There was a silence, as Sofia contemplated how naive she had been.
‘Let’s try and be cool at work though, yeah? And it may be best if we keep the whole situation to ourselves.’
Sofia nodded meekly, looking down at her feet. She felt a perfunctory pat on her shoulder and then watched his boots stride back into the restaurant.
The next week was a slog. She had a lot to learn as Joy’s sous, which at least kept her from having time to mull over her situation during working hours. She stayed late and arrived early, determined to surpass Joy’s expectations. When she had to put her dishes on the counter for Simon to serve, she would look down or stare blankly ahead as she flatly said, ‘Service,’ and dinged the bell.
She stopped seeing her other friends, and stayed in bed until the sun went down on her days off. On her commutes home she stared out the window and tallied up how many people hated her. Simon, Tony, pretty much all the cooks. Erica had been off work since the party, which was over a month ago, and Sofia hadn’t heard from her. If she was being honest with herself, she had also avoided getting in touch. Sofia was concerned about the unwelcome sense of envy and anger she was feeling towards Erica, and how it might manifest.
Her dream life had come crashing down, mutating into a monstrous distortion of what it had been just a few weeks before.
It was her Monday off when she got a call from Erica. Sofia was so surprised she took a moment to stare at the call ID before she answered tentatively, ‘Hello?’
‘Hey, Sofia.’ She let out a deep sigh. ‘It’s good to hear your voice.’
Sofia was awash with relief. ‘You have no idea how much it means to me for you to say that.’ Her eyes stung hot with tears of gratitude. ‘I’ve not been in a great place recently.’
‘That makes two of us.’ Erica let out a dry chuckle. ‘Are you around today? I’d really like to talk to you in person.’
Sofia looked down at herself. It was four in the afternoon and she was still in her pyjamas. ‘Sure, I can be ready in an hour. Shall we meet at the Hope and Anchor?’ she suggested.
‘Um, I’m trying not to drink at the moment. Maybe Bert’s café next door?’ Sofia was sure she’d get the full story soon enough. ‘See you soon.’
Both women looked tired and resolutely pale as they took a small table by the window. Erica clutched a mug in her hands, and stared at the cooling coffee as she spoke. ‘I’ve quit Nakachwa,’ she burst out suddenly, like a confession. Sofia didn’t say anything, sensing that Erica needed space for what she wanted to say. She took a deep breath. ‘It’s about Simon.’
Erica’s story was the same as Sofia’s save for a few key details. Both had been very drunk, neither could remember a lot of what happened. But when Erica woke up in Simon’s bed, she was not embarrassed but somewhat triumphant; she was scared and confused.
‘I’m not really into him like that. I thought we were friends, and it terrifies me that I don’t know how I got there.’ Sofia slowly began to grasp what Erica was saying.
‘I saw you at Mark’s party,’ she said quietly, feeling embarrassed that her first instinct was to think of Erica as competition for Simon’s affections.
‘I don’t remember being there,’ Erica admitted. Sofia’s heart sank.
Suddenly the scene no longer seemed romantic at all, recast in this disturbing light. Sofia imagined his arms wrapped around her waist were holding her up, rather than holding her close.
Sofia reached her hand across the table and took Erica’s hand in hers. They didn’t need to say the words ‘assault’ or ‘consent’ to understand each other.
‘Have you spoken to him since?’ Sofia asked.
‘I rang him a few days after. It didn’t go well, really. I told him how I felt and he just dismissed me, said I had been drinking too much and it wasn’t his fault I couldn’t remember anything.’ She wiped away a hot tear running down her cheek. ‘Anyway I’ve told Peter and Joy I’m not coming back. I can’t.’
Outside Sofia gave Erica a big hug. She hadn’t told her about her own night with Simon. This was not the time. After hearing Erica’s story, she didn’t really know how to feel about it anyway. Unlike Erica she knew that shehad‘wanted it’, but now she couldn’t for the life of her remember why.
Sofia went back to work the next day. Every time she caught sight of Simon over the counter she felt some combination of confusion, shame and anger. So she began to simply never look at him. He seemed to understand this unspoken agreement instinctively. He made no effort to speak to her. They orbited around each other seamlessly.
With Erica gone and Tony resolutely ignoring her, her world began to quieten further, until she minimised talking to anyone at work to direct orders in the kitchen. When her shift was over she was the first out of the door. She politely declined any increasingly rare offers to go to drinks or parties.
For six months she lived like this, or rather existed like it, not knowing how to feel and eventually forgetting to feel at all.
It was a friend from home who snapped her out of it. She was back in Portsmouth for Christmas and managed to drag herself to the pub on Christmas Eve. She hadn’t seen this friend, Isla, since school.
‘So yeah, basically it’s split over two seasons, May to October and then November to April. You get a bit of time off if you don’t do back-to-back charters but it’s pretty full on.’
Sofia was only half listening, as she had grown accustomed to doing.
‘Sofia, you should totally look into it. I’ve just done a season with Captain Mary and she’s been looking for a decent chef for ages.’
‘Oh yeah, I mean I’m working in London at the moment.’ She gave an unconvincing smile.
