June 28th, 2016

I was talked into by my flatmates to accompany them to Biggleswade for Remembrance Day. 

Two of my flatmates, Alice and Chloe lived in this town that sounded like the name I would give to a short-muzzled, tightly curled tailed pug – with the name "Wade" attached at the end. 

We were at King's Cross Station, the six of us – Alice, Chloe, Mollie, Jon, Conor and me – to buy our train tickets. 

My flatmate, and friend, Rachel was back home in Sunderland for the weekend. To be quite honest, I envied her a little bit. Not just because she was spending time with her family (while mine was an ocean and an entire continent away), but also because she didn't have to suffer with our flatmates. 

It had already been three months since moving to London. I was entering my second weekend of November and feeling not so welcomed in this historic city, especially not by my three British female flatmates. 

Besides Rachel, I had managed to make a handful of friends in England. On my first day of lectures at King's College London, I met Sofia for my Chaucer class. She had a wonderful accent, and shared my love for literature just as equally as me. In my Elizabethan Poetry class, a girl named Ally O spent a hour chatting me up. She was from Spain, and we exchanged writing tips to one another in between lectures. Then there was Jocelyn, who later became friends with both Sofia and I in our Victorian Literature class. She was studying abroad just for the fall semester from University of Pennsylvania. Then from Jon’s Arcadia Study Abroad Group, I had gotten friendly, but not too close to a couple of students studying at King’s College London with me. Amy, Mel, Erica and Conor. Conor, was going to Biggleswade with us.

The only American who I was the closets to was my friend, Geena. She was a member of the Arcadia group and was studying abroad for a semester from Mount Holyoke College. This alone made us automatic friends. Before going abroad, I knew Geena, but we were never close. I knew her by name, and it was only when I recognized her at my apartment complex in London that our bond as Mount Holyoke sisters strengthened. 

As we boarded the train to Biggleswade, I wished nothing more than to have Geena with me.  ​There’s no real nice way to write this, but my flatmates – except for Rachel – were bitches. 

Even Jon, the only other male member living in our flat was a bonafide asshole. 

In the months that I had lived with them, I had suddenly felt invisible to them.

Granted, because I can sometimes be egotistical, I did believe that before I arrived in London that I was going to be (as the kids call it these days) “hot shit.” And why wouldn’t I be? I was a American girl, studying abroad all the way in London, England from sunny California. I really did think that I was going to be a hot commodity. I thought all of my Mount Holyoke friends who were studying abroad our junior year were going to be hot commodities too. 

But in truth, when I arrived at my apartment on Stanford Street, jet lagged and cranky as hell for only getting three hours of sleep on the plane, I wasn’t greeted with any “Oohh’s” and “Aahh’s” from neither Alice, nor Chloe and especially nothing from Mollie. I did get a lot of excitement when I first met Rachel’s mother helping her daughter move in. She introduced me to Rachel the instant she heard my American accent. I should have been over the moon, flattered even, that both Rachel and her mother greeted me with such warmth after leaving my parents behind for a full academic year. Except at that moment the jet lag really kicked in and I collapsed on top of my mattress when I found my dorm room. 

Looking back, the only approval that I ever needed and wanted was only Rachel’s. But because the two of us were living with other people – people who we obviously didn’t like very much – we had to find a way to get along with them. The first American that I had met once I napped for eight hours straight in my dorm room, was Jon. 

First impressions can really throw you in a loop. 

Remember when Elizabeth Bennet first met Wickham in Pride and Prejudice? To refresh you memory, Elizabeth is with her sisters, Lydia and Kitty, when one of their officer friends introduces them to Mr. Wickham. Austen writes:

 “[Mr. Wickham’s] appearance was greatly in his favour; he had all the best part of beauty, a fine countenance, a good figure, and very pleasing address. The introduction was followed up on his side by a happy readiness of conversation—a readiness at the same time perfectly correct and unassuming . . .” 

This was what I first thought of Jon.

