Break-Up Club

by Lorelei Mathias

  ‘Just Channel 5? I’m no good at doing it for myself, but I LOVE dejunking other people’s lives. Thanks for the TV idea though – can’t hurt to have one more at this stage!’ she said, scribbling the words ‘Big Yellow Break-Up’ onto her hand.

  For the next two hours they worked tirelessly, dividing up memories, combing each room in the house, where every nook and cranny was saturated with the bittersweet paraphernalia of Harry and Rachel, the item.

  ‘Whose was this?’ Holly asked, holding up a huge rustic bottle of extra virgin olive oil.

  ‘Oh, that stuff was really expensive. We brought it back all the way from the Dordogne. Maybe I’ll take it but decant a bit for her into a cup or something?’

  ‘Harry. I think you deserve the oil. I don’t think she’ll begrudge you that.’

  ‘She did shag another man in our bed. Yeah. You’re right. Gimme the goddamn oil.’

  Next on the pile were the salt and pepper people. Holly stared at the condiment lovers; one blue, the other purple. Their china arms locked in perpetual embrace, they seemed like the perfect couple. What other couples were there like that? So happy that no one, not even God or Facebook, could tear asunder? The humble knife and fork? The Sun and the Moon?

  Holly thought about asking Harry whether they should split them up – perhaps they could take one and leave the other for Rachel? The salt, maybe? Best not to ask him, she decided; if Harry saw the couple now he’d probably just smash their delicate porcelain faces in. So she carefully began to swaddle the salt and pepper people in bubble wrap (arms linked, of course. They would travel together to Brent Cross).

  She looked across at her best friend, who was sat on the floor sorting through CDs and old cassette tapes.

  Wait, cassettes?!

  ‘Harry. Dude. You know that musical formats have changed about six times since the humble audio cassette? You can probably chuck those away now!’

  ‘But these are all the mix tapes we made for each other when we went travelling!’

  ‘Even more reason!’ she held out the bin bag towards him.

  ‘I remember, she wanted to make them all on cassette so it didn’t matter if anyone nicked them!’

  ‘That was probably really sensible back then. But you can get them all on Spotify now! Come on, bin!’

  ‘But I still have a perfectly good tape player.’ Harry pointed to the dusty red 1980s double-decker ghetto blaster that was somehow playing Radio 6 Music.

  ‘Wow. That’s proper retro. It’s gone full circle to cool again.’

  ‘No. It’s just an example of sturdy electronics – made in a time when things were built to last. Not like Apple things that last a year, tops! Designed obsolescence, indeed!’

  Holly smiled. ‘He has a point. Keep the Sanyo. And the tapes. They’re lovely,’ she said, shoving them towards the ‘keep’ pile. ‘Besides, if you ever end up out of work, you can make a mint on Antiques Roadshow.’

  Which was perhaps a joke too far. Either that or Harry had just had a sudden realisation that things were over. She turned to see him in the centre of the living room, holding up a Smiths LP and sobbing. She sat down next to him, held him tight while he wept. Until eventually he began to complain of a crying headache, like the big old girl that he was.

  A while later, a transit van marked ‘Rapid Removals’ pulled into the drive. With the help of Andy, the Turkish driver (the same one who had recently done Olivia’s move, and seemed to be developing a sensitivity for these things), they began to load up Harry’s life into the back of the van.

  ‘That’s the last one,’ Harry said an hour later. He gave the flat one last glance, as though committing every square inch to memory, just as Bob Dylan began to bellow ‘It ain’t me’ on the red ghetto blaster.

  ‘I guess this is it then.’ The van beeped. Harry took the final goodbye letter to Rachel that he and Holly had stayed up all night writing together, and deposited it on the mantelpiece, next to the face-down photograph of them on graduation day.

  ‘Wait, the radio!’ Holly said. She went to the kitchen and unplugged Dylan, cutting him off mid-chorus, just after the words ‘It ain’t me you’re looking for.’

  She felt torn between two things. On the one hand, selfish relief: at least she wasn’t the one having to pack up her life into little boxes, nor dealing with a custody battle over every shared possession. And on the other hand, overwhelming sympathy that one of her best friends was grieving the loss of his future.

