Chapter Four (Part Three)

After they had said goodbye and Jen had taken the short walk back to Levi’s flat; the four rooms above his shop. She sat down on a sofa in the small cream walled lounge and, while listening to the occasional car rumble past, she thought first about how the windows needed double glazing. Then as she settled down with her peppermint tea that was too hot to drink she thought about Lucy. She considered her life in relation to Lucy’s. It was strange for her to put someone on a pedestal like that she thought, forgetting, in her usual degree of self reflection, how she had lionised Levi for such a very long time.

That was exactly what she was doing. ‘As if Lucy was my older sister, my comparator’ she smiled ‘I anchor myself on her even try to emulate her’. As this thought lingered satisfyingly she did not consider that how she regarded Ethan; that just as she looked up her older sibling, she disparaged her younger for mistakes she had made. He was little different at all to the way she was a few years ago.

Instead of becoming aware of this Jen felt a sudden discomfort in her thoughts about Lucy; the reason for which she could not arrive at so she picked up the TV remote. Thirty seconds flicking persuaded her to turn it back off again.

As she finished the tea in the quiet of that room she looked around at the flat. It used to be owned by Levi’s mum and dad. He had never changed it in the time she had known him, the same pictures, the same books on the shelf, the same furniture all in the same places. Everything was tidy. The only extravagance in Levi’s life right now was the cleaner he had come twice a week to dust and vacuum the rooms. Four rooms that needed dusting just to look as if they were inhabited.

She brushed her teeth climbed into bed next to Levi, turning off the light as she did so. His breathing was even and slow. And she lay next to him peering at his outline in the orange glow afforded by nearby streetlamps she thought about him in ways that she nearly never did. In many ways he was the perfect man, strong willed and handsome he was like the ideal of a man from some bygone age; there was something patriarchal about him. He was ambitious, self controlled but not reliable, no, she had to stop herself there: reliable with work, yes, but not reliable to her. He didn’t love her she was sure of that, he didn’t seem capable of it. He had never said it, and she had thought several times before that she didn’t love him, not really.

He was a practical guy, and she a practical girl. Together things just worked. So what if she didn’t really believe that he had been faithful to her for the whole time she was away. Had she been faithful to him? She thought it with a tinge of sadness, but no regret. She turned onto her back and sank back into the pillow deflated; they were not so different, her and Levi.

The last thing she thought of as she slipped off to sleep was the look in her brother’s eyes that evening. They had looked so warm and then so cold, like two different people. As she slept she dreamt of life in London, the money, the freedom, the dream she had for herself. Next to her that night Levi dreamt the same dream for her.