by Shari Low
Two things happened. The breasts got on board and subtly re-swelled in this new direction and inside my head I heard a definite voice saying, ‘Oh, you’re so mine.’ Houston, we have take-off.
‘I was with Dan. Dan Hodges.’
Mission abort! Mission abort!
‘Ah,’ was my considered, eloquent reply.
‘I think you were seeing him at the time,’ he continued.
There was no point in sugar-coating or backtracking.
‘I was. Right up until the part where he got thumped. I look forward to living down the humiliation somewhere around middle age. Or if I get hit by a bus and develop amnesia.’
What was I talking about? Mouth, desist and disengage immediately! Being caught off guard or pushed into a nervous situation always led to an outpouring of verbal tosh.
‘Poor guy never recovered. He became a Buddhist and went to find himself in Nepal,’ cute guy added.
I was momentarily speechless again, until the grin reappeared and I realised he was joking.
‘Actually he moved to Thomas Cook and works the charter service from Manchester to Malaga.’
It was hard not to laugh, especially with Lizzy giggling away beside me.
‘I’m glad. He’d never have been able to keep up his blond highlights in Nepal.’
It was his turn to laugh, then, ‘Sorry, I should have introduced myself. I’m Marc Cheyne. And you’re Lou?’
His expression made it clear that he was raking up information from the past.
I nodded. ‘And this is Lizzy.’ In a gesture that seemed a bit out of place given the surroundings, he reached out and shook her hand.
‘When’s the baby due?’
‘Twelve weeks.’
‘Excellent. Didn’t you go into labour that night just after the fight broke up? I remember the paramedics carting you out.’
Lizzy nodded. ‘Yep, it was an evening of dignity all round.’
It suddenly struck me that this guy, cute though he was, was here alone. Wasn’t that a bit creepy? Even more so since he looked like he was in his early thirties and therefore a good decade older than the club’s regular clientele.
Urgh, he was obviously a lounge lizard, out on the pull, looking to get his leg over. In fact he was probably married too. Just because he didn’t wear a ring didn’t mean he was single. He probably took it off. Oh, I had him sussed, yet I was slightly disconcerted to realise that as far as my lust genes were concerned, none of these facts outweighed the cute grin and the twinkly eyes. Thank God I was sober enough to read this situation and make sensible decisions. Lust or no lust, I wasn’t going anywhere with a creepy guy who stalked out nightclubs alone looking for action.
‘Are you here with friends?’ I heard Lizzy asking.
Damn, why hadn’t I thought of that?
‘No . . .’
Hah! I was right! A lounge lizard on the prowl! He was probably a walking mass of STDs.
‘I’m the manager here. That’s how I knew Dan. He used to come in here with his mates and they invited me along that night.’
‘I just have to nip to the loo,’ Lizzy interjected. ‘It’s the bladder. Mind of its own.’
At that moment the music did a complete change of direction yet again and suddenly the Spice Girls were telling me what I really, really wanted. I didn’t need a description.
‘So are you still with that other guy?’
I shook my head. ‘No. Public humiliation has a bit of a vanishing effect on some people.’
He nodded with mock seriousness. ‘Yeah, some folk are just oversensitive like that.’
There was a pause as we both stood and stared at each other with borderline stupid grins on our faces.
‘So . . .’ he repeated.
I waited for what I dearly hoped was coming.
‘Would you like to have dinner with me next night I have off?’
Bingo!
‘No.’ I shook my head regretfully. ‘I’m really sorry but I can’t.’
Somewhere deep inside me, parts of my anatomy were threatening to form a picket line for improved working conditions.
The poor guy looked mortified. ‘OK. Well. It was good to see you again.’ He started to back away, but he only made it about six inches before I blurted, ‘Sorry, but I had an argument with Lizzy earlier and my point was that you never meet anyone decent in a club. But if you come to the shop one day and ask me nicely, I might say yes,’ I said.
‘You might say yes?’ he repeated archly.
‘I might.’
