Kitabı oku: «Don’t You Forget About Me»
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Mhairi McFarlane 2019
Cover design: Holly MacDonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover illustrations © Abbey Lossing
Mhairi McFarlane asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008169336
Ebook Edition © March 2019 ISBN: 9780008169329
Version: 2019-08-09
Dedication
For my niece, Sylvie
A small superhero
Epigraph
Love’s strange so real in the dark
Think of the tender things that we were working on
Simple Minds
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Then
Chapter 1: Now
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
About the Author
Also by Mhairi McFarlane
About the Publisher
Then
Tapton School, Sheffield, 2007
‘You loved me – then what right had you to leave me? Because … nothing God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart – you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.’
My most truculent fellow pupil, David Marsden, looked up and wiped his chin on his sleeve. He had given Emily Brontë’s Gothic novel the emotion of reading from the menu at Pizza Hut. As a teenage male, it was important you kept it monotonous to avoid allegations from other teenage males of being a massive bender.
The room was muggy with that syrupy heat you get as you near high summer, the sort where your clothes feel grubby by midday. In our squat box of a Sixties building, the windows heaved halfway up as poor man’s air con, we could hear the liveliness of the school field in the distance.
‘Thank you, David,’ said Mrs Pemberton, as he closed his paperback. ‘What do we think Heathcliff means in this passage?’
‘He’s nowty again because he’s not getting any,’ said Richard Hardy, and we guffawed, not just as it delayed proper academic discussion, but because the person making the joke was Richard Hardy.
There was some muttering but no proper answers. It was six weeks to the final exams and the mood was a febrile stew of excitement at imminent freedom and a bottleneck of panic about the reckoning that awaited. The tortured inhabitants of these pages were starting to get on our nerves. Try getting some real problems, like ours.
‘“Then what right had you to leave me” is a bit creepy, isn’t it,’ I said, if no one else was going to break the lengthening silence. Mrs Pemberton could get testy if they ran on, and make the homework bigger. ‘I mean, the idea Cathy had to stay with him or she deserves to be unhappy is a bit … ugh.’
‘Interesting. So you don’t think Heathcliff is justified in saying that by denying her feelings, she ruined both their lives?’
‘Well,’ I took a breath, ‘it’s the thing about how her love for Heathcliff is like the rocks underneath, constant, but gives her no pleasure,’ I say this in a rush due to the inevitable mirth at the word ‘pleasure’. ‘It doesn’t sound like it was going to be much fun? It’s all about her obligation to him.’
‘Perhaps then the love they share isn’t conventionally romantic but deep and elemental?’
‘It’s mental, alright,’ said a male voice. I glanced over and Richard Hardy winked at me. My heart rate bumped.
My teacher had an annoying way of taking me seriously and making me do actual thinking. She once kept me back and told me: ‘You play down your intelligence to enhance your standing with your peers. There’s a big wide world outside these walls, Georgina Horspool, and exam grades will get you further than their laughter. Pretty faces grow old too, you know.’
I was furious afterwards, the kind of fury you reserve for people who accuse you of something that’s absolutely true. (I was quite pleased at the ‘pretty face’ bit though. I didn’t think I was pretty, and I wouldn’t be old for ages.)
A murmur of chatter spread around the class, and the air was thick with no one caring about Wuthering Heights.
Mrs Pemberton, sensing this fatal straying of attention from the text, dropped her bombshell.
‘I’ve decided you’re going to change places. I don’t think sitting with friends is doing concentration in this room many favours.’
She started going from desk to desk, swapping one in for one out, amid much grumbling. I was convinced I could smart mouth my way out of this.
‘Joanna, you can stay put, and Georgina, you’re at the front.’
‘What?! Why?’
Obviously the front row was reserved for the problematic, lazy, or outcasts – this was deeply unjust.
The seating layout respected invisible but rigid castes: swots and oddities at the front. Averagely well likeds, who worked for good approval ratings, like myself and Jo, in the middle. At the back, the super cool girls and boys, like Richard Hardy, Alexandra Caister, Daniel Horton and Katy Reed. Rumour had it that Richard and Alexandra were kind of seeing each other but also kind of not, because they were cool.
‘Come on. Shift.’
‘Aw, miss!’
I got up with a sigh and slung my pens in my bag at a speed that emphasised my reluctance.
‘Here you are. I’m sure Lucas will be glad to have you,’ Mrs Pemberton said, pointing. There was no need for that phrasing, which caused a ripple of sniggers.
Lucas McCarthy. An unknown, who kept himself to himself, like all future murderers. Not social contagion, but not who I would’ve chosen.
He was lean, with a pointed chin; it gave him a slightly underfed look. He was Irish, signalled by the scruffy-short tar-black hair and pale skin. Some wags called him Gerry Adams, but not to his face because apparently his older brother was nails.
Lucas was looking up at me, warily, with dark, serious eyes. I was taken aback by how easily I could read his startled apprehension. Would I make any disgust towards him humiliatingly public? Was this going to be harrowing? Did he need to brace?
In seeing his concern, I suddenly saw myself. I felt bad that I was the kind of person he’d fear that from.
‘Sorry to foist on you,’ I said, as I dropped down into my chair, and felt the tension ease by a millimetre. (I liked to use elevated vocabulary but in an ironic, throwaway manner, in case everyone thought I was trying to show off. Mrs Pemberton so had my number.)
‘Here’s your question to work on together until the end of the lesson, and we’ll discuss your joint findings on Friday: is Wuthering Heights about love? And if so, what kind? Nominate a note taker,’ Mrs Pemberton said.
Lucas and I gave each other uneasy smiles.
‘You’re the thinker so I best be the writer,’ Lucas said, scrawling the topic across a sheet of lined A4.
‘Am I? Thanks.’
I smiled again, encouragingly. I saw Lucas brighten. I rifled my memory bank for any stray useful fact about him. He’d only turned up in sixth form, partly why he was someone out on the periphery of things.
He always wore the same dark t-shirts with half faded-out pictures on them, transfers that had fragmented and splintered in the wash, and three red and blue pieces of string as bracelets. I recall some of the boys calling him ‘the gypsy’ for that. (But not to his face, because his older brother was nails.) In the common room, he often sat by himself, reading music magazines, Dr Marten boot-clad foot balanced on knee.
‘I agree with you about Heathcliff. He’s a werewolf more than a person, isn’t he?’ he said.
I realised I’d spent two years in the same building as Lucas, the same rooms as him, and we’d never had a conversation before. He spoke softly, with a slight Irish lilt. I vaguely expected a local accent. I’d paid him no attention whatsoever.
‘Yeah! Like a big angry dog.’
Lucas smiled at me and wrote.
‘I don’t know, it annoys me Cathy has to take the blame for the whole story,’ I said. ‘She makes one wrong decision and everything goes to shit for generations.’
‘I suppose if she makes the right decision there isn’t much of a plot?’
I laughed. ‘True. Then it’d just be Meet The Heathcliffs. Wait, if Heathcliff is his surname, what’s his first name?’
‘I think he has one name. Like Morrissey.’
‘Or he could be Heathcliff Heathcliff.’
‘No wonder he’s pissed off.’
I laughed. I realised: Lucas wasn’t quiet because he was dull. He watched and listened instead. He was like opening a plain wooden box and finding a stash of valuables inside. Was he plain? I reconsidered.
‘It’s not her decision though …’ Lucas said, haltingly, still testing out the ground between us. ‘I mean, isn’t it the fault of money and class and that, not her? She thinks she’s too good for him but she’s been made to think that by the Lintons. They grow up differently, after that accident with the dog. Maybe it’s all the dog’s fault.’
He chewed his biro and gave me a guarded smile. Something and everything had changed. I didn’t know yet that small moments can be incredibly large.
‘Yes. So it’s about how love is destroyed by …’ – I wanted to impress – ‘… an unhospitable environment.’
‘Is it destroyed though? She’s still haunting him as a ghost years later. I’d say it carried on, in a different form.’
‘But a twisted, bitter, no hope form, full of anger and blame, where he can’t touch her any more?’ I said.
‘Yes.’
‘Sounds like my parents.’
I’d told jokes with some success in the past, but I don’t think I’d ever been so elated to see someone crack up. I remember noticing how white Lucas’s teeth were, and that I’d never seen his mouth open wide enough to see them before.
That was how it began, but it began-began with four words, three lessons later.
They were printed on lined A4, at the end of shared essays on ‘the role of the supernatural’. We had to swap the folder back and forth, annotating it, straining with the effort of impressing each other.
I had a second’s confusion as my sight settled on the rogue sentence, then a warmth swept up my neck and down my arms.
I love your laugh. X
It was there, in Bic blue, an unexpected page footer. It was so casual, I’d almost missed it. Why didn’t he text me? (We’d exchanged numbers, in case pressing, Brontë-related questions arose.) I knew why. A direct message was unequivocal. This could be denied if necessary.
So it was mutual, this newfound obsession with the company of Lucas McCarthy. I’d never had a spark like this before, and certainly not with a male, whose skin, I’d noticed, was like the inside of a seashell.
I’d gone from not noticing Lucas ever to being consumed by noticing him constantly. I developed the sensory awareness of an apex predator: at any time I could tell you where Lucas was in the common room, without you ever seeing my eyes flicker toward him.
Eventually, I had printed shakily underneath:
I love yours too. X
I handed the folder back to Lucas at the end of the next lesson, our eyes darting guiltily towards each other and away again. When it was once more in my possession, that page had gone missing.
I didn’t know what falling in love felt like, I’d never done it before. I discovered you recognise it easily when it arrives.
We found every excuse to revise, out of hours, and the weather meant we could use the excuse of meeting outdoors, in the Botanical Gardens.
We were going on dates, but the revision aids strewn around the grass provided a fig leaf. Truly, I could’ve hugged Mrs Pemberton.
At first, we talked incessantly, devouring information. His life in Dublin, our families, our plans for the future, favourite music, films, books. This dark, serious, laconic Irish boy was an ongoing surprise. He put nothing on show, you had to find it out for yourself: not the deadpan quick humour, not the good looks he could’ve worn conspicuously simply by walking tall, not the sharp intelligence. He was self-contained. By contrast, I felt uncontained.
When I spoke, he concentrated on me intently. Through Lucas’s fascination, I saw myself differently. I was worthy. I didn’t have to try so hard.
The third time we met, in about five days, Lucas leaned over to whisper something in my ear about a group nearby, and I shivered. It was a ruse, he didn’t need to get so close, and I felt us move up a gear.
Lucas said, as he tentatively smoothed the wisps from my ponytail back into place: ‘Is your hair real?’
We collapsed in hysterics.
‘Is that the real colour! Colour! That’s what I meant. Ah, God …’
I wiped tears away. ‘Yes this wig is my real colour. I get my wiggist to match them up.’
Lucas said, unguarded and weak from the mirth: ‘It’s beautiful.’
We both gulped and looked at each other heavily and that was it, we were kissing.
After that, we started revising every day. Barrier broken with that kiss, our feelings spilled out more each time we met. Secrets were whispered between us, fears and desires, the risky intimacies piled up. He had a pet name for me. I had never been seen like this before. I had never dared to be seen like this before.
Before I met Lucas, my body had been something to angst over and regret: not thin enough, chest too big, thighs too much in contact. When grappling with him, I learned to love it. Despite being fully clothed, I couldn’t miss the dramatic effect it had on him: the heat between us, his heart rate, our rapid breathing. I pushed myself against him so I could feel the lump in his jeans and think: I caused that. The thought of being some place private where we could properly clash pelvises was almost too thrilling for me to contemplate.
We kept it all a secret. I don’t quite know why, there was no moment we agreed to it. It was simply an understanding.
There was still this giant ridiculous stigma at school about anybody getting together with anyone. I couldn’t face the whooping and applause in the corridors, the nudging, the smirking, the questions about what we’d done that would make both our faces burn. And I knew I’d get teased, more so than him. For lads, a notch was a notch, and, brutally, I was well liked and Lucas wasn’t. The boys would caw and mock and the girls would say ‘ewwww?’
It was much easier to wait, because soon the captivity, school and its cruel rules, would be over.
