14
creative writing
A Mistake By Izzy murphy The thing is, you were an accident. A mistake. A problem to be solved. We just didn’t get there in time. I didn’t get there in time. I had always been irregular, so I didn’t think much of it. But I should have. I really, really, should have. I should have kept track. I mean, they have apps, or calendars for things like this now. I know, I know; it was a risk. I know what everyone was thinking. ‘This is just another way to get his attention.’ But I didn’t want his attention, I didn’t crave it. I needed it, I survived off it. It kept me going. I started to feel sick when he wasn’t around. But then I started to feel sick when he was around. I started to feel sick all the time. I thought it was a bug, a cold. I thought I’d get better. The shrink said it was just nerves. Wrong. “Nausea,” He called it. What a load of rubbish. “It’ll pass,” he concluded. Wrong, again. Josie told me that you were a blessing. A gift. She told me over and over again. Have i told you about your auntie Josie yet? Well, she’ll be here soon; she said she wouldn’t miss this, she wouldn’t miss meeting you.. She’s a bit mad, as you’ll see, but she’s all we’ve got. We met in university, in our third year. She had been pouring pints and waiting tables at some seedy bar, when she saw me sat alone, waiting for a date that would never show. She bought over a free pint and called the no-show a dickhead. After that, we were stuck. Neither of us had a clue what we wanted to do with our lives, or what we wanted to get out of the world. We travelled around for a few years, hoping to ‘find ourselves’. Unfortunately, all we found was that travelling is expensive, having sex with strangers in shared hostel rooms is a bad idea, and no one cares as much about your adventures even remotely as much as you do. Maybe you’ll want to go on a gap year some day, get some adventures under the belt like we did? Anyway, once we had spent all of our money and exhausted all of our options, Mr Oliver, Josie’s step-dad, said he had a friend looking for ‘administrative assistants’ at some insurance firm in London. Well we both jumped at the chance; any opportunity, to ditch our streaks of making exceedingly poor choices.
Anything to get out of beaded necklaces and colourful baggy trousers with elephants on them. Together, we found a cheap two bedroom apartment, in a rather unsavoury part of the city, bought, somewhat acceptable, workwear, and agreed: no more foolish decisions for a while. That lasted about three years. Three years of good, sensible behaviour, and then I would wake up in a strange apartment, after Josie begged me to help her ‘enjoy her 20s’ by escorting her to dodgy bars in South London. “Well, that was fun. When will I see you again?” “I don’t think that would be a good idea.” Three years and he would be introduced as the new head of finance. “Can I grab everyone’s attention please, just for a moment. This is Mr Harrison, he is joining us from-” “Hey Fliss, isn’t that-” “Shh. Yes. It’s him.” “-so I expect you to all make him feel very welcome.” He would flirt. I would resist. A little. Three years and we would start fooling around in his office. Three and a half years and he would take me out on dates, trips away, show me off. Three years and eight months and his wife would show up at the office, holding the hands of two young boys. Three years and eight months, and he would abandon me completely. He let me down gently, I guess, in his own way. “We shouldn’t have gotten involved.” “It’s been months…” “Look, I guess I just got carried away. It was never serious.” Three years and nine months and Josie would walk into the office toilets to find me vomiting. Three years and nine months and there would be two blue lines on the test she grabbed from the corner shop. I cried. She said we would ‘sort it’. She said that we didn’t need to make it any bigger than it needed to be. We could keep you a secret, or not, whatever I wanted to do. She would help me take care of it. She was good like that.
