“I think I’ll start therapy. Real therapy, not just offloading to Amanda anymore. Properly opening up to a professional who doesn’t see me outside their office.” Holding her breath, she met his gaze. “I’d recommend you do the same, though I know you’re hardly gonna value my opinion right now, being that I’m divorcing you.”

Hearing the word “divorcing” spoken aloud so nonchalantly took him out of the conversation momentarily, but he refocused his attention onto the idea of therapy. It wasn’t like he never discussed how he felt. In a confession booth every now and again he’d try to explain adult messes to a sympathetic teen boy while his overseer crouched, eavesdropping. Usually, it just amounted to a vague piece of advice that either changed his life or was something his cousin would’ve had on her bedroom wall during her Tumblr hipster phase. Tim hadn’t lost anyone, he’d never dated and likely never would get the chance to. All his childhood was spent talking to adults. He wasn’t a good therapist, but he was a good kid. Mark hoped somebody had told Tim as much.

“Honestly, I might. At some point. Just to test it.”

Clarissa’s chest heaved up and down slowly, her eyes glassing over. “I’m really proud of you, Mark. I really want you to be happy, chase whatever brings you joy. I want you to be safe, healthy, optimistic. I don’t wanna ruin your life. I’m sorry. I wish you could lie to me and tell me that I haven’t, and that it’s not my fault, and that everything’s gonna be alright. That this is the hardest part. I wanted to lie to you and say that I didn’t love you so you’d leave quicker. It hurts to tell the truth, even more than it aches to lie.”

“Then I won’t lie either.” he said plainly. “I’m not proud of you. I’m not happy for you. Frankly, I want you to be tortured right now, mentally or physically. I’m scared that it would bring me pleasure to know that your life was ruined by this decision. And I’m scared I’m capable of hurting people in ways I shouldn’t be. I know you said I’m not my father, but I’m his son. I took his shocks, every single one. I absorbed his anger, pretty literally. Most of me is the remnants of his self-hatred.”

She held out her hand. He took it as delicately as he could. “Yet, you’re still gentle. You want to be. Somebody said the last stage of grief is acceptance.”

“I’ve accepted my mom is dead, Clarissa.”

Her mouth twitched upwards at his use of her first name. “Have you accepted that you’re still alive?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Have you?”

She sniffed. “I’m trying to.”

“So am I.”

They didn’t let go of one another’s hands for what might’ve been hours. The birdsong returned to the yard, and the sun began to set, bathing them in orange glow. It brought out the features Clarissa never realised she had, that he’d always admired, the slope of her nose and rosiness of her cheeks. How her face was heart-shaped, like she was designed by God to appear friendly and warm at all times. She looked at him, his thinning auburn hair, his worn eyes, his too-strong cheekbones, and she grinned softly, taking him in patiently. They had time.

Whilst he was devastated about its result, he understood why he’d proposed to her. What he’d seen in her all of those years ago. Even if he’d been misled, he wasn’t wrong in seeing how beautiful she was, how hard she was trying to impress him, and how incredible her mind was. That had been true. It was a failure of a marriage, but not a lie. There had been love, attraction probably, genuine admiration and adoration. He couldn’t bring himself to be happy at the sight of her; he did care. He loved her.

He loved her enough to know that she was right. This wasn’t sustainable. Their love wasn’t enough.

“I’m gonna miss you. A lot.” he told her.

“I’m not going anywhere.” she reminded him. “We’re going to Somerset together. I want you there when the baby’s born, if you’re willing. You can come to my check-ups, ask the doctors all the weird questions you’ve been trying to ask me these past few days. We’re gonna have to go talk to lawyers together eventually. It’s not a very separate process, separation.” She chuckled rather dryly. “This doesn’t have to be the last time we spend time together. It doesn’t have to be the end of ANYTHING bar the marriage. We can just be… Mark and Clarissa.”

“What does that mean?”

“I guess we have the rest of our lives to find out.”

“Okay.” he paused, sighing weightily. “I don’t know if I wanna talk to you.”

“Now?”

“Just generally. For a while. I know we have to, and all the things you just said- I’ll do them. It’s gonna be hard for me to process. You weren’t even around all the time, but you were always mine. I could guarantee that wherever you went, you were gonna be back. We’d sleep in the same bed, wake up next to each other. There’s a lot of change. It’s like when my m- well, it’s different, but not really. It’s like a chunk of your life gets suddenly ripped right out. Even if the chunk wasn’t great, it’s still gone now. And it’s not coming back.”

“I know, Mark. I feel it too.”

“That’s hard to believe from my perspective.”

“I know. But it’s true.”

She let go, getting up to her feet. She looked at the yard, clearly realising this was the last time it would be hers too. There were tears in her eyes that refused to fall, either to force her to be strong for the pair of them or simply a sign of emotional exhaustion. She walked down the grass, right to the end of the shed, and took off her socks to return back. With each press of her feet she took in a breath, memorising how it felt against her toes. “It’s almost migrating season.” she repeated his words under her breath. “I always worry it’s genetic. Forgetting. I know it was the alcohol that caused the memory loss, but I can’t help the thought.”

Mark listened to her footsteps against the ground towards him more than he watched them. “Are you worried you’ll forget me?”

“I worry I’ll forget myself. Who I wanted to be.” She reached him. “But I still see her in the mirror, so she’s not far gone. I just wanted to retrace my steps, so I don’t walk them again.”

He decided not to ask what she meant, letting her enter the house once more. After staring at the bird feeder, grabbing some seed and refilling it, he followed her lead. Neither of them ate dinner, one staring at leftover Mexican food while the other didn’t even pretend to be hungry. They sat in the same room, silently going about their evenings. They avoided their phones, not in any urgency to break the bubble they’d created. Not wanting to face the reality of their changed lives.

She didn’t go with him to their room. In fact it seemed she was sleeping elsewhere. It struck him very starkly that they’d never sleep together again. He’d never kiss her again, never touch her again, never hold her, never wake up by her side. And he hadn’t known when doing them for the last time that there would never be a next time. Maybe the other day he’d noticed the futility of their attempts to revitalise things, but it hadn’t occurred to him how beyond fixing things had become. He couldn’t sleep, thinking about how he could’ve been better to her while he had the chance, even if they were doomed from the start.

In the middle of the night, he went to the toilet, and discovered where Clarissa had been spending her resting hours. She’d passed out between the bath and the sink, curled into the fetal position, holding her stomach. With her hair in a bun, he assumed she’d been feeling unwell, and the room smelled slightly of vomit. With little trouble, he carried her to the couch, and pulled a blanket over her half-asleep body. From the toilet, he brought a bucket, and placed it on the coffee table in the case she hadn’t thrown up the entirety of it.

“Thank you.” she mumbled. “M’sorry.”

“Yeah.” He wanted to return the sentiment, but couldn’t. She didn’t seem to mind much, shutting her eyes with a small groan.

He managed to sleep after this. Poorly. Still, it was an achievement. It was a new chapter.

Maybe his prayers were going to be answered after all.

Notes:

hello!!! that was a lot, wasn't it?
BIG AND HEAVY chapter that was weird to write (and features both some of my favourite and least favourite bits of this whole fic)
if it's not clear, this is kind of our turning point as we've passed the halfway mark, so be prepared for a tonal shift from here on out (mostly for happy reasons)
this was an experimental one, so I'd love to know what people think! please leave comments (although kudos/bookmarks/subscriptions are all cool too)
i imagine the next chapter will take a little longer, as i'm a little unwell and working this upcoming week (but still within the next 10 days most likely)
thanks for reading and I hope you all have a lovely afternoon, evening and night!
theo <3

Chapter 10: Domesticity?

Summary:

Thousands of miles apart, two families separate Easter.

Titch and Derek receive a prophecy, and see the future in a million different places.

Clarissa and Amanda try to cobble together something to call their own.

Maybe a million different griefs lay underneath the biggest joy of all.

-Somerset-

Titch McMillan worked too hard. This wasn’t news to him by any means. Even his primary teachers’ feedback to his new parents had been that, whilst he was definitely overflowing with emotional problems, his work ethic was unceasing to a concerning degree. One had even made a joke in a consultation that he “should’ve been born in the 1800s, he’d have been an incredible chimney sweep”, something that his mother had let out a snort at, and his father had threatened to walk out over.

He worked on Sundays. Most farmers did. It was April after all, time to begin planting. Next month, he’d be bringing the aubergine seeds outside, and letting them begin to flower. They were on the cusp of the most exciting part of the year, horticulturally speaking. The holy day had no meaning to the dirt, so it held little weight to Titch. That wasn’t strictly true, as he did go to Church, but the moment he took off his Sunday best, they were replaced with his flannel, dungarees and wellies at a rate almost missable by the human eye.

Except this Sunday, James was insistent that he mustn't work. “It’s Easter, Titch!” he’d shaken his brother over breakfast. “Literally Jesus’ birthday. It’s a massive birthday party. It’d be pretty fucking rude to get out a tractor at somebody’s birthday party, wouldn’t it?” Whilst Titch did broadly agree, he also didn’t think it was a big deal. It was the world’s biggest birthday party, nobody would notice a couple stragglers planting seeds. Plus he tended not to join in with the town’s celebrations. Beyond the service, the churchyard egg hunt seemed a tad beyond him.

“You’re just jealous that I got more eggs than you when you were twelve.” James pointed out smugly.

“You were eleven. You weren’t supposed to have more eggs than the little kids. It’s basic decency.”

“Oh shut up! Like it wasn’t you that shoved little Toby Field the year before that because he stole the cream egg from out your bucket!”

“Toby Field was a- Derek!”

The brothers’ spat was decisively cut off by the approach of Titch’s slightly haggard fiance, who was still getting into the rhythm of getting up early on a Sunday, having been an atheist practically all his life. Popping bread into the toaster, he patted Titch on the back and pressed his lips to his hair, murmuring, “Good mornin’, love” into the strands. His touch seemed to cause the frustration in him to evaporate, and he instantly forgot why he was arguing with James in the first place. “Morning James.”

“Hi, Derek. Tell your partner to stop working for the day. He won’t listen to me.”

“What did the GP say? You’ll send yourself to an early grave this way. Then what am I meant to tell the kids?”

Titch chuckled, knowing his boyfriend was being hyperbolic. “Lilibet the baby goat is hardly gonna notice who’s feeding her.”

“Well, I will.” Derek said curtly, trying to end the interaction then and there. He didn’t need to imply he’d be devastated if Titch died; he’d proven it at every turn. Sometimes it itched at him, the question of his own worth, but he never scratched at it anymore. Over the years it had become more believable, the idea that there were people who genuinely saw him and liked him. Even James, who had always said he struggled to understand his adopted brother, seemed to love him.

And with this realisation it had become easier to love all of them back.

“Fine, fine. I won’t work. Just for today. I know tomorrow’s Easter Monday… so maybe I’ll start late then. Is that a compromise?” Whilst he saw hesitation flicker in Derek’s eyes, he shared a look with James and conceded. Whilst Titch hated being treated like their patient, he knew they had the best of intentions. Since dad had died and mum moved back to Ireland, totally unable to inhabit any space he once had, nobody had become more removed than Titch McMillan. At least James had cried, at least he’d opened up to people, at least he’d stopped working to mourn.

These days, he saw himself as recovered from what he referred to as “grief-induced seasonal depression”, and what Derek called “very much real, clinical depression that did not in fact end the second the sun started shining, so you should maybe take it more seriously and take meds, love”. It had been two and a half years after all. He’d gone to church countless times, stopped drinking as heavily, and even attended a couple therapy sessions (begrudgingly, as it reminded him of being a foster kid with a social worker, not that he was going to tell James or Derek that). Mostly, he was improved.

“I think you forget how long I’ve known you.” Derek responded snarkily. He had a point. Having met in a pretty exclusive horticultural diploma course at Kew Gardens (Titch was pretty proud to be one of the 14 people they chose a year, and was downright starstruck that someone as talented as Derek had immediately bonded with him once he joined the following year) aged 21 and 22, it had been 6 years since their first meeting. Back then, they’d both been fresh faced, hopeful, slightly less disparate in height individuals (Titch swore Derek’s growth spurt didn’t end until he was 23). They’d been class favourites, alongside Philip, and it had seemed inevitable they’d found friends for life in each other.

Which just so happened to translate to lifelong lovers, as it turned out.

“Not forget… I wouldn’t forget you.” It was strange being so sappy, especially with his brother several feet away. They’d become more affectionate since James had left to pursue football, and now he was back for the holidays, they weren’t sure how to turn off this new couply version of themselves. “It’s more like… you’re like the furniture. You’re the kind of obvious bit of my life. So I don’t actively plan things around you. You’re a part of the plan. Which is why I argue with James, not you.”

James rolled his eyes at the pair of them. “I wish he’d be this nice to me.”

“No you don’t.” Titch replied swiftly. “Not this nice. I know we’re not blood-related, but-”

“Ew, Titch!” James yelped, putting the dots together surprisingly quickly. “Don’t even joke about that.”

“Okay… God forbid somebody keeps the air light on a national holiday.”

The trio made their way through breakfast in this manner, Derek and Titch bumping shoulders and Titch and James kicking each other under the table every thirty seconds or so like they’d done twenty years ago. Eventually, they got dressed for Church, Derek letting Titch pick out his outfit (although he pointed out that nothing Derek owned would be considered immodest, as he permanently dressed “like an alcoholic businessman after he attended a few AA meetings and started going to the gym”).

On the way to the car, Titch was tossing his keys up and catching them mid-air when he got jumpscared by the rustling of a bush. Though this unfortunately wasn’t the first time this had happened, he wasn’t fond of the way their neighbour had begun making her appearances. With her back hunched over from the burden of various pots, pans and assorted bags of goods, the 62 year old woman hobbled over to the three men with a pep in her step that only meant trouble. “Hello boys.”

“Hi Margaery.” Titch and Derek said in unison. James determinedly stayed silent, clutching Derek’s shoulder and hiding behind his massive stature.

“Easter Sunday.” She noted, looking up in the sky as if the clouds would magically spell out what day it was. “Never been too fond of him. We’re more or less the same age, and you don’t see me making such a big fuss on my birthday.”

Titch tittered. He couldn’t exactly deny that Margaery was 2062 years old. Not since he’d witnessed her potions give Derek two broken pinkies AND change the output of an entire field. The Christian and rational man in him was desperate to disprove her story, and yet it was basically proven. In his own father’s diaries, he’d spoken of her skill. When he got his mum incredibly drunk once, she’d confessed that she’d taken Margaery’s drugs a couple times early in the marriage. She’d even tried to use her for fertility help, although this seemed to be one of the few realms Margaery didn’t specialise in. He simply didn’t like her vibes.

And he was still mad on Derek’s behalf over the whole hospitalisation thing.
“What is it this time, Margaery?” he asked, weathered instantly.

“No need for that sass, dear. You’d think the church had created a minimum height requirement the way you’re getting all pissy.” She hummed, taking pleasure in his evident displeasure. “Anyways, I came as a messenger. My dearest friend Ethel was helping me with a particular assignment, and we were beginning to think it was a lost cause. That was until she finally came round a bit. Ethel wants her to get with the girl, but that’s because she’s just in a fuss still that her grandson didn’t marry a man.”

