Behaving Like Adults

by Anna Maxted

  I left him to it and went to say hi to Claw and Camille. Camille was wearing a floaty khaki green dress which went surprisingly well with the butterfly tattoo on her upper arm. I knew she was looking for a new job – having resigned when the firm dithered over moving her to another position – and I was wondering whether she’d fit in at Girl Meets Boy. I decided to say nothing before discussing it with Claudia. After all, my recent experiments with nepotism had not been a success. Best to let Claw make the choice.

  ‘Em and Dee are alright, aren’t they?’ said Claw as I approached.

  I glanced over to where our parents were gazing at a huge ice sculpture of two cautiously entwined figures – presumably Frank and Isabella, but easily mistaken for Mr and Mrs Shrek. Mum and Dad, in their 1974 wear, looked underdressed amid all the sequins and beaded designer flounce of the other guests (who, sartorially, were years ahead – 1982 at least). They were holding their champagne bowls a distance from their bodies in a wary fashion, as if they were mobile phones.

  ‘Aw, they’re fine,’ I said. ‘Just a bit stunned at Frank’s . . . style. Have you introduced Camille yet?’

  ‘Yes,’ grinned Camille, squinting at Claw. ‘That’s why she’s asking if they look okay.’

  I widened my eyes. ‘How was it?’

  Camille and Claw glanced at each other and, without any visible change in expression, glowed with joy. I felt a great sense of relief. Not because the meeting had plainly been a success, but because my little sister was so thoroughly in love, and her love was so obviously reciprocated with such an honest and open heart.

  Claw had always been restless, jumpy, shifting from one phase, trend, job, to the next, and no matter how vivacious and witty she seemed, you always sensed her dissatisfaction simmering below the surface. Now, I saw, she had found a destiny that suited her, and it showed. Her fidgetiness had been replaced with a mood of calm. (That said, the vampire teeth were as sharp as ever, and her dress sense remained the same, which I found reassuring. The day I see Claudia and she isn’t wearing an item that makes you blink, is the day I’ll start to worry.)

  Smiling round the room, I spotted Frank and Issy. I don’t think Issy had told Frank his cover was blown. She’d certainly fluttered her lashes and arranged her mouth into a neat O when we’d all jumped out from behind the flowers yelling ‘surpriiiiise!’ Even Nige had rated her performance. And now, they were standing in the centre of the dancefloor, just out of range – I was pleased to note – of the killer chandelier, and Issy was resting her head on his shoulder. I was proud of her (she was two inches taller than him, so it was a generous concession). Eden was stealing pink sugar roses off the cake and squashing them in her Hello Kitty purse, but I think Issy had spent just enough on her dress not to mind.

  I slipped out of the room, passing a famous rock star – who should have died of shame at the fact he was playing at such an event – and after a good five minutes trekking down corridors, found the exit to a central courtyard. It was quiet and pretty, with jasmine tumbling down the brickwork, more Paris than London. I sat on a wooden bench and closed my eyes. This was a triumph in itself. A month ago I’d only dare close my eyes when there were two Banham locks, three bolted doors and a large kitchen knife between me and the open air. I felt the breeze on my skin, and breathed deeply, sinking my shoulders and trying to relax.

  I could be cynical about Frank and Issy’s anniversary party but there was no denying it was a room shimmering with hope. Some had already found happiness, others tentatively reached towards it. I counted myself somewhere in the middle. Perhaps, if I wanted to make progress, I’d have to make some tough decisions. Well, one. Nick had talked several times about selling the house but done nothing about it. I was loathe to, partly because moving house is a monstrous affair (you’re at the mercy of other people’s incompetence), but mostly because it would, in the most concrete way possible, signal the end of Nick and me.

  ‘Still trying to tan your eyelids?’

  And there he stood, watching me. I laughed. A private joke. Me, on every holiday, determined to tan my eyelids (because, after all, it’s the small achievements that make life such a blast). It had never worked. Without suncream they went bright red and peeled and I looked like a salamander. With suncream they swelled up and I looked as if I’d been crying for a week.

  I shaded my eyes from the gentle evening sun and gazed at Nick. His smile faded. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Don’t. I know what you’re going to say.’ He sighed. ‘You’re going to be sensible and suggest we sell the house.’

