How Do You Like Me Now?

by Holly Bourne

  His ‘fucking’ is a verbal warning and I immediately stop being playful. But I can’t take it lying down, so I join in the we-must-get-there-now game. I pick up pace and storm ahead, pushing people out the way, dodging and weaving through all these humans having a nicer evening than me. When I hit a child with my handbag and don’t even apologise, Tom looks at me in disgust.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asks. Oh, how he hates me right now. I can visibly see it.

  ‘Nothing!’ I shrug. ‘I just thought you were in a rush to get there?’

  He sighs and you could fit the universe in the space of it. We walk the rest of the way in a terse silence that I’m sure he thinks is my fault but I know for sure is his. This is what I think as I walk alongside the love of my life in silence:

  Leave him. The wise voice says. You have to leave him. Why aren’t you leaving him? Tori, this isn’t going to work out. You must leave him. You are so unhappy.

  We are here. At the little tucked-away French bistro Nigel recommended. Dee and Nigel stand and wave to show us where their table is. I can see Tom approves of the place. It’s got high stone-ceilings that rumble as trains pass overhead. He’s looking around and nodding slightly.

  Leave him. Leave him. Leave him.

  We collide with the happy couple and Tom’s charm switches on. ‘Dee! You’re actually glowing. I never knew that happened in real life.’ He kisses both of her cheeks, then turns to Nigel and shakes his hand with a strong grip. ‘Congratulations, man. And nice to meet you, I’m Tom.’

  They both unfurl like photosynthesising flowers under his charm. I’ve forgotten what it feels like when he’s the lighthouse and he puts his beam onto you full whack. I never get his beam any more. He saves his charm for others, but it’s a potent force – I’m squinting under the glare of it just by watching him. I grab Dee’s engorged stomach and squeal and act delighted when, actually, the sight of it makes me feel weird and surreal. I tell her how good she looks and ask how pregnancy is and say and ask all the things you’re supposed to say and ask.

  We settle down, screeching our chairs back under the table. I order a bottle of wine the moment the waiter turns up. ‘A bottle of Merlot please and three glasses.’

  ‘Four glasses!’ Dee pipes up.

  I do not know what to say to that, but I sense the table stiffen. Even the waiter looks at her stomach and raises an eyebrow.

  ‘Four glasses,’ she repeats.

  A touch of frost has fallen when we return our attention to the menus and ask one another if we’re getting starters. Dee, never one to allow frost to develop anywhere, says, ‘I’m only going to have a trickle. You’re allowed a trickle for fuck’s sake.’

  I’m not sure who she’s saying it to. ‘Of course!’ I jump in. Tom just shrugs. I’d be surprised if he knew even one thing about being pregnant.

  Nigel laughs, showing off a mouth made mainly from fillings. ‘Of course you can, gorgeous. Nobody says you aren’t.’

  ‘Yes they do,’ Dee shoots back. ‘You have no idea what it’s like. I had a trickle last week and someone actually came over to me to tell me I was a bad mother. I’ve got strangers telling me what I can and can’t eat. People are asking me about my sleep patterns and what vitamins I’m taking. I’m not allowed to even carry a shopping bag without some do-gooding meddling twat snatching it off me and telling me it’s bad to carry it.’

  ‘Isn’t she brilliant?’ Nigel asks us, bringing Dee in to kiss the top of her head. ‘Isn’t she just the best?’

  Dee emerges from his armpit blushing and intoxicated by the compliment. ‘It’s true though,’ she protests. ‘Tori, you have no idea how awful it is.’

  Because you’re not telling me, I think. Because this is the first time you’ve told me any of this.

  I scan the menu and panic about the clear lack of vegetarian options. Why do French people hate vegetarians so very much? How are they not all constipated with their refusal to ever eat roughage? French women are all so slim, yet, whenever I come home from a trip to Paris, my stomach resembles that constipation advert where she keeps tipping food into her handbag.

  Tom leans over. ‘You OK with this menu?’ he whispers. ‘Is there anything you can have?’

  I smile at him and grab his leg, giving it a squeeze of affection. ‘I’ll find something. And sorry … about earlier.’

  He kisses my forehead in response. ‘You’re forgiven.’