It’s factually accurate to say the first male to see my outfit for the leavers’ party was stunned, and his jaw dropped. Sadly, he was eight years old, and a right little toerag.
As I stepped out into the balmy early evening, dolled not up to the nines but the tens, the next-door neighbour’s son was flipping the door knocker to be let in, using the tattered stick of the ice pop he’d been gnawing on. His mouth was dyed alien-raspberry.
‘Why is your face so bright?’ he said, which could sound like he’d correctly assessed my mood, but he meant the sixty-eight cosmetics I’d plastered myself with.
‘Piss off, Willard,’ I said, jovially. ‘Look at the state of yours.’
‘I can see your boobies!’ he added, and darted indoors before I could cuff him.
I adjusted my dress and fretted that Willard – despite being no Vogue intern himself, in his Elmo sweatshirt – was right, it was too much. It was deep scarlet with a sweetheart neckline that was quite low cut, and I had the kind of bosoms that tended to assert themselves. I’d been distracted getting ready because it was the first time in my life I’d put on underwear knowing I wouldn’t be the person taking it off. The thought gave me vertigo.
Lucas and I were on a promise. As clothed make-out sessions became almost as frustrating as they were exciting, I had suggested to him that we could stay over together ‘in town’ after the sixth form prom. I acted casual, as if this was an obvious thing to do. Even tried to play it off as something I might’ve done before. I didn’t know if he had.
‘Sure,’ he’d said, with a look and a smile that got me right in the heart and groin.
I was so excited I was almost floating: I know the exact day I’m going to lose my virginity, and it’s going to be with him.
I’d gone to the Holiday Inn earlier that day, checked in, left some things, gazed at the double bed in wonder, come back and reminded my indifferent parents I was staying at Jo’s. Luckily my sister was away, as Esther could smell a fib of mine a mile off.
The party was in a plastic shamrock Irish pub in the city centre, a function room with a trestle table full of beige food and troughs of cheap booze in plastic bins, filled to the brim with ice that would soon melt into a swamp.
It was strange, both Lucas and I being there, knowing the intimacy that was planned afterwards, but pretending to be distant to each other. I caught sight of him across the room, in a black corduroy shirt, sipping from a can of lager. We shared an imperceptible nod.
Up until now, keeping our involvement to ourselves had felt pragmatic. Tonight though, it finally felt off. What was there to hide? Did it imply shame, whether we meant it to or not? Would he rather have been open? Was it an insult he had tacitly accepted?
I was a little anguished, but we’d set a course we had to sail now. I could raise it later. Later. I could barely believe it’d arrive. My head swam.
I was drinking cider and black, too fast: I could feel my inhibitions dissolving in its acidic fizzle. Richard – now, Rick, I’d learned – Hardy said: ‘You look fit.’ I quivered, murmured thanks. ‘Like a high class prozzy with a heart of gold. That’s your “look”, right?’
‘Hahaha,’ I said, while everyone fell about. This was grown-up banter and I was lucky to be part of it.
As the evening wore on, I felt like I was in a circle of light and laughter, among the halo-ed ones, and I didn’t know why I’d underestimated myself until now. I mean, OK I was inebriated, but suddenly, being liked seemed a total cinch.
Jo and I shared a wondering look with each other: could school really be over? We’d survived? And we were going out on a high?
‘Hey, George.’
Rick Hardy beckoned me over. He was calling me George, now?! Oh, I had truly cracked this thing. He was leaning against a wall by a bin of tins, with the usual gaggle of sycophants around him. Rumours were he wasn’t going to bother with university: his band was getting ‘big label interest’.
‘I want to show you something,’ he said.
‘OK.’
‘Not here.’
Rick unstuck himself from the wall in one sinuous, nascent rock star move, and handed his drink to an admirer. He outstretched a palm and gestured for mine – I could feel multiple pairs of eyes swivel towards us – and said: ‘Come with me.’
In surprise, I put my drink down with a bump, put my hand into his and let him lead me through the throng. My bets were on either a new car or a large spliff. I could style either out.
I glanced over at Lucas to reassure him this wasn’t anything, obviously. He gave me the exact same look as when I’d first been sat next to him.
How badly are you going to hurt me?
1
Now
‘And the soup today is carrot and tomato,’ I conclude, with a perky note of ta-dah! flourish that orange soup doesn’t justify.
(‘Is carrot and tomato soup even a thing?’ I said to head chef Tony, as he poked a spoon into a cauldron bubbling with ripe vegetal odours. ‘It is now, Tinkerbell tits.’ I don’t think Tony graduated from the Roux Academy. Or the charm academy.)
In truth, I put a bit of flair into the performance for my own sake, not the customers’. I am not merely a waitress, I’m a spy from the world of words, gathering material. I watch myself from the outside.
The disgruntled middle manager-type man with a depressed-looking wife scans the laminated options at That’s Amore! The menu is decorated with clip art of the leaning tower of Pisa, a fork twirling earthworms, and a Pavarotti who looks like the Sasquatch having a stroke.
He booked as Mr Keith, which sounded funny to me although there’s an actress called Penelope Keith so it shouldn’t really.
‘Carrot and tomato? Oh no. No, I don’t think so.’
Me either.
‘What do you recommend?’
I hate this question. An invitation to perjury. Tony has told me: ‘Push spaghetti vongole on the specials, the clams aren’t looking too clever.’
What I recommend is the Turkish place, about five minutes away.
‘How about the arrabiata?’
‘Is that spicy? I don’t like heat.’
‘Slightly spicy but quite mild, really.’
‘What’s mild to you might not be mild to me, young lady!’
‘Why ask for my recommendations then?’ I mutter, under my breath.
‘What?’
I grit-simper. An important skill to master, the grit-simper. I bend down slightly, hands on knees, supplicant.
‘… Tell me what you like.’
‘I like risotto.’
Maybe you could just choose the risotto then, am I over thinking this?
‘… But it’s seafood,’ he grimaces. ‘Which seafood is it?’
It’s in Tupperware with SEA FOOD marker penned on it and looks like stuff you get as bait in angling shops.
‘A mixture. Clams … prawns … mussels …’
I take the order for carbonara with a sinking heart. This man has Strident Feedback written all over him and this place gives both the discerning and the undiscerning diner plenty to go at.
Here’s what some of TripAdvisor’s current top-rated comments say about That’s Amore!
This place redefines dismal. The garlic bread was like someone found a way to put bad breath on toast, though they’re right, it did complement the pâté perfectly, which tasted like it had been made from a seafront donkey. The house white is Satan’s sweat. I saw a chef who looked like a dead Bee Gee scratching his crown jewels when the door to the kitchen was ajar, so I left before they could inflict the main course on me. Sadly, I will never know if the Veal Scallopini would’ve turned it all around. But the waiter promised me everything was ‘locally sourced and free range’ so there’s probably a Missing Cat poster somewhere nearby if you follow my drift
Admittedly I was stoned out of my gourd on my first and last visit to this hell hole, but what the f**k is ‘Neepsend Prawn’? This city is not known for its coastline. I would have the Pollo alla Cacciatora at this restaurant as my Death Row meal, in the sense it would really take the sting out of what was to come
I told the owner of That’s Amore! that it was the worst Bolognese I’d ever tasted, like mince with ketchup. He said it was the way his Nonna made it in her special recipe, I said in that case his ‘Nonna’ couldn’t cook & he accused me of insulting his family! I’m not being funny but he looked about as Italian as Boris Becker
That’s Shit more like
2
‘When did you know you wanted to be a waitress?’ Callum, my only colleague front-of-house says, trying to swill an Orangina in a cowboy manner, re-screwing the cap with a sense of manly purpose.
He has a shadowy moustache, armpit sweat rings and his only hobby and/or interest is the gym, doing classes called things like Leg Death. I often fear he’s trying to flirt. I pitch my tone with him as very ‘older sister’ to discourage it.
‘Uhm … I wouldn’t say I wanted to do this. Or want to do this.’
‘Oh. Right. How old are you, again?’ Callum says.
Callum, being a not-that-sharp twenty-two-year-old, doesn’t realise when his thought processes are fully evident. He once mentioned to me that the step machine was great ‘even for people a stone, or a stone and a half over their ideal weight’.
‘Thirty,’ I say, as he double-takes.
‘Woah!’
‘Thanks.’
‘No I mean you don’t look that old. You look, like … twenty-eight.’
Lately, I am feeling the fact that I used to be ‘of ages’ with people I worked with in the service industry, but increasingly I am a grande dame. The thought makes my stomach pucker like an old football. The future is a place I try not to think about.
When I took the job at That’s Amore! I was a month behind with my rent and told myself that it was retro, with dripping candles in Chianti bottles in wicker baskets, red-and-white-check wipe-down tablecloths, plastic grape vine across the bar, and Italian Classic Love Songs: Vol 1 on the stereo.
‘Why don’t you get a proper job?’ Mum said. I explained for the millionth time I am a writer in waiting who needs to earn money, and if I get a proper job then that’s it, proper job forever. Somewhere in the back of a wardrobe, I have my old sixth form yearbook. I was voted Most Likely To Go Far and Most Likely To Get A First. I have made it as far as the shittest trattoria in Sheffield, and I quit my degree after one term. But apart from that, spot on.
‘You’re going to be a very old waitress without a pension,’ Mum replied.
My sister, Esther, said supportively: ‘Thank God no one I know goes there.’
Joanna said: ‘Isn’t That’s Amore! the one that had the norovirus outbreak a year back?’
Having sampled the ‘rustic homely fare’, I’m not sure that norovirus wasn’t unfairly scapegoated.
Now, I could take a lump hammer to the looping CD. I want the moon to hit Dean Martin in the eye like Mike Tyson.
It turns out my role is less a waitress, more an apologist for gastronomic terrorism. I’m a mule, shuttling the criminal goods from kitchen to table and acting innocent when questioned.
They told me that a free lunch was a perk of my meagre wage, and I soon discovered that’s an up-side like getting a ride on an inflatable slide if your plane crashes.
What really sticks in the craw is that, due to a combination of confused pensioners, masochists, students attracted by the early bird ‘toofer’ deal, and out of towners, That’s Amore! turns a profit.
The owner, a really grouchy man known only as ‘Beaky’, claims Mediterranean heritage ‘on my mama’s side’ but looks and sounds totally Sheffield. He comes in every so often to swill the grappa and empty the till, and is happy to let it lurch onward with Tony as de facto boss.
Tony, a wiry chain smoker with a wispy mullet, is tolerable if you handle him right, meaning, accept his word is God, ignore the lechery and remind yourself it’s getting paid that matters.
Tonight isn’t too busy, and after bussing the mains to the lucky recipients, I sip a glass of water and check my frazzled reflection in the stainless steel of the Gaggia machine.
A call from across the room.
‘Excuse me? Excuse me …!’
I assemble my features into a neutral-interested expression as Mr Keith beckons me over, even though I know exactly what’s coming. He picks up his fork and drops it back down into the congealed, grout-coloured sludge of the carbonara.
‘This is inedible.’
‘I am sorry. What’s wrong with it?’
‘What’s right with it? It tastes like feet. It’s lukewarm.’
‘Would you like something else?’
‘Well, no. I chose carbonara as that was the dish I wanted to eat. I’d like this, please, but edible.’
I open and close my mouth as I don’t know what the fix for that is other than firing Tony, changing every supplier and razing That’s Amore! to the ground.
‘It’s obviously been sat around while you made my wife’s risotto.’
I’d make no such wild guesses, as the truth is bound to be worse.
‘Shall I get the kitchen to make you another?’
‘Yes, please,’ the man says, handing it up to me.
I explain the situation to Tony, who never seems to mind customers saying his cooking is rank. I wish he would take it personally, standards might improve.
He takes a catering bag of parmesan shavings out, flings some more on to the dish, stirs it around and puts it in the microwave for two minutes. It pings, and he pulls it out.
‘Count to fifty and give him this. The mouth will taste what the mind is told to,’ he taps his forehead. I can’t help think if it was that easy, That’s Amore! would have a Michelin star instead of a single star rating average on TripAdvisor.