“Huh?” James asked aloud.

“I’m just saying, that it’s twenty twenty three, gays aren’t that interesting, are they? God knows, the pair of you” she gestured lazily to Derek and Titch, “haven’t got a fascinating bone in your bodies. And that includes the two I broke of yours, Gangles. Ethel has it in her head that it’s a whole problem worth solving because she was born during the war. Me? I’ve been alive a lot longer and I can tell you being gay is just about the most boring thing about me. In fact, even the word gay is boring. I prefer…”

She trailed off, allowing the three men to fill in the gaps. Whilst Derek clearly wanted to ask if Margaery was actually a lesbian, Titch shot him a harsh look. “Get to the point, Margaery, I don’t care about your friend’s grandson.”

“Neither do I, but it doesn’t make Ethel stop rambling about his wife’s time in Berghain, does it?” She sighed, pinching her nose. “I am sorry I’m being like this. It’s been a long decade, you know? Anyways, on with your prophetic statement. Basically, you’ve sown the seeds and now it's time for an unexpected root to flower. Something something a world will open its eyes up to you, your life will be given meaning and a fairy will be born anew with the sound of laughter.” She cleared her throat. “I took too much LSD after that to help with more future shit. Whoopsie.”

Before they spoke she vanished, likely to her tent, her stool and her cauldron, like a weird cartoon witch that didn’t follow the human laws of physics and back pain. In her wake, James seemed to be rubbing his eyes as if everything he’d witnessed was a bad dream, Derek was walking towards the car, mumbling, mostly unfettered, and Titch had dropped his car keys on the floor. Bending down to pick them up, he thought for a split second he heard the sound of a loud, sharp cry. By the time he whipped his head towards the noise, it had stopped equally abruptly.

“Did anyone hear something half a second ago?”

James raised his eyebrows. “Other than an old woman’s mental health crisis? No?”

He winced as the expected hand popped up, slapped him, and left.

“I’m not old, and it’s not a crisis!” the wind echoed.

They got into the car. From the passenger seat, Derek seemed concerned. He stared at the driver for a long time as he started up the engine. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah dear, why wouldn’t I be?”

“Oh, no reason.” he replied, clearly having a reason. “It’s just… you seemed to be more affected by Margaery than the rest of us. That’s normally a sign. Plus she was talking all about an assignment with a woman, and I wondered if it had anything to do with us.” He drummed his hands on his lap, his typical nervous movement. “Something about it’s weird… fairy’s laughter… an unexpected seed… a client… Ethel… our lives aren’t meaningless right now, are they?”

“No. We have each other, and the farm. That’s plenty of meaning as far as I’m concerned.”

“Right…” Derek wasn’t letting it rest. “Is it Clarissa?”

“How would I know?” He began driving monotonously towards the town church, forcing James’ hand away from the wire to plug in his phone and play whatever music he’d suddenly decided whilst out playing was his favourite kind. “When has Margaery ever said anything that makes sense to any of us? That woman’s older than Somerset itself, her first language is probably long dead. If you ask me, reading into it’s only gonna send you insane, Derek. Now, let’s enjoy Easter, which is what YOU were so insistent I do.”

The conversation, though seeming unfinished, ended there, and only five minutes or so later they were getting out of the car for the service. Everyone looked lovely, dressed in button up shirts and wide smiles, handing out bread and wine like nobody’s business. They sang hymns, had speakers up, and reminisced on the resurrection of Jesus like it was something they’d all been alive to see. Which, Titch now knew, was true for a select few of its inhabitants. Once the bushy-bearded old minister finished up his speech, the youth pastors massed a crowd of youngsters for the real fun.

“Right guys,” Holly Willoughby, the tallest and most authoritative youth leader announced, “it’s time to get your buckets for the egg hunt. We’ve got thirty two, since Beth and Jasmine are in a team and the youngsters are gonna be going in a group with their parents.” She began handing out the tools to the toddlers who almost fell under their weight, and the eleven year old girls holding hands. “Remember the rules: no stealing, no fighting, and no eating the eggs before we’ve done a count and announced the winner, otherwise we’ll have no way of proving it.”

“But Holly,” a scruffy-haired eight year old moaned, “I want to be in a team with James! He’s really fast, I saw him on TV last week doing a goal.”

Amused by the idea of “doing a goal”, Titch’s brother emerged from the pews and approached the child. “Digby, having me is an advantage. You need to prove you’ll be a good team mate, otherwise I might go and join Willow instead.” He pointed to the boy’s younger sister, who giggled at the idea. After being gone for the best part of two years, Titch did find himself endeared by the sight of James integrating right back into the community. Being recognised and appreciated. The thing he’d always been desperate for.

While Digby began flexing his non-existent muscles and footwork skills for a thoroughly intrigued James, Titch felt a tap on his arm. Turning around to face the distraction, he saw the girls from before. Beth Jenkins was a freckled, acne-ridden girl with thick horn-rimmed glasses, the daughter of a long line of police officers in Somerset with thick Essex accents that seemed unexplainable. Jasmine Ahmed was a gangly, wavy-haired girl with arms littered with bracelets to represent all the bands she was into, who’d only recently moved to the area from London. They were an odd pair, who he’d seen whispering all during the service that day.

“Mr McMillan,” Beth began, her accent familiarly strong. It was odd. His dad had always been Mr McMillan around here. He’d been Little Junior for so long. Beth was too young to remember, obviously. “I was wondering if you and Mr Thomas might want to do the egg hunt with Jasmine and I? I know it might be a bit weird, because you’re like, quite old for this, but we thought it was a good idea. Plus, we’ll give you all the eggs we don’t want. Jasmine’s allergic to loads of things, and I’m fussy.”

He stared at the tweens for a moment, before turning to face Derek, who’d noticed the interaction. Upon Titch giving him a shrug, he made the decision for the pair of them. “Yeah sure, why not? I do love chocolate.” Titch laughed to himself. Despite working around food, Derek was a bizarrely strict eater. He’d always thought he’d make a good dad, with the way he was so disciplined with his health. On the other end of the scale, Titch had to stop going shopping in late October because he kept buying up half the Halloween stock and eating it overnight.

“Why are you lying?” he whispered to his boyfriend.

“Because it’s about time we let loose a bit. And I DO like chocolate!” He sheepishly stared down at the ground, admitting defeat. “Sparingly.”

“You just want to feel like a kid again.”

“And so what if I do? That’s a perfectly normal feeling!”

Resolving not to fight him, Titch smirked and followed the two girls out of the huddle as Holly began a countdown from five. Across the group, James seemed to have united Willow and Digby in a tentative but powerful team. Philip, who hadn’t told any of them he was coming, had rallied together some rowdy six year olds, creating an army of children in incidentally ripped jean shorts and Mickey Mouse crocs prepared to fight tooth and nail for a kinder.

“And GO!” Holly yelled over the hubbub of the children, and they fled into the early afternoon, their various supervisors hot on their tails. Whilst the younger ones went straight to the obvious places- beneath trees, in between flowers, underneath the awning- the slightly older amongst the bunch were used to the deceptive egg-hiding skills of the eighteen year olds running the event, and headed straight for dusty, pebble-ridden corners. Within seconds, Jasmine and Beth were scooping bunny rabbits and Lindt into their purple and green buckets. Derek held their equipment whilst they gathered. It was all a well-oiled machine.

A smile festered on Titch’s face as he witnessed the pair bickering over which direction to look next, their pinkies firmly intertwined. It reminded him vividly of being much younger, in the mid 2000s, clinging onto another boy’s arm and dragging him around the playground, trying to rationalise feeling quite so strongly about him. These days he could saunter around the churchyard without a care in the world, hand in hand with the love of his life. Maybe the girls had this privilege. Or, maybe, they’d asked for Titch and Derek’s company so as to feel less alone in their companionship.

Derek had slotted right in amongst them. The sight wormed its way into his heart against his better judgement. For years, he’d caught himself picturing it: life with Derek. Nowadays, while wedding planning, it made sense to envision what was to come. But even during their days at Kew, he’d look up from the dirt and notice his friend wiping soil from off his nose with the back end of his glove, and let his mind wonder to waking up to that face every morning. Being the one to clean muck off him. Kissing the clean skin. Expecting the same thing back, in sickness and health.

He’d never been sure about marriage until meeting Derek. With him, commitment seemed like the obvious answer. Just seeing how happy he was proposing was enough to answer yes. He’d say yes a million more times to see that smile again. He’d say yes every day for the rest of his life if Derek needed the evidence.

“Are people nice about you two?” Jasmine asked during an egg dry spot.

“They’re never mean.” Derek responded simply, waiting to see if the man who’d lived here all his life had a more conclusive answer.

“These days, they’re pretty open minded, yeah. Wasn’t always like this. Count yourselves lucky. Or don’t. I’m not in school anymore, I don’t know what it’s like.”

The girls narrowed their eyes at each other, silently asking themselves the same question. Eventually Beth opened her mouth, becoming a little quieter on instinct. “I mean, it’s alright. Nobody says anything to our faces. But it’s not like they would, is it?” She shrugged half-heartedly, following the trail of toddlers’ footsteps. “We’re almost finished Year 7, so now everyone knows each other better, so they’re all talking about each other. It’s scary, knowing they’re saying something, but not knowing what.”

Titch tried to smile, although it came out more grimace adjacent. “I think I get it. When I was little, people were always talking about me being adopted. It pis- annoyed me to hear that they had all these preconceived notions. Judgements, basically, about the type of person I was and what my parents must’ve been like. If you were like me you’d just punch them in the face and go about your day, but maybe don’t do that. Also don’t tell Holly I said any of this stuff. I might never see you guys again.”

The girls chuckled to themselves. Titch wasn’t sure if he reminded them of himself or Derek, or if he was imagining having his own children one day, giving them advice and being scolded by his husband for encouraging violence. Sharply, he veered himself off this course of thinking by noticing a Santa chocolate that must’ve been out of date by now smothered in dirt next to a bench dedicated to a recently deceased person. His own father, he realised, with a downwards-facing smile.

“You alright, love?” Derek asked.
“All good.” He replied, surprised to hear his honesty. Despite everything, he was fine.

They ended up coming a respectable second, only beaten by James’ supernatural speed and Willow and Digby’s familiarity with the church’s layout. In fairness, they’d gotten distracted numerous times discussing all the Year 7 drama, which to Titch, was simultaneously deeply disturbing and far more interesting than egg hunting. Chloe had left Darren for Ollie because Millie told her Darren had snapped Jess a picture of him shirtless. Everyone involved in this story was twelve. The most dramatic thing Titch had done by twelve was send his brother to the hospital by accident.

Divvying up their prize, Derek donated all of his to the youngest members of the youth group, and Titch begrudgingly followed suit (bar a cream egg he’d stored in his pocket for revenge on Toby Field, who’d told him he deserved to be homeless like his sket biological mum probably was). He snapped it in half and forced Derek to take some, which he did. They stood off to the side, watching the children munching feverishly. Jasmine and Beth were also sharing.

“I give it a month.” Titch whispered.

Derek snorted. “You’re such a sad sack.”

“They’re eleven! A month is a kind estimate.”

“Well I give it a year.”

“We can both agree they’re toast though.”

Derek spoke with his mouth full, a hand over it. Titch was beginning to succeed in convincing him that it was alright to be a little gross around the people you love. “Oh, absolutely doomed. They’re kids. Plus I remember how brutal Year 8 is. Too much free time, everyone gets mean all of the sudden. I kissed a boy for the first time in Year 8 in a game of spin the bottle at a thirteenth birthday party. It was downright awful. He scratched my lip with his braces.” Derek chortled at the memory. “My point is that breaking up’s sort of the point. You can wish them the best and still know that the joy of being young is moving on.”

“You’re acting like we’re old pensioners. I’m only pushing thirty, I have time for a couple more marriages left in me before I settle down.”

“More marriages? Anything you’re not telling me about?”

“Oh right. Forgot we weren’t married yet.”

“Aye.”

“Time for just the one marriage after you then, perhaps.”

“How generous.”

They walked arm in arm back to the car, smothered with thanks from Holly and chocolates from Philip and James, both of whom lacked the courtesy Derek had instructed. On the drive, James bellowed the lyrics to Shine Jesus Shine at the top of his lungs. Philip groaned, Derek stared blankly into the middle distance, and Titch tried to keep up his annoyed glare, but eventually joined in, albeit a little quieter than his sugar-mad brother. It was overall a very painful, exhilarating five minutes back to the farm.

Shortly after getting back, Titch was brewing up a black coffee when the phone went off. Normally he’d ignore it on Sundays, since it was almost impossible for it to be a business call, but something compelled him to pick up on the third ring. Instantly he was rewarded with a loud, thick and fast American woman’s voice. “Hi, is this McMillan farm? Titch? Derek? Philip?” She seemed to run out of names. “In Somerset? Generational farm. Known for eggplants- no, aubergines, and has a few animals too so-“

“Yes? It’s Titch McMillan. Who is this?”

“Oh good.” She cleared her throat. “Clarissa Jenkins. The journalist who was there last week. And last year actually. More like a couple years ago. The point is, you know who I am. I’m rambling. I procrastinated making this call, and now I feel a little crazy.”

Her tone threw him off. The presence of a journalist indicated newsworthy events, but the panic and word vomit insinuated something much more serious than work. Which, to Titch, was an idea few and far between. What was more important than work? Love, he believed, but why would Clarissa Jenkins be calling about love? Money? You worked for money. Kind of defeats the point. But maybe she was just worried. There could’ve been a misprint in her article. An incorrect fact. Perhaps she was just calling to get clarity. “What’re you calling about then, Mrs Jenkins?”

There was a long pause. “Miss Jenkins, actually.”

Titch looked around the room, trying to signal for backup. Emotional reassurance was not his forte. From the next room, he heard some shuffling, and silently prayed the more sociable Philip might be around. “Oh. Right. Sorry.”

“Oh no, don’t.” Her voice sounded rather genuinely neglectful of the apology, enough for him to wonder just what he’d missed in the two weeks since he’d last seen her. During that, she’d been married and (based on the constant hand hovering over her stomach and nothing she said aloud) pregnant. Who got separated from their child’s father less than a few months into the pregnancy? What prompted such a sheer change of heart? Titch was far from asking, but it didn’t prevent the questions from piling in his head. “But it’s sort of related to the subject of me calling, now you mention it.”

“Aye?” He was rather speechless, having no clear guidelines for how he was meant to navigate this kind of conversation. Either he needed to go back to therapy, or she was just a really weird person to speak to. Derek wondered into the living room and, noticing his boyfriend on the phone, held up a hand to silently ask whether his presence was welcome. Titch wordlessly put the phone on speaker, hoping he’d get the message. The two men stood a foot or so apart listening, one with a eyebrows raised and the other with them furrowed.

“Um, yeah. Since Mark and I got separated,” Derek whipped his head around to Titch at these words, his mouth agape. Titch simply shrugged and tilted his head back towards the phone, encouraging his partner to remain focused since this seemed to only be the top of the mountainous mole hill. “We’ve mentioned your name a few times. And Derek’s obviously. Mostly in passing, but I thought it was worth bringing it to you. Just to gauge how you’d feel about us potentially developing a stronger understanding.”

