It's Not Me, It's You

by Mhairi McFarlane

  ‘You know something I never admitted to myself, until now? I made it easy for Paul when we got together. I knew that if it was hard, he might not have bothered.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He was never that crazy about me …’

  ‘Oh that’s not true!’

  Delia took a deep breath. She’d always shoved this knowledge into a cupboard and shut the door on it, and Paul’s affair now brought the contents cascading out.

  ‘It is, Em. I don’t mind, or I didn’t. I know he loved me, and he liked my company, and he fancied me enough. It was fine, we still had a great life. But that extra-special thing that makes you lie awake and watch someone sleep in the early days, or want to kill your rivals with your bare hands? That kind of passion, it’s never been there for him, like it was for me. I wanted Paul, so I built it all around him. It’s why I was so good about him spending all hours at the pub. It was going to be the same way with the wedding. He only had to show up and say his lines.’

  ‘That’s Delia-ish caringness. You’d be that way with anyone.’

  ‘I wasn’t trying that hard with men before Paul, though. I usually had the upper hand.’ Delia swiped her travel-greasy fringe out of her eyes, ‘Am I allowed to say I was quite a bit in demand, now it’s so long ago?’

  ‘You completely were,’ Emma said. ‘I remember in the union bar when you wore your hair in those buns which had all the boys sighing. You were one of those manic pixie dream girls. Without being a twat with a ukulele.’

  What was different about Paul? It was his wasn’t-much-fussed nature, the carelessness. It made Delia determined: you WILL notice me, you WILL want me.

  ‘Maybe Paul being half-hearted is why I wanted him so badly. How messed-up is that? I knew I had to strive for him. I was so demented about winning him over, I never considered if I wanted to be with someone who needed convincing.’

  The truth of the last line landed heavy. Delia felt depressed. Accepting she’d got something so vital wrong filled her full of regret. Would she wish the last ten years away? No. She should’ve walked into them and through them with her eyes open, though. She encouraged Paul’s complacency.

  ‘I never thought of you as unequal,’ Emma said, adjusting the stem of her glass on her glamorously girdled stomach. The shoes had long been kicked off, her flesh-coloured tights pouching at her toes.

  ‘We weren’t in a day-to-day way. But his house was my house. His lifestyle was my life. His friends were mine. Parsnip is the only truly joint project we’ve ever had, come to think of it.’

  ‘You feel like now you’ve thought this, you can’t un-think it?’

  ‘Kind of. I have to face it and it has to change, if we’re ever going to be together again.’ Delia absently touched the edge of her glass against her lips, in contemplation. ‘You know all the things you never have to ask yourself, because you know? In your gut?’ she said. ‘This might sound odd but whenever I popped into the bar unexpectedly, Paul always looked pleased. Instantly. You know that split second when you can’t disguise how you feel? Like when you see someone you know in the street at the same time, and you think “Oh shit now we have to chat” and you both see it on each other’s faces, just for a moment? Paul never did that with me, not even through the Celine months.’

  ‘Maybe he’s always pleased to see you. As they say.’

  ‘Yeeaah, but never to show any concern I might run into the other woman? It turns out he’s also really good at lying to me. That’s what I can’t un-think. I’m not sure I know him as well as I thought I did. It’s almost like, if I suspected, it’d be easier. Now I think, it could all happen again. Because I didn’t spot one clue.’

  ‘You and Paul had a good life together though. I know it’s tempting to see everything through this massive mistake, but it doesn’t undo everything you have together.’

  ‘I know. All I can do is wait to see how I feel after time’s passed.’

  Emma nodded.

  ‘And another thing,’ Delia said, conscious she didn’t want to alarm or cast judgement on Emma’s singleness, ‘I have to accept that if I don’t go back to Paul, I might not meet someone else who wants a family in time.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Emma sighed. ‘I can’t lie to you, dating over thirty is full of that fear. Sometimes I worry I’m too fussy. I mean, look at Dan. I got bored, but maybe that was my fault.’

  ‘Which one was Dan?’