At the sometime, most of my anxiety had left me when he introduced himself to me. Mainly because it meant that I wasn’t the only American living in this flat. I had a companion that I could reminisce about Kraft Mac ’n’ Cheese with. Someone who had visited Los Angeles and knew about Hollywood and Pink’s Hot Dogs. Someone who understood that there was no better feeling than sticking your hand down a bag of Goldfish, or opening a fresh pack of birthday frosting Oreos.

Unfortunately, talking about these nostalgic American pastimes, very quickly became a very boring topic. America, itself was the one and only thing that Jon and I had in common. While I immersed myself with books, Jon was studying music at King’s College London. He told me and the other flatmates that he was writing a musical.

“It’s a Canadian love story,” he told us as we sat around the small around blue table that we had in our shared kitchen. “Between a conservative and a liberal who are fighting to become the next Prime Minister."

He promptly pulled up TuneSmith on his computer and showed us the music and lyrics for this musical. 

Alice, Chloe and Mollie huddled around him.

“How fascinating."

“Oh, you’re so talented."

“You American boys are just too clever."

It doesn’t matter who said what to Jon, because at this point in our living situation, I was keenly aware that my three British flatmates were all worshipping the ground Jon walked upon.

When I told them that I had published a YA novel, Chloe said “That’s cool. I don’t really read though.” And Alice said, “Oh, how nice” before gluing her eyes back to her iPad to read The Daily Mail. Mollie’s response – unlike Alice and Chloe’s mildly intrigued reply  – was more suspicious. As if she couldn’t believe that someone like me took the time to write a 272 page novel. “Is that so? You actually sat down and wrote a novel? Was there nothing exciting happening in your life or something?” 

Actually, yeah. My life was kinda boring which was why I started writing to begin with.

But I guess if you’re writing a Canadian musical, it must mean that you had some purpose in life.       Chloe and Alice had been best friends since high school and lived just a few doors down from each other in Biggleswade. So as you can imagine, every waking day was the Chloe and Alice show. They were such a unit that their classmates mixed them up, even though they looked nothing alike.

Chloe – the best and unfortunate true description that Rachel told me was – an English Rose. Even I admit, Chloe was very pretty. She had long light caramel colored hair, sun-kissed warm skin, big green eyes and round rosy cheeks. Alice, on the other hand was the polar opposite of her friend. While Chloe was taller than Alice and spoke with a smooth accent that almost sounded silky and perfect, Alice was the less confident about her looks. She was mousey, with fading yellow hair, dry wall white skin and small cloudy blue eyes. Chloe always reminded Alice that she was balding at her scalp and that her left eyebrow didn’t have enough hair so it looked like she only had one brow. I had noticed that Alice was suppressed under Chloe’s shadow. But she never fought back against her friend. Instead she went along with Chloe’s comments about her bald spot and her thinly haired left eyebrow because Chloe had a knack for inviting some good looking boys over to our flat to play beer pong. Chloe was her only source for meeting boys, and she would laugh off every snide and every critical thing Chloe had to say to her if it meant having some of Chloe’s magic rub off from her. 

On day one of meeting Jon, they had sat on either side of him at the kitchen table trying to get him  to settle an argument about if American men preferred watching football or baseball. I don’t remember Jon’s answer, except that whatever it was made Chloe and Alice laugh like hyenas. 

Then there was Mollie. When I first met her, I thought she was older than me because she was so tall. But then I learned that I was older than her by three years and she was just a freshmen entering her first year at King’s College. She was enrolled in the same nursing program as Rachel at Guy’s Campus. Mollie – with a “IE” at the end instead of the standard “Y” – wasn’t too keen on me when we first met. Alice, Chloe and I were Oompa Loompa size compared to the giant that was Mollie was. Everything about her was pale. Her skin was bleach white, her hair a platinum blond, and her eyes a washed out blue. When I finally did some shopping and bought myself a bowl, a dish, a pot and pan, all of the cabinet space above the skin was already taken by Alice, Chloe and Mollie. Jon, luckily, was given special permission from Alice to share her cabinet space. 

