Twenty Something

by Iain Hollingshead

  I used to enjoy her flirting with my friends. Now I get insanely jealous every time she talks to one of them. We used to have spontaneous sex in public places. Now she tells me every time she’s faked an orgasm. I used to love the fact that she sounded so posh that she probably wore pashmina knickers. Now I shiver every time she opens her mouth. I hate her taste in music, I hate her friends and I hate the way she says, ‘OK, then’ at the end of every telephone conversation. I hate her clothes, I hate the decorations in her flat and I especially hate the way she drives her detestable little car.

  There was a time when she could do no wrong. Now she can do no right. All her endearing eccentricities have become unbearably annoying faults. And I just can’t cope pretending to like her any more.

  I hate myself for hating her, and I hate myself for not being brave enough to do anything about it. We’ve been going out for three years, but if I’m honest about it, I’ve spent half that time inventing convenient internal excuses to delay breaking up: ‘But I’ve already bought her a birthday present/it’s only two months till Valentine’s Day/what if she went off with any of my friends?/I might never have sex again’ etc. etc.

  In fact, I was trying so hard to think of something I did like about the two of us that the football-playing buffalo returned with a vengeance to put a stop to any further thought processes. I crawled to the sofa and watched TV. The most successful thing I did all day was take my dressing gown off (twelve hours after putting it on) and go back to bed.

  Sunday 9th January

  Home, sweet Home Counties, to visit my darling ’rentals – the street name I use to refer to Mummy and Daddy so my mates don’t take the piss too badly. I always wanted to call them ‘Mum ’n’ Dad’, but they’re just not ‘Mum’ ’n’ Dad’ types. So it’s stuck — Mummy and Daddy in the vocative; ’rentals in the third person.

  Daddy (alpha male rental) meets me at the station.

  ‘Who’s your daddy?’ he asks, climbing out of the battered Volvo.

  ‘Er, you are, Daddy,’ I reply, pushing the dog off the front seat and getting in beside him to give him a hug. No Public Displays of Affection for our family.

  ‘Wicked,’ he says, pulling away in third gear while trying to do the Ali G Westside sign.

  Occasional excruciating references to outdated popular culture aside, my dad is the world’s loveliest man. Mates who come to visit seem to spend as much time talking to him as they do to me. He is a retired headmaster, the same yesterday, today and for ever — a solid man mountain of integrity and bonhomie.

  ‘Your mother’s in a filthy mood,’ the man mountain warns me on the way back in the car.

  Never ‘Mummy’, never ‘Amelia’ — it’s always ‘your mother’, as if he were somehow separated from any involvement in the process.

  But he wasn’t wrong about Mummy. She was in a tub-thumping, bottom-clenching howler of a grump. And, unsurprisingly, it was all my fault.

  ‘How could you be so insensitive to Lucy?’ she demands, refusing to kiss me as I walk through the kitchen door.

  ‘What do you mean, “insensitive”?’

  ‘I mean, breaking-up-with-her insensitive. That girl’s the best thing that ever happened to you.’

  ‘No, she’s not. She’s not even in the top ten of good things that have happened to me. And it’s only a trial separation. And how did you know, anyway?’

  Lucy, bless every little conniving cell in her beautiful body, is so bloody close to my mum that she’d rung her in floods of tears to indulge in a mutual oestrogen-bonding, Jack-bashing session.

  My mum likes Lucy because she’s just like her — vacuous, petty, pretty, snobby and attached to someone much better than her. Harsh — but there, I’ve said it.

  Monday 10th January

  It’s now a week since I made my New Year’s resolutions, and I’ve just flicked back through my diary to check on my progress.

  Not good.

  At work I’m treading water, spending most of the day entering obscure opinions under a variety of aliases in the ‘Have your say’ section of the BBC news website. I’ve drunk forty-two units in a week (the twenty-four of these on Friday night making me an official binge drinker — result). My Bible reading stalled on the sixth day (of creation, not of January) and I’ve just realised that I started at the wrong end of the Koran.