  ‘The one with the rich family in Hertfordshire who turned out to have the raging coke habit that day at the races.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Delia said, not sure she remembered him. Wealthy drug taker and a trip to Ascot wasn’t really pinning it down in Emma’s romantic CV.

  ‘The cocaine might’ve been a problem if you’d spawned.’

  ‘I know. But compared to the usual idiots I meet, he wasn’t a git. He was pleasant. He was … benign.’

  ‘Tumours can be benign.’

  ‘That is so fucking deep! Write that down,’ Emma said.

  After so much chatter they lay in peace on the sofa, watching a small breeze move the curtains, listening to an argument taking place outside the flat between a taxi driver and his fare. It was like being back in halls again.

  ‘You know what annoys me?’ Emma mumbled. ‘When people act as if not having your personal life sorted out by our age is some sort of failure of paying attention. Like if you want it, you can automatically have it. As if it isn’t mostly down to luck. We’ve both gone at it in different ways and here we both are. On my sofa.’

  ‘On your sofa,’ Delia agreed.

  ‘I read this interview the other day. You know that blonde woman …’

  ‘That blonde woman?’

  ‘You know. Used to do that telly thing in the nineties, I forget. She was all “Women should remember that they’re less fertile after thirty-five and remember to get pregnant by then.” Remember?!’ Emma roared. ‘Yeah thanks, it had totally slipped my mind. And where did I put that perfect father material partner? Must have left him in the pub with my umbrella. What a shitcranker.’

  Delia laughed. Not for the first time, she imagined Emma as a formidable opponent in a boardroom.

  ‘Don’t you need to get to bed?’ Delia said, twisting her watch round.

  ‘I’ll inject Costa Americanos. Two of them and I’m riverdancing these days. No major meetings tomorrow. And, on the subject of the opposite sex: I have to share something so awful it can only be with my best friend,’ Emma continued. ‘Rick the Dick did this freaky thing. Oh God it’s so awful I can’t even tell you! I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s the worst thing to ever happen to anyone ever.’

  ‘You said that when you were bought gift vouchers for Zara Home and couldn’t swap them to Zara fashion.’

  ‘Worse even that that.’

  ‘Did he bring out spiky toys? Like a rubber prickly pear?’

  ‘When he reached his … conclusion, he said stupid stuff.’

  ‘What, dirty talk?’

  ‘Kind of …’

  ‘You filthy slut, dirty whore, sort of thing?’

  ‘No, I could’ve coped with that! It was surreal, irrelevant.’

  ‘I’m not sure I get what you mean …?’ Delia said.

  ‘He came out with nonsense-speak. Gibberish. I can’t tell you!’ Emma covered her face with her arms and her voice came through muffled. ‘I let this man into my bed, I’m implicated.’

  Delia sat upright.

  ‘Emma Berry, tell me what he said!’

  ‘The first time he said “Fuerteventura!”’

  ‘What?’ Delia sat stunned, then clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘Ahahahaha …’

  ‘Another time it was “Drambuie!” The worst was,’ Emma was hyperventilating in the attempt to get the words out now, ‘“Charles Dickens!”’

  She did an overbite face when she said the words. Delia was utterly destroyed, face down in the cushions, shaking with whole-body laughter.

  ‘Did you ask him why?’ De
lia gasped, face wet with tears.

  ‘How could I? Why did you mention the greatest novelist of the Victorian period when you spaffed?’

  They collapsed into more howling and weeping.

  ‘Must be some very specific form of Tourettes,’ Delia said, wiping under her eyes. Why did laughter with Emma feel so therapeutic? She wanted to send Richard a thank you note. Signing off: Emily Bronte

  There was a pause, where they watched lights from passing cars strobe across the darkened room and sigh-giggled, pondering the mysteries of love and relationships. Delia opened her mouth and thought she might be about to give birth to a profound thought.

  ‘Where do I go from here? I can’t date. I mean, thongs have come back in, for God’s sake. I look like my dad in a thong.’

  As she woke in the eerie stillness of the empty flat, an incredibly saddening thought occurred to Delia. She lay on the futon, examining the cobwebbed nooks and gulleys of a ceiling that didn’t belong to her.

