The Art of Keeping Faith Page 24

  Richard: Do you have any food?

  Me: Cheerios?

  Richard: Give me half an hour

  Me: I love you

  Me: In a completely platonic non sexy way

  I could kiss Richard when he turns up at half nine with a box of books, a laptop that is far better than mine, and two carrier bags of food. But I manage to restrain myself. I also manage to completely avoid talking about New Year’s Eve in any way whatsoever; praise the lord for that! That would have been hideous. What do you say? “So does your girlfriend try and hump every famous person she meets?”

  I don’t think so.

  Right. It’s time to crack these damn essays.

  7th January

  One essay complete!

  Richard is still here, it was another all-nighter but at least I have managed to get something down on paper.

  He was going to go home at midnight but I literally threw myself across the room and barricaded the door.

  “Do not leave! I actually do study when you are here.”

  “Well, what would you do if I was not here?”

  I scanned through my mind for possible scenarios.

  “I have no idea but I am pretty sure it would not involve studying.”

  Richard gave a shrug and settled back on the end of my bed where he was precariously perched with his laptop.

  “Okay, but you had better make some more of that awful stuff you call coffee.”

  8th January

  I am on fire!

  Second essay complete, it does not make a huge amount of sense but I hit thirty footnote references, which is an all-time personal best. I don’t know what it is about footnotes but they make me feel very important and super intelligent.

  More the better if you ask me, even if they bear no relevance to the essay at all.

  I had to release Richard from my temporary prison when Fi started to track him down because she was back from wherever she had been and wanted to know why he was not home and had not done the laundry.

  What a bitch.

  I tried very hard to keep my expression neutral as he packed up his stuff but I don’t think I was overly successful, the lip twitch he left with makes me think that I failed.

  Right then. Two days, two essays. I can do this.

  9th January

  “Are you alive?”

  It’s Meredith.

  “No. And don’t come in, I don’t have time to stop.”

  She comes in anyway and perches on the end of my bed in the only free space she can find. There are books everywhere, post it notes all over the walls, half of the contents of our kitchen cupboards are dirty and on the floor and I have not washed since, well, I cannot remember.

  “How much more?” she asks with a sympathetic pat of my leg.

  “One.”

  “That’s good.”

  “No, it’s not. I have left the hard one until last.”

  “Ah, that’s a shame. So when can you take me driving?”

  “Are you being serious?”

  “Maybe, are you going to shout?”

  “Out! Out, get out!”

  “Jeez, all right. Keep your hair on.”

  Meredith, the bloody swat, has already handed in her work. I don’t understand how, because I am pretty sure she was in as equal a panic as me the other day about a lack of essay titles. Now, they are done and handed in.

  I’m thinking foul play? Tristan maybe? Although I am not sure that he knows anything about history. It is a mystery to me.

  Driving my bloody arse. Hmph.

  10th January

  Done.

  I have not slept in the best part of five days and I feel like I have been run over by a very large truck. I don’t plan to write anything again for a very long time!

  Just need to sleep. For about a year.

  I’d better pop into the kitchen to tell my flatmates I am still alive just in case they are interested. And then I am going to bed.

  It’s only Tristan. He is sitting at the desk in the lounge, the desk that strangely neither of the students in the house bothers to use. Mrs Morgan left it for me when she moved out, but I haven’t used it yet.

  “I’m alive!” I announce.

  “Oh, good.”

  He does not sound overly thrilled at the confirmation of my existence.

  “What ya doing?” I plonk myself down on the sofa. Tristan doesn’t seem to want to be interrupted which means I should do it more.

  “Working, Lilah, remember that thing that grownups do to pay the bills?”

  I stick my tongue out and try to peek over his shoulder; he is just staring at a blank screen.

  Working my sodding arse.

  “Oh.” He lifts his head a little. “Meredith said to remind you about Ben’s birthday because it would be dead embarrassing if you forgot two years in a row.”

  “Duh, Ben’s birthday is ages away.”

  “Monday.”

  “Monday! Fucking Monday and you are reminding me now!”

  Smirking he turns and looks at me, one eyebrow raised. I could quite happily punch him but I am too busy embracing a full on state of panic.

  “Oh, my God! I am the world’s crappest girlfriend.”

