How Do You Like Me Now?

by Holly Bourne

  I hope this has alleviated your concerns somewhat. Feel free to ring me if you have any further questions.

  Kindest regards

  Jenny

  *

  From: Tori@WhoTheFckAmI.com

  To: Jenny@Hawkpublishing.com

  CC: Kate@Nightingaleagents.com

  Subject: RE RE: Femme Fatale Festival

  Hi Jenny

  Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I’ve CC’d my agent into this just so she knows what’s going on. I hope that’s OK?

  I have seen the backlash to the event. I’ve had to come off my accounts today because I’m being trolled. A lot of them are fans and readers. I think if you’re going to make an event tongue-in-cheek you may need to be clearer about it …

  I really don’t want to be difficult but I feel very uncomfortable with this event. I am an expert in being true to yourself and finding strength in yourself, not in long-term heterosexual relationships. It would be great if we could look at this situation quite urgently as I don’t want to damage my brand by pretending I’m an expert in something I’m not.

  Sorry if this email has made things more confusing, not less confusing.

  Regards

  Tori

  *

  From: Kate@Nightingaleagents.com

  To: Tori@WhoTheFckAmI.com

  Subject:

  Tor, what’s going on?

  I’ve just been CC’d into an email with you and your publisher about the FFF? Everything OK? How are those chapters coming along?

  Kate x

  *

  From: Tori@WhoTheFckAmI.com

  To: Kate@NightingaleAgents.com

  Subject:

  Kate

  I’m so angry at Hawk! They’ve shoved me onto some fucking piss stain of an event and they won’t cancel it. I’m going to pull out and I thought things might get messy so I cc’d you in. I can’t BELIEVE they think it’s a good idea to have me up on stage, spouting off about how in love I am!? Do they not understand my brand at all!? FFS. The whole thing is a mess. I’m so embarrassed.

  Tori x

  *

  From: Kate@Nightingaleagents.com

  To: Tori@WhoTheFckAmI.com

  Subject: RE No title

  Tori, are you free for me to call you ASAP?

  I’m sorry you’re upset and I’ll speak to Hawk about it. However, FFF is a huge opportunity and you have a great relationship with them. It would be a bad idea to upset their scheduling this late on. Also, regarding your brand. I thought you were happy with how we were moving this on? What The F*ck Now? is all about your thirties, not your twenties, and about you and Rock Man’s relationship. I do agree with Hawk that this is a good place to let your readers and fans know this.

  But of course I don’t want you to do anything you’re uncomfortable with. Please let me know when I can call you.

  Kate x

  *

  From: Tori@WhoTheFckAmI.com

  To: Jenny@Hawkpublishing.com

  Subject: RE RE RE Femme Fatale Festival

  Hi again Jenny

  I’m really sorry if I’ve confused everyone with these emails. I think I just got thrown by the online backlash and freaked out a bit. I hope I’ve not been too much of a headache.

  I’ve had a chat with Kate and I can see why you’ve pitched me in this way. It’s a really good idea actually! I think I just got the wrong end of the stick. So, please don’t worry. I won’t pull out. I’m looking forward to unleashing this new brand of Tori on the world.

  Anyway, looking forward to seeing you next week at the festival.

  Tori x

  *

  Tori’s WhoTheF*ckAmI? Official Fan Page:

  To my F*ckers,

  I’m SO EXCITED about this year’s Femme Fatale Festival in London. Who’s coming? I’ll be speaking about monogamy and the complexities of modern relationships at the Stand By Your Man event at 7p.m. Yes that IS a tongue-in-cheek title so calm yourself! I’ve not been dragged off to Stepford overnight. With that cleared up, expect much swearing, hilarious anecdotes of the banality of long-term love with Rock Man and … drum roll please … AN ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT MY NEW BOOK! Only a few tickets left so go go go.

  458 likes

  *

  What sort of outfit projects the message that you are a strong, independent woman who is exploiting the fact she’s in a heteronormative relationship to further her career?

  That is what I’m thinking as I stare at my vast cupboard of clothes.