“Understanding?” Derek mouthed, his arms flopping around like a fish.
Again, Titch shrugged. “Just go with it!” he whispered, forcing Derek to pick the phone up.

“Okay,” Derek said into the ancient piece of technology, glaring playfully at Titch for throwing him under the bus, “this is Derek. Titch passed the phone to me, but he’s right here. What I was wondering was… what are you talking about exactly? An understanding of what?”

The line went silent for several seconds, giving the impression that the caller was telling the truth, and hadn’t scripted what she was going to say. Titch rather wished she had, because the awkwardness was only pushing him further over the edge, and Derek was beginning to share his frazzled exasperation. Crackling sounds that might’ve been one long exhale were audible, and eventually she seemed to have deemed herself ready to speak. “I’m pregnant with Mark’s baby. Now we’re separated, we’ve decided it’s probably best for us not to keep it.”

Both men stared at each other blankly, rendered dumb. Being gay men from rural countryside, this was perhaps the scenario they were least prepared for. Abortion wasn’t exactly some abstract idea, they each knew people at university who’d been through it, and Titch had even driven a friend to the clinic back in the day (although he’d left her boyfriend to do most of the comforting). As one of two boys, he’d never really had the pregnancy chat with his mum (and James had been the only one able to cause a pregnancy, which had made him even less of a priority in that sense). Derek had a sister, but they were too far apart in age for these kinds of conversations, he assumed. Neither made a move to answer.

“Hello?” Clarissa offered.

Biting the bullet, Titch gave a feeble, “We’re still here. I’m sorry about…” he gestured to Derek, who gave him a sympathetic frown, “that. Um, why are you telling us?”
There wasn’t exactly a kinder way to ask, although he reeled in pain upon hearing the words exiting his mouth.

“That’s- that’s a fair question. Well, last time I was there you guys were incredibly sweet. You offered me a place to stay, food and advice. And I listened to your story, about your relationship, it just clicked. You guys were kind of aspirational to me, and I pretty quickly realised that it was an unattainable point to reach with Mark. Which is… fine. Or it will be. But as far as the baby is concerned, it seems important that it be raised by parents who can guarantee the kind of love and support that you guys gave me.”

The couple were no less confused. Eventually Derek spoke up. “Do you want us to come with you to the clinic, or-”

“What clinic?”

Titch, realising Derek was about to dig himself a deep grave, tapped his arm. “Clarissa, are you having an abortion or not?”

On the other end, there was a noise adjacent to a dry chuckle. “No. No. Sorry, I know that, based on everything up till now, that’s where it sounds like I’m headed. I’m not getting- no. For reasons mostly emotional and a little bit religious, that seemed too terrifying to me. Instead, I’m going to be giving the child up for adoption. An open one, obviously, where communication and consent is key. I’m not abandoning it, or forgetting about it or anything like that. I want to feel like I did right by my child. This seems like the best moral thing to do.”

The room was split in half. Derek was humming to himself, trying to put the pieces of what she was saying together, bit by bit, and becoming steadily more open-mouthed in shock. He was repeating Margaery’s prophecy from that morning under his breath, connecting elements that he couldn’t even conceptualise. He kept flitting his gaze between the phone and his partner, seeing all the possibilities. The life they were being offered, the life it might revoke from them. What James might say.

Titch had not thought this far ahead, mostly because he was stuck at the first part of what she was saying. “Adoption” was the “best moral thing” to Clarissa. Over the past two decades, he’d harboured an assortment of feelings towards his birth parents for his conception and immediate ditching by the bins of a petrol station on the M5 towards Somerset. He’d been tossed about foster homes, observing family dynamics through the lens of an outsider. Even once he’d been chosen as a permanent resident of the farm, he’d never believed it. Every day for the first four years, he’d imagined some suited businessperson would wrestle him out the front door with a clinical smile and a clicking fountain pen.

“An open adoption?” he thought aloud. At his childlike wonder, Derek snapped his head around to see his boyfriend’s wide eyes and melted, reaching out for his hand and squeezing it with a reassuring smile. Titch turned his lips upwards slightly in response, still waiting for Clarissa to explain what she meant. Of course he knew what an open adoption was, but it had never been remotely close to an option for him. Nobody had ever claimed parenthood of him. Frankly, he’d stopped wanting to know. All the answer would bring was rage, to discover there were people alive who’d decided he didn’t deserve a home. Who’d left him on the side of the road like trash.

Clarissa must’ve heard his stunned nature, because her voice softened. “Yeah. I know you were adopted, but I don’t know under what conditions. Regardless, I don’t want to cause the baby any suffering. No matter what, I’m gonna be around, checking in, ensuring they get all the opportunities I wouldn’t be able to bring them under my roof. I wasn’t really thinking about it when I considered calling you guys, but it must be an issue pretty close to your heart. I’d understand if you’d like me to leave you out of it.”

Derek brought himself close, whispering in Titch’s ear, “She’s asking us if we’d be interested, darling. It’s like Margaery said, ‘it’s time for an unexpected root to flower’.”

Titch wasn’t sure exactly what root he’d planted to cause this result. He didn’t know when he’d conveyed the impression that he was a man in search of children to acquire. Sure he was an older brother, but that was by barely a year, and James had always been the more domestic and affectionate of the two. How was he supposed to interact with a child of his own? Would he be like his adoptive parents, a little complicated yet ultimately loving to their core, or his biological ones, and leap at the idea of a commitment such as this?

An arm soothingly rubbed his back. Derek was holding him. Early in their relationship, he’d hated being coddled by his partner, feeling weak and vulnerable and in need of assistance. Whilst it still sent his brain into overdrive, he rather liked knowing how supported he was these days. As long as Derek was nearby, he was never alone. And even when they were separate physically, he didn’t doubt someone was in his corner. Same with James, and his mum, and, slowly, Philip, and Derek’s family. There was the church, and the townsfolk, and Margaery and all her concoctions (most of which were admittedly drugs).

“Oh, right.” he said. “You want to ask us.”
There was a pause. “Yeah. I was hoping you’d say it first.”

“We’re not expected to answer now, are we?” Derek asked on his behalf.

“No. Not at all. I was kinda hoping you wouldn’t. It means you’re thinking it through properly, which is what I’m trying to do by asking.”

Titch hadn’t been born as Titch, or even the name he’d had before that. Two names ago, he’d been handed a petrol station and a fifty year old cashier who’d almost had a heart attack at the sight of him before calling up emergency services and getting him hauled into a hospital incubator. Leonard had been born in 1945, so the name wouldn’t have been quite as odd for him. A social worker had chirpily commented that the premature baby might make a good “Lennie” one day. Leonard Taunton Deane had, in fact, not.

For his early years, everything he had was a hand me down. Other peoples’ names, other peoples’ clothes, other peoples’ families. People never asked him what he wanted. They asked if he was okay like he had any frame of reference for what ‘okay’ would be, but they never asked what he’d want to be changed. Which, in fairness, had been quite a lot. He wanted siblings who stuck around, parents who weren’t a little bit afraid of him, teachers who didn’t condescend to him. A house with more plants. He liked plants. They didn’t leave.

By comparison to him, this child was in for a paradise of a childhood. Parents who actually wanted to name it, food and shelter from the day it was born, both present adoptive and biological parents. Maybe they wouldn’t have the impostor syndrome he’d grown up with, a lurking inkling that he wasn’t supposed to be born, and that his existence was somebody’s biggest regret. Maybe they’d get siblings, get a big garden to play in, a network of people who really tried to get them. People who did.
Maybe he could be the one to correct the mistake.

“Maybe.” he said slowly, looking to Derek for reassurance.
“Maybe.” he affirmed with more confidence.

Beyond that, they had little to say. All three thanked each other, and quickly, the call simply died out. The phone went silent. The room suddenly became claustrophobically small, and Titch was very aware of his two feet planted firmly on the floor. His words were still echoing in his mind. Maybe. It was the only constant he could depend on. The uncertainty. He hated the unknown, but he’d had no shortage of it over the years. It had a comfort to it by now, a bizarre familiarity. Like when his father had gotten ill, he’d been pleased by the fact that he didn’t know when the point of no return was passed. It meant it wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t his burden to carry. It was in the Lord’s hands.
God would guide him in the right direction. Clarissa too.

“She’ll visit in a few weeks with Mark.” Derek explained the end of the call, which Titch had been too zoned out to take note of. “They’re trying to scope if we’re the right fit. Our job is to decide if we’re up for it. Whether it’s too soon, too financially or emotionally draining. If the farm is a place for little’uns.” Preempting one of Titch’s main concerns, he gently pulled his fiance’s chin upwards so their eyes could meet. “No matter what happens, whichever choice she or we make, it’s not our fault if we can’t take the baby in. Someone will. This baby is gonna live a happy life. You’re not obligated to do it just because of how you were raised.”

“I know.” He did. Partly. “Do you want-” he stopped, not sure how to ask. They’d had the conversation, or at least skirted around it over the past couple years. There had been the strong implication that in the distant future, they’d want a family together. Derek had spoken so lovingly about his family (once it had gotten its shit together), and Titch was proud of the home he’d found and made in McMillan farm. Together, and only together, he’d be happy to grow it into something bigger one day.

“It’s a tad bit soon.” Derek pointed out, completing the train of thought. “She’s due in early October, she thinks.”

“We’re getting married around then.”

“True. Big paperwork year, in that case.” He smiled, albeit feebly. “Could be fun, though.”

Titch tried to metaphorically sober up and pay attention to the glow in his partner’s eyes that he loved so much. The joyous youthfulness that Derek managed to cling onto that Titch wished he still had. He could see into Derek’s mind, all the cogs turning, the Summers he was picturing with little legs skipping across the fields. Loud, high-pitched squeals coming from tractors, where they’d sit in the lap of a much larger person. Little wellies next to sturdy boots on the shoe rack. The spare room finally getting a purpose.

“Christ, you’re gonna be a good dad.” Titch let slip.
Derek went bright red, very genuinely touched. “So are you. Now or later.”

There wasn’t much left to say after that.

 

-Amanda’s Apartment-

Clarissa hung up the phone with a pond’s worth of frogs in her throat. Her entire life - the baby’s entire life - hung in the balance. If she didn’t pitch like a future Shark Tank billionaire, she was in the wrong place. They’d sounded moderately confused, a little suspicious, and a tad excited, which was more than enough to drive her insane for the following two weeks leading up to the visit. She kept planning out scenarios, trying to find the variable that led to the adoption in every single one. Whether it was finances, emotional problems, familial accessibility, time management- she had to solve every problem before it arose.

She told Mark absolutely nothing. He was better off without the minutiae of her scheming, far too busy wallowing and thatching the neighbor’s roof to confront his child. She’d been working remotely as much as possible, drawing up a big article on her trip around the UK, seeing how she could manipulate a mental breakdown into a marketed, brainstormed idea. Constantly completing the drive between her home and Amanda’s apartment, hauling countless boxes and appliances from one to the other.

It was strange, seeing her life laid out in cardboard. Two suitcases full of clothes had been the first to go (and she’d donated anything she didn’t want to a charity store). She realised that soon half these items wouldn’t fit her. Maternity shopping sounded like a nightmare, but maybe she’d bring her mom. There were carrier bags filled with makeup she relied on to look halfway presentable, as well as various hygiene products. Without them, Mark and her bathroom looked empty. She’d forgotten that that was what a woman did to a household. Now it was simply products to prevent hair thinning, shaving foam, and a 3-in-1 shampoo, conditioner and body wash that made her nose wrinkle.

There were DVDs, cassettes and mixtapes (she wasn’t that old, she was just best friends with a girl raised on 80s music, and married to a man who idolised his mom) in the first box. She’d combed through it briefly, grinning at the sight of Alanis Morissette and Waiting For a Star To Fall. After playing it through once, she heard the lyrics ‘seems like waiting makes me love you even more’ in the bridge and promptly scratched the track to a halt altogether. Not worth reading into, she supposed.

“Books” was by far the heaviest load, as it included both her favorites and some of her own childhood journals, which she’d consistently overflowed with sketches, lyrics, stories and reviews of any piece of media she consumed. There’d been some she’d been willing to give away again, but words on paper seemed so precious to her. They were what had given her her livelihood, her sense of direction and fun. She wanted to hold on tightly to the things that tied her passions to history. Otherwise she worried she was floating in an empty ocean.

Amanda was the only one with a working landline she actually was confident in operating, so it had made sense to make the most of it. The whole call long, Amanda herself had been fifteen feet away, scrolling through Twitter with an increasing pallor on her face. By the time Clarissa hung up, she was staring expectantly, in need of a distraction from the site she’d once turned to as a distraction. In response, her best friend crashed lamely onto an armchair, and sighed into her palms.

“Hopeful?”

“Hopefully.” She spoke through the gaps in her fingers. “It’s hard to tell. I’m asking them to do something objectively crazy, in barely six months time. They’re planning a wedding already, on top of running a successful farm. I’d be changing their whole lives. And mine. They’d be stuck with a piece of me for the rest of their lives, and they barely even know me yet. Imagine having me sprung on you, Mandy. You’re unlucky you don’t know anything else. Don’t know what you’re missing out on.”

Amanda got up and rubbed Clarissa’s shoulder comfortingly. “Now, don’t go wallowing just because you’re away from him. You’re rebuilding. Let’s not take it out on ourselves. If you were a client I’d tell you to be okay with not being okay. Accept that some days are gonna be tough in the next few months. You’re not always going to be proud of the decisions you’ve made, and the relationship you’ve lost. That’s perfectly healthy, and nothing to be ashamed of. Because I’m also your best friend, I’m adding a caveat that you’re allowed to hate him a little bit. And that you can stuff your face with chocolate and be stupid and all that. Grief is messy and you already know that. This is just a new grief.”

Clarissa stared at her best friend in the low, early afternoon lamplight. Normally she’d be busy of a weekend, least of all Easter. Last night she’d brought herself to attend the Easter Vigil, watching people receive Holy Communion as she wondered what lives they were going home to. Asking herself if she was worthy to be in their company, a sinner in disguise. Across the room, she’d made eye contact with Mark, and tasted the metal of his blood on her tongue. Today she’d missed Mass. Divine Mercy Sunday was next week, and she wasn’t sure if she could stomach it.

When her father had died, she’d turned to the Church as a sanctuary. Even if half the town was whispering about his passing, it was easier to focus her attention towards the Lord. She’d pray for his eternal soul, pray for her own salvation for briefly being glad to see him out. Pray that her mother would one day recover and find happiness again, rather than deflate further and further into a shadow of her former self.

He died on a minor feast day, so she’d been surrounded by God’s people. She’d felt like a part of something bigger than herself. In her loneliness, it had brought warmth. With the divorce, she’d never felt less welcome. She knew what they’d say. She remembered over a decade ago, when Mr and Mrs Wilson had gotten divorced, and the rumors had festered amongst people. Every time a service occurred, Mr Wilson had covered his children’s ears as they entered, directing them to look straight ahead. Amanda had gone home during lunchtimes at school, feigning illness to avoid hearing girls whispering. Things had gotten weird with her around then, Clarissa knew as much.