  While I’ve updated my diary almost every day, I’ve only really used it to slag off my friends, my job and my mother. The only serious exercise I’ve undertaken is masturbation, and I’ve exceeded my limit of four for the week (by a factor of three, for which I blame Lucy’s absence). I’ve given nothing to charity and I’m getting fatter by the second. On the plus side, I haven’t flirted with anyone at work (because they’re all male) and my testicles and hairline appear to be behaving themselves.

  And I seem to have fulfilled my desire to ‘love Lucy more/break up with her in a mature and dignified manner’ by writing horrible things about her and brokering a trial separation with the luscious little frollop.

  In a bid to remedy this, I phone her in the evening to try to talk things over.

  ‘Why the fuck did you ring my mum to talk about us?’ I ask in a conciliatory way.

  ‘My mum,’ she mimics. ‘Little Jacksy’s Mumsies-Wumsies. Mummy’s not happy, is she?’

  ‘Not as unhappy as Jack is.’

  ‘Why are you referring to yourself in the third person?’

  ‘Second sign of madness.’

  ‘What’s the first?’

  ‘Deciding to go out with you.’

  Click. Brrrrr. 15—0, Jack Lancaster.

  Tuesday 11th January

  Woke up this morning and counted at least thirty hairs on my pillow while listening to Thought for the Day on Radio 4 (Bishop of Liverpool talking about spiritual implications of the Congestion Charge).

  Realised after a while that four of these were Lucy’s (I haven’t washed the sheets for two weeks), but it’s still a worrying statistic. Five more came out in the shower and I swept my hair back to examine the view in the mirror. Aaaargh, spamhead! It’s retreating in all directions like a brigade of Italian war heroes. Upwards, sideways, diagonally. This isn’t meant to happen until your fifties. This is the end of my youth. Baldness goes hand in hand with arthritis, impotence and senility. It is the first sign of my mortality. I will never pull randomly again unless I’m at a cowboy party and wearing a hat.

  Spent so long considering these unpleasant implications that I turned up late for work.

  Rupert (bald): ‘Why are you late for work?’

  ‘Because my hair started falling out in the shower. I’m going to have a bald patch.’

  ‘That’s not a bald patch — that’s the solar panel for your sex machine.’

  It would take more than energy-harnessing sunshine to sort out my current excuse for a love life.

  Wednesday 12th January

  Not many things can make a hundred city bankers in an open-plan office stop what they’re doing and simultaneously look in the same direction. The last time it happened was when the managing director’s jilted wife evaded security and came up to the fourth floor to have a cat fight with his secretary. Apart from that, it would require news of an anthrax attack at Bank station — or maybe an announcement that we were going to IPO and could all retire early — to raise our collective noses from the grindstone.

  The girl who arrived at work today, however, succeeded. She was a walking vision of everyone’s perfect girl. Petite without being fragile, slim but curvy, blonde but natural, and a sweet angelic face which said, ‘I’m the loveliest person in the world but if you were ever lucky enough to get me into bed I would go like The Flying Scotsman.’ I caught the gaze of at least twenty guilty pairs of eyes belonging to twenty dirty minds who all, like me, had been imagining what it would be like to spend five minutes alone with her in the stationery cupboard. The death of gentlemanly capitalism? Rubbish.

  I watch her as she moves about the room being int
roduced to her new colleagues by her ‘buddy’ — ironically, an American called Buddy who looks like the cat who’s just frotted itself in the cream. Nervous, geeky analysts, who haven’t spoken to anyone outside their team for years, wipe their messy Prêt hands on their polyester suits and shuffle to their feet to greet her. Confident M&A bankers swagger over to introduce themselves. Managing directors and vice presidents hitch up their red braces as if girding their loins for action and try to hold in their paunches. The secretaries all eye her warily.

  But she never makes it as far as my corner of the room, settling instead in the Financial Institutes Group, the Basingstoke of the banking world. I watch as she makes herself comfortable, shuffling and shifting in her chair, her dark trouser suit pressed against the leather folds. Oh to be a £500 swivel chair now that January is here.