  Leaving Harry to have one last moment on his own, she cradled the ghetto blaster in her arms and stepped indelicately onto the van. Some time later, Harry climbed aboard, the van door sliding after him with a loud, jolting finality. They set off for Brent Cross, to the Big Yellow Break-Up Storage, where much of Olivia’s life was already in boxes.

  12. Status Anxiety

  The next few days, Holly lived a pendulum-like existence, swinging from drunk to hung-over to drunk every few hours while simultaneously lurching between her two jobs of incompetent Editor and unofficial Development Executive. At the end of one very long such day, she was walking through the underground walkway at Tufnell Park station, when she passed a busker playing a trumpet. She did a double take when she saw that this particular trumpet appeared to be made out of a Henry Hoover. Ingeniously, the smiling face and its long, winding cord were emitting a hilarious, happy sound. Her thoughts were, one: am I hallucinating from low blood sugar? And two: awesome, I must ring Lawrence to tell him about this! Followed closely by three: fuck-knuckles, I don’t have a Lawrence anymore.

  She was halfway to the temple of gloom when her phone beeped with a message. ‘Hey, it’s D-Day! You bring dinner, I’ll bring some vino. Let’s get this over with! Harry x’

  She bashed out a reply before heading home, a renewed spring in her step: ‘Roger that. See you soon x.’

  When she got to the flat, Harry was already in his makeshift bedroom (previously known as Holly and Bella’s living room). Next to him on the sofa was a rolled-up double duvet and pillow, his pyjamas piled up on it with his towel. Next to that was a black bin liner full of clothes he still hadn’t unpacked. Next to that, a pile of library books, one of which Harry had open on his lap as he stared straight ahead at the blank television. As he heard Holly enter, he turned to face her, his eyes grave.

  ‘Tell me, why does this feel so much like a rite of passage?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, shifting the tower of break-up bedding to the other armchair so she could sit next to Harry on the sofa. ‘I feel sick. Do you have the instructions from Bella?’

  ‘Yep,’ he said, retrieving a printed email from his bag. ‘Here we go then. Rule Number Six. OK now, apparently this is all for our own protection. No Face-stalking. Yadda yadda yadda – be sure to follow the specific instructions below. Now,’ he said, looking up at Holly, ‘firstly, I need to ask. Are you of sound mind at present?’

  ‘Of course I’m not of sound mind. I just bought two Pot Noodles,’ she said, placing two Chicken and Mushroom tubs of dirt onto the table.

  ‘Aye. ’Nuff said,’ Harry said, visibly saddened by the sight of their unappealing dinner.

  ‘So, I think you should go first,’ Holly said, taking the paper and beginning to read. ‘Right. Next, it says that this is your official deletion ceremony and a laptop will be required to make things go a swiftly as possible– none of this squinting at phones and so on. Then, log on to Facebook, open your personal settings. Then, remove the information on personal data from your feed that is viewable to others. Now THIS IS KEY. This is the thing that means that you can change your relationship status without anyone seeing.’

  ‘OK. Done,’ he said, clicking a few keys. ‘Then what.’

  ‘Then, you have to manually change your status,’ Holly said, reading aloud. ‘And Bella says not to make the same mistake she did, which was to put in SINGLE. Instead, you want to just put NO STATUS AT ALL. This way, you’ll be freed from any dirty-laundry-fuck-ups in the future.’
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br />   Harry tapped a few more buttons, then closed his eyes as he pressed the last one. ‘OK – DONE!’

  Holly kissed him on the cheek. ‘Well done. That wasn’t so hard was it?’

  ‘And I did it without looking at Rachel’s picture. Now it’s your turn.’

  ‘OK.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Let’s do this.’

  ‘What’s your password?’ Harry passed her the laptop.

  ‘Womble123’ she said as she typed it in. ‘Well, that will have to change! Right, where am I going?’ She looked through her homepage for ‘settings’.

  ‘Oh. Hang on, Hol. Look.’

  Harry was staring at the screen, and Holly followed his gaze. There, at the centre of her newsfeed, was a big neon sign saying NEWSFLASH! Orbiting this sign were some disco lights, a mirrorball and the words ‘Lawrence Hill is now listed as single’. Next to it all, a dozen comments from friends, and a glib one from him in return.

