Kitabı oku: «The Wish List», sayfa 3
I pushed it open to find a salmon-pink room. Salmon-pink walls, salmon-pink curtains, salmon-pink sofa and armchair. On the sofa were four cushions – two shaped like red hearts and one which had the letters ‘LO’ on it beside another that said ‘VE’. Grim.
Decorating a wooden dresser behind this sofa were several statues of naked women. My eyes slid along them. Nineteen in total, with rounded bottoms and pert breasts. Wooden statues, bronze statues, statues carved from stone, even a purple wax statue, although that one had started melting and was headless. On the opposite wall was a mural of clouds and classical figures in togas. It was as if I’d stumbled through the back of a wardrobe, from the clinical starkness of Harley Street into a deranged computer game.
‘Welcome, Florence,’ said Gwendolyn, pushing herself up from the armchair. She was a large woman wearing purple dungarees that fastened with buttons shaped like daisies. Silver earrings dangled from her ears and she had the sort of cropped haircut you get when you join the army. The tips of her eyelashes were coated with blue mascara and the look was completed with a pair of green Crocs.
She pointed at a woman in the mural, a brunette whose toga had slipped off one bosom but not the other. ‘That’s Aphrodite, the goddess of sexual pleasure. Are you familiar with her?’
‘No, I don’t know her, er, work.’
‘Ah, never mind.’ We shook hands, a row of bangles dancing up and down Gwendolyn’s forearm, and she gestured at the sofa. ‘Please have a seat.’
She reached for a pad of paper and a pen from a coffee table while I leant back against the cushions and tried to relax. All the pink made me feel like I was sitting in someone’s intestines.
‘And how are we today?’ Gwendolyn asked, glancing up from her pad with a smile.
‘All right.’
‘Not nervous?’
‘No,’ I fibbed. This was mad. This room was mad. This woman was mad. Patricia was mad. I pretended to scratch my wrist so I could push up the cuff of my jumper and look at my watch: fifty-eight minutes to go.
‘I’m going to ask a few preliminary questions before we get stuck into the real work,’ said Gwendolyn, raising her chin and cackling before dropping it and becoming serious again. ‘Can you tell me why you’re here?’
‘Because I have a socially ambitious stepmother who thought it would be helpful, so I said I’d try this out so long as she never interrogated me about my love life again,’ I replied. I might as well be honest.
Gwendolyn cackled again and scribbled a note. ‘And can you tell me about your relationship history?’
‘Not much to tell. There was someone briefly at university ten years ago. Very briefly. But that’s pretty much it.’
‘Nobody else?’ said Gwendolyn, her forehead rippling with concern.
I picked at a scrap of cuticle on my thumb then met her gaze. ‘A few one-night things. But nothing more than that. I’d like to fall in love,’ I said, trying to sound casual, as if I’d just said I’d like a cup of tea. ‘Course I would. But the right person hasn’t come along.’
‘Mmm,’ murmured Gwendolyn, looking from me to her pad. She shifted in her armchair and crossed her right ankle over her left knee so a Croc dangled from her foot. She looked up and squinted, as if she was trying to see inside me, then back at the list. ‘Mmm, yes, what I think we need to do is clear your love blocks out. I can sense them. Your subconscious is very powerful. You’re stuck. Hurting. Lonely. Do you want to stay lonely, Florence?’
But before I had a chance to reply and say I wasn’t lonely and, actually, I quite liked going to bed at whatever time I wanted, Gwendolyn ordered me to lie back on the sofa and close my eyes.
‘Across the whole thing?’
‘Yes, yes, stick your legs over the end. That’s it. Put a cushion under your head. There we go.’
Resting my head on a heart-shaped cushion, I noticed a cherub painted on the ceiling. I closed my eyes to banish it, wondering how many minutes were left now.
‘I’ll light a candle to dispel the forces of darkness and then we’ll get going,’ she said. ‘Eyes closed.’
I shut them as she started asking questions in a velvety voice. ‘What grievances are you hanging on to, Florence? What can you let go?’