Oh, the eyes were crinkling again and there were teeth – gorgeous, straight, white perfect teeth.
‘Then I might just do that.’
Eighteen
Lou
The St Kentigern Hotel, Glasgow. Friday night, 1.30am
‘Commitment, compatibility and trust,’ Lizzy was saying as I slid back into my chair.
Ginger groaned. ‘Jesus, you sound like an advert for Hallmark.’
‘What have I missed?’ I asked, puzzled.
‘I just made the fatal mistake of asking Barbara Cartland here what she thought were the most important things in a relationship. She didn’t mention sex once so I’ve disowned her. She’s dead to me now.’
‘Ignore her, Lou,’ Lizzy said dismissively. ‘OK, it’s your turn. What do you think?’
‘Luck,’ I said. I really believed that good relationships were all down to luck. I knew too many couples who seemed perfect for each other, yet had ended up in a screaming match with a divorce lawyer on speed-dial.
‘What else? Come on. What advice would you give Cassie about finding the right relationship?’
I tried to ignore the twisting sensation in my gut. Her question threw up a whole new spectrum of discussion but I wasn’t going to go there. Not now. Not at 2 am, in a crowded bar in the middle of Glasgow. Instead I took a deep breath and thought about my answer. I was pretty sure that luck made a good relationship, but after growing up with Dave and Della, I had a good idea on how to avoid the bad. I ticked the points off on my fingers as I said them.
‘Right then – not that I’ve given this much thought but . . .’
Never forget who you are.
Compromise is a good thing. Agreeing to everything he says/ wants/does is not.
Never be so blinded by adoration that you allow yourself to be treated badly or used as a doormat/chauffeur/ housekeeper.
If he doesn’t want you to have friends or interests outside of your relationship, this doesn’t mean he adores you so much that he wants you all to himself. It means he’s a narcissistic control freak who should be chucked.
Your opinion is just as valid as his.
He’s not always right.
Or in charge.
When you have children, they become the most important thing in your life. If he disagrees with being demoted, that’s his problem not yours.
Negative behaviour can be justified by him swearing undying devotion and repeatedly telling you that you’re the love of his life. People also swear undying love for cars/money/pets/ serial killers on death row.
10. If any of these behaviour patterns ring a bell, it’s time to leave.
Ginger and Lizzy sat open mouthed for a few moments as they absorbed this.
‘Glad you haven’t given it much thought then,’ Ginger eventually said with playful sarcasm.
Thought? I’d given it plenty over the years. Just a shame I didn’t always practise what I preached.
Nineteen
Lou
1997 – Aged 27
‘Hi, honey, I’m home!’ My sing-song joviality was borrowed for the occasion from American sitcoms of the 1950s. Or anything starring Doris Day.
The truth was that I was exhausted. Knackered. Fit for lying down and slipping into a self-imposed coma until it was time to get up on Monday morning and do it all again. And strictly speaking I wasn’t actually home.
‘Home’ was still a flat above the dentist’s next to a familiar mo
ther of two whose children had inherited her capacity for shrieking. It had taken a bit of persuasion for me to accept Marc’s key and agree to move in with him for most of the week. Actually, all of the week. I couldn’t remember the last time that I’d stayed over at my own home, but that didn’t mean that I was ready to give it up. Not yet. Despite the fact that Marc had been saying for months that it made absolutely no sense for both of us to be paying rent, the very thought of giving up the flat made my teeth grind. I still hadn’t cut the umbilical cord to my single, independent life, but I’d stretched it a bit and was working on a full-scale detachment.
And besides, not only was Marc’s apartment quiet and free from the heady aroma of disinfectant and mouthwash, but it was in a gorgeous Georgian townhouse in the West End of Glasgow, with huge sash windows and the swankiest kitchen I’d ever seen. The white voile curtains fell from just below the ornate coving to the deep mahogany floor and, continuing the theme, the bedroom was a light, enticing collision of mirrored furniture, a huge white wooden bed, a solid wood floor and a stereo system that took up one whole wall. But the best thing about it was that it was across the road from a cinema so there wasn’t a new release in the last year that I hadn’t seen. Four times, in the case of The Full Monty. And me and my bag of Pick ’n’ Mix had practically taken up residence when Armageddon came out. No, I didn’t want to miss a thing.
