Game Over

by Adele Parks

  I am hopeful, expectant. I’m looking forward to being alone with my face pack, fridge and remote control. I sit down with a highlighter pen, the television section of the Observer and a bottle of gin. I circle my TV viewing for the night. Coronation Street, a documentary on Brooklyn Beckham (that’s our show), Brookside, Friends, and then I’ll switch to cable for a movie. I catch sight of the date and automatically calculate that it’s one month, three weeks, five days and eight hours since I last saw Darren.

  Only quarter of an hour before Corrie starts.

  Thirteen minutes.

  Another nine minutes to go.

  Still quite some time yet. I think I’ll ring Mum.

  ‘Hi, Mum.’

  ‘Oh, hello Jocasta, dear, how are you? I was just talking about you to Bob.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Bob, you know—’

  ‘Your neighbour.’

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘What were you saying?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘What were you saying to Bob?’ I’m beginning to regret the call.

  ‘I was just saying I wonder how Jocasta is.’

  ‘Well, I’m fine.’

  ‘Pleased to hear it.’

  ‘And how are you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m fine, except for the old problem.’ I have no idea what the ‘old problem’ is, although doubtless she’s told me on countless occasions; nor do I have any desire to find out. I move the conversation on.

  ‘I called to ask if you fancy going shopping tomorrow. Unaccountably it’s a Saturday and I haven’t got a wedding to go to.’ I hadn’t realized that I’d called to ask this; the fifteen minutes alone before my viewing started have obviously weighed in heavily. I wait for her gushing thanks that I’ve decided to offer up an entire Saturday, even though it’s not her birthday or anywhere near Christmas. Instead she surprises me.

  ‘I expect people are a little nervous about inviting you to their weddings, what with your show and everything. Well, dear, I’d love to go shopping with you, but Bob and I are going to a craft fair and it’s been in the diary for some time. I can’t let him down – I know he’d be most disappointed and I’m looking forward to it too.’

  I don’t ask what kind of man enjoys a craft fair; nor do I commit myself when she adds hopefully, ‘How about next week?’

  I put the phone down and turn the volume up.

  Whilst it’s been a constructive weekend (I’ve filed my nails, both fingers and toes, I’ve tidied my cutlery drawer and I’ve descaled the kettle and the showerhead), by Sunday afternoon I’m beginning to wish I’d accepted the invite to lunch. I’ve read the Sunday papers, including the small ads for the removal of unwanted lines, fat and hair, as well as those for the addition to breasts and penises. I’ve watched a backlog of recorded programmes and all the soap omnibuses. In fact, most of my entertainment and all my food have been generated from radioactive boxes. Although I have ample time on my hands, I can’t be arsed to drag myself to Tesco’s or even Cullen’s. There really is no point in buying fresh herbs and vegetables, chopping and sautéing for one. Instead I search my cupboards for inspiration. I don’t find it. I can’t think of a recipe that happily combines peanut butter, Carr’s water biscuits and All Bran. The contents of my fridge are neither useful nor ornamental. There’s a mouldering jar of capers and another of anchovies (bought for a dinner party), Tabasco, Yakult and Red Bull. Of course, there’s the foundation bottle of champagne, but even I don’t like drinking Veuve Clicquot alone. Instead I defrost things unsavoury. Cardboard food from cardboard boxes – singleton’s food.

  I can hear some kids playing in the nearby park. As far as I can tell the objective of the game is to see who can produce the most piercing scream. Very entertaining, if you’re eight. I wonder what Charlotte and Lucy are up to? An aeroplane passes overhead. In the mid-distance I can hear the intermittent hum of an articulated truck whizz from factory to storage warehouse. I’m depressed. I must be. The truck seems poignant. I look around for a vessel to use as an ashtray. All the ashtrays, saucers, teacups, plant pots that are in spitting distance of my sofa are full to overflowing with ash already.

  Whilst me-time is all very educative, the most overwhelming lesson appears to be that I’m pretty miserable company. Even the fact that Saturday’s show was a corker, and the scheduling department have already rung to tell me we’ve reached 10.4 million viewers, fails to cheer me. The worst of it is, I’m not entirely alone.

