My coat has never left my body, so going is as simple as standing up and walking. Outside I look at the gnome and his cheeky little smiling face. He’s tying the shoelaces on his black boot, his foot propped up on a sign that reads HAPPY HOME THIS WAYwith an arrow pointing towards the door. I’ve looked at him and these words thousands of times, he is a symbol of my family and where I was raised, but I’ve never given him much in the way of attention. Picking him up, I notice how faded his blue coat is, how the end of his nose has no colour at all, but he’s still who he’s always been. A liar. I raise him above my head and smash him to the ground. Him in smithereens is quite the sight. Mum’s face appears at the window, her hand covers her mouth in surprise at what I’ve done, but she stays inside.
32
For the next few weeks I allow myself to fall in love with Gavin. Many people would argue love is not a choice, but I don’t agree. I would argue they are completely wrong. Love is marvellous, but it cannot be denied that to enter into a loving relationship also opens up the possibility you will fall out of it and be deeply wounded, therefore it’s a choice to trust another with your heart. And if it’s not, you’re telling me that for everyone else love is forced upon them? That every loving relationship – whether romantic or friendship or familial or a dynamic I’ve not experienced so am unable to comprehend – all of those people had no choice? None at all? Exactly. Love is a choice everyone makes with their eyes as open as they choose them to be. Mine are wide open.
Look at Nicol and me, for instance. Our sexual chemistry allowed me to make the choice to commit to our relationship. Nicol wanted to be inside me often and I wanted to be loved always. He seemed like a good choice, until I realised that when we were not directly connected at the genitals he was an arsehole and his pursuit of me ended as soon as we signed a rental agreement. Still, I chose to stay loving him because I understood the physical tenderness he was capable of. Then, more recently, after I had accepted who he was as a person, I had chosen to love him because things are so much easier when you’re in a partnership. There’s the immediate splitting of bills, of course, but the future is brighter for having someone else with you. Marriage and children began to feel imminent, and to not follow down that path with him but go back into the world of dating and start all over again felt impossible. Therefore I did love him, I had to, otherwise what the hell had I spent years and years of life doing if it had not all been for love? Which brings us to Gavin. They are the sort of person I want to be loved by and, in turn, this has allowed the sensation of love to form inside my brain.
At work, Brian does not appear to believe we are two individuals who have romantic lives, let alone with each other. Because we are not constantly shagging, he views us like Barbie and Ken, two toys in his office with no working sexual organs and no sadness this is the case. That’s not to say we do not have sex. That’s also not to say that we do, because we don’t. Not fully. Not yet. We have come close, twice, but Gavin has been unable to maintain their erection due to ‘the pressure’ and so we do everything but. Their desire not being confirmed with a hard penis on demand felt, at first, like the proof I’d been waiting for that it was not possible they could truly want me. Instead it was proximity or loneliness or an as-yet-to-be-diagnosed mental illness clouding their judgement, making them see beauty in me I do not possess, and their penis was the first part of their body to recognise me for the mediocre person I really am.
‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
Gavin loomed over me, their hands beside my head propping them up, their flaccid penis grazing the top of my thigh, ‘What do you mean?’
‘Like, is there a certain thing that’ll get you going?’
They maintained the intense eye contact we’d been sharing. Despite their penis very much not being inside me, this intimacy entered my soul. Still, I needed their erection to be present, too. A soul connection could be entirely imagined on my part. Our genitals connecting could not.
‘Is there something I can do to make you want me more?’
Gavin rolled themself off of me, lay beside me and moved my head with their hand so I could continue to look at them. I focused on the few grey hairs in their moustache. ‘That’s the problem, Jem. I couldn’t want you more. I want you so much my body can’t handle it.’
There’s a steadiness to being with Gavin that’s allowed most of my recent destructive behaviours to go. I no longer watchFixer Uppers Go Under the Hammerfor hours of an evening. Instead we go to the cinema, or for walks, or for a drink together and talk about everything and nothing. Gavin is the only person I have ever told about my parents’ unhappy marriage that neither of them will leave. Gavin tells me about how accepting their identity has made them question everything: family, work, their relationship with their ex. Which is the exact opposite of what they were hoping for when they acknowledged who they really were. From our conversations, I’ve deduced that all I’ve just mentioned is why they were so emotional when we first met, but I still want solid confirmation my theory is correct. When I pressed for details to verify this – ‘So that’s why you loved crying for a bit, yeah?’ – they only reassured me with, ‘There’s a bit more to it. It’s the sort of thing I don’t want to go into until we’re certain this is the end game with you and me. In the past I’ve given too much of myself to people who didn’t value it. It’s not bad or terrible, it’s just exposing and I’m not ready for it. Yet. I will be soon, though, I promise.’
If I were to bet on what I think it is, I’d say they had some dicey mental health stuff in their past but have worked through it. They don’t take bets as specific as that at the bookies down from the office so I’ve kept that gamble to myself.