  “I’d say. You’ve spent the last five days holed up in your room with another man. Now you have forgotten your real boyfriend’s birthday.”

  “Not helping, Trist. What on earth am I going to do?”

  “I don’t know, what did you do last year?”

  I think for a moment.

  “Bought a crazy expensive guitar and gave him a blow job. Twice.”

  Tristan just laughs in response before something obviously crosses his mind.

  “You could do my work for me?” he suggests.

  “What! Are you bloody kidding? I don’t know how to write anything. Did you see my essays this week?”

  He thinks about this for a moment. “Well, I bet you could write about Ben.”

  He leaves his words dangling there like a carrot.

  Could I? Could I write about Ben?

  “Okay, I’ll do it,” I shout before running off to my room to work on ideas.

  “I need it by Monday,” he calls after me, followed by something unintelligible along the lines of otherwise he is going to get sacked.

  Right then. What can I write about Ben for his birthday surprise?

  11th January

  “What can I write about Ben?”

  I’ve walked into the shop and flung my bag down. I’m late, but who gives a shit? I can think of nothing to write about Ben, which is far more important than forty minutes of tardiness.

  “And, hello to you, too.”

  “Don’t mess about, Baz. I haven’t slept in a week. I am feeling a little bit cranky and I need to think of something to write about Ben by Monday morning at the latest.”

  “You’ve forgotten his birthday again haven’t you?”

  Apparently I am the only one who has. “No, not exactly.”

  It was embarrassing enough admitting to Tristan and Meredith that I forgot again, I don’t think Baz needs to know my forgetfulness as well.

  “So what can I write about?” I ask again.

  “How much you miss him?”

  “Rubbish.”

  “How much you love him?”

  “Rubbish.”

  “What a great musician he is?”

  “Rubbish.”

  Baz grabs a beer and hands me one, it is only ten but who gives a shit, these are desperate times.

  “What abou …” he starts.

  “Shh, stop. Wait a minute.” I wave my hands at him.

  I have an idea. It is swirling around my brain like a bit of wispy cloud. I just need to grab it before it floats off.

  Desperate … desperate times … why does that ring a bell?

  Desperate times! It’s back. That’s how I felt before I met Ben. I don’t think about it very often, but that’s how I used to feel before I came to Uni and before I
met him. The moment I unlock the memories they all come flooding back; that first day, the apprehension; meeting Meredith; my first trip to the lake on campus that wouldn’t be my last. Then the following day at the ’Freshers’ Ball and my first sight of Ben and the first kiss before passing out. The embarrassment of waking up the next day and finding him in the kitchen and then that first day of lectures when he sat behind me and tapped my chair with his foot the whole time, before later that evening, back by the lake when he kissed me again and made my entire existence spin on its head.

  “I’ve got to go,” I tell Baz, grabbing my bag off the floor where I threw it only a few minutes earlier.

  “But you’ve only just got here,” he starts before changing his mind. “Oh go on, I don’t know why I bother.”

  I step over and give him a massive hug. “Love you, Baz, thanks for saving me twice.”

  “Oh, get out of here,” he tells me. So I do. I dash home and start writing for what feels like the millionth time this week. But this time the words flow easily because it is something that I know as well as I know myself.

  Ben.

  12th January

  “Is. It. Any. Good?” I manage to mutter.

  My capacity for speech ended about an hour ago, half an hour before my capacity for typing.

  Tristan looks up from the sofa where he is sat reading through the article I have written for him. “Yeah, it is. Lilah, it really is.”

  I don’t bother trying to ascertain if he is taking the piss. I just shuffle back to my room where I collapse in a heap on the floor, never to get up again.

  13th January

  Midnight

  “Thank you.”

  It’s his opening line and it was worth waiting up for.

  “Happy Birthday, Benjamin.”

  “Thank you, and thank you again for your gift. I was not expecting that in a million years.”

  “What were you expecting?”

  “A blow job.”

  “How? You are there and I am here?”

  “An I Owe You?”

  “Well I am glad I managed one better than an I Owe You blow job.”

  He giggles down the line.

  “Is that really how you felt, the first time you saw me?”

  “Yep.”

  “I love you Lilah,”

  “I love you, Benjamin.”

  “Oh, Lilah, by the way, I did think you were winking at me!” he chuckles down the line.