  As I move around my home I see Darren sprawled out on his stomach reading the Sunday papers, or I find him squeezing oranges in my kitchen, or I bump into him coming out of the shower. Naked and powerful with a white towel round his hips and water drops dripping from his hair to the carpet. But the carpet is never wet because he’s only in my head and he’s never in my bed.

  I remember Darren first coming into my flat.

  ‘Nice pad. Did you buy it lock, stock and barrel from a style magazine?’ He’d grinned and turned to kiss me. I flung my coat on the back of my settee, not bothering to hang it in the cupboard. I kissed him back and didn’t take offence.

  ‘Funny. Issie thinks this place is impersonal, too. I think it’s anything but. I bought an empty shell and built my apartment from scratch. What could be more personal?’

  Darren wrapped his arms around me and held me tightly. I breathed him in. I was shaking with the newness of it all. It was new that I was talking this way. It was new that a man was in my home and I was sharing my life, even for a week.

  I stare at the windowpane, concentrating on the raindrop race, which Darren taught me. The idea is you choose a raindrop and the other person chooses another raindrop, both roughly at the same height and ideally at the top of the window. The winner is the one whose drop reaches the bottom of the window first. I win. Naturally – I’m the only one playing. I can’t think of anything to amuse, charm or hearten me. Not even the fact that Josh’s girlfriend will be having an even more shit time than I am. This just proves my theory about the insanity of getting involved. I pray Josh will call me soon with a debrief – I need a distraction.

  I decide to replace the catchy tune of my clunking radiators and purring fridge. I force myself out of my cosy window seat and examine my cassette and CD collection. Uninvited, the memory of Darren discovering my CD collection barges into my head.

  ‘You put some music on whilst I pour some drinks,’ I’d instructed, moving towards the wine rack.

  ‘Interesting music collection,’ he commented.

  ‘Normally described as eclectic. It’s a testimony to ex-shags.’

  ‘Ah, I see.’ And he probably did, because I believe that he understood me entirely, past and present. Which is my problem.

  ‘The Smiths and the Cure represent your adolescent angst years.’

  ‘Correct. Actually I was an extremely buoyant adolescent but my lover was an anger ball so I faked an avid interest. Red or white?’ I held up both bottles, trying to ignore my own last sentence. I realized that by faking an avid interest I’d set a pattern for a lifetime.

  ‘Red. Something full-bodied, if you have it.’

  It impressed me that Darren managed to politely knock back the plonk in Whitby without showing any snobbery or distaste when he obviously knows what he likes when it comes to wine. Maybe it was a mistake to make such a fuss about drinking Blue Nun, especially when Mrs Smith had bought it just for me. Not that it matters. None of it matters.

  It still gnaws.

  ‘And I take it that Lloyd Cole, Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Pet Shop Boys and Scott Walker are attributable to your student years?’

  ‘Spot on. Phil, Paul, Iain, Greg and, er, Mark respectively.’

  I poured the wine and handed it to him. As I re-enact this scene I use a coffee mug, which is pretty inadequate.

  ‘Your music tastes are certainly wide and varied. REM, Blur, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Ruben Gonzalez.’ Darren sipped the wine and smiled at me. The smile then, as now, hit directly in my chest,
exploded and hurled shrapnel to my throat, back of knees and knickers. I’d never felt so fine. I hurt all over.

  ‘Not my taste in music but in men. Those CDs are credited to Nathan, Andy, Tom, Dave.

  ‘The Judds!?’ Raised eyebrow.

  ‘I know – awful, isn’t it? Peter. Take heart, his appalling musical taste was compensated by his expertise in the sack. At the time I’d even have forgiven white socks.’

  ‘I can’t take heart. I’m jealous of every last one of them.’ He turned and kissed me ferociously, nearly causing me to spill my wine. He began to unbutton my shirt. His fingers teased my skin. First my collarbone, then trailing past my breast, threading down to my stomach.

  I absolutely force myself back to the present.

  It’s bleak. I thought I knew all there was to know about loss, but not having Darren in my life is so vile and final that I wonder how I get up in the mornings. I feel like Dorothy on rewind. Instead of hitting the yellow brick road and finding myself in Technicolor Oz, I’ve been shoved into a monotone existence. I don’t enjoy parties, or bars, or clubs. I don’t like being with people, I loathe being alone. I don’t zing, I don’t sparkle. I don’t slice with my tongue. Even work seems lacklustre. I wonder how I ever thought this life was fulfilling, let alone exhilarating. Life now sags around me. I’m nauseous with loneliness. It engulfs me.

