Page 43 of The Mismatch

She laughed. ‘These questions …’ She thought for a moment. ‘Three.’

He raised their clasped hands in the air as though celebrating a triumph. ‘See, I told you.’

She stopped walking and gave him a half-joking scowl. ‘You’re so annoying,’ she said. ‘We’re genuinely not like loaded or anything. We have a nice house because my parents lucked out and bought one in Brighton years ago when it was cheaper, but they came to England with literally one suitcase each and a Persian carpet.’ She’d heard the story many times, but saying it aloud sounded a bit too exact. Why did they need to bring a rug with them? Who did that?

She felt herself getting a touch too defensive. What did she even care what he thought? Except, she knew she cared very much.

‘To clarify,’ she continued, ‘I’m not saying we’re in a bad position or anything, like I’m very lucky, I’m just saying that we’re not posh.’

He smiled down at her then. ‘You’re cute when you’re annoyed, you know,’ he murmured.

She understood, then, why the girls at the house party lapped up Magnus’s words, because right now she was doing the same thing. One minute she was annoyed at him and the next she was putty in his hands – and it needed to stop. But not right now.

There was an uneasiness in the pit of her stomach. It took her a moment to locate the cause: she had come to really like Magnus. She liked his brain and the version of herself that she was around him. ‘You’re being mean,’ she breathed. ‘And presumptuous.’

He came closer so their lips were almost touching. ‘I’m joking,’ he said, before kissing her. The kiss was slow, romantic. ‘I quite like arguing with you,’ he said after a moment.

She disentangled herself and narrowed her eyes.

‘You know you said I see you in a way you don’t like? Well, you see me in a way I don’t like.’

In fact, perhaps part of the reason Soraya never quite integrated at university, she thought, was because she couldn’t connect with the other students there. Lack of sexual experience aside, every year friends of friends at university would return with stories about their summers abroad, and she could never understand how they lived as they did, always thought she was the one who was doing something wrong, like she had to keep up with them or be left behind.

‘How would you like me to see you then?’

It was such a simple question, but one she struggled to answer. She shrugged her shoulders.

A niggling part of her wished she had brought up the subject of his dad. She imagined that his probing linked backto his family somehow. But the problem was, if she mentioned his dad, he might ask about hers, and that would lead them into territory she couldn’t face. It would only lead to more lies, or even worse: the truth.

CHAPTER 19

Soraya

London, 2014

It had become a given that Soraya and Magnus would see each other at least twice a week. As time passed they went for dinners in central London, crazy golf in Shoreditch, and long walks on Hampstead Heath.

An invisible milestone was reached when Magnus sent her his work-in-progress novel. It was when they had been steadily dating for two months that she was finally given the opportunity to read it.

Despite repeatedly asking him to send it, when she got the email with the attachment and nothing in the body of the email, she began to fear opening it. What if it wasn’t good? Would she have to lie?

It was a worry she needn’t have had. She read his book in just one day; it exceeded her expectations. The prose was dream-like and whimsical, whilst also managing to be very precise. It was full of contradictions in a pleasant way. It was a lot darker than she’d thought it would be, featuring a dysfunctional working-class family on the verge of collapse. Magnus was always so positive when they met, that the novel was an insight into a different side to him. One she could very much relate to.

He asked her to go with him to buy a new winter coat, something she relished doing because despite now finding him attractive, she still hated his clothes. As she picked out the perfect coat, part of her wondered if she was helping out the next girl he would be with, one who would be dating a far more fashionable Magnus. She tried to dismiss such thoughts.

When he invited her to watch him play an important rugby game, she lied and said she already had plans. She was wary of integrating herself into his life because this was only meant to be temporary. It had already gone on for too long. She didn’t envisage them having a future together, and if they attempted to have one it would end badly, that much she knew. Whilst on some levels they were alike, fundamentally their attitudes towards many aspects of life were completely different. They would never marry, ultimately, and that meant one day they’d break up. She didn’t want to put herself in a situation in which she could get hurt, didn’t want to be one of the many women who were discarded by Magnus.

That he’d invited her into a public space was also worrying in another way too: it hinted that he wasn’t seeing anyone else.

And yet, despite all of this, they continued seeing each other. After each date they’d go back to her flat or his house and put on a film, although they never got past the opening credits before they began kissing. Their clothes would come off, hastily. Each time it escalated more and more, but they still hadn’t had sex. On this point, Soraya was adamant. She got the sense he saw this waiting as a tactic, that by playing the long game he’d eventually win. But little did he know, insome way this was a game for her too. She’d stay with him until the issue of them not having had sex finally became too much, and then she knew they’d break up.

She wasn’t ready to have sex, didn’t know how to come to terms with everything she had been taught about the importance of preserving one’s virginity. Nor how what she had been taught differed from what she believed, that virginity was a social construct.

It was when they went for a walk in Nunhead Cemetery that Soraya decided she needed to end things with Magnus. But not for the reasons she had originally believed would cause her to break up with him; rather because she realised she was developing very real feelings for him. She didn’t want to fall for him. Didn’t want the messiness that came with being emotionally involved with someone like him. She decided she would do it in the evening, via text message because she was a self-professed coward.

Autumn leaves crunched under their feet as they studied the gothic tombstones.

‘You should pursue writing and getting published, if that’s really what you want,’ Soraya said.