Thing is, I’d argue with Tony he should whip up a replacement, but it’ll be just as bad as this one.
I sag with embarrassment. My life so far feels like one long exercise in blunting my nerve endings.
Having waited a short while to reinforce the illusion, I march the offending pasta through the swing doors.
‘Here you are, sir,’ I say, doing the Basil Fawlty-ish grit-simper again as I set it down, ‘I do apologise.’
The man stares at the plate and I’m very grateful for the distraction of an elderly couple in the doorway who need greeting and seating.
With crushing inevitability, as soon as I’ve done this, Mr Keith beckons me back. I have to leave. I have to leave. Just get past this month’s rent first. And booking that week in Crete with Robin, if I can persuade him to it.
‘This is the same dish. As in the one I sent back.’
‘Oh, no?’ I pantomime surprise, shaking my head emphatically, ‘I asked the chef to replace it.’
‘It’s the same plate.’ The man points to a nick in the patterned china. ‘That was there before.’
‘Uhm … he maybe did a new carbonara and used the same plate?’
‘He made another lot of food, scraped the old pasta into the bin, washed the plate, dried it, and re-used it? Why wouldn’t you use a different plate? Are you short on plates?’
The whole restaurant is listening. I have nothing to say.
‘Let’s be hard-nosed realists. This is the last one, reheated.’
‘I’m sure the chef cooked another one.’
‘Are you? Did you see him do it?’
The customer might be right, but right now I still hate him.
‘I didn’t, but … I’m sure he did.’
‘Get him out here.’
‘What?’
‘Get the chef out here to explain himself.’
‘Oh … he’s very busy at the stove at the moment.’
‘No doubt, given his odd propensity for doing the washing up at the same time.’
My grit-simper has gone full Joker rictus.
‘I will wait here until he has a few minutes free to talk me through why I have been served the same sub-par sloppy glooch and lied to about it.’
Glooch. Good word. Just my luck to get the articulate kind of hostile patron.
I head back into the kitchen and say to Tony: ‘He wants to speak to you. The man with the carbonara. He says he can see it’s the same one as it’s on the same plate.’
Tony is in the middle of frying a duck breast, turning it with tongs. I say duck. If any pet shops have been burgled recently, it could be parrot.
‘What? Tell him to piss off, who is he, Detective …’ he pauses, ‘… Plate?’
In a battle of wits between Detective Plate and Tony, my money is on the former.
‘You’re the serving staff, deal with it. Not my area.’
‘You gave me the same dish! What am I supposed to do when he can tell?!’
‘Charm him. That’s what you’re meant to be, isn’t it? Charming,’ he looks me up and down, in challenge.
Classic Tony: packing passive aggression, workplace bullying and leering sexism into one instruction.
‘I can’t tell him his own eyes aren’t working! We should’ve switched the plates.’
‘Fuck a duck,’ Tony says, taking a tea towel over his shoulder and throwing it down. ‘Fuck this duck, it’ll be carbon.’
Complaining about the effect on the quality of the cuisine is a size of hypocrisy that can only be seen from space.
He snaps the light off under the pan and smashes dramatically through the doors, saying, ‘Which one?’ I don’t think this pugilistic attitude bodes well.
I Gollum my way past Tony and lead him to the relevant table, while making diplomatic, soothing noises.
‘What seems to be the problem?’ Tony booms, hands on hips in his not-that-white chef’s whites.
‘This is the problem,’ Mr Keith says, picking up his fork and dropping it again in disgust. ‘How can you think this is acceptable?’
Tony boggles at him. ‘Do you know what goes into a carbonara? This is a traditional Italian recipe.’
‘Eggs and parmesan, is it not? This tastes like Dairylea that’s been sieved through a wrestler’s jockstrap.’
‘Oh sorry, I didn’t realise you were a restaurant critic.’
Tony must be wildly high on his last Embassy Regal to be this rude to a customer.
‘You don’t need to be A.A. Gill to know this is atrocious. However, since you’ve raised it, I am reviewing you tonight for The Star, yes.’
Tony, already pale thanks to a diet of fags and Greggs bacon breakfast rolls, becomes perceptibly paler.
If this wasn’t a crisis and wildly unprofessional, I’d laugh. I pretend to rub my face thoughtfully to staunch the impulse.
‘Would you prefer something else, then?’ Tony says.
Tony folds his arms and jerks his head towards me as he says this, and I know in the kitchen I’m going to get a bollocking along the lines of COULD YOU NOT HAVE HANDLED THAT YOURSELF.
‘Not really, last time I asked for you to replace my meal you reheated it. Am I going to be seeing this excrescence a third time?’
I notice Mrs Keith looks oddly calm, possibly grateful someone else is catching it from him instead. Unless she’s a fake wife, a critic’s stooge.
‘I thought you wanted it warmer?’
‘Yes, a warmer replacement meal, not this gunk again.’
Tony turns to me: ‘Why didn’t you tell me he wanted a new dish?’
I frown: ‘Er, I did …?’
‘No, you said to warm it up.’
I’m so startled by this bare-faced untruth I have no comeback.
‘No, I didn’t, I said …?’ I trail off, as repeating our whole conversation seems too much treachery, but am I supposed to stand here and say this is all my fault?
A pause. Yes. Yes, I am.
‘Are you calling me a liar?’ Tony continues, entire dining room riveted by this spectacle.
I open my mouth to reply and no words come out.
‘Oh right, you are! Tell you what. You’re fired!’
‘What?!’
I think he must be joking, but Tony points at the door. Across the room, Callum is shocked, mouth hanging open and hands frozen round a giant pepper pot.
‘Oh, hang on, this seems excessive …’ says Mr Keith, looking suddenly chastened. This is why Tony’s done it. It’s the only way to get the upper hand again, and hope his write-up doesn’t focus solely on the gusset-flavoured carbonara.
You could hear a pin drop – apart from Dean Martin crooning about Old Napoli.
I untie my apron, chuck it on the floor, find my handbag behind the bar with clumsy hands.
I dart out, without looking back. Incipient tears are stinging my eyeballs, but no way are they seeing me weep.
When I’m round the corner, fumbling for a tissue as my non-waterproof mascara makes a steady descent, I get a text from Tony.
Sorry, sexy. Sometimes you need to give them a scalp. We’ll have you back in a fortnight and if critic fuck finds out, tell him your mum died or something so we took pity. Call it a holiday! Unpaid though.
That’s Amore.
Then another realisation.
For fuck’s sake, I forgot my coat!
3
First thought: it’s a prisoner of war. They can’t torture it, so leave it behind. Second: damn it, it’s the bubblegum-pink faux fur. It’s armour, it’s my personality in textile form. It’s up there in sentimental value after my ancient tortoise, Jammy. Also, I’m shivering already.
Wait, wait – I have a man on the inside: Callum. I message him to ask, thinking he’ll surely feel sorry enough for me to do it.
Insta-ping.
I will give you your coat if you will go on a date with me 
I blink, twice. You’ve just seen me get sacked in the most public, humiliating way and now you’re holding me to sexual ransom? I consider a blunt response saying, ‘I’m washing my nipple hair that night.’ Or pointing out it was only £50 in the Miss Selfridge sale three years ago so definitely isn’t worth that, concluding with the insult of a cry-with-laughter emoji.
But the objective is to get my coat back, not a load of middle fingers and a photo of it in the scraps bin.
Hahaha if I’m not too unemployed and skint to stand my round 
See you at the front door in 1 min?
I would pay. Is that a yes lol? 
Is there anything less charming than someone trying to push you into something unwillingly and acknowledging they are pushing you into it, and carrying on anyway?
OK, lying it is.
Sure 
… LY NOT. And he knows I’ve got a boyfriend. We had a conversation where he said ‘Lol his name is Robin do you ever call him Cock Robin’ and I said no and he said hahaha, wicked bants.
Outside the door, there’s no sign of Callum. I wait for five minutes which feels like five hours and then text him a question mark. Another three minutes and he appears round the door.
‘It’s busy with only me on.’
I wonder if I am supposed to apologise for this.
I look down at the material he’s holding. A beige trench coat.
‘That’s not mine.’
‘Oh.’
‘It’s pink and fluffy.’
Callum disappears back inside. Minutes pass and I think: there’s no way more than one piece of outerwear the colour of taramosalata in the cloakroom to justify this length of hold up. I bob down and peer under the tea-coloured nets in the window. Callum is taking an order for a table of eight people. He is chatting and joking and obviously in no rush.
Frustration wins out over shame and I wrench the door open and march back in. I feel multiple pairs of eyes on me as I rifle among the row of pegs on the back of the door behind the bar and claim my property.
‘Young lady – young lady?’
I turn and see Mr Keith is beckoning me over. I glance warily in the direction of the kitchen, but what’s Tony going to do, sack me again?
I approach. He’s dabbing his mouth with a napkin.
‘I’m sorry about what happened just now. If I’d known the consequences …’
‘Oh, it’s fine,’ I say. ‘It’s not your fault.’
‘In the future, remember honesty is always the best policy.’
I stare at him. He’s telling me off again? For fu—
‘I was honest. The chef was lying,’ I snap.
‘You’re saying he did cook me another meal?’
Ah.
‘No he didn’t but he told me he wouldn’t so I …’
‘Lied?’
‘To keep my job! He told me to lie!’
‘And how’s that working out for you?’
I open and close my mouth and dumbly repeat: ‘He was the one lying.’
‘Anyway. I’ve decided not to write it up, so as not to embarrass you.’
My jaw drops.
‘That’s what he wanted! That’s why he sacked me! So you’d feel bad about saying how shit the food is!’
I’ve become shrill and everyone’s looking round now.
‘Write it up! Tell everyone what it’s like, say I was sacked, I don’t care!’
‘That’s not a very collegiate attitude, is it?’
‘Or …’ I say, I feel the room hold its breath, ‘I’ll write it up for you. I could write you a great piece about this place. No conflict of interest anymore.’
Mr Keith clears his throat.
‘Well. Employee of the Month.’
I’m about to mention the time the kitchen’s tub of Stork margarine had what looked like rodent footprints in it, and Tony used an ice cream scoop to take off the top layer and carried on using it. Or, I could get my phone out and show Mr Keith the text I just received. Yes, that’d do it.
Callum is looking over with an aghast expression. When his line of sight moves to the kitchen door I know what’s coming.
Tony swaggers out holding another plate of pasta, affecting a casual air of bonhomie. When he spots me, his eyes are pinwheels.
‘Can’t stay away when you’re not being paid? Go on, Georgina, on your way. This customer doesn’t want more hassle from you.’
Tony sets the plate down. It actually looks half decent – he might’ve Googled ‘carbonara’ and cracked an egg.
‘I’m not hassling him, he spoke to me. I came back for my coat.’
Any noises of scraping cutlery in the dining room are yet to resume, so it’s us and volare, woooooaaah oh.
At that moment, my eyes settle on someone beyond Mr Keith. A little girl with pageboy hair and a disproportionately large forehead, wearing a large paper crown with BIRTHDAY on it, tomato sauce splattered across her cheeks. She’s paused in the middle of eating penne marinara and along with her awestruck family, is listening to every single word in this unseemly stand-off. We’re ruining a kid’s fifth birthday. Given everyone’s poised to see what I’ll do next, I’m ruining it.
Some of my few good childhood memories are of the excitement of being taken out for dinner, eating chicken nuggets in baskets and hustling for a second Coca Cola.
‘Forget it. I only wanted my coat. I’m done,’ I say.
‘Don’t let the door hit you etc. etc.,’ Tony mutters. Then louder, to Mr Keith: ‘I hope her drama doesn’t keep you from enjoying your meal.’
‘I hope your meal doesn’t keep you from enjoying your meal,’ I say, and Mr Keith shakes his head in dismay.
I turn and walk out, conscious of the many pairs of eyes on me. I keep my focus at the level of the SPECIALS chalkboard, acknowledging no one. I never thought this job would go especially well, I didn’t think it would end with a dignity ransacking. The door falls shut behind me and I exhale.
I stride and stride some more and I’m still too het up to fumble for my fags. I don’t want this to turn into a panic attack. I remember what the counsellor said about concentrating on my breathing when I felt anxiety rising like a sea level inside me.