  This was my favourite bit of the article to write. Recounting standing against the wall at the Freshers’ Ball when every time I opened up both of my eyes there were two Ben’s on stage. I spent a good few minutes chuckling to myself every time I managed to make two of him, or the extra one disappear. I was sure at the time he knew.

  “Did you?” I ask him.

  “Ha, no not really I was just so bloody pleased that I found you again after all those months of looking. You probably could have been comatose and I still would have tried to snog you.”

  “Ha! You dirty pervert.”

  “Only when it comes to you.”

  “So tell me about your birthday.”

  “Nah, boring, you tell me about your day!”

  So I do. I tell him all about meeting Zoe Benedict and going to thank her at the publishers after she published my article online, and effectively saved my birthday bacon. I tell him all about my trip back to Uni to pick my modules, and the dosser course I have managed to get on this term: History on Screen, which basically involves watching old, shit movies. And I tell him all about the short-and-sweet-but-easy-to-keep New Year’s resolutions I have finally managed to write.

  I have decided to keep them vague and brief therefore allowing greater flexibility in not breaking them.

  I will not drink—as much

  I will try to be on time

  I will try and study slightly more often and not leave it to the last minute

  I will try not to be jealous of skinny American girls hanging around my boyfriend.

  I do not tell him the last one. It slipped my mind.

  14th January

  9.30 a.m.

  Fuck it, it’s nine-thirty, but I have not had time for my pre-lecture nicotine hit.

  I will just a have a quick one before heading in.

  9.40 a.m.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I announce to the room in general. There are only ten people, and I try not to make eye contact with anyone as I head to a seat at the back before changing direction to the front row. If I am going to do this whole study malarkey I may as well sit at the front. Meredith who is already settled in the back row gives a little giggle.

  “Ah, Miss McCannon, how privileged I feel to have you two terms in a row.”

  You have got to be kidding me.

  Professor Pilchard pops his head up from behind a projector he is fiddling with.

  “Don’t worry about sitting down, Delilah.” Pilchard tells me with a wave of his hand.

  Really!! He can’t be throwing me off the course already for being ten minutes late.

  “Let’s move seats everyone. There are only a few of us, no need to be strangers, we will be spending a lot of time together watching movies and all sorts over the next few weeks.” He rubs his hands together with glee and I feel my stomach give a little drop.

  This is not going to be a doss lecture at all.

  Is there anything worse in the world than thinking you had something easy and then finding out it was going to be really hard?

  Yes, there is. It’s called History on Screen with Professor Pilchard and it is going to be hell.

  To make matters even worse, who should I end up sitting next to?

  That’s right. Bloody Barbie and her miniscule slut underwear, which thankfully I cannot see through the plunging neckline of her sweater, but I am sure it is there all the same.

  Bloody great.

  15th January

  It’s a good thing my belated New Year’s Resolution regarding my alcohol intake only specified ‘Try not to drink too much.’

  I failed and then some.

  It was only partially my fault.

  After the disastrous History on Screen lecture where Professor Pilchard attempted to make me understand the term Mise-en-Scene by waving his hands at me and going purple in the face, I snuck off to the library.

  Once there, I spent an hour idly flicking through books from the film and television section (haha! One floor lower in the library—I may like this subject after all!). It was then I noticed the date on my phone.

  I like to spend my time in a state of ignorant bliss where I am not normally aware of what the date is, or even for that matter what month it is.

  However, yesterday one date was really niggling in the back of my mind, 14th of January. Why would that ring a bell? I cast my mind back to that first week of spring term last year. Ah, the snow. Snow days with Ben, one of my most favourite things in the world. This was back during the time when we were not supposed to be together. In fact I had told him already to go and live in the States, but we were unable to keep our hands off each other.

  Nice memories, but it didn’t explain that nagging sensation making me feel that I should be remembering something important.

  It was only as I was heading out of the library and glancing over the cold and bleak campus that I suddenly remembered.

  Meredith.

  The 14th of January was when she found out about her baby. It was the day she came into my room covered in snot and tears and laid on my bed as all of our lives spun and tilted, putting us all on different paths. It was the day when her words and tears broke my heart but later, Ben, in the silence and still of his room, was able to piece it back together and stick it with glue in such a way that I would never be able to separate myself from him.