Drive Me Crazy

by Portia MacIntosh

  One should not, for example, become romantically involved with any of the following types of men: married men, bosses, control freaks and egomaniacs. We know this. We know this like we know never to over-pluck above our eyebrows. We know this like we know never to brush our hair when it’s wet. It is instilled in us by every failed relationship we’ve ever seen play out, every cruel-to-be-kind piece of advice our best friend has offered us, every romcom storyline we’ve ever watched and every magazine article we’ve ever read on ‘types of men to avoid’.

  Despite all of this knowledge, my fella ticks every box on the list. Well, I say ‘my fella’ but he’s not my fella at all, he’s his wife’s fella. He’s my boss.

  I worked in the sales and marketing department at Starr Haul for a year before Will even noticed me, and our first conversation actually took place when he called me into his office to fire me. The truth was that not only did I hate working for the sales team (haulage, warehousing and distribution – yawn) but I wasn’t particularly good at it either, and I think those two factors only made each other worse. Combined with the fact that I was often late, employee of the month I was not, and if I were Will, I probably would’ve fired me too.

  I could tell from the look on his face when he called me into his office that he was going to let me go, but with everyone always banging on about what a kind, generous family man he was, I thought I’d try and appeal to his better nature. I told him about losing my parents, about being alone in the world and barely having enough money to live on. Suddenly, Will started talking to me about his problems too. About how things weren’t working with his wife, telling me they were separated but pretending to still be together to save face. It was nice to have someone to talk to and our long chat comforting each other about the state of our lives eventually turned into a kiss, which quickly turned into sex on his desk – the first time of many.

  After that first time, as I buttoned up my white shirt (as best I could considering he’d ripped a few buttons off) and watched Will thoughtfully rub his stubbly chin (probably pondering whether or not it would be wise to fire me so soon after fucking me), I swore to myself that it wouldn’t happen again. Separated from his wife or not, I didn’t want to get involved.

  Unsurprisingly, Will decided not to fire me, taking me out of the sales department so that I could work under him (yes, I did just say that). As we started spending more and more time together, we started getting closer and closer and here we are. Nearly a year together and still sneaking around.

  I push my key in the door to my flat and let out a sigh before letting myself in.

  ‘Honey, I’m home,’ I call out as I ditch my handbag on the sideboard. No, I’m not so lonely that I’ve resorted to cracking witty jokes to myself about my situation – Honey is my cat. So not so lonely that I’ve started talking to myself, but lonely enough to talk to my cat, it would seem.

  ‘Well, it’s about time,’ a voice calls back and, despite being a familiar one, it is unexpected and causes me to jump out of my skin.

  ‘Gosh,’ I exclaim. ‘Don’t do that to me, Aims.’

  ‘I told you I was going to be here. You must be missing me if you’re talking to that thing.’

  My soon-to-be ex flatmate nods towards Honey, who hisses back at her.

  ‘You two still not getting on?’ I laugh.

  ‘Let’s just say it makes me feel less bad about hardly ever being here, and the fact that in just over a week I will be officially moved out helps too. Nice use of “gosh” by the way. I take it your old bloke doesn’t appreciate you blaspheming, as well as swearing.’

  Amy wanders into the kitchen. It’s only now that I notice the smell of food drifting through the house.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with being more ladylike,’ I call after her. ‘I can’t believe you’re getting married and moving out like a grown-up.’

  Amy returns, spoon in hand, and points at me with it as she speaks.

  ‘And I can’t believe you’re wearing that disgusting dress,’ she says harshly. ‘Or what you’ve done with this place. Or that you have a cat. Or that you have nothing but vegetables, chicken and milk made from fucking almonds in your fucking fridge – thank God I brought shopping.’

  My friend puts extra emphasis on the word ‘God’ and she reels off her list of things that she can’t believe about the new me. Well, the new new me.

  As Amy stands there, still brandishing her spoon in an attacking position, she waits for me to justify all of the above. I don’t see her as much as I’d like to these days, and I guess I must be changing a lot.