My phone pings.
Keep our date a secret yeah, Tony will go well ape if he finds out and sack me too lol 
Tony’s already ‘well ape,’ it seems: another ping.
DICK MOVE, princess. No job for you here now and anywhere else either once I put the word round. BLACK LISTED enjoy your next job on the pole
I stab out a reply:
LOL. Tony, your surname isn’t Soprano. You might know more about Italian food if it was 
I’m not really that flippant about his threat. Sheffield’s mid-priced bistros are quite a small world and I can’t pay next month’s rent now. I’m not used to making enemies, I’m usually a champion smoother-over. Appeasement is my middle name.
Although maybe I’m kidding myself: a third text arrives from my sister, Esther, who I’ve never really succeeded in smoothing over:
Are you bringing Robin on Sunday? Sending Mark to Sainsbury’s in morning so would be good to get numbers, swift response appreciated. Rib of beef. Let me know if any allergies to Yorkshire pudding or whatever too.
That’s how Esther always communicates with me on text, like I am a lazy temp at her accountancy firm. Although the near-sarcastic last line is a particular tilt at Robin.
No he’s out of town! Thanks though x
I’m also a world-class white liar. Robin and my relatives are a bad combination. I tried two family events with my boyfriend and decided to rest the integration project indefinitely.
I turn the corner and psychologically, being out of sight of That’s Amore! helps slightly. This is fine, this is nothing. It’ll be a tapas bar in two years’ time, the sort where they microwave gambas pil pil so the frozen prawns are the same texture as contraceptive sponges.
Plus, Robin’s going to love the material from my firing this evening.
I can hear myself drafting and redrafting the key passages already, anticipating the points where I expect to get a laugh. At school, everyone used to clamour for my stories, I was good at them. If I went on a terrible summer holiday, I spun it into gold in term time. George, tell the one about …
Jo once said, admiringly: ‘Mad things always happen to you, how are you a magnet for mad!’ (that could sound like she was doubting me, but Jo is never ever snide. She only ever says exactly what she means) and I explained: I notice things. Appreciating the absurd was a useful skill in my childhood.
A snap snap snap with my pleasingly heavy silver lighter, in trembling hands, and the tip of my Marlboro Light glows. I suck in a big whoosh of nicotine and I feel better already. It’s not tenable to give up in current circumstances.
It’s an early winter evening, the sort of cold where the air in the middle distance looks smoky, and you can sense a weekend evening getting going. The swell of people in Broomhill, the scent of aftershave mingling with perfume and burble of chatter that comes with being two drinks to the good.
I can see my reflection in the window of Betfred and shift from foot to foot. As much as I argue back with Mum when she says things to me like: ‘scruffy is charming in youth but doesn’t age well, Georgina,’ I am starting to wonder if my playful taste in short dresses and liquid eyeliner is going a bit Last Exit to Brooklyn.
‘Be careful with that heavy make-up as a blonde. One minute you’re punk like Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner, the next you’re Julie Goodyear.’
Boy, how I’ll miss Tony’s beauty tips.
I open a message to Robin, then think again and press backspace to swallow the you’ll-never-guess-what-these-twats-have-done-now rant about the termination of my employment. I have a Friday evening free all of a sudden – this shouldn’t be thrown away on a prosaic text.
I want to be stylish about it.
On one of our first dates – I say dates, actually it was being invited round to Robin’s flat to drink red wine, until he eventually flapped a takeaway leaflet at me around 9 p.m. and said: ‘Have you eaten?’ – Robin said: live your life like this song.
The song playing was Elvis’ ‘Suspicious Minds’ so I asked: what, suspiciously?
He has a stack Hi Fi with a turntable at the top, which is now old enough to be a fashion statement, with volume lights that ripple.
‘The way it fades back in at the end. It’s already brilliant, but that is genius because it’s unexpected. That’s the moment that turns good into true greatness.’
Robin hunched over, rolling his joint.
‘… Everyone thinks you have to do everything a certain way. Monogamy, marriage, mortgage. Two point four kids, because what will you do with the second half of your life otherwise. Washing the car and the roast chicken in the oven every Sunday. William Blake called them “mind forg’d manacles”. People don’t want to get rid of the rule book, it scares them. We’re all living in captivity.’
I thought I could really fancy some roast chicken. I knew this was an implicit warning to me, as much as Robin sharing his world view.
(‘If he was going to settle down, he’d have done it by now, Georgina.’ Ta, Mum.) I was determined to appear unfazed.
‘Constructed reality. Like The Matrix,’ I say, picking up a menu for Shanghai Garden.
‘Yeah! So much of “can’t” and “not allowed” is an illusion.’
‘Tell that to my probation officer,’ I said.
Robin laughed, pushing the window open on its latch, before he lit his spliff. ‘Good one.’
I felt the satisfaction of being a Cool Girl.
‘… Would you share the illusion of a Kung Po rice with me?’
4
I toy with the prospect of a taxi to Kelham Island, then consider that now I’m on the dole again, the bus is more appropriate. These sort of internal negotiations are alien to Robin.
It’s weird to say, but Robin is sort-of famous. ‘Famous’ is overselling it really, but ‘well known’ is positively misleading. He’s a face and a name you might know if you’re in a very specific age demographic in Britain, watch the obscurer TV channels, follow fringe comedy and are probably a stoner.
When I saw his modern penthouse flat with its lipstick-red leather sofas, white rugs and mezzanine bedroom in a converted factory, I thought wow, challenging offbeat authored comedy pays well.
In the six months we’ve been seeing each other, I’ve witnessed Robin turn down various offers he thought ‘weren’t simpatico with what I’m trying to build’ and toss bills into the bin unopened, yet the lights stayed on and the hot water flowed. Eventually I twigged that income was coming from elsewhere.
Apparently Robin’s dad was some major wheel in the civil service, his parents now retired to the Cornish coast. Robin owned his property outright and ‘I get the rental income from the last place.’ I didn’t inquire any more in case I looked like I was gold digging, eyeing up the portfolio.
‘Are they fans of what you do?’ I asked, tentatively, as code for woah they set you up nicely.
Robin ran a hand through his wild hair. ‘I think “fans” might be overstating it. They want me to fulfil my potential, in whatever I see as my potential.’
Our disparity is never an issue except on the occasions I arrive exhausted from a shift. He’ll shrug and say: ah, sod it off then, as someone who has never understood how it feels to be dangling off the monkey bars with no financial crash mat. His whole inspirational ‘life is what you make it’ schtick grates a bit, as a result.
Though it has to be said, he’s never complained about our differences as a couple, monetarily or otherwise: as the most sinewy, wiry man I’ve ever slept with, he’s very keen on my waterbed belly and marshmallowy arse, and he positively enthuses about staying in my attic room in my terraced house in Crookes.
‘Look at it this way, if you ever want to be a writer, you’ve already got the garret.’
‘Glad you’re enjoying your poverty safari,’ I said, and he said ah poverty safari I like that I’ll use that. He says that quite a lot.
I stub out my fag as the bus arrives and push a Mentos into my mouth. Instead of serving dog food ragu to dismayed punters I have a night off, and the night is young. Chin up.
When I get off at the destination and walk the two minutes to Robin’s, in the dark and cold, I start to question the wisdom of the fabulous surprise concept. I probably should’ve told him …? This is the trouble with being unconventional. You never know when you’re simply being annoying.
As I approach his building, I see Robin near the door: he has a cheap thin blue plastic bag, handles lengthened with the weight of what must be purchases from the corner shop.
This is my moment! I’ll call him and say something like: I hope you have some wine for me in there. I’ll be like Jason Bourne! ‘Get some rest, Pam,’ while Robin jerks his head to see where I’m standing.
I scroll down, hit Robin’s number in my contacts and press the handset to my ear.
Ahead of me, I see Robin pull his iPhone out of his jacket pocket. A moment where he stares at the caller ID, then my line goes blip-blip-blip = call ended. Has he turned it off by mistake? His phone is back in his pocket and he continues towards the flat.
Baffled, and stung, I hit redial. Same process: momentary check, and again, declines it. He’s pressing it fast enough that even if I couldn’t see him, I think I’d know from the desultory length of time it rang that I’d been drop called.
Stubbornly, knowing I’m being uncool, I try for a third time. He’s almost at the door now. If his phone is buzzing, he doesn’t react.
I hear: The phone you have called may be switched off.
What on earth? He’s turned it off? I’m his girlfriend and I got the treatment of an unknown Manchester landline phishing for PPI. Is he angry with me about something? I search my recent memory and nothing occurs. Also, despite his hatred of stand-up comedy critics, Robin doesn’t do fits of temper: either due to his disposition or the quantity of marijuana he inhales, or both.
I’m hurt. As I watch Robin let himself into his block of flats I try to calibrate: how much, and whether I should be.
I anticipate what his excuse will be. Wasn’t in the right frame of mind, didn’t want to inflict myself on you. I called three times though, in quick succession, during what was supposed to be my shift. It could’ve been an emergency? I mean, it’s sufficiently out of the ordinary. Robin calls me a catastrophist but you can be too laid-back.
And I tend to call rather than message as Robin likes to declare himself above ‘the myriad ways of being pestered these days’. Maybe he’s waiting for an important person to get in touch? He was told the BBC’s Head of Light Entertainment might need a chat about now and to keep the line free.
I’m grasping at straws, obviously. My mum used to say that eavesdroppers hear no good of themselves and I feel the truth of that. My temporarily lifted spirits are now in tatters around my feet – I got an insight into how my boyfriend sometimes feels about me, and it’s not done anything for my self-esteem.
I think back to other times I might’ve called and not got an answer: is it often like this? FFS, what does she want now.
I light a cigarette and weigh up my options. If I go back to mine, I might see Karen on her way to her shift and that has to be avoided at all costs. My soul concaves at the thought. I know what I’m feeling and my counsellor told me to name it, when it surfaced: loneliness.
A minute or two later, I’m no closer to a decision, when my phone pings. Esther.
Can you bring red not white? We’re running short on it and I can’t raise Mum. Ta. (Do NOT get some Turning Leaf bin juice from the cash and carry! Spend a tenner min)
Not an ideal audience, but this gives me a chance to rehearse my story, get the lines right to make Robin laugh when I tell him, and I’m still buzzing with the adrenaline of outrage. I call her.
‘Hi, Esther, yes fine about the wine, but I can’t spend a tenner – I’ve just been sacked.’
‘WHAT?’
Maybe this wasn’t the greatest idea.
‘What for?’
‘A customer complained about his food being awful, the customer turned out to be a critic for The Star. Tony fired me in front of him, as if the problem was the service not the kitchen.’
‘Oh dear. This is like that hipster place on Green Lane with the drinks in jam jars where you lost a month’s pay after a row about a bowl of sick and gherkins.’
You know how your family can wind you up in a way no one else can quite hear? Like a dog whistle? To anyone else, Esther sounds sympathetic. To me, instantly bringing up another time I lost my job sounds anything but.
‘They were “kimchi loaded cheesy tater tots” and not really, the manager kept groping my arse so I had to leave.’
‘Well … spend a tenner on the wine and I’ll refund you when you get back.’ I make noises of objection, ‘George, Mark is a member of the Wine Society, he’s not going to drink something from Spar.’
Offstage, my brother-in-law Mark makes tutting noises and then something that sounded like a question.
‘Mark wants to talk to you,’ Esther says.
There’s a rustling as she hands the phone over to Mark.
‘Hi, George,’ Mark says. ‘Sorry to hear about the Italian. This might be a bit soon but striking while the iron is hot and all that, I know a landlord who needs someone to work an event tomorrow night, a pub in town? Under new management. Only one night but it’s cash in hand and a decent amount, if I remember right. Shall I give him your details?’
‘Definitely, thanks,’ I say. Good old Mark.
‘Great, I’m sure he’ll be in touch soon. Best of luck and all that.’
More rustling while Esther wrestles the phone back.
‘Thanks, darling. Can you go check on the dinner please?’ A pause, while Mark is dismissed. ‘Mark’s involved himself by recommending you for that job, the man’s a client.’
