by Polly James
She tells me about it when we run into each other in the stationery cupboard first thing this morning. Apparently, we’re both trying to avoid the Fembot, who’s harassing people into signing up for an awayday of some sort. The last one was bad enough, so I have no intention of going to another, and Esther never goes to staff events “on principle”.
“So?” I say, as we load up with Post-its and other non-essentials. “How’s the dating going?”
“I’ve decided it’s not who I am,” says Esther, somewhat incomprehensibly. “I’ve never had a typical life path and I guess I never will.”
I make a sympathetic face, then sit down on a box of printer paper. It sounds as if this may take a while.
“The guy met me at the station,” Esther continues, making me think back to Jude, which is so enjoyable that I get distracted, until Esther coughs to attract my attention.
“With me so far?” she says, and then continues, “He looked me up and down as if I was something for sale on eBay, and then told me I didn’t look like my profile picture.”
I say I bet he didn’t either, as Esther groans, sits down on another box and puts her head into her hands.
“No, he bloody didn’t,” she says. “Not without the six inches that had mysteriously gone missing from his height.”
That seems to be a common problem, given Pearl’s experience when she was catfishing, but Jude’s exactly the right height for me.
“Ergh-ergh-hm.”
Esther’s doing that cough-hint thing again, so I force myself to stop thinking about Jude and to concentrate on her instead. It’s difficult, though, as now the Fembot’s yelling my name somewhere further down the corridor, and Esther’s started sneezing. Hayfever season lasts all year for her, so I wait while she rubs her eyes, which turns them bright red, and then she scrabbles in her sleeve for a tissue and starts trumpeting so loud the Fembot’s bound to hear us soon, if she hasn’t already.
“Hush!” I say, in a panic, so Esther whispers the rest of her story, which starts with the moment the waitress brought the bill and Mr Short got out his calculator.
“Then he proceeded to add it up and divide by two,” says Esther, in a disgusted tone.
I can’t see what’s so bad about that, myself. Wasn’t the independence of paying our own way one of the things feminists fought so hard to achieve? Esther agrees it was, but says she didn’t expect Mr Short to then point out that she needed to pay an additional £3 to cover the extra coffee she’d had.
“I didn’t expect him to calculate twenty per cent of £3 to add to the tip, either,” she says.
“Holy shit,” I say. “Nothing could be worse than that.”
Famous last words. The Fembot’s just opened the door.
“Get out here now, you two,” she says. “I knew you were in here because of Esther’s wheezing. So I’m volunteering you both for the HOO awayday. We’re going to do extreme sports.”
I can definitely hear panic-stricken wheezing now, but this time, I’m the one it’s coming from.
* * *
Time flies when you’re having fun, doesn’t it? I’ve had two more wonderful dates with Jude by the time that Eva returns from the States, so now there’s someone I can talk to about him, at long last.
“So,” she says, as she opens her front door and ushers me in. “Slept with him yet?”
I make a non-committal noise as I follow her into her living room, but it doesn’t put her off.
“You haven’t, have you?” she says, chucking a bright orange box towards me, just as I am sitting down.
It misses my head by about half an inch.
“Gift from the US,” Eva says, by way of explanation. I thank her profusely, to buy some time, even though I’ve always hated peanut butter cups.
There follows quite a long silence, during which Eva stares at me, while she waits for me to answer the dreaded sex question, and I stare back at her. Finally, I’m the one who caves.
“No, I haven’t slept with Jude,” I say, “and I don’t think I ever will. I’m shit scared by the thought of it.”
I was doing fine when we first got back to Jude’s flat in Shoreditch the other night, after he’d taken me out for another meal, and I was even looking forward to taking things further for about five minutes, until the disrobing started. Then I recalled that I haven’t slept with anyone but Dan for donkey’s years, and my body looks nothing like it did when he and I first started having sex. After that, I got a migraine, which lasted all the way home on the train. I’ve got a horrible feeling that if Jude ever manages to get all my clothes off, he’ll end up ordering me to put them straight back on again.
He’s being very patient, but Eva says I’m being an idiot and should “just get drunk and go for it”.
“Talking of drink,” I say, “can we have a glass of wine, if we’re going to keep talking about having sex with Jude? I’m going to need one, if we are.”
* * *
Turns out I need three glasses, as Eva spends so long trying to reassure me that sleeping with Jude will be “a piece of piss”. Her efforts prove so ineffectual that I’m still totally unconvinced by the time she calls me a cab, though I’m well on the way to being pissed. Even so, I’m still capable of registering her parting shot: “And get a wax before you do it,” she yells, as I stagger down her garden path. “Don’t forget these younger guys grew up on porn.”
I sit in the back of the cab, feeling thoroughly sick, and wishing I still didn’t have anyone to talk to about Jude. Talking to Eva made things ten times worse.
* * *
I’m too busy to think about sleeping with Jude today – or getting waxed – because I’m collecting Pearl and Albert from the airport, now they’ve come back from Beijing.
“It’s so good to see you,” I say, hugging Pearl so hard I’d be worried about her bones cracking, if she didn’t insist there was no chance she could have osteoporosis, due to all the sit-ups and planking that she does.