  Amy Kelly is my best friend, and she came into my life when things were the most difficult for me. By the time I was twenty-four I had lost both my parents. With no grandparents, siblings or even so much as a distant aunt I could turn to, when my dad passed away I became an orphan. Both my mum and dad were very ill in the years before they passed, so as soon as I finished sixth form, rather than going to university or travelling like the rest of my friends, I stayed at home to take care of them. I was happy to do it, and if I had the time again, I wouldn’t do things even a little differently, but it had a huge impact on my life. I stopped seeing my friends; I had no social life, no love life. When my mum passed, it just made my dad and me even closer. As he got worse, he had to go into a home and that’s where I met Amy – she was one of the carers who looked after him. When my dad died I was left with pretty much nothing. That’s when Amy told me she was looking for a new flatmate. Growing up so shy combined with my lack of a social life as an adult had turned me into this quiet little mouse, and Amy saved me from that. It took a year of my life to get there, but I was happy. Truly happy.

  Growing up, I was not a tidy child. I would take out a toy, play with it for a while, and then take out another, leaving the previous one on the floor. I never made my own bed, and any clothing I took off would wind up inside out on my bedroom floor. My mum would be constantly telling me to tidy my room, and every now and then she would offer me something in exchange for cleaning up and I would do it, and for a day or so my room would be tidy…until it wasn’t again. I wish my mum were still around to see my Manchester city centre apartment, because she wouldn’t believe just how tidy it was.

  When I first moved in with Amy, our place was everything you would expect of the home of two twenty-something chicks. We had fairy lights almost everywhere, fluffy cushions, lots of weird and wonderful ornaments and pictures on the wall. We had so much pink shit, it would make even Barbie herself dizzy and, my gosh, was it messy! No matter which room you were in, the chance of you being able to see a wine glass (clean, dirty or decorative) was very high. The place was full of smells too: hairspray, coffee, a cocktail of perfumes, the unmistakable whiff of chocolate from that one time we tried to use a chocolate fountain and it malfunctioned epically, spraying chocolate everywhere. I remember that night so well, and yet when I think about it, it feels like it didn’t really happen, like it’s something I saw in a movie once.

  It was a particularly cold December, not long after I’d started working at Starr Haul – before I got with Will, in fact. I don’t even think he’d given me a second glance at that stage. Both Amy and I were skint, and we were stuck in a battle with our landlord over who should pay for our broken central heating, because he thought it was our fault it had broken down. I was young, I didn’t have my parents to support me and things were so bad I couldn’t even afford to take the bus to work – I had to walk. It was so cold I resorted to buying cheap cups of takeaway tea, exclusively for keeping my hands warm during the journey. One evening we decided we needed to do something to try and keep us warm and it just so happened that for Amy’s birthday someone had bought her a chocolate fountain and bars of the stuff to use with it. So for dinner that night, melted chocolate was on the menu, but without any wooden skewers to stab our Poundland marshmallows with, we resorted to using forks, and when Amy dropped her fork into the fountain it jammed it and the result was us, our furniture an
d our living room being lashed with chocolate.

  As well as smelling delicious, the place had bags of personality. Amy is very hippy-chic. She’s into all this weird and wonderful stuff that I don’t understand, like crystals and dream catchers, and I’ve no idea what they do, but they definitely made the flat look cool. As she started spending less time here and more time at her fiancé’s place, she started taking all the stuff away. And as it started disappearing I realised that although the flat had bags of personality, none of it was mine.

  My friend stares at me, waiting for an explanation.

  ‘What’s wrong with my dress? It’s not that bad,’ I protest, glancing down at the black pencil dress I wore to work.

  ‘Yeah, not that bad if you’re going to a funeral,’ my friend (who is wearing a white cheesecloth gypsy top as a dress, might I add) says harshly, ‘or you’re still trying to turn yourself into a weird clone of your boss’s wife.’

  I stare at my friend for a moment. She hasn’t been back to the flat for a while, and she’s been so busy with wedding stuff that we haven’t spent much time together – not to have a proper chat – but it’s clear that she still doesn’t approve of my situation with Will. She can’t even say his name.

