The Last Laugh

by Tracy Bloom

  ‘1996?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes.’ I nod.

  He stands up straight, his mouth slightly open, a strand of long auburn hair waving in mid-air.

  ‘Wow,’ he says eventually. ‘So… er, did you meet at a Spice Girls concert or something?’

  I laugh. The thought of Mark at a Spice Girls concert is laughable.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You were fans though, right?’

  I can see Dominic trying to work out what’s going on here. A middle-aged woman walking into a hairdressers to ask for a nineties Ginger-Spice-inspired haircut is odd to say the least, but roll a divorce into that, and something is definitely weird.

  ‘I was a fan. He kind of was,’ I explain. I lean forward and pick up the photo printed from the internet. ‘This was the Spice Girls at the 1997 BRIT Awards.’

  ‘I know,’ says Dominic. ‘I’ve seen it on YouTube, like, a million times.’

  ‘We watched it live on the TV,’ I tell him. ‘Me and my husband. Well, he was just my boyfriend then. I thought she looked amazing. I had never seen anything like it, she had such balls.’

  ‘Not in those pants she didn’t,’ says Dominic, returning to fiddle with the back of my head. ‘You couldn’t smuggle a peanut into them.’

  ‘Geri made me proud to be ginger. I’d been born ginger but ever since my teens I’d dyed it blonde because, well, you would, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Of course you would.’

  ‘I figured I’d go back to my natural hair colour just like hers and then have that swish of blonde across the front,’ I say, running my finger across the yellow streak in the picture. ‘I didn’t tell Mark – I thought he wouldn’t like it. Gentlemen prefer blondes and all that. But he loved it. I mean, really loved it.’

  I feel myself blushing at the memory of what happened when I got home with my new hair.

  ‘Aaaaaah,’ says Dominic, emerging from behind me again. ‘I get it. This is a “Fuck you, cheating bastard husband, I’m going to remind you what you are missing” haircut.’

  ‘Something like that,’ I say.

  Though it wasn’t really. When Dominic put it like that it seemed petty and I didn’t have time for petty any more. Petty was pointless. Petty was too small a word for my life now. I wanted to live in the big part of life, not the small, vague, quiet, safe sections I seemed to have frequented recently. A halfway-house attempt at an image change felt unsatisfying, weak, a waste of time. My actions needed to be big and bold and full of life and vigour. Hence there was no question of an inch off here and there and a change to a slightly different shade of blonde. Hence it was Spice Girls hair or nothing, 1996 hair or nothing. And it wasn’t about some weird revenge on Mark, it was about living life in a bigger, bolder, brighter way than I had done for a very long time.

  ‘He asked me to marry him,’ I tell Dominic.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, glancing sideways at me, hands poised an inch above my head.

  ‘He asked me to marry him the night Geri Halliwell stood on the stage in a Union Jack at the BRIT Awards.’

  ‘Had he planned it?’

  ‘No. We’d had a bit to drink and when the show finished I was messing around, you know, pretending to be Geri. I even went and grabbed an England flag left over from the World Cup and tied it round me and started singing “Wannabe”.’

  Dominic instantly starts singing the lyrics into his comb.

  ‘Mark pretended to be Posh Spice,’ I told him after he’d done a couple of lines. ‘You know, sticking his nose in the air and strutting.’

  ‘How she bagged David Beckham I have no idea,’ commented Dominic.

  ‘We were crying with laughter.’ I stop as the tears spring to my eyes. ‘Then he just dropped to his knees in the middle of the living room, threw his arms open wide and said, “We have got to get married. Will you marry me, Jenny?”’

  Dominic gasps, his hand flying to his mouth as though he’s about to cry.

  ‘What did you say?’ he asks me.

  ‘Yes, of course. A thousand times yes.’ I can feel my face falling. I can feel my heart falling.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ says Dominic, appearing at the side of my face this time. ‘Do you know what this reminds me of?’

  ‘A troll?’ I ask, looking at my reflection.

  ‘No way! This is looking awesome,’ he says, waving his hand over my head as though casting a spell. ‘No, it reminds me of when I got a tattoo of David Beckham.’