  Chapter 48

  NICK WAS SHOVING gobbets of chicken around the pan as if he was trying to get them to leave a nightclub.

  ‘“All it needs is a lick of paint”,’ he growled. ‘How dare she? They weren’t even interested. All they wanted was a nose. I feel as if I’ve been defiled!’

  I watched him bully the dinner and flapped shut my copy of Elle Deco. I had to agree. ‘The house has been on the market for two weeks, and already we’re stressed,’ I said.

  ‘And why is every estate agent in the world called Jeremy? I can’t wait for all of these people to be out of my life. I’ve been patronised by four idiots in one day!’

  I could tell by his voice that the chicken was suffering. So was I. I’d asked Nick to be present when people came to view the house after it became clear that our estate agent was more than happy to disappear to the pub and send me round an axe murderer who hadn’t even bothered to put his house on the market.

  Nick and I were being civilised about it – hence the dinner – but it was proving hard to spend time with him. I kept thinking that in a few years he’d be doing this with some other woman, whipping up dinner, while she sat at her oak table (made of reclaimed wood salvaged from the banks of the Thames), flicking through Elle Deco (although not in the catatonic state of depression that I did – it would be a friend’s copy, all her stuff would be ‘flea market finds’). She’d have wacky pictures of the Queen and Jesus tacked up around the place and everyone would think how cool she was. I didn’t know who she was but I wanted to kill her.

  I was holding my breath for Nick to drop into conversation the name of a girl, or the word ‘we’. He hadn’t yet, but I wasn’t complacent. He wouldn’t be short of offers. Women liked Nick. There is a time, after a love affair ends, when you feel proprietorial. Even when your ex presents with a new squeeze, you cling to a sense of superiority. Yes, you silly little thing, with your low slung trousers and pierced belly button and media training, you may have snogged in a nightclub, shagged back at your Camden-ethnicky pad, then trolled out your thruppence-worth on the meaning of life. That, dear, does not a relationship make.

  I could cling to my scorn for a few months. Yes, but you don’t have what we had. I know more about him than you ever will. Issy once told me that after nine years of marriage, and being a mother, she had no patience with people who got engaged and were excited about it. ‘It’s so babyish,’ she’d said. Being engaged myself at that point, I couldn’t empathise, but I would happily apply her logic to the potential new girlfriend situation. And yet.

  What if the ‘we need to talk’ with Ms Pierced Belly Button never came? What if the years rolled on, and Nick developed a taste for, oh what, floor cushions, and they moved into a loft apartment in Hoxton, or worse, went travelling for a year to Africa and New Zealand, my ascendancy would be slowly erased. It would count for less and less, until I was barely an acquaintance, and if they ever sent me a Christmas card it would be one of those pointedly insulting We-Are-Family photos of their kids in fancy dress and signed by her from both of them. I boiled with rage, as I considered the magnitude of the affront. Why – to quote her devoted husband – she might as well have sent me a pooh in a parcel. And he, the smug bastard, had done nothing to stop her!

  I stood up, scraping my chair. ‘I don’t WANT any chicken!’ I shouted. ‘It’s for people too stupid to know what they really like to eat!’ Then, feeling blushy about having repeated so
mething I’d heard a chef say on Ready Steady Cook in a desperate attempt to be mass-audience controversial, I thundered up the stairs, ran into our – my my my why couldn’t I get that into my head? – bedroom, and banged the door.

  I heard footsteps on the landing. Nick bawled, ‘Holly! I’m confiscating Elle Deco! It’s not good for you! You always get like this when you read it! I’m throwing it away! Right! I’m going downstairs! I’m in the kitchen! I’m placing my foot on the bin pedal! The lid is up! The magazine is going, going . . . It’s gone! Goodbye Elle Deco! I’m sorry, she cannot cope with you’ – he raised his voice – ‘even though I always tell her every house in that evil publication is a film set and does she not think that when the owners know Elle Deco are coming round they scoot off to Notting Hill to buy antique chandeliers and Venetian mirrors and get the stain on the ceiling painted over and stuff all their junk from IKEA in the cellar and lock the baby in the attic and light twenty diptyque candles to mask the smell of cooking oil and old nappies and wet dog and light every gas ring on the hob to try and raise the temperature in the house above freezing because ripping up the carpets to reveal all those marvellous wooden floorboards have turned it into a miserable draughty ice box . . . Holly? You listening to me?’