  ‘This isn’t for anyone’s benefit, I just like dressing a bit smarter,’ I lie. ‘And maybe I have made this place a bit more neutral, but if Will is going to move in here with me eventually then it needs to be less girly.’

  ‘Ergh, listen to yourself.’ Amy rolls her eyes theatrically. ‘All you go on about is him. You dress for him. You decorate for him. What does he do for you? He won’t even be with you publicly.’

  I feel my face fall, and my friend reacts.

  ‘Candice, I’m sorry, it just upsets me to see him treat you like this. You deserve better.’

  Amy carelessly places the dirty spoon down on the chest of drawers next to her and grabs me for a hug.

  ‘I know I deserve better,’ I tell her honestly. ‘But that’s what this week away is all about. It’s going to be our first anniversary so we’re just going to concentrate on being normal together, seeing how it goes and then working out what we’re going to do about our future.’

  ‘Remind me again how we’re spinning this little holiday-slash-business trip?’ Amy asks, pulling a face.

  ‘As managing director, Will needs to visit all branches of the company. He’ll make sure things are running smoothly and put in a bit of face time with the other employees. It’s good for his image.’

  ‘It’s good for an excuse to nail you in a hotel bed instead of a supply cupboard,’ she tells me.

  ‘That was one time.’ I laugh.

  ‘And this explains why you’re away for the weekend too, because…’

  ‘There’s always someone working day and night, seven days a week, to keep things moving,’ I tell her. ‘Haulage never sleeps.’

  ‘That might be the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.’ Amy laughs.

  Before I met Amy, I was so so shy. Somehow, she brought me out of myself and for that brief moment between meeting Aims and meeting Will, I felt like a whole new person, like a normal girl in her early twenties. I will admit that since I started seeing Will, I have gone back into my shell a little. I worry about keeping in shape. I worry about coming across as the scrappy, foul-mouthed, party girl I turned into when it was just Amy and me against the world. I know that Will wouldn’t be into that kind of girl, and I hid her from him well until I got out of those bad habits. Will is a smart, educated, well-respected man. He comes from a good family. He’s so well-spoken his accent is almost neutral, despite being born and raised in Manchester. Guys like that don’t wind up with girls like the one I had become, so I cleaned up my act. I know that Amy holds Will responsible for this regression in personality (that’s what she calls it) but I do feel like a better person for being with him.

  ‘Right, go get your comfies on,’ Amy insists. ‘Dinner will be ready in ten. I’ve made steaks, chips and my own special secret sauce,’ she sings. ‘I know you’ve been missing it so you better be off your silly diet.’

  As I head for the bathroom, a sick feeling washes over me. I don’t know what exactly is in Amy’s special sauce, but I know that it’s full of calories. As are steaks and chips. The thing about being on a diet is that as soon as you have a little slip-up, it undoes your progress for the past few days and it feels like it was all for nothing. And if that bagel yesterday made my tummy blow up like a balloon today, then tomorrow, after Amy’s cooking, I’ll look like I’m expecting one hell of a food baby, and that will have Will worried.

  I close the bathroom door behind me, slip off my dress (and my underwear, because an underwired bra will easily add one pound to my weight), pull out the scales from behind the sink as quietly as possible and place them on the bathroom floor. As I am about to step on them, a bang on the bathroom door causes me to jump out of my skin.

  ‘Bitch, are you weighing yourself?’ my friend yells through the closed door. ‘Seriously, you’ve gotta stop with this shit. You are a perfectly normal and healthy weight. Stop trying to be a stick for a man and come and get some chips into you.’

  ‘I’m not weighing myself,’ I lie, although it’s pointless. Amy knows I’m on a quest to lose a bit more weight, but I’m just trying to get healthier with Will, that’s all. I don’t have a problem or anything – actually, I do have a problem, it’s that I want to eat brownies near-constantly, but I try my hardest not to. The urge never goes away though. ‘I’ll be out in a minute.’