They didn’t know yet. She’d not told anyone bar Amanda, Titch and Derek. Mark hadn’t told his father, and she was petrified of her mother’s reaction. For now, it was their little secret. Soon, it would be everyone’s gossip, and she’d be the subject to the majority of it. Wives always had it worse in this scenario. The adulterer, the Madonna, the whore. The sodomiser, the sinner, the slut. The bitch, the bastardised daughter of her poor parents. The money hungry mess of a maternal figure. And she was pregnant. They’d all ask who the real father was. It was a very new kind of grief. A grief for the woman they'd wanted her to be.

“I wanna stay here tonight.”

Amanda nodded slowly, awaiting further information.

“I’ll take the couch.” Clarissa informed her.

Amanda shook her head adamantly. “I can’t have you do that. You’re pregnant. I can sleep on it. It’s hardly uninhabitable.”

She smirked, ecstatic to catch her best friend out. “Exactly. I’ll inhabit it. It’s me who’s putting you out. I’m paying for my food, I’ll pay half your water bill this week, and I’ll cook half the meals. That’s my terms. No negotiations.”

Amanda sighed, already knowing where Clarissa’s mind would have jumped. It was like her better half was a manic rabbit with religious guilt that had only just realised a world existed outside of a magician’s hat. “We’re best friends. You’re not taking advantage of me by crashing here for free after you’ve separated from your husband. This is literally exactly what friends are for.” She tried to phrase her demands carefully. “Look, maybe you cook a couple nights a week, pay a quarter of my bills, and we sleep in my bed together. It’s a queen.”

Clarissa weighed the idea in her mind. When they were little and having sleepovers, they’d shared a single bed with one another. It had been a squeeze, especially with Amanda’s legs stretching to the very end of the bed at a slight diagonal, but they’d always made it work. She rarely snored, had a similar sleeping pattern to Clarissa, and would happily listen to her ramble before bed. For the first time in years, she would have a bedmate who enjoyed her company in the nighttime. “Deal.”
It was all coming together.

Maybe.

Notes:

hello!!!! did someone say official ditch crossover? it's me i said it, i'm adding it to the tags now :)

the lollipop lady's revenge (the longform my best friend titled, and i yelled at luke and aj) has been released today, which is crazy. it's been a very fun day in this fandom. weirdly, people have now found this fic via youtube comments of mine, so if that's you: hello! i've noticed you, and am very flattered! i hope you're enjoying this mess
s
peaking of mess, i've had fun with this one if you couldn't tell. i love TUA, titch especially, and am very excited for the crossover element as we move into the final third of this fic (i think? my maths is still pretty bad, we may have more like 40% left to go if i'm not careful)

anyways, i hope you enjoyed this slightly lighter chapter, be prepared for a little more emotional range coming up soon and thank you so much for reading!! reminder as always to comment/kudos/subscribe!!!

thanks again, theo (templetodestruction on all platforms) <3

Chapter 11: Discussion

Summary:

Clarissa adjusts to life outside of Mark, and has an honest conversation with her mom.

Amanda pours tea down the sink.

Mark finally works towards an answer to the question "What's wrong with Mark?"

 

(tw for mentions of physical/verbal/mental abuse, hallucinations/derealisation, and implied suicidal thoughts)

-Maggie Jenkins’ Bungalow-

Clarissa knocked three times. It had been the way she’d made her appearance at the doorway clear as a kid, before she’d been given her own set of keys. Since her mother had downsized from a house to a bungalow, once Clarissa finished her apprenticeship, she’d forgotten to give her daughter new keys. Of course she hadn’t minded, but it did worry her on occasions. The idea of something happening to her frail mother and her being trapped outside the house, forced to watch her suffering through the window, haunted her.

It did have a whimsy to it, though. Reminded her of what had been. Today, they were having lunch. It was the 16th April, Divine Mercy Sunday, and Margaret Petunia Jenkins had gone to church to celebrate amongst many Catholics in the town. Most years, after the service, she’d host a dinner to reconnect with her family. This would include her parents, Clarissa, Mark and Amanda, as well as some of her church friends. It was relaxed, jovial, and homely, and had only started in 2017. Maybe she’d been lonely. Maybe she’d been rescued.

“Are you sure I should come?” Amanda asked, having parked the car a minute’s walk away from her house. The pair had arrived together, both having skipped the religious aspect of the day, Clarissa simply too shameful to face them, Amanda continuing her distancing from the church in her adult life. They’d broadly been living together for the past week. It had been… nice. Awkward, perhaps, with all that had happened over the past few years. But it was raw, messy, much realer than their friendship had felt since her marriage.

That morning, she’d finally put a few of her t-shirts into a drawer in Amanda’s bedroom. Initially, it had seemed too final an action. Too much of a burden to her host, too intimate, too obviously an ending to her time with Mark. To share someone’s space was one thing, to inhabit it was another. But Amanda had encouraged it, specifically saying she had an empty drawer, and didn’t have any particular use in mind for it. “Look, it’s not like you’re leaving tomorrow, is it?” she pointed out, “You might as well empty out your suitcase. Just for a bit.”

Clarissa, remembering their conversation a few hours ago, looked at Amanda fleetingly. She had her hair half-up half-down, as elaborate as its short length could allow. There were necklaces, mostly crystals and gemstones, one of which had a cross. Her eyes were so dark they seemed to reflect Clarissa’s back in them. They were like the night sky, expansive and uniquely beautiful. Right below one of them, on her left cheekbone, was a beauty mark. Clarissa had once been told by a friend that beauty marks were simply kisses from a lover in a past life. She wondered who’d been lucky enough to imbue that on Amanda’s skin.

She wondered who’d been Amanda’s before. Matty. She knew about that. It made her blood boil, how much she’d failed her with that. There must’ve been so many girls she’d missed out on hearing about, judging, comparing herself to. Last week she’d found Matilda’s Instagram via mutual friends of Amanda’s. In fairness to her best friend, she was gorgeous, tall and slim and angular in all the places it counted. And she was interesting. Creative. Someone you’d be proud to be with. Except that she sucked. She’d blocked Matilda right after, doing what Amanda probably hadn’t.

“You can come. My mom always welcomes you.” She got lost in looking briefly, so much so she’d lost track of her words. “I’d force her to if she didn’t, you know. You mean too much for me not to.”

Amanda froze, leaning against the brick wall, stunned. It had been said so naturally, that she had to believe it. She knew what Clarissa meant. The implication. Were Maggie not to accept her sexuality, Clarissa would stand up for her. Against her sickly mom, who’d retreated into her home in her middle age, to avoid confronting that the world had changed since she’d gotten married. Who’d told Clarissa she was “discovering feminism” the other week. Who smoked cigarettes alongside taking her meds and having an inhaler. A woman slowly becoming a paradox.

“Thank you.”

“It’s no trouble. Your family’s been there for me for so long, including you.”

“Yeah.” Amanda looked hesitant to accept the compliment, but swallowed any objection. “Who else is coming?”

“Not sure. She invited me an hour earlier than everyone else, so we have time to give her the run-down on why Mark’s not coming; she’ll ask immediately, so we can take the full hour to explain. And we’ll need to, that woman adores him.” Not that she disagreed with her mom. Mark was a great guy. Was he the love of her life? No, admittedly. But she hadn’t lied to him once in the conversation where they separated. She really did wish him all the joy in the world. Apparently he was going to therapy soon. He’d mentioned it one night, where he’d spent two hours calling her, then aired her “good morning” message the next morning for three days. It had justified the aforementioned therapy enough for her not to mind.

Clarissa rang the doorbell three times, wishing her mother was less despondent. Several seconds later, a voice yelled, “I’m coming!” It took the typical thirty seconds for them to finally see her. Slightly bedraggled despite having already left the house for several hours earlier that day. She was wearing her nicest outfit, although she’d bought it fifteen or so years ago, and likely hadn’t ironed it in the last few wears. She had her slippers on, that seemed to have been chewed up by a dog she didn’t have. Her reading glasses were on at least, giving her some semblance of formality. “Hello girls!” she said cheerily, not noticing the absence.

They were each given a kiss on each cheek and a pat on the back before being welcomed in. Clarissa set about making the three of them tea whilst her mom and best friend made themselves comfortable in the living room. She could hear their small talk through the thin walls. Amanda was talking about recovering Clarissa from England, getting some new clients and buying a new Roomba. Margaret had begun a book club with some of her church friends, and was getting paid a bit to review new books in the local paper. Clarissa was glad to hear her mom was finally up to something that got her outside and interacting with real people.

When she came back in with the mugs, arranging the coasters and china properly, her mom looked at her for a long time. Mainly at her gut, which wasn’t the most surprising. It was gaining a more distinct shape with each passing day, enough so that people in public pursed their lips when they saw her, willing themselves not to look like they were staring just in case she wasn’t actually pregnant and had just been going through a tough time and started comfort eating. It had also inconvenienced her physical health, as sickness plagued her whenever anxiety didn’t. “How is the little one?”

“Well, I think,” she responded plainly, sitting on a bean bag that her mother often used as a bizarre replacement neck pillow. It sank lower than she'd wanted it to. “Mark and I went to the doctor’s yesterday. Twelve weeks.” Out of the window for abortion, she thought. As it turned out, she knew very little about being pregnant. In New Jersey, there was no gestational limit on terminating a pregnancy, which was nice. Not that she was going to. But it did provide her a backup plan, just in case arranging adoption became too much of a hassle. Maybe a poor backup plan, one that would keep her the center of unwanted attention even more than regular birth, but one nonetheless. Lots of things were opening up to her. “All’s healthy and well.”

“Speaking of health,” Maggie took a swig of her tea that she’d added a hefty number of pills into. “how is your Mark doin’? Any reason he couldn’t make it this lunchtime?”

Clarissa’s eyes darted to Amanda, who was already shooting her a sympathetic look. Neither of them wanted to be the one to bite the bullet, but each understood that Clarissa should probably be the one to do it. Flexing her freakishly long forearms, she reached for her cup of tea and feigned horror at it lacking the appropriate amount of sugar, darting off into the kitchen to go solve it. Clarissa knew the thin walls meant her friend was still able to intervene if things went majorly awry, and she knew that Amanda hated tea, and was only going to pour it down the sink. It was privacy she’d offered.

It sucked to bring someone for emotional support just to remember you had to create the situation they were supporting you to handle. Margaret had furrowed her eyebrows, watching the women’s cryptic interactions, yet being dreadfully unable to decipher them. Eventually she frowned, turning on her daughter. “I’m your mother, Clarissa Suzanne. I deserve answers to the questions I ask, no matter what. It’s my grandchild that you’re cooking up in there. Our grandchild.” She crossed herself, pressing her fingers up to the air afterwards to point towards Heaven.

Visibly fighting a scowl, Clarissa stared at her mother, instantly reduced to her teenage angst that she’d bottled up for so long. “How are you already offended?”

“I’m not offended.” Maggie held up her arms in a mock surrender, not helping her case. “I’m only reminding you that I’m the reason you came home. If it weren’t for me, you would’ve ran the length of the English Channel all by yourself out there. Sure, I told on you, but it was for the best, wasn’t it? We look out for each other in this family, and I was doing my duty.”

Conflicting responses bubbled in Clarissa’s mind. The obvious one was further frustration. Messing with her personal relationships, stealing a major life moment from her, was a deeply unemotional action. Her mother had overstepped, and couldn’t blame maternal instincts. Then again, there was the fact of the matter that Margaret had been correct. Having the two of them pursuing her had been pivotal in her realisation that she had to confront her reality. Without it, she wouldn’t have made any of this progress. Since dad died, she had been better. They had stuck to their word and tried to do good by one another.

Until the other day.

“Ma, you’re not going to like this much.”

“No… I often don’t. You’re a big girl, so I accept that.”

When she was sixteen, she stepped onto the stage, and searched for her parents’ faces in the audience. It was precisely what the teachers warned you against, but it was a force of habit. Plus this was one of the few events her dad had bothered to show up to, so it was only natural she was ecstatically awaiting his reaction. Whilst he was definitely the priority, her mom caught her eye first. There was a mini-spotlight making her face bright white. This was due to her phone being on, probably to message the electrician or plumber. They were only a couple minutes into the show, it wasn’t a big deal. Instantly, as if she psychically knew she was being stared at, she looked up and shot her daughter a wink.

Her mom was just a mother at the end of the day. Though useless sometimes, she supported her. “Mark and I have been talking a lot since, uh, he and I got back from our vacation.” She was already phrasing it poorly, a teenager trying to convince her mom not to get lost in her phone. Six different overlapping narratives were clogging the bloodflow to her brain, screaming different messages, suffocating all good reason. “We’ve come to the conclusion that we’re at a standstill. There’s not much to be done.”

Maggie’s hand hovered over the side table, ready to take a cigarette to her lips. “Is this about the baby, sweetheart?”

“No? Yes, to an extent. Not really.” She wondered idly how Mark would’ve explained this to her. Most likely, he wouldn’t. For an adult man, he’d never mastered the skill of communication to the extent expected of one. In fairness, she was hardly any better. “We’re planning to deliver the child. I’m giving birth. It’s everything after that that’s changed.”

“Don’t tell me you’re-”

“I’m giving it up for adoption, mom.”

Margaret spluttered incredulously, reaching for a cigarette and lighting. “Now I’ve really heard everything, haven’t I! A Jenkins, abandoning a kid. So what, it's going to some complete strangers? You think some random woman’s going to make a better mother than you, Clarissa? Do you really value yourself that lowly? No, I know you don’t want me to make a fuss, I’m sure you’re stressed as anything already. Mark’s clearly pissed if he’s refusing to come today. Make me understand.”

“Well, that’s not everything, ma.”

“Oh, what is it now? You’re running off with a lesbian nun from Mississippi? The baby’s being adopted by the polyamorous Wild West? Mark’s run off to join the circus?”

“No! Well…” she thought about the antics of the last couple months. Ethel, Margaery, Dillon, Titch and Derek. Very few things could compare to how crazy the reality was. On the other hand, it sounded like her mom was simply strawmanning an argument based on her own fearful prejudices she was only recovering from in her fifties. This was a debate she’d love to have if it was literally any other day. “It’s not that complicated. The little one might be getting adopted by this sweet, young, CHRISTIAN couple of guys from Somerset.”

Margaret hummed and hawed, clearly having opinions.

“It’s not that that I thought would bother you. I know how much you love Mark, how you said you knew that I was in good hands with him. You trusted him with your daughter, and, for the most part, I don’t think you were wrong to have faith in him. He’s been as good of a husband to me as he could have been in this state. I’ve been a bit of a shit wife, so I can’t afford to complain. What I’m trying to get to is that our time’s up. Mark and I’s. We’ve been mulling it over, and mutually, we’ve agreed the best course of action is to separate. We’re getting a divorce.”

