Her phone buzzes. It's at the bottom of her handbag, which she dropped at the foot of Dylan's bed what feels like a lifetime ago. The phone buzzes again: either it's her gym app reminding her about Zumba with Zoe at 9:30, or the whole thing's running out of juice.
Either way, who cares?
"You want to plug it in?"
She shakes her head against Dylan's lovely big cushy brown pec. Much to her disappointment he pulls away. But then he turns onto his side and grabs her face between his hands:
"OK, now who are you and what have you done with my phone-addicted friend Gemma Woodhouse?"
She smiles. She's been smiling so much her face hurts: who knew real smiling could be so much harder on the zygomatic, than faking it?
"I'm fine, honestly. It can't be anything urgent."
"Seriously? You love me that much?"
"No!" she cries but oh, that grin! "I mean yes, of course I do. But also everything's under control at the office and Dad thinks I'm at Isabella's so I don't see what could require my urgent attention."
A brief shadow passes over his face, but then he smiles again. She could watch him smile all day. Just as well it's the weekend and she can.
"You're amazing, Gem."
"You're pretty amazing too."
"I don't mean great in bed - which you are, obviously. I mean…"
He's chewing at the beard on his bottom lip and frowning a bit again, and still holding her head.
"You weren't drunk last night, Gem, were you?"
"What? No, of course not! Were you?"
He shakes his head, staring on at her.
"What?"
"… no, maybe… better not."
"Better not what?"
"Never mind."
"Never mind what? You're starting to worry me now, Dyl."
Also, she doesn't like this gap he's created between their bodies. She tries to come closer but:
"No, wait, Gem, are you sure you're OK? I mean you're not just… "
"What?"
"I don't know. I mean I know I'm great and everything but… you're not just here because you're pissed off with life or anything?"
"Why would I be?"
"Gem, I must've listened to you plan that move into France for over a year so frankly, last night, not only did I never expect to get lucky, I expected to be picking up tiny emotional pieces of you and your dream from all over Adrienne's floor."
"Aw, Dyl, that's so sweet of you!"
He looks incredulous. But really, it is so sweet of him.
"It's fine, Dyl, everything's fine, really! All is well!"
Everything is much, much better than well. All that's missing from Gemma's life right now is a pair of telescopic arms so she could pull him to her and squeeze and hug all of him all at the same time. His face finally relaxes:
"What can I say, Gem: you are one very hot, very cool lady."
"Thanks. It's not as if it's quite all sorted yet, but Montage are coming in on Monday and I've been very clear to them about our margins, so I'm sure it's going to be fine."
"You what?!"
Dylan lets go of her head and sits up. You what indeed! She can't be having this. She sits up too, pulling the sheet over her chest, but he won't let her sidle up to him and that is so, so unfair:
"Gem, please, please tell me you haven't…"
"No, Dyl, you please tell me, that you're not going to ruin the best morning of my life with more patronising advice about how to run my business."
He sighs, actually sinks his forehead into his hand. His beautiful, infuriating hair tumbles over it.
"Sorry, Gem."
"Look, it's not as if we've signed anything yet, obviously. Even I can't sell anything that fast. But they liked our investor pack and I really think we can do business together."
"I… I'm sorry, Gem. I'm sorry I brought it up, and don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think you should."
"Why ever not?" Gemma asks, sadly pulling the sheet tighter around her. This is so, so wrong. Why are they talking at all, let alone about this?
"With Nicky I was only worried she might load you up with debt and rip you off financially. Montage will take it to another level. They'll rip you apart quite literally: ditch the beekeepers, keep your formulations and patents, sell them to whatever bullshit company they happen to own and before you know it, you'll be consolidated out of your very own business. Don't do it."
"Really, Dyl? Asset stripping: is that what you're saying Montage are up to?"
"What else do Venture Capital firms do with companies with 10% EBITDA margins?"
Oh not that again: not today, not here, all was going so well!
"Dylan, please, this is so, so wrong…"
"I'm sorry, Gem, but it is."
"No, not Queen Bees! For God's sake, Dylan, why are we talking about this instead of…"
They look at each other for what feels like a long time, perhaps because neither of them can bring themselves to smile:
"I can't sit here and watch a car crash with you in it, Gem. Would you rather I did that?"
"No! Of course not, but… why should there be a car crash? Why do you always have to assume the worst? Why can't you just trust me to know what's best for my business? Do you know how patronising that is?"
"That's not the idea, you know that."
"Do I?"
"Shit, I hope you do!"