  I flush the toilet before returning the scales as quietly as possible. I slip on a pair of joggers and a vest top and open the door to find Amy waiting for me.

  ‘Stop weighing yourself,’ she ticks me off, hitting me on the nose with a CD.

  ‘Stop leaving the pans unattended,’ I tell her off in return.

  ‘OK, I was just bringing you this.’

  Amy presents me with a CD called ‘Anything you want is yours’.

  ‘Cool, what genre do they play?’ I ask, knowing full well it isn’t music.

  ‘Very funny. It’s that cosmic ordering I was telling you about. This one teams it with meditation; it’s bound to sort your life out.’

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ I reply, unsure what to say to that. ‘I’ll put it in my room.’

  As Amy heads back to the kitchen, which hopefully isn’t on fire, I frisbee the CD into my bedroom. I’ll need to be pretty desperate before I resort to asking thin air to fix my problems for me.

  Chapter 3

  I tap the step counter on my wrist to check my progress for the day. After inputting my calories consumed into my health app, I can see that my usual target of a calorie deficit is unsurprisingly a calorie surplus after my epic dinner (and too much wine) with Amy, but after her catching me out with the scales, I felt like I had to clear my plate to prove a point. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself, because it’s a more flattering excuse than me being a piggy.

  With just ten minutes to go until midnight, I walk laps around my bedroom to try and get my steps up for the day, because more steps equals more calories burned. The fact that I am tipsy from all the wine is only making this more difficult, but that’s all the more reason for me to do it. I don’t have much floor space in my room, which makes this even trickier, but Amy had decided to stay the night and she just doesn’t get why I want to lose weight. That’s because she’s so happy in her skin. If she caught me exercising at this time, she’d flip.

  I pace back and forth a few more times before stumbling over nothing – possible the thick fumes of alcohol in the air – and hit the deck. Unhurt (or just too tipsy to feel it) I laugh at myself. That’s when I notice the CD Amy gave me and curiosity gets the better of me. I pop it in my CD player before hitting play (making sure the volume is low enough not to be heard) and getting in bed.

  As I listen to what the voice on the CD has to say, I frown. This is silly. I’m supposed to just repeat a few chants and tell the universe wh
at I want and it will just hand it over? If only life were that simple.

  The voice talks about deciding what you want, and asserting yourself.

  ‘Repeat after me,’ the voice instructs. ‘I am in charge of my own destiny, and I deserve a better life.’

  ‘I am in charge of my own destiny, and I deserve a better life,’ I replying, mockingly.

  ‘It doesn’t work if you take the piss,’ I hear a voice say softly from behind the door. ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Sure,’ I reply, embarrassed, although I’m not sure why – at first because she caught me listening to it, but then because I was taking the piss just a bit. The thing is, after the shitty cards life has dealt me, it annoys me that the voice on the CD is implying that all I had to do was ask it not to.

  Amy turns off the CD player before climbing in my bed next to me.

  ‘So, what are you asking for?’ Amy enquires.

  ‘Hmm, let’s see… How about that I fall in love with Mr Right, ASAP?’

  ‘Beats the Mr Wrong you’re with now,’ she teases, before changing her tone to a more serious, concerned one. ‘You’re not yourself, babe.’

  ‘I’m fine, just a bad day,’ I tell her and leave it at that. I won’t tell her about Will pushing me underneath a desk because she’d hit the ceiling.

  ‘Not just today – generally. You’re like a different person. He quashes your spirit.’

  I laugh it off. ‘Just a bad day,’ I tell her again, but I feel my eyes filling up. Stupid alcohol, letting my emotions get the better of me. Suddenly, it’s all flowing out.

  ‘My life is passing me by,’ I admit. ‘With each second that ticks by, my death gets that little bit closer. I watch the seconds turn into minutes, then hours, days, weeks, months and eventually years. I see the so-called “best years of my life” vanishing before my eyes. And I hate my job so frigging much.’

  ‘So quit,’ Amy suggests.