part0022

‘Look, my real name is Elsie Stevenson but I prefer Steve.’ She gives a wry smile. ‘For obvious reasons. Named after my grandmother, bless her. Although I have no idea why I’m explaining this to you.’

I’m stunned, everything I thought about Flynn has been turned on its head, I think I’m in a state of shock.

Steve clears her throat. ‘Um, sorry, I don’t know your name...’

‘Becca,’ I manage to mumble.

‘Right, Becca, I think you might want to check the kitchen because it smells as if something’s on fire.’

‘What?’ She’s right, I can smell something burning and I remember that I left the wok on the hotplate, gas turned on full blast. The smoke alarm suddenly decides to screech into life which only panics me more; bit late now I think as turn and hurtle down the hallway and into the kitchen where I’m met with a billowing cloud of black smoke emanating from the hob. I hesitate in the kitchen doorway, frozen in fear, I can hardly see the cooker for the smoke. What do I do? Oh God, now I’ve gone and burned Flynn’s house down.

‘It’s okay, don’t panic,’ Steve says from behind me as she calmly walks past me and goes over to the sink where she grabs a tea towel and turns the tap on. She holds it under the tap for a few moments until it’s soaking wet and then wrings it out. She then steps over to the cooker, turns the gas ring off and carefully places the wet tea towel over the smoking wok.

I stand gawping at her like an idiot before the Beccabird galvanises me into action with her awful squawking and I dash over to the window and fling it open as wide as it’ll go. Should I open the door to the conservatory? No, it’ll just make that room stink as well.

The smoke slowly clears and Steve comes back into view; thank God she knew what to do, unlike me, even though I should know because it’s not the first time I’ve nearly burned a house down. The first time it was a chip pan fire at Mum and Dad’s house and I managed to melt the kitchen cupboard doors on either side of the cooker. It could have been much worse and I was soon forgiven but let’s just say we never had a chip pan after that; strictly oven chips only.

‘Thank you so much, Steve. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t been here.’

‘Well it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been here would it? If I hadn’t interrupted your dinner.’

True, but I should have had the sense to turn the gas off before answering doors. Or telephones; that’s how the chip pan fire started, I answered the phone and got side tracked – the galling thing was that it was a call centre trying to sell me something and I couldn’t get rid of them.

‘Anyway, no harm done, although your dinner’s ruined and you’re going to have to buy a new wok.’

I carefully raise the tea towel from the wok; black charred stir fry that looks as if it’s welded to the pan looks up at me. The only thing I can do is leave it to cool down and chuck the whole thing into the bin.

‘Would you like a drink?’ I ask Steve.

Steve smiles. ‘Please, all that excitement’s made me quite thirsty. Do you have green tea?’

‘God, no.’ I shake my head. ‘But I do have a nice bottle of red.’

Half an hour later we’re settled in the lounge where the smell of burnt wok isn’t quite so bad. We both have a large glass of red and Steve agrees that it tastes much nicer than green tea. I’ve opened all of the windows in the house to get rid of the smell and I’ve had to put a jumper on because it’s freezing. Steve still has her coat on.

Steve and I are both going to smell like we’ve been lying on a barbeque but I’m so grateful that she wasn’t frozen with panic like I was. I can see that Steve and Flynn are perfectly matched – she’s gorgeous looking and seems really nice too, I can’t imagine why they’re not still together because they’re the perfect couple.

Because he’s gay? taunts the Beccabird nastily.

Okay, I got it completely and utterly wrong which isn’t surprising because I get most things wrong – I do try, but it seems that if there’s a way of cocking things up or totally misreading the situation then I’m your woman .

Steve is looking at me with interest and the hint of a smile. She’s obviously deduced on her very short acquaintance with me – absolutely correctly – that I’m a walking disaster area.

‘You honestly thought that Flynn was gay and he had a boyfriend called Steve?’

When you put it like that it does sound ridiculous and I feel mortally embarrassed. I can’t believe that I so readily believed it based on the flimsiest of evidence.

You are ridiculous! snorts the Beccabird in derision. And stupid! Completely forgetting that she was the one constantly reminding me that Flynn was gay and unattainable.

I shrug in a non-committal way.

‘I never really thought too much about it, I just sort of assumed,’ I say casually.

Will Flynn find out? Will Steve tell him? I’ll just have to hope that she doesn’t see him very often so she won’t have the opportunity to tell him and make me look even more dumb.