Slowly, Maggie’s cigarette was deposited on the ashtray by her elbow. Leaning on it, she began to fade right in front of her daughter’s eyes. Not in death (not quite, although it looked close). More of a meditative state. Her eyes closed, her mouth hang open, her nose the slightest bit wrinkled. From an open window, wind rustled her dusty blonde follicles, the same ones she’d passed on to Clarissa. Clarissa, for her part, was trying to sip her tea so aggressively it brought her mother back to reality, to no effect.

Clarissa would’ve asked if she was drunk, but her mother had been sober for over a decade. It wasn’t peace of mind as much as it was a void, a vat for all her anguish. Alcohol wasn’t a medicine to her, but a vacuum, one that had drained the man she had wasted most of her life loving. Although she wouldn’t call it wasted time whatsoever. In her words, it was a “commitment”, a “consumption”, a “life force”. Not that it had been a force enough to save his life. Maybe that was why she didn’t drink. She was like a scorned lover, envious of the object of his affections. The bottle.

“Divorce?” Her voice wobbled as the word slipped out from between her lips. She reached onto the table for another cigarette then psyched herself out of it, reaching for her painkillers instead. Clarissa mumbled a warning not to over-rely on them, which she ignored, swallowing them dry with a groan. Whilst her knees bounced up and down, she pulled her rocking chair to and forth, a late-fifties woman perpetually stuck in the mannerisms of a ninety year old. Clarissa still remembered how lithe she used to be, making all her meals and walking her to and from school every morning. Now she rotted from the outside in.

“Divorce, ma. The dissolution of a marriage witnessed by God. You heard me right, before you pretend otherwise.”

“Your dad would be so disappointed.” she said matter-of-factly.

Clarissa burst into tears. Initially, she didn’t know why. She wanted to take pride in the idea that she had put her father to shame. It should’ve made her feel a spiteful gladness that the father who’d never understood her was finally going to see her strength. But she couldn’t bring herself to take any joy in the idea. After all, she’d once been sixteen years old, singing a song she thought was barely passable, that had almost brought him to tears. She’d moved him. At one time, she’d mattered to him. He’d never forgotten her, even at the end. He saw her, however briefly. She’d been his daughter. His little girl. Even when she hadn’t felt like it, she’d been her mom’s daughter too.

“I know.” she said between sobs. “I know he would.” Even now, having fought so hard to be seen as significant in their eyes, she craved their validation. She craved their affection, somebody who hugged her and told her her mind was worth being heard. That her mistakes were forgivable. A boa constrictor wrapped its way around her throat and she coughed down her cries. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I’m crying over things in front of you, and I’m sorry I couldn’t make things work with Mark, and I’m sorry you never saw dad get better. I’m sorry I didn’t try harder. I think it would’ve killed me if I had. I’m really sorry, mom, that I’m not who you wanted me to be.”

Maggie got to her feet, ignoring Clarissa’s bleary urge to “sit down, ma, you’re sick” in favor of taking her by both hands. She squeezed them, paying the most attention to the finger that had once bore Maggie’s own ring, and her mother’s before it. Holding her daughter, her only daughter and her only child, she shook her head. It was unclear to Clarissa whether she was refusing to sit down, or staying adamant to Bill’s memory, so she gulped down another tear. Her mom let go of one of her hands to hold her cheek. “Come here.”

She wrapped her arms around Clarissa’s neck with surprising strength that her daughter wasn’t wholly prepared to reciprocate. Seemingly it wasn’t expected of her. Margaret held tightly enough for the both of them. It was reminiscent of being even tinier than she was now, tripping over in the playground or being told off by an adult (usually her father), and being comforted by her mom. Back then it had been more of an instinctive reaction, a maternal obligation to be present for her only child. Now she was an adult, and affection was a choice.

“Hey, hey,” she pulled Clarissa’s face from where it was buried in her neck, cupping both her cheeks so their eyes met. They were similarly short women. Overall, they looked similar. People had always told her that. She used to hate it. She didn’t anymore. “It’s going to be okay, isn’t it, sweetheart?”

She coughed, covering her mouth. It was embarrassing to regress like this, but she’d rarely cried in front of her mom since becoming a teenager. It was oddly relieving. “I think so.”

“That’s all you need. Belief.” Maggie loosened her hold, yet didn’t let go. “I’m looking out for you. God is looking out for you.”

“What about dad?”

“I don’t know, darling. Sometimes, I think it’s easier if I don’t get held back by what he would’ve done. You’ve taught me that, somewhat.” She picked up Clarissa’s mug of tea, basically forcing liquid into her mouth like a baby crawling into its mother. “I’m not a young woman anymore. Frankly, I’ve never really been of my time, even when I was your age. Whatever insane schemes and lifestyles you have available to you, were never an option to me. Which means I’m totally unprepared to mother you through them. And also sorta unqualified to stop you.”

In between gulps, Clarissa asked, “What are you saying?”

Maggie replied, “That what makes you happy makes you happy. Nothing much I can do to alter that, no matter how much I want to. In time, we’ll see His vision for us. Maybe this is it for you.” She began to chuckle to herself. “I’m gonna miss Mark; his little ginger hair and his stupid words charmed me.”

Clarissa wiped her eyes, reminiscing over countless dinners at the old house. “Me too, mom. Me too. He might be back in some other capacity one day.”

“God be willing, he’ll make a good friend.”

“I promise I’m not giving her up just because I’m insecure.”

“If you say so.” Margaret raised an eyebrow, taking pause. “Her?”

“Just an intuition.”

“I got that with you, y’know. I kept telling your father you were gonna turn out a girl. I said it so much he stopped preferring the idea of having a son. He just wanted me to be validated in my guess so I’d shut up already. I don’t know if it’s Him that puts it in your head, but you trust it.” She looked Clarissa up and down, before nodding to herself. “I think I did a pretty good job raising you. You’re a nightmare for a Catholic, but you’re an honest girl with a big brain. You could lose a few pounds once you’ve had the kid, but it runs in the family.”

“MOM!” Clarissa exclaimed, somewhere between offended and amused. At the minute raise in volume, and the shift towards lighter words, Amanda silently shuffled back into the living room, empty mug in hand.

“I take it we’re all good?”

“Well, she thinks I’m fat, but besides that I think we’re on to something.”

For the next forty minutes, the conversation sprawled, going over the oddballs Clarissa met in the UK, Amanda finally having an overdue coming out with her best friend (Maggie was very excited to discover her Audre Lorde comparison had been apt, and less excited to learn that the “d slur” was “not appropriate anymore” and in fact had never been), and the two of them temporarily moving in together. She even offered to help out and go to Ikea with them to get bigger bookshelves, despite her health.

Though a rocky start, it had been a major success. On the drive back, Clarissa took the wheel, and kept reminding Amanda that this was a good sign. “Mark’s going to therapy next week, we’re going to see Titch and Derek the weekend after, you’ve let me move in. The baby’s healthy. I mean, it’s literally Divine Mercy Sunday, Mandy. I feel like this is some pretty big signs of mercy from God. I know you’re not into all of that these days, but you understand what I’m getting at, right?”

“Yes, Suzy. Although I think it might just be that you’re a good person. People know that. You get what you give.”

“God teaches that too. Luke 6:38. Give and it will be given to you. The Catholic still lives within you.”

“Stop talking like we’re in Star Wars.”

“Fine… you’re like Lindsay Lohan. You may leave the industry for a few years, but you can’t resist the call of the shitty movie.”

“Speaking of which, we have to watch Falling For Christmas. We were gonna when you got back from new York.”

Clarissa smirked devilishly. “It’s April, isn’t it too late in the year for-”

“Shut the fuck up!”

And that was their evening plans set in stone.

 

-Littlewood House, New Jersey-

Very little of the separation had settled in Mark’s mind. Other than the fact that she’d been progressively moving herself out, he didn’t feel like Clarissa had left him. Or he didn’t want to. All it would do was trickle down into something much darker. Abandonment. Again and again and again, being left. Soon you began to turn the thought inwards. Something must be wrong with you if people keep leaving. Maybe your mother wanted to die. Maybe the pressure of your existence drove your father to drink when he drove. You were small, but could you have known better?

It was easier to frame it as a temporary thing, to prevent his own spiralling. Just a piece of advice from his partner during a dry spell. And he had listened, even if he didn’t want to hear her. There were things she’d noticed that he’d been hiding much longer than they’d been together. It was kind of a relief to see that he wasn’t making it all up. His dad once said Mark had hallucinations. Visions of his mother, vivid dreams of the future with her in it. Teachers said it was just an overactive, very emotionally vulnerable imagination.

But Clarissa knew whatever he was going through was real, to him at least, and she’d told him to get help. And, despite everything else, the hatred he might feel for her right now, he trusted her enough to agree. So, when he ended early on Thursday afternoon, he grabbed a late lunch and ate it on the way to his first therapy appointment. It tasted rather like sand in his mouth, possibly due to nerves, and he sweat through his t-shirt in the April lukewarm heat, but it was fine. He was doing it.

When Mark pictured a therapist, he imagined a stern, mid-thirties woman at a desk, glasses on the end of her nose, clipboard in her arms, constantly working her gaze up and down his body, poring into his mind. She dressed in business casual, full face of makeup, taunting him with her put togetherness. Her heels would clack as she led him out of her study at the end of sessions, and she’d forget he existed the moment he left her sight. Because her life was idyllic, and she did this job to prove it.

This wasn’t that. First of all, there was a waiting room, where you could get a “worry worm”, which was a knitted needle-shaped creature, while your therapist finished their previous session. Then they’d approach, call out your name, and take you to their designated room. Opposite him was a girl that looked barely adult, picking at her lip as she scrolled through her phone. He wondered what made her need help. Usually parents at that age. Not that he talked to people about their problems enough to get a good sense of scale.

“Mark Murray?” A measured, soft voice asked the room. He raised his hand and turned towards the sound. This woman was a little older than he’d imagined, early fifties maybe, dressed in a loose-fitting plaid cardigan, a black blouse and a long, navy blue skirt that swooshed as she walked. Her sandals didn’t make a sound, bar the little squeaks rubbery things often make against wood panelled floor. Though her hair was compact, dreadlocks in a neat bun, there were streaks of various whimsical colors. She was extensively pierced and bejewelled, and her presence carried the impression of a life lived to the fullest.

Immediately, he was intrigued.

The room was neither small nor spacious. Intimate, let’s say, with two armchairs equidistant and a little coffee table in the middle, decorated with translucent containers with various notepads, pens and fidget toys. Shelves covered the wall furthest from the door, displaying a variety of topics. Murder mystery, cookbooks, autobiographies. Quite a lot of self-help books, he couldn’t help but notice. The perpendicular walls were mainly empty, aside from a clock, a painting of a waterfall and a small cupboard.
“What’s in the cupboard?” he asked, ignoring social cues. It was probably best to put his most earnest foot forwards in this.

The woman half-smiled, like a slightly bemused dog. “It’s for several things. Cups, mainly, for when clients get thirsty. Would you like a drink?”

“No. Thank you.”

“That’s absolutely no problem,” She paused, deliberating whether to use an affectionate nickname, then decided just to nod. Making herself comfortable in the further armchair, she indicated he sit opposite and make himself comfortable. Difficult as that was with her watchful eyes on his every move, he sat. The two of them stared at each other for about twenty seconds, before she held out her hand for him to shake it. “Hello. My name is Chinaza and my pronouns are she-“

He rescinded his hand and interrupted her brashly. “Mark. He. But the email said Cynthia would be seeing me.”

She shook her head reassuringly. “That’s also me. Chinaza is one of my middle names. I tend to use it with clients so as to have a separation between my work self and my personal life. For balance’s sake. Is that okay?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Mark hummed to himself, rethinking his initial perception of the woman. “I like middle names.”

“That’s convenient.” It was an odd response, but Mark found it very earnest. Chinaza extended her hand a second time, and he obliged. “Is this your first experience with therapy?”

“Yeah, if you ignore some counselling sessions in middle and high school. Which you should, they didn’t do shit. Wait, I can swear, can’t I?”

“You can say whatever you want. Within certain limits like hate speech, I’d say the floor’s pretty open to any discussion you’d like. So, what was it that encouraged you to come here today?”

“It was my wife, actually.”

“Oh, that’s lovely. Married young?”

“Quite. Last year.” He wasn’t sure quite how to summarise his marriage. It seemed important to mention recent developments, but he struggled to verbalise it. The first session didn’t seem like the ideal time to explore his six year long relationship that led to a very fresh marital collapse. Instead, he looked at her a little blankly, eventually conjuring up, “She’s pregnant. Thirteen weeks. Basically second trimester. We just went to our first proper scan. No gender yet, but I know she thinks it’ll be a girl. I can tell.”

Chinaza raised her eyebrows, noticing how the words trundled off his lips, not a natural chatterbox. She looked like a dentist, getting her sharpest tools ready whilst he lay back in his chair, prepared to spit out blood for the next month. “And how did that make you feel? Finding out you’re going to be a father?”

He shrugged. He didn’t think they actually said, ‘how does that make you feel’. “Good?”

“That’s very simple.”

“Okay… excited. Nervous. Angry that she wasn’t as happy as I was. Worried about what that meant.” He sighed. “I haven’t told my dad yet.”

“Is it just the two of you, then?”

“These days, yeah. For a long time, now.”

This sentence got her to read over some bullet points he could vaguely see she’d been given going in. During the previous call, he’d been asked some regular questions about his life situation and requirements. In there, she’d probably have something about a parental loss. That sounded like dynamite for therapists. She adjusted her seating position, closing her legs slightly, weakening her stance. He wasn’t sure what she was trying to evoke. “Do you want to go from the beginning, or work backwards?”

He wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about anything specific really. “Maybe just a bit of an overview?”

“Sure. We can do that. Identify pockets of time and events we may need to give more attention to.”

“Right.”

“When did your mom pass, then?”

“August 18 2007. A month before my eighth birthday. Almost to the day.”

“Do you remember much about it?”

There were lots of photos from before. She’d carried around a camcorder like it was the nineties, capturing every minute. He knew exactly what he’d looked like back then. Thick, ginger tufts of hair spiking out in every direction. He used to laugh bigger, rounder. His accent was more clipped, it had a lilt like hers. The smallest hint of Irish. Something she was already convinced he’d lose by adulthood. They dressed him like a farmer, in overalls and little bucket hats and boots. Sometimes they’d take him to work with them before he was school-aged, so he had to be practical.

She was usually behind the camera, but there were photos. The back of her head as she was lifting him into a high chair. Her billowing white dress at her wedding, the biggest grin in the world. All the callouses on her hand as she took him to the zoo for the first time, delicately balancing a butterfly on her knuckles that her son was about to scare away without any recognition of its mortality. Little fragments of a life that was quite little itself. Less than a decade older than him now.

He focused on the facts. Facts are cold. “I was staying with my grandparents. Dad’s, mom’s lived in Ireland and were mostly excommunicated when she moved here. Just for the night, since they wanted to have a few hours out to themselves. We watched Finding Nemo, not for the first time, and I ate chicken nuggets. I went to bed at my normal time I think, about 9. In the middle of the night I got woken up by panicked voices. They were on the phone, talking to someone. Must’ve been hospital staff, telling them about the crash. Discussions of alcohol, injuries, comas. Words I was too small to really understand.”