  I wish I’d never met him.

  I don’t mean that. I hate myself for being so disloyal. I know that I would do it all again. I’d still get on that train. It was already too late the moment I collided into his eyes in the interview room. I’d thought I was so damn smart. So élite. So untouchable. Yet whilst it hurts that only his ghost – and not his irresistible self – is in my sitting-room, him in my towelling dressing gown, me in his jumper, both of us soaked in love and cum – I know I am still in control.

  Oh, only just, I admit that.

  I left him. He didn’t leave me. He doesn’t know how I feel. He doesn’t know how vulnerable I am.

  Only I know that.

  The phone rings, breaking the sound of being alone. I pounce on it. It’s Josh. I know this before I pick it up.

  ‘How’d it go?’ I’m ridiculously interested, as I’m desperate to break myself out of my own indulgent apathy.

  ‘Awful,’ he groans.

  ‘Mmm.’ I sound sympathetic because I am. ‘Did she take it very badly?’

  ‘She cried.’ Most of Josh is upset but a tiny bit of him is triumphant.

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘It’s worse doing the dumping than being the dumpee.’ I doubt he means this.

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ I remind him.

  ‘No, of course not. You’ve never been dumped.’

  ‘What is the point of sticking around long enough to get your heart broken?’ I challenge, more cheerfully than honestly. I want this conversation to have away from me. Strangely I haven’t been honest with Josh about my feelings for Darren. Josh assumes Darren was another brief and unimportant encounter. I can’t tell him how I feel because saying it aloud makes it more real. I must bury my feelings for Darren. I must.

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘Oh, you know, the usual stuff.’

  ‘It’s just not right?’

  ‘Yes,’ he agrees enthusiastically. Although I love Josh, I’m irritated by him. I sigh, thinking of all the women who’ve ever cried because of the words, ‘It’s just not right.’ Why do men only discover this when they roll off the sticky Durex?

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, but I really didn’t want to hurt her.’

  I relent. After all, I’ve known him since he played with Action Men and I played with Sindy dolls. Now it’s the other way round, I can’t simply abandon him. He starts to tell me about the ditching. It doesn’t take long; he’s a boy. If Issie were telling me about her dumping some bloke or other, we’d spend hours. We’d start with describing what both parties were wearing. We’d talk about the location selected for the scenario. It’s very important to choose the correct ground. His place is good because then you get to choose when to leave and he doesn’t have to stumble home in a veil of tears. Or somewhere neutral, like a bar or a party. Not his mum’s. She simply won’t see it from your point of view. And not – under any circumstances – your own place. He might decide not to leave, insisting that it’s possible to make a go of it. It never is. Calling the police in is ugly. I know – I’ve done it. Now if this were Issie it would be a different story. Issie would tell me everything. She’d punctuate it with ‘and then he said’, ‘and then I said’, ‘and he looked as though…’ However close we are, Josh has too many Y-chromosomes to do this. Instead he has to act all disinterested and hard. He blows it when he asks me if I’ll go round.

  ‘I’ll be there in ten.’ Of course I’ll go to him. I’d walk hot coals for him.

  Josh likes to think he lives in Islington but in fact he lives in King’s Cross. He lives in a ground-floor flat, which can most adequately and efficiently be described as ‘masculine’. Until his thirtieth birthday, Josh steadfastly refused to pay as much as a cursory glance towards interior design, cleanliness or comfort. He lived in squalor – not that he seemed to notice. In fact, he often joked that filth and disorder were his best friends. I was never sure if he was referring to his domestic arrangements or me and Issie respectively. Josh only ever washed up if the corner shop had run out of paper plates and he changed his sheets less frequently than his women. His bathroom never benefited from Ajax, Jif or Domestos, all of which could be Greek islands as far as Josh was concerned. His items of furniture were my mother’s cast-offs, the things she absolutely could not force into her home. This foulness was not poverty-induced, simply a male blind spot, as inexplicable as the fact that when men do become interested in their home (thirtieth birthday or marriage, whichever they meet first) they cover the squalidness in blue.