So, have you seen Flynn lately?’ I ask, trying to think of something to say and thereby proving the truth of what I’ve just stated because it’s hardly the best thing to say to someone who’s been dumped by their boyfriend.

‘Not for a few weeks. Flynn pops round occasionally to check on me and make sure I’m okay.’ She gives a rueful look. ‘I didn’t take our breakup very well at the time but I can see the sense in it now, Flynn was totally right. We’d been together for a long, long time and I think we’d become friends more than anything else.’

I nod. Don’t start that again!

‘You know Flynn,’ she goes on, ‘One of the good ones.’

‘Definitely, one of the good guys,’ I agree, taking a slurp of wine .

‘But I’m fine now,’ she says, ‘Because otherwise we’d have drifted into marriage for all of the wrong reasons and I’m not saying we wouldn’t have been happy enough, I’m sure we would, but we shouldn’t just settle, should we?’

‘No, we shouldn’t,’ I agree as if I’ve had endless opportunities to settle for someone. Fat chance.

‘I think we were both settling if I’m honest but when Flynn finished with me, I couldn’t understand it at first because we were happy. I kept on at him until he told me why and I had to practically drag it out of him because he didn’t want to rub salt in the wound but I wanted the truth. He gave in eventually and told me – he’d found someone else; he’s fallen in love with someone else and that’s why he couldn’t commit to me, said it wouldn’t be fair.’

‘The thing is…’ She puts her empty wine glass on the table and stands up. ‘… he doesn’t even know if this woman feels the same way. So it may all be for nothing. But I know Flynn; he’s found his great love and he can’t go back, his heart’s taken, whether she wants him or not. Simple as that.’

She gives a shaky smile.

‘She’s one lucky girl.’

Ten o’clock. Still no sign of Flynn so thankfully he hasn’t had to witness his house nearly turning into a towering inferno. I finally closed all of the windows half an hour ago and I think the smell of burning has gone; or at least diluted a bit. I won’t really know until tomorrow when I go out and come back in again so it might be that I’ve just got used to it. I did briefly consider lighting some scented candles and putting them around the house but then instantly dismissed it as a very bad idea, for obvious reasons.

Are you quite mad? questions the Beccabird.

Yes, I think I am. Quite, quite mad.

After Steve left I stayed glued to the sofa like a zombie trying to take it all in; the fact that Flynn is not gay, the fact that he has a new love. I didn’t even drink the rest of the wine I was in such a daze.

I cleaned up the kitchen – I know I did this because all of the worktops have a nice orangey smell from the spray I used – and I know that I ordered a new wok online because I took a picture of it to show Flynn that it was the same as the one I ruined, but honestly, I have no real recollection of doing any of it. I felt as if I was in a dream.

When Steve showed up and I realised that Flynn is not after all, gay, after I’d berated myself for being a blind idiot, I also admitted to myself that I was far happier about the fact that he’s not gay than I had any right to be. So happy for the very short time before I found out that he was in love with someone else; which was when I admitted something else very important to myself.

I’m in love with him.

Yes, I’m in love with Flynn. Deep, real, forever and ever kind of love.

And when Steve told me that the reason he’d spilt with her was because he’d found someone else, I felt as if someone had ripped my heart out and stamped on it.

Don’t be so dramatic! the Beccabird shouts.

That’s how I feel.

It all makes sense now, why Flynn is hardly at home these days. He’s not with a new boyfriend, as I thought, but with his new girlfriend .

And it wouldn’t really matter if he didn’t have a new girlfriend because let’s face it I’m hardly in Steve’s league, am I? I don’t have supermodel good looks; I’m ordinary.

All of this admitting my feelings and being honest with myself – instead of burying my head in the sand and pretending that everything in my life is fine and dandy – has forced me to make a decision which is probably the most grown up decision that I’ve ever made in my life.

I’m going to move out.

I love Flynn but I can’t live here and pretend that I’m happy when he’s with someone else. Would I have been happy to stay if we could go back to me thinking he was gay and we could be friends like we used to be? I probably could have – but only for a while; because there’s only so much self-delusion that a person can indulge in. Even for me – the master at denying my feelings and burying my head in the sand - there would have come a point very soon when realisation about how I feel about him would have set in and I‘d have come to the same conclusion as now.

I need to move out and move on.

‘Of course you can come and stay at mine, you can stay as long as you like.’ Trina is looking at me with concern, wondering what the hell is wrong with me. I push the uneaten Paella around my plate and eventually give up and put the fork down and push the plate away.