I thought about replying ‘trapped wind’ but suspected Gwendolyn wouldn’t find this funny. Then I smelt herbs so opened one eye again; she was circling her hands around my face without touching it, as if my head was a crystal ball.
‘What’s that smell?’
‘It’s sage and frankincense oil for emotional healing. But forget the herbs. Close your eyes and think, who are you holding on to in your heart? Can you let them go?’
The questions continued while Gwendolyn wafted her oily fingers above my face.
‘Set an intention for your healing. Ask yourself: what do I need right now to open my heart to the love I deserve?’
I wondered what to have for supper when I got home. I was starving. Soup? The thought of ending a day with soup was depressing.
‘We need to break down the wall around your heart,’ she went on. ‘Imagine a bulldozer smashing that wall, Florence, opening the path to true intimacy.’
A baked potato? No, it would take too long and I hated it when they weren’t cooked in the middle.
‘Now open your eyes and sit up, and we can make a start,’ said Gwendolyn. ‘I’ve cleared those blocks and you should be feeling clearer and calmer. Less defensive.’
I opened my eyes feeling exactly as I had nine minutes earlier.
Wiping her hands with a tissue, Gwendolyn explained that she wanted me to write a list.
‘A list? Like a shopping list?’
Gwendolyn nodded, the silver teardrops swinging in her earlobes. ‘Exactly, my precious. Like a shopping list, except for what you want from a man, not Asda. Ha ha!’ Her mouth opened wide at her own joke before she was serious again. ‘What do you want in a man, Florence?’
‘Er…’
‘Because you need to ask the universe for it,’ she said solemnly. ‘These things don’t just fall into our laps. You need to manifest your desires and attract the right vibrations into your life, summon them to you.’ Gwendolyn stretched her arms in front of her and pulled them back as if playing a tug of war with these vibrations.
‘OK,’ I replied. I was going to play along with this mad hippie. Play along for the session then leave and tell Patricia that she was never, ever to interfere with my love life again.
Gwendolyn tore a piece of paper from her pad and handed it to me. ‘Use a book to lean on.’
I reached underneath the glass table for the nearest book, which had a silhouette of a cat on the front. The Power of the Pussy: How To Tame Your Man, said the title. I covered it quickly with my piece of paper. The power of the pussy indeed. Marmalade would be horrified.
‘Help yourself to a pen,’ went on Gwendolyn, ‘and I want you to write down the characteristics that are important to you so the universe can recognize them and deliver what you’re looking for.’
‘How many characteristics does the universe need?’
‘As many as you like, poppet,’ she replied, flourishing a hand in the air like a flamenco dancer. ‘But the more specific the better. Don’t just say “handsome”. The universe needs clear instructions. Write down “has all his own hair”. Don’t say “athletic”. Say “goes to the gym once or twice a week”. Remember, it’s your list. Your wish list for the universe to answer.’
I wished she’d stop talking about the universe. I went quiet and blinked at my piece of paper. What to write? I couldn’t possibly take this seriously, but on the other hand, I had to write something to convince this nutter that I’d at least thought about it.
After twenty minutes of sighing, chewing the biro, nearly swallowing the little blue stopper at the end of the biro, laughing to myself, closing my eyes and shaking my head before sighing again, I’d come up with a few suggestions. I totted them up and felt uneasy. That was fifteen. I needed one more to make it even. I gnawed the end of the biro once more and thought of a final addition.
THE LIST
– LIKES CATS.
– INTERESTING JOB. NOT GOLF-PLAYING INSURANCE BORE LIKE HUGO.
– BOTTOM AND SEXUAL ATHLETICISM OF JAMES BOND.
– NICE MOTHER.
– NO POINTY SHOES.
– NO HAWAIIAN SHIRTS.
– NO UMBRELLAS.
– READS BOOKS. NOT JUST SPORTS BIOGRAPHIES.
– NO REVOLTING BATHROOM HABITS. E.G. SKID MARKS.
