by Jemma Harvey
She headed for the stairs like a small tempest, leftover poets scattering from her path. ‘I’d better go with her,’ Lin said. ‘Cookie—’
‘It’s all nonsense,’ I said. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
‘I hope so.’ She threw me a last look, then followed Georgie.
‘Right,’ said Cal. ‘Let’s go and have sex.’
I removed the glass from his hand and set it down on a nearby table. Then I slapped him round the face. Hard.
For a moment he stood perfectly still. Then he took off his specs, straightened a bent ear-piece, and put them back on again. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Sorry. Sorry . . .’
‘If you’ve lost me one of my best friends,’ I said in a shaking voice, ‘I hope you burn in hell.’
‘I’ll talk to her,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t your fault. It was me – all me. I’ll fix it for you.’
‘You’d better. I wanted to help you – I wanted you and Georgie to get back together. She’s my friend, and I thought you were my friend too. I never imagined you would come on to me. Even when you’ve flirted a little, I just thought you were kidding.’
‘I’m a man,’ he said ruefully. ‘That’s the problem with all of us at the blunt end of a prick. You want us to be caring and sensitive and wonderful, and we ain’t. We always let you down. I am your friend, Cookie – at least, I hope so – but put me near an attractive woman and the good old hormones kick into action. That’s how blokes work. Women are the superior sex: you girls have always known that.’
‘You do want to be with Georgie, don’t you?’ I said, suddenly scared.
‘God, yes. I want to be with her so much it’s tearing my heart out. All I wanted from you was comfort. And the tits, of course.’
‘I encouraged you,’ I said, smitten with a surge of remorse. ‘You thought I was coming on to you, didn’t you? I was being all cosy, and – this dress. I should never have bought it. I just wasn’t cut out to be sexy.’
‘Bollocks,’ said Cal. ‘All women are sexy – or they should be. I didn’t need encouragement. I’m a bloke: remember? I keep my brains in my dick.’
‘You said it.’ But I was still feeling horribly guilty. I’d enjoyed his company, and his admiration. I’d been too pissed to think straight. How could I have been so stupid? And how on earth would I put things right with Georgie?
‘Don’t worry,’ Cal said, reading my face. ‘I’ll speak to Georgie. It’ll be okay – at least for you. She doesn’t bear grudges.’ And, after a pause: ‘Shall I take you home now, or do you want to pick up a poet?’
I managed a smile. ‘Just get me a cab.’
Outside, we stood on the pavement while Cal scanned the passing traffic for a ‘For Hire’ light.
‘What will you do now?’ I asked.
‘Go home. Crash out on the sofa in front of the late-night movie, probably.’
‘Do you still sleep with Christy?’ I said.
‘Yes. Me on one side of the bed, she on the other. Clear blue water in between. We don’t even touch.’
‘D’you mind?’
He shrugged. ‘Not any more. It’s been over for a long time now.’ An available taxi approached, and he summoned it for me. When he opened the door I hesitated, turning to say goodnight. ‘You should get yourself a decent guy,’ he said, squeezing my hand.
‘According to you, there aren’t any.’
‘Nah – the best ones are all like me. There are a few sensitive types, but they’re all wimps. You’ll just have to make do.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
I got into the cab and it drove off, leaving him alone at the curbside. Looking back, I thought he appeared solitary and rather forlorn, standing there in the lamplight, with the bleak look settling over his face again. So much for my night of triumph. I’d been hailed a sex goddess – I’d been seductive and sought-after – my wish had come true. And what good had it done me? I’d hurt someone I cared for, I’d let people down, I’d lost my friend. I’d lost friends in the past through what might be termed natural wastage – growing apart, moving away, taking divergent paths – but never through anger. Never like this. I knew a horrible squirming feeling inside of mingled shame and regret and self-loathing, and worst of all, the sneaking urge to justify my actions, to tell myself: ‘I didn’t mean it. It wasn’t my fault. Things just happen.’ There I was, being beautiful and irresistible, and things just happened around me, the way they do around beautiful irresistible people. We don’t mean to inflict pain on others, but we can’t help it. Us femmes fatales . . .
