‘You know, I lost my mother when I was very young, too.’
‘Wow. Oh, my God.’
‘Yes. So I understand how you felt. What you said really resonated with me. About having them one day, and the next they’re gone forever.’
‘What… What happened?’ Bianka tilts her head back as though she is trying to stop tears from running down her face, and maybe that is what she’s doing, and a splash of moonlight spreads out across her features. ‘I mean, you don’t have to tell me, of course.’
‘I’ll tell you another time,’ she says, looking back at me, her eyes huge and sad. ‘But I do understand.’
I nod.
She stops for a moment under a streetlight and just looks at me, smiling, the sadness of moments ago dissolved. The atmosphere between us feels charged, like there is something intangible between us that I can’t grasp. The only comparison I have is to when I first met Andreas, when every thought of him brought a delicious shiver chasing the length of my spine. I imagine Bianka taking a step closer, then another, cupping my face with those soft, warm hands, and am surprised to realize I want her to; I want there to be nothing unsaid between us, no distance at all between her and me. I feel confused by this; I’m a married woman, I love my husband and our family. But I haven’t been touched for so long. Nobody has looked at me like this for a long time. Until Bianka. And I want her to.
‘Bianka,’ I say, my voice light and soft, my heart beating hard and fast in my chest. ‘I wondered about something. Every year, a couple of friends and I go to my house in Ibiza the third week of June. A girls’ trip. I think you should join us.’
Eight
Bianka
Bianka feels a wave of annoyance as she presses Start video call on Skype, but it dissipates at the sight of Dr Matheson. In spite of everything, the therapist has a calming effect on her. Bianka sits all the way on the edge of her seat, leaning forward toward Dr Matheson. She keeps her hands tightly clasped in her lap to keep herself from wringing them. She has to use a lot of effort to appear vaguely calm and in control of herself, to not come across as too intense.
‘I met someone. A woman. A new friend. She’s… I need to talk about her. I can barely think of anything or anyone else. Not gonna lie, it’s thrown me. At first, it was very obvious what drew me to her so strongly and instantly. It was like a bolt of lightning. She reminds me of someone.’ Bianka has to swallow hard several times before continuing. ‘Her. You know who I mean.’
‘Mmm.’
‘So, at first, I thought it was just that – a painful reminder. Looking at her was like looking at everything I’ve lost and feeling like I could have it back. But then it became obvious that it was more than that. One person can’t be another, right? And that’s a good thing. She’s special and she doesn’t know it which makes her even more special. I can’t think about anything else, it’s as though she fills me up in all the spaces where before, there was nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Yes, nothing.’
‘But you were there. In those spaces. Inside yourself. You were already filling them. It was never nothing.’
‘I guess. It’s just… I’ve always felt so empty.’
‘Yes, it’s a feeling we’ve returned to many times.’
‘And then suddenly, there she was and it’s like being filled with this soft, glowing light. It’s like being in love, only better.’
‘Better?’
‘Yes. Surely, female friendship is one of the strongest human connections there is.’
‘Well, the bonding between women can feel as powerful and intense as falling in love.’
Bianka closes her eyes. She feels the burn of excitement and trepidation in her stomach, from speaking about it. She knows, indeed, that the connection between female friends can be so intense it blurs boundaries, all of them – even the ones that keep us safe. It’s like a powerful love affair that sidesteps the natural distance between men and women, eviscerating that sliver of difference that is necessarily there even in the very closest of heterosexual relationships. And sometimes, like love, it can turn dark. Toxic. Dangerous. Bianka knows this right down to her bones.
‘Yes.’
‘I told her about what happened to my mom.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘That I lost her as a child.’
‘Did you tell her everything?’
‘No.’
‘Bianka. It sounds to me like you need to be a little bit careful here. And that this relationship might trigger some of the underlying challenges we’ve been working on together.’
‘No, it’s not like that. This feels good, and healthy and like being ignited.’
‘You spoke earlier of the intensity of this new connection. Of feeling filled up where there was emptiness before.’
‘Yes.’
‘Isn’t that where things have gone wrong before?’
*
Bianka closes her Mac and stands up to walk over to the window of the study. In spite of the therapy session, which she always finds emotionally draining, she is grateful to be here, in Wimbledon, in her new life, free of the old one. She shudders to think of her daily routine back home in Oslo, for so many years, and of how she’d felt like a domestic prisoner.
She’d come home from work and immediately have to start cooking for Emil and Storm, making sure they got enough performance-boosting protein, when really, she’d have quite liked to throw a fucking frozen pizza in the oven. She often tried to imagine the looks on their eerily similar faces at the sight of the small, soggy disk scattered with plastic-like faux-cheese. Only, it would never have happened – Bianka knew what was expected of her. Next up – laundry; the endless cycle of Storm’s sports clothes spinning in the machine before hanging to dry. If she was going to describe the soundtrack to her life, Bianka would have to say it was the whoosh of the washing machine. Once, she dreamed she fed armfuls of Lycra into the hot, hungry mouth of the fireplace instead of the washing machine, its synthetic fabric crackling and producing an odious black smoke.
When the job offer from London came, Bianka was only too ready to escape. She had always known deep down that she wasn’t designed for the old kind of life: a comfortable, socially acceptable life in the suburbs, working part-time in an unfulfilling job and succumbing to outdated gender roles to please a man who thinks being a feminist means agreeing that women should be able to vote and not much else. She couldn’t quite grasp what kind of life might have suited her better, and therein lay the problem; whenever she’s tried to explore herself, she’s come up against that vast, familiar emptiness. Even as a child, she’d found it hard to express herself in ways that seemed to come naturally to the others, struggling to answer questions such as Which do you prefer, blue or green? Do you like ice cream or cake? Which boy is cuter, this one or that one? What do you want to be when you grow up? The other children seemed to have a sense of self that effortlessly delivered the answers to such questions, whereas when Bianka tried to decide what her general preferences were, she just came up against a milky void. So she turned to other people; watching them and mirroring back their opinions and desires, needing them to fill her up.
Bianka allows her mind to return to the other night, to the slow walk through the dark park and the moments on the bench, how Charlotte’s presence had made it feel like an occasion touched by magic. Charlotte, like almost everyone else, liked talking about herself and hadn’t needed much encouragement to open up. Bianka felt genuinely sad for her because it was obvious she’d not had anyone else to really talk to. She’d watched her speak, drinking in every facial expression and mannerism, consciously committing them to memory so she’d be able to return to them in her mind, while listening intently, a skill she’d perfected years ago. Making someone feel truly seen and heard is half the battle, ideally complemented by the perception of shared experiences. Chemistry is the other half, and that one is harder to create, but is usually achievable with good mirroring; most people experience chemistry when they are basically interacting with themselves.