– AMBITIOUS.
– ADVENTUROUS.
– GOOD MANNERS. E.G. SAYS THANK YOU IF SOMEONE HOLDS THE DOOR OPEN FOR HIM.
– ISN’T OBSESSED WITH INSTAGRAM OR HIS PHONE.
– FUNNY.
– ACTUALLY TEXTS ME BACK.
– DOESN’T MIND ABOUT MY COUNTING.
I handed the piece of paper to Gwendolyn who inspected it while I checked my watch. In twelve minutes, I could go home for supper, whatever it was. Eggs again? Could one overdose on eggs?
‘Well,’ said Gwendolyn, looking up. ‘You clearly listened to what I said about being specific. This line about James Bond, for instance…’
I spread my hands in mock innocence. ‘You said it was a wish list. So I thought, why not? If I can truly put down any bottom I wanted, why not go for his?’
The corners of Gwendolyn’s mouth tightened as she glanced back at the list. ‘What’s wrong with umbrellas?’
‘Not very manly,’ I said. I had a thing about this. Hugo never left the house without his umbrella. It seemed fussy and faint-hearted; you’d never catch Mr Rochester or Rhett Butler faffing about with an umbrella.
‘And you want someone who’s both ambitious and adventurous?’
I nodded. Ambition was to guard against the sort of man whose dreams stopped at ‘golf club membership’ and someone with a spirit of adventure might encourage me to be braver, to venture further afield than south London.
‘Fine,’ she went on, ‘but you could jot down a few more personality characteristics. What about kindness, or generosity? And does he want children?’
‘I don’t know,’ I replied, because I didn’t know. I had to find a boyfriend first and that seemed hard enough.
‘And what’s this about your counting?’
‘Nothing,’ I said quickly. ‘Just a… weird thing I do. Like a tick. I count things. In my head.’
‘Hmmmm,’ mused Gwendolyn, narrowing her eyes at me as if I was the oddball in the room. ‘Well, what I’d like you to do is some deeper work over the next week or so. Really think about this list and finesse it.’ She held the piece of paper back out.
‘All right,’ I replied, taking it from her. ‘And then what? Do I need to find some sort of cauldron and burn it?’
‘You are naughty!’ said Gwendolyn, grinning and clapping her hands to her thighs. ‘No, darling, just leave it somewhere safe so you can come back to it at our next appointment.’
‘What next appointment?’
‘Your stepmother booked a package. Did she not tell you? We have another three to go.’
I exhaled. Three more sessions in this Pepto-Bismol room. Three more interrogations with this giant fairy. But how to reply? I could hardly say, ‘Absolutely not, I’d rather skip naked through the streets of London.’
She reached into her dungaree pocket and pulled out her phone. ‘Let’s see… I always think it best to allow at least a week between the first and second appointment, to allow you enough time to think about your list. So what about two weeks’ today? Same time? There’s a new moon that night so it’s wonderful timing.’
I smiled back, my lips pressed in a straight line because otherwise I thought I might scream.
And then, once I was standing back on the Harley Street pavement, I folded the list and slid it into the side pocket of my rucksack. The manifesting power of the universe indeed. What a load of absolute, Grade-A nonsense.
Chapter Two
LATER THAT WEEK, I was dealing with Mrs Delaney and didn’t notice the blond man loitering in the biography section. It was raining, which drove more people into the shop since it was a peaceful place to pass time until the clouds moved. Unhurried. Relaxed. No assistant ever approached you in a bookshop and said, ‘Would you like to try a pair of heels with that?’ Customers could browse undisturbed while their coats dripped quietly on the Turkish rugs.
Mrs Delaney had been visiting Frisbee Books for decades. She lived in a big house overlooking St Luke’s Church, a short wobble away on her walking stick, and liked to come in every week to discuss new gardening books. She was exceptionally keen on gardening (although she didn’t do it herself, she had a man called Cliff who did that), and Eugene and I took it in turns to deal with her. This morning it was my turn, so I was leafing Mrs Delaney through a new book about rewilded gardens. It wasn’t going well because she declared every photo of daisies and cow parsley ‘a disgrace’.