  ‘Pssst.’ I grab Buddy as he returns from his lap of honour. ‘What’s the fittie’s name?’

  ‘Leila — and don’t even think about it, Jack. She’s fifteen leagues out of your league.’

  Leila. Lovely little Leila. There are a number of names which guarantee attractiveness — Lucys, Amys, Sarahs, Nikkys and Amelias are nearly always fine-looking fillies. But ‘Leila’ has an ethereal etymological beauty in a league of its own. It soars with the iambic Greek gods, it dances on Mount Olympus, it erupts with Mount Vesuvius. (Jack, you’re talking crap.)

  Tomorrow I’ll find out her surname, look her up on the email database and send her some witty banter. In a month’s time I’ll give her a Valentine’s card, pull her on 20th February, sleep with her on the 24th and go out with her by 3rd March.

  In Arabic, Leila means ‘night’; in English, it means ‘Jack’s’. I am delightedly, desperately, dribblingly in love-lust.

  After all, I’m on a trial separation, aren’t I? And I’ve been with Lucy for three years — I must be due a loyalty scheme upgrade by now.

  Thursday 13th January

  I’ve just Googled Leila. She was a wing defence for her school’s under-16 netball team (no photos, unfortunately), spent a year doing charity work in South America and once proposed a motion at her university’s union (Newcastle) in favour of more varieties of chocolate in the vending machines. Put it another way: she combines sufficient intelligence, compassion, sporting ability and endearing girliness to be crowned Jack’s Number One Target. Google never lies.

  More worryingly, her surname is Sidebottom. Her dad should be in The Hague on a war crimes trial for passing on that name to someone as beautiful as her. Leila Sidebottom. Voilà la chute du sublime au ridicule. I’d like to know which pig-arse idiot of an ancestor came up with that name.

  ‘Can you tell me where I can barter my mule for some chariot wheels?’

  ‘Ah yes, you want to go and see old Harold. He lives on the bottom side of the creek.’

  ‘Ah, Harold Sidebottom — of course.’

  I have to marry her to save her from herself.

  Friday 14th January

  Lads’ night out.

  At 7pm Buddy and I headed straight out after work for a couple of rounds and then met up with Flatmate Fred, Jasper and Rick in a pub in Fulham. We were an unlikely combination — two bankers, one freeloading freelancer, an actor and Rick, who never stays in a job long enough to have a job title. His current contribution to civilisation is to perform the ultra-quick voiceovers at the end of radio adverts — the gabbled disclaimers that end with ‘terms and conditions apply’. This amuses just about everyone apart from Rick’s dad, who is a QC and therefore has a proper job.

  By the time we left the pub, we were completely slaughtered. Jasper suggested going somewhere to sweat off our alcohol intake and we all piled into a taxi.

  ‘Drive on, James,’ cried Flatmate Fred, banging the roof of the cab, ‘and don’t spare the horses.’

  ‘Where are the horses?’ asked Buddy.

  I made a mental note that I was going to have no difficulty outshining him in front of Leila next week.

  We pulled up in front of Mad Barry’s and Buddy took charge. This was his domain. No clever little quips. This was business. He marched up to the bouncer and demanded that he let us all straight in.

  ‘No, I won’t. You’ll go to the back of queue like everyone else.’

  ‘But you don’t understand. We’re not everyone else. We have significantly more money than everyone else.’

  ‘If you carry on like that, you’re not coming in at all.’

  ‘It’s a simple economic choice. We have superior purchasing power to the rest of the people in this queue. If you let us in now, you’ll be maximising shareholder value.’

  Jasper at this point wisely intervened and led Buddy to the back of a queue, which only consisted of a few fifteen-year-olds, in any case. They all glowered at him with as much intimidation as four public schoolboys in pink shirts with upturned collars could muster.

  Flatmate Fred, less wise, used this diversion to try and leap over the cord and walk in without paying. About six paces in, a Neanderthal hand descended on his shoulder.

  ‘And what do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Er, I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re a dickhead, aren’t you?’

  ‘Er, yes.’

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tell me that you’re a dickhead.’

  ‘Er, I’m a dickhead. I think I’ll go home now.’