  The waiter returns brandishing the alcohol, and pours a little for Nigel to sip. I’m expecting Nigel to make one of those jokes like, ‘Yes, that tastes like wine’, as is the custom of anyone chosen to play this weird little game in restaurants. But Nigel takes a small sip and starts swilling it around his mouth like a pro, making unsexy little slosh slosh noises. He tips it around the glass and holds it to the light before nodding his head with arrogant quietness. I try to catch Dee’s eye to pull a face but she’s looking down at her bump and rubbing it absent-mindedly.

  The wine is poured and Dee stops the waiter with her hand when he tries to fill her whole glass. But I do see at least six diners watching her do so, and feel a swell of rage for my friend. Dee notices too and holds up her glass to toast them. ‘Wine chaser,’ she calls across to them. ‘Helps take the edge off the skag comedown.’

  I erupt with laughter. ‘I want to hug you right now,’ I tell her. ‘I think that is the most perfect thing you’ve ever done.’

  She grins back at me. ‘What? What did I do? I wasn’t joking, Tor.’

  All of us laugh again, even Tom, who has said many a time to me that he finds Dee’s humour ‘unfeminine’. Nigel entwines his fingers with hers and kisses their fused hands. ‘Isn’t she something?’ he asks us again rhetorically. ‘God, I’m the luckiest man alive.’

  She rolls her eyes. ‘Nigel, I feel nauseous enough as it is.’ She smiles as she says it and he kisses her hand again. ‘Please kindly do shut up.’

  Everyone orders starters but not one of them is vegetarian. ‘Just a bowl of olives,’ I say to the waiter. I pour more wine into my glass. That first one vanished quickly. I down the second glass within a minute.

  Nigel starts explaining his job to us after we make the mistake of asking about it. Tom and I nod and say ‘yes, right’, although I couldn’t honestly tell you what he does for a living, not even if you put a gun to the heads of my parents. It’s something in the city, it involves finance, but he’s not a banker. He’s very keen to stress that.

  ‘Darling, nobody cares,’ Dee tells him, and the whole table laughs again.

  ‘I still can’t believe your name is actually Nigel,’ I say. The moment it’s out I know I’m already drunker than I thought.

  Dee shrieks with glee, and Nigel, to be fair to him, shakes his head and smiles. ‘I’m named after an actor from Chariots of Fire,’ he explains. ‘It’s all to do with my parents coming from Birkenhead.’

  I’ve forgotten the explanation already because I’ve thought of a brilliant joke. I lean over the table, excited to tell it. ‘You need to be a ticket inspector on a train. Then, when you punch a hole in someone’s ticket they can sing to you, “there’s a hole in my ticket, dear Nigel, dear Nigel”.’

  The happy couple laugh. Tom doesn’t. He does squeeze my leg under the table – so hard that it hurts – and I’m not sure whether it’s a ‘that was funny, dear’ squeeze or a ‘shut the fuck up I hate you’ squeeze. I pour the last trickles of the bottle into my glass and wonder whether it’s possible it means both.

  The food arrives and I order us another bottle of wine. And when I say us, I mean me, because for some reason tonight, oblivion seems like a very welcome option. And you are not a train wreck if you’re drinking too much French Merlot in a restaurant where starters pass the ten pound mark. I toss olive after olive into my mouth and watch how much Nigel loves Dee and how much Dee loves Nigel. He cannot stop touching her. At any given moment there is physical contact. When she speaks, he watches her mouth move with a look on his face of pure adoration.
I pour out another glass and pop another olive into my cheek, remembering how Tom used to look at me like that. When we drove across America together after we met in Sedona, I’d catch him just looking at me. Time after time, he’d glance over with the same look that Nigel wears now. It became a game we played. ‘What?’ I would ask, whenever I caught him doing it. And he’d smile and say ‘nothing’. And then we’d both smile because we knew exactly what it meant. It meant we were falling in love but were too scared to say it just yet. ‘Nothing’ meant everything. These days though, Tom doesn’t look at me like that ever. Even if I have his penis encased in my mouth.

  Next to me, Tom slurps at a bowl of mussels, and it makes me never want him to give me head ever again. Not that he’s given me much head anyway. He told me once that I tasted funny and wouldn’t do it again. My glass is empty again. So I fill it. The olives are gone. When did that happen? I push my fingers into the puddle of oil at the bottom of the bowl and fish out small bits of pepper to eat.

