It's Got To Be Perfect

by Claire Allan

  I giggled back – a little. I think I sounded okay and not demented. Truth was, I just didn’t know what to say and my mind was still frantically trying to find some idea inside it as to what his bloody name was.

  “Anyway, I wondered,” he went on, “if we could, you know, do it again some time?”

  Now when he said “do it”, I wondered if he meant do it. And if so, wasn’t he being a little presumptuous? Of course we had ended up doing it on our first, erm, date – if you could call it that – but that didn’t mean I was the kind of girl who routinely did it on a second date – or a first date for that matter. It had taken me over a month to do it with Pearse – and even that was quick compared to my previous record. Contrary to what you may think, I was generally quite reserved when it came to the opposite sex.

  I coughed to hide my embarrassment – vaguely aware that my limited responses were in fact creating an impression of me as a total feckwit.

  “I mean, I’d like to take you out for dinner,” he offered and I breathed a sigh of relief. I probably should have said no, but then as I’ve already explained I was lacking in other options. All I had to look forward to was being the spinster bridesmaid of my best friend and a lifetime of loneliness. My beautiful laminated Life Plan would mean nothing now – if I didn’t find another man, and fast, I’d have to bin the fecker altogether. And I knew that sounded pathetic. And I knew I was a modern, successful woman who didn’t need a man to define me. And I knew that I was terribly stupid to think that a man – and only a man – could really make me happy. But I wasn’t good on my own. And even though my behaviour with him vaguely disgusted me, I found myself agreeing to dinner with the Nameless Wonder.

  “Great,” he said and I could hear him smiling down the phone. “I’ll take you somewhere special,” he vowed. “I was thinking of Manna. I’ve heard great things about it . . .”

  “So you don’t know his name?” Fionn asked. “And he wants to take you to Manna?”

  “Wanted,” I corrected her, sipping from a glass of Merlot and dipping into the box of Maltesers at my side.

  Yes, again I knew I was supposed to be going easy on the drink and at this stage my liver was screaming out for a reprieve but desperate times call for desperate measures.

  “I said I’d been recently, which wasn’t actually a lie, and he agreed to take me somewhere else.”

  “But you still don’t know his name?”

  I shook my head and Fionn looked at me with a mixture of disbelief and, dare I guess, admiration. I’d thought she would have been utterly, utterly disgusted with the tales of my wanton misbehaviour with Chewbacca but she had, in fact, laughed her head off. “Well, that explains the sudden change of heart about Pearse!” she’d roared and I didn’t correct that by telling her the end of my relationship with Pearse had been anything but sudden. Thinking on it, we had been in the death throes for a really, really long time. Denial was our best friend.

  “I probably do know his name,” I said, refilling her glass. “I just don’t actually remember it at the moment. I’m hoping it will be one of those things which come back to me in the middle of the night. You know how you can just be dropping off to sleep and bam – in it pops?”

  “I’ve heard one-night stands described in many ways but that’s a new one for me,” Fionn said with a wiggle of an eyebrow.

  I plastered a look of mock offence on my face. “You know what I mean,” I said and sat back against the sofa, again reaching for the Maltesers.

  Once Chewbacca had finished chatting to me on the phone, I had gone into a bit of a spin. I wasn’t sure if I had done the right thing agreeing to meet him again. I was not sure I had done the right thing meeting him in the very first place, if the truth were told. So I needed to talk and even though Fionn had enough on her plate and it was a school night and Bob would be thoroughly unimpressed with the inevitable whiff of stale booze in the morning, it was inevitable that I would call her. She didn’t hesitate – her antenna for scandal on full alert – and within an hour of EastEnders ending and my phone call with the mystery man, she was sitting on my floor, drinking wine and coming to terms with the fact her best friend had – for all intents and purposes – acted like a complete hussy during the week.

  “Feck me,” she said. “You don’t do things by half.”

  “I hadn’t actually planned it,” I explained to her. “And I don’t really understand it. All I know is that something in me shifted and I ended up in bed with someone else. And I don’t even know if I like him – in fact, if you had asked me earlier today I would have said it was all a mistake and I didn’t care if I never saw him again.”

  “But you do want to see him again?” she asked, eyebrow raised.

  “It can’t hurt.”

  “Apart from the carpet burns from his chest hair,” she said with a smile.

  I laughed – a genuine out-loud laugh which made me snort just the smallest amount of red wine through my nose and all over the floor.

  Fionn stayed over. It was easier than trying to get a taxi and we figured we could land into work together. With Fionn to push me on in the morning, it was also much less likely that I would be late. That had to be a good thing. Sure Bob had warned me about my timekeeping before but there was something in how he warned me about it last week that made me think this time he was actually serious.

  So when Fionn shouted, “Wakey wakey!” in a much-too-chipper-for-seven-thirty voice, I resisted the urge to tell her to get to feck and instead hauled myself out of bed and under the shower. As I washed away the smell of stale red wine, I wondered had I been utterly out of my head to agree to a date with a man whose name I didn’t know – but who I knew intimately in almost every other way? I admit I did feel a tad sluttish about it – but what worried me (then again, perhaps worried is the wrong word) – is that I quite liked the slutty feeling.

