Ah, home sweet place-I-can’t-wait-to-move-out-of.
I first viewed this low-ceilinged, squeaky-floored one-bedroom on a winter evening, thinking it was just the January miseries making it feel dingy. I pictured throwing open the windows come spring and setting a little vase of flowers on the sill, but the sun never seemed to find me. I didn’t know about prioritising south-facing and natural light back in those days. Still, the low rent has helped me save up over the years, and as soon as I find the right spot to buy I’ll be out of here.
I drop my bag on the pink velvet chaise and head for the kitchen. Much as I’d like to slug back some rum, I’m saving all booze consumption for the wedding so I reach for what’s left of my blackberry gelato. My hand lingers on the fridge door handle as I take in the photos held in place with retro housewife magnets.
‘Hello, friends!’ I smile at my two best girls – May and bride-to-be Charlotte – and two best boys – Gareth and Jay (May’s twin brother).
Though Jay has been threatening to move to New York since Pose first aired, we’ve been a pack since school. Charlotte and May were first to pal up, making an unbeatable goal attack and goal shooter combo on the netball team. To this day May is all attack while Charlotte personifies seal-the-deal precision.
Jay and I bonded when we were cast in the drama department’s interpretation of The King and I. Jay still loves to be the centre of attention, while I’ve never been known to turn down a spin on the dance floor.
Gareth became our unlikely fifth musketeer a year later, coincidentally combining physicality with dramatic flair. I’m just about to relive his scene-stealing moment in PE when my phone rings, making me jump.
‘Kiss Me, Honey Honey, Kiss Me!’ Shirley Bassey entices.
I must remember to change my ringtone before the wedding. May put it on as a joke and I never got around to updating it. I think some part of me kept hoping that one day the right man would hear the invitation and respond accordingly.
‘Hey, May!’ I say, balancing the phone on my shoulder as I reach for a spoon from the drawer.
‘I DON’T WANT TO GO!’
Excellent. Someone in a worse mood than me.
‘Neither do I right now,’ I concede.
‘You’ve finally seen the light about Marcus?’ She brightens. ‘There’s still time for Charlotte to cancel, should we go to her now? One hour and this nightmare could be over!’
‘May.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve got to let this go,’ I say as I put her on speaker and recline on the chaise. ‘The poor guy has done nothing to warrant your distrust.’
‘Poor guy?’ she sneers.
‘Okay, rich guy. This rich guy has done nothing to warrant your distrust. Nothing.’
‘He’s going to take her away from us. We already see less of her.’
‘We saw less of you leading up to your wedding.’
‘And too much of me during the divorce.’
‘I liked having you to stay!’ I protest.
‘Anyway, it’s a slippery slope,’ she continues. ‘He’ll have her pregnant before we know it.’
‘And then we get to be aunties!’
‘Of a human that is half his DNA.’
I set down my gelato and unclick the speaker button. ‘Can’t you just be happy for her?’
‘He’s not good enough!’ she rails.
‘No one would be good enough for her in your eyes.’
‘What’s your point?’
I sigh.
‘Anyway,’ she huffs. ‘I know why I don’t want to go, what’s your excuse?’
I wasn’t going to go into details about Mattress Matt but I feel any distraction from Marcus is probably a good thing.
‘Woman!’ May reels after I bring her up to speed. ‘That is a zinger!’
‘I know. And before you offer, I don’t need him to be punished in a cruel and unusual way. I just want to know how to face a dozen of our schoolfriends when they introduce their beloved husbands and wives and I stand there alone.’
‘Being single is nothing to be ashamed of.’
‘I know that, of course,’ I sigh. ‘I just can’t carry it off like you. Plus, I’ve always been associated with romantic failure. I wanted to surprise everyone by being squared away.’
‘Maybe by Charlotte’s next wedding . . .’
‘Oh May!’
We veer off topic for a while and then as we go to wrap up, her voice softens. ‘I really am sorry about Matt. There has to be one non-dick out there for you.’