  The acoustics in here are clattery and voices get lost as they rise up to the high ceilings. Nigel asks Tom about his job and gets excited when Tom says he’s a travel journalist. Everyone is always excited by Tom’s job, and by God does he love talking about it and getting them even more whipped up in adoration and jealousy. He and Nigel then get lost in a discussion about all the different places they’ve been to and get excited when they’ve been to the same ones. It quickly becomes a friendly one-upmanship of who has the best story about going somewhere in the world. Dee and I pull faces at one another. She’s only been abroad once: with me, on an ill-advised trip to Spain when we were twenty-three. We both got food poisoning on the first night and had to take it in turns to shit in the bin when the other one was in the loo.

  ‘The thing that shocked me about Japan was …’

  ‘Cambodia? Oh yes. Did you go to the …?’

  ‘The steak in Argentina? Oh yes. Amazing. Brilliant.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not my favourite waterfall. My favourite waterfall has to be … not very many people know about it …’

  I drag my chair closer to Dee. ‘Remember when we had to take it in turns to shit in the bin?’ I ask her.

  ‘I have never travelled since.’

  I pick up my wine glass and drain what’s left in it. I reach over for the new bottle and pour more in. Our food arrives and stops the men talking about the most authentic place to get good food in Changhai. I had to order the goats-cheese tart even though I hate and despise goats cheese. That is all they had. I try to pick out the goats cheese without Tom noticing as he hates it that I’m a vegetarian enough as it is. But the bitter tang has contaminated the whole tart so I just mush it around my plate. I steal one of Tom’s potatoes and he gets annoyed and tells me I should’ve ordered my own. There is a third bottle of wine and Tom’s looking at me like I shouldn’t be being the way I’m being. I think I’m fine personally. I’m not drunk. And even if I am, that is a perfectly allowed thing to be. The food has been taken away and I find myself leaning over the table and promising Dee that I’ll throw her the best baby shower the world has ever known.

  ‘There’ll be fucking GIN,’ I’m shouting at her as she laughs. ‘And a Colin the Caterpillar cake.’

  The puddings arrive and I’ve ordered one apparently. I’m so hungry I shovel giant spoonfuls of chocolate mousse into my mouth, hardly even tasting it. The second it’s finished, I hate myself. I can picture it travelling through my bloodstream, depositing itself as cellulite onto my arse. I think about making myself sick. Even though I promised myself, all those years ago, that I’d never do that again. God, the way Nigel looks at Dee. It hurts. I never knew it was possible to feel so lonely when you’re in a relationship. But, to be fair, Tom is being nice about how wasted I am. Even though I’ve just spilled the water jug all over the table.

  ‘Feel for me,’ he says to the other two. ‘I’m the one who has to somehow get her home.’ But his arm is around me and he’s rubbing my hair like it’s all quite cute and he doesn’t mind really. He’s playing the role of affectionate, ‘isn’t-she-quite-sweet-despite-this’ boyfriend and he could easily get a BAFTA for it.

  ‘They really are the most underrated cakes,’ I’m saying to nobody in particular. ‘It’s not even that they’re a caterpillar. It’s more that the ratio of buttercream to cake is perfection. I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t enjoy a piece of Colin.’

  The French waiter is putting on my leather jacket and I’m asking him why he’s not permanently constipated. Dee is cackling with laughter. Tom is saying ‘oh dear’, but still puts his arm around me as he steers me outside. Dusk has almost fallen. The Thames glitters in the twilight. The heat from the day is almost evaporated but the air still sings with balmy festivities. I’m hugging Nigel. I’m hugging Nigel so tight.

  ‘You fucking take care of her,’ I’m saying to him. I am not letting go. I’m repeating it over and over. I’m gripping on to him hard. ‘You fucking take care of her, you hear me?’

  He expertly extracts himself from my grip and reassures me that he will. I tell him I love him and I’m so happy for them and I start to cry and they all laugh again. Dee hugs me and I can feel her stomach getting in the way and that makes me want to cry harder. I bury my face into her hair. ‘I’ll get two caterpillar cakes,’ I garble. ‘Amy will love it.’

  ‘Drink some water before you go to bed, Tor.’ She releases my hug.

  We say goodbye and I’m waving and watching how Nigel folds Dee in as they walk off. I want to stand here forever and watch them walk away because it could be a metaphor.