  There wasn’t much time for feeling slutty with Pearse – not after those initial few weeks and months anyway. It was hard to get yourself into a sexual frenzy with a sweaty, knackered chef with a faint, if permanent, whiff of garlic about him. And he seemed to find it impossible to get himself into a sexual frenzy with me at all – in fact, now that I thought about it, it was hard to remember the last time Pearse and I had had a decent romp. Sure there were duty-fumbles – but passion? Forget about it.

  But with Chewbacca – I remembered with a flush of excitement – yes, he knew what he was doing. Perhaps our meeting up again would actually go well? Perhaps it would be for the best? Perhaps it was high time I stepped away from the constraints of the Life Plan and just enjoyed myself for a bit?

  With a smile on my face, and a spring in my step (despite the slightly hung-over feeling in my gut) I dressed in my nicest, most professional skirt suit (pencil skirt, boobage-hugging jacket) and high heels with proper stockings and sashayed out the door behind Fionn, unafraid of what the week ahead would hold.

  Sure this time last week I hadn’t planned on splitting up with Pearse and launching myself once more onto the world of Singledom – but now that I had, I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

  6

  Bob was in remarkably chipper form when we arrived – on time – and with smiles on our faces. “Ladies,” he crooned, “good morning and welcome to another wonderful week!”

  Normally I’d have given him a death stare and walked to my desk but I was feeling generous of spirit and smiled back.

  “Oh, did someone get some action?” he quipped and I felt myself blush. For all his by-the-book mentality when it came to the office, he was still able to make some amazingly inappropriate statements from time to time.

  “And what business is it of yours?” Fionn asked matter of factly, with more confidence in her voice than I could have mustered.

  Bob had the good grace to look a little flustered and walk off in the direction of his office while Fionn dissolved into giggles. “He can give it, but he sure can’t take it,” she said as she sat down and
switched on her computer screen.

  At around eleven (give or take time for the managers to faff about and decide to run things to their own schedule) we would hold our monthly ops meeting and discuss what campaigns were coming up, what was still bubbling along and needed a little help, and any pitches we were putting in for new clients.

  It was generally about that time that Bob would announce another jump in targets, and we’d all groan, have a bitch and then Fionn and I would clear off with our prop cigarette packets and lighters for an FSB and plan how to hurt Bob in a 101 ways no one had even thought of yet.

  The routine of it all was at the same time comforting and utterly depressing. Yes, things could get weirdly exciting when we were given something weird and wonderful to sell, and sometimes the thrill of an upped target was enough to give me an injection of adrenalin and a new-found love for my job. But at other times I just wished I had some easy little job where I sat all day, knew my targets, filled them easily and didn’t feel as if I had to beg people to spend money just to keep myself a hair’s breadth away from my P45.

  And of course Bob had made it fairly obvious last week that I was moving ever closer to the dole queue so there was no way I could slip up now. I would have to be one hundred per cent on my game – so spending thirty minutes Googling for advice on how to find out the name of someone you slept with, and who you were due again to meet for dinner, without actually having to admit you didn’t have the wits about you to find out in the first place, was not a good idea.

  Google didn’t really provide any answers and Fionn seemed to find it increasingly hilarious as the day went on.

  “Do you really need to know his name?” she asked during FSB3.

  “Well, it would make it easier – you know, for phoning him, or storing his number in my phone – that kind of thing? I’m not sure he would be too flattered to know he is currently stored under the name of a Star Wars character.”

  “Well, it probably wouldn’t surprise him. I mean he must be aware of how hairy he is and it mustn’t annoy him too much.”

  I smiled, a conciliatory smile which meant I knew Fionn was right but at the end of the day I couldn’t assume that he would be happy for me to spend the rest of our relationship avoiding calling him by his actual name. I mean, it was okayish now when we were only planning our second date – but should things progress, I imagine it would get harder and harder to hide the fact I didn’t have a baldy notion who he was. Introducing him to my parents would be a fecker for one thing – not to mention the whole “I, Annie, take thee whatever-the-feck-you’re-called to be my lawful wedded husband . . .” thing.

  “You could just make up a name for him,” Fionn suggested during FSB5. “I mean a proper name – not a Star-Wars-inspired name. And tell him you think it suits him so much better. Or better still just call him ‘Stud’. I bet he would love it if you just called him ‘Stud’.”

  I had immediate visions of myself in overly tight leather trousers and a spiral perm, stubbing out my cigarette with the heel of my impossibly high stiletto and singing about him being the one that I wanted while he shimmied and shook his carpet of excessive hair in my direction. No, no, that wasn’t going to work at all – even if he did seem to be the kind of guy who would secretly quite like to be referred to as ‘Stud’.