Chinaza’s upper lip trembled as she pinched her nose, trying to concentrate. “Are you telling me that your mother was killed in a drunk driving incident?”

Keep to the facts. “Yes. My dad was barely above the breathalyzer limit, apparently, and she’d been driving the first half of the journey. She got a migraine, pulled over. He cajoled her into letting him drive. She was tipsy, it made her agreeable, he told them. It had been a twenty minute drive. She’d done the first seven minutes. He’d done another seven. It was minute fourteen. There was a sudden bend in the road, it was dark, his reaction time wasn’t quick enough. A tree took most of the impact. So did she.”

Don’t let her ask questions. “He never took the test. Not formally. He was unconscious when they found him. Ambulance arrived first, so they didn’t get to intervene. By the time he regained consciousness, it had left his blood. Urine tests wouldn’t prove much, he immediately admitted he wasn’t sober at the time of the crash. The cops didn’t want the hassle, neither did the law much. He’d already lost his wife. Pronounced brain dead on hospital arrival. They didn’t want to put him through much. Within a few weeks they’d decided to put him on house arrest, and make him pay a hefty fine. Basically all having a wife costs. Seemed stupid, but he did it. I lived with my grandparents for most of that year.”

“How did-”

“Bad. I felt bad. Worse when he took me back.”

“Why’s that?”

“When I came home, I found out that he’d not stopped drinking. In fact, he only gave it up last year- or at least, he’s been trying to for the last year. All his anger was swallowed, and spat, and thrown up. Then I arrived, a good enough second outlet, you know?” Mark swallowed, wondering if he should’ve accepted the offer for a glass of water. He didn’t like this. “Waxing poetic” as Clarissa had called it once, when she’d gone on a particularly long rant about her mom. The over-emotional drivel. It just made him feel stupid for caring so much.

“Right. Are you okay with this?” he nodded. “So your father was harming you?” he nodded. “Physical?” slow nod. “Mental?” tentative nod. “Verbal?” more enthusiastic nod. “And this lasted your entire childhood, eight to eighteen?” he nodded. Chinaza laughed. He raised his eyebrows. “I’m sorry, that’s desperately poor etiquette on my part. It’s just the idea that you lost your mother at a young age, partially due to your own father’s irresponsibility, then he abused you consistently for a decade… and you never got recommended therapy.”

“No… didn’t come up, really.”

“Yeah,” she pulled something from out of her pocket and popped it in her mouth pensively. An eclair. “That’s on me for being from New York City, really.”

“Can therapists talk about their lives?”

“Sure. I won’t much. But I can. We’re here to discuss you though, so it’s best not to dwell much on myself… you said in your preliminary call that you suffer from mood swings, erratic and occasionally reckless behaviour, and a frequent feeling of both worthlessness and frustration at your peers for not being able to reach your standards for them.” There was a clear thread Chinaza was spinning, tying everything together, much as he didn’t want whatever product she made.

“Yes. That’s all true.”

Scribble scribble on her paper. “Do you hear things?”

“What kind of things?”

“Things other people can’t.”

At this prompt, the words seemed to fall out. “Yes. Sometimes. Voices calling my name. Arguments. Whispering. Even when I’m home alone, or one of the voices belongs to someone who’s gone.” Chinaza tilted her head, signaling that she was following who he was referring to. “It isn’t always audible, just vague sounds. Crying, shrieking, that sort of thing. The only thing that happens every time is that it causes me to panic. Like it’s meant to bother me. Like I’m going insane.”
“Have you ever seen anything?”

“Only a couple times. Shadows of people, bugs crawling across my arms. The only exception was when I was nineteen. My girlfriend- now wife- and I had gotten into an argument over something or other. I think she’d been asked to go on a work trip during our two year anniversary, and I was mad that she was thinking of accepting the offer. It sounds stupid now. I was out in the garden trying to comfort myself, watching the birds come and go, when suddenly it appeared, and everything began.”

“Like a daydream, but not- like a- a waking nightmare. Yeah. I’m not paralysed, but I’m sort of entranced. I can move, but I can’t look away, like those paintings where the eyes are following you no matter where you go. Normally, I’d be able to make out a silhouette, a figure, and assume it was her. That day, she’s as vibrant as the grass and the sky. Without a care in the world, she walks towards me and holds out her hand. I didn’t think the sound and the visuals would match until she opens her mouth.”

“What did she say, Mark?”

“She says ‘I know you know.’ And I do. It gets louder. Not the voice, but everything. The air in between us is thicker. She looks like an older version of the child I was. Her hair is as red as mine, her cheekbones as high, her shoulders as strong. I’m recalling her- she’s as much of a memory as I am. My mom was beautiful, like she told me I was. Tall, athletic because she had to fight, but gentle. For a long time, she looks at me, with piercing turquoise eyes. The ones she passed on to me. She says. ‘I know you know who I am.’, and I do.”

“I ask her why she’s here, and she says ‘That’s a bad question. I’m always here. You should ask why you can see me.’ Why can I see her? ‘You’ve managed to get too lonely. When you’re this isolated, I come to remind you.’ Remind me of what? ‘That this is the only way you can see me. A reanimation of a photograph you don’t remember being taken. And despite that, you keep me here.’ And I do.”

He swallows. “She left, after that. I think I could've kept her around longer, but an alarm went off in the kitchen, so I went to fix it. But it circles around in my mind. And I just think ‘why did it have to be her?’.”

“Do you wish it was your father instead?”

Mark jerked his head accusatorily towards Chinaza, who was unfazed. She continued. “Or do you wish it could’ve been you?”

He needed water. His throat was dry. Maybe some food whilst he was at it. Lunch had only been half an hour ago, but appetite had its own schedule. Although he might get sick if he over-ate. Then it would be another consecutive evening spent keeled over his toilet, praying something would come out to no avail. Chinaza might want to take a break, go to the bathroom or something. Prepare for next session. It was hot. Was there air conditioning? Or a window to open? The coffee table looked nearer than before. “I can’t answer that.”

“Okay.”

“What do you mean ‘okay’?”

“I mean that that’s fine. Lots of the questions I ask in these earlier sessions are to test the water. See what you’re willing to talk about, what’s your code of conduct, so to speak. And to see what you’re concerned about within yourself.” She adjusted her cardigan. “I’m sorry if that was a rude or invasive question.”

“No. No, I was-” he sighed. “I guess that’s why I'm here. I get mad too quickly, and I blame people. Then if they leave, I can’t decide if I hate them or myself.” He stared at Chinaza for a long time. He worried that the function of a therapist was partially to act as a mirror, rather than a hammer. She wasn’t going to rearrange him with her bare hands. All she had to do was reflect back to him the reality of what he was, what he’d become and how, and then the onus was on him to grow into something better. “My wife left me. She’s gone. We’re gonna give up the baby.”

“I see.”

“Tell me what that says about me.”

“I don't necessarily have an answer for that.”

“You don’t need to shield my feelings.”

“I’m not, Mark. It’s session one. I’m only currently learning how your feelings work.”

“And?”

“I’m drawing parallels.”

He stayed silent, realising she meant between him and his father. She wasn’t wrong, even if he hated to hear it. They’d spent two decades with each other, one of those the other’s sole companion in the house. It was inevitable Oscar had rubbed off on him. He wondered what that meant medically though. If all of the things he described were symptoms of some larger, looming illness. He’d seen Clarissa get her ADHD diagnosis not long ago, the clarity it had given to her everyday life. The relief of finding medication that worked, combating her struggle. There might be a solution out there for him too.

Not long after that, the first session wrapped up. He had homework. It seemed silly, to get assignments at twenty three for your class in “talking about your feelings”. And the task itself was dreadfully unsuited to him. Writing a letter to his child self trying to emphasise to him that it was okay. That none of it was his fault. That his father was going through something enormous and was only lashing out of him due to his own soul-eating guilt. The secondary task was to note down any hallucinations he had.

Much as he despised feeling crazy, he left feeling overwhelmed, but comforted. Anything he’d said, Chinaza had handled. Even when she lamented and laughed at him, it was only because he hadn’t sought out treatment sooner. This was exactly the place for people like him, which existed. He wasn’t the first person to feel like this, and he was far from the last. Chinaza was specifically trained for cases just like him. Which meant there was probably a solution out there. Some way to be better.

He would gladly keep searching.

Notes:

helloooo!!!!!
sorry this took a while. my chronic bacteria infection is back in full swing so i've not been my best (it'll be fine i promise) but here it is! 11 of 16 maybe? i'm trying to lock in a specific number but i feel like we're all here for the ride at this point. can you tell i've listed to too much samia and next to normal writing this chapter? maybe.

massive note... since last chapter was posted SO many new people have discovered this fic! welcome all and thank you! it may be ditch fans, in which case, i am a queer man and will make yaoi happen in my sapphic fic :)

next chapter should be next weekend provided i don't have too much studying to do! as education returns soon though the final few chapters may be a little erratically posted so be warned.

anyways, thank you for reading this chapter (whilst not my favourite it does have some bits i really enjoy)!!!!! have a lovely day
Theo <3

Chapter 12: Decision

Summary:

As the question looms over their heads of what will happen to the baby, Clarissa tries to get into Titch's head.

Mark tries to get over his jealousy.

Amanda meets a man who has maybe the worst coping mechanism she's ever seen.

And... a magical miracle approaches.

-Somerset-

The gang reuniting had been strange. So much had changed in the several weeks since they’d last seen each other, travelling home from near Folkestone. Amanda hadn’t gotten the chance to look Mark in the eye since his becoming single, and Clarissa had barely had much of a window either, what with spending most of the time in Amanda’s apartment. She’d almost suggested getting different flights until she heard how stupid of an idea that sounded when spoken aloud. Mark would simply sit on the outside, with Amanda in the middle. Just like before. Not awkward at all.

“This is excruciating.” Mark whispered to Amanda an hour in. “Like, I can feel her thinking about me.”

“Buddy,” Amanda replied dryly, “I think that’s partly a you problem”

“No, I know. My therapist told me that I need to stop making assumptions, and just talk about my shit.”

“Sounds like a good therapist.” She looked at him for a long time. He’d gotten a hair cut, and shaved recently. There was a little more skin on his bones than there had been the last time they were in England, and his cheeks had color in them. He looked fuller, oddly. More functional. “How’s the house treating you?”

“It’s big. I wanna get a dog to fill the room once I can afford it. In the meantime I’ve been trying to get applications for a housemate to rent out the bits I don’t use. Turn the extension into a place for them to live. Not really a big job, but it’s something to keep me busy.” Amanda huffed in amusement at the idea of Mark in IKEA trying to figure out what wardrobe the average boarder wants. She patted his shoulder consolingly, hoping that he wouldn’t turn the question round on her.

“I’m proud of you, man. For trying.”

“Thanks.” He looked over her shoulder to check Clarissa had her earphones in. “What’s living with her like?”

Amanda wasn’t budging. “You should know, you’re the one who did it for a year.”

“It’s different.” he said, enunciating every syllable so it held significance. She followed his line of vision, to the woman trying to sleep with music blasting in her ears. Apparently she couldn’t sleep in silence. This had meant that Amanda had gotten used to podcasts in their now-shared bedroom every night. Clarissa had emphasised that she was happy to wear earphones, but Amanda hadn’t let her. She watched her now, breathing heavily, dead to the world. Her eyelashes were long, her hair falling out of a ponytail strand by strand. No makeup- it was a travel day- but still rosy-cheeked and clean-skinned (not even travel days and pregnancy could get in the way of her skincare routine, Amanda had learned). Beautiful in a very normal way. The face she’d woken up to every morning for the past two weeks.

“Why’s it different?” She regretted asking the moment it escaped her mouth, implications best left silent. Mark smirked, proud of himself for getting in her head. It wasn’t as cruel of an expression as it could’ve been, so at least she had the comforting notion that he was only a little jealous.

“I was living with my wife who I hated half the time. You’re with your best friend who you love literally all the time. It’s just… different.” His tone still bordered on a little mocking. “She hasn’t even mentioned the idea of exploring her sexuality to you, has she?”

“No.” Amanda said sullenly. She didn’t like this line of questioning. “She’s got a lot on her plate right now.”

“So you think she will?” Mark sounded both malevolent, taking advantage of Amanda’s pain as it matched his own, and genuine fear, losing his ex to the woman he was always afraid understood her better than he ever would. The latter had even been proven. “You believe that after the baby’s gone, she’ll wanna be with you?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying not to skip ahead. Right now, we’re doing well.” Amanda hated being psychoanalysed in public. In a session, with a professional, it was earnest and explorational. Here it was confrontational. And it was none of Mark’s business. What if she had watched Clarissa wake up one morning, and pictured kissing her cheek? What if she wanted to be the big spoon? What if she wanted to be the little spoon on occasion for that matter? Nobody had the right to know that sleeping in a bed with her, eating with her, washing her towel- it was all a blessing and a curse. To indulge herself, and to remind her how much she still needed her.

“Don’t get your hopes up.” His tone softened. “She tends to get unfocused easily. She’ll probably ask to live with someone else soon enough. Sleep with them. Get carried away, as usual.”

“She’s not some kind of fantasy, Mark. There’s no such thing as a slut, and if there were, she wouldn’t be one.”

“Well, she’s not a saint. And she’s unwell. Has she been taking her meds?”

Amanda raised her eyebrows, surprised Mark had remembered something so ordinary. With the brush strokes he painted the picture of his marriage, she expected most details to slip through the cracks. It was endearing, to know he’d at least reached the low bar. “Well, she actually was told to reduce her dosage. Methylphenidate can be risky, especially in early pregnancy, although it’s too late for that. They just weigh up the risks against the benefits to her mental health. Ultimately, they just reduced it, and have said that shortly before the birth, she might need to stop taking them altogether until the baby’s born, Just to avoid the baby having withdrawal symptoms.”

“How do you remember all that?”

“I went to the most recent appointment, since you were busy. “Plus,” she got a picture up on her phone of some text. “They hand out leaflets if you ask too many questions. I took a picture because I didn’t trust Suzy not to lose it.” She smiled to herself, thinking about Clarissa apologetically informing her she’d forgotten where she’d put the leaflet the next morning (it was in her jeans pocket that she’d put in the laundry basket). In that moment, she hazarded a look at her best friend, only to find she was already staring. Totally unable to hear them. She put a hand on Amanda’s knee and squeezed it gently.

It wasn’t something she unpacked very often. In therapy, briefly, they’d touched on it. Her fear of being second priority. It was more of a circumstantial thing than anything else, witnessing Clarissa marry Mark and Matilda gladly sleep with other people. She couldn’t help getting the impression that she wasn’t built to be the main choice. Lots of people liked her, they were attracted enough to her in some sense, but she was never quite enough. Other people could satisfy their needs. She was their support system, the interface they connected with. Never the bride, always the bridesmaid.

Nodding at Clarissa, she saw Mark in her periphery gritting his teeth. Clarissa was looking at her. Living with her. Sleeping with her. Even if they never got any closer, she already had Mark’s girl in ways he never did. He was seeing it now. Watching how Clarissa, half-asleep with music blasting in her ears, tried to make Amanda feel safe. She’d abandoned her life with Mark in less than a decade, but she’d not spent a day without Amanda in her life since she was four weeks old, and she couldn’t bear the idea even now.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” he murmured into her ear. She nodded again. “I presumed it would be. Being seen by her, and loved more because of it.”

