Gwen was the only person in the world, apart from the parties involved, who knew about Rowan and Skye. I’d found her through a local counselling service and, even when things had started to get better, I’d kept a foot in the door with our sessions. It was the closest I’d ever come to investing both time and money into my mental health and well-being, and it didn’t seem like the right day and age to go giving that up. I called her after I’d seen Rowan with the girl who he told me he didn’t really know that well – ‘Just a friend of Monty’s’ – because of course I asked him about it. Like any woman in a misfunctioning adult relationship, I’d sheepishly sent a text in the early hours of the morning two days after I’d seen them together. He said they’d fooled around – ‘But that’s allowed, right?’ – and that he was sorry I’d found out that way.
Since then, he’d sent four WhatsApp messages asking whether I was okay, called twice and turned up at my front door once. I’d been on my way out – to see Gwen, funnily enough – when I bumped into him on his way to me.
‘I can’t talk, Rowan, I’m really sorry.’
‘Edi, come on. What’s the rush?’ He grabbed me and turned me towards him. He looked truly worried. ‘Look, I’m not so sure this is okay, babe, not really. I feel like … I don’t know, I feel like maybe you’re just going along with this and—’
‘Rowan, I said I can’t talk.’ Then, I said the one thing I knew would answer all his worries – with more worries. ‘I’ve got an appointment with Gwen …’
*
It had been maybe six months since I’d last seen her. The first fifteen minutes of my appointment went to explaining that I was now engaged – and sleeping with other people. ‘Well, not sleeping with other people yet but we’ve both got the option to, if we want to and …’
‘And do you want to?’ she asked gently.
I sighed. ‘I don’t know, Gwen, I … I thought it was a good idea, but it’s just been one worry after another since it all started. Seeing Rowan with that girl, it just felt like Skye all over again except now people know about it and I have to be okay about it.’
‘Why do you have to be okay about it?’
‘Because …’ I pushed out a deep breath. ‘Because I told him this was okay.’
‘And …’
‘I told him this was okay because if I hadn’t done, I’d spend the next two years half-planning a wedding and half-wondering whether the man I was going to marry really wanted to sleep with other women,’ I said, answering a question she hadn’t quite got to. ‘That’s why I did it, because if I hadn’t, would he have cheated again? And, if I hadn’t, would he spend our whole married life wondering what he’d missed out on by not screwing around more?’
‘Give me a deep breath,’ she said and I followed the instruction instantly. ‘Then talk me through these reasons one at a time. Your first reason to agreeing to it, was that because you were worried Rowan would just wander around wanting to sleep with other women?’
I thought hard and stared out of the window. I wanted a slow-paced instrumental to kick in from somewhere so I could pretend I was the lead in a smushy romance movie – instead of the lead in what felt like a bloody cautionary tale. ‘My first reason is because I was worried, am worried, have always been worried that Rowan would … will cheat on me again.’ By the end of that explanation I was speaking into my lap; I couldn’t look at Gwen, or her city-scape view. ‘It felt, feels like Rowan was ready to cheat again, but instead of cheating, he went ahead and just asked whether he could cheat. And I said yes, so now it isn’t cheating.’ There was a horrible swell building in my chest.
She narrowed her eyes and nodded. ‘And how are we feeling about Rowan at the moment?’
‘When I’m with him, I love him.’
‘And when you aren’t?’
I inhaled hard and exhaled a long stream of feeling to stop it coming out as tears. ‘When I’m not, I find that I’m getting angry. Angry that he suggested it, and angry that I agreed. And I’m still wondering what the hell he expects to get from this.’
‘I’ve heard a lot of wondering and thinking so far, but there’s also a lot here about what Rowan wants.’ She stopped then, as though she’d asked me something, and when I didn’t answer she pressed on. ‘What about what you want?’
‘From this situation?’
‘Maybe. But why don’t we go a little further back than that? Let’s think about the engagement. The proposal. You seemed happy when you thought about it?’