“Is there no more room in the cabinets?” I turned to Mollie who was cooking something on the stove.

“Nah. But we left you some room under the sink though,” she said stirring whatever was boiling in her pot. 

“Under the sink?” I got down on my knees and opened the cabinet to see the empty two shelves in front of me. “This should be storage."

“Yeah I know.” Mollie said without looking at me. 

“No, I mean storage for cleaning supplies,” I said. “Like for the skin and the stove."

“Well it’s the only free space that’s left. Do you want it or not?"

I should have done what Rachel did and just leave all of my cooking supplies in my room. At least I had enough room in my dorm to store things like my pots and pans. But I also wanted my pots and pans to be conveniently located in the kitchen, because that’s where the pots and pans belong.

I took the space under the sink. Reluctantly, of course. So whenever I needed to use one of my cooking tools, either Alice, Chloe, Mollie or Jon would be at the sink, washing their dishes. This turned into, “Can Jacqueline retrieve her pot under the sink without Chloe lapping water on top of her?” For my first semester under the sink, I was pretty successful at avoiding all of the soap and water from the skin whenever someone would be using it. Although with Mollie, I just waited until she was done washing her dishes in the sink. I knew she would “accidentally” spill dish water on me if I was on my knees pulling one of my kitchen items out. Especially when Jon was in the room.

I made the first mistake of pulling something out from my sink cabinet while Mollie was doing the dishes. Jon was actually asking me a question about California as I pulled out my pot to make pasta. He wanted to know how close Pasadena was from San Diego when I felt something cold and wet running down from my scalp over my eyes. The front of my head was completely soaked and I looked up to find Mollie washing a large stainless steel pasta spoon at the skin. 

“Whoops,” she shrugged before turning off the faucet to dry off the spoon. “You should probably wait your turn next time if you don’t want end up in the splash zone."

While Chloe obsessed over boys, and Alice obsessed over being just like Chloe, Mollie was obsessed over taking anyone down who held Jon’s attention for longer than a minute. When Mollie met Alice and Chloe, they got along right away – mainly because they all secretly had one huge crush on Jon – and from then on it was like Jon had his own entourage of British girls hanging on her every word.     It even got to the point when Alice, Chloe and Mollie – AKA the Three Stooges, as Rachel and I later secretly nicknamed them – chipped in enough money to make Jon dinner. DINNER! Three British girls were taking the time to feed him! 

Rachel and I couldn’t believe it. 

“Why are they even doing this?” Rachel turned to me one evening when the Three Stooges and Jon all decided to take a stroll around Somerset House without inviting us. “It’s not like they’re going to get anything out of this! He has a girlfriend!"

And this is what made me angry at Jon to begin with. Jon had a girlfriend back in New York named Julia. Before going abroad, both Jon and Julia decided to put their relationship on hold. Apparently, a lot of the boys from Northwestern did this. They had girlfriends back home but decided to either take a break or just split up while they went dilly-daddling in London. Conor told me that he and his girlfriend mutually agreed to take a break when he told her that he would be abroad for a semester. In a way, I felt torn about this decision, of men putting their girlfriends aside – or breaking up – just to be single in London for a short period of time. 

On the one hand, I understood this decision, especially if it was a mutual agreement like Conor and his girlfriend. I get how fun single life could be, and in a foreign country with foreign people. You meet so many different kinds of personality outside of America. Yet, if you were tied down to someone, you couldn’t go on Tinder and meet some European for a one-night-stand. Because you knew that you had to be loyal to your significant other back home. And maybe your significant other wants you to have a good – single – time abroad, and agrees to give you a break because they care about your happiness abroad. Although, there were also plenty of American boys who were in long-term relationships, and didn’t formally say they were breaking up with their girlfriends, but went on sleeping with one of two British women. 

