It's Not Me, It's You

by Mhairi McFarlane

  For Celine to be someone Delia couldn’t understand, she’d have to be nasty, spiteful, to glory in the pain she’d caused. But a human who’d made a mistake: Delia could relate to that, to her. The casting director of Delia’s life’s drama had screwed up. She wasn’t a proper enemy.

  It was Paul who was thirty-five, and knew the impact of what he and Celine were doing. Paul who had made promises to Delia, who came home to the dinner she’d left him in the fridge, and took longer over his post-service shower than usual, before climbing into bed beside her and saying sorry, he was too tired for anything.

  Her disgust flared again. Celine regarded her nervously and it occurred to Delia that she was frightened herself, only not of Celine. Delia had answers in front of her. Could she bear to ask them? Should she walk away, having made her decision to reunite with Paul? Surely that would be the easy thing to do – but if she did, she would forever wonder.

  ‘Can I ask you a few things?’

  Celine nodded, expression deeply wary.

  ‘Did Paul give you a Valentine’s card?’

  Celine nodded again, slowly, and Delia felt the faith she’d had in Paul the previous evening start to unwind.

  ‘What did it look like?’

  ‘It had teddy bears on it,’ Celine said.

  ‘Did you call him your boyfriend?’

  ‘Yes. He called me The Girl.’

  Delia gulped. Pet names? Liar, you liar. This was hell. But she’d started, so she’d finish.

  ‘You know the first time that Paul went back to yours?’ Delia said. ‘Who came on to who? How did it happen?’

  Celine’s unlined brow knitted.

  ‘Uhm. He came up to me as I was leaving and said if I stayed, he’d make me a Caipirinha. We’d already been flirting and I knew it’d be only us left …’

  She blushed again. Delia knew this was true; it bore the hallmarks of her own first encounter with Paul.

  ‘He came on to you? Not the other way around? He wasn’t outside, locking up, when you approached him?’

  Celine shook her head, for the first time looking sorry for Delia, as well as ashamed.

  Delia continued: ‘When was this?’

  ‘After New Year. January the fourth.’

  Of course, Celine would know that date immediately, as Paul would have.

  So, his claim that it was Mother’s Day wasn’t just a simple invention, it was a horribly manipulative one.

  For the first time, Delia flinched.

  Delia stood under the vaulted roof of the train station listening to the distorted, aurally foggy announcements, feeling as if she was in a clearing house.

  It was a grim but instructive lesson to find out what she could withstand. If this Delia had told the Old Delia, gleefully planning her marriage proposal, that she would lose both Parsnip and Paul within hours of each other, she’d have collapsed. Yet Delia hadn’t collapsed. She was here with her trolley case, waiting for the 3.35 to London King’s Cross, with an unshakeable sense of purpose. She wasn’t uncertain now.

  Her mobile rang, as she knew it would. Her note had simply said she was heading back to London. She picked up the call.

  ‘Why have you gone? I thought you were staying for the weekend.’

  ‘I met Celine.’

  Horrorstruck pause.

  ‘What? When?’

  ‘I ran into her in Fenwicks. We went for a coffee.’

  ‘God,’ Paul said, and Delia suspected he wasn’t quite as sorry he wasn’t face to face with her now. ‘… How did that go?’

  ‘It’s not the worst thing that’s happened this weekend, though that says more about the weekend.’

  Paul made a teeth-sucking noise and Delia heard the platform announcement for her train.

  ‘She told me a lot of things that didn’t match with things you’d told me, Paul.’

  Silence.

  ‘Can you think what they’d be?’

  ‘Delia, look …’

  ‘You did send her a Valentine’s card. You did know she called you her boyfriend. You called her The Girl. You started the whole thing. And when did it start, Paul?’

  ‘… Oh, God, Delia. Listen …’

  ‘When?!’

  ‘New Year,’ Paul said, in a low voice.

  ‘Yet you said Mothering Sunday. I wonder why pick that day, of all days?’

  ‘I’d blurted out three months and that sounded about right if I tracked back, it wasn’t … Oh my God, it wasn’t because …’

  ‘Why say three months?’

