The ABCs of Love

by Sarah Salway

  For example, one summer holiday Sally got us both a job selling fire extinguishers. We were supposed to walk into shops, and while one of us distracted the shop assistant, the other would start a small fire that we would then put out with the fire extinguisher to show how efficient it was.

  My father found out what we had to do on the day we were due to start, and he banned me from joining Sally on safety grounds. Although she kept telling me what fun she was having and how much I was missing, I was secretly relieved. Sometimes the things Sally makes herself do frighten me.

  See also Attitude; Danger; Imposter Syndrome; Sex

  foreheads

  Sally asked me what I thought of Colin.

  I said he was okay. Nothing special. Not worth throwing your life away. But then Sally said that Colin had told her I was a bit intense. Apparently, I keep staring at him.

  At first, I didn’t know what he was talking about. But then I realized. Colin plays rugby. He’d come to the pub with a group of his friends after they’d been playing in the park. It’s true, I couldn’t stop looking at them. They all had the same foreheads. A bulging shelf that hung over their eyes and made them look unfocused and brainless. Other men didn’t have this. They even shared the same wavy wrinkles across their foreheads. It was as if an empty space had been badly filled with cement, and then someone had made patterns on it with a comb when it was still wet.

  I wanted to ask why rugby players look and sound permanently concussed, but they were all too busy talking to one another and ignoring Sally and me. I didn’t think Colin had seen me looking.

  See also Nostrils; Vendetta; X-rated; Youth

  friends

  Every time I go out now with the girls, we talk about Sally.

  I think that nowadays we spend more time thinking about her than we ever did when she was spending time with us. We wonder if she’s really happy, if she thinks Colin is genuine in his desire for her, what it must be like to have such a one-sided relationship. We agree we only have her best interests at heart.

  We are supportive, even though Sally doesn’t always deserve it. I know that Miranda hasn’t forgotten the time we were talking about making love and she was explaining the importance of truly caring for the other person and treating yourself as if you were someone precious.

  “I could never have inappropriate, meaningless sex,” Miranda said. She was so earnest that Sally was the only one round the table who didn’t nod.

  “I could,” she said, staring at the businessman at the next table and ignoring Miranda’s frown. She left the restaurant with the businessman, and afterward, she wouldn’t tell anyone what happened. Not even when we begged. She said we wouldn’t approve.

  It was so typical of her, but even so, the last thing we all want is for Sally’s relationship not to work out.

  Whenever I ring Sally to pass on everyone’s best wishes, she laughs.

  “We’re here waiting for you if things don’t work out,” I tell her, and she says that’s just what she’s worried about.

  See also Outcast; Vendetta

  G

  glenda g-spot

  I told Monica at work that I don’t go out very much in the evening, so she invited me around to her house. I thought it was just going to be the two of us, but when I got there, I found she was having a sex party.

  This is like Tupperware for desperate women, although we didn’t do “it”; in fact, not much of the evening was about actually doing “it.” There were just lots and lots of gadgets for sale that simulated doing “it.” There were about ten women there, all older than me. Monica’s age. We sat in a circle and passed these gadgets round, sometimes without saying a word. Every so often, Monica walked round with a tray of little biscuits smeared with hummus and pâté and filled up our glasses with fizzy sweet wine.

  The woman who was organizing the party was like a perverted Mary Poppins. Just when you thought it was all finished, she’d put her hand into an enormous canvas bag and pull out something else. She made us play games and gave us all silly names. I was “Glenda G-spot,” Monica was “Wendy Wet-dream,” and the girl sitting next to me was “Cathy Come.” It was hard to know whether to call one another by our real names or the names on the labels the woman stuck on our chests.

  Cathy Come and I got into the final round of one game where we had to pass an enormous black dildo under our chins between each other without dropping it. Cathy Come cheated because she kept angling it, so it was difficult to get hold of. Mind you, I was quite pleased to come in second because Cathy won the dildo but I got a bottle of an apricot-flavored sauce, which seemed nicer somehow.

  I left when the woman drew a blow-up man out of her bag. One of his legs was stapled up from when a dog had got hold of it, she said. The air kept fizzling out of him, and I don’t like to say where the nozzle was to blow into.

  See also Liqueur Chocolates; Names; Toys

  glitter

  It worries me that all everyone thinks about these days is sex. I asked Sally about this the other day, and she told me a story about a friend of hers who is a nurse. This friend’s elderly mother came to stay the night before she was due to have a gynecological examination in the hospital Sally’s friend works in. The mother was very nervous, so she spent a lot of time preparing in Sally’s friend’s bathroom before her appointment. She wanted to be very clean because no man had looked at her “down there” before, not even her own husband.

  The examination went very well, but just as he was finishing, the doctor said: “I would like to thank you for making such a big effort.”

  Sally’s friend and her mother discussed this afterward. Could it just be because Sally’s friend’s mother was so clean? Eventually, they went to the bathroom and looked through the cabinet to see the lotions the mother had used.