‘I was – am happy about it. We’ve been together for so long and now it’s … I don’t know, it’s an official thing, isn’t it? Something that let’s everyone in the world know that we’re in this forever.’
‘And that’s how you feel, like you’re in this forever?’
The question felt too big for the compact room we were sitting in. I looked out of the window again, as though a blimp might float along with an answer tailing out the back end of it. Lacking that, though, I said, ‘I don’t know anymore.’ I sank back against my chair as the admission tumbled out of me. ‘This is just jitters, I do know that. It’s just, all this – the messing around and the seeing what’s out there, I don’t know, maybe it’s made me worry that Rowan isn’t in this forever?’
Gwen nodded along with my self-analysis. ‘But again, that’s about Rowan; that’s his needs, his wants. What if it turns out you’re not in this forever?’ She still spoke gently.
‘I don’t think that will happen.’
‘No but humour me, what if it does? What if you waltz out of here, straight into some strapping young thing …’ I blinked away a flashback of the curve of Fred’s waist. ‘Dates later and you decide actually this is the person for you. It’s a connection like nothing else you’ve ever known. Would you stay with Rowan, still, just because you’d once thought it was forever?’
‘I don’t … I mean, I can’t know the answer to that.’
Gwen shifted forwards in her seat and leaned over, so her forearms sat on her knees. ‘Edi, relationships change and grow and evolve, all the time. In fact, it’s part of being in a relationship that we allow these changes to happen. Your relationship with Rowan seems to have forked slightly and it’s leaving you, understandably, in a position that you’re not entirely sure how to move forwards from.’
‘What are the forks?’ I asked, even though I felt like I should know.
‘To me, as an outsider at least, the forks seem to be that you might think about sitting Rowan down and explaining to him that maybe, despite the agreements that were made, you’re not altogether comfortable with how this new situation is developing. Another thing to consider, Edi, is that you didn’t set a time limit on this situation, or at least not one that you mentioned?’
‘Three months,’ I answered flatly. ‘But, I don’t know, that’s a long time.’
‘So, let’s consider another option. What if Rowan decides to suggest an open relationship on a permanent basis?’ The question stunned me; I hated her use of that phrase. But I think Gwen spotted my kneejerk panic. She reached out towards my hand but didn’t quite touch me. ‘It’s another hypothetical. Let’s concentrate on the forks that are already there for now. The second fork, then, if you decide you really can’t press pause on the situation, is that you go along with it. What would happen if you put yourself out there a little? If you did what Rowan is doing, even? Would it be the worst thing in the world?’
There were hypotheticals coming at me like teenage boys at a house party and I found I was physically shaking my head at Gwen’s ideas. ‘I’ve put myself out there, believe me. I’ve had dick pics flung at me left and right; I’ve had coffee; I’ve been ghosted by people I haven’t even seen. I …’ I felt a sudden outrage at the men I’d met and not met since the girls started to tart me out online. Then I reached down under my chair and pulled out my backpack, tore Fred’s business card from the front pocket and slammed it on the table between us. Let’s get it all out then, I thought. Gwen leaned forward with a raised eyebrow to inspect it.
‘Okay, tell me about Fred.’
I spoke to the windowpane. ‘Fred’s a woman.’
‘Okay, tell me something else about Fred.’
I explained how I’d met Fred the first time, then the second time in an altogether more compromising position. Gwen asked kind questions about whether I’d felt anything like a spark, whether there were certain thoughts or feelings I couldn’t shake from the encounter – encounters.
‘Is it only since she gave you her card that you’ve been thinking about her?’
‘I mean …’ I thought back. No, I’d thought about her before that, too. ‘Okay, if I’m being completely honest then yes, I thought about her before that. But she was the first person to flirt with me without an avatar and a username, and Christ, I wasn’t even sure she was flirting.’