‘That’s even messier than the last!’ she said, as I reached the final page, a picture of a butterfly on a clump of grass. ‘Not for me,’ she said. ‘I’ll be off.’
Mrs Delaney waved her stick in the air as a goodbye before tottering out into the rain. I stepped under the wooden beam separating fiction and non-fiction to slide the rewilding book back onto its shelf.
‘I’m so sorry to trouble you,’ said the man.
I turned to help him, my automatic smile in place.
‘It’s only that I’m here to pick up a book my mother ordered.’
My mouth fell open like a trapdoor but no words came out. It was his old-fashioned clothes that struck me at first. Over a white shirt he was wearing a pair of blue braces which fastened with little buttons to the top of his trousers. Then I stared at his face and wondered whether his pale blue eyes and almost invisible blond eyelashes meant he was Scandinavian.
‘She said she got a message saying it’s in,’ he persisted. ‘If you wouldn’t mind…’
‘Yes, sure, sorry,’ I said, shaking my head as if to wake myself up. He didn’t sound Scandinavian. He sounded very English. ‘What’s she called?’
‘Elizabeth Dundee.’
‘OK, give me a second.’
I stepped behind the till into a small side room that led off from it and ran my finger up and down the shelves until I found the order slip that said Dundee.
‘Here you go,’ I said, carrying the book round to the front of the shop again. I held it out and only then saw what it was called: The Art of Arousal: A Celebration of Erotic Art Throughout History. There was a painting of a woman having sex with a swan on the cover.
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘Ah,’ said the man, in a low, clipped tone. ‘Yes. I might have known. It’s Zeus. He transformed himself into a swan and seduced Leda. Quite odd, those gods.’
‘Looks like it,’ I replied, and we both gazed at the book in silence for a few moments before he spoke again.
‘I’m also looking for something else.’
‘What is it?’ I asked, keen to alleviate the awkwardness of discussing bestiality with this handsome blond man.
‘A book called The Struggle. You don’t happen to have it, do you?’
‘Should have, but it’s a novel so it’ll be back through here.’
I waved him into the fiction area after me. The Struggle was a book as fat as a brick, one of the summer’s biggest sellers, partly because the Irish author had given a series of interviews in which he denounced anyone he was asked about. The Prime Minister? A gobshite. The English in general? A load of gobshites. The Queen? A rich gobshite.
I leant over to scan the table of hardback fiction to find a copy, suddenly very aware that the handsome man was behind me and I was wearing my biggest knickers, the ones with an elasticated waist that pulled up to my belly button and gave me a very obvious VPL. Mia had once insisted that I needed ‘to give thongs a chance’ and left a couple at the bottom of my stairs from one of her fashion clients. But when I’d carried them to the safety of my bedroom for further inspection, I couldn’t work out which bit to put my legs through, and when I finally got them on and glanced over my shoulder in the mirror, my bottom looked so exposed, so vast and white and wobbly, that I wondered why anyone wanted that effect anyway. I’d stashed them at the back of my underwear drawer where they’d remained ever since.
I found the book’s gold spine on the edge of the table. ‘Here you go,’ I said, sliding it free and handing it to him. ‘Have you read any of his others?’ I wanted to distract him from my enormous pants.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘Should I?’
‘I’ve only read his first one. This is better, but that was good too. A coming-of-age tale. Growing up in Dublin in the Seventies, trying to escape family politics, actual politics and then he…’ I stopped. ‘Well, I won’t give it away. But it’s good, yes,’ I said, blushing as he held my eye.
He turned the book over where, on the back cover, the author, Dermot Dooley, glared up at us.
‘Looks pretty angry with life, doesn’t he?’
I snickered. ‘True.’