However, in retrospect, this is also really shitty move. I mean you have a girlfriend that you take the time to cultivate a relationship with and then you decide to go abroad. And after years of building this relationship, you ask your significant other to take a break because you want to be single again in Europe. I saw this as boys shelving their girlfriends away until they returned to pick things off as they left them. Because what? Being single again to sleep with as many European girls as you want was more important than the significant you spent the most time with? 

I wasn’t sure I could do that. I wasn’t sure I would be able to be okay with my boyfriend going abroad and agreeing to “take a break.” Sure I would want him to have fun, but does that fun consist of being single so that he could feel guilt-free if he found someone else? Even if it was nothing serious? Even if it was a one-night-stand? I don’t think I could bare to think of him with someone else who wasn’t me. Maybe that’s just my “girly feelings” talking but it’s true. Because that’s the blessing Conor’s girlfriend left him, that was the blessing many girls who were back in America gave to their significant others as they waited for them come home. To be guilt-free. To not feel bad if they decided to sleep with someone else. To be forgiven by those girls when the fun did end and the semester abroad was over. That’s just the reality.

So Jon and Julia were on a break while Jon was abroad. Which meant Jon was fair game. However, after several days living the single life in London, it suddenly hit Jon that he didn’t like this break he and Julia  had found themselves in. Before either one of the Three Stooges could pounce on him, Jon had announced to us that he and Julia were officially back together. You would think this news would at least send a message to The Three Stooges to back off, just a little. But they didn’t. And Jon didn’t tell them to stop. 

Whenever one of Three Stooges would touch Jon affectionately he wouldn’t brush them off. If either Alice or Chloe wanted to hold hands with him, he wouldn’t question it. In response to the attention Jon was receiving from our British flatmates he would reward them with his presence. Once, all four of them went off together to a taping of The Graham Norton Show (without inviting Rachel and I). Then another time all four of them left the apartment to go to a nearby pub (without inviting Rachel and I). And another time – and this one really pissed me off – all four of them decided to go ice skating at Somerset House (without inviting Rachel and I). This escapade with The Three Stooges and Jon really took the cake because I CLEARLY ANNOUNCED to the entire flat that maybe as a flat we could do a  fun activity together and buy tickets to ice stake at Somerset House. This was back when I still held on to some small thread of hope that maybe we could all just get along. Instead, Jon and the Three Stooges had bought their tickets without informing Rachel and I the plan, and the four of them went off anyway. What sucked more, was that that was the last day the ice rink would be open at Somerset House for the entire winter. So not only were Rachel and I jacked out from staking with out entire flat, but we had missed staking at Somerset House all together.

​Yeah. I was hella mad.  After a 30 minute train ride from King’s Cross Station to the town of Biggleswade, the Three Stooges, Jon, Conor and I had arrived for the Remembrance Day Ceremony in the town. 

​Rachel had explained to me that Remembrance Day was like the US’s version of Veteran’s Day. It was a memorial day to remember the members of the armed forces who had died in the line of duty during the First World War. Everyone was wearing a red poppy on their lapels as I stood with my flatmates and Conor to the side of the road to watch the Remembrance Day parade. Holly, the friendly receptionist at the Stanford Street Apartments had bought me my paper poppy to wear to Biggleswade before I left. I tried to remember the last time I was at a memorial service this quiet and serious for the fallen soldiers during the war, but all I could think of was how far away my grandparents were buried back in California. So far a way, and they were buried in such a beautiful place. As grim as this ceremony was, I closed my eyes and imagined that I was at Forest Lawn in California. On the the green hill my grandparents who fought and served in the Second World War were laid to rest. But when I opened my eyes I was back in Biggleswade, England under the overcast gray sky.

“Let’s do something fun,” Alice turned to us when the ceremony was over.

“Like what?” Conor asked her. 

“Oh, I was thinking taking a quick trip down to Cambridgeshire,” Alice’s voice hiked up another octave whenever she spoke to Conor.

Conor was an interesting character. I didn’t like him, but I didn’t hate him either compared to the other boys who came from Northeastern with Jon. He was just there. And whenever we were in the same room we kind of acknowledged each other, which – compared to the Three Stooges – I actually really appreciated. At least with Conor he didn’t pretend I was invisible and I think it was because I had something he didn’t have: California bragging rights.