  Imagine Sally’s friend’s horror when she realized her mother had sprayed her pubic hair with green glitter spray for the doctor. At work the next day, everyone was laughing about her mother’s private parts and how when her legs were wide open, they were lit up like a Christmas tree.

  Sally and I laughed about it too, although I stopped after a while.

  “Why did your friend have glitter in her bathroom, anyway?” I asked, but Sally says I’m too literal.

  Now I can’t stop wondering if she sprays herself with glitter for Colin.

  See also Indecent Exposure; Sex

  god

  I used to spend a great deal of time listening for messages from God. Despite what the nuns said, I thought that I had a vocation and that if I didn’t concentrate, I might miss the sign. In the same way, I used to check my hands for stigmata every morning.

  I never got a message. I know now this was a blessing. Imagine if you did spot the star of Bethlehem one night on your way back from a club? Could you really tell anyone without being locked up? Or what if your sign was so stupid, it made people laugh? Like that Victorian couple who also gave up a lot of their lives to listening out for God. When the message finally came, they were beside themselves with excitement. They probably told all their friends, so imagine their humiliation when they eventually deciphered it.

  “Eat more slowly,” God told them.

  See also Ambition; Codes; Phantom E-mails

  gossip

  Every time Brian finds me talking to someone at work, he tells me off for being a gossip. But why is it that two men found talking together are discussing something important whereas two women are always gossiping?

  See also Boxing; Glitter; Mustache; Women’s Laughter

  grief

  There was a little boy in the park the other day. He was dressed in the full England kit, like a miniature footballer. He even had those long socks on, and when he ran, he did that sideways swagger at the hips men do to make it look as if they aren’t properly running. Just getting to somewhere quickly.

  But then he fell over, and his face went all square. Not just the shape of his face, but every little feature in it went square. His mouth was th
e most obvious. It turned into a letterbox in the middle of this red block. Even his eyes looked like small, angular black stamps. His whole body went rigid too, and when his shoulders shook, they turned into straight lines that went up and down, up and down, like a lift. I watched as his mother ran up and tried to get hold of him. It was difficult for her at first because his edges were too sharp, but then he suddenly deflated into a rag doll, and she picked him up and took him over to the bench and made him happy again.

  Just like that. I saw how she made him happy. One second he was crying, and the next he was pointing at a dog and laughing.

  I think the secret is in getting the tears out. Some mornings I wake up and I know I’ve been crying in my sleep, but I just can’t get the tears out. That’s when you think you’re drowning. You’re not sharp or square. Just an empty outline filled to the brim with lukewarm water that numbs everything inside you. You’re too full to take anything in and too blocked to let anything out. That’s grief. Everything else is just sadness, and seeing a funny dog can make you better.

  See also Happiness; Illness; Why?; You

  gwyneth paltrow

  If I looked like Gwyneth Paltrow, nothing could possi-bly go wrong in my life. And that’s all I want to say about her. Basically.

  See also Breasts; Star Quality

  H

  hair

  My hair is very long and black. There’s a little nub of black at the end of each strand. Like a small pool of ink. I can squash it between two pieces of paper so it sticks and leaves a dark streak when you press on it. I can even write with it. Sometimes I find marks I have left in books and forgotten about. Once I even did it to a library book. If I am ever captured, I will be able to write a note with my hair. It is the one advantage brunettes have over blondes.

  Actually, I have started to pull my hair out. Each time I tug at a strand, there is a second when I don’t think I’m going to be able to bear the pain. It’s the only thing I can think about, but it never lasts long enough. When it’s over, I flick the hair to the ground and immediately pull at another.

  I was trying on some clothes the other day, and I saw what I thought was a bald patch at the back of my head in the mirror. My legs nearly buckled, but when I went closer, I saw that it was just the reflection from the light shining on my hair. I told myself that I would stop. Not that day, but one day soon.

  When I was at school, I played netball with a girl called Susan Armstrong. One day she was just standing on the court scratching her head and daydreaming. When the ball suddenly came toward her, she put her hands up in a panic to catch it, but she was still holding on to her hair, and she yanked out a whole handful. It never grew back. The skin underneath was tighter and shinier than her face. It was like looking at the moon.

  She couldn’t have minded because she used to show it to everyone. Mind you, she was a bit of an exhibitionist. When she left school, she went to work in a fish-and-chips shop and had to wear a little hat over her head. Maybe it was because she couldn’t let us see her bald patch anymore that she would let us smell her arm. It was as if the oil and vinegar from all those fish suppers had soaked into her skin. I used to love smelling Susan’s arm, but one day when there was no one else around, I couldn’t stop myself from leaning forward and licking her. Not hard. My tongue didn’t actually reach the flesh, it just brushed the hairs on her arm backward and forward. I could almost feel each grain of salt in my mouth.

  Susan kept her arm still, and when I looked up into her face, I could swear I saw right through her eyes and into her soul. It was moonlike too, with patches waiting to be filled.