  ‘So much for going quietly,’ she grumbled. Then, scrolling down her own timeline, she noticed she had a load of new messages from friends – everything from, ‘Just seen the news. Soz,’ to, ‘Give me a call, honey. Hope you’re OK’.

  ‘Wow. I wish when I’d joined this stupid thing that I hadn’t bothered to say I was in a relationship! This is so weird, it’s like breaking up twice!’

  ‘So, are you ready to change your status?’

  She nodded and began following the instructions. Moments later, a sentence she never thought she’d see appeared up on her feed. ‘Lawrence Hill and Holly Braithwaite are now friends.’

  ‘Are they? Are they fuck?!’

  ‘Maybe you should delete him altogether then, and it won’t say that. You said yourself you’re not ready to be friends. In fact, I’m going to de-friend Rachel now. And it’s going to give me enormous amounts of pleasure!’ he said unconvincingly, as he took over the laptop and logged back in.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh, what? What now?’ Holly said.

  There, right at the top of Harry’s newsfeed was the neon broadcast ‘Holly Braithwaite is no longer listed in a relationship’ – complete with garish broken heart icon.

  Holly groaned. ‘Brilliant. Bella’s instructions didn’t work. It’s told every Tom, Dick and Barry that I’m single.’ She sighed, while Harry poured her some wine. ‘Thanks Haz. Sorry I’m being a grumpy twat. I’ve just had it with The Facebook.’ She took a large swig. ‘Actually, give me the laptop again.’

  She logged back into her account and went to do a status update. She wrote in the words: ‘Holly Braithwaite is now listed as Single. Just in case anyone didn’t hear the loudspeaker announcement. Send wine and sympathy to the usual address. Thank you please x x x.’

  Next up on the itinerary was full-on deletion. Right, let’s do this, she thought, finally hitting the DELETE button. There. She’d done it. Phew. END OF. But oh no. The plaster wasn’t quite ripped off yet. Here was another one of those oblong boxes, tempting her to change her mind again. ‘Are you sure you want to unfriend this person?’

  Yes! I am quite sure thank you, she thought. Although am I ready to sever all contact, even virtual?

  ‘How about we get drunk instead and eat ice cream?!’ she said, looking up at Harry in the way a pleading eight-year-old looks up at their dad when they want a bit more pocket money. ‘Can’t I just have one last supervised stalky stalk?’

  Harry nodded reluctantly. ‘OK. I’m giving you a 24-hour respite. Only if you promise to do it tomorrow at work.’

  ‘Yes, Harry, I promise.’

  ‘Good. Now, I have a confession to make. I’m guilty of some A-grade cybermentalism.’

  ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Yesterday, I Googled the douchebag she’d been shagging. Chris Haddock is his name – which I managed to deduce from various pictures they were both tagged in.’

  ‘Chris Haddock, you say? I mean, imagine having sex with someone called that?’

  ‘I don’t need to imagine it.’

  ‘I suppose it would be like kissing a wet fish?’ Holly said slowly.

  Harry smiled and gave Holly a high-five.

  ‘But there was fuck-all on him.’

  ‘Well. You know what Olivia says – if someone’s not Googleable, they can’t be that interesting.’

  ‘Which I always say is such a lovely way of looking at the human race.’

  ‘Well, I’m convinced Lawry’s knobbing someone out in Paris. The festival finished days ago, and he’s still there! I keep seeing him tagged in pictures with beautiful women with names like Fulvia.’

  ‘You realise he now has every right to knob beautiful women called Fulvia, don’t you?’ he said, but Holly was back on the computer, typing Lawrence Hill into the blue search bar.

  As she waited for Lawrence’s profile to load up, she found herself feeling the unique mix of excitement and shame in her stomach that only an impending Face-stalking session could generate.

  ‘Oh, no look at him in this one… and there she is again. I can’t look directly at her, she’s too stunning,’ Holly covered her eyes.

  ‘OK, let’s see what else there is – then we’re getting out,’ Harry said.

  Together they scrolled back down Lawrence’s timeline, perusing a photo album called ‘Gay Pareee’. The same girl was with him in a different picture now, next to a pretty, elfin girl tagged as Anna. They were stood on a red carpet by a sign for the Paris Bibliotheque, glasses of bubbles in their hands.