  ‘No I’m not!’ I roared. ‘Eat the chicken and go!’

  ‘Fine,’ said Nick, losing patience. ‘Grumpy cow.’ He certainly paid more attention to what I said these days. He ate the chicken and went. When I crept down to the kitchen to see if he’d left me any, the pan was scrubbed and resting on the draining board, and the fridge was bare and smelt of ripe cheese (not in a good way). Emily was sitting on the windowsill looking well-fed and washing her face with a paw. I ate twelve slices of toast while staring at the wall with a sour expression and wondering if piercing your belly button hurt.

  ‘It’s out, it’s out!’ shrieked Claudia, when I got into work one day.

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘Who? Don’t tell me. Tom. Penelope was a beard, I’m head over heels with Russell – ooh, he’s such a scamp and so outspoken – I’m putting him on a diet and we’re eloping to Canberra, romance capital of th—’

  ‘Shush, you’re not funny. The Glamour feature!’

  I snatched the magazine she was waving. Claudia sank to her knees and kow-towed to an imaginary Tabitha. Four minutes later and I was down there with her, kow-towing to Xak and making a mental note to get the office carpet cleaned.

  Tabitha had written what I can only describe as the dream feature. It was funny, self-deprecating, sweetly cynical about dating agencies and bashfully charming about ours. Well, it would have to be. Seeing as she was announcing her engagement to Xak in print. Best of all, there was a photo. She looked sparky and fun, he looked good enough to eat. He’d also been kind enough to give his fiancée an exclusive. All the women he’d met at Girl Meets Boy were sexy, clever, a laugh – filthily eligible, in fact – but then he’d seen Tabitha taking notes in shorthand and nearly expired with desire.

  ‘“Filthily eligible”, what a delicious phrase, the little rentaquote.’

  Claw, forgetting her orientation for a moment, rained kisses on Xak’s dolly face, leaving red lipstick prints on the page. ‘I love you, I worship you, angel boy! I praise the day you walked through our door! I bless the unlikely fact you find shorthand sexy! May you make Tabitha the happiest woman alive and if you ever divorce, please let it be in fifty years’ time when she’s retired and arthritic and can’t write about it!’

  As if on cue, the phone rang.

  ‘A thought,’ I said, reaching for the receiver. ‘It’s a women’s mag. What if only women apply?’

  Claw frowned. ‘Then we’ll have to invite a reporter down from GQ to even out the odds. Or Esquire. Or FHM. Or start up our own men’s magazine. Pick up already!’

  I picked.

  ‘Hello, Girl Meets Boy. How can I help you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said a male voice. ‘Um. The dating agency, right? I saw this thing about you? In my flatmate’s copy of Glamour? She’d left it lying around? On the kitchen table? I had to move it to, um, read Newsweek? And I caught a glimpse of the article? Thought it sounded a laugh?’

  After twenty-seven such calls – give or take a few ums and ers – I realised that Britain’s young single men are voracious readers of women’s magazines, forever leafing through them in a feverish hunt for rogue nipples (Loaded and other publications where female full-frontal nudity is compulsory presumably don’t hold the same sly appeal). In comparison, we had eighteen calls from women.

  ‘And that,’ crowed Claudia, vampire teeth glinting, ‘isn’t counting all the queries via email and the hits on the website.’

  She looked around the scruffy paper-ridden office. I followed her gaze. It had that generic office look – a grey aura, buzzy white strip lighting, messiness even when it was tidy, hardwearing fitments. ‘Hol,’ she said. ‘We should do this place up a bit. Paint it hot pink and azure blue . . . and have a hardwood floor put down instead of this manky hide-a-million-stains carpet. It’s not a crèche for godsake, how many stains are we expected to make? I’ve only dropped my coffee once. And I make it a rule never to drop food. This is only a tiny room, it won’t cost much. We can do the painting. I think we need to do something to mark the fact that business is on the up. And not just because of the Glamour piece. It’s been improving steadily month on month – after that awful series of blips. We’re really doing very well.’

