Sonia Jarvis

This is just a story. A made up tale. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just an entertainment.

So let’s say there’s a girl. Let’s call her Sonia. It’s a neutral name. It could be anyone.

And let’s say I met her at university. At a writers’ group, because this is a writers’ site and you can probably relate to the situation.

And she’s a red-head, as I’ve always had a soft spot for red-heads, and that’s not a fiction.

So I met her, got talking to her, and I liked her. I took an interest in her writing, laughed at her jokes, and she took an interest in me, laughed at my jokes.

But all of this is a bit too easy, and a good story needs conflict. So let’s bring in another character.

Let’s call her Jade, another nice neutral name. And it was Jade who introduced us, who brought Sonia along to the writers’ group. And Jade is a really good friend of mine, who I’ve known for a year and half, since my second day at uni, who I share a house with and who has a crush on me, though I’m not aware of that fact. Or at least, I refuse to let myself be aware of that fact.

And we’d better give me some back story as well, because at the moment I’m sounding pretty dull and one dimensional. So let’s say I’m still getting over a relationship, a girl from home who I was going out with before university and tried to keep it going over a distance. Let’s call her Karen, it’s a nice neutral name. And we were together two years in all, and there were good times there, it was my first serious relationship after all, and though we never lived together, for the whole of that summer we were inseparable, like conjoined twins sharing the same skin. And there was the holiday in Norfolk!!!

And if I’d only got better grades I could have gone to Nottingham with her and it all might have ended differently. This story might never have been written.

But I didn’t and though she said it was just ‘not working out’ I knew from the way she phrased her texts and emails that there was someone else, from the pauses in her phone calls, the place her eyes were looking when I spoke to her, the subtext was always another man.

So I’d been down for a while, was writing turgid poetry that not even my best friends could enjoy, overwhelmed by a soul-destroying attempt to write a Spinoza essay and the general feeling that somewhere, somehow, I’d made a stupendous error.

Jade had stuck by me through this slump, spent hours in my room listening to my woes, taken me out to the pub where she would sit for hours listening to my woes.

Then one day she had brought Sonia along to the writers group, a friend from her course. Sonia was fun, not like our crowd of shoe-gazers and geeks. She danced through life with a smile on her face and from one crackpot scheme to another. And I fell for her instantly.

We started to spend all our time together, as a threesome. Me fancying Sonia, Jade in love with me and Sonia oblivious.

One day there was a party in our house. There were six of us in the house altogether, four guys I knew from the politics half of my course (I avoided the people from my philosophy lectures) and Jade and me. Let’s say it was Rick’s birthday, Rick’s a neutral name, the sort of name a politics student might have. And Sonia came to the party. And the drink flowed and the conversation flowed with it. And finally Sonia seemed to notice that I liked her and it became clear that she like me too, so before the night had ended we had both retreated to my room where she spent the night.

Jade must have been there and witnessed the whole thing, but we were both completely oblivious.

And I had no regrets. The sex was great, Sonia was much more experienced, experimental and enthusiastic in bed than Karen had ever been. I’d even throw in the word elastic. In fact, it had been six months since I’d slept with anyone, as Karen had gone off sex altogether towards the end. Sex with me at any rate.

So I woke next morning with a spring in my step. And yes I found Jade in tears and I realised, well, everything. And I tried to console her, and Sonia tried to console her, but we’d both betrayed her without meaning too. And she was inconsolable.

But despite seeing what we’d done to Jade we agreed to see each other again. To start going out. Because we liked each other and that’s what happens when two people like each other, all other friendships and commitments count for nought. And that’s as true in real life as it is in fiction.

We still went out as a threesome, though it was no longer the same. It was a couple and another person tagged on. It would be like Ant and Dec being paired up with a third presenter – it simply didn’t work.

But we didn’t notice. Because spring arrived and with it the passions of spring, and when you’re a student you have plenty of time for those passions. And we really didn’t notice that Jade had stopped going out so much, was missing lectures, not doing her coursework.

Then one day the world changes.

Let’s say I go up to Jade’s room, as nobody’s seen her that day. I knock on the door and there’s no sound, even though I know she’s in there. I knock again and go in. I see the empty bottle of pills on the floor and bottle of Pils they were washed down with. I have to look on the bed, though I already know what I will find there.

I desperately try the kiss of life, anything, but it’s way too late, her body’s already cold.

I just about manage to pull out my phone and call an ambulance before breaking down.

The next week is a blur, I remember little. There was a funeral, I travelled down to Surrey and saw her body lowered into the grave, 100 pairs of strangers’ eyes staring at me, disseminating blame.

I stopped going out so much, started missing lectures, not doing my coursework.

I still saw Sonia for a while afterwards, though Jade’s death was too much of a burden for any relationship to bear, and Sonia wasn’t the type to be burdened.

And, besides, without Jade there with us, we really didn’t have much to talk about, nothing much in common, it turns out that it wasn’t Sonia and I that were Ant and Dec, it was me and Jade. I’d paired up with the wrong presenter.

Easter break came and Sonia went home to Oxford. I was supposed to visit her, but she kept putting me off, making excuses. Her first night back we went out on the town and had fun, I remember laughing for the first time in forever. Then in bed that night we were as passionate as ever. Maybe, I thought, we can get through this.

The next day she left me. We went for a walk along the beach and she dumped me in the exact same bit of beach that Karen had left me a few months previously. It was as if there was a big X marking the spot.

And that is how the story ends. Not in a good way.

I know that if I’d never met Sonia then Jade and I would have got together eventually.

That Jade and I would have been perfect for each other.

That Jade should have been my life partner.

Instead, all I had was the sickening emptiness of being dumped by a girl I didn’t really know, who in her mind had left already left me several weeks’ previously.

And the memories of Jade’s cold, naked body as I’d desperately tried to resuscitate her.

And having to spend the whole of that last term living in the house where she died, haunted not by a ghost, but by cold hard fact. I had killed the most important person in my life.

And the guilt, and the loneliness, and the regret and the pain and hurt of it all.

But none of that matters, for this is just a story; a fiction, an entertainment, a lie. I never knew a Jade, nor a Sonia, I took both names from a magazine article I was reading in the toilet at lunchtime. I thought, they’re nice neutral names, they could be anyone.

And yet, in spite of the entire story being a total fabrication, in spite of this being clearly labelled as a work of fiction, it all feels so similar to what really happened. Why is that?