  ‘As if! Lawrence always said that only posh twats drink champagne! All the romance of being in Paris must be changing him. Look at how gorgeous he looks… and look at all those comments from girls underneath. Gah!’

  ‘You mentalist! YOU ended it with him!’ Harry said.

  ‘What have we degenerated into?’ Holly asked while shaking.

  ‘I don’t know. That Zuckerberg has a lot to answer for.’

  Harry shut the laptop and put it onto the floor.

  ‘It’s really over, isn’t it?’ Holly said slowly.

  ‘The writing’s on the wall. Or at least, the Timeline. You did the right thing,’ he said, huddling up to her as the tears fell in droves.

  She nodded.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ Harry said. ‘Let’s take our minds off this by stalking another human being entirely. Let’s find out a bit more about this Tube voice-over lady of yours.’

  Harry opened up Google. He typed in Clara Thomas, then clicked on the link to an actor’s website, where there was a black and white headshot of a woman in her forties with brown hair.

  ‘Wow. She’s so pretty! Ha, see! I was right, she does loads of other things besides being the voice of London Underground. Adverts, radio plays, all sorts! Cool!’ Holly said, adding the link to her bookmarks before Harry took over the keyboard again.

  ‘But what’s this,’ he said, opening up another link on the Google results page. ‘Bakerloo Bob’s forum? Wow, this bloke has catalogued all the different voices, on all the different lines and uploaded all of them as sound files! Some people have too much free time.’

  ‘Wow this is actually really fascinating! A record of all the mechanical voices we hear every day but never think to put a name to, or give any more thought to. Mental.’ Holly scrolled down the forum, which was filled with people posting facts about different voices on different train lines. ‘This is nerdy as hell, but it’s also really useful stimulus for my writing. I’m totally going to use this. Thanks Harry.’

  ‘Why don’t you have a stab at writing some of it now, take your mind off things?’

  Holly knew he was talking sense. And part of her was feeling excited by the idea that Clara had a real life, and there was more to her than her dulcetly robotic tones. Part of her felt spurred to go and sit in her room and write. But her head felt so heavy, and her facial muscles had started to arrange themselves into the shape of a yawn.

  ‘I’d love to, Harry, but I actually feel a bit run-down, like I might be coming down with something. I’ll defin
itely start on it later. I might just have a nap first.’

  ‘What about dinner?’

  She looked at the sad little pots of pretend food on the table, waiting to be activated with hot water, and shook her head.

  Harry gave her a cuddle and caught a yawn off her. ‘Night then. I might go out for a kebab later. I’ll give you a knock in case you fancy one by then.’

  ‘Thanks. And well done on the delete – you’re much stronger than I am!’

  *

  The next day, Holly awoke to a stench worse than death. One by one, she opened her eyes. Lying next to her in the bed was a small brown oblong, wrapped in swaddling clothes of pita bread, two small bites taken out of it. Resisting the gargantuan urge to be sick, she slowly dangled one foot out of the bed and felt for the floor. The foot landed on her laptop, and before she knew it, her whole body weight was now on the screen, causing it to tip up like a see-saw. In a matter of seconds, the laptop buckled and back-flipped into the air, landing with an un-earthly crack.

  ‘ARRRRGGJJJJJHHHHH!’ she yelled, not daring to look at the damage. Instead she studied her bedroom, which now looked as though it had been burgled by the same people who regularly did over The Lawrence Pit. She could just make out her bath towel at the other side of the room, engulfed in a tornado of ‘going out clothes’ that appeared to have swept over what was once her Zen-like bean-bag area. ‘Shit,’ she said, hobbling over to retrieve the towel, which now had an unsavoury smell of mildew. She pulled off her T-shirt and wrapped the towel around herself before running to the bathroom.

  But the door failed to open. Arse. She had missed her slot in the unofficial bathroom rota, which meant that Bella was now full-throttle into her three-hour bathroom beauty regimen.

  She pounded her fists on the door. ‘Honey! So sorry! I overslept again! Pretty please can I share the bathroom with you?’

  The door was unlocked and opened, revealing a face dotted with white blobs. ‘Don’t scream. It’s only toothpaste.’

  ‘Thank you! I’ll just run into the shower, and I’ll be out of your hair in three squirts.’

  ‘What?’