"I…" she hesistates, but: "I'm afraid I don't, sometimes. I mean, I don't go around telling you when to take your gearing up and down or change prime brokers, do I? You and I have good days in the office, and we have bad days, but for my part I always assume that you're doing your best. All I wish is that you could do the same for me. Queen Bees need finance to expand into France, and I'm trying to arrange it. As best I can. I'm trying my best, OK?"
A pause:
"Are you, though?"
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"You don't need that money, Gem."
"I don't, but Queen Bees does."
"My point exactly: you were born swimming in money, Gem. For God's sake, use it!"
It's Gemma's turn to have a palm-to-forehead moment.
"Dylan, I'm sorry, it doesn't work like that. There's a trust, for starters."
"Aha, run by uncle Montague and cousin Cholmondley …"
"Phillip and Charles."
"Phil & Chazzer: perfect. And maybe a couple of your godfathers as well? Ever thought of trying to persuade them?"
"That is not how it works."
"Duh, yes it is. That's exactly how a trust works."
"In theory, yes, but…" oh, this is infuriating: "That's not what a trust is for. You don't take money from a trust. Isabella didn't buy her house with the trust. We don't… the trust is for our children, for the next generation, you add to that money, you don't use it for yourself!"
"Hmm, why not? Aren't you someone else's next generation? Aren't you your father's next generation?"
"Yes, I am. And Daddy feels exactly the same way I feel about it."
"You mean that you feel the exact same way he does."
Gemma shakes her head.
"About that amongst other things," he adds.
"Look, I'm not asking you to understand. The trust is not for me to use, period."
"Shame: all that money nicked from the land of my ancestors, just sitting there helping no one. It seems a waste."
"You ancestors were from the Punjab, Dylan, mine plundered Kerala."
"Whatever."
This is impossible: he's looking cross, and he's crossed his arms. His naked, gorgeous arms. For the sake of those arms she's got to try, one last time:
"It's ironic, isn't it, Dylan?"
"You don't say."
"I didn't say funny, I said ironic."
"OK."
"Ten years ago Rob interrupts us and I end up saying horrible things to you. Today Rob's my corporate banker and nowhere near us, thankfully."
"Fuck Bobbo…"
"Yes thank you for that lovely image."
Dylan shrugs.
"Anyway, ten years on: Rob's well away in Harpenden with his wife and three kids and yet here we are, just the two of us, naked, in your bed, and still we're arguing instead of getting on with what we do best. Isn't that ironic?"
Dylan shrugs again.
"What's even more ironic," she continues, "is that this time instead of me rubbing all my white middle class privilege in your face, it's you who can't seem to cope with me having a trust fund. Look, I can see why: I'm very sorry my family ever went pillaging in India."
Apart from her bedroom furniture, she can't feel entirely sorry about owning that, it's just too nice.
"I am sincerely, very very sorry about where that money came from, Dylan. That this trust came to exist was never fair in the first place, and that's yet another reason I won't use it," she concludes, reaching for his hand.
But he takes it away and swaps it for a hard stare:
"That is not the point, that is so not the point, Gemma. Why do you have to think that?"
x
It hurts so bad she can hardly breathe. But she does, and swallows, and says:
"Then what is the point?"
"The point is, I can't believe you think I'm patronising. The point is, I'm trying to help out here, not… I don't give a shit what your great great great uncles did or didn't do to India in the 18th century, OK? This is not about race, or history, or intersectionality or any of that bullshit, it's about you, today, tomorrow, doing the right thing instead of shooting yourself in the foot on some half-baked woke notion."
Half baked?
Woke?
Hand away.
Hard stare.
Is this it? Really? Well, OK:
"If by my doing the right thing you mean doing what you want me to do then no, Dylan, maybe I won't always do the right thing."
More silence, more hard staring. When not smiling Dylan can actually look rather terrifying. Now Gemma gets how Hari feels about him.
"I think I'd better go."
Still the hard stare. It's not true, she doesn't want to go, but she can't let him treat her like this, she simply can't. He can't say these things and expect her to comply. This isn't, well…
This isn't 18h century India.
"Maybe you're right, maybe that is the right thing to do," he says. To the opposite wall.
How did it get to this?
x
She still hasn't figured it out as she rings Isabella's doorbell forty minutes later. Abbas has been perfect, she would give him six stars if Uber allowed it. He only opened his mouth to ask her whether she wanted the radio on or off, and tactfully ignored her dabbing at her eyes the whole way over. There is the usual delay at Isabella's door, but thankfully after a scramble she's the one who opens it.