  ‘I knew I’d fucked up so badly I was going to lose you and I was saying anything that I could to stop that happening. It was over, so the rest was detail and I didn’t want the detail to hurt you even more.’

  ‘You don’t think I deserved the truth?’

  ‘You did. Absolutely you did. I know that now. I thought off the top of my head, three months sounded less appalling. Delia, I promise. I promise on my life. There’s no significance to any of this other than me flailing around, trying to stop you going.’

  ‘“I promise”,’ words that Delia could no longer put any faith in at all. Jesus, untangling lying was exhausting.

  ‘You started it with her.’

  ‘I got myself in a mess. I’d say it was six of one, half a dozen of the other. I don’t know why I did any of this, Delia. Like I said, flirting got out of hand. When you confronted me, I was grasping at straws …’

  ‘Bullshit!’ Delia was conscious of bystanders’ heads jerking up, on the periphery of her vision. ‘You’ve lied so much, you’re probably still lying now. You can’t have any respect for me at all. We’re over, Paul. Go back to Celine. See if she’ll grasp at your straw. Though I think she deserves better.’

  ‘Delia, please. If you’d just come back and we could talk—’

  Delia took a ragged breath and ended the call, cutting Paul off mid-sentence. That was that. Done with a bang, not a whimper.

  After her train glided to a halt, she found a quiet corner of a carriage and opened her laptop. There was an email from Joe. Her spirits lifted, even before she knew what he was saying. Typing was a way of focusing, amid the thunderstorm of her emotions.

  Delia. Profuse apologies for my no-show. Joe

  Don’t worry about it! What happened? Everything OK? Dx

  I feel so stupid. I chickened out. Are you still here? Joe

  No, I’m on the train heading back to London. I ran into Paul’s Other Woman, we had coffee. Turns out he’s an even bigger lying hound than I thought. We’ve split up for good, I’ve ended it. Sorry not to see you. No need to be scared of me! I am quite tame, honest. Dx

  Oh God I’m sorry! Are you OK? Jx

  Yes. I will be. Are you? Dx

  Yeah. Ish. OK, this is more explanation than you probably want or need, but, you asked a while back why I’m still at the council when I have a few IT moves. I actually have fairly crippling social anxiety. If I met you, I’d need a month to prepare and I’d walk round the block twenty times. And even then I’d probably not manage to go in. I should’ve said sooner, but online is where I get to be ‘me’. Not the me who sweats and shakes and stutters. And I so like you and did want to meet you, sorry. I’d rather you know this than think I didn’t care enough to turn up. Joe

  That sounds so tough. Don’t be sorry, you have nothing to be sorry for. But you can get to your job OK? Have you thought about treatment? (obvs don’t mean electro shock things in hospitals on haunted islands) Dx

  Haha! I might be up for that. I’ve had it all, CBT, Beta Blockers, the works. It’s like I’m my own worst enemy. It’s not agoraphobia, I can leave the house. I just can’t deal with new people or situations easily. As you know, at the council you don’t get much stimulation, in that respect I can imagine you’re backing away slowly now, and I don’t blame you … Joe

  Not at all! This is fear, at heart? I have plenty of that. We can keep chatting like this, and only meet if you ever feel you want to. Dx

  She thou
ght about what Emma said about online wooers not being what they seemed, and she was right, if not in the way she imagined. Underachieving keyboard warriors might not be heartbreakers or bank account rinsers. They might simply have a whole inconvenient reality you hadn’t factored in to your fantasies.

  Only … Delia was a sucker for a bird with a broken wing. It was what helped it along with Paul, after all.

  The train rocketed past countryside bathed in honeyed afternoon light. As Delia watched the world speed by, she decided then and there that there would be no more half measures. No more London as a waiting room. It was a destination, it was where she was going to build a new life, one on her own. This was her chance for a fresh start.

  Her mobile was on silent, on the flip-down tray table. She watched it push itself around with the vibrations of three missed calls, an answerphone message and a text from Paul, like a little mechanical scorpion with a ringer as its sting. Ignoring it, she opened an email to Joe.