  ‘David Beckham?’

  ‘Oh yeah, I’m obsessed with him and of course his hair.’

  ‘But a tattoo?’

  ‘Just a small one on my thigh. So very discreet.’

  ‘Not sure you could ever class a tattoo of David Beckham as discreet.’

  ‘It was a present to myself on my thirtieth birthday but I didn’t tell Andrew. I thought it would be a nice surprise.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘No, he hated it. He said I had to have a tattoo of him to make up for it.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Good God, no! He’s bald. I told him it would look like I had a Weeble on my leg. We nearly broke up.’

  ‘I’m not surprised if you told him he looked like a Weeble.’

  ‘Oh, I’m always calling him a Weeble, especially when I’m cross with him. Like this morning, he deliberately took over half an hour in the bathroom when he knew I had to be in here early. Hence I look a shambles.’

  He doesn’t. He’s neat as a pin in a tight-fitting T-shirt tucked into pristine jeans and box-fresh trainers peeping out at the floor.

  ‘I said as he came out, “How long does it take to comb Weeble hair?”’

  ‘I bet he didn’t like that.’

  ‘Oh, it’s water off a duck’s back with him. He’ll come home tonight having forgotten all about it and wonder why I’m still in a strop. You have to be proper nasty to him or else it doesn’t get through at all. It’s exhausting. Makes him really hard to live with.’

  ‘So why do you then?’

  He stops and stares at my reflection, then shrugs and carries on weaving into the top of my hair.

  ‘Because I love the flippin’ Weeble head, that’s why,’ he says without making eye contact. As though he’s admitting a failing and is embarrassed about it. Very different to the open way he grumped and complained about his partner’s weaknesses moments earlier.

  I wonder why we are often quick to explain to anyone who will listen the failings of our nearest and dearest. What mistakes they have made, how they have let us down in some small way, what they have done that has clashed with our world view and caused discord. And yet we rarely readily declare our warmth of feeling when we are reminded of the things that attracted us to them in the first place.

  I look in the mirror and can see me and Mark messing around in that sitting room nearly two decades ago, laughing ourselves silly then agreeing to spend the rest of our lives together. Our life together fast-forwards to now as I see the petty disagreements and differences swallowing up and crushing the moments spent dancing and singing our way through life.

  Killing them like cancer.

  Eighteen

  I can sense something is wrong before I’ve even entered the house. It’s late Saturday afternoon. It’s a warm sunny day. I can hear birds tweeting. The hanging basket I bought is still alive – a miracle, seeing as I have a knack of forgetting to water plants, forcing ourselves and our neighbours to watch the slow miserable death of many a pot plant decorating our garden. All should be well on the home front but the door is open. Unusual to say the least. As with all our neighbours, we tend to barricade ourselves in, suspicious of inviting casual callers, careful not to appear too welcoming. But not today. Today the shiny black painted door with the matt-silver door knocker is slung wide open, ready for any spontaneous passerby to pop in.

  ‘Hello,’ I shout as I step into the hall. It crosses my mind we might have been burgled. There might even be a hooded robber rifling through my cupboards as we s
peak.

  ‘Mum,’ shouts George from somewhere.

  He sounds agitated but then he often sounds agitated.

  I dash into the kitchen to check he’s not tied to a chair but he is sitting on the table, head bent low. He looks up at me, tear stains down his face.

  ‘What on earth has happened?’ I say, rushing over and grabbing his shoulders.

  ‘It’s Betsy,’ he moans. ‘She’s gone. Got out. She never stays out. N-n-n-n-never. I think she might have been r-r-r-run over.’

  He starts proper crying now. Sobbing, his shoulders heaving up and down.

  ‘Shhhhh,’ I say, rubbing his back. ‘Shhhhh. We’ll find her. You just calm down and we’ll find her.’

  ‘We won’t,’ he sobs. ‘She’s dead, I know she’s dead.’

  My heart contracts. ‘You don’t know that,’ I say desperately, putting my arms around him. We rock slowly together as I wait for the sobs to die down so I can get out of him exactly what has happened.