Back in his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Conor was an actor. A good one actually. Good enough to get me thinking if he was really trying to be my friend or just acting. Anyway, he played an extra in The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Me Earl and the Dying Girl. He showed me pictures on his phone meeting Paul Rudd and Aaron Paul. He had his own IMDB page and was hoping to make it big in Los Angeles one day. 

And guess who was the only girl attending King’s College straight from Southern California: This gal.

Conor and I bonded over things like In-n-Out Burger (and how much we desperately missed it) the palm trees, and if I knew anyone in the movie/TV business. Because obviously, George Clooney is my next door neighbor. Although, the truth was that yes, I knew people at Paramount and Warner Brothers, but I didn’t go into great detail with him about my connections. 

What made me like Conor – just a little bit – was the fact that he didn’t bullshit with me. He didn’t try to beat around the bush and was directly honest. That’s pretty much the only reason why I liked him enough to be my friend. However, he was also a bit of a sneeze. Particularly with Alice. Not that I cared, but I did notice what he was doing.

Conor originally wanted to get together with Chloe, and I mean who could blame him, she is after all pretty. But Chloe was too busy flirting with Jon and asking him all these American questions that I knew all the answers to. So while Chloe was distracted by Jon, Conor decided to move on to his second choice which was Alice.

The two of them had tipsily made out when we all went out to Piccadilly Circus, followed by Alice inviting Conor back to her room and having sex with him. Alice was sure this was proof of Conor’s feelings for her, despite that Conor obviously wanted to get together with Chloe badly. Alice had tried to keep things going with Conor – finally thinking that she found a boy who only saw her instead of Chloe – but Conor reverted to treating Alice the way he treated me: Totally platonic. 

Alice, however, was unaware of Conor’s feelings for Chloe. ​We took two cars to Cambridgeshire.

I was in a car with Mollie and Alice while Chloe took her car and drove with the boys.

“Do you think he still likes me?” Alice was asking Mollie about Conor as I sat in the backseat. It was so weird watching someone drive on the opposite side of the car. I felt too cramped in one area so I decided to just sit in the middle. 

 “I mean, yes of course,” Mollie replied. “I just think he need to sort things out with his former girlfriend from home is all."

“You think so? Have you seen what she looks like? Is she prettier than me?"

As Alice listed off all of the possible questions she had to Mollie about Conor, I part of me really did pity Alice for being so insecure about herself. The problem wasn’t that these insecurities steam from within, but from Chloe who constantly reminded Alice where her place was in their friendship. 

I had seen enough TV shows and movies, and had read enough books to know that relationships like the one Alice and Chloe had was toxic. Rachel and I had noticed this. As a nurse, Rachel was able to perfectly dissect and label all of the emotional abuse Chloe was giving Alice, like naming all of the bones in a hand. 

“If Alice doesn’t stand up for herself soon, she won’t have anyone by her side by the time Chloe is done with her."

“What about Conor?” I asked Rachel.

“That’s an even worse scenario.” Rachel and I had felt like we were the only ones who knew about the Holy Disaster Trinity that was Alice, Chloe and Conor. “Because if Alice finds out that Conor was just using her, she’ll always believe that she’s nothing compared to Chloe.” 

The rest of the entire drive was emotional. At least for Alice. I was at least glad that the sun had come out, saturating the bright green of the fields as we entered the town of Cambridgeshire. 

Alice and Chloe parked their cars at a lot and we took a boarded a bus that zigzagged through the narrow streets of the university town. While Alice desperately tried to reclaim some of Conor’s attention back, I tried not to think about how totally screwed up my flat was. Jon had a girlfriend but was enjoying the benefits of getting pampered by the Three Stooges. Alice wanted Conor. Conor wanted Chloe. Chloe wanted Jon. Mollie wanted Jon. And I hated that Jon was getting more attention than me.