‘Hey. Good day?’ Marc came towards me with two glasses of white wine in his hand. The whole wine-drinking thing was new to me but I was doing my best to acquire a taste for it. According to Marc and all his nightclub buddies, it was more sophisticated than double vodkas and orange with a splash of lime and a decorative feast of cherries, lemons and a plastic monkey hanging off the side. Personally, I wasn’t convinced. As far as I was concerned, if a bottle didn’t come with a screw-top then it wasn’t worth having.
‘Yeah, it was fine. Busy. Knackered now though. Just want to slouch out, order in Chinese and watch The X-files. What time are you going out to work?’
He shook his head and broke into a languid grin. ‘I’m not.’
‘What?’ My eyebrows rose straight up to their ‘suspicious’ setting. Marc always went to work on a Friday night. Always. We’d just passed the one-year mark and, other than last Easter when we went to Ibiza for a fortnight, I’d never known him to take a weekend night off.
Thursday to Sunday was when the club was busiest so he had to make sure he was there. On top of that, he was always in the club on those afternoons too, doing the admin, organising the stock, staff, finances and marketing, then overseeing the set up for the evening opening. I’d come to realise that the job of a nightclub manager may seem glamorous, but in reality it was eighty-five per cent slog, ten per cent danger, and five per cent strolling around like you were the dog’s bollocks.
In a strange way, the conflicting work schedules were one of the reasons why our relationship worked so well. By the time I closed up the shop on a Friday or Saturday night all I wanted to do was come home and crash out (or lately, nip over to the Cinemax for a solo encounter with Titanic, but I kept that act of solitary saddo behaviour to myself).
Tonight was one of those Fridays and the only thing I wanted to party with was a large bag of cheese and onion crisps and the remote control for the TV. Lizzy and I kept promising to reinstate our weekly meeting but to be honest I was glad that her two toddlers were keeping her too busy to get out. The last thing I felt like was hitting the town these days. If there was such a thing as a work/life balance I was wobbling like a workaholic elephant standing on one leg. On a skateboard.
I dropped my bag and waited for him to explain why he wasn’t going to work. Was it my imagination, or was he looking a bit sheepish? Bloody hell, he’d been fired. Or he was having an affair. Or he was sick. That was it! He had succumbed to the recent wave of mad cow disease. But then he looked perfectly healthy, so maybe not. There was definitely something suspicious going on though. I made a silent vow to deploy tactics learned from watching the finest legal brains on LA Law to get to the bottom of it. Or I could just forget my propensity for drama and panic and wait until he explained.
As if reading my mind, he leaned over, slid one arm around my waist and murmured in my ear, ‘Since it’s your birthday tomorrow I just thought I’d take the night off and take you out somewhere special.’
Thankfully, my groan was halted by the tongue that was exploring the depths of my tonsil area. Eventually he came up for breath.
‘I like you, do you know that?’ he whispered as his hand went up the back of my T-shirt and he unhooked my bra like a pro.
‘Like?’ I murmured, buying into a dialogue we often played with – usually right before foreplay or right after a disagreement. I was thinking this was definitely the former. Was it wrong that even right at that moment I’d still swap this encounter for a cheesy snack and an episode of The X-Files? It had been a long week.
‘OK, maybe more than like,’ he replied.
There was a pause while he pulled my T-shirt over my head and tossed it over the back of the couch. Must retrieve it before it’s found by the cleaning lady who comes in for two hours every Monday morning. She already found it difficult to disguise her blatant resentment that a woman has moved into what she considers to be Marc’s bachelor pad. If it wasn’t for an age difference of thirty-five years, I’d suspect jealousy, exacerbated by inhalation of Flash bathroom spray.