  Every now and again a thought of Pearse jumped into my head. It would be over something silly. During the monthly meeting we were talking about a new slimming club we were hoping to represent. Pearse hated slimming clubs and all their restrictions. He would complain bitterly about the hordes of women who would take up the very popular seats at Manna and order a small plain steak with a garnish of green salad – no dressing allowed. He thought it such a waste of a good night out and for that alone I loved him (past tense – I reminded myself) because I was never, ever going to be the kind of girl who could settle for a small plain steak with garnish. Even my healthiest eating attempts would not see me stoop so low. I was the kind of girl who would go to the salad bar at Sainsbury’s, on the premise of being good, and stock up on all sorts of creamy pasta delights before adding a token leaf of lettuce and a cherry tomato just to take the bad look off myself. (And it was amazing how often I could convince myself it was okay not to eat the lettuce after all because I had eaten the rest of my “healthy” salad with gusto.)

  Later that afternoon “Hot Stuff” was playing on the radio and I remembered how – in the first flushes of our relationship – I used to sing it (badly) to him when he called to mine after a night at the restaurant, sweaty and smelling of spices. As the song played in the office I felt a little pang of regret but managed to push it away. It had been a long time since we’d shared a hot-stuff moment – those spicy moments had long since lost their appeal. There is only so much caressing from onion-flavoured fingers a girl can take before she too starts to develop a faint whiff of kitchen stink about her.

  I’m sure Fionn was only too aware of my pangs of . . . something . . . I can’t describe it as regret, over Pearse. She sent occasional emails throughout the day – generally with pictures of very hairy men in them or a witty line or two about the best way to get over one man was to get under another one.

  Well, I had already done the getting under another one bit and I don’t think I wanted to get over Pearse as much as I wanted to come to terms with the fact that, with the exception of a man whose name I didn’t even know, I had no romantic life to speak of. Which brought me back once again to my Life Plan and the fact that it was spiralling away from me at a rate of knots. I wondered if I should just bin it – but then it contained years of deepest thoughts and hopes. It was me – and everything I ever wanted. And just every now and again, while I clicked on the latest image of Tom Selleck sent to me by Fionn, or jumped as Bob glided silently up beside me, I felt a little bereft that the Me I had wanted to be for so long was never going to happen.

  By home time I was resisting the urge for a glass of wine and a kingsize Galaxy. I had to manage without drink – even if just for one night. It dawned on me it had been a very liquid week and, with payday still looming somewhere off in the distance, it seemed daft to assault my plummeting bank account with yet another trip to the off licence.

  So instead I went home and promised myself a soak in the bath, a read of a good book and an early night. I figured distracting myself with someone else’s fantasies in the form of a trashy novel, before falling into a blissfully sleepy oblivion, would be the perfect way to quiet the voices in my head.

  Climbing the many stairs to my flat, my legs ached. It was strange how, even after all this time and all the many trips I had made up and down those stairs, they still had the ability to make my calves scream for sweet mercy.

  Opening the door, I went straight to the bathroom and set about lighting the candles which were dotted around it. The only ones I didn’t light where the sandalwood Yankee Candles which reminded me too much of Pearse. In fact, I picked them up and hid them in the cupboard under the sink. I would have binned them but, feck it, they were expensive and they did smell nice. I was sure one day I would be able to burn them freely without feeling this sinking sense of disappointment in myself.

  I started to run the bath – an old roll-top which stood just left of centre in my cavernous bathroom. I dollopped in half a bottle of Sanctuary bubble bath and watched the foam grow and rise at a frighteningly impressive rate. I dipped the lights and closed the door. I don’t know why I closed the door – it wasn’t as if anyone had half a chance of walking in on me but I had to do it anyway. Even if, like the toilet, there was no way I could reach the door to make sure it was locked if I took a mid-soak panic.

  I stripped off my clothes, showered quickly first, and then climbed into the bubbles, sinking down under them as I let the gorgeous rich aromas fill my nose. I lay there for ten minutes before I lifted my novel and started to read. While it felt strange not to have a glass of wine in my hand, or the phone at arm’s length so I could call Pearse and chat about the
mundane activities of my day, I started to read and stayed there until the water started to go cold and my fingers and toes wrinkled enough to resemble those of a shrivelled corpse. It was not a good look, so I climbed out, wrapped my oversized and fluffy dressing gown around me and climbed into bed – again with only my book for company. I could see the Life Plan, jutting out from under the chest of drawers where I had pushed it in a fit of over-emotional hysteria the day before, and I rolled over so it was out of my line of vision.

  If only I could get it out of my head altogether.

  7

  Wednesday arrived and I still did not know Chewbacca’s name. I did know, however, that I had to accompany Pearse to dinner that evening. He had called me early in the day to tell me that he was sending a dress over for me and that I was to be ready for six thirty.

  I wondered, momentarily, what kind of dress he would have chosen for me. I had told him I had plenty of my own clothes I could wear, but he had insisted: “No, please, let me.” I felt moved that he could see beyond his anger at our relationship break-up to treat me to one final gift.

  Then again, he probably wanted to make sure, one hundred per cent, that I looked the part. This was sure to be a dress that would set tongues wagging.