‘That’s okay.’
‘Sometimes my own name hurts. Hearing you say it hurts.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He is rocking me slowly, back and forth. ‘I don’t want to hurt you. I never want to hurt you.’ Around me, I feel him tense. The rocking slows. ‘How about we try something? I don’t know if it would help, but it might, it could.’
‘What?’
‘I could call you something else.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘A different name. One that’s only between you and me.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Let’s try,’ he says. He holds my face in his hands. Our foreheads touch. ‘It has to be something that’s not too different from your name but different enough.’
‘Okay.’
‘How about “Laura”?’
I wince. ‘That was the second name on Mama’s list. She was going to call me “Laura” if “Lauren” hadn’t suited.’
‘Laurie?’
‘That’s what my friends used to call me.’
‘Lana.’
‘Too American.’ I think, bizarrely, of my old favourite movie,The Little Mermaid, the scene when Prince Eric is trying to guess Ariel’s real name. Except he isn’t guessing my real name. He is creating it. Finding me another.
‘Lola.’
‘Too Spanish.’
‘Lolly.’
It is silly, frivolous, a red, licked thing, so different to ‘Lauren’, the opposite of what my mother would have wanted. It sounds fun and carefree, like this summer, pastries and sun and the sea. ‘Lolly,’ I repeat.
‘Lolly it is then,’ he says with a finality which confuses me, because I’m not sure, I want to test it out. But then he says it into my mouth just before he kisses me and I thinkHe’s right,that’s it. He decides it. He gives it life.
From: Kit McDermott
10:31
I’m at work. My parents came yesterday, Cass called them, she doesn’t think I’m coping. My dad told me to call in sick but I couldn’t think of anything worse than being at home, with Millie asking me where you are and my mum always crying.
But now I’m at work, I want to be at home, among all your things – your clothes, your jewellery, your perfume – I haven’t put any of your things away. I keep trying to read emails, speak normally to Peter and Tom but it’s impossible, I drift off when they’re speaking, can’t finish sentences. I got called into a meeting and I literally could not get out of my chair. I was terrified. Nothing feels safe, there is no ground, no floor.
I need you, Laurie. Please.
41
Extraordinary
Now
‘Are you going to tell me where we’re going?’