‘I wouldn’t ask, but Mum and Dad’s is just too far away from work, all those winding back roads are a nightmare at rush hour. I’ll find somewhere of my own as soon as I can. I’m a first-time buyer so it shouldn’t take too long.’ I’m finally taking the plunge and looking for a flat, no more putting it off for some distant, mythical date in the future. With my increased salary and my savings for a deposit I should comfortably be able to afford a one bed flat, maybe even a two.

‘I would say it’ll be fun, girly nights etc.’ She fixes me with an unblinking stare. ‘But in your present state I don’t think it will.’

I squirm underneath her scrutiny, I owe her an explanation at the very least. I also haven’t told Flynn yet that I’m moving out because I haven’t seen him. I’m going to pay him a month’s rent to compensate for the fact I’m leaving him in the lurch without giving any notice. I’m going to move out at the weekend because there’s absolutely no point in delaying the inevitable.

‘Is it to do with Flynn?’

I nod, too choked to speak. I’ve explained the Flynn not gay thing to Trina but not my true feelings towards him. She didn’t seem particularly surprised when I told her about Steve not being a man; she said that she never could get her head around Flynn being gay from what I’d told her about him but didn’t think it was the sort of thing she could come out and say. Not very politically correct, is it?

‘Let me guess, you have feelings for him?’

‘The biggest,’ I say.

She gives a sigh. ‘I can’t say I’m surprised, whenever you talk about him your whole face lights up. And you talk about him a lot. You might have been fooling yourself but really, it was pretty obvious.’

‘Really?’ I say in shock. ‘If it was so obvious why didn’t I know?’

‘Maybe you couldn’t admit it to yourself because you thought he was unobtainable. And if I’d said anything you’d only have denied it wouldn’t you? And to be honest it was never going to end well with him being gay, was it? But as he’s not, surely that’s a good thing? There’s absolutely nothing to stop you from getting together now, is there?’

I tell her about his new girlfriend, the one that he broke up with Steve for.

‘Hmm.’ Trina chews an immaculate red painted fingernail, a sure sign that she’s thinking deeply. ‘It might not be serious. It could all fizzle out and amount to nothing because it sounds like he hasn’t been with her for very long. He could just be infatuated with her - this Steve doesn’t know everything. Could be a five-minute wonder and he’ll be back on the market and available next week.’

‘No, Steve doesn’t know everything,’ I admit. ‘But then there’s the fact that Flynn’s not actually speaking to me.’

‘Are you sure you’re not being over sensitive? I can’t see why he wouldn’t be speaking to you, it’s not as if you’ve done anything wrong. I just don’t think you should make any rash decisions. There’s no need for you to move out right now.’

‘No. I’ve decided, I can’t stay, it’s pointless. And Flynn is definitely not the same with me. We were good friends and got on so well and now we don’t. Maybe he just wants to keep things business-like, with me being the lodger. You’ve guessed how I feel about him so maybe he has too and he’s keeping his distance to spare my embarrassment. Oh my God, the humiliation.’ I put my head in my hands.

‘I realised because I’m a woman and I can sense these things,’ Trina reassures me. ‘He’s a man remember, trust me, he’ll have absolutely no idea.’

‘God, I hope not, I don’t think I could bear it if he knew; if he was actually pitying me.’

‘You’re getting carried away, honestly, he won’t have the faintest clue about how you really feel about him.’

I think about this for a while, I hope she’s right.

‘Whether he’s guessed how I feel or not I have to be realistic, I can’t waste any more time hoping for something that’s never going to happen. I’ve wasted enough of my life on Jonathan. I don’t want to do the same with my unrequited love for Flynn.’

‘I think you’re being too hasty, you should give it more time, think it over for a bit longer.’ Trina looks at her watch. ‘Christ, we’d better go, we’ll be getting the sack if we sit here any longer. We’re only supposed to have an hour for lunch.’

‘God, where did that time go?’ I put my plate and cup onto the tray and pick my handbag up. ‘I’ve made my mind up. I’m going to text him and ask him when he’s going to be home and I’m going to tell him I’m moving out.’ I pull my mobile out of my handbag. ‘You go on ahead, I’ll catch you up.’

‘Okay.’ Trina looks at me in resignation. ‘See you upstairs.’

After several deleted attempts I finally tap out a message to Flynn and press the send button before I change my mind.