  PS Speaking of fear. Let’s press GO on Fantastic Miss Fox. It’s time I let her out into the world. Dx

  The thing about Emma was, she was so reassuring. There was nothing you could throw at her that she couldn’t handle, and coolly manage. Panic wasn’t in her emotional vocabulary, nor was the kind of knee-trembling doubt that frequently assailed Delia. Her sense of humour was never damaged.

  This was why she was so brilliant at her job, Delia thought, apart from the bit where she could marshal the recollection of endless pieces of dry data at will. She’d have ‘Leave It With Me’ on her gravestone.

  So when Delia called and said her dog was dead, her relationship was dead, and could her stay in Finsbury Park be a little longer, there was zero drama. Capable Emma said in that Minnie Mouse voice: absolutely yes, and that she loved her, and it’d all be fine, and did Delia want to chat it out over some very good Chinese food?

  While prodding at pallid purses of excellent dim sum in wicker steamers, feeling much better than she thought possible, Delia related what had passed.

  Emma was concerned, yet Delia noticed, she wasn’t looking the required amount of shocked and outraged about Celine’s disclosures, or Paul’s weak rationalisations. It was the moment of silent agreement with Adam West, replayed.

  ‘You ended it? For good?’ Emma said, carefully.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think this is the right move and you needed to make it. Whatever happens in the future.’

  Whatever happens?

  ‘You don’t think Paul and I are over? It bloody well feels like we are.’

  ‘I don’t know, only you know that. But not necessarily. Can I play devil’s avocado? I’m not entirely surprised at what Celine told you,’ Emma said, sucking on the straw of a giant restorative lemonade. She’d been brought low by a corporate wine-tasting event with management consultants the previous evening.

  ‘Paul lied to me!’

  ‘Paul lied to you all the way through having the affair. Try some of the pork with spring onions, it’s amazing.’

  ‘I know. But once I’d found out, to still lie? To keep lying then is so insulting. I’ll never trust him again. Mmm, that is amazing.’

  ‘He didn’t want to lose you.’

  ‘That’s not good enough,’ Delia said, shaking her head, clacking her chopsticks like jaws as she went in for the kill again. ‘To lie at that point is worse than anything to me.’

  ‘Worse than him having sex with someone else?’

  Delia grimaced.

  ‘I know it hurts. I can’t imagine how much. This is the fallout. But I’m not sure it changes anything.’

  Delia looked dubious.

  ‘Can I use the analogy of Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman”? And Bill and Hill patched it up.’

  ‘He did have sex with that woman?’ Delia said, confused.

  ‘I mean the lying, on the spot. You’re caught out fooling around and what do you do, in the oh fuck moments? You blather your way through it as best you can. Paul wasn’t likely to admit things like he’d made the first move. I’m not sure if this is a lawyer attitude or not, but I know that very few people voluntarily make things worse for themselves, if they have a choice. You know, there’s the way we all like to think we behave, and then there’s the way we actually do.’

  Delia pondered. Was it possible she’d used Celine’s answers in place of finding her own answer about Paul? That she’d wanted X to mark the spot, to find conclusive evidence that would simply tell her what to do? But if she’d not run into Celine, she would’ve believed Paul, ultimately because she wanted to. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  ‘I’m not undermining what you’ve done; I think your coming to London properly is amazing. Obviously. Self-interest aside,’ Emma said.

  ‘No. It’s good to have another perspective,’ Delia said.

  Emma spun the Lazy Susan.

  Delia dwelt on what she said. She didn’t think the former President’s impeachment was the best analogy – there was a bit more at stake for him – nor did she agree with Emma that Paul could be excused for further lying when caught. Emma’s realism said everyone works their advantage, whilst Delia was an idealist who thought a truly penitent Paul should’ve held nothing back. If that was too high an ideal, she was still keeping it.

  ‘I can’t believe I’m single! I’ve been out of circulation for so long,’ Delia said, sitting back, stuffed to the greedy gills with dim sum. ‘People I slept with before Paul are so long ago they don’t count.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ Emma said, waving her hand. ‘It’s not as if Cock Number Twelve is a magic key that unlocks the secrets of the erotic universe. Do you know, I’ve got my second wind – let’s stay out.’