  ‘Why’s the front door wide open?’ says Mark, bursting in through the kitchen door behind me.

  ‘Betsy might be run over,’ gasps George, his head flying up from my shoulder.

  ‘What!’ I hear Ellie exclaim. She must have followed Mark in. ‘Are you serious? Oh my God, Mother, what have you done to your hair?’ she cries as I turn to face her and she catches sight of my new look.

  ‘Of course I’m serious,’ says George, wiping his sleeve across his nose. He glances at my hair but my change in appearance is nothing compared to the disappearance of his beloved dog.

  ‘She got out,’ I add. ‘And she’s not come back. George is very worried she might have been run over.’

  Both Mark and Ellie are now staring at me, Ellie in horror. I’m not sure if this is in response to my hair or the disappearance of Betsy. Mark is frowning, which is actually pretty much his normal face in regards to me.

  ‘We don’t know she’s actually been run over yet,’ I say. ‘She might just have got lost, or stuck somewhere.’ Inwardly I curse the fact that I never got round to microchipping her. That would have been some reassurance at least but somehow it never got to the top of the to-do list.

  ‘Let’s all go out and look for her,’ I say.

  ‘But I’ve looked everywhere,’ wails George. ‘I’ve been out for two hours, going up and down every road on the estate. I can’t find her anywhere. I know she’s been run over, I just know it, and it’s all my fault.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, darling,’ I tell him. ‘How can it be your fault?’

  ‘It is his fault if he let her out,’ says Ellie.

  ‘You can’t say that,’ I tell her, looking to Mark to get involved in this family trauma rather than me flailing around for the right words and actions on my own.

  He’s looking at his phone. Actually looking at his phone. We are dealing with the possible death of the family pet here and he is looking at his damn phone.

  ‘Mark!’ I cry.

  ‘What?’ he says, flipping his head up in surprise.

  ‘Do something?’ I ask, my eyes wide in wonder. I watch as he glances around and it finally triggers that there is a crisis going on right under his nose.

  ‘Come on, guys,’ he says, putting an arm around Ellie’s shoulders. ‘She’ll be back,’ he shrugs.

  ‘But it’s Betsy,’ mutters Ellie as an actual tear falls down her face. This is Ellie, who normally reserves genuine feelings for ludicrously expensive brand names I have never heard of. This is a surprising reaction.

  Mark wraps her in a bear hug.

  ‘Look, if the worst comes to the worst, we could get a puppy,’ he says into her neck.

  ‘Really?’ she exclaims, pulling away and staring at him, her eyes wide in delight.

  ‘What!’ I shriek.

  George starts shaking his head.

  ‘Like a Labrador or something,’ Mark blunders on.

  ‘Phoebe has a black Labrador,’ Ellie says excitedly. ‘Seriously cool, Dad, good choice.’

  They high five. Yes, they actually high five.

  ‘I was thinking more of a blonde one though,’ says Mark, oblivious to the horrified stares from myself and George. ‘Don’t you think they look nicer?’

  He looks at me. I have no idea how to arrange my face, never mind what to say, so shocking is the conversation between my husband and my daughter.

  ‘I think you mean golden,’ I eventually say through gritted teeth. ‘Not blonde. You don’t call them blonde Labradors.’

  ‘Whatever,’ he shrugs. ‘I just prefer the blonde… I mean, golden ones, that’s all.’

  I literally cannot speak. I look over at George. His chin is down in his chest. I squeeze his hand.

  ‘Betsy’s not dead yet,’ I say firmly. I try to control my breathing as the anger surges up inside me. ‘What we are going to do is we are all going to go out and look for her.’

  I glare at Mark and Ellie, daring them to protest. Daring them to utter another word about their way-too-hasty replacing of our beloved Betsy.

  ‘And we’ll put missing posters up,’ I say to George. ‘Someone will have seen her. We will find her. Betsy is still with us, I know she is. We won’t give up on her yet.’