  I was pleased. It’s certainly good, I thought, to have at least one portion of your life sorted out. Rather like a child dividing peas, potato and chicken into seperate sections on their plate, I retained a habit of dividing my life into compartments. (Except at five years of age I’d gone a step further than most children, I used to remove all the blackcurrants in my Ski yoghurt, after cleaning them in my mouth, and line them up on the table for afterwards.) When Claudia forced me to analyse how I felt about my achievements, I realised that I’d dragged whatever neurosis lay behind the yoghurt custom with me into adulthood.

  I couldn’t even discuss it with Dr Goldstein. Over the last few months we’d had ten sessions. By session nine, I’d been scratching around for dilemmas to maintain his interest. He hadn’t felled my bugbears with a big stick, one by one, as they ran at me. It wasn’t that simple. But he was able to help me understand how a person who doesn’t want to deal with a problem can invest all their energies in a distraction. I liked talking to him. He was the opposite of a god in that he turned wine into water. (Not so flashy, but a life essential rather than an extra.) And I think he liked talking to me – it wouldn’t have worked otherwise. After our chats I felt the same intense satisfaction you get from popping bubble wrap. I could have gone on seeing him, except it was like a love affair: you know in your heart when it’s over. I walked out of his office for the last time, quaking. Now I was on my own. But, I consoled myself, aren’t we all?

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We are doing well. And you’re right. We should paint the office blue and pink.’

  The more I considered it, the more I loved the idea of such a colour scheme. It reminded me of a Walt Disney book I’d had when I was young. The illustration of Sleeping Beauty’s castle had been a rush of hot pink and azure blue, to signify the spell cast by the kind fairy godmothers to save our princess from death and send her into a slumber that would last a hundred years.

  Although, I had to concede, that spell was in no way the perfect solution. Sleeping Beauty’s parents would die long before she awoke, and – snooze of the century or not – until they did, it would be like having a daughter in a coma. I felt quite strongly that the King and Queen’s feelings had been clumsily overlooked by the well-meaning fairy god-mothers. And the poor girl was at the mercy of being woken by a handsome prince. It was quite a gamble.

  I was about to tell Claudia all this when the phone rang. Presuming it was new male client number twenty-eight, I answered with a trill. ‘Girl Meets Boy. How can I help you?’

  There was
an embarrassed cough, so I knew instantly it was the estate agent. He was curiously priggish. ‘Jeremy. We have an offer on your house. From Mr and Mrs Piddington. And’ – dramatic pause, perhaps to illustrate his brilliance, my luck and the imbecility of the Piddingtons – ‘it’s the asking price. I’ve spoken to Nick, and he’s happy, but he wanted me to check with you. You’ll wanna accept, right?’

  For a moment I couldn’t speak. Perhaps, had Nick and I painted the house hot pink and azure blue, our love story would have ended differently. Mr and Mrs Piddington would have been less likely to offer the asking price, that was for sure. I swallowed. I was being ridiculous. Ten hours with a shrink and I was subjecting the Dulux colour collection to psychoanalysis. What nonsense.

  We’d paint the walls of Girl Meets Boy hot pink and azure blue because they matched the theme of our business. There would be more pink than blue, just in case anyone argued that, like Sleeping Beauty, our princesses had placed their lives on hold in the hope of being rescued by princes. If there was more pink than blue, then we could argue it was just as likely to be the other way round.

  But listen to me. Why was I so defensive? Once I’d been proud, brazen even, about the goals of Girl Meets Boy. I’d never thought it was shameful to join a dating agency, to want to find love so badly you’d pay a firm to find it for you. Love, I’d declare to anyone who would listen, was the meaning of life. After we are dead, all that remains is love. A big house, a powerful job – poor comforts if you lead a loveless existence. It was your duty to yourself to do everything in your power to ensure that you found love. And I still believed that, with all my heart.

  So why was I suddenly coy?

  The truth. I’d always been confident that I would find love without anyone’s help. That was what distinguished me from my clients. Because, I’d always had love. From my family, from Nick. Now, I was staring a future of single-dom dead in the face. There was no guarantee that I’d find a prince – a prince, a pauper, who cared, so long as he was my soul mate? – or that he’d find me.