Gemma looks her sister up and down, and realises that the outfit she put together yesterday is what Isabella wears almost every day. Except that with Isabella's figure the effect is quite different. Effortlessly elegant.
"Such a frump!" Isabella jokes then, seeing Gemma's face: "Oh, darling, what's wrong?"
"I'm not sure where to start…"
But the salient facts have somehow tumbled out by the time they reach the kitchen, one floor down and at the back of the house.
"I can't believe… it seems so unfair. Why can't we seem to open our mouths but to argue?" she sighs as they sit down.
"Or to kiss and have amazing sex?"
"Don't laugh: the amazing sex only makes the arguing harder to take afterwards. It was bad enough when he was just being patronising about financing the company, but now he's telling me what to do with our trust..."
Isabella nods. She is the one person in the world who understands what that means,. Her empathy is precise and therefore perfect. Agnes has always had money, of course, but not the responsibility of money. Her biological father's cash is tied up with his latest family, and her step-father's with his first. There's nothing unusual about this in the 21st century. But the Woodhouses belong to a different era, nothing Gemma or Isabella can do about it. Woodhouses do not "do" divorce, though all their marriages have not been happy ones. Family lore has it, that the same lady who sailed back from Trivandrum with Gemma's bed and dressing table, once welcomed her errant husband from one too many unscheduled visits to his "club", wielding meat cleavers in each of her fair hands.
Woodhouses believe it is their duty to increase or at the very least preserve what wealth has been handed down to them. Greed has nothing to do with it, only respect for the efforts of their elders. Perhaps this is not an attitude that normal, non-Woodhouse people such as Dylan can be expected to understand. Oh, but then why should he take it up in the first place?
"I'm sorry, Gemma. That sucks."
Gemma frowns: Isabella does not look sorry. She has seen Isabella sorry plenty of times before and this is not it, not at all:
"Oh come on, Gem! It's you and Dylan. Finally! Do you realise how long the rest of us have been waiting for this to happen?"
Really? That's sweet, except:
"I don't think Dad's been waiting for it to happen."
"Dad's an old racist and you know it. Never liked Dylan. Mind you, he did break the conservatory."
"Quite."
One day she'll have to level up about that, but not today.
"Dylan's perfect for you, darling."
"If by perfect you mean argumentative."
"Well that too, yes. But look: you do know that all the best couples bicker, right?"
Gemma looks at Isabella and imagines, not for the first time, what a great bedside manner she must have. How wonderfully safe it must feel to be counted down into a drug induced oblivion by her calm, deep voice, to look into her steady dark grey eyes as you leave consciousness behind.
She also imagines what kind of an anaesthetic consultant Isabella could have been, if she'd not had to finish her training while pregnant with Quentin. And then with Toby, and then with Alfie, and lastly with Freddie and Finn, the twins. Every visit to Isabella's bustling, beautiful and remarkably clean and tidy home is a reminder of why Gemma is single and, thank goodness, childless.
All the best couples bicker, yes, and then the very best women compromise. They always do. Men may think they compromise, but in practice it's the women who go part time at work to raise the children and keep the house beautiful, and bustling, and tidy and clean. For free. And it's the men who somehow find time to carry on using their season tickets at the Arsenal. However graceful Isabella always is about it, she's the one who does all the hard, unpaid work keeping things together around here, while useless males nab the promotions at the NHS trust.
"You're right," she sighs. "Perhaps it's best we got to the bickering stage before I got even more besotted."
"Hey, couples aren't all bad, you know. Whatever you think. Dylan loves you, that's for sure, and that goes a long way. Give the guy a chance: this is just a hitch, a bump in the road."
It's best not to answer this. Of course Isabella would say that. It's not the done thing for women to go around telling each other, not even their sisters, that sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes they definitely regret having fallen in love and married their useless husbands.
Considering quite how useless Hugo is, it's very much to Isabella's credit that she hardly ever moans about him. She just gets on with everything that needs doing, one child at a time, with that "calm in a crisis" attitude that carries her through emergencies in the operating theatre. Compared to saving lives anything, including managing five boys, is easy, a "welcome distraction" as Isabella likes to put it. But Gemma's seen the struggle, the constant demands, she's waited in vain for the end of all the interrupted sentences, watched the thoughts of a clever brain fail to fly further than to catch a spoonful of spat up mush before it hits the floor. She's seen Isabella under the kind of strain that would make any normal human scream, but that mothers keep inside for the sake of the children, while their husbands are only too happy to look the other way. Why else does cricket go on for days on end?
It's lucky that Quentin should chose this moment to arrive, heralded by a thudding of footsteps down the stairs and the familiar cry of:
"Antigen, Antigen!"