“It’s wonderful to see you, too, darling girl,” she says, “though don’t get too used to it. Albert and I’ll be off again, as soon as we can arrange our next bout of voluntary service overseas. It’s changed my life!”
Danny’s talking about changing his again, too, when he and Pammy catch up when I get back from dropping Pearl and Albert off at Abandon Hope.
The Council’s having to cut jobs, so now I’ve been offered a redundancy package. I think I’m going to take it and do something different with my life – probably one of the things I’ve always wanted to do.
Pammy never thinks before she replies, that’s her trouble. She just types this:
Well, don’t move to China. It’s really shit.
Even when you think you may have been caught out in a lie, you have to keep it going, if you don’t want people to despise you. Then you need to change the subject, so I ask Danny what he’s considering and he says he’s not sure yet, but it might be something to do with food.
I need some good recipes, given that now I’m pulling myself together, I can’t let Joel do all the cooking, every night. He says he’s getting bored with it, and it’s “taking too much time away from the brunettes”. The continuing use of the plural form of brunette worries me, but I don’t think Joel’s changed his position on commitment yet. He still says it’s a waste of time, if people can “just get bored with each other and give up trying”.
I think that may be what Danny’s getting at when I decide to ask him what happened with his marriage. Surely we can discuss this stuff, now that we’re just friends?
Apparently not. This snaps back, straight away.
I’m not really comfortable talking about my wife.
I note that Danny didn’t say, “ex-wife”, so I repay him for that by apologising. I add that I didn’t mean to pry, and then I suck up a bit, to help me get over the guilt I’m suddenly feeling about Jude.
You seem such a lovely, considerate, funny guy. I can’t understand why you and your wife split up
.
There’s quite a long delay before Danny replies this time, and I’m not a hundred per cent sure how to respond when he does.
Let’s just say that maybe you stop seeing each other when you’ve been together for a long time. Not that there was much of me left to see. I’d become pretty grey and boring, I think.
I hope that doesn’t mean he’s taken to using Grecian 2000. Joel would never let him get away with that, though maybe it’d work for pubic hair. If it did, I wouldn’t need a bloody wax.
* * *
Oh, dear God. Never, ever get a wax. They’re agonising. On top of that, now I’ve got a horrific red rash which looks like syphilis or something equally off-putting, so I definitely won’t be sleeping with Jude until it wears off – if it ever does.
Eva promised me the whole thing would be a doddle, which is why I arranged to have it done during my lunch break, but now I can’t walk properly, because it feels even worse than it looks. I’m walking like John Wayne when I waddle back into the office.
“Where’d you leave your horse, Hannah?” shouts Geoff, one of the irritating “wits” I have to work with, day after infinitely-boring day.
I try to kill him with one of Joel’s death-stares to shut him up, but it’s too late, because the Fembot’s already spotted me. She gives my bandy legs a funny look, and reminds me that the HOO awayday is tomorrow.
“I hope you’re not thinking of faking an injury to get out of it,” she adds. “Like Esther has. A partially-slipped disc, my arse. She sounded far too cheerful for that when she called in sick this morning.”
She probably was cheerful, because there’s nothing wrong with her, except fear of making an idiot of herself. I told her that would be my role when she called last night to tell me her plan, but she wouldn’t listen. She’s even more terrified than I am of doing these bloody sports, even though she’s so much younger than me, and even when chickening out isn’t likely to help her chances of promotion. I don’t care about mine, so maybe I could claim to be sick as well. I’m sure a nasty rash would count.
Judging by the Fembot’s expression when I enquire, it seems it won’t.
Chapter 44
I knew Albert was wrong about my ever being able to learn to row a boat. I can’t even handle a kayak.
It’s time for the first set of activities at the awayday centre, which turns out to have been set up for adrenalin junkies who like all things coastal and insane – and I get to have first go. That’s thanks to the Fembot, who is both in charge, and a sadist. Lucky me.
I sit on a rock, shivering with terror as the instructor finishes his lecture on what to do if anything goes wrong – which isn’t exactly reassuring – and then he helps me into my kayak. I think I’m seasick already, judging by how nauseous I feel.
“You can do it,” he says, when he sees my face. “Now off you go!”
I think he’s right, for the first five minutes, as it goes surprisingly well, until the Fembot decides to intervene. I’m rowing along quite nicely – or paddling, or whatever you call it – when she suddenly yells, “Go, Hannah! Show the rest of us what oldies can do!”
That load of nonsense ruins my concentration – and my rhythm – and before I know it, I’m underwater, thrashing about like a newly landed fish.
I can hear the Fembot yelling something else, probably more helpful instructions about how to prove I’m not completely past it, but her voice is muffled by whatever’s banging in my ears, which is why it takes me a while to realise that the instructor’s appeared and is trying to help me get upright again. By the time he succeeds, I’m freezing cold and I’ve swallowed so much salt water I’m sure I’m dying of dehydration.
“Never mind,” says the Fembot, marking me down as a fail on her chart. “You can restore your honour on the zipline.”