  Even though she gave me extra chips at the shop that day, I never went back. I told everyone that I’d decided fish-and-chips weren’t healthy.

  See also Fashion; Lesbians; Visible

  happiness

  There is a new campaign at work that has been designed to expand the horizons of the support staff. This means that instead of the weekly gossipy lunch, we now have speakers who come in to talk about our personal development.

  I enjoy most of these.

  One of the best has been a man who came in and told us how to be happy. He said something that has stuck with me. He asked us what we’d do if we went into a room that had two doors leading from it. One had a notice on it that read “Lecture on how to get to heaven,” and the other read “Heaven.” Which one would you go through?

  We all thought about this, and more than half of us said that we’d go to the lecture first because it would make us better prepared. He laughed.

  “Why not just go straight in?” he asked, and we couldn’t tell him because then we would have had to admit that it was because we didn’t feel quite up to heaven just at that moment. He was so confident. It was as if he’d been covered in shiny plastic that kept out all worries. Even his teeth looked as if they’d been carved from white rubber. You felt if you were to punch him, your fist would bounce right back and smack you one in the face. And you’d probably deserve it.

  He told us that we had to write our obituaries. I tried all afternoon, but Brian kept leaning across and reading it out to everyone. Monica must have told him about the sex party, because he keeps calling me Glenda and winking. I think Brian is the kind of person who would read other people’s diaries.

  See also Grief; Imposter Syndrome; Kindness; Positive Thinking; Wobbling

  heroines

  One of my heroines is Grace Darling, the lighthouse keeper’s daughter. This is not only because she had trouble with her hair. In fact, she and I have much else in common, including growing up with unsupportive mothers.

  I first developed a craze on Grace when we went on holiday to Bamburgh. Every time I walked along by the sea, I would see the lighthouse at Longstone where she lived. I used to secretly call her “my Grace,” although she would never have played with me, of course.

  No, I’ll never forget visiting the Grace Darling Museum and hearing her story for the first time. It wasn’t that she risked her life to save all those people that startled me; it was the similarities between us. For a long time, I wondered if she had been reincarnated in me, and I took to wearing a shawl over my clothes until my mother stole it one night and refused to give it back because she said I was making a fool of myself.

  It was Grace who saw me through this crisis. I thought of how her mother had tried to force her to finish her breakfast when she wanted to go out to sea straightaway. And then to cap it all, her mother’s last words to Grace before she left that day were: “Oh, Grace, if your father is lost, I’ll blame a’ you for this morning’s work.”

  This didn’t stop her mum from sharing in the glory when it came. She even got a jug sent to her by a well-wisher with the inscription FOR THE MOTHER OF GRACE DARLING. I would love it if my mother had received something like that. FOR VERITY BELL’S MOTHER.

  In fact, my mother is just one of the reasons that I have never been able to carry out any heroic actions. That, plus no one ever needed saving during all the time we stayed at Bamburgh.

  But, yes, I have always liked and empathized with strong women.

  See also Boxing; Marathons; Voices; Weight

  horoscopes

  The other day, I noticed a worrying thing. I have got in the habit of looking up Sally’s horoscope before mine. It’s a good thing I don’t believe in them anyway, because I am a Taurus and we never seem to have much fun. Besides, Saturn is fighting Mars this week, and I need to watch my back at work. Someone will be hiding a deep secret from me. I didn’t read Sally’s properly, but I did notice that not everyone close to her will have her best interests at heart. She refuses to tell me what star sign Colin is born under, but I bet it’s Sagittarius. I have never trusted Sagittarians. They are too popular.

  See also Omens; Questions

  horror movies

  The only horror movie I have ever enjoyed was one that I went to with Sally. When we first started earning money, we’d go up to London to spend the day shopping and sometimes fit
in an early film. One day, I wanted to go and see a rerun of The Sound of Music in Leicester Square, but somehow Sally got the wrong tickets and we ended up in the cinema next door.

  Sally wouldn’t let me leave straightaway, although she promised I could if I really, really hated the film, but I’d have to go home on my own. She also said she’d hold my hand if I got scared. The heroine was a beautiful female photographer who saw death through her camera lens. Eventually, the murderer she watched came after her in real life.

  Something funny happened in the cinema that night. It was as if every one of us in the audience had been plugged into one another. The film can’t have been that scary, but we all screamed as one, clung to complete strangers, and at the end, when the murderer was climbing up the stairs to kill the photographer, we all started shouting at her to “Turn around and get the gun” at the top of our voices. It was exhilarating. When the film finally ended, all of us were laughing in our seats, none of us seemed to have the energy to move, and the cinema bars were full with people who wanted to talk about what had just happened.

  Sally and I giggled for the whole of the train journey home, and when I woke up the next morning, I knew that something wonderful had happened. I’d been part of something. I felt a deep sense of anticlimax for a long time afterward.

  See also Danger; God; Sculpture; Why?

  houses

  Most Saturdays, our family would go and look at smart houses in the area that were up for sale.