  Do I wear a smart dress? Does a dress, one of those tight corporate ones in bright colours like purple or red, balance femininity with independence? Or should I wear a trouser suit? I do not own a trouser suit, but I have a few hours before I become a national hypocrite to buy one.

  I repeatedly go through my rails, pushing clothes from one end to the other like the act will magically dislodge a perfect garment I missed the last eight times.

  I cannot believe I am going through with this.

  ‘I have nothing to wear!’ I shout to Tom. He doesn’t hear me though because he’s watching football with his headphones on. The headphones are something new we are trying as a compromise on how much sport he watches. Tom watches the football with his headphones on, while I curl up next to him on the sofa and watch something on my iPad with my headphones on. That way we can spend quality time together without having to talk, or even have our brains in the same reality. Sometimes, he even rubs my feet as he watches the football that I can’t hear.

  I pull on a menagerie of different combinations and examine my body from all angles. This is never the best of ideas because then I focus on all the bits of my body that I don’t like. Like my shoulders, and how they’re a hint too bulky. Or the top two inches of my thighs and how they bulge out. I used to be able to cover my thighs with longer tops but it’s not been fashionable to wear a long, flattering anything for two years now, and every top in the universe ends just above the belly button. Oh, I don’t want to be doing this event. Everything about this event is wrong. Everything about this book is wrong. Everything about my relationship is wrong and I’m about to sit on a stool, in front of four hundred people, and pretend the exact opposite. I pad about our room in my underwear, rifling through drawers for a perfect jumper I know doesn’t actually exist. I’m on the verge of giving up and just turning up in my pants when I get a blurt of inspiration.

  Taylor Faithful.

  What does she wear? I remember she looked amazing in Berlin, and she was talking about her husband then. I will just copy her. She will know how to utilise a trouser suit.

  I flop onto my stomach and open my laptop. This disrupts Cat who lets out an annoyed mew and opens one eye lazily to give me the biggest of all cat glares. ‘Oh get over it,’ I mutter, as I type in Taylor’s name and pull up her page to look for photos of her past events and …

  And …

  NO.

  I let out such a loud yelp of despair that Cat scatters off the bed.

  Dear Spiky Women,

  I hope you respond to this post with grace and sensitivity. My friends, my dear friends, it is with great sadness I announce that my husband and I are separated.

  Some loves last forever, like evergreen trees. But other loves are only one cycle of seasons. A spring full of hopeful bloom, a summer of hazy sun, an autumn where the leaves fall even though you don’t want them to, and a winter where the branches are empty. Sometimes, after these winters, you can find spring again. The buds can grow back, the blossom will return. But sometimes you only get the one season. And, in this amazing, beautiful, challenging relationship between my husband and me, we have only had one season.

  I do hope you can respect our privacy at this difficult time. I am grieving something I’d never thought I’d grieve but I know there is my own personal spring waiting for me around the corner. Until then, the only way out is through and I’ll be taking a break from this account indefinitely.

  See you on the other side, you spiky, wonde
rful people.

  Much love

  Taylor x

  Tom runs into the room, his eyes wide with panic.

  ‘What is it? I heard a scream. Are you OK? Oh my God, Tori. What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s … it’s …’ I cannot talk. My mouth cannot function. The shock has rendered me incapacitated.

  ‘What is it? Tor!? Is it Dee? Is she OK? Talk to me Tor!’

  I cannot. My heart is sliding down to my ankles, my hope has strapped on an explosive vest and it’s not even demanded a ransom before blowing itself to pieces. ‘It’s … it’s …’ I point to the screen and Tom snatches the laptop off me, reading under his breath. He lets out an angry exhale.

  ‘Tor! I thought someone had fucking died.’ He shoves the laptop back at me.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ I manage to get out. ‘I feel so let down …’

  He’s shaking his head. ‘I honestly thought something terrible had happened,’ he mutters.

  ‘I didn’t mean to scare you,’ I get out. ‘I was just shocked, that’s all.’

  His anger is hardly contained, it is seeping out of him. His fists are clenched.