  ‘No, you won’t. You’re coming in, and you’re paying double.’

  At which point the brute of a bouncer marched Flatmate Fred up to the vapid Sloane behind the counter and forced him to hand over £3 instead of £1.50. All of which shenanigans meant that it took us twenty minutes to get from queue to girls, instead of five.

  Unfortunately, the path from queue to girls rarely runs smooth and we had no joy on the dance floor. By 2am we were all alone in an exhausted, sweaty, blokes-only circle, loving angels instead. We decided to head back to my place.

  ‘Drive on, Sam, and don’t keep the horses,’ yelled Buddy with fire (and four bottles of champagne) in his belly.

  ‘Buddy Oh, never mind.’

  The taxi dropped us several streets away, as Flatmate Fred was too drunk to remember whether we lived in a place, a street or a mews.

  On the short walk home we passed a beautiful winter-flowering cherry tree in one of the private residents’ gardens near our flat. The only sensible thing seemed to be to take it back with us. We were five drunk guys who hadn’t scored. If we couldn’t get a trophy pull, we could at least take a beer trophy home with us.

  ‘Can’t we just snap off a branch?’ said Jasper.

  ‘Bollocks to that,’ I said, flushed with the scent of victory. ‘We’re taking the whole thing.’

  Flatmate Fred was dispatched inside and came back with a saw. Feeling a bit like Hugh Grant (minus Julia Roberts, but plus metal blade) I climbed into the garden with the weapon of choice and did the dirty work on the trunk. Fifty panting minutes later we were sitting triumphantly in our kitchen with a sixty-kilo, two-metre mass of foliage. Buddy laid his weary head down in its soft leaves and passed out.

  Saturday 15th January

  ‘There’s fucking stolen property in our goddamn fucking kitchen,’ Flatmate Fred croaks as he walks into my room at ten the next morning.

  ‘Huh?’ The footballing buffalo are back in my head.

  ‘There’s a dense mass of fucking foliage in our motherfucking flat and I want to know how the fuck it got there.’

  I feel like I’m in a Tarantino film. Next Flatmate Fred will be calling in Mr Big to help us get rid of the ‘body’ without trace.

  I tell Flatmate Fred that it got there because he couldn’t remember where we lived, caught sight of a Prunus subhirtella (aka winter-flowing cherry) on the walk home and then dashed inside to get a saw to help cut it down. He denies everything.

  We go through to the kitchen to examine the damage and find Buddy surfacing from his soily slumbers. We take a photo so that we can frame
him if things get nasty.

  ‘Oh, hey, you guys,’ he drawls, a flower lodged behind his left ear. ‘I’ve just realised why the doorman didn’t buy my line about maximising shareholder value. Mad Barry’s isn’t publicly listed; it’s a limited company. I’m such a jerk.’

  Buddy is indeed a jerk, but if I were compiling the top ten reasons as to why he is a jerk (which I might just do at work on Monday), his ignorance of Mad Barry’s’ corporate governance structure wouldn’t feature highly.

  By the time hangover TV drew to a close at 3pm, everyone had decided that the tree theft was someone else’s fault. Buddy claimed exoneration on some obscure point of international law as he had used the tree as a pillow. Flatmate Fred, whose memory loss had evaporated, argued that he was using the episode as a research project for his book (Rick: ‘Which book now? 101 Greatest Horticultural Thefts?’) and Jasper kindly pointed out in dramatic thespy tones that I had wielded the saw and was therefore the ringleader. At which point Rick added in the moronically slow voice he uses when he’s not doing radio ads that the final buck lay with Flatmate Fred and me as the stolen property had come to rest in our flat. The others swiftly agreed and sidled off home.

  Bastards.

  Thursday 20th January

  Came back from work to find Flatmate Fred waving a piece of paper excitedly in my face.

  ‘What are you doing, you mad freak? And why are you wearing my dressing gown at eight in the evening?’

  ‘Because mine’s in the wash. But listen, Jack, I’ve cracked it. I’ve worked out how to save ourselves from going to prison.’