Here we go.
‘And?’
‘And please, don’t fuck it up.’
‘Thanks!’ I say, stung. ‘What with me being a known fucker upper.’
‘You know what I mean. Please don’t come back with one of your amusing stories where everything is a huge mess but it isn’t your fault. No incidents. I don’t want there to be incidents and excuses.’
‘Jesus Christ, thank you!’
That’s what Esther really thinks – this is what they all think. Oh how, er, ‘unlucky’. Trouble seems to follow her around doesn’t it? How many times is that now? Mmmm. It enrages me and at the same time worries me. I fear they’re right. Whenever anyone criticises me, I always worry they’re right. I overcompensate with extra outrage.
‘You know what I mean,’ Esther says.
‘In that you mean I’m an incompetent liar? Noted.’
‘Oh, don’t be a diva, Gog. All I’m asking is that you’re considerate towards Mark being connected to this.’
The Gog is definitely manipulative. Makes me and my objections to this characterisation sound small and silly.
‘Got it,’ I say tightly. ‘Thanks, Esther. Oh, my bus is here.’
I hang up before she can reply.
I stub out the tail end of my fag. What to do? I know hanging around at night time on my own is a bad idea. I square my shoulders: he’s had time to settle himself now, if he says, ‘why not warn me?’ I called, right? Not my fault.
I rifle in my handbag and find the key. It didn’t come threaded with ribbon, in a box – it has a West Ham fob as it used to be his brother Felix’s. He crashed with Robin when he was benched with an injury from the Cirque Du Soleil. (Seriously. I wonder if the McNee parents thought they were raising lawyers and doctors.)
Robin handed it over after a row where I’d rung the doorbell endlessly after work, and the Rolling Stones was on too loud for him to hear. He eventually answered to find not only a pissed off, knackered girlfriend but also a very angry, severely jet-lagged next-door neighbour wearing an eye mask round his neck who had heard my endless attempts to raise him. (‘Did he not know you were coming round?’ I was embarrassed to admit – especially to someone who’d been awake for thirty-two hours – that he did know.)
‘Sorry you couldn’t get no satisfaction, you can’t always get what you want. Did you want to paint my red door black?’ Robin said when he finally appeared, not reading the room.
‘Pure twat,’ said the neighbour.
When Robin gave the key to me I asked, what occasions is it for? Robin said: ‘Any time you want to open the door. That’s how they work, isn’t it?’
So, he said it.
5
After knocking with no answer, I turn the key with a snap, the door opens and the vista of the glamorous bachelor pad is in front of me, music set to deafening as it always is. (Robin was playing it earlier in the week. ‘The new St Vincent, it’s good. Also not that it should matter but she’s got a bum like two Crème Eggs in a satin glove.’)
Robin is nowhere immediately in sight. I call: ‘Robin? Robin …’
Nothing. The stereo drowned me out, I think. He’ll be unpacking the Birds Eye waffles and Rustler burgers in the kitchen, no doubt.
Further into the room and still no sight of Robin, though the blue bag is abandoned on the sofa, its contents spilling on to the cushions, multiple tubs of Ben & Jerry’s Vermonster. They’re going to melt over the leather. I twitch to put them in the freezer but it seems officious before ‘hello’.
I peer round into the kitchen, not there.
I lean back and crane my neck to look up, towards the bed on the platform above. I’m about to call ‘Robin’ again and then I hear weird strangled sounds, distinct from the official soundtrack.
Ugggggh fuuuu
Nuf-nuf-nuf mmmpppppf
Don’t … don’t … oh my God, yes
I freeze to the spot. My skin goes cold and yet hot, prickling with shock. Did I hear what I think I heard. Is this possible. Is this happening. No. No? It can’t be. This happens to other people, not me, not right now. This is a hilarious mistake and it’s going to end up in Robin’s act, that time his girlfriend walked in on him doing yoga or whatever.
St Vincent reaches another sonic lull and this time it’s:
Uh uh UGH
You like this don’t you, say you like it.
The second line is familiar to me and I feel a lurch, a sudden acrid wash of vomit pending at the back of my throat. I stand motionless as the rhythmic heaving in the background continues. I can pick out an intermittent pressure on a bed frame that’s unmistakable now.
I can’t look. But I definitely can’t not look. Having to focus to steady my hands, and tiptoe towards the metal ladder, I mechanically and carefully climb the rungs to the mezzanine level, planting my heeled boots with precision. I never liked this thing at the best times, made going for a drunk nocturnal wee feel like the Crystal Maze.
I poke my head up above floor level, sweaty hands fastened to the aluminium.
In the large low bed beneath the skylight, I see Robin’s bare arse pistoning up and down, a pair of skinny white female legs splayed either side. Disbelief. Revelation. Revulsion. And the thought: God, do we look like that when do we it?
It strikes me how weird it is to see two people having sex, up close, in real life. You’ve been one of the people, you’ve seen it happen on a screen enough, but an on-premises spectator to the act? Totally surreal. I’m still not quite believing what I’m seeing, as if Robin might’ve tripped and fallen and be having trouble getting back up again.
I can’t help comparing. It’s a lot more frenzied and noisy than we are. We were.
Do it Robin do it I love you aaaaaahhh
Lou. Talk. Dirty.
This is said while punctuated with a thrust each time, and suddenly, without making a conscious decision to announce my presence, I snap and yell: ‘WHAT THE FUCK?!’
Both bodies jerk and spasm with the shock of my joining the conversation and Robin falls sideways from the bed with the effort of getting off the woman, and turning round to look at the same time.
The woman wriggles to sit up and I see that a) she is tied to the bed posts by her wrists with scarves, one of which is a striped football scarf I recently ran through a hot wash for him b) she has small breasts, with nipple rings like barbells, a flower tattoo curling round her ribcage and c) she is coated in some sort of pale, lumpy substance, which after a second’s disorientated fright I realise comes from squashed tubs nearby, the emptied-out contents of a Vermonster.
As she boggles at me through a cloud of mussed spirally brown hair and I boggle back at her I realise I know who she is – she’s Robin’s PA, Lou.
Robin stands naked, hair like a fright wig, erection now at half mast, as if it’s been lowered out of respect for a visit by the Queen. He’s as pale as the Vermonster.
‘Oh God fucking hell Georgina what are you doing here?!’
‘I got sacked from work. What are you doing?’
‘What … well … how did you get in?!’
Robin seems angry with The Fates rather than himself, as if this is one terrible admin cock-up, as opposed to his cock half up.
‘You gave me a key?’
‘Oh, God …’ the truth dawns on Robin: the architect of all of his pain was himself. He was going to try some very thin defence that I’d somehow broken in. As the realisation settles, he splutters: ‘You don’t think you should’ve knocked first?’
That he thinks he can do self-righteousness at this moment absolutely astounds me.
It also makes anger overtake my shock. I’m back in some control of myself.
I purposely let him watch my line of sight go slowly back to Lou in the bed, who looks like she’d really like to be untied now; squirming against her bonds, red in the face, then back to him, and lastly down to his wilting member. I give it a good withering stare.
‘I did. I wasn’t heard over the music. You pathetic, treacherous piece of shit.’
I descend the ladder fast, jumping the last part so that my knees and ankles jar as I hit the ground. Robin gives chase, which means he has no time to dress himself, so as I near the door I’m confronted again by a stark bollock man.
I hate him even more for it – not enough shame to scramble to cover up. He’s to some extent performing, even now. Look at my vulnerability. Look at my unconventional lack of artifice. I’d like his unconventional artifice to be behind a towel, thanks.
‘George, George, wait, I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘Yeah so am I. It’s not every break-up that comes with a therapy bill. I feel sick.’
‘Break up …?’
I turn to look him in the eyes.
‘You don’t seriously think I’m staying with you?’
‘No, not tonight, obviously.’
I blink, taken aback. ‘Are you clinically insane? It’s over, Robin, we’re done. I don’t know how you can think we could have a relationship after this.’
Robin pauses and says: ‘Relationship? I … I didn’t think we were going out?’
I’m so stunned by this it takes a moment to assemble my expression, and form a response.
I only manage:
‘… What?’
‘I thought we were “seeing each other”.’ Robin makes air quote marks. ‘I didn’t think we were exclusive … as in, forbidden from seeing other people? That whole scene is not my … scene.’
My blood feels like it’s caught fire. It’s one thing to do this to me, it’s another to blame me for it – to pretend this is a product of my unreasonable expectations.
‘Are you fucking serious?! You’re going to handle this by pretending our relationship didn’t exist? That’s like a CHILD’S level of lying. Will you put your hands over your eyes next, so I can’t see you?’
Robin pantomimes more exhaling, shaking his head in incredulity, rubbing at his hair as he thinks what to say next, a tic he uses on stage. God, the insolence of still having his gingery cock and balls on show.
‘I’ve never seen you like this before,’ he mutters.
My jaw, once again, drops. ‘Do I need to point out what I’ve never seen before, either? Are you for real?’
He puts his hands on his hips, Mr Reasonable But Aggrieved now, as if we’re discussing an inflated quote for lagging the loft.
‘What was it I’ve ever said or done that’s made you think I believed in monogamy? I’m pretty sure I said I didn’t?’
I splutter, momentarily stalled. It’s as if someone’s been caught with their hand in the till and their defence is nothing is as it seems and theft can’t exist because we’re living in a false consciousness created by the CIA. It’s not a comeback you’ve planned for. Fuck me, I’m raging.
‘This is it, this is your excuse? You thought we were both free to have sex with other people?’
‘Uh, yes I did, Georgina. The terms and conditions of our liaison were never discussed. I’m not sure how you’d expect me to know otherwise.’
‘Then why hide it from me by switching your phone off and doing it behind my back?’
‘It’s poor manners to shove it in your face, isn’t it? I didn’t expect you to put up with a running commentary of who else and when.’
‘OH HOW EXCEPTIONALLY FUCKING CONSIDERATE OF YOU!’
I have to get out of here, mentally process it, escape this toxic weirdness.
I throw the door open to the hallway. A thirty-something couple and sixty-something parents are passing outside, their attentions already focused in our direction due to the cacophony.
True to his self-described not-sensitive, not-bashful nature, my ex not-boyfriend stands staring back at them, full frontal in their faces.
The dad says, ‘Excuse me! Do you mind covering your private area? There are ladies present.’
‘I’m in my private area. This is my flat. That makes you Peeping Toms.’
‘Peeping Vom more like,’ says the son, aka Jet Lag Man, who’s suddenly my new hero.
‘Having your toilet part on show really is unnecessary,’ says Jet Lag Man’s dad.
‘My toilet part! You want to get less uptight about the human anatomy, mate,’ Robin says. ‘It’s a beautiful thing.’
‘I can assure you, not from here it’s not,’ says Jet Lag Man.
‘Give my best to Lou,’ I say to Robin, stepping in to the hallway. To the disturbed-looking group, I add helpfully: ‘That’s the woman I just caught him having sex with.’
‘Oh, he finally got you a key cut?’ says Jet Lag Man.
‘Yeah but apparently we were never in a relationship,’ I throw my hands up in ‘silly me’ way.
‘It’s never his rubbish in my bin either,’ says Jet Lag Man. ‘He’s full of shit. Much like my bin.’
I vigorously shake Jet Lag Man’s hand.
‘It’s been a pleasure.’
6
‘Am I going to have to say it? Oh you pair of …’ Clem shakes her head in dismay at Rav and Jo, who are both mute and awkward.
Rav tweaks at his expensively pre-frayed navy cuff and Jo has an expression like a sad farm animal in a cartoon.
‘What?’ I say. I know they all think I’m gutted-but-fronting, but actually, I’m oddly calm. Shiraz is helping. I’ve found my safe harbour in rough waters. It’s a scarlet leather booth in a pub called The Lescar off Hunter’s Bar.
It turns out that you can get your friends out for a drink at no notice of a weekend if two of them had got out of the cinema with a thirst, one of them was having a night in due to saving Weight Watchers points and blew it on a whole plank of M&S cheesy garlic bread anyway, and you whet their appetites with a lurid story of bondage infidelity.