Up close, he smelt fresh, of a lemony aftershave. Without moving my head, I raised my eyes from the book to his face. It was as if part of me recognized him. He felt familiar. But if he’d been in here before I would remember it, surely? Eugene and I would have fought to serve him and Eugene was normally quicker than me with the hot ones.
His eyes met mine and I blushed again. Busted.
‘Thanks for finding it. And my mother’s book. You’re brilliant, er…’
‘Florence,’ I said, smiling back at him, ‘and not at all. It’s my job.’
‘Thank you all the same.’
‘You’re into contemporary fiction then?’ I ventured, stepping back behind the till and taking the books from him.
‘Absolutely, when I get the time. Why?’
‘Sorry, nosy of me. Just…’ I stopped. ‘Well, I shouldn’t really say it but most men come in here looking for Wayne Rooney’s autobiography.’
‘Oh Christ,’ he said, clapping a hand to his forehead. ‘That was the other one I was supposed to pick up. Don’t suppose you’ve got a copy?’
I looked up from the till and laughed.
‘What about you?’ he asked.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘What do you read? I suppose I’ve never really thought about it before, but does someone who works in a bookshop have to read all of these?’ He gestured at the shelves.
‘No! Luckily not. We share it. I’m novels. Eugene, that’s my colleague, he takes on non-fiction and plays. There’s a system so that if someone comes in we can help them, er, find a book they fall in love with.’
I felt embarrassed for describing it like that but he didn’t seem to hear because he was concentrating on the cards in front of the till. ‘Sorry, can I chuck these in too?’ He handed me a pack of cards with Vermeer’s Girl in a Pearl Earring on the front, except the woman’s face had been replaced with a cat. It was part of a series of greetings cards that I’d insisted to Norris we should stock. And I’d been right. There had been Mona Lisa as a cat, a Van Gogh self-portrait as a cat and a cat dressed as Holbein’s Henry VIII, but they’d all sold out.
‘You like cats?’ He looked more of a dog person. Wellington boots on the weekend, three Labradors, a tweed hat.
‘I do. My mother has three Persians.’
‘Cute. And altogether that’ll be £36.45 please. Do you want a bag?’
He shook his head. ‘No, not to worry.’
‘But it’s raining,’ I said, nodding towards the windows. Outside, people scuttled under umbrellas like giant black beetles.
He grinned again. ‘A bit of rain won’t hurt.’ He tucked the books and his cards under his arm. ‘Not sure I’m going to fall in love, though,’ he said.
‘Huh?’ I said. I’d been gazing at his chest – at a small triangle of blond hair exposed at the top of his shirt – and misheard.
‘With him,’ the man said, flashing Dooley’s headshot at me again. ‘You said you find books for people to fall in love with.’
‘Right,’ I replied, laughing too loudly. He meant Dooley. Obviously he wasn’t talking about me. Come on, Florence. People don’t go about their lives falling in love with others they meet in bookshops. That only happened once in Notting Hill.
‘Thanks so much for all your help,’ he said.
‘You’re welcome,’ I replied as he made for the door. ‘I hope you enjoy it.’
He held his fingers to his temple, saluting. Then he was gone into the drizzle.
I felt a pang of disappointment at his disappearance but heard Norris coming upstairs, so tried to rearrange my face.
‘Pass us the order book,’ he said, standing on the other side of the counter. I handed it over in silence.
‘You all right?’ he added.
‘Yeah, fine. Why?’
‘Just look a bit flustered. Where’s Eugene?’
‘Upstairs, restocking travel.’
Norris opened the book and reached for a pen.
‘You missed Mrs Delaney,’ I went on.
‘My lucky day. She buy anything?’
‘No. But someone came in to collect an order and I sold another copy of The Struggle.’
Norris blew out heavily through his nostrils. ‘I’m not sure one hardback a day’s going to keep us open. Ah, we’ll see,’ he said, closing the book and handing it back to me.
‘I’ve been thinking about this and I’ve got a plan,’ I said, straightening up and deciding to broach my ideas.
