by Tracy Bloom
She’d tried not to stalk him like a love-struck teenager but if she happened to go to lunch at the same time as him then so be it. She had to talk to him; she couldn’t just ignore him. And for some reason she genuinely drank more coffee on the days he worked in the office meaning she had to make more trips to the kitchen that was co-incidentally opposite his desk.
In the end she had Gareth the new editor to thank for getting them together. Gareth had thrown them all into a room on his first day and demanded they each come up with at least three ideas to boost sales of the struggling paper. When she’d flippantly suggested an agony column he pounced on it.
“Brilliant,” he said, flashing his best thirty-year-old, hot-shot Londoner smile at her. “Particularly as the dating section on the website currently gets more hits than your entire Lifestyle section,” he’d continued cuttingly. “I want it in by next week and liaise with Alex on what advertisers it can bring in. Viagra, Tampax, whatever – just make it pay.”
“You work on the content baby, I’ll bring Durex,” Alex had whispered that night during an extensive and drunken post mortem of the new editor in the pub with the rest of the team. Later he told her they needed to discuss the new column at length and could they do it in McDonalds because he was starving.
She’d told herself sternly as she staggered after him through Piccadilly that going to a fast food restaurant after a works drink did not constitute a date. However she couldn’t help but feel some excitement at the romantic potential of sitting next to him alone in a restaurant albeit surrounded by obese teenagers and anorexic looking tramps.
She could still taste that first kiss. Cheese with a hint of gherkin.
After he’d satisfied his appetite, to her absolute astonishment, he’d pulled her onto his knee in that very window and snogged her face off.
She could picture them now giggling like naughty school children oblivious to their abusive audience.
“I think you’re lovely,” he’d said when they finally came up for breath and a table of spotty youths had cheered.
She was practically swooning as a chorus of “Give ‘er one for me,” came from the next table.
“I’d like to,” Alex had whispered in her ear and she’d swooned again.
She’d taken him home to bed of course. She really didn’t see why not. She’d been stalking him for a few months so why waste time? And time was something she didn’t have the luxury of anyway. Long courtships were for twenty-something’s. Post thirty and you had to cut corners to find out fast whether he was going to be in it for the long haul. Delaying sex until after they’d dated a while was an indulgence she couldn’t afford.
Luckily their post McDonald’s consummation marked the start of a beautiful relationship and not a drunken shag between colleagues never to be repeated. It was with great delight that she had rung Jackie to announce that she was dating a number one off her list of possible boyfriends. An absolute first. Nearly twenty years it had taken her to bag a list leader. Now finally here she was, convinced it meant that he was the man she had been waiting all her life to live happily ever after with.
“Calm down,” Jackie had said. “I know what you’re like. You fall in love and you stop seeing sense. You watch way too many of those stupid romantic comedies. As I’ve told you time and time again, stop at the bit where it all goes wrong. They’re much more realistic that way.”
But this time she was convinced it was different. She was so happy she almost felt like she could be Meg Ryan. Before plastic surgery obviously. And before all the dodgy stuff with Russell Crowe. Really what was she thinking?
Still it had felt like they were on a fairytale roll. One month in and they were going out together every Friday and Saturday night. Two months in and he was spending every weekend at her flat. Three months in and they had embarrassing pet names for each other. Four months in and there was talk of love as they giggled under the duvet. Five months in and he’d taken her to his mum and dad’s Ruby Wedding party. She’d met his parents for goodness’ sake. He’d taken her to meet his parents and she was in her thirties. Surely he knew what that implied? And now six months in and they’d gone from that to a casual parting text. It didn’t make sense. She had to be missing something. Something must have caused this temporary wobble, she just didn’t know what.
An insistent beep from her phone interrupted her thoughts. She felt her heart leap into her mouth as her head instantly filled with the naked hope that it was Alex trying to get in touch to tell her it was all a mistake. Her fingers tripped over themselves in the scramble to open the text. Then her heart sank slowly and painfully back down as she saw Drew’s name appear at the bottom of a harsh reminder that under no circumstances should she attempt any pleading communication with Alex during her post break-up misery.
She knew that Drew only had her best interests at heart but he didn’t really understand what it was like to be her. Mostly adrift, desperately casting out for someone to anchor her down. He’d had his anchor for so long he didn’t remember what it was like to be floating, completely untethered. So she had to call Alex. She owed it to herself at least to find out why he’d ended it. It could be something ridiculous after all. Something that could be mended immediately. She couldn’t let them fall apart for the sake of one stupid phone call.
For the first time that day she felt a glimmer of hope as the bus pulled up to her stop. She picked her umbrella up off the mud-soaked floor and stumbled her way to the front. Hope was some relief at least.
Unfortunately hope took a knock the minute she walked through her front door. As if on auto-pilot she glanced down at the shoe rack. Alex had taken to leaving his footie boots there so he didn’t have to race home every Sunday morning to pick them up on his way to a match. She’d moved her never-used trainers to be next to them, delighted by the vision of harmony. The boots were gone; a few flecks of mud remaining like ashes on the floor. She dropped her bag and sprinted upstairs to the bathroom. His toothbrush, mini aftershave and deodorant were gone too. He’d cold-bloodedly packed his belongings then shut the door behind him that morning already knowing it was the last time he was going to be in the flat.