I didn’t dare hope a spectacularly grotesque Friday night was going to end in my favourite place with my best people, but it does, and I give a silent prayer of thanks over the pork scratchings.
I’m single again and have no job or money and live in a rented house next door to a maggot farm with the region’s worst personality, but I have mates and a large red wine.
‘Go on, Rav, go ahead,’ Clem says and Rav coughs into his fist and glares.
‘What?’
‘Pussy! OK if neither of you are going to tell her, I will. Georgina—’
‘Oh God you KNEW he was seeing other people?!’ I cry.
The thought is a stab wound, not because Robin was flaunting it, but if they kept this secret from me, this grisly episode has damaged much more than it deserves to.
‘No of course we didn’t know, you moo!’ Clem says. ‘Why would we know and not tell you?’
‘Oh. I don’t know,’ I mumble.
‘Georgina,’ Clem portentously draws breath, ‘We all thought Robin was a massive, tremendous, glaringly obvious arsehole. What on EARTH have you been thinking?’
‘Oh?’ I say, dumbly. ‘You didn’t like him?’
Rav coughs again and Jo stares down into her cider.
‘“Didn’t like” doesn’t quite cover it. Actively abhorred is closer to the mark.’
‘Clem!’ Rav says. ‘Fuck’s sake, she’s just caught him in bed with someone else.’
‘Relevant to the abhorring.’
After a very tense few seconds of silence, I start laughing. They look shocked for a second and then start laughing too.
‘I thought you were going to burst into tears and slap me,’ Clem says, clutching her chest.
‘No, I only want to slap myself,’ I say.
Jo puts a hand on my arm. ‘Not that this isn’t awful for you. I’m so sorry for what’s happened.’
I pat back. ‘I’m well rid.’
‘Did he really claim you were in an open relationship?’ Clem says, her immaculate vermillion MAC lip curling in disgust. Clem dresses like a member of Pulp, only better: dyed red hair in flapper bob, head to toe vintage, pointed retro nails. She’s very pointy, in looks and nature.
‘He said he thought we were free to sleep with other people. Which begs the question why he didn’t mention doing it, ever.’
‘He was sneaking around like your bog-standard shitbag and now he’s gaslighting you.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Making you think you’re going mad, making you think it was your problem.’
‘It’s true we never said “What are the rules on sleeping with other people”. He had said he didn’t believe in monogamy as the only way to live, but you know … I didn’t think it directly applied. He’d met my friends, my family. God’s sake, how are you meant to be totally go with the flow, ultra modern, no pressure and find this basic stuff out at the same time?’
‘This is the gaslighting. You’re questioning yourself. It’s him who’s put the goalposts on wheels.’ Clem sucks on the straw in her gin and tonic, then grimaces. ‘He called you “the Waitress”. He never missed a chance to act like he was better than you.’
‘I thought he was being … I don’t know, light-hearted.’
Clem widens her eyes and Rav and Jo still can’t meet mine and I realise this is Robin’s legacy – me uncomfortably working out how I accommodated and rationalised a lot of crappy behaviour that wasn’t remotely invisible to anyone else. And forever hating Ben & Jerry’s.
‘And you knew the woman?’ Clem says.
‘Lou’s his PA. They’d had a thing before but I thought it was long over by the time I was around.’
Robin said he and Lou had slept together once, ‘in the day’, which I took to mean a long while ago rather than the timing, but who knows.
I was taken aback when he mentioned it, as I’d spent a whole evening in her company thinking theirs was a friendly working relationship and it hadn’t once crossed my mind. Not that I’m saying attraction is an exact science but Lou is my complete physical opposite: long wild brown curly hair, a nose stud, knobbly knees in laddered patterned tights and a pair of silver glitter-crusted clumpy shoes. I’d taken an instant shine to her.
It always causes some mental realignment when you discover someone has been where you have been.
‘She was cool about it, she’s really cool,’ Robin said, which I translated as: there were no consequences when I made it obvious it meant nothing.
Robin had paused.
‘That’s not a thing for you, is it? Who’s been with who?’
Yes it’s a thing for me like it’s a thing for pretty much everyone, that’s why there’s so many pop songs about it.
‘No! Just surprised that’s all. Wouldn’t have put you together.’
‘I dunno if you’d call it together. We ended up having a shower in an Ibis in Luton after a food fight, it seemed the next obvious step. Certainly not much other entertainment in Luton.’
I flinched. In this moment, I definitely wasn’t the cool girl who wanted to hear the details and I didn’t like the way I felt Robin was trying to portray me as uptight and conventional. Even then, I could tell he was getting a kick out of it, congratulating himself as an erotic buccaneer, compared to Georgina the square.
So when he added: ‘Would you rather I didn’t say, in future?’ I instantly replied: ‘No,’ and changed the subject.
I didn’t ask if he’d mind if situations were reversed: when I unpick why, it’s because it’d mean either he was a hypocrite or he was totally without jealousy, which might be great for him but sort of flat for me.
Why didn’t I tell Robin that his free love, free’n’easy approach wasn’t for me? I was scared of seeming like the parochial fiancée in Billy Liar, a woman stuck in the past who represented the opposite of everything exciting.
And I was scared my expectations were never going to be met. But I’ve learned it’s better to have unrealistic expectations than none at all.
We’re two drinks deep and having established I don’t mind if they slag him off, the Robin roast is now a marinated deep smoke over a pit of coals. By the end of the night he’ll be nothing but pulled brisket in buns.
I feel a peculiar mix of gratitude and shame that I don’t feel sad, or any urge to defend him. It should be as if my heart’s been torn out and spat on. I only feel baffled, humiliated and empty. The empty was there before Robin, and he was a distraction from it.
‘Stand-up comics are often terrible people,’ Rav is saying. ‘Think about the personality type who decides to stand alone on a stage and say funny things and risk no one laughing. It’s for the maladjusted. The sad clown cliché. I’d rather spend time at Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest than backstage at the Comedy Store.’
‘You might’ve told me this before I dated one,’ I say.
‘I was going to, but like a scrubber you disappeared off into the night with him before I could give you my professional opinion. Afterwards I judged it unwanted.’
It was actually Rav’s fault that I’d met Robin in the first place. Rav had got us tickets for an open mike night. Robin was the last act, and by far the best. He did an excerpt of his show, I’m Not Being Funny But. It was much more of a storytelling style than those who’d leaned on the mike stand and chucked out one-liners, which got tiring after a while.
Afterwards we found ourselves in a group in a late-night hotel bar with him and two of the other acts, a turquoise-haired plus-size woman dressed as a fighter plane pin-up, and a depressive man from Solihull who wore a pork-pie hat. I had finally felt part of a Sheffield creative quarter.
Robin was tall, with a mop of telephone cord-like hair and small, shrewd blue eyes that contrasted with his red tartan shirt. He’d paced the stage rubbing his head, radiating a nervy energy. I could still smell the sweat from performance on him.
I had realised I was excited to meet him. He felt like something different from the usual men I encountered. Going places. Things to say. Knew what he was doing. I decided to wait for my moment to get his attention.
Robin held his mobile horizontal at chin level – a sign of a right tit I should have recognised, if ever there was one – and read a review aloud to his agent. They’d started the tour in London two nights previous, and apparently a verdict had just dropped.
‘McNee has an acute ear for the casual linguistic stupidities that infect daily life. He tries on a Stewart Lee-ish irascible rancour towards celebrities, his professional competitors, and even his audience, but it gradually slips over the line from knowingly self-parodic to plain self-indulgent … he becomes the very blowhard he seeks to send up. His ego is a drunk driver, but if his better instincts take control of the wheel, he could be something quite dazzling. You tell me, Al, is that praise or not?’
Pause.
‘Yes I know, I’m asking you which of those two ways you take it.’
Pause.
‘… Fair enough. I want to fold this cutting up and insert it into “Lee Hill” using a litter-picking claw.’
Pause.
‘No I know Chortle is a website and there isn’t a hard copy, you might be missing the point.’
He hung up. Everyone was quiet. I wasn’t nervous, mainly due to two powerful drinks that tasted like evil jam, with fat Morello cherries on sticks in them.
‘A review with the words superb, dazzling, and “acute ear”. I’d take it,’ I say.
Robin looked at me.
‘What about my ego being a pissed driver?’
I shrugged.
‘You can’t do it without ego. There’s no way Richard Pryor or … Lenny Bruce didn’t have ego. It’s right up there with demons. Ego and demons. It’s to making art what eggs and bacon are to making breakfast.’
Robin stared.
‘Wow. Yes. And you are?’
Introductions were made, champagne was ordered on someone’s tab and the night was properly underway.
‘You’re a writer?’ Robin said, with one arm slung round the velvet banquette, in a way that meant it was sort of slung round me.
‘Hah! No. Who told you that?’
‘Your advice to me sounded like one writer to another …?’
I glowed. This was one of the best things I’d ever heard.
‘… That said, you’re a bit too healthy for it. You don’t have the black coffee and fags face. You look like you leave the house and get fresh air.’
I knew I was being hit upon, but my blood alcohol level and the bass-line in a Prince song were in harmony, and I was happy to be flattered.
‘I’m a waitress.’
‘Ah! That’s cute.’ (There it was, that tone. Clem was right.)
I’d nearly said: I’d like to be a writer but I knew the next question would be, what have you written? and the answer is a big old nothing, bar a diary that I was once quite proud of, so I didn’t.
‘I have a research question, you can help me with my act,’ Robin said. ‘What’s it like being beautiful?’
Over his shoulder, I could see Rav making a ‘gun to temple and firing’ gesture.
Maybe in other circumstances I’d have groaned, but it felt like Robin was being refreshing and surprising. And you know, it’s never the worst thing to hear.
‘I’m not beautiful.’
I resisted the urge to fuss at my hair, but held my stomach in.
‘You clearly are.’
‘Well, thank you.’
‘So what it’s like being beautiful, is thinking you’re not beautiful?’
I laughed. ‘Erm. If you insist.’
‘That’s a let-down. I’d thought it’d be like being a Disney heroine where you can make the pots and pans clean themselves and the broom dance.’
Rav leaned over minutes later and whispered: ‘I bet you can make his broom dance, if you follow.’
I laughed and realised I was interested in someone for the first time in ages.
I did something that night I never do: as Robin reappeared and slid back in next to me, refilling my glass: I thought, I’m having you. I’m taking you home.
After whispered I like you / I like you toos and kissing by the taxi rank we ended up having very mediocre intercourse in a room at The Mercure, as Robin couldn’t even be bothered to travel back to his flat. My big first-night-sex adventure ended with me bouncing around on top of a very drunk, semi-comatose comedian who kept groaning: ‘Talk dirty to me, Georgina the waitress, talk dirty! Be filthy and nasty!’
Nasty?
I shouted: ‘Shag me, you curly-haired blowhard!’
Rav is still musing Robin’s shortcomings.
‘You know, I didn’t spend enough time around Robin to diagnose the Dark Triad, but I wouldn’t be surprised.’
‘That sounds like a hip-hop group.’
‘Narcissism, manipulation, lack of empathy,’ Rav says, counting them off on his fingers, then grabbing for the open bag of Walkers. ‘The people who can reel you in and spit you out, without a second’s guilt.’
Rav is a counsellor. You’d never peg the skinny Asian lad with the Morrissey quiff and the discreetly peacocky clothing as such. He is coolly analytical and unsentimental and probably the ideal person to have around if you get yourself involved with a technicolour fountain of dysfunction like Robin. Though there’s now been enough alcohol-fuelled deconstruction I think we might’ve turned your run-of-the-mill selfish arse into a Shakespearean villain.
Jo chews the inside of her lip.
‘I thought Robin was very idio … idio …’
‘Idiotic?’ Clem says.
‘No … like, idi …’
‘Idi Amin?’ Rav says.
‘No, a word for individual that isn’t individual!’
‘Idiosyncratic?’ I say.
‘Yes! I didn’t like how rude he was to you though.’
I frown. ‘I honestly thought it was teasing.’
I prize my capacity to take a joke. It’s painful to think my friends were cringing for me, and that I don’t know where the line should be.
Clem purses her mouth.