  ‘Just don’t freak me out like that again, OK?’ he says. He slams the door behind him and it shakes the room. I am too many emotions now. I read the post again and feel bitterness crawl under the gaps of me.

  I trusted you.

  I Google search her name to see if I can glean any more information. I need to know everything and then maybe I can understand it. Maybe I can rework my blueprint for forever happiness which was her blueprint for forever happiness. There are a few small news stories about it. She’s just about famous enough for this to be vaguely newsworthy.

  Self-confessed ‘difficult’ lifestyle guru, Taylor Faithful, has announced she is divorcing her husband of seven years. In a short post to her fans, Taylor confirmed her split. Her bestselling memoir Spiky Around The Edges has sold over three million copies.

  There’s nothing else. No additional information. I try to think of any reason for this divorce that I can live with. He’s had an affair? But why would he have an affair if he truly loved her for being a difficult woman? Does that mean if you’re a difficult woman you’re one day too difficult to love and so men go and shag some basic woman as an act of defiance? Or did they just drift apart? Like everyone does. Does everyone drift apart? I can feel myself spiralling even though I need to be dressed and preened in an hour’s time. I don’t know what I’m wearing yet, and I’ve not done my make-up. I will need to put on three different creams before I even start my foundation and they each take about five minutes to sink in between applications so I should really be getting a move on, but I can’t. I feel … I feel …

  Dee answers her phone right away. ‘I’m too fat to give you advice on what to wear to this thing,’ she says. ‘I hate you for not having a giant blubber ball tied to your stomach while I can only wear a sack.’

  ‘You’re not fat,’ I say. ‘You are blooming and gorgeous and pregnant and it won’t last forever. And that is not why I’m calling.’

  I hear the angry crunch of her eating crisps down the line. ‘What else has happened?’

  I pause, hoping she, at least, understands. Though I’ve been scared to tell her my problems lately. They all seem insignificant compared to her heartburn and her worries about childbirth and if she’ll be a good mother.

  ‘Taylor Faithful is getting divorced. She just announced it online.’

  ‘No way! Your guru?’

  I nod into my phone, so relieved she gets it. ‘Yep. Basically, if she can’t make it last, we are all screwed. I can’t believe it. I’m traumatised, Dee, totally traumatised. She’s been lying to me this whole time!’

  Dee laughs. ‘She might not have been! This may have been a complete shock to her too.’

  I shake my head into the phone this time. ‘No. She must’ve known something was off. You always know something is off. There must’ve been at least one time where “It’s Too Late” by Carole King or “Foundations” by Kate Nash came on the radio and she found herself weeping and then had to pretend to him she was only crying because she was on her period.’

  ‘That’s a very specific example, Tor. I wonder why the hell you came up with that …’

  ‘Shut it.’

  Dee laughs and then goes, ‘Oh bugger. I’ve woken up the baby. Calm down in there! Seriously foetus, please, oww. Oww. Leave me alone. Stop kicking.’

  I change the phone to my other ear as I examine my crows feet in the mirror.

  ‘Kicking again?’

  ‘Yep. Nigel keeps making jokes that it means it’ll be good at football and I keep hitting him. If it’s a boy, I refuse to let it be good at football. I am not spending my Saturday mornings in some freezing field somewhere. Oh, hang on, it’s calmed down now.’ She pauses and takes a breath to eat more crisps. The crunches echo down the line and I wait for her to swallow.

  ‘She was my hope,’ I wail. The shock repeating on me like reflux. ‘My one hope. She was tricky and spiky and yet she still found a man to love her forever. Now she’s alone.’

  ‘Hey!’ Dee says. ‘How is she your only hope? What about me and Nigel? I got disciplined at work for my Halloween costume – that’s spiky too, thank you very much. And he loves me for exactly who I am.’

  I bite my lip. I’m glad we’re on the phone so she can’t see my face. ‘Apart from you,’ I say, rolling my eyes to myself. Sorry, but Nigel and Dee have only been together for seven months. I cannot base any relationship idol-worshipping on couples who’ve only been together seven months. They’re off their tits on serotonin right now. ‘You know what I mean though anyway. I just … I thought I knew her. I feel duped!’