Don’t let me get like that! I prayed to whatever powers might be listening. Don’t let me be someone who hurts people, and says it’s not my fault, and is secretly smug about my fatal attraction. (If I had any. I felt like a fraud.) I don’t want to be beautiful any more. I don’t want to be a sex goddess. I just want my friend back.
I found I was crying, helpless tears oozing out of my eyes and trickling down my cheeks, probably making snail-tracks in my makeup. The cab driver was watching me in the mirror, but I didn’t care. I fished in my bag for a tissue, but I hadn’t brought any.
‘Break up with your boyfriend?’ asked the driver.
‘No,’ I said. ‘My girlfriend. My best friend.’
‘Oh. Like that, is it?’
At the time, I didn’t catch the inference. It wasn’t important. All that mattered was I’d hurt Georgie – I’d betrayed her – and I didn’t know how to put it right.
Chapter 10
When the sky began to roar
’Twas like a lion at the door;
When the door began to crack
’Twas like a stick across my back;
When my back began to smart
’Twas like a penknife in my heart;
When my heart began to bleed
’Twas death and death and death indeed.
FOLK RHYME
When I set out to write this book, I meant it to be light-hearted and funny, a flippant account of three girls, and three wishes, and how we tried to help those wishes come true. I didn’t know if they would or not, I just thought it would be entertaining to make a story of it, good practise for an aspiring writer. I meant to leave out the dull bits, the dark bits, the moments of gloom and despondency, the small failures and petty humiliations – but of course they crept in. As soon as you start to think about people, and life, you have to deal with the dark side. It’s always there: the black underbelly of comedy, the shadow behind the light romance. Without it, my story would be only half-coloured, the characters only half-alive. I thought I could joke about it, make a mockery of the bad times – but it hasn’t worked out that way. The problem is, I suppose, that nothing very dreadful has ever happened to me. (Yet.) Georgie lost a husband to alcoholism; Lin was betrayed by the man she adored and then ran off with someone else, who died after an excess of drink and drugs. I was just dumpy and dumped – and I dealt with one and got over the other. But writing this, I learnt to see through my friends’ eyes. My experience has widened even as I took on theirs. I’ve grown up, and the story has grown up, and I don’t know where it’s going any more.
All of which brings me to this chapter. If you thought things were bad at the end of the last one, just wait. Up to now, I could be flip about the bad stuff: I made comments about worst fears being realised, and shit-fan situations, but there was no big tragedy, no major catastrophe, only everyday disasters. But this is the point where the jokes stop, where there’s nothing to laugh at any more. And I’m scared to write it, because I don’t do gloom and doom; it isn’t my thing. I just have to tell it the way it happened, and keep hoping it’ll work out in the end.
At Ransome on Friday, Georgie wasn’t talking to me. I asked Lin to explain things to her – ‘There was nothing between Cal and me. He was pissed and being provocative: that’s all’ – but Lin looked sad, and faintly unconvinced, and said she didn’t think she could do anything. When Cal headed my way I begged him to sort it out, but he said
Georgie wasn’t talking to him either.
‘She’ll speak to you first,’ he said. ‘Bet you fifty quid.’ He was leaning on my desk as he said it, and at that precise moment Georgie went past. She paused for a second, fixing us with a stare that would have split the atom, then walked on, ignoring my pleas to Listen, please listen . . .
‘Bugger,’ said Cal.
‘Would you mind not coming near me,’ I said, ‘for the next year?’
He gave a resigned nod and returned to the Design Department, leaving me to sink quietly into a morass of misery and frustration.
Later, Lin admitted to me that she was going to the pub after work with Georgie. ‘She needs someone with her,’ she said. ‘Ivor’s been a star. He’s babysitting again – though it’s only Meredith tonight, so he might get some peace and quiet.’ I thought it unlikely, but didn’t say so. I suggested coming along with them to the pub and attempting to patch things up, but Lin was discouraging.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘nothing happened. You couldn’t think – you can’t think I would’ve . . .’
‘You flirted with him, didn’t you?’ Lin sounded more unhappy than accusatory. ‘He was coming on to you, and you didn’t exactly repulse him.’