Norris’s eyebrows waggled with suspicion.
‘We need to sort out the website. And I thought about a petition. Online and in here. I’ll get everyone who comes in to sign it.’
He didn’t reply.
‘And we really should have Instagram by now, Norris. I can run it, it’s easy. And Twitter.’
‘Twitter?’ Norris barked it as if it was a dirty word.
‘It’s free marketing, quite literally.’
‘No, no, no,’ he replied, shaking his head as he made for the stairs. ‘Can’t think about all this now. I’ve got enough on as it is.’
I stuck my tongue out at his back. ‘Didn’t want to think about it now’ was always his excuse. It was maddening. And irresponsible.
Then came the noise of Eugene clattering downstairs. He dropped an armful of empty boxes on the floor in front of the till.
‘They can’t stay there,’ I said.
‘Calm down, bossy boots,’ he replied, leaning on the counter and panting. ‘I’m famished. Do you mind if I have first lunch? Not sure I’m going to make it to second.’ Lunches in the shop were divided into first (an hour at twelve thirty) and second (an hour at one thirty), decided between us every day.
‘Nope, you go.’
‘Thanks,’ replied Eugene, yawning and stretching his arms over his head. ‘See you in a bit,’ he said, already halfway through the door before I could shout at him about the boxes.
‘Men,’ I muttered to myself. At home, I lived with two sisters who never put a mug in the dishwasher; in the shop, I worked alongside men who only thought of their stomachs. I wondered which was more trying. Not that long ago, Mrs Delaney had told me that gladioli plants were asexual. Sounded a much easier life, being a gladioli.
As I bent to slide my fingers under the boxes, the doorbell tinkled behind me so I stood up quickly, aware that another customer was being subjected to my bottom. ‘Sorry,’ I said spinning around, ‘I’m just tidy— Oh, hello.’
It was the man in the braces.
‘Hello again,’ he said, grinning. His hair was damp and there were dark spots on his shirt front from the rain. ‘I only… Well, I hope you don’t mind… The thing is I don’t go around London asking women I meet in shops this, but I wondered if you might be free, or might be interested, in perhaps having a coffee with me?’
‘A coffee?’ I repeated, as if I didn’t know what coffee was.
‘Or a drink,’ he said. ‘Whatever you like. I’d just like to talk to you more about books, if you wanted?’ He ran a hand through the wet strands of his hair and looked expectantly at me.
‘Er…’ I was so surprised by his reappearance that, as if witness to a baffling magic trick, I went mute.
‘If you can’t, or don’t want to, or if you’re taken and don’t for some reason wear a wedding ring – it’s often very hard to tell these days – then forget I ever asked and I’ll never come in here again. Although that would be a shame since it’s a splendid bookshop. But if none of those things apply then I would like very much to buy you some sort of beverage – hot or cold, it’s entirely up to you.’
‘Er…’ I started again, willing my brain into action. ‘Yes, lovely,’ I said, over the top of the boxes. It was only two feeble words but it was better than no words.
‘Good. I was hoping you’d say that. What’s your number?’ He reached into his trousers and pulled out his phone.
Number, I told myself, you can do this. I duly read it out to him.
‘Marvellous,’ he said, pocketing his phone. ‘I’ll text you. Maybe this weekend?’
‘Lovely,’ I said again, feeling dazed.
‘It’s a date,’ he said. ‘See you soon.’
‘See you soon,’ I repeated, although he was already gone. I dropped the boxes on top of the fiction table and exhaled slowly, then squinted at my reflection in the window pane. Did I look different today? Was my hair less like a spaniel’s?
‘Florence, duck, you know those shouldn’t be there,’ said Norris, appearing on the stairs again and pointing at the boxes. ‘Put them out the back, please.’
I didn’t even protest that, actually, it was Eugene’s fault for abandoning the boxes and I was moving them for him. I just did it.