‘Just maybe?’ I still played along, my hand tugging on his belt. I felt like I had to go with it. The guy had taken the night off just for me, we were alone, and he was clearly horny. Whether I felt like a bout of naked sweaty stuff or not, to refuse would have been rude given that he had obviously planned this surprise for me. And besides, he seemed to think I was OK in the sex department and the scars from my first encounter made me eternally grateful for the approval and keen to show that I could maintain these standards of orgasmic adequacy.
The cheesy puffs, Ally McBeal, Mulder and Scully would just have to wait. I pushed my hands deeper into his hair and pulled his face towards me.
‘OK, I love you,’ he whispered, before sliding further downwards and flicking his tongue against an erect nipple.
‘Then you can carry on doing that for at least another ten minutes,’ I told him in my very best provocative voice. ‘Because I love you too.’
We had been four weeks into the relationship when he had completely astounded me by announcing that he’d already fallen in love with me. It should have seemed strange but it didn’t – especially because I knew even then that I was crazy-ass in love with him too.
This put everything that had come before it into perspective. This was what love felt like.
With an impressive display of athletic strength, he lifted me up, carried me over to the couch, and – without breaking mouth-to-nipple contact – followed me down and proceeded to ravish me.
Oh, and it took a lot longer than ten minutes.
If only Gary Wanker Collins could see me now.
Twenty
I pulled at the skirt of my little black dress as we climbed the steps to the restaurant, trying my best to avoid flashing my knickers, while ignoring the internal screams of my swollen feet. I had pulled out a pair of jeans and my favourite smart-but-comfy boots, but Marc had used his power of veto and persuaded me to dress up a little. Six-inch high studded sandals were not designed for optimum comfort at the end of a six-day working week spent almost entirely in a standing position. Urgh, how I wanted to be home on the couch with my tender toes in a bucket of bubbles.
Marc had won the ‘going out vs. staying in’ battle and, after a quick shower and some crucial cosmetic coverage, we’d headed to Santangelos, my favourite restaurant. Located in the basement of a glorious old building in the city centre, it was all brass and wood and reminded me of the interior of Cheers – without the resident shrink, ex-sports star, the gobby waitress and the postman who never left the bar stool long enough to deliver any mail.
Rico, the far too good-looking Italian manager, shook Marc’s hand and then did that hug/back thump thing that macho blokes do. They’d been friends since they were in their early twenties, when both of them worked as barmen in the same nightclub and shared rat-infested student digs. The pub/ restaurant/club world was a small one and most of the managers and owners knew each other and traded off information, hospitality and girlfriends. Myself being the exception. Although if Rico asked nicely I don’t know that I could be responsible for my actions. I blushed as he leaned over to kiss both of my cheeks. If that man ever developed mind-reading skills I’d be done for.
Of course, I didn’t actually mean it. I was happy with Marc. We had a good thing going. A settled routine. With none of that intensely claustrophobic stuff. He loved me. I loved him. It worked.
He was easy and uncomplicated and, OK, so we might not spend every waking moment locked in a frenzy of romance but all that mushy passion was seriously overrated. My mind flicked back to the memory of a huge suitcase under my mother’s bed that contained all the cards that my dad had ever sent her. Hundreds of overblown declarations of devotion that she poured over whenever he disappeared off the face of the earth on one of his benders. If that’s what hearts and flowers got you, I’d rather stick to easy and uncomplicated.
We followed Rico as he headed down to the rear of the restaurant and were almost at the private dining area at the back of the room when I heard the unmistakable sound of nails scraping down a blackboard. Since there was no blackboard and no nails, that could only mean one thing.
I looked at Marc questioningly and he responded with a wink, as Rico pulled back the curtain that guarded the privacy of the back booth to reveal the excited faces of Ginger, Ike, Lizzy, Adam, Josie and Avril.
And now they we were all shrieking. I just hoped no one in the main restaurant had a pacemaker or we could have a medical emergency on our hands.