‘Yes, that’s my goal – to meet the non-dick of my dreams.’
‘All you need is one good premonition,’ she reminds me. ‘I know it’s been twenty years of disappointment but that light at the end of the tunnel is no use unless you keep moving towards it.’
*
I was fourteen when I first heard about our family legacy, for want of a better term.
Mum and I had just watched the final episode of some Sunday night period drama when she abruptly turned off the TV and came and sat beside me on the sofa. ‘I need to talk to you about something.’
‘Yes?’ I said, a little unnerved by the look on her face.
‘Do you remember kissing Tommy Turner in the playground when you were seven?’
‘Random!’ I frowned. ‘Yes, vaguely. Little Tommy Turnip.’
‘Do you remember what you told me about it?’
I thought for a moment and then suggested, ‘That he smelled of apple shampoo and plasticine?’
Mum chuckled. ‘Actually, you probably did say that. But do you remember what else?’
‘No.’
She took a breath. ‘You told me that when you kissed him, the sky went dark and you had a dream even though you were standing up.’
I gave a shudder. ‘That sounds a bit Sixth Sense.’
‘You said you saw him with metal on his teeth and that you didn’t like him anymore because he reminded you of Jaws from The Spy Who Loved Me, which you’d watched with Dad the weekend before.’
‘That rings a bell.’
‘Well, it wasn’t a dream, it was a premonition. You had a premonition of him when he got braces.’
I shifted positions. ‘I don’t think I’ll set up my Madame Zaza tent just yet – he had gappy teeth, just like me. It’s actually one of the things I liked about him.’
‘Okay, that probably isn’t the best example,’ Mum conceded. ‘What I’m trying to tell you is that all the women in our family have a particular ability and that was your first experience of it. When we kiss someone for the first time, we get a flash of how the relationship will end.’
I looked around for a half-drunk bottle of Bailey’s – she must surely be tipsy.
‘I know it sounds far-fetched or delusional but it’s true. It’s been going on for generations, as far back as anyone can remember.’
I studied her for a second. ‘Did it skip a generation with you?’
‘No, I had it too.’
‘So you saw Dad leaving when you first kissed him?’
She looked sad and a bit uncomfortable. ‘Yes.’
‘But you married him anyway?’
‘I had my reasons. The point is that the premonitions don’t lie. You need to pay heed.’
‘Should I also beware the Ides of March?’ I tried to lighten the mood.
‘Amy, darling, I know this is a lot to process.’ She reached for my hand. ‘I’ve put it off for as long as I could because I didn’t want you worrying, but I feel it’s important for you to be prepared.’
‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ I withdrew my hand. ‘What if I don’t want this to happen to me?’
‘I’m afraid you don’t have a choice. This is our family gift.’
*
That night I stayed up fretting, swinging between ‘It’s all a load of nonsense’ and ‘What if it’s true?’ Which led me to three key questions by daybreak: how long does the premonition last? Do I see myself in the premonition or am I looking out through my eyes? What will the person I’m kissing think is going on?
My mum had replied calmly: ‘They are fleeting. Sometimes you are looking onto the scene like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, other times it’s more emotion-based – you’ll see the other person and get a strong feeling of sadness or regret or anger, et cetera. As for the person you are kissing, they won’t know anything – except that one minute you’re receptive to them and the next minute you might be pushing them away.’
‘Right,’ I had replied. ‘So it’s basically a big spoiler alert for the relationship. And I have to decide whether I want to experience the full movie based on a few-seconds-long snippet of the ending?’
‘I hadn’t thought of it that way but yes, it’s exactly like that. You still get to choose what you do about what you see. You just don’t get any say in the outcome.’