‘And whenever you gave an opinion about anything, Robin was straight in there with “maybe the people who disagree have a point” or “maybe you were too touchy”. I spotted it right away as a psycho ex used to do it to me. Constant undermining. They don’t want you to trust yourself on anything.’
Oh, God. She’s right. At first I was bowled over by Robin’s iconoclastic take on my life – yet the solution, now I think about it, was always that I should fix my attitude and stop being such a princess. Wow, I’ve chosen a smart cookie and a challenge here, I congratulated myself, look at how he’ll just come right out and say it. Not: why is this bloke never on my side?
I gave Robin so much leeway because I thought he was ‘Other’ – an emissary from a cleverer, more rarefied and liberal world than that of Georgina the Waitress. Anything I disliked was down to having not caught up with the latest trend yet, not being an artist with an artist’s temperament. I realise, as per the Lou conversation, he was always subtly reinforcing the idea I was two steps behind.
‘He’s this loaded posh boy and his idea of showing you a good time was you trekking out to the flat his parents bought him to get high and listen to his drivel,’ Clem says. ‘Did he ever take you anywhere?’
Ah. No. Again, I told myself that was a sign of how gloriously unmaterialistic he was – not short of funds but uninterested in spendy dinners, showing off, roostering round town, trying to bedazzle me with his wealth. He wanted to talk about cerebral things. (Himself and his work.)
I’m sucking down wine fast and writing myself an internal memo about how an athletic ability to find the positive – the sort that’s drilled into girls especially: be grateful, smile! – isn’t always a good thing. Sometimes you should ask yourself why you’re having to.
And I’m reflecting on other signals I successfully blocked out. The first time I properly introduced Robin to the gang was Clem’s thirtieth. I’d thought Clem spent the whole night on the other side of the room to circulate, that Rav got lordly drunk due to the units in a pitcher of Dark and Stormy and that Jo was quiet due to pre-menstrual issues. Meanwhile, a visibly bored Robin said he ‘wasn’t good in crowds’.
I grimace into my glass:
‘I hope you don’t think I dated a tosser because he’d been on television once or twice.’
‘Oh, no,’ Rav says, ‘We think you dated a tosser as you thought he was something out of the ordinary, am I right? Which, y’know. He was …’
Jo adds: ‘It’s not as if the rest of us are doing any better.’
I wasn’t going to say it but it’s not usually me who brings a cuckoo into the nest. My few boyfriends in my twenties have been albeit-unthrilling, unsuited-to-me, but nice enough guys.
Meanwhile Rav’s carousel of internet dates end up being hard to distinguish from his therapy list – ‘Only I can’t charge for my time’ – Jo is long-term hung up on the charismatic neighbourhood rotter, Shagger Phil, and Clem believes romantic love is a concept designed to subdue and enslave humanity. She’s rarely seeing anyone long enough for us to meet him.
Rav goes to give Clem a hand at the bar for round three and Jo, from under her blunt, glossy brown fringe – her current dip-dyed style is two thirds cappuccino shade vs one third cappuccino foam (she’s a hairdresser) – says: ‘You’re coping very well. I hope we’ve not been too full on.’
‘Oh, thanks. Not at all. I’m appalled by myself to be honest. I’m wondering if he’d not done this, how long I’d have gone on telling myself we made a good couple. Only we were never a couple.’
The excitement of the night and the adrenaline of unmasking Robin’s audacious act is fading, and I’m left with a hollowed-out feeling inside.
‘You were! A couple, I mean.’
‘We weren’t, Jo. I glommed on to someone I thought was cool.’ I rub my temples and resist the urge to bang my head on the table. ‘I didn’t feel feelings, that’s the worrying part. I’m wondering if I’ll ever actually fall in love with anyone now. Perhaps this is it. Least worst options and growing the fuck up.’
I’ve entered the maudlin stage of red wine soakedness.
‘You will find someone! You could have your pick, you really could.’
I hesitate, worrying at the beer mat in front of me. You can say more to someone you’ve known for twenty years, who knows the bones of you. Who knows where you came from.
‘I don’t know if there’s anyone I want to pick. I’ve never fallen for anyone …’ I plough on, unable to meet her eye, reckless in drink: ‘Well, maybe once. When very young and stupid. But turns out it didn’t mean anything.’
‘… Richard Hardy?’ Jo whispers, quizzical, but respectful. Oh God. The danger of someone having known me this long.
As soon as I’ve started this conversation, I realise I don’t want to have it, not now, not ever. The name being spoken has caused my insides to seize up. I make an indistinct ‘mmmm’ noise.
‘I see his photos sometimes. Is it Toronto where he lives now?’
‘Mmmm. I think he moved to Canada, yeah,’ I say, and wish my glass wasn’t empty, so I had a way of keeping my mouth busy.
Jo pats my arm. I can feel her working out what to say and I don’t know how to stop her.
‘I didn’t know that you—’ she starts, and I cut her off.
‘Where has Rav got to? Is he trampling the grapes for this wine?’
She looks round, and I know she senses there’s something amiss, but that this moment will have passed before she’s even started to wonder what it might be.
7
These first few minutes of consciousness with a hangover are the worst, like waking up in a field after being thrown from a car crash, only you were the car crash.
The end of the night plays in my head: licking salt, biting lemons, throwing back tequilas that tasted like nail varnish remover, laughing like hyenas in the taxi. Urrrrrggggh. Shots. Nothing about the experience can legitimately be called pleasurable and the bell tolls heavily the morning after.
Reality reassembles in a series of bare-skin-filled flashes: Lou topless and strung up, Robin presenting his junk in front of passers-by. It has the quality of a very strange dream, and for a second I think it was one, until my eyes settle on a tattered I’m Not Being Funny But tour poster on my floor with NOB BAG written on Robin’s forehead in lipstick.
Oh God, did I make much noise? Karen will go spare. She works a week of night shifts alternating with a week of day shifts at a biscuit factory and I regularly forget which is which. When I moved in I said: ‘Do we really eat so many biscuits that we need biscuits to be baked at night?’ and she said ‘Is that a joke or are you really that stupid?’ which set the tone for our co-habitation.
I poke a lizardy tongue out of a dry mouth, try stretching limbs, my hinges creak. I’ll have a fat Coke, two Nurofen Lemon Meltlets and try for another two hours, I think.
What time is it? I tip my phone towards me to check and see a text message from an unknown number. I prop myself on my elbow – seeing myself in the glass chest of drawers opposite, hair like the late Rick Parfitt on a Quo comeback tour, why does drunk-sleep always give you root lift at the crown? – and swipe to unlock.
Hi Georgina, this is Devlin, Mark gave me your number, said you could give us a hand at the wake this avvo. Can you be here around three? LMK if that works, we’re pretty desperate!
Fuuuuuuuuc … I’ve got Mark’s client’s job! The one thing Esther doesn’t want me to fuck up! Must cancel must cancel CAN’T CANCEL. I need to not enrage my sister, not to mention the money – there’s a second text offering a pretty healthy chunk of cash in hand (plus ‘any tips you can cadge’) that’ll tide me over until next month at least.
It’s half eleven. I’m summoned for three. Much as I could do with another hour, better get a move on – oversleeping would be fatal.
I have a hot shower, spend ages on make-up that’s supposed to disguise my condition. I know this is temporary, with pink eyeballs and grey skin. In a steamy mirror, you convince yourself you’ve done a magical Lazarus by piling on the cosmetics, then as the day wears on, catch your exhausted reflection and see Baby Jane.
I can’t face solids yet. I drain a strong black coffee, gritty with white sugar, while Jammy the tortoise gives me a shrewd look that says – rough as arseholes again, are we? My my.
Oh, good. Karen’s left one of her love notes on the kitchen table.
Georgina.
It seems we have a TAMPON GOBLIN. This mythical creature sneaks around stealing sanitary items. I had a box of Super Plus, with approx. three left, now none. Had to use your Lil-Lets. If I wanted Lil-Lets I would buy Lil-Lets. Plus I have a heavy flow and they have nothing like the absorbency. Plz replace ASAP.
Karen
PS adding this at 6 a.m. as leaving for work: after crashing around your bedroom (alone? I assume) for an HOUR at 2 A.M. you think you can play your Taylor Swift songs on headphones and I won’t hear you SINGING ALONG. THE DISRESPECT IS STAGGERING.
Given I can’t remember getting home, this will mean buying apology cava, as well as more Tampax.
I’m absolutely sure I didn’t use hers, Karen has a faulty memory and a relish for persecution, just one of the many reasons it’s such a privilege to share with her.
She also has no sense of humour so drawing Dobby the House Elf and captioning him ‘Blobby’ is a definite no.
Mark’s client is a robust, friendly-but-gruff sounding man called Devlin with an Irish brogue, who has that male thing of talking on the telephone in the way you give someone directions when leaning down to a car window: staccato bursts of necessary information, delivered at volume.
He calls me straight back after I text to say that 3 p.m. will be fine, as he wants to explain a) it’s a wake and the wake is for a friend of his, and b) the reason he needs bar staff urgently is because The Wicker on Ecclesall Road isn’t yet open after a refit – am I OK with being the only one on for most of the evening? I am, grand, grand, OK then see you at three. Click.
The Wicker, hmm. I hope they had a few quid to spend as that wasn’t a small task.
The Wicker was always attractive from the outside: its Victorian exterior is covered in varying shades of intense green lacquered subway tiles, the door is a giant solid gloss-painted black slab. If you didn’t know the city, you could be easily fooled into thinking it was going to be all craft ale and cheese boards with pickles in miniature Kilner jars inside. Instead it used to be gloomy and musty and the drinks were always cloudy. It’s one of the places you wouldn’t contemplate, a place very much for regulars only, regulars who must be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome to keep going back.
‘Hello?’ I rap my knuckles on the imposing door, which lies ajar. ‘Hello?’
I tentatively push it open, step inside. You know when you step out of the plane door abroad and reflexively flinch for the British cold air to hit you, and instead it’s this hairdryer warmth?
Like that, but with beauty.
There’s a sweeping curve of mahogany bar that’s obviously original, lovingly nursed back to rude health from its knackered one-hundred-years-of-being-leaned-on patina; panels of etched vintage mirrors behind, bottles of spirits stacked against it. Classy ones which promise good drinks, too: a dozen different gins, Aperol, proper whiskies. I’m a sucker for this sort of shabby chic mixture of old and new. It’s all the glamour, as far as I’m concerned.
They’ve gutted the place, without tearing its heart out. Booths in the windows are now oxblood leather, instead of that textured, itchy fabric they make train seat covers from. The lights are low-hanging white china pendants.
The floor, which I recall as having a thick wodge of much-trampled sticky carpet covering it before, is varnished mole-dark parquet. The expensively atmospheric walls are the colour of sky at dusk, which if I recall Esther’s endless interior project vacillations correctly, is Farrow & Ball’s Hague Blue.
I smell meaty food cooking. Trestle tables line the walls, holding platters of triangles of soft white bread sweating under clingfilm, and starbursts of crudités are arrayed around ramekins of dips.
‘Hello! You must be Georgina?’
I turn as a man dumps down a sizeable floral display on the floor, words picked out in orange gerberas and lollipop-headed white chrysanthemums, and bolts across the room to shake my hand.
‘Devlin.’
He’s nothing like I imagined him when we were on the phone. I thought from the singsong, deep voice he’d be a Hagrid-like beast. Instead he’s a livewire, five-foot-something with inky hair, deep grooves in his face and a trendy jacket. He’s forty-ish and good-looking, in a lived-in way.
‘You’ve scooped us right out of the shit here, grand of you to step in.’
‘No problem … cor, it looks great in here.’
‘Ah, you think?’ Devlin looks gratified. ‘Been a back-breaker this one but I’m pleased with it. Did you know it before?’
‘Er … I knew it but I wasn’t a customer.’
‘Yes, a bit of a drinkers’ pub, as they say? The previous owners had let things get very bleak. Could see it was a diamond in the rough though.’
‘So much so! Wow.’
It’s now lovely enough it makes me feel happier just being here.
‘We’re still a week off opening so we’ve not got the tills up and running, so it’s a free bar. Still, less for you to do.’