‘He wasn’t serious. It was just words. He kept saying how much he loved Georgie. But she’s hurt him so deeply, I think he wanted to hurt her back, so he used me.’
‘And you let him.’ Lin turned to go. ‘I think you should leave it for now. Maybe in a couple of weeks . . .’
But I didn’t want to leave it. That was like an admission of guilt, and although I felt guilty, when I went over the events of the previous evening in my mind I didn’t think I’d been leading Cal on. Instinct told me that the longer I left it, the harder it would be to put things right. But I didn’t want to go to the pub alone, so I went to find Laurence, hoping this would be one of his going-out-with-the-gang nights. By then it was late-afternoon, and the undercurrents in the office had become overcurrents. Everyone knew there was something badly wrong, and most of Ransome was waiting with bated breath for the big explosion.
Except, as it turned out, for Laurence.
‘Not tonight,’ he said. ‘Sorry, Cookie. Hector’s giving a dinner party for some of his chums from work.’ Hector, Laurence’s partner, was in the social services. ‘I have to get out my pinny and put the beef in my Wellingtons.’
‘You’re not the cook,’ I said. ‘I know that. What’s more, I don’t believe you have a pinny.’
‘I do now,’ he said. ‘It’s got Princess Di on it.’
I laughed, if half-heartedly, and went back to my desk.
Cal was there. ‘You going to the pub?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Good. We’ll go together. Georgie shouldn’t be blaming you for what happened yesterday. It was my fault, not yours. You didn’t even encourage me.’
‘This isn’t a good idea,’ I said. ‘Anyway, Georgie isn’t talking to you.’
‘Doesn’t matter. I’m going to talk to her. I’m off on holiday for the next fortnight, and I want this business sorted before I go. I won’t leave you to deal with the fallout; it isn’t fair. I may be an arsehole, but at least I’m not afraid to say so.’
‘I really don’t think—’
‘Yes you do. You think much too often: that’s the trouble with women. Time for action.’ He had obviously had an attack of grim resolve, and there was no point in arguing, though I tried.
Around half-past five I saw Lin and Georgie leaving. Cal and I followed after six – he was always the last out of Design – with me looking furtive, making sure there was at least a yard of clear space between us at all times. He paid no attention. When we reached the pub I hung back, feeling a coward, unwilling to be seen walking in with him – but Cal seized my wrist and pulled me through the door in his wake. It wasn’t the entrance I would have chosen. Across the room, Georgie looked up at exactly the wrong moment. Lin told me later she was on her second double gin with very little tonic, and the glitter in her eyes would have daunted a black mamba. Cal took in the scene with a stiffened lip, bought drinks for both of us, and headed for Georgie’s table. I lagged behind.
‘Give us a moment,’ he said to Lin.
‘No,’ said Georgie. ‘Don’t.’
Lin got to her feet, hesitated, then joined me. We didn’t speak, just waited at a safe distance, trying to look as if we weren’t watching the confrontation at the table.
‘Fuck off,’ Georgie said.
‘If you wish. But first, we need to straighten something out. I made a pass at Cookie last night, yes, but she brushed me off. She’s a good friend to you; she always has been. Stop blaming her for something I did. She wouldn’t even flirt with me.’
‘It’s not important,’ Georgie said, sick at heart. ‘You wanted her, not me. I can’t – I can’t bear to look at her.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Cal snapped. ‘Of course I want you. But we keep fighting, and Cookie was there – she looked great – she was kind to me—’
‘Kind to you? How generous of her!’
‘Yes, kind. It’s an attractive quality. You should try it some time.’
‘How dare you!’ Her face blazed. ‘You don’t have the right to lecture me! You’re a married man screwing around, and you think you can take the moral high ground—’
‘I’m not screwing around. I wish I was.’
‘You bastard!’
‘I’ve had enough of this. All I get from you these days is tantrums. Yes, I’m married – you knew that all along. I thought we had a good thing going—’
‘You made me fall in love with you!’ Georgie all but screamed, abandoning any attempt at reason.
‘I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to fall in love either. I can’t deal with it any more than you can. When you go with other men it destroys me, but I can’t leave my wife, I can’t leave my family. I don’t think there’s any way out of this—’
‘There is,’ Georgie said, going from stormy to stony in rather less than a second. ‘The way out’s over there.’ She pointed at the door.