This sounded super depressing to me so I shared the burden with my friends. Charlotte said it was like having a direct line to destiny and insisted I wait for someone I really liked to test it out. May and Jay were all for unleashing my ‘superpower’ that day. I was equal parts terrified and curious but agreed it would be best to start with someone I wouldn’t be hoping for a future with, so I wouldn’t have to add crying to the mix. I really just had one criterion – I wanted it to be someone I could trust not to blab all round school if I started screaming or passed out. I studied each guy in our class and couldn’t find one candidate. At least not one I actually wanted to physically kiss. An uneventful year passed and then new boy Gareth arrived. I never pictured myself with an outdoorsy type – compared to the techy stringbeans and cool-coiffed pretty boys I’d been eyeing across the school cafeteria, he looked as burly as a lumberjack – but I did notice that he never got sucked into any gossip or drama. If May demanded an opinion from him on a topic, he’d look vague and say he missed what she said because he was just thinking about pollen. Or orchid propagation. Or ferns. Apparently there are over ten thousand species of ferns. It’s a wonder we were able to get his attention at all.
Then came the school outing to the local Christmas market. Gareth and I had been tasked with getting the hot spiced apple cider and, as we awaited our order, he casually pointed to the sprig of mistletoe hung above our heads.
My eyes widened – was my first kiss going to be straight out of a Hallmark movie? Just enough snowfall to catch on my eyelashes and a chaste kiss tasting of sugar-dusted Pfeffernusse? Suddenly I felt ill-prepared – we’d had zero flirtation in the lead-up, barely even any eye contact. Nevertheless, I tilted my face and attempted a flirtatious twinkle. ‘Yes?’
‘Did you know mistletoe is actually a parasite?’
My face froze, my heart beating uncomfortably in my chest. What?
‘Birds eat the berries then deposit them onto the branches of another tree, where they proceed to suck out all the nutrients.’
‘Oh,’ I grimaced, deflated.
‘As for the kissing part . . .’
I raised a wary brow.
‘That comes from the legend of Norse god Loki poisoning another god with the berries.’
‘They’re poisonous?’
‘Yes, but in the story the poisoned god recovered and his people were so relieved that the mere sight of mistletoe would prompt a celebratory embrace.’
This was at least ten years before Tom Hiddleston played Loki in Thor so there wasn’t even that element to pep me up.
‘Do you want my cinnamon stick?’
I looked at the dusty, twig-like scroll he was offering and that seemed like all the premonition I needed – we were never going to be romantically entwined. My shoulders slumped briefly but as we rejoined the rest of the group and I watched Jay use him as a buffer against the whistling wind, I realised I was perfectly fine – this wasn’t a personal rejection of me, Gareth was just being Gareth. For years he showed more interest in hugging trees than women. It’s almost as if he knew that Freya was on her way and he had no need for place-holders.
Valentine’s Day brought with it an invitation to a spin-the-bottle party – the odds of getting kissed there seemed decent, if daunting. But things took a decidedly different turn and ultimately impatience got the better of me and I succumbed to the pestering of class stud Chas. In a tube stairwell smelling of stale wee.
The only thing worse than the setting was the kiss. You know those haphazard assaults that make you want to wipe your face after? When it came to the big premonition moment there was no fainting, no screaming; it was more a surge of blackness, not dissimilar to going into a dark tunnel, and then a fleeting vision, like passing through a station without stopping and trying to make sense of what you are seeing on the platform.
I didn’t let on what I had seen. Chas had promised to take me bowling and I wanted to make some attempt at having a boyfriend, even knowing it would end. But I barely made it through two weeks of dating, with most of our interactions consisting of me saying, ‘Not now!’, ‘Not there!’ or ‘Not on your nelly!’
In my eagerness to move on, I got my premonition timings a little off and accused him of cheating with Alison Kirkpatrick before they’d even got together.
‘Don’t deny it! I saw the pair of you canoodling at that new cafe by WHSmith!’
‘What are you talking about, Whole Latte Love hasn’t even opened yet?’
‘Oh,’ I sighed frustratedly. ‘Well, why don’t you take her there, on me?’ And then I gave him a fiver.
I can’t say that things have greatly improved in the twenty years since then.