It is only natural that now I am in a solid, loving relationship, Nicol chooses to reappear in my life. After I’d handed Amara the first lot of documents after my first date with Gavin, neither of them ever followed up about receiving any more and I had other things to be thinking about. Not just Gavin, there’s also Paula, who did not die. She’s been in a coma for two weeks – I hope she regains consciousness for the sake of her sweet daughter. However, if she doesn’t, Natasha is so young she won’t have memories of her mother, so maybe now would be as good time a time as any for her to die and Natasha won’t know what she’s missing.
Luck has been on my side far more than it should with that whole debacle. Paula’s own Ring doorbell had run out of battery so didn’t capture me speeding off, and then the other CCTV camera on her street had a view only of the wheels of the car driving past and not the registration or the driver. A similar tale was repeated all across Bothwell. Security camera footage exists of the car, but only its tyres, everyone concerned about their own property and nowhere beyond the boundary of their land. I haven’t even had to go researching Paula’s situation. Gavin brought it up to me one lunchtime, as they read the news eating a tuna baguette, and updated me on it, alongside the stabbing of an elderly woman in Cambuslang and the MSP who says his expenses were fabricated by his cleaning lady to bam him up.
So yes, Gavin and I had locked up the office together and were walking to my flat holding hands, our arms close against one another, the need to be connected physically after eight hours of professional distance almost too much to bear. I have never been to Gavin’s flat because they moved in in a hurry after their last relationship broke down and they don’t actually like spending time in it. It’s not where they’d wanted to be and remains that way. It has, they tell me, ‘bad juju’ due to the circumstances that led to them moving into it.
We turn onto my street as I’ve just about stopped moaning about Brian cornering me in the kitchen for the length of time it took me to drink my tea, while he explained how difficult it was for him to juggle his work, his marriage, being a father and his lover, who he now thinks he loves as much, if not more, than his wife. Not wanting the entire evening to be clouded with simmering anger towards Brian’s callous approach to his wife’s heart, I shift the conversation onto the topic of which film we are going to watch – we are working our way through Oscar Best Picture winners from 1970 to today – curled up around each other after we eat the ‘famous lasagne’ Gavin wants to make. Although they can’t explain exactly what about it is legendary when probed.
At the entrance to my building, two legs are visible from someone sitting on the doorstep and I know from the lean of the knees it’s Nicol. There’s not enough distance until we reach him to explain to Gavin what the situation is and so I cast a silent prayer this will not be the nightmare I expect it to be.
‘Oh God,’ is as much as I can offer as a warning signal to Gavin. ‘Hi, Nicol,’ I say before he sees me; at least I catch him unaware.
Nicol looks as he always did at the end of his working day: a bit bedraggled, skin shiny, his hair sticking out at weird angles from his moss-green beanie. He’s not trimmed his beard in a few days so you can see he doesn’t get much growth on the cheeks. I am pleased I can note this and it leaves me with no emotional hangover, no desire to smooth down his messy hair or run him a bath like I would have before.
‘Hiya.’ He spots Gavin beside me, which cuts the end of his hello short. ‘I don’t think we’ve been introduced?’
Gavin, being polite and nice, is going to say their name – God, they are so charming, I hate it – so I cut in. ‘You’re not going to be, either.’ I put my hand across Gavin’s belly like I’m holding them back from starting a fight when they haven’t moved an inch. ‘What is it?’
‘I was hoping we could speak about our’ – he gives a pointed look to Gavin – ‘secret project.’
I give Gavin the keys. ‘You go up, I’ll be there in a minute.’ Understandably, they seem a bit miffed at being told to disappear so I can speak with my ex, but they do as I ask. I stand inside the building, using my body to hold the front door open so I won’t have to make Gavin buzz me in. It also allows me to hear the sound of Gavin opening the lock, entering the flat and shutting the door behind them. Nicol seems to understand this is what we’re waiting for and doesn’t say anything until all the noises necessary for privacy are completed.
‘So, what is it?’ My intention is to sound strong and direct. I wonder if, actually, I sound stroppy.
‘We need more information. Anything you can get on Heather Gray’s properties and any dodgy stuff she’s done in the last five years. By next Thursday if possible – that’s when we have our next union meeting.’
‘Oh, just loads of sensitive information to get in five working days. Sounds reasonable.’
He puts a hand on my elbow. ‘I know this is a lot to ask, but if we get her, it’s going to help so many people. It’ll all be worthwhile and it’ll all be because of you.’ He completes his uncharacteristic kindness towards me with a full wide-eyed look. See how truthful and kind I am being, he’s trying to say to me. It’s disconcerting.
‘I’ll see what I can do. Get Amara to text me when and where I’ve to share what I find.’
And even though we slept beside one another every night for years, exchanged bodily fluids, shared a language of catchphrases and jokes only we would understand, we don’t know how to say goodbye in this new arrangement and so I let him walk away without any farewell. It distracts me, the fissures that form after a relationship ends, how I could once feel everything about him and now nothing. Is this what will happen with Gavin, I wonder, as I make my way into the flat to the scent of onions frying. Gavin is in the kitchen opening a packet of mince; there’s a small saucepan of garlicky tomato sauce beginning to bubble. I come up behind them, wrap my arms around their belly and put my head in between their shoulder blades.