Honestly, Esther had the right idea, didn’t she? She insisted she was still too unwell to come with us this morning, even after the Fembot sent her an email questioning her commitment to her job, and to any idea of being promoted. Getting a better job isn’t likely to be much comfort if you die in the process of achieving it, which is probably what’s going to happen to me if I get on this zipline. Even the thought of it’s enough to give me a heart attack.
I stand at the very back of the queue, watching the rest of the team fly past one by one. Their expressions range from elation to agony, and I start to wonder if I can sneak off into the bushes before it’s my turn.
“Yee-ee-ha-aah!” shrieks the Fembot, as she goes whizzing past.
Her mouth’s so wide open with excitement, hopefully a seagull will mistake it for a cave and fly inside. That would shut her up.
I throw a small pebble towards the nearest seagull, to give it a hint, but it just gives me a look of intense disdain, and then returns to pecking at the remains of one of the energy bars the Fembot doled out when the HOO team boarded the coach at stupid o’clock this morning.
“Wake up, Hannah,” she shouts, having landed safely on the ground and removed her harness. “You should have climbed up to the platform by now, so get a move on, will you? We’re all waiting to have our lunch.”
She’s welcome to the energy bar the seagull thought too disgusting to eat, if she’s so bloody hungry, so I wave the wrapper at her, but she just shakes her head and gestures for me to hurry up.
I stare hopelessly up into the trees at the platform, which is so high that I can barely see it, while contemplating the stroke I’m bound to have on my way there, if I manage to avoid the aforementioned heart attack. After that, I think of my whole team, all watching me from down below, and all believing I’m too old to manage anything, and finally I recall Eva telling me the other night that age is just a number, when I said I couldn’t sleep with Jude. I start to climb.
* * *
Fail, writes the Fembot again on her chart, next to zipline and Hannah Pinkman.
Age may only be a number, but terror is exactly what it says on the tin. I only got halfway up to the platform when a gust of wind scared me so much I spent the next five minutes stuck where I was, clinging to a flimsy wooden ladder that was swaying like mad, no matter what the instructor and the Fembot kept claiming from the ground. When people say they’re paralysed by fear, they really do mean paralysed. I couldn’t move in any direction, and it was only when the instructor climbed up behind me, linked me to his harness and then wrenched my fingers away from the ladder that I agreed to follow him back down.
I’m so embarrassed I wish I could just disappear. There’s no escape, though, so I do the next best thing. I carry my phone up the slope behind the cafe where the rest of the HOO team are lunching on full English breakfasts, until I find a signal, and then I call Eva and tell her that I want to die.
I have a bit of a self-pity-fest, actually, given that I go on for at least ten minutes about how I can’t do anything, and how I must be an idiot to think I can. It’s almost a match for Esther’s current Facebook status, which says, “Everything I have ever wanted has been denied to me.” I know that, not because I’m checking Facebook, but because Eva’s just read it out to me.
“You’ve gone back to being more of a bloody wuss than Esther is,” she adds. “I thought you’d grown some balls over the last few months, Hannah – and started to believe you’re as good as anyone else – but now you’re wimping out again. What would Pearl say if she saw you acting like this? And God knows what Jude would think.”
He’d think I was being pathetic, so Eva’s right, but that doesn’t make the situation easier. I was hoping she’d help me think of an excuse to avoid this afternoon’s suicidal activity: abseiling down a cliff.
* * *
“It isn’t a cliff,” says the instructor later, when he’s trying to persuade me to walk towards the edge. “It’s just a steepish slope.”
Like an idiot, I trust him, only to find out that he tells lies. It’s definitely a cliff, and now I’m supposed to be jumping off it.
“Shall I just write fail now,
Hannah?” asks the Fembot, from further along the edge of the cliff-cum-slope. “Save us all the bother?”
My eyes begin to prickle as I fantasise about pushing her off the damn cliff or whatever it is, but then something weird happens to me: the last nine months flash before my eyes and I decide I won’t give up before I’ve started. After all, I didn’t think I could survive Dan leaving, but I somehow have, and I didn’t think Joel could manage without me while I was in France, but he did. I also thought Pearl would die on the flight to China – from a DVT or something – but she looked better than ever when she returned. Now she wants “an even greater adventure” next time she and Albert go away.
Abseiling can be my great adventure. It’s only a slope, after all, albeit a very cliff-like one.
I allow the instructor to help me into my harness, adjust all the ropes and talk me through what’s going to happen, all without panicking once. I even manage to smile and nod when the Fembot says, “You’re really going to do it, Hannah?”
We Pinkmans are made of sterling stuff – until we find ourselves walking backwards over a cliff edge above a hell of a drop. Then we almost shit ourselves.
I take several deep breaths in through my nose and make wild promises to any gods that are likely to be listening, if they’ll just allow me to get through this nightmare in one piece. Then I start letting the rope out and begin to descend. It doesn’t get any better at that point – not if you’re stupid enough to look down, which I am.
I stop dead about thirty feet below the edge of the cliff, and hang there, swaying for what feels like quite a while. It’s the zipline ladder experience again: I can’t go up, or down.