Clarissa shut her eyes. Amanda turned back to Mark. “She does see and love you. That’s why she left.” She thought for a moment. “I guess you’re right. We are pretty different.”

“You even talk like her.”

“I’ve known her since before I could talk. That’s hardly surprising.”

“It’s like wanting to date a differently shaped clone of yourself.”

“We’re individuals. It’s not like you’d marry me if I looked like her.”

“I’d divorce you even if you looked like her. So not that different.”

“Touche, Murray.”

The rest of the flight went on like this. They arrived in Bristol in the early morning, and slept in till lunchtime. A little haggard, the trio got an Uber to McMillan farm, Amanda once again sitting in between them. In the hotel, there were two singles and a couch. Amanda took the couch, trying to give Mark some respite from seeing his ex wife and her best friend effectively leave him in the dust. By the time they got there, the tiredness had mostly evaporated from their bones, and they were able to chirpily greet a posh man who met them at the gate. Philip from London, their assistant.

“Is it true about your baby?”, he asked Clarissa within seconds, “You might give it up to Gangles and Titch?”

“Mind your business, Philip!” a much more charming, lilted accent bellowed. “This is a delicate matter!” To accompany the smooth voice, a short but stocky dirty blonde-haired man stomped his way towards the group of them, wearing a blue button up shirt, cargo pants, thick boots and a wide smile that seemed routine to him. With a familiar nod he greeted Clarissa, then turned to Amanda and Mark one by one, shaking their hands. “I’m Titch McMillan, this is my family’s farm, run these days by myself and my partner Derek.”

Amanda ventured a glance at Mark, who was narrowing his eyes at the man. She wasn’t sure what criteria he was searching for, only that he was being ranked. Eventually he broke his gaze, and tried to muster a polite, “Thank you for letting us stay here. Hospitality.” It was very awkward, not that any of them voiced it. Titch only benevolently flashed them a wink and began walking towards the farmhouse, telling Philip something under his breath that made the posher man burst into a fit of laughter.

“Lip was just saying he reckons you’re Irish.” Titch said to Mark.

“I am. On my mum’s side more directly. Why?”

Amanda interrupted the interaction by thinking aloud. “Lip?”

Titch laughed. It seemed to be something he enjoyed both doing and causing others to do. Amanda hadn’t figured him out yet enough to know if it was an honest want or a desperation to please, a fear of silence and confronting darker matters. Something to keep a careful eye on. After all, she was here to get a scope on these men as much as Mark and Clarissa, she might as well make astute observations. “Lip is the end of his name. AND he has quite the lip, doesn’t he? Asking so many questions. And it was supposed to be a nice thing, I swear. My mum’s also Irish. She’s a little foggy up there these days, but she has the Irish vigour still in her.”

“That’s nice.” Mark stumbled on the words, trying to sound interested, and only pulling off vague acknowledgement. “Mine’s dead.”

“Oh.” Titch blinked a couple times. “So’s my dad. Not that it’s a contest. It’s kinda what your twenties are like, isn’t it? Losing parents?”

“I was seven.”

“That’s not great.” Titch affirmed. “Not much I can offer other than condolences. At least you’re near Ireland right now. I mean, not THAT near, but a little nearer than usual. You could visit, you know? You got extended family there?”

“Yeah… most of mum’s side. Grandparents and all that. Although they barely know me. My mom got pretty embedded in America once she arrived.”

“That’s nice. My mum hated most of England. Could only stand this town, my father, and her children. The second my dad passed- God rest his soul -” Titch crossed himself at this. And Philip did the Boy Scouts salute like it was the Hunger Games and a tribute had fallen, “- she moved back to Ireland and hasn’t looked back since. Not done much looking any way, honestly, early onset dementia. But she’s okay. Still cognitive. Very alive. Does lots of zumba, which is apparently what all women in their late fifties start doing after being widowed.”

A fragment of a change of expression appeared on Clarissa’s face, barely a pinching together of her eyebrows, but it was enough for Amanda to make the connection. Clarissa could see a lot of her own story in Titch, that had been evident from the get go. As the story unfolded, the similarities only became stronger. Dead fathers. Mothers who were coping strangely. Feeling like they might be the odd one out in their family. Watching someone they love lose their memory, bit by bit. It made sense, weirdly, why she’d been attracted to such an odd choice for adoptive parents.

By now they’d reached the farmhouse, where a much taller man than Titch approached them, shuffling forwards, desperate not to knock over the tray he was carrying. On it were mugs of coffee for every single one of them, and a plate full of scones filled with jam. Amanda wasn’t a glutton by any means, and often strayed away from indulging herself with food, but even she could admit this was quite the offer. The man, assumedly Derek, was bearded, with high cheekbones but an immediately soothing, bright demeanour. Everything about him radiated hope. She understood why a man who loved laughing would love Derek. “I brought coffee,” he explained, in an accent much like his fiance’s, “since you all had such a tiring journey here.”

They all took seats on the sofa, the engaged couple facing the divorced couple, Amanda in an armchair in between them, facing directly opposite the TV. It was a nice, clean, organised space. Based on Derek’s well-ironed shirt and perfectly tied shoelaces, she had an inkling as to which housemate was behind the polished aesthetic. They exchanged pleasantries, asking about the flight, work and other such life events.

“How’s the baby?” Titch asked, clearly itching to get to the meat of the visit.

“Sh- healthy.” Clarissa responded. It was becoming uncanny, how set in her mind she was that the baby was going to be a girl. Like some kind of psychic vision. She’d told Amanda she’d been dreaming of it some nights. Holding the tiny girl in her arms, listening to her cry, telling her that she was finally going to be a Jenkins girl that was raised to be happy. That she could be whatever she wanted to be, and everybody loved and supported her. In the dreams, it ended with Titch walking in and picking her up. Clarissa insisted it was a nice dream. “Hitting all the growth milestones they’re supposed to.”

“And the two of you?” Derek voiced the silent part, wincing as he said it. Amanda was immediately endeared by him, his cautiousness. It would make for a good parental figure. Amanda’s mom often told her stories of her early childhood, her dad constantly worried that any move he made might shatter his daughter like a china plate. He’d try and search up any slightly unusual things she did just in case it was a symptom of some horrible undiagnosed disease, and would write down everything he’d fed her and what her reaction was to it just in case they started to think she had any allergies. It was part of the reason she loved him so much, his care for detail. He’d been the first one to notice her face blindness. Derek could be that positive influence for baby Murray-Jenkins.

“Well… separated.” Mark said, less annoyed by the word than he’d been calling Clarissa about it a couple weeks before.

“This seems like a bit of a personal thing,” Amanda dismissed the apologetic look Clarissa hand shot her with a hand. “I’ll excuse myself and leave the four of you to it.”

Derek told her where the guest farm was, and she pulled away, leaving the Murray-Jenkins to discuss their collapsing nuptials. Quite frankly, she’d already heard the story from Clarissa, and didn’t need it rehashed in much less harsh and brutally honest terms. Plus, she wasn’t a parent. This wasn’t her situation to be in. Whilst, as usual, she was following Clarissa, this wasn’t anything to do with her. The sooner she tried to frame it that way, the easier it would be to accept that Clarissa’s recovery wasn’t to facilitate Amanda’s fantasies.

At the gate between the farmhouse and the guesthouse, there was a pathway towards the field, and a man. Wondering if there could really be four British men needed to run the one farm, Amanda tapped him on the shoulder. He whipped around, holding out his hands reflexively like Amanda had learned to do from having a younger brother. Always preparing for another fight. He wasn’t dressed for farmwork whatsoever. “Who’re you?” she asked.

“Jamie Michael. From Bristol. I’m here to see Margaery.” the man responded professionally. He was dreadfully normal in appearance, the kind of face she’d struggle to write in her notebook to remember for later. No key features to pair it with. Very unsuspecting, which only made her more suspicious. It reminded her of Clarissa's route, going to Bristol to visit two men, only one of whom she’d had the pleasure of meeting. Jim, married to Lucy Julie, best friend of Jamie. It seemed too good to be true.

“Do you know Ethel?” Amanda asked plainly. The man shuddered, bringing his fists back up, willing himself into fight mode.

“Why? What’s happening?”

Amanda held up her hands, hardly intimidated but wanting to get to the bottom of this. “Noting, nothing! Name just rang a bell, I guess. Something I read in the paper, maybe. So why are you here to see Margaery?” Amanda admittedly had no idea who Margaery was, not that she was going to give that impression. Things were much easier when she had the advantage on him. The moment she gave away that she was equally clueless as to the goings on here, he’d stop talking. Clarissa must’ve interviewed him for a reason. Getting into his brain was getting into hers.

“I just-” Jamie looked around, seeking out an excuse, and finding nothing of use, “Ethel recommended that I come to visit Margaery every now and again. She makes good shit, she wasn’t lying. Little bottles of stuff, in return for airpods. Don’t tell the woman, but I get the off-brand stuff. She’s too… you know… to tell the difference.”

Nothing about it really made sense to her. Margaery, by the sounds of it, was just as nuts as Ethel was, if maybe a little more professional. Selling magic in return for tech. Sure. “And what does it do? The potions?” Amanda wasn’t a theist, nor was she quite an atheist. Hovering in the middle, she was about half-willing to believe whatever bullshit Jamie was about to spew. After all, things did strike her as odd around here. The field was in sight, and seeing so many eggplants threw her. They didn’t grow in the open like that. Not in the UK. It didn’t make sense.

“Lots of things. Grow plants. Break bones. Love spells, although I think that’s just ecstasy. It’s mostly drugs, honestly. One makes you forget- temporarily of course- about certain people.”

“How?” Amanda wasn’t considering it, obviously. She was a scientist, to an extent. This was a treatment. Call it a professional curiosity.

“You hone your thoughts on one particular person, thing or event, take a sip, swallow in one. All emotions towards it just slip away. The whole thing becomes blurry for twenty four hours. Temporary release, I guess, but it does the trick. I tend to buy them in packs of 7, to last me the week. Not that I use it every day. Just occasionally, when things get to be a bit much, to reduce the pain.”

“Do you do it about Ethel? Was meeting her really that bad?”

“It’s sometimes Ethel. It was fucking crazy, I’ll have you know. Literal horror movie, with a weird Cabaret side-piece that was somehow worse.” His expression hardened in a way she found unreadable. “But, uh, no… normally that’s not what- or who- I’m trying to get rid of my attachment to. Amanda, have you ever had a best friend? As in, someone you’re inseparable with, like your other half, your companion through life? Just a solid person who’s in it, thick and thin, with you?”

Amanda held back a bark of laughter. “Yes, actually.” she said, wondering vaguely if this was why he was here. Ethel’s little messenger, trying to give her some cryptic form of encouragement. Or simply another victim, to prove to her that she was in good company. “I have something almost identical to that. My best friend Clarissa is here to give up her baby for adoption, and I’m here as emotional support. Thick and thin, you know?”

“Oh shit.” He chewed on his bottom lip, figuring out the same thing Amanda already had in reverse. “Jenkins?”

“Yep. Divorced. Well, separated.”

“Crazy. Still, can’t say I’m surprised.” Jamie uttered, too cocky to not be compensating. “Most marriages fall apart.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean, statistically, yeah. They say it’s 50% but like, it used to be even lower before we started working on feminism. It’ll only get higher as time goes on. I know that’s maybe a slightly nihilistic viewpoint, but it’s true, isn’t it? People fall out of love, they miscommunicate, they have differences in opinion. Sometimes they love other people, and go as far as to hide it. Sometimes they just didn’t realise that the real love of their life was right in front of them the whole time, and they’re just fucking dense, clinging on like it’s the fucking Titanic or some shit.” He sighed, looking at his watch. “I should probably go get the bottles.”

“Holy shit.” Amanda let out, the cogs turning, “you’re taking them to stop thinking about him.”

James sighed. “His name’s Jim.”

“Yeah, we met. Lucy Julie’s husband. Very polite.” She tried to picture him, as usual coming up blank. It didn’t really matter though. She understood the essence of Jamie’s problem. Having pined for years all the way to the aisle, the sentiment of missing an opportunity got to her. The inner resentment, the guilt of praying for your best friend’s misery just so it meant you could have an ounce of joy. Trying to put distance between the two of you so the feelings were less unbearably close by. “That’s so fucking unhealthy, man.”

“What?” Jamie seemed taken aback by her honest statement.

“I’m not trying to be mean. It is unhealthy, though, you must be able to see that.” She looked at Jamie for a while. A white, late 30-ish year old British guy with brown hair, brown eyes, and a slight tan that told her he could afford a Mediterranean holiday. Pretty easy to appeal to. It sucked that she had facial blindness, she was an incredible analyst in the moment. “You like the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, right?”

“Yeah, obviously.”

Predictable. “So, is it good for them? The process? Do they successfully move on with their lives? Or does it alter their entire existence, leaving them with a chasm of their being?”

Jamie rolled his eyes. “That’s not- it’s fiction. Plus, I’m not permanently wiping anything. I’m merely temporarily changing how I feel about him. To make it more manageable. Once I get over him, I’ll stop. There’s nothing wrong with it- I’d even gamble saying it’s healthier than bottling it up and pushing it down!”

Amanda stared at him incredulously, before very simply asking, “And how is drinking a bottle of potion not bottling it up to you exactly?”

He waved his arms around, trying to summon an argument. “Look, tell me you wouldn’t do it. For a little bit of peace and quiet, to let yourself stop feeling so useless. Suddenly it really is just a wedding, and Julie’s just a woman, and Ethel never tested you to see if you’d confess your feelings to him, and then have a fake him reject you before turning into a little German twink of a man. You look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t wish sometimes to have it all taken away for a little while so you can feel normal again?”

Slowly, Amanda adjusted herself, so she could stare him down directly. In her boots, she had a couple inches on him, in his casual clothes. A city boy, obsessed with trying to make his life the most regular it could be. He was probably something boring, like a head of sales or a tax consultant. Working to live, and then barely letting himself live. Then she thought about Clarissa, her beautifully chaotic life, the sound of her full-body laughter, the look she’d given her on the plane, and the shudder of warmth it had sent through her. “Jamie, I don’t know how to feel normal without her. I imagine you’re not dissimilar. Margaery, whatever she is or isn’t, clearly doesn’t do emotional advice. She’ll give you anything you pay for. I bet if you asked though, she’d tell you it’s a shit solution. A temporary, shitty solution to a problem that isn’t even too bad.”

“Not too bad?” Jamie had cocked his head to the side like a frustrated cocker spaniel, before it fell, and he adopted a sorry-for-himself look. “Makes sense, you’re on the other side of it. She’s divorced.”

God, what was with men today and their incessant urge to be jealous of her?