  ‘So she needs to stay in an unhappy relationship forever, just so you can believe in her book?’

  ‘Umm, yes.’

  Dee is quiet a moment. ‘You still seeing that counsellor?’

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘Well, you may want to repeat back what you’ve just said to her. It will make her day. The depth here, Tor, the depth!’

  I shake my head. ‘Don’t, Dee,’ I plead. ‘I’m about to talk to a room full of people about how happy my relationship is. They’re calling me an “expert” in the programme. Just because I am in a relationship, that somehow makes me an expert. And now I’ve just lost the one rock in my entire attitude towards love. It’s a joke. My whole life … it’s a joke. I’m even considering buying a trouser suit.’

  ‘God, Tor. Things really are bad, aren’t they?’

  I feel tears threatening to spill and push them back in with my thumb. I don’t have time to cry and let my skin calm down enough to apply the first batch of cream. I’m already going to have to skip out some stages. Also, Tom will get annoyed at me for crying. Again. He says I’m falling apart too often. He calls it ‘a bad habit’. ‘I don’t know, Dee. I’ve got a bad feeling about this event. About this book. About everything.’

  ‘Tor, it will be fine! You’re going to be great, you always are. As for Tom … well … don’t think about it right now. But if Taylor can leave … well, you may want to think about that. But, for now, just get through this event first. You’ll be amazing. You’re the strongest person I know.’

  I laugh. A short burst of it that takes me by surprise. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yes! You don’t buy into nonsense because you’re insecure and overcompensating. That’s why we’re friends, remember? But it takes strength to reject all the things the world tells you to be.’ Another crackling sound as she takes another mouthful of crisps. ‘You show me that you are strong every day. So today is going to be fine. And your relationship … whatever happens with that, Tor, you will be fine, because you are strong and you are fighting for a life you deserve.’

  ‘Why are you so much better at cheering me up than Tom?’

  She laughs. ‘Because I’m a woman. Because I’ve been socialised into knowing that showing your emotions is a healthy, natural
response to stress. Because you’re not trying to have sex with me. Because I’ve known you longer. Because, if I piss you off, you can just not see me for a few days until we’ve cooled down, but you wake up to Tom every single morning.’

  I take in a deep breath. Like Anne has taught me to. Because apparently, alongside all my other problems, I’m not even breathing properly. ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘For talking me down off the ledge. Again.’

  ‘Any time.’

  ‘How are you anyway? All good with the pregnancy?’

  She cackles. ‘Well, let’s see. I’ve not slept in forever. I’m so fat I don’t possibly understand how there is any space left for me to get fatter, but I’ve still got weeks to go. I can hardly get through a day at work without napping. And, if I allow myself to think about it, I worry constantly about bleeding out in childbirth and/or my child being Kevin from We Need To Talk About Kevin because maybe it will cry too much and I won’t bond with it enough so it will become a psychopath and kill everyone in high school and I know it will be all my fault.’

  I undo a pot of moisturiser. ‘Just never let your child get really into crossbows.’

  Dee laughs. ‘You see! This is what I need. Practical advice! Nigel just keeps telling me I’m being unreasonable.’

  A tiny chink. The tiniest of chinks. The first thing she’s ever admitted, suggesting she and Nigel aren’t completely perfect and shagging all the live long day. It’s terrible how reassured I feel. ‘Men always think women are being unreasonable. But, hey, who lives longer?’

  Dee’s laugh gurgles down the line and I let my stomach dissolve into relief. It’s OK. I don’t need Tom to calm me down when I’ve got Dee. We put too much pressure on our relationships anyway and then wonder why they break. You can’t rely on one person to fulfil all your needs, so it’s fine that Tom doesn’t fulfil all my needs. In fact, it’s good I’ve recognised that. That probably makes us happier and healthier than all those couples who are so loved up and everything to each other that they’ll have to die at the same time like in The Notebook.