‘But since you became sure, since this—’ she tapped the card ‘—you’ve thought about her more?’ I nodded. I couldn’t bring myself to admit it out loud – although I didn’t exactly know why. ‘Edi, now, you don’t have to answer this, but this is a safe space; I have to remind you of that. Have you ever had these sorts of thoughts or feelings about a woman before?’ Again, I nodded; again, I couldn’t admit it out loud. But the question sent me catapulting back to the smell of Impulse and the taste of strawberry lip balm. ‘Okay. Well, that’s okay, Edi. Sexuality, despite what some people think, can exist on the same sort of scale as gender. It can move, evolve in the same way our relationships do. Not everyone experiences it, no. Some people feel their sexuality is very much fixed. But some people don’t. And both of those experiences and viewpoints are valid and allowed. There’s nothing wrong with either lived circumstance.’
‘Rowan says he could never be with a man.’
‘Well, that’s Rowan’s narrative.’ She waited for me to look up. ‘What’s yours?’
‘I don’t know what it makes me, if I call her.’ I couldn’t bring myself to look at Gwen. But I knew that I needed to tell someone – and I was paying £90 for the privilege of the back-to-back appointment, so I thought I should at least put my privilege to use. ‘If I call her, do I stop being straight? Do I start being something else? Do I need to have a sit-down with my parents?’
‘Is this something that you’ve considered before?’ I threw her a quizzical look. ‘Your sexuality: exploring it, identifying it?’ The question was enough to make me look away again, but I nodded – a hearty, honest nod. ‘Recently, or, let’s say, in your teenage years?’ I thought the question over; rolled the memories around.
‘I think you can probably take out the or,’ I admitted. ‘It’s more, and.’
‘Hence the confusion you feel over Fred?’
Confusion felt like an understatement. Still, I nodded again. ‘Do I need to start ticking a different box on equality forms? Like, is that the decision I’m really making here?’
Gwen let out a soft laugh. ‘Edi, what are you planning on doing with the girl?’
‘That depends on how the date goes.’ I snorted, and Gwen laughed along with me.
‘That’s more like it.’
‘I’m just worried, and Rowan is—’
‘A grown man, who initiated this agreement. You didn’t place limits on it. You certainly didn’t place gender limits on it. And that isn’t a criticism,’ she leapt to explain, as though spotting a stir of worry in my expression, ‘but if you’re going to do this – explore different wants, different needs, different people – why shouldn’t exploring different genders be a part of that, if that’s how you want to explore your options in this time?’
I counted out the ticks of the clock until it hit half a minute. ‘I don’t have to tell him?’
‘Did he tell you about the girl he took to breakfast?’
‘Well, yeah.’
She raised a finger. ‘If he told you when you asked, that isn’t telling you.’
‘Oh.’ I sank back further in my chair. I wondered whether, before the session timed out, I might find a way to origami myself into the crack between the backrest and seat. ‘What if …’
‘What if you have a really good time?’ Gwen smiled. ‘What if you find something you really enjoy? What if you find something you don’t? What if …’ She petered out, shrugged. ‘What if anything, Edi? What if you leave here today and decide gender is fluid, sexuality is fluid, Rowan isn’t for you, Rowan is all you want? Life is all about what-if questions.’
It sounded like something Lily would say; only she’d find a way to swear more. ‘I should call Fred?’
Gwen squinted. ‘Should is a quick route to guilt. Do you want to call her?’
The clock hand did another half cycle before I answered. ‘Yes.’
‘Then yes, call her. And …’ She set a hand on either armrest and pushed herself upright. ‘Maybe you can let me know about the date in our next session. No pressure, but you’re always welcome.’
‘Thank you. I …’ I sighed. ‘Just thank you.’
On my way out of Gwen’s office building I fumbled for my phone with my free hand, while the other clung on to Fred’s card for dear life. I was tapping the screen in time with my hurried steps down the stairs and, when I arrived on the pavement, I was dialling. It rang out three times before she answered.
‘Good afternoon, Faith speaking. I’m pretending to work here.’
I laughed. ‘Good, so you’re free? I think I need some advice …’