  ‘Come on,’ Tom tugs at my hand. We turn and stagger back along the Thames.

  I thought everything would be OK because Tom was so very lovely in the restaurant. Yet he’s hardened right back up again. He drops my hand, he walks too fast, he does not speak to me. I can hardly keep up with him. It’s so busy and he’s less drunk and therefore has better dexterity for navigating the crowds. I keep colliding with people, saying sorry, tasting wine on my breath. There’s a sunset and it’s pretty and everyone wants a photo of it and so do I but Tom is too far ahead for me to stop and take one. I do not know where other Tom went. The Tom who seemed to like me only ten minutes ago. The Tom who promised my friend he would get me home safe. I keep picturing how Nigel looked at Dee. I keep remembering Tom saying ‘nothing’ in the jeep when he really meant ‘I love you’. The Tom before his eyes had creases around them, before his stomach started to hang slightly over his waistband, before we knew one another too long to be excited by the prospect of the other’s existence any longer. Where is this going? Why aren’t we leaving each other when it’s so clear we hate each other? Oh, I am crying. I have ground to a halt and I’m crying. I watch Tom walk further and further away. He’s becoming a small dot, he’s merging with the crowds of people who are out here having such a better time than us. I see the back of his tiny head stop when he finally notices I’m not walking alongside him.

  He turns and walks back and his head gets bigger and I can see his face is angry but he’s trying to pretend it isn’t. ‘What now?’ he asks, irritation hacking out like a cough. I am being difficult again, even though I try so very hard not to be difficult for Tom.

  ‘What’s going on with us, Tom?’ I ask him. I stand there and I just plain ask him. Why have I been so scared to do this?

  The annoyance on his face evolves into anger – his eyebrows knitting together. ‘What? Nothing. Come on, we’ll miss our train.’

  I am not moving. I am staying right here. With the water glittering and St Paul’s reaching up into the sunset. If I’m going to break my heart, I’m going to do it with a view as pretty as this one.

  ‘Do you love me?’ I slur at him. ‘Properly love me?’

  ‘Of course I do, Tor. Come on. You’re wankered and you know it.’

  ‘THEN WHY WON’T YOU MARRY ME?’ I find myself screaming.

  Pigeons scatter, even the ones with gammy legs. Tourists stop, eve
n the ones who are in rush. In this crazy city where nobody notices anything, my emotional display breaks the social conditioning of London. I’m crying. I’m crying so hard, like there’s a switch for my tear ducts that’s been switched on. My chest heaves as sobs break through my ribs and expel themselves in gasps. Tom’s face bleeds with humiliation. I don’t feel guilty. No I don’t. I feel angry.

  ‘Tor,’ he whispers, with such menace I know I should probably be scared. ‘Let’s. Go. Home.’

  I shake my head so hard the whole of London wobbles behind my eyes. ‘I won’t go home until you tell me why you won’t marry me.’

  ‘I didn’t think you wanted to get married,’ Tom argues. Crossing his arms. Digging in. Of course he’s going to use logic on this.

  ‘I don’t believe in stupid expensive weddings, that’s different from not believing in marriage,’ I counter. ‘You wouldn’t know though, would you? Because you NEVER LET ME TALK ABOUT IT. Why not? How do I know you’re committed, Tom? How do I know you’re not going to dump me for some twenty-four-year-old who writes a travel blog about fucking … fucking … LAOS?’

  He grabs my hand and tries to pull me away from my self-made scene. ‘OWW!’ I yell and a man stops to intervene.

  ‘Are you all right?’ He shoots Tom an evil look. That’s too much for him. Tom storms off down the river, shaking his head, swearing at people to get the fuck out of his way.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I tell this stranger. Even though I’m crying. Even though I can hardly walk straight. I must catch up with Tom. I need to let it all out. We need to talk about this. We can’t go on any more not talking about this. People part for me like I’m Moses. You’re only invisible in London until you start sobbing publicly, then you’re visible enough for everyone to avoid you.

  ‘Tom! Wait!’ I yell at him. He does stop, his head bent upwards, like the sky will rescue him from his own live-in girlfriend. I scuttle towards him and manage to catch him up. I pull on his sleeve. I pick up where I left off. I start really crying again. ‘You hate me,’ I inform him, through my veil of tears. ‘Why do you stay with me when you hate me? Why won’t you commit? What is wrong with me?’