Dawn
Dawn had met Natalie through a mutual friend, Gemma, in her final year at university and even then their conversation was, more often than not, stripped down to the absolute bare minimum. They met four times before finally passing the five minute mark – Dawn had developed a nervous habit of regular watch-checking that made her painfully aware of conversational shortcomings – and even then the focus was on Gemma and how inseparable from Tim she had become. It was in the closing moments of that conversation that the prospect of house-sharing had unexpectedly raised its head above the mire of mutual jealousy, as the story of her parents investing in a house for their daughter slipped out of Dawn’s lips before she realised just what she was opening the door to. Coming hot on the heels of Natalie’s confession that she had yet to work out where she was living once she finished her course, Dawn’s revelation danced before them both as an implicit invitation that they would forever be house-mates, ambitious single women with the world at their feet, staying up late into the evening speaking of their hopes and dreams, making pacts that they would always stick together and wouldn’t let any man come between them.
She had shuddered then and she shuddered again that morning as the memory returned. Within five months, Natalie was out most evenings with Simon at the cinema, the pub, the bowling alley, the car-park on Broadway Street, the gap between the skips on Ferley Hill, or wherever Dawn imagined them next. She never asked what they’d been up to or where they’d been – even a year into their time together, she didn’t feel comfortable to broach the topic – and Natalie would always hesitate before mentioning Simon’s name, as though she almost felt embarrassed to be acknowledging she had broken the pact they never made, so it came as little surprise to Dawn that conversations melted away into a series of monosyllabic mundanities. Natalie’s presence in the house became purely financial – she met a need and it mattered little who she was or what she was doing – and so, when the day came for her to depart, Dawn’s only sadness was in the realisation that she would need to look for a replacement to fund the bills that post-university life had burdened her with.
She hadn’t intended to live with a man. It was the constant need to explain the difference between flatmate and person-I’m-having-sex-with that particularly troubled her and it proved to be the first comment her parents made, as expected, when their persistent use of ‘she’ when referring to the mystery new flatmate prompted Dawn to finally reveal that Jarrod was, in fact, a ‘he’.
‘Oh,’ they responded, their tone both investigatory and condemnatory. ‘And how long have you known this...Jarrod for then?’
In one foul intonation, Jarrod’s name was defiled to sound as uncultured and unsophisticated as possible.
‘Oh, not long,’ Dawn had replied cheekily. ‘Just this last week, really.’
‘Oh. I see,’ her mother responded knowingly, as if the entire situation had just become completely clear to her. ‘And what does this young man do?’
A frown from her father accompanied the undue focus that had been placed on Jarrod’s occupation and it was in that moment that Dawn realised just how little she had interrogated her new flatmate. She had conducted a brief interview before agreeing that he could stay but the questions had focussed more on whether he was a fan of instant or ‘real’ coffee, whether he had any good DVDs in his collection and whether he minded if they finished talking because Mighty Joe Young was about to start on ITV2. It had never occurred to her to ask what Jarrod actually did and now, faced with parental interrogation, she found herself unable to provide the reassurances that her surprise gender revelations had necessitated.
‘You do know what he does, don’t you?’ her father insisted, balancing his tone carefully between question and statement.
Dawn puffed out her cheeks. She had begun to feel guilty for inadvertently bringing Jarrod into disrepute, his name sullied simply because cross-gender house-sharing with no sexual-contact remained an idea too unnatural for her parents to accept.
‘Look. There’s nothing going on between us. If I’m perfectly honest, I barely know the guy. I just needed a new flatmate, he applied, he seemed normal enough and I was pretty tired after a day at work, so I just said yes. I don’t know what he does and, to be perfectly honest, it doesn’t really bother me. He pays me money. That’s all that matters.’
‘Do I need to remind you who owns that house?’ her father gently mumbled through narrowed teeth.
‘I know, Dad. I know. But you know I can’t afford the rent on my own. I need someone.’
Dawn’s mother, still fixated by the offensive image of her beautiful, innocent daughter rolling around beneath the sheets with a man whose job had yet to be defined, reached her hand out to lay it upon the slightly trembling figure before her.
‘We know, dear. We know. But why does it have to be some boy? It just makes things...complicated,’ she smiled, wincing a little as her final word exited her pleading mouth.
The conversation alone proved complicated and Dawn was convinced, as she drove home that evening, that her parents remained certain that Jarrod was about to father her babies and she determined that she had better at least find out what he did during the day, if only to ease the awkwardness future phone conversations might bring.
She too had known that there was something unnaturally reckless about her decision to welcome him into her life without properly assessing his suitability – to borrow her parents’ words – but the question that bothered her then and that continued to bother her throughout the opening weeks of his stay was simple: how do you assess someone’s suitability? She had surreptitiously glanced in his direction at irregular intervals during the first few days of his stay, trying to read every movement and look in his eye, as though she would be able to deduce something remarkable by examining his reading posture or the way he held a fork. She thought of listening in on his phone conversations to pick up vital pieces of information and yet she had not once heard his phone ring. All she heard, as she glided past his bedroom door, was a quiet whispering, accompanied by the occasional flurry of tapping fingers on a keyboard.
One thing she could be sure of – at least, all evidence so far had suggested she could – was that he wasn’t skulking off on a nightly basis to meet Simon behind the snooker club. His lingering presence in the house was strangely comforting; she could accept consistency, however unexplained. He contributed and that was all that mattered. She needed money and he provided it, and for that she could overlook any peculiarities that threatened to test her resolve. It would be a temporary solution, a suitable, workable temporary solution – the words became her mantra as the parental interrogation continued – until she could find another Natalie. Every time the whisperings rang out she reminded herself that this would not last forever, that she was a good person, that in helping someone out she was making a contribution that would not be forgotten. The world would acknowledge her goodness and her generosity and it would bring her another Natalie, a better Natalie. She was sure of it.
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