  Blue walls and tiles, blue fabric, blue crockery, blue cutlery, blue loo roll, blue napkins and napkin rings (which have only ever been used once – the thirtieth birthday dinner party), blue settee, blue bed and bedding, blue dustpan and mop and finally a blue toothbrush. When Issie or I ever visited Josh whilst he was decorating we were always overly animated, fearing if we stood still for too long he’d paint us blue too.

  As I walk into his flat, I’m thinking that if Josh introduced buttercup yellow in his hall or a deep red in his sitting-room it would be a vast improvement.

  ‘Josh, why are the lights dimmed?’ I ask and immediately turn them up. I start to laugh. ‘Oh, I see, to show off the candles. Are you indulging in a Druid-type self-loathing session?’ I kiss him on the forehead and wave the bottle I’ve brought.

  ‘It’s a ‘94 Château La Croix de Mouchet. I was saving it for a special occasion but I’m not sure when that’ll be so I thought I’d bring it round.’ I march directly to the kitchen to forage out some glasses.

  I bump into the biggest floral arrangement ever.

  ‘Who are the flowers for, or should I say from? God, Josh, this place looks more like a seduction scene than a dumping ground.’ I suddenly guess what’s going on. ‘No, she didn’t buy you these just before you ditched her, did she?’ I’m shocked at the stupidity of some women. ‘And you accepted them.’ I’m less surprised by the callous nature of most men. ‘Bastard.’ I smile. He’ll know I’m joking. Josh doesn’t answer but takes the wine I’m offering and clinks my glass. I continue chattering, glad of the company, for what it is. Josh is not at his sparkly best.

  ‘God, I’ve had the loneliest weekend,’ I confess.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Don’t look so pleased about it, Josh. You know you and Issie are indispensable to me. You don’t need to prove your point by both going away at once. I started having the most maudlin thoughts. I even wished there was a wedding to go to. Now isn’t that a hoot?’

  Josh brightens. ‘Do you really?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Wish there was a wedding to go to?’

/>   ‘Well, since my choice this weekend was that or eat Coco Pops, by the hand directly from the box, yes, I’d prefer the wedding.’ I pat the settee next to me. ‘Come on, then, sit here. Tell me all about chucking Jane.’ I stare at Josh. ‘Hey, you look quite shaken. Are you regretting it?’

  ‘No.’ He shakes his head definitively.

  ‘So?’ He pauses for the longest time. Something is definitely upsetting him. ‘Good God, Josh. You’re not ill, are you?’ I’m suddenly terrified.

  ‘No. Not ill.’

  ‘So what’s up?’ I link my arm through his. He shuffles awkwardly, pulling his arm away.

  ‘I don’t know how to put this.’

  ‘Just say it, whatever it is,’ I encourage. Why the sudden hesitancy? Josh and I have always spoken freely to one another. What can he have to say that’s so dreadful? Suddenly he lurches for my hand.

  ‘OK, I’ll just say it. Will you marry me, Cas?’

  ‘Ha ha.’ I sip my wine.

  ‘I’m serious,’ he insists.

  I look at him. His eyes are shining earnestly.

  He is.

  Shit.

  ‘Well, it’s a bit of a surprise. I don’t know what to say.’

  Probably anything but that. It’s a bit lame. It’s awful. Luckily Josh is too nervous to notice my inadequacies. He reaches behind a cushion and pulls out a Tiffany ring box. He magics a thick cream rose from somewhere or other.

  ‘Bloody hell, Paul Daniels is proposing to me.’ I laugh but my laugh is hollow and echoey. It doesn’t fill the silence. Josh notices the silence too.

  ‘Bugger, forgot the music.’

  He jumps up and puts on his CD player. ‘Ground Control to Major Tom’ blares out, which makes me laugh and Josh swear. I know he’s spent the afternoon walking around the house with the strainer on his head, singing along.

  ‘Fuck, not very appropriate.’ He swaps to Frank Sinatra singing ‘I’ve Got you under my Skin.’ I’m grateful for this small diversion.

  ‘You’re serious, aren’t you, Josh?’ I ask his back.

  ‘I am.’ He tells the wall. After fiddling with the bass and the volume for a while Josh comes back and sits next to me. He doesn’t sit quite as close as he usually does. He’s not actually touching me, but he is close enough for me to notice that he’s shaking and there’s sweat on his upper lip.