And it was only while flattening them with my feet in the stockroom that I realized two things: firstly, I didn’t even know the man’s name. And secondly, Gwendolyn’s list! I froze and my hands flew to my cheeks as I remembered what I’d written. He was a tall, absurdly attractive and seemingly funny man who read books, liked cats and clearly didn’t think a drop of rain was going to kill him. But that had to be a coincidence?
Course it was. I laughed and shook my head as I started stamping down the boxes again. As if the universe had anything to do with it. Obviously it was a coincidence. There was no way that lunatic in her daisy dungarees had sent that beautiful man in here.
I had a NOMAD meeting that evening so I left Eugene to lock up and walked to the primary school where they were held, a few streets from the shop. Peering through the classroom porthole, I saw my friend Jaz already sitting in one of the child-sized plastic seats. A man I didn’t recognize had folded himself into a front-row seat and was scowling at the finger paintings. We were a small group, normally about eight or nine, and we sat in rows surrounded by colourful finger paintings and art made from pasta. At the front, under a large whiteboard, our leader Stephen would try and encourage a sensible group discussion while we ate custard creams. It was always custard creams. Stephen brought them himself, along with a travel kettle, several mugs and tea supplies.
I pushed open the door. ‘Hi, Stephen,’ I said, waving at him.
He spun around from his plate of biscuits and beamed at me. ‘Good evening, Florence. All well?’
‘All pretty brilliant, actually,’ I said, dropping my bag on the small red seat next to Jaz. Her 4-year-old, Duncan, was sitting cross-legged on the floor in his sweatshirt and school trousers, earplugs in, watching a video on her phone. ‘How come Dunc’s here?’
Jaz sighed. ‘Because his dad’s a premier league asshole who didn’t make pick-up.’
She said this loudly enough to make Stephen’s shoulders twitch. Dunc, fortunately, was too engrossed with his phone to overhear. I ruffled his hair and he looked up and grinned happily before dropping his gaze back to the screen.
Jaz’s ex, Dunc’s father, was a plumber called Leon. He and Jaz had been together for a few months when she got pregnant. She’d presented him with the happy news only for Leon to admit that, actually, Jaz wasn’t the only woman whose pipes he was seeing to. They’d split and Leon had been a sporadic father ever since. Occasionally he’d take him to the Battersea zoo to see the rabbits and the frogs (Dunc, very into animals, wanted to be a vet when he grew up), but he and Jaz were generally on bad terms.
Dunc was the reason she’d started coming to these meetings. Jaz was a hairdresser who worked in a Chelsea salon but, when he was a baby, she’d started obsessing about his food: his food and her food. She panicked that he’d eat or swallow something – a crisp or a grape – that had been contaminated by her own hands with chemicals from the salon. She began to only eat food with a knife and fork, and nothing could touch her fingers at any stage of the cooking process, which had drastically shrunk her diet.
By the time she started coming to the meetings on the advice of her GP, she was only eating ready meals since she could just peel off the cellophane. Ready meals for breakfast, ready meals for lunch, ready meals for supper. It was the same for Dunc – a 2-year-old reared almost exclusively on Bird’s Eye. When I joined the group a few months on, Jaz (and Dunc) had graduated from just ready meals to ready meals along with pasta and vegetables so long as they came in a frozen bag and she didn’t have to touch them before cooking. Now, she let them eat most things, apart from fruit by hand, but she still came along every other week so we could whisper in the back row. We made an unlikely pair – me, the bookish 32-year-old in ugly shoes and Jaz, the forty-something hairdresser always wearing animal print – but we’d become close. Although outwardly very different, we both knew what it was like to feel as if we’d lost control of our own brains, as if we were being operated by an internal puppeteer constantly giving us pointless and exhausting tasks.
‘You all right?’ I checked, looking from Dunc on the floor to Jaz. Today she was wearing a white T-shirt over a pair of snakeskin leggings.
She sighed again. ‘Yeah, just dead as a dingo.’ Jaz often confused her expressions. A couple of weeks ago she’d complained to Stephen of feeling as if she was between ‘a sock and a hard place’.