"Quentin!"
He almost slips off the last step, then throws himself into her arms, bashing her with a large square box which she guesses must be the latest addition to his extensive collection of Monopoly boards:
"Look," he says, holding the box far too close for her to see, "this is the Malaysia edition. It arrived yesterday. The most expensive properties are KLCC which stands for Kuala Lumpur Commercial Centre, and the Sepang Formula One circuit. Will you play it with me?"
Of course she will.
x
She manages to buy all the green island resorts and build a hotel on one, but Quentin acquires all the mustard colour and light blue streets, so the game takes forever. Still, eventually Gemma has to do something even less fun, and walk back home and call Dylan en route.
"Gem? Thank goodness, look, I'm sorry…"
"I… we need to talk."
"We don't. Please don't let's talk, you were right. Just come back here and let's do more of what we do best. Please?"
Well, that is the trouble. That is precisely why she is calling him, not calling on him. If she sees him in the flesh then the flesh will do the talking, and she mustn't let it.
"Dylan, I'm sorry, I just don't think it'd be a good idea."
Silence. She slows down, checks her phone signal, then hears:
"So that's it: you're freaking out on me again already?"
"I'm not freaking out."
"Are too."
She's not, but he's just made things easier for her:
"For Goodness' sake, Dylan, can't you see you've just made my point? What were we thinking, having sex when we can't ever seem to agree on anything else?"
"Who cares? We did agree on having sex."
"We did. In the past tense. And I'm sorry because I suppose it was mostly my idea but…"
"The timing was your idea, but the idea has been my idea for years."
"There you go: disagreeing. Again. Thereby proving that we can even disagree on having sex."
"OK."
"What?"
"I'm not disagreeing, if that's what you want. But will you come back here please? Or can I meet you somewhere?"
"No, Dylan. You…"
"What?"
Why is this so hard? Why is it so very very tempting to see him, just once more? Ah yes, that was why she was calling:
"Dylan, we've both said some pretty horrible things to each other over time, well mostly I have but… bottom line is I'm not sure you ever really liked me. What are we doing sleeping with each other if we can't ever say two kind things to each other?"
"I can, easy. I love, and I like, that you're kind and generous, and believe it or not I like that you try so very very hard to make the world a better place, even where and when it's none of your business."
"Great, so you agree with Queen Bees' margins then?"
Silence. She knew she couldn't get him to back down on that. Instead he starts again in his usual, flippant tone:
"And anyway, your turn, what first attracted you to gorgeous, hunk of spunk Dylan Mann?"
She smiles, good job he can't see it:
"That too, yes, definitely, but… I like that you're generous and generally I do like that you look out for me. I even like that you don't care what people think about you, believe it or not."
"Good, so you don't care that I don't care that your Dad hates me."
What?
"What's that got to do with anything? You never liked him either anyway, even before the conservatory. And of course I care what he thinks about you! I care what he thinks about me, about other people, about life in general. Don't tell me you don't care what your parents think about your choices?"
"Not enough to lie to them about who I spent last night with, no."
She stops walking, dead in her tracks. Ah yes, that. She did lie, and she can see now that that would have been hurtful for Dylan, but she didn't mean anything by it. It was a spur of the moment thing, expedient. After all she couldn't very well have put Peter Rabbit in charge of telling her Dad about this. She'd fully intended to tell him herself, as soon as practical, just... oh, why does this have to be so messy!
Oh but wait, wait, no. She starts walking again. Gemma rarely rings anyone without a clear agenda and she has just remembered that this was indeed her agenda when she called Dylan: sex is simple, talking impossible, ergo sex must stop. Or to put it the way she had planned on putting it before he side-tracked her as only Dylan can:
"I'm sorry I offended you, I didn't mean to but perhaps it was actually for the best. Dylan, I don't want to be with someone I can't be my very best self around. And I can't be my best self with someone who doesn't support the choices I make for my business. Last but not least I think you deserve to be with someone whose ambitions you actually do respect and support and sadly, that's not me."
"Bullshit."
"What?"
"Bullshit: what crazy-ass intersectional-feminist Ted-talk crap are you quoting now?"
"Do I always have to be quoting? I am quoting me, my thoughts! I do have them, you know, independently! Quite independently of you, even. And until you can live with that, which clearly you can't, there's no point us jumping into bed together. I'm sorry that I forgot about that last night, Dylan. That was a mistake, I apologise. Good bye."
She hangs up before he can argue with that too.
Copyright Mel Liffragh 2021, all rights reserved