“Look, it’s not like I’m getting with my pregnant, recently divorced best friend of twenty three years. It’s a messy, unfortunate situation all round, hence the giving up the baby thing. Having feelings for her, unrequited or just unfulfilled, sucks. There’s plenty of times I wish I could hold her or kiss her or just tell her how I feel without the fear that it’s gonna ruin everything. At the same time, I wouldn’t erase how I feel. It’s nice to feel. Obviously if it faded of its own accord, that’s great, but to take drugs to forget? It’s like saying you don’t trust yourself. You have no self-belief, no self control, and you’re afraid. If it’s really killing you that much, you should tell him how you feel.”

Knocking his head back against the gate, Jamie groaned. “I hate all these moral lessons. At least Margaery doesn’t try to drill a message into everything.” He kicked the ground, a couple specks of dirt flying onto the pleasant field. “You tell her.”

“Why would I? I’m surviving fine without it.”

“And I’m surviving fine with the potion. End of story.” He began to wander away, slinging his bag over his shoulder, seemingly more interested in getting away from her than finding the witch.

“You’ll regret it.” she told him.

Jamie looked at her, smirking. “Not right now. Problem for later.”

 

Back in the farmhouse, Derek was giving Mark a tour of the farm, leaving Clarissa and Titch alone together. The former couple had decided they were more effective splitting up, each getting their own set of information about life on McMillan farm, and Titch and Derek as prospective parents here. Having given an overview of her separation, Clarissa was feeling emotionally exhausted, and unwilling to answer any more questions about herself. So she turned to her new friend. “What’s the Christian scene round here?”

“It’s an All-Saints church… so it’s not exactly your kind of thing. But it suits me fine.”

She liked that. It seemed less pressurising, the idea of growing up with all different flavours of faith. While Clarissa hoped her daughter believed in something, she wanted it to be something she discovered for herself, and was supported in. She wanted everything to be open to her. “Sorry, Titch, I know this is a bit of a personal question to ask, but- you’re Christian. And you’re also marrying Derek.”

“Aye, that is my life story. I assume you’re trying to see where those two things intersect?”

“Yeah. I mean, I’m not saying you’re doing anything wrong, it’s just- how can you be proud of both things at once?”

“Well, in my case it wasn’t an overnight thing. I didn’t wake up one day and suddenly feel like I fit in here. My family already struggled to get me, what with me being adopted and not half as upfront as James. They always instilled into me that I was their son, that ‘the Lord blessed them by bringing me into their lives’. They even made my name the same as Mr McMillan’s so I’d integrate better. Plus it was a Christian name. You want to ask, don’t you?”

“Please.”

“My birth name, the one on my certificate, was Leonard. Lennie for short. Then the McMillans met me, and asked if I liked my name. When I said no, they changed it to Caleb while they were doing my surname. Caleb McMillan junior.”
Clarissa scoffed. “It’s not bad.”

“Yeah, but look at me. I don’t look like a Caleb. And I especially look nothing like my father, God bless his soul. You’ve met James. Do he and I have anything in common physically?”

Aside from being white men, Clarissa conceded they did not. Then she pivoted a little, deciding it was worth knowing. For research purposes, and maybe simply because she liked Titch, and wanted to see how he’d come to be this balanced with such a hectic background. “How did you tell your family?”

“Well James found out first. Not really intentionally…”

 

{12 years ago}

Titch’s feet had grown in a spurt his height simply didn’t concur with. Now he and James were the same shoe size, which was great news for their mother, who was about to return to her decade-old habit of buying her sons identical shoes. In the meantime, Titch had begun stealing all of James’ shoes, as they were the only ones in the house that didn’t squeeze his feet. Normally this wouldn’t be too big of an issue, since James had the shoe collection a sportsman, but Titch had happened to take the exact football boots James had wanted to use to hang out with his friends.

It was his older brother’s GCSE summer, so he was living life to the fullest, sneaking out of the farmhouse to go to various events. James knew Titch wasn’t going to tell him anything at gunpoint, so he didn’t waste his breath asking. Sometimes, he’d see the same guy appear multiple times in the same week. Lee, who was on his football team at school. Again, he didn’t ask where Lee was taking him, who else they were meeting with, and what activities they were getting up to. He wasn’t a snitch.

Nothing on the shoe rack.
“Mum, where’s Titch? He has my shoes and I need them!”

She rolled the pin until it was right on the end of the board. She loved cooking. With all the strange herbs she seemed to conjure up out nowhere, it was inevitable she was in charge of the family meals. James couldn’t imagine how they’d get along without her. “He’s in his room with a friend, doll. I’d knock if I were you, he gets tetchy about that kind of stuff.” Sharply she tossed him a spoon. “Try this.”

Unquestioningly he did. It was sticky, gooey, a little chocolatey with undertones of peanut butter and raspberry. “What is it?”
“Brownie mix. You always liked licking the bowl, I thought you’d appreciate this.”

The fifteen year old nodded enthusiastically, popping the spoon back in the bowl to his mother’s minor discontent. Then, not really noticing, he made his way upstairs, his tongue still roaming around the inside of his mouth the get every ounce of flavour out the dessert. Once he went down the corridor, passed by his own, incredibly messy room, he found Titch’s bedroom. On the outside it was unmistakably his brothers, with a garland of vines that said “Titch’s Room, Do Not Enter (Without Knocking)”.

He knocked. “Titch.”

There was a half a second pause and some sounds of feet thudding on the floor. “Yeah- James- gimme-“

Assuming he’d given enough of a warning, James opened the door nonchalantly, still picking crumbs off his bottom lip. As it swung, he could hear a lot of muffled noises. A zipping sound, an irritated groan, the duvet being rearranged. None of it struck him as out of the ordinary; Titch was known for keeping his privacy. James only noticed something was wrong with his entrance once his eyes landed on what he’d interrupted, and instantly wished he hadn’t.

He’d seen Titch shirtless before plenty of times, swimming and such. As kids, they hadn’t had baths together, since Titch was already seven when he arrived and was largely too uncomfortable to hug a child, let alone bathe with one. He’d probably seen his brother named, but he couldn’t confidently name a time. To his credit, he wasn’t fully unclothed, having managed get his pants on. All he could do was duck down, cowering so far into his legs that his torso became invisible. Not that that was the problem.
“Hi Lee.”

“James…” The other boy responded lamely. His jeans had been zipped all the way up, but the button swung around loosely, a sign of just how off guard he’d been caught. Again, James had seen Lee shirtless in the changing rooms getting ready for games, and sweating a river once they were done. The tousled hair, blood red cheeks and belt long abandoned on the other side of the floor were new though. Lee looked like a fish out of water, with the ragged breathing pattern of one to match. James didn’t enjoy knowing this was the effect his brother had on people.

“Jesus Christ.” Titch mumbled almost incoherently, rubbing his eyes as if he was the one who witnessed something he wasn’t meant to. “I told you to fucking wait and-“

“I knocked.”

“Yeah, and fat lot of use that did.” Titch pinched the bridge of his nose together, bumping his shoulder against Lee in something bordering on comfort. Then he looked at James in a way his brother had seen him do in the playground, right before the teachers had to phone their parents. “This isn’t leaving this room, got it? You tell mum or dad, or anyone- including the team- and I will personally hit you over the head with a shovel till you forget you saw this.”

James looked between the pair of them, one incredibly sheepish and shell shocked, the other curling his fists up and readied got a fight, and decided he’d already messed this up beyond belief, and might as well roll with it. “Well my boots are in the corner, so I’m just going to go and get those.” Wordlessly, he crossed the room, passed two t-shirts, a pair of jeans and some Nikes before reaching his own boots. They had Lee’s belt on them, which he removed gingerly, feeling four eyes on him intently. “That’s me done.” he commented, picking up the shoes and heading back to the door.

He started to close it behind him, adding an additional, “Hope you guys have… fun. See you tomorrow Lee.” in the hopes it might mellow the tension. It did not.

In the otherwise very plain bedroom, Titch glanced at his friend. They were young, and didn’t usually feel it, but suddenly he could see the youth in Lee’s face. The acne, his movement not quite matching his physique, the panicked wobble of his lip. He was sixteen. Plenty of people his age were up to exactly the same kind of stuff. Sure, most of them had learned about said stuff in school, and might even be able to tell their parents about their more explicit activities, but he wasn’t strange. The only abnormal thing about the whole situation was that Lee was a boy like him.

“Hey,” he whispered, his fingers wrapping around Lee’s wrist. Reflexively, he jerked away, grumbling about something or other. Titch tried again, practicing softness he wasn’t raised in. “I’m serious. He’s not gonna tell anyone. And if he did, like I said, I’ll beat the shit out him. James is stupid, but he’s not that stupid. You know that much.” He got even quieter. “Don’t you?”

Lee was staring into the middle distance. “Yeah. What? Yeah. Sure.” Slowly, his hand crept out of the touch, and he began walking towards his belt. Titch suddenly realised how exposed he was, and sat on the bed, pulling the duvet over her bare legs. For a whole two months, they’d been getting away with this. Finding corners, empty rooms, quiet nature, and finding themselves through each other. It hadn’t exactly been tender, their lips more grazed than touched, and that was far less often than the more carnal occurrences they met up to do.

Except for the days where they’d talk. About anything, really. They’d walk the length of five football fields to guarantee nobody would see them, and they’d lie in the grass, and talk for hours on end. Until the sun set. It was a feeling hard to describe, being two of the only gay boys in the town. Lee never really referred to himself as “gay” either. One time, one of the first times they’d been together, he’d sworn he wasn’t. That this was some elaborate punishment from God that he’d repent for later. He’d called Titch a faggot. Titch had kissed him. He’d kissed back harder.

He knew Lee liked him.

“You can’t let this get to you. It’s one time. We can be more careful. I can buy myself some shoes of my own” He laughed, trying to diffuse whatever was making the air suffocating. “We’ll be okay.”

“There’s not a fucking ‘we’.” Lee grabbed his t-shirt off the floor, pulling it over his head. It slid on. Titch wanted to point out that he was in need of a shower. “Get that in your head, Titch.”

“I mean, ‘we’ just got caught mid-” he caught himself, “- so there’s clearly a ‘we’ isn’t there?”

“Don’t be smart-”

“I am smart though, Lee. I am. I can make sure it’s fine. I can clean up this mess, literally, figuratively, whatever way necessary. You’re not in any trouble.”

The belt took longer than usual to buckle. Titch watched it slip over his waist. About fifteen minutes ago he’d taken it off. It was 7PM. They’d had dinner, and were going to try to go on a walk in the evening, under the guise of exercising off dessert. In reality they wouldn’t do anything crazy. In Titch’s ideal world they’d walk arm in arm, or hand in hand. His faith wasn’t tied to some external thing like sexuality. If God had allowed him to be abandoned in birth, letting him like men without guilt seemed like a fair trade. It was about finding a purpose for his survival, his existence, seeing hope in suburban mundanity on the farm. He knew his parents wouldn’t understand any time soon, but Lee was young. Different.
“We’ll see.”

At least he said ‘we’, Titch thought, knowing he was being let down gently.

 

{present}

Clarissa raised an eyebrow. It reminded her of Matilda and Amanda, in a strange way. Maybe it was just the quintessential queer experience, to be so afraid of being discovered that you’re only ever left disappointed or violated. She was relieved to have avoided it- not that it was within the realm of possibility. But every time she had it described to her, she couldn’t quite quiet the voice in her head, telling her this was a story she knew. A world she lived in. A fear she could name. “What happened with Lee?”

“Oh, you know. Normal shit. It was 2011, different times. I think he went to Sussex Uni, came out, got on fine there. He’d be ashamed to say he ever called me a slur, I reckon. They’re lovely about the gays over in Brighton. We live and we learn. And I got on fine enough myself. That was kind of my breaking point, the one thing I had for myself going away. I just sat my mum and dad down, long before James would’ve blurted it out, and told them. Suck it up, I said. I should’ve been nicer, in retrospect. I was seventeen, they were born in the sixties. It wasn't until I left for university that I think they really accepted it. I was miles away in Shropshire. Midlands- you’re American, you won’t know. Without me, I think they realised they actually didn’t mind my baggage. They just liked… all of me. And it probably didn’t help that every time I’d come home I was seeing someone new. They got the idea pretty quickly that my gayness was immovable.”

Clarissa hummed in agreement. It was the opposite of how she’d functioned. Under the assumption that the only thing she could be was straight because she felt a strong sense of obligation to the idea of marrying a man, starting a family with him. The idea of going off to college and experimenting, only to be more assured of your own difference, was an insane fever dream of a concept to her. Clarissa wondered how different her circumstances would’ve needed to have been growing up for her to consider her sexuality as an actual thing to engage with, instead of some objective truth. Even now, she struggled to picture it. “That’s so much.” she said simply. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too.” Titch laughed dryly. “You’d think we’d gone camping the way that was in tents.”

At these words, the door opened and Mark and Derek filed through, kicking off their shoes that had become caked in mud from trying to approach the animals. Clarissa made eye contact with Mark, who nodded. Later, they’d properly debrief. Right now, all she needed to know was that it was going well. Derek knew the farm like the back of his hand, Titch had grown up there, and they could be trusted with it. Titch had proven to her that he was growing, and had suffered and persevered as a result. He had learned from things.

“I think we should get married in August.” Derek announced to the room at large.

“What?” Titch burst out. “I thought you- you wanted- October was your idea!”

“Yeah. Sorry, I just… who’ll have time for a wedding once the baby’s born? It’s easier to get married sooner rather than later. We’re not inviting too many people, it’d be during the Summer holidays so little’uns could come, and then we don’t need to worry about Clarissa’s water breaking mid ceremony.”

Mark looked up at Derek. “So you’re serious about-” he faltered.

“Yeah. I am.” Derek affirmed. He looked at his partner. “Titch?”

Titch watched Clarissa, replaying their chat. “I think so. Incredibly poor planning, but it makes enough sense.”

“Right, August it is.”

Clarissa shut her eyes. What the hell did that mean?

Notes:

hello!!!
i rushed a bit to get this out before i went to sleep so some of the transitions between segments may be a little rough. i was very busy today making a presentation about fanfiction to my friends, you know how it is.

anyways, time skip time??? mayhaps. thought you should all know this fic doesn't end with the birth, and so a little bit of skipping around may be necesarry. don't worry, i promise i have a plan.

stag husbands content? titch flashback? more mark/amanda friendship content? welcome to this fic's most ecperimental chapter where i try to tie all the sideplots up bit by bit. hope it all made sense. can you tell i love the crones (ethel/margaery) and the whole tua squad? i'm sso autistic it isn't even funny.

anyways, thanks for reading! as always, feedback/kudos/comments are all appreciated, thank you for sticking around and giving this story so much time to build, and have a lovely day!

theo <3

Notes:

HELLO!!!!!!! Thanks for reading Chapter 1!
I'm very excited for this one, it should be very fun. Soon we will meet Ditch, James, the spirit of New Jersey and perhaps several more fan favourites (perhaps someone old?).
I wouldn't normally do a pregnancy fic, it just spoke to me with this longform. Additionally, before it comes up, yes I know Clarissa could just get an abortion. I don't think she sees it as an option though- but note I, Theo, am pro-choice. Just wanted to clarify.
I promise we will see more yearning soon.
Thanks again!!!! Chapter 2 should be another week or so I reckon.
Theo :) (templetodestruction, here and on tiktok/insta)

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of was it always you?