Turning Thirty Read Free Page A

about my coming home?’
    â€˜I said I’d talk you into it because I’d like to see the place you call home for myself. See where you grew up, meet your old school friends, it’d be fun.’
    â€˜Hmm,’ I said dismissively, even though I quite liked the idea of visiting home for a while. ‘What did she say?’
    â€˜She said that we can come any time. Oh, and that I should get you to call back.’
    â€˜How did she sound?’
    Elaine lost patience with me and threw a cushion at my head. ‘If you were that interested why didn’t you just speak to her?’ She took the cushion back, put it underneath her head, picked up the phone and ordered some random takeaway food. This kind of banter was typical of Elaine’s and my everyday interaction. It was tiring but always entertaining, although sometimes I felt like we were trapped inside sitcom world – sometimes I wondered why we never had proper conversations like normal couples did.
    â€˜I’m going to pick it up,’ she said. ‘They said it’d be ready in twenty minutes but I figure if I go pick it up myself it’ll make them speed up – I’m ravenous.’ She went to the bedroom to get her coat. As she checked her pockets to make sure she had enough money she opened the front door then picked up her bag from the table. Suddenly she stopped.
    â€˜What’s up?’ I asked, looking over at her. ‘Forget something?’
    Leaving the door half open, she walked across the room and sat on the sofa at the opposite end to me. ‘I’m sorry, babe,’ she said gently, ‘I can’t not say this any more.’
    I didn’t understand. ‘You can’t not say what any more?’
    â€˜This,’ she said flatly. ‘You. Me. Us. I . . . I . . . don’t think I love you any more. There I’ve said it. You can go ahead and hate me now.’ Much to Elaine’s consternation an uncontrollable urge to laugh came over me and I let it out. ‘Are you laughing at me or with me?’ she said, staring hard at me.
    â€˜I know you’re going to think I’m just saying this to get even,’ I said, holding her gaze, ‘but the truth is, I feel exactly the same way.’
    Then eerily, in that couple symmetry that often develops when you spend so much time with someone that you feel you must be them, we both burst into another fit of laughter then simultaneously whispered, ‘What a relief.’

three
    â€˜So that’s that, then?’ I said blankly.
    It was two in the morning and Elaine and I had been talking about splitting up from seven o’clock the previous evening. There were no tears, no histrionics, just a lot of long silences followed by a few words of bewilderment, followed by some more long silences.
    â€˜I guess so,’ said Elaine. She accompanied her words with a shrug, an odd sort of stretch and a peculiarly feline yawn. I’d always thought there was something quite cat-like about her, and more so than ever now: she reminded me of a Persian desperate for its belly to be stroked.
    â€˜Wasn’t this all . . .’ I searched around my vocabulary ‘ . . . a bit too easy? A bit too . . . you know?’ I finally stumbled across the right word. ‘Civilised?’
    Elaine tilted her head upwards. ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ she said. ‘I guess you’re right.’
    I looked at her encouragingly because I wanted her to say something, anything, really, because I knew this was wrong – not us splitting up, that was definitely right, but the lack of drama. On the form of previous break-ups I expected a good deal more grieving, if for no other reason than politeness. Our calm and collected so-long-and-thanks-for-the-nice-time attitude troubled me. I wondered whether this was one of the curious by-products of the turning-thirty process. I’d been