She slumped her way back downstairs in a daze, desperately trying to make sense of it all. She mooched towards the kitchen in search of caffeine and something hideously fattening but was stopped in her tracks at the doorway. She gasped and her hand flew up to her open mouth. She leaned heavily against the doorpost shocked to be so devastated by the scene that lay before her. Her eyes wandered slowly over the embers of her last evening with Alex stacked messily on the kitchen counter in front of her.
Two empty bottles of red wine.
The end crust of a French stick.
A congealed cheese-fondue pot.
Half a dozen uneaten mince pies.
Two burnt down candles erupting down two old wine bottles.
Two dirty glasses. One with lipstick marks. Hers. One with greasy finger marks. His.
One broken coffee mug.
It was the broken coffee mug that made her want to curl up into a ball and weep. The mug that less than twenty-four hours earlier Alex had knocked to the ground in a fit of passion, his hands all over her body making her giggle and gasp before she surrendered and allowed herself to be led to the bedroom. The coffee mug that had been broken in the lead up to what had been possibly their best sex yet, fuelled by the euphoria of Alex telling her he wanted to spend Christmas with her and her family.
She’d been so nervous about asking him. But as she kept telling herself, all the evidence suggested that she wasn’t entering dangerous territory. They spent all their time together, she’d met his entire family and she was on piss-taking terms with his mates. Even so she’d tried hard to be ultra-casual ensuring he hadn’t felt under any pressure to say yes.
“So mum’s cooking Christmas dinner this year,” she’d said whilst pouring him some wine. “D’you fancy coming?”
He’d looked at her for a moment then smil
ed and declared, “I’d love to,” before he lunged at her, knocking the coffee mug clean to the floor.
Her stomach lurched as she recalled her mind wandering to a place she hadn’t dared venture to in some time. Vivid images of roaring fires and twinkling fairy lights and Alex handing over the perfect gifts to all her family before he produced an extra special gift. A small box hidden in the Christmas tree containing a …
She groaned and wrapped her arms tightly around her realizing what an idiot she’d been. She’d gone too quickly for him, it was obvious. She’d asked him for Christmas and scared him off. It was okay for her to meet his family but it was clearly a step too far for him to meet hers. He’d panicked and that’s why he’d ended it. She’d made a mistake. One stupid mistake. Why oh why had she asked him? Why couldn’t she have just let it amble along? Let him set the pace rather than her.
She sank to the floor, head in her hands. She felt sick. Sick at her mistake and at the prospect of what Christmas now held in store. Her mother asking her nervous questions designed to reveal whether or not her ancient, husbandless daughter was actually a lesbian and her self-satisfied younger sister taunting her with the plans for her imminent hen-do.
She would just have to uninvite him. Tell him that she didn’t mean it. He could do what the hell he wanted for Christmas. It didn’t matter as long as they were together. She would call him and offer up some options. That had to be better than him finishing it just because he was worried about spending Christmas with her family. How stupid would that be?
Finding a scrap of hope once again she pulled herself up and grabbed the phone off the kitchen counter. She took a deep breath and dialled his number before raising the phone shakily to her ear and waiting ten excruciating, heart-thumping rings until he picked up.
“Alex,” he said.
“Hi, it’s me,” said Suzie.
“Who?” asked Alex.
“Me, Suzie.”
“Oh,” he said. “Where are you calling from?”
“Home, why?” she asked.
“Oh,” he said again. “I didn’t recognize the number.”
There was an awkward pause.
“Look Suzie,” said Alex.
“Look Alex,” said Suzie at the same time. “You don’t have to come to my parents for Christmas,” she blurted out. “We could go away instead, somewhere warm, anywhere you like.” She stopped. He didn’t respond. She listened to the silence hoping it was the sound of his relief.
“Look Suzie,” he said eventually. “Time to move on darlin’. Like I said, it just wasn’t working out for me.”
It was her silence this time that hovered momentarily.
“Not working out?” she whimpered. “Since when?”
“Oh for a while I guess now,” he said offering no further explanation.
“But … but I don’t understand,” she said, racking her brains to make sense of it all. “You took me to your parents’ ruby wedding,” she said more to herself than him.
“Oh that was just to get them off my back. They’re always nagging me about settling down and I thought if I took you along it might shut them up for a while. To be honest Suzie I’ve been meaning to end it for some time now.”
“But …” said Suzie slumping back against the worktop. “But last night you said you wanted to spend Christmas with me?” She felt like a pathetic, clingy, whining child but she couldn’t help it. He’d raised her hopes and now all hope had gone.
“Sweetheart,” he said. “You caught me a bit unawares. I only said yes because it was late and I was tired and I didn’t want an over emotional chat as to why I was just about to book a week in the Alps with the lads over Christmas.”
She gasped.
“But we had sex,” she whispered. “Twice.”
“Like I said, I didn’t want an over emotional chat,” he replied.