  She and Emma had talked about falling in love the night before and Delia had relived that gut-wrenching sense of your world pivoting around one person. She’d only ever had this strength of feeling lopsidedly with Paul, so the chances of doing it all again, and fully reciprocally, seemed slim.

  It was very possible, she thought, that it was only a feature of your twenties. When you had time, self-obsession and innocence enough to make heartsick compilations of please sleep with me songs and stare forlornly out of rain-spattered windows.

  Your twenties were a time when you were passionate about being on the brink of blending with another soul. And going at it like weasels being suffocated in a pillowcase.

  But in your mid-thirties? It was hardly old. Yet you were considerably less open to it all. It wasn’t your first bar mitzvah, as Emma liked to say. The ratio of head to heart was going to change, because you could spot potential problems and predict outcomes a lot more clearly.

  You’d plan embarking on a serious relationship more like buying a house – undertaking searches of the structural solidity, haggling over the price of acquisition.

  She and Paul had dated because he liked her legs and her sense of humour, and she liked his smile and his charisma. Everything else they could figure out later.

  Nowadays, maybe he’d want to know how soon she wanted kids and she’d want to know if the bar was bought with a bank loan. He’d wonder if her office job and love of soft furnishings meant she’d nag him about late nights; she’d fret about whether his love of parties was a sign of a perpetual man-child.

  Ack. Delia had a stern word with herself.

  It’s half nine: stop wallowing, get up and face the day. You’re bound to be blue, booze is always a depressant.

  In the quiet of the flat, she padded to the kitchen and switched the kettle on. A set of keys sat on top of a note.

  SO MY HEAD FEELS SHOCKING. That champagne must have been corked Have a lovely day, it’s the two gold keys for the Yale lock and the one below. If Carl downstairs asks who you are say you’re only visiting. You’ll know who he is, he looks like a boil in the bag Michael Barrymore. E X

  Delia’s work bag was in the hallway. She found it and slid her laptop out, setting it up on the dining-room table.

  There was an item of business she’d been putting off but it needed doing, a strange twenty-first century necessity. She opened her Facebook page. Her profile picture was one of her and Paul on holiday in the Yorkshire Dales. She was grinning into the lens, Paul was pulling a face as if he’d fallen asleep on her shoulder. In the upper right-hand corner of the shot, a cow could be seen defecating. A proper raised tail action spurt.

  It was funny, unplanned and perfect, and it had to go. Delia wasn’t going to change her relationship status for now, and suffer a barrage of inquiries from the nosy. But she couldn’t have herself presenting a perfect united front with Paul online either.

  She uploaded her new picture. It was Delia as a toddler: still with ginger fringe, plus bunches. She was wearing her dad’s carpentry goggles as a superhero mask and her mum’s daisy wedding veil as a cape, standing serious-faced in the middle of the kitchen floor, looking up at the parent photographing her.

  She flipped her profile to the new image and sat with chin propped on palm, gazing at it. Little Delia. What did she want for herself, and how much of it did she achieve?

  Her Facebook inbox showed a message. She clicked on it and saw, with a spike of adrenaline, it was from Peshwari Naan. From a Peshwari Naan Facebook account, with a naan as a profile picture.

  OK, now she was scared. In the seclusion of the flat, she felt her heart rate leap and skin crawl.

  Hi Delia. Please don’t think I’m stalking you, you’re easy to find on here. You’ve gone very quiet on your work email and I wondered why? Sorry if the anal bleaching jokes were a step too far. PN.

  Delia read and re-read as her heart rate slowed. She didn’t like this man pursuing her. Nevertheless, she was being given a chance to vent some spleen.

  The reason I’m quiet is, I left my job. Partly because of the trouble you caused, which I got blamed for. Please don’t bother me on my personal account. Cheers. Delia.

  Delia checked his profile. It was anonymous and had no friends listed – it had obviously set up purely to message her. She felt some nerves return before thinking: he surely won’t hunt me down here.

  She drummed her fingertips, made another cup of tea and waited for the response. Her mind wandered to other things and other people.

  A terrible, terrifying, yet irresistible prospect suddenly raised itself. She had the full name now. Delia tapped it into the Search For People field, feeling giddy and hoping it’d return no matches.