  They went on for a ‘quiet neighbourhood drink’ in a narrow, gothicky nearby bar with Emma’s gay friend Sebastian. He had a very small round head, with features that looked as if they’d slid to one side, and he did a laugh like nyuck-nyuck-nyuck.

  Delia had forgotten there was no such thing as quiet drinks with Emma, who had now found her second wind.

  ‘Let’s do Picklebacks!’ she squeaked. Picklebacks turned out to be pure necromancy: a shot of whisky followed by a shot of brine.

  ‘The saltiness helps take away the taste of the whisky. They’re all drinking these in Brooklyn. Along with sipping tequilas,’ Emma said, coughing slightly, as if any of part of this statement made sense. Delia declined drinking more gherkin jar water in favour of a lager.

  ‘You drink pints,’ Sebastian said approvingly to Delia, ‘I love the whole …’ he danced his hands in the air around Delia’s up do and Alice band and sucked on his vanilla flavoured e-fag, ‘… vintage store Lucille Ball thing you have going on. You dress for women, not men.’

  ‘I dress for me …’ Delia said, ‘… and I’m a woman. So I suppose you’re right.’

  She liked the idea she’d styled herself with intent. Her life seemed to have happened to her, in many other ways.

  ‘Any more news of Aristocratic Adam?’ Emma said, making an overbite face.

  ‘Only that, in my revolution, he would not be spared,’ Delia said, borrowing a phrase from Paul and internally chiding herself for it.

  Sebastian got the Adam story, including the impromptu B&B after the Cock & Tail.

  ‘If he’s as awful as you say, why did he do that?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Delia admitted. ‘I can promise you it wasn’t carnal interest, he made that very clear. Probably thinks drunken women in public are sinful, due to his breeding.’

  ‘I’d breed with him,’ Emma said, stoutly.

  Sebastian fiddled with his waxed hair, rolling two pieces at his temples into horns.

  ‘Maybe this man thought it was the right thing to do?’ he shrugged. ‘There are men with principles. Not among any men I’ve ever met. I saw one once in a film.’

  Delia had started to think that she’d never meet a Twist & Shout client from the world of politics, and A
dam West’s request for information on clients in that sphere would end up being as much use to him as a candyfloss codpiece.

  Yet the following Tuesday morning, Kurt muttered that he wanted her to come with him to meet a Parliamentarian, one Lionel Blunt.

  As they left the office, the heavens opened with a summer monsoon and they were pelted as they hurried through Soho under umbrellas, getting thoroughly drenched.

  When they located Lionel, he was sat underneath an awning outside a bar. Rain was pouring in a sheet from its edge as if he was behind a waterfall. His reason for being al fresco in inclement weather was nothing to do with a love of nature, but a result of him puffing away on a fag, over a late morning schooner of brandy.

  He had swept-back salt-and-pepper hair, librarian spectacles on the end of his nose, and a somewhat lived-in three-piece suit. Not as lived in as his walnut face, however, which looked not so much ‘lived in’ as ‘trashed after a gatecrashed party’.

  ‘What kind of fucking world is it,’ he said by way of greeting, waving his cigarette, ‘when a working man and private individual whose forebears fought in wars for this country, is put out like the fucking dog for wanting to enjoy the fruits of one of our most successful industries?’

  ‘The twats are in charge of the twat farm, LB,’ Kurt agreed solemnly, patting paper napkins from a metal dispenser on his hair.

  ‘As my dear mother said when she was on her deathbed, I’m bloody glad I’m off to my box, Lionel, because this world is only getting worse. God rest her soul, how right she was.’

  I wonder if the cause of death was passive inhalation lung cancer, Delia thought.

  ‘And who is this bird of paradise?’ Lionel said, peering down his specs at a mildly revolted and very damp Delia, shaking her brolly out and unpeeling her sodden coat.

  ‘My girl Delia. Grab us some coffees would you, Red?’ Kurt said, and Delia’s soul wilted at the flagrant sexism. ‘And another – Courvoisier, right? – for Blunters.’