“You had sex with me to shut me up about Christmas?” she exclaimed. What was he saying? She couldn’t really be hearing this?
“No,” he protested. “I had sex because … because … well because I really like having sex.”
She waited for him to finish the sentence.
He didn’t.
“With me,” she shouted down the phone. “You are supposed to say you really like having sex with me you tosser.”
She slammed the phone down on the counter knocking a stray fondue fork to the floor.
She surveyed the aftermath of her efforts the previous evening again, and attempted to stop the room spinning.
She’d searched Manchester to buy a fondue set after Alex had mentioned that he loved them because they always reminded him of happy times on skiing trips.
She’d made the mince-pies herself in the hope that it would get him in the festive mood. A week of practicing had finally produced some acceptable offerings and then Alex had told her he didn’t like mincemeat.
The lipstick on her glass reminded her that she had even bought a new top and washed her hair and put on make-up.
All that just to dare to ask him if he would spend Christmas with her.
The broken coffee mug. All that so he could have sex because he liked it. Not necessarily with her. He just liked it. All that so he could send her an electronic message calling it a day.
She sank slowly down the kitchen door until she made contact with the floor again. Wrapping her arms around her knees, she buried her head and waited for the tears. But they didn’t come. All she could do was take deep breaths as anger rose up inside her.
How could she have been so stupid to think that this was going to be her happy ending?
How could she have put herself through this yet again? To believe that she’d fallen in love with Prince Charming only to discover that she’d been sleeping with the villain all along. Yet again.
A vision of the four trolls reared up inside her head like some pyscho’ horror movie. Four cartoon faces laughing at her, psychedelic hair licking round their faces like hell fire.
“Bastards,” she cried kicking out. “All of you. I’ll get you all for this.”
She had no idea how long she sat there curled up in a ball, waves of anger engulfing her as she reflected on her past and speculated on her future. She hated where she was and right now she blamed them all. Right now it felt like they had not only ruined her one and only love life, they had ruined her one and only life.
Eventually she was disturbed from her misery by the sound of her mobile ringing somewhere in the hallway. She scrambled up hoping it might be a sympathetic ear that had tuned into her distress. It wasn’t. It was Gareth. She answered quickly, knowing he bawled out anyone out who ignored his phone calls.
“Suzie, it’s Gareth,” barked the editor.
“Hi,” she said tersely not in the mood for one of his infamous stripping downs.
“I’ve just looked at your advice column for this week and it’s shit,” he said. “And our audience figures show no uplift in female readership. I want a revised proposal by the team meeting tomorrow. Something that doesn’t make me want to puke.”
The line went dead.
Chapter 3
Drew had watched, completely and utterly horrified as Suzie staggered out of the office. Because I love him? What kind of idiot excuse was that? How Suzie, an attractive, normally intelligent woman could allow herself to be rendered a complete fool by the likes of someone like Alex he would never understand. Couldn’t she see through all the charm and slick, sugary patter? Couldn’t she see that he was about as deep as his fake tan and that he only had genuine feelings for himself? Couldn’t she see that he’d only gone out with her because she had her own flat and he needed somewhere to crash whilst he’d got the builders in at his?
“Because I love him,” he murmured to himself shaking his head. He had a deep-seated dislike for that particular sentence. It was the because that ruined it. The because slicked an evil tone over an otherwise perfectly nice few words. The because transformed it into a justification rather than a statemen
t. A justification of deficiencies of the him in question. A justification that allowed the deficiencies to continue without challenge or recrimination. Drew knew this all too well. He had spent a lot of time considering this very sentence since it had been part of one of the most significant conversations in his life. The last one with his mother before he left for University.
“Why don’t you leave him mum?” he’d asked her in a rush of courage as he got into his car. It was the first time he had ever addressed the appalling state of his parents’ marriage in public.
Her eyes had welled up and she’d stared at him for a long time before she uttered, “Because I love him.”
His father was the landlord of a pub in a rough suburb of Manchester and had struggled for many years to resist the temptation of the parade of neglected wives who came in to get drunk and pour out their troubles in his ever-willing ear. His mother had first found him wrapped around a skeletal redhead in the cellar after closing time when Drew was around twelve years old. He could still picture her sitting at the kitchen table as white as a sheet and trembling whilst his father begged forgiveness and threw empty promises like confetti. At some point during the angst-ridden few days that followed his mother cracked and forgave in order to maintain the status quo but life was never the same. Periods of relative calm prevailed until his dad cocked up, got discovered and his mum fell apart. She’d cry for days on end until forgiveness started to wheedle its way in again, just as his father said it would with a sly wink to him one day at breakfast. There was a part of him that was angry with his mother. For being weak and submitting not only herself but him to this lie of a family. And as for using love as an excuse. He vowed never to let it affect him like that. Love had no right to force you into a life of hell as it had done his mother. It had no right to manipulate you, fling you from pillar to post and mess with your head. He believed that love was something to be controlled and managed with a firm hand and a clear head. The heart should play second fiddle no matter what, or you could end up like his mother – and Suzie for that matter.