  ‘Celine Roscoe’ came up instantly. There was only one, and the line of biography Delia saw made it clear she’d found the right one: student at University of Newcastle.

  The profile picture was of a lightly tanned girl with amazing legs in jelly shoe sandals, sat on the floor, pretending to drink from a giant inflatable bottle.

  Delia breathed hard, smelling so much danger and competition from that tiny thumbnail image. Sylphlike beauty, youth, high spirits, confidence. Delia had wondered if she simply wasn’t enough fun for Paul any more? Seeing Celine made it fully real.

  She clicked through to the page, again hoping that Celine would have tight privacy settings that saved Delia from herself. She didn’t want to know and equally she had to see everything. Sadly, Celine had virtually no padlocks. Delia could see her photo albums, her status updates, everything.

  A sick, ugly compulsion gripped Delia. She hammered through picture after picture, update after update, in determination and increasing pain. The virtual version of cross-hatching her inner arm.

  Celine was beautiful. Not perfectly, conventionally so, but that only made her more compelling. Delia could quite easily see how Paul had fallen under her spell. She had rich dark chocolate hair, a long, aquiline nose, slanted eyes ringed with kohl, and a swipe of claret lipstick.

  Her figure – this made Delia feel almost lightheaded with jealousy, imagining it unclothed, wound round her boyfriend – was naturally slender and graceful. She looked like the lines of a fashion designer’s sketch.

  But most of all, Delia felt threatened by the attitude. The larky, humorous, totally-at-ease-in-her-own-skin swagger. Every single image brimmed with the subtext: SCREW YOU, I SCREWED HIM.

  Had Celine ever looked Delia up too? She must have done. What did she think of her? Did she ever feel guilty?

  Then, combing the comments on her page, she saw something that stopped her breathing. Someone asked Celine if she was bringing her ‘boyfriend’ to a house party.

  Another person had said ‘C’s boyfriend is MR MYSTERY.’ Celine had replied NO COMMENT, and it had 11 Likes. Eleven. A dozen people who knew the owner of the bar was sleeping with her on the side. Delia was a laughing stock among strangers.

  Boyfriend? Celine considered Paul her boyfriend?

  Delia jumpe
d up and leaned over the sink, holding her hair to one side. Emma’s lovely deep Bristol sink wasn’t meant for vomiting at ten a.m. She heaved, twice.

  Turn it off turn it off turn it off, she told herself. Finding Newcastle’s spectres on the internet is not healthy or helpful. You’re in London – you can step outside that door and see no one you know. You’re safe.

  As she went to close the laptop screen, she saw Peshwari Naan had replied.

  Seriously?! Oh my God, I am so so sorry. I had no idea you’d get in trouble for anything I was doing, it was a bit of fun, I thought. Please tell me if there’s anything I can do to put this right. Burning with shame and guilt. Honestly, sincere apologies. PN.

  Delia thought for a moment.

  If you mean ‘anything’, then I’d like to know how you tracked me down in the first place. And who you are.

  Delia was lonely in the following week. She was surprised by how much, before she reminded herself: no shit, you lost your partner and your job, you left your home and dog, and have moved to a city of over eight million people where you know only one person.

  Wake up and smell the … well, the Café Direct java roast and the interestingly barbecue-smoky pollution, which she was slowly growing accustomed to. The aroma of so many bodies and vehicles and buildings packed into such a tight space.

  Less easy to accept was the stark reality of Emma’s schedule, which took Delia aback. Delia was barely awake at the hour Emma left the flat, and she routinely fell through the door at gone nine in the evening.

  Delia shopped for food and flowers, prepared things that kept in the oven well like stews or moussaka, lit tealights in the Moroccan-style lanterns and waited. And waited. Did lots of waiting.

  On arrival, Emma would try to look suitably thrilled when she could obviously only cope with warm bowl on lap, cold glass pushed into hand, small talk and hot bath before the whole process started again.

  Meanwhile Delia, after eagerly awaiting her return all day, desperately tried not to irritate with her need for attention and chatter. It was like being a housewife in the 1950s.