I smile and nod even though I am experienced enough at bar keeping to know free bars are an absolute bloodbath, and free bars at wakes, doubly so. Once you remove the need to pay, people are animals. As Mark said, the money is great, and it’s only now I start to figure why this might be. This is a wild lock in with no clear end.
It’s also the first time I’d been near a funeral since my dad’s, twelve years ago.
When I was fifteen or so, my mum pinned the order of service for her cousin Janet, a physiotherapist in Swansea, to the corkboard in the kitchen. It said A Celebration of The Life Of and inside there were photos of Janet in a clown’s outfit at a party, in a kayak, raising a watermelon margarita to a camera lens next to her girlfriend. The dress code was ‘be a rainbow’. Mum sent flowers.
I recall my dad huffing and saying: ‘I don’t like this “celebrating” and holiday snaps and jollification of mortality. Let death be death. It’s sad. It doesn’t need this modernisation where we’re in Hawaiian shirts, trilling KUMBAYA MY LORD, KUMBAYA and cheering them on their way.’
‘Janet chose her own funeral,’ Mum said.
‘Then Janet is being selfish – it wasn’t for her, was it? It’s the very definition of an event where you should only think of other people’s feelings.’
Mum gasped and Dad muttered about going to the shops if anyone wanted anything and left the room.
It was only years later I realised Mum probably didn’t go the funeral because she knew Dad would react like this. Was he really bothered about happy-clappy send-offs? Or was it a way of providing them both with an excuse for their non-attendance, so they didn’t have to spend a weekend in Wales with each other for company? The argument wasn’t about what it was about. Maybe none of their arguments were about what they were about.
It didn’t make Dad’s funeral three years later any easier, knowing that he wouldn’t have approved of gaiety, that he wasn’t religious and said it was ‘the plunge into eternal TV test card nothingness.’ In a strange irony, he hadn’t thought of our feelings.
For his send-off, we had the standard package of inexpensive coffin, MDF with veneer finish, a service at a church that Dad never visited but Mum wanted as it was posher than a crematorium, then a wake in the adjoining hall where young staff in white shirts and dark trousers served hot drinks from catering-sized canisters and vinegary warm wine from boxes.
I can taste the dislocated, bad-dream-like nauseous quality of it as if it happened yesterday. The feeling the universe had taken a sudden mad swerve, a left turn into some grotesque alt-verse that it should be possible to clamber back out of. Mum and Esther had identified the body; I was in my first year at university. An ordinary morning, when Mum heard him crash to the kitchen floor, rushed down and found him prone, lying in a lake of cafetière coffee.
I wanted to walk up to one of the poker-faced, white-gloved men from the undertakers, schooled not to make eye contact, and grab them by the grey lapels. Say: ‘There’s been a terrible mistake. That’s my dad in that coffin. Death happens to other people, I get that, but not to my actual dad, and definitely not yet. I need to discuss something with him urgently, so get him out of there.’
The word loss had a new meaning, or its meaning became clear: a person who loved me, in a completely unique and irreplaceable way, had vanished and took with him our relationship. And it wasn’t only Dad that disappeared, but his perspective, his encouragement, his approval, his opinion of me. There was no one else who could be my dad and I still badly needed one. I was never going to see him again? Ever?
We hadn’t said goodbye.
I return to these memories reluctantly. Then I push them away again. It’s like forcing too many things into a cupboard and using the door to keep them jammed in. Knowing it’s a short-term fix, and that the next time you open it – instant cascade.
Another clue that this wake might be more ‘Cousin Janet’ than ‘my dad’ are the pictures hung like bunting, across the bar. A lantern-jawed, strawberry-blond man in his thirties, larking it up: walking the Peaks, or dressed as a Roman centurion, the yellowy quality of 1990s pub trips, documented when photographs weren’t taken on phones and every man seemed to be in lumberjack shirt and light blue jeans. A sagging banner hangs above them, spelling out: RIP DANNY.
Oh, no. It’s a young person. The out-of-the-way, non-fashionable venue had made me assume otherwise. It stings. Someone who’d lived a long life, was in a care home and whose faculties had possibly gone to mush is one thing. I look at the images a second time, feel my throat tighten. However late this ends and thinly it spins my wages out, I won’t complain.
‘Should I start unboxing the glasses?’
I gesture at the stacks of Paris goblets and a spare wallpaper pasting table, with paper cloth.
‘Yeah that’d be great. You can pour out plenty of the red and white too because they’ll get drunk, of that I can be sure.’ He checks his watch. ‘About half an hour to lift off, they’re still chatting outside the church, it only just finished. Catholics, you know.’ He does a talking hand puppet mime. ‘They like a long ceremony.’
My gaze focuses again on the flowers and I see the words for the first time.
‘… IRN BRU?’ I ask.
Devlin turns to them, turns back. ‘Aha yeah, Dan loved Irn Bru. When we were brainstorming his favourite things it was Irn Bru, poker, booze and boobs and I didn’t think Co-op Funeral Service would agree to the others.’
I laugh, then check myself. ‘Sorry for your loss,’ I say, knowing from direct experience how inadequate those words are.
‘Ah, thanks Georgina, thanks,’ Devlin says, and I notice the charm of working for someone who remembers your name and uses it. It says: I know you are not merely my lackey and have a lively existence outside of this transaction.
‘No age, no age at all, but Danny was never going to make old bones.’
‘Oh …’ I say. ‘I am sorry.’
He shakes his head. ‘My best mate from my first job in a warehouse. Absolutely lovely guy, do anything for you, you know. But a thirsty one. Always on the hoy.’
I sense Devlin’s not easily offended and risk asking:
‘Was it … alcoholism he died from?’
‘Yeah. Well, yes and no. Got so pished he fell down some stairs, brained himself, massive bleed. Doctors said there was no bringing him back round. Not bringing him back round as Dan, anyway.’
‘Oh, God.’
‘Thirty-three, no age.’
‘Thirty-three!’ I put a hand to my face. ‘Awful. I’m so sorry. Devlin.’
‘My sister-in-law died a year ago at the same age so it’s been a grimy old time.’
I have no variant on gasping and mumbling sorry left available to me but we’re interrupted by a man with his Wranglers falling down his arse – in the old school, can’t be bothered to belt them properly way, not as a ‘look’ – holding a speaker.
I’m feeling less awkward now about my black t-shirt and jeans. I didn’t know if denim was too disrespectful a textile.
‘Where do you want this?’
‘Ah let’s see … by that door is fine.’
‘There’s going to be music?’ I say to Devlin.
‘Oh yeah. Can’t have a tear up without tunes,’ he says. On noticing my faintly puzzled expression he adds: ‘I should’ve said really, I mean, this is more of a party than a wake. Danny left strict instructions in the event of a sudden departure and we’re following them to the letter.’
Devlin pauses.
‘I mean, he was probably pissed when he wrote them, but still.’
8
I’m hugely enjoying something I didn’t expect to enjoy whatsoever, so the sense of enjoyment is potent – two and half times the strength of a scheduled pleasure. And I’m being paid.
In my defence, everyone here seems to be having fun. The music is blaring, the conversation is near-deafening but always good spirited, and everyone I encounter is polite, no matter how trolleyed.
Dan’s wake would surely have made Cousin Janet’s do look like a Quaker meeting, and I wish I’d met him, although I might’ve felt conflicted serving him drinks.
Devlin gave a short speech, during which tears rolled down his cheeks, about how much Dan hated grim-faced memorials.
‘He has absolved you from the guilt of still being here without him, and asks you celebrate the fact instead. Which was Dan in a nutshell. To Dan,’ he toasted.
‘To Dan,’ everyone said, as arms went up, and I felt my eyes well as I raised my glass and wiped my face with my apron.
Devlin said to me in the first hour: ‘Have one on the go for yourself throughout, won’t you? As long as you can see straight, it’s only fair and decent. Help yourself to the buffet too.’
I pour myself a champagne and barely get a chance to sniff it, but it’s that satisfying-to-the-soul sort of busy where the clock leaps forward rather than crawls and I get a glow from everyone being properly looked after, as if it’s my personal largesse I’m dispensing.
Devlin’s wife, Mo – ‘You’ll know her if you see her. She’s short, bleached blonde and will be giving me shit’ – keeps me stocked up with fruit and ice and otherwise I run the show single-handed.
I remember something I’d forgotten in the trenches of That’s Amore! – I’m a good worker. Having served a hundred of them in two hours, I can now draw you a shamrock in a Guinness foam with a flick of the wrist under the tap, while pushing an optic with the other.
As the crowd thins out, the middle of the space turns into a dancefloor.
I find a crate of fizz that’s been lost in the melee and mention it to a flushed and expansive Devlin.
‘Call me Dev! I am only ever Devlin to my mother and the police. Thanks for letting me know.’
He taps a flute with a fork.
‘If I can have your attention! Our wonderful barmaid has found more of the Moët. I always say, get the decent stuff out once the riff-raff have gone home. Let’s all have another glass and toast dear Dan.’
A roar.
‘And while we’re at it, a round of applause for Georgina and her tireless efforts tonight.’
Devlin points at me, everyone claps and whistles and I blush and think: well, at least Esther’s going to have no cause to mither that I’ve made Mark look bad.
As the night wears on, I’m exhilarated, I feel I’m half Gaelic now, in a superficial and appropriative way – like Rose in that bit in Titanic where she can somehow blend seamlessly into the revelry below decks by hitching up her skirts and dancing a jig to a tin whistle.
As I assemble a cluster of goblets and start doling out the second wave of champagne, I become aware of a man who’s walked in to the party, with a portly, sandy-coloured dog in tow.
He’s tall and dark in a navy jacket with its collar turned up. He has curling, jet black hair, just long enough to scrape behind his ear. I realise what’s drawn my gaze is that he’s not greeting anyone or joining in, but doing a studied, sulky performance of ‘brooding’, a modern disco’s answer to Mr Darcy at a ball.
These rowdy, twenty-first century commoners are swaying to Tina Turner’s ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’ while he stares into the middle distance.
I get a funny feeling, watching him watch the room through the throng of people who keep blocking my view: should he even be here? Usually if you walk in alone you’re trying to get someone’s attention to announce your arrival? And why turn up this late to a wake anyway? Is he the wake version of a wedding crasher? But why would you make yourself conspicuous by bringing a dog? No. He must belong. I wonder what his story is, if he was close to Dan and can’t quite stomach the disrespectful raucousness.
His eyes move toward me and I quickly busy myself.
Ooh, Blondie’s ‘Atomic’. I dance a little while I tidy the bar.
‘Excuse me, blondie?’
I turn and laugh. Devlin beckons me over at the side of the bar and offers me a wad of notes.
‘You’ve been absolutely solid tonight, can’t thank you enough.’
I thank him and say honestly it’s been my pleasure and then flinch at the inappropriate phrasing when we’re marking a hideously premature death.
‘Listen. I’ve been to-ing and fro-ing over who to hire to run the bar full time because I hate interviews and CVs and that bollocks, I’d far rather meet someone and work with them. Get a sense of what they’re about. But holding auditions didn’t seem fair. How about if this was one, in retrospect? Would you be interested?’
‘Yes!’ I say. Then, with less windy desperation, more determination: ‘I’d be very very interested, thank you.’
‘Great. I’ve got to sign it off with my brother but it shouldn’t be a problem.’
As hope surges, I remind myself that job offers made verbally when three sheets to the wind are not binding.
Devlin turns back to me and I notice Lonely Glowering Man is now stood at his elbow, trying to get Devlin’s attention. He’s quite the knock-out, now I can see him fully: dark sweeps of eyebrow, sulky mouth, lightly stubbled movie star jawline, the works.
Hang on. I freeze. I realise I know this face. The terrain is altered, and it’s a long time since I’ve traced its lines, but it’s not as I’d thought, completely unfamiliar. Far from it.
The split second of recognition is a punch to the heart.
My breath stops in my throat as his gaze meets mine.
Blondie’s vocals soar as she sings about beautiful hair.
Devlin says: ‘Meet my brother, Lucas.’
Ücretsiz ön izlemeyi tamamladınız.