‘If that’s what you want.’
‘It’s what you want. You said so.’
It was another half hour before Cal finally walked out, looking furious, and wretched, and bitter. Georgie was left alone, looking – bitter, wretched, and furious. Same old scenario, but that didn’t make it any less painful. Lin went over to her; I followed more slowly.
‘I don’t want to see you,’ she said to me, I hoped with less acrimony than before. ‘What I want to see is another gin. A triple.’
I got her the drink and went back to the bar, taking up a position beside a refugee from Ransome (Sales) who had evidently come to spectate. Georgie was going to feel like hell the next morning – if not sooner – but I knew it would be no use trying to stop her. As the evening progressed I saw Lin failing in the attempt, and Georgie getting through a couple more large gins, with only a packet of peanuts to soak up the alcohol. Booze doesn’t solve your problems, I thought, but at least it makes you feel like shit. Tomorrow, Georgie would be too busy with her hangover to agonise over Cal, if only for a few hours.
Some time later, she called me over. ‘You’re still here,’ she said accusingly.
‘It’s a pub,’ I responded. ‘I wanted a drink.’
‘What really happened with Cal?’ she asked, not looking me in the face.
‘We talked about you. He said he loved you. He said you were in his bones, in his blood. He’s desperate for you.’
‘Then why did he go?’ She looked up at me now, her eyes filling. ‘Why does he always go?’
‘You never ask him to stay.’
‘I shouldn’t need to ask him. He should . . . he should . . .’ She groped for phrases that wouldn’t come.
‘He should stay even when you tell him to leave?’ I suggested.
‘Yup.’ Sometimes, there is clarification at the bottom of the bottle.
‘It’s time you t
alked to him without rowing,’ Lin said optimistically. ‘On Monday—’
‘He won’t be there on Monday,’ I said. ‘He’s off for two weeks. Holiday.’
‘What?’ Georgie’s fury returned, first in a trickle, then in a flood. ‘He left me – like that – and he’s going away? Two weeks – two weeks – and he just walked out! He can’t – he can’t—’ She banged her glass down on the table. They’d run out of tumblers: it was only a wine glass, and it smashed. She crushed the pieces in her hand; the blood ran over her fingers. Her face distorted.
Lin and I stared in horror. ‘Georgie, your hand – !’ Lin gasped, groping for tissues in her bag. She was the sort of person who always carried tissues.
‘I won’t let him!’ Georgie was saying, fumbling with her mobile. ‘I won’t let him just go. I must talk to him. Now.’ She pressed out the number, but evidently there was no answer.
‘It’ll be on recharge,’ I said. ‘Probably silent. He’ll have gone to bed by now.’
It was the wrong thing to say.
‘With her!’ Georgie said. ‘Bloody Christy. I can’t stand it. If he loves me, why is he in bed with her? Why is he going on holiday with her? What kind of love is that?’ She picked up her bag and made for the door with an alarmingly steady step. We ran after her.
Outside, she hailed a cruising taxi and got in, thrusting Lin away when she tried to follow.
‘Where are you going?’ Lin demanded.
‘I must see him. I have to see him. He can’t just walk out on me and bugger off on holiday with his wife . . .’
‘What’re you going to do?’
Georgie slammed the door, and the taxi leaped forward. ‘Boil the rabbit!’ she screamed.
Fortunately, we were on a main road and the closing-time rush hadn’t yet started. Taxis streamed past, many of them for hire. I grabbed the next one and we jumped in. ‘Follow that cab!’ Lin cried, getting carried away.
‘Which cab?’ the driver asked, bored. Plainly he had heard it all before.
‘That one,’ said Lin, pointing. ‘No – that one . . .’
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I know Cal’s address.’ I’d had to send some stuff round to him once when he had a day off. I couldn’t recall the house number, but I knew the street. Our driver took his time, getting bogged down in traffic, and we didn’t see Georgie anywhere up ahead. When we eventually reached Lyndhall Road it was dark and quiet, with no sign of any other vehicle.
