Page 111 of The Mismatch

‘Hmm,’ Priya mused. ‘Breaking free. I like it.’

In the weeks that followed Soraya led them towards their goal. They decided to create a bi-annual literary journal and it was the first time in a very long while that she felt like she had a purpose, like she was in charge of something important.

There was the question, firstly, of funding. Soraya had no savings; all the money from her hours at the shop went towards rent, and each month was a struggle for her. She wouldn’t ask her mum. This was something she wanted to do independently, and to ask for help would forfeit the pleasure she felt in the process. So Priya and Oliver offered to band together to cover the cost of printing.

Next was finding people to write in the journal for free. That was easy. They used their pool of Goldsmiths friends, who had a lot to say. The journal would include poetry, articles and short stories on the theme.

Soraya filled every spare moment with tasks for their journal. Every time she thought of Magnus, she looked up different design techniques. It provided her with a good distraction, but that didn’t mean that every day she didn’t remember him, didn’t think back over every date and turn over every detail to assess whether he was pretending then.

It was a week after their meet-up, and after work Soraya scrolled through her phone on the bus, her mind too distracted to read. Her mum had texted her to say that she had been speaking to Laleh, and had told her that the family now all knew what really happened. Laleh was apprehensive to meet them with Zara. Soraya imagined if she were in Laleh’s shoes, she would feel the same way. That didn’t mean her sister’s reluctance didn’t sadden her, though.

She went on Facebook and clicked on Magnus’s profile, allowing herself to open old wounds once more. She wasn’t sure why she was doing it, it was clearly emotionally cutting, but she couldn’t help herself. It was almost involuntary.

What she saw made her pause, eyes focused on the image. He was tagged in a photo by a girl called Angélique. The picture showed him sitting outside a cafe with an espresso cup in his hand, smiling into the distance, tagged somewhere in Paris. The caption was: ‘the boy’. What did that mean? The boy.Herboy?

After a minute had passed, Soraya realised she was still staring at it blankly, her vision blurry. She put her phone in her coat pocket. Removed her headphones. In such a mood she couldn’t concentrate on music, the sounds spiked her anxiety levels. She needed a clear head to focus on what she had just witnessed.

Her hands were suddenly cold, clammy. She hated the way her body reacted to things, the way her heart speeded up, but she also managed to feel outside of her body at the same time.

The bus was fairly quiet apart from the group of teenagers jokily arguing at the back.

‘Don’t be a pussy, man,’ one of them was saying. But the sound was muted in the background, and all Soraya could focus on was ‘the boy’.

She looked out the window, out at London. Watched as the bus went over the river. She looked at the London Eye, and then Elephant and Castle with its busy, ugly roundabout, bursting with people, until the bus went down Old Kent Road with its takeaways, launderettes, and hipsters walking by. Some of the people she saw looked as lost as her dad. As each image passed her by all she could think about was Magnus.

He’d moved on so quickly, she thought, so ruthlessly.

She didn’t even know how anxious she was until she looked down and saw she had ripped the skin by her nails with her teeth, her eyes stinging with a mixture of tears and liquid eyeliner.

Familiar feelings she thought she’d managed to shut out invaded her thoughts. Did she miss Magnus, or did she miss being liked by him? Somewhere, deep inside, she wondered if maybe she had loved him, but didn’t want to admit it to herself. He had even said he was falling in love with her. Was that true? Or was that part of the lie too? It was cruel, in a sense, that their relationship had ended before she could find out. Suddenly she could no longer talk to him. And that’s what hurt the most. That someone she’d spoken to every day, she would never speak to again. If she contemplated talking to him, sending him a message, friends scolded her. Theyscolded her for trying to talk to someone who didn’t want her anymore. Someone who had never truly wanted her. Soraya had acted just like these friends when other people were going through a break-up. She understood where they were coming from, but they weren’t in her relationship, they didn’t know how she felt about Magnus. Not really.

Another wave of anxiety. A minor detail Soraya kept choosing to ignore rose to the surface of her mind again.It was all a bet, she reminded herself.I was one of many.

CHAPTER 53

Soraya

London, 2015

She scratched on Oliver’s door, catlike, so he’d know it was her, despite the fact that they were the only two people living in the flat. It had been their tradition since they lived together in student halls, a signal to indicate that the person behind the door wasn’t the weird girl who frequently requested hugs from them.

‘Come in!’

Soraya pushed the door open. She knew without saying anything that he’d know what had happened. Her tear-stained face communicated it all. Although she’d tried to wipe her face clean on the walk from the bus stop to their flat, tears rematerialised.

‘You saw it?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

She sat down on the armchair opposite his bed, her usual spot, whilst he lay down. In this position, she should have been the therapist and he the patient, but they never did things the right way around. They never stuck to convention.

‘We shouldn’t jump to conclusions,’ he said.

‘But you would, wouldn’t you?’

He threw a roll of toilet paper at her, which she caught. She blew her nose, multiple times, surprised by how much snot one could produce when devastated.

‘God, why did he have to be such a … such acunt.’