  * * *

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  I hadn’t heard Mark come into the bedroom. I am sitting on the bed with my back to the door, head in my hands. We’d all been out pounding the streets and putting pictures of Betsy on as many lamp posts as we thought we could get away with. There is still no sign but I am remaining optimistic. I have to. We can’t lose Betsy. Not now. I can’t cope with loss now. But I am shattered. My body was screaming at me that I wasn’t fit for such exertion, which I had ignored until we arrived home, then crawled upstairs and collapsed on the bed.

  But as soon as I hear Mark speak I rear up. And without warning a voice in my head shrieks, ‘Tell him. Tell him now.’

  Tell him what, I want to scream back. I know you’re shagging someone and by the way, I have terminal cancer. I roll both facts around in my head. No, not ready, still not ready. We agreed, I tell my cancer self. We agreed not to let you out yet.

  Instead I tell him about my feet.

  ‘My feet are bloody killing me,’ I say. ‘I just needed to get these shoes off.’

  ‘Right,’ he nods.

  He stands in the doorway just looking at me. He never stands still to look at me. Never. He’s still not mentioned my hair. Is it conjuring up memories of happier times or can’t he put into words how stupid I look? I watch as he casts his eyes awkwardly around the room as though building up to say something. He coughs politely, opens his mouth and then shuts it again. He walks around the bed and sits next to me.

  Again, not normal. This is not normal bedroom behaviour in our household. We move about that room independently, coming and going at different speeds and times, rarely engaging, rarely interacting. I go to bed at ten; he rarely comes up before eleven thirty. He gets up and washes before seven, leaving me to wallow until after eight, rising to make sure the kids have left for school. If we had a speeded-up video cam record of our movements about that room it would look like we never touched or spoke to each other.

  Mark reaches over and picks up my hand. Our thighs are touching on the side of the bed. I look at him. Has my transformation actually made a positive impact? Then it hits me like a ton of manure what is coming. He isn’t holding my hand to tell me that now I look like Ginger Spice he is going to fall back in love with me. He is about to confess his affair. I can see it coming like a tidal wave. He is about to shatter our family, he is about to leave me. This is that moment when my life falls apart – though unbeknown to him it is already in tatters.

  I can’t bear it. I can’t bear to give him his moment. This isn’t his time to be the breaker of bad news. If anyone is breaking bad news around here it is damn well going to be me. I have to think fast.

  ‘I’ve downloaded Jerry Maguire on Amazon,’ I say quickly.

 
‘What?’

  ‘I’ve downloaded Jerry Maguire on Amazon. For us to watch tonight.’

  ‘Jenny, really, I…’

  ‘We have to watch it tonight,’ I say, getting up, hoping distance will destroy his momentum. ‘We must watch it tonight.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because… because I already downloaded it and I think you only get twenty-four hours to watch it so if we don’t watch it tonight it will be a waste of money.’

  ‘I’ve told you about not downloading stuff until you’re sure you’re going to be able to watch it.’

  ‘But I am sure. What’s there to stop us?’

  He stares back at me. If anyone can stop a husband leaving a wife it’s Tom Cruise, surely. On second thoughts, I might have really screwed this up.

  ‘The kids are going to watch it with us,’ I lie.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yep,’ I nod. ‘They’re both really looking forward to watching Jerry Maguire with us. And we really should spend time together tonight as everyone is so upset about Betsy being missing.’

  He’s looking totally confused now. Unsurprising really. He planned to share his infidelity and instead he’s come home to find his wife has been replaced by a Spice Girl, the dog has run off and his teenage children allegedly want to spend Saturday night in with him, watching Tom Cruise get stressed. Things are certainly unusual around here.

  ‘I’ll go and get the popcorn on, shall I?’ I head for the door.

  ‘Jenny?’ I hear him say.

  I’m forced to turn. I can’t pretend I haven’t heard him. I feel like I’m about to open a door I had temporarily barricaded.

  ‘I know what you’re going to say,’ I tell him, walking forward and putting my arms around him.

  ‘You do?’ he says, looking up at me, a very pained expression on his face.

  ‘Yes,’ I nod. ‘You complete me too.’