by Fiona Gibson
She shivers in her thin dress. So this is the kind of girl he sees when he’s not with me. A girl, not a woman. I knew, of course. I just didn’t allow myself to dwell on it because it felt so good, making love with a man I’d have imagined to be way out of my league. I glance at her as she puffs away, tapping her foot on the pavement. She has a tiny lizard tattoo above her ankle and her shoes – extravagantly strapped, with huge, chunky heels – appear to be squishing her toes together. She needs a cardigan, I decide, and I hope she’s not planning to wear those shoes all night.
I check my watch. I could make my excuses and leave, and she’ll just say, ‘Some woman was looking for you’, when he returns from the shops. Maybe he’s bringing her Pringles. Poor thing, I reflect, assuming she has a good thing going with a successful, handsome older man who happens to be bloody brilliant in the sack. Of course he is. He’s had plenty of practice. It’s like Mrs Sherridan, my music teacher, kept reminding me: work hard at the basics – breathing, tonguing, running up and down those pesky arpeggios and scales – and the more technical stuff will come easily.
She continues to smoke in silence. ‘I’m Audrey, by the way,’ I venture.
‘I’m Danielle.’ She flashes a brief smile, and I decide there and then to just leave it because he’ll arrive with his shopping and it’ll be terrible and, anyway, now I know. Danielle is the D, and someone else is the C, but it’s not my job to tell her. Maybe she’ll never find out.
‘Look, I think I’ll just go,’ I murmur.
She looks faintly relieved. ‘Okay. So, shall I just say Audrey was here?’
‘Yes, if you wouldn’t mind.’
‘And he’ll know what it’s about?’
‘I’d imagine so, yes.’ Now I just want to get away, to spare this shivering girl a terrible scene when all she wanted was a quick smoke. Her expression turns quizzical as she drops her gaze to my neck. ‘That’s weird …’
‘What is?’ I frown.
‘That. Your necklace. Look, it’s just like my bracelet …’ She raises her arm. My heart turns over as I study the silver coils dotted with tiny pink stones.
‘There must be a lot of them around,’ I say, with an awkward laugh.
‘No, there can’t be. He had it made specially for my birthday. He asked what stones I’d like and I said pink diamonds’ – she laughs tightly – ‘and he said, Bloody hell, they’re only the most expensive gemstones in the world, so he got something cheaper, but as close as he could to the real thing, y’know? ’Cause it was my 21st …’ Her 21st! For Christ’s sake, she is three years older than Morgan.
She examines my necklace and reaches out to touch it. I flinch as her nails brush against my neck. Shit, here comes Stevie, ambling down the street with a carrier bag. He spots us, and his expression freezes. For a moment, he looks as if he might be sick.
‘Stevie!’ Danielle calls out sharply. ‘This lady – Annie, was it? – wants to see you …’
He walks towards us and stops. ‘Audrey. Er … hi.’
‘Hi,’ I say dryly.
Danielle looks at him, then me, and crushes her cigarette end with her shoe. ‘What … what are you doing here?’ he croaks.
‘Like Danielle said, I just came to see you.’ I feel eerily calm as I fix my gaze on his. Those eyes, which always looked so teasing and suggestive, are now filled with fear.
‘Shit, Aud,’ he mutters.
‘Yes, it is a bit shit, isn’t it? That’s exactly how I’d have described it.’
He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. I’d never noticed how prominent it is before.
‘What the fuck’s going on?’ Danielle snaps.
‘Nothing!’ he exclaims.
‘It doesn’t seem like nothing,’ she shoots back, waggling her wrist in his face. ‘See this bracelet? The one you had specially made, ’cause you know how much I love pink?’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ He tightens his grip on his Londis carrier bag.
‘Well,’ she adds, ‘her necklace … it’s just the same, isn’t it?’
He frowns, pretending to study it carefully, as if not entirely sure.
‘Did you give it to her?’ Danielle ventures.
‘Er, well, she’s a friend, I should’ve said …’
Her eyes widen, and she steps backwards, her pert, young person’s breasts barely contained in the low-cut scoop of the dress. ‘Don’t tell me you’re seeing her?’ She glances at me, as if barely able to believe it might be possible.
‘Well, I, er, um …’
‘I know what it was,’ she yells, rounding on him. ‘It was one of those jewellery sets – the necklace, bracelet and earrings all in the same design. I’ve seen them. You bought one and split it up, you tight bastard!’
‘Whoah!’ he cries. ‘No need for that …’
‘Where did you get it?’ I cut in.
He purses his lips. ‘Just some store.’
‘Where exactly?’ Danielle demands.
His cheeks colour, and a middle-aged man passing by with a terrier on a lead pauses to smirk at us. ‘I think it was BHS,’ Stevie mutters.
‘BHS?’ Danielle crows. ‘Well, that’s lovely, that is. That’s real class, Stevie …’
‘So … who got the earrings?’ I enquire.
‘Nobody! Listen, I never said …’
‘You said you designed and commissioned it,’ she shrieks, ‘just for me—’ He starts to protest, but she storms past him and into the entrance to his flat. ‘I’m getting my stuff,’ she yells back. He stands, still clutching his carrier bag, looking at me in a what-did-I-do? kind of way.
‘Well, that was nice,’ I say coldly. ‘You’re just a lying shit and you keep a note of us all in a little book.’
‘What?’ There’s a crack of breaking glass as he dumps his bag on the pavement. Liquid – wine, probably, or maybe even champagne – starts to leak from the bag and pool around his feet.
‘I saw it in your car.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ he snaps. ‘I didn’t ask for any of this …’
I observe him in a detached way, as if he might be the sort of ranting stranger I’d normally cross the street to avoid. ‘You sort of did, actually.’
‘Aud, for God’s sake, you can’t just turn up at my place without any warning. I have a life, you know. You should’ve called—’
I climb into my car and lower the window. ‘I was just in the area, Stevie. Bye.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
Emergency Booze
Maybe it’s me, and I just don’t know the rules of modern dating. Maybe the way things go is that, unless someone says, ‘At the present time I am only intending to sleep with you’, then they are probably shagging so many other people they need to keep track of it all in a logbook of lays. I should start one, I decide as I drive home. Should be easy to keep: i.e., pages of blankness, stretching to infinity. I wouldn’t even need to bother looking for a pen.
I let myself into the house. It feels oddly quiet without Morgan in it, and I prowl from room to room, putting things away, crunching morosely on stem ginger cookies and deciding I need a drink. It’s gone midnight when Stevie texts me: Sorry babe but I never said we were exclusive.
I absolutely need a drink. There must be something. I rake through our cupboards and fridge.
Inventory of booze found:
1 bottle Tia Maria (raffle prize, unopened)
Dregs of Baileys (contains cream, and not kept in fridge: possibly ill advised?)
1 can cider
2 cans lager
Bottle of brandy, about a quarter full and untouched for several years
Four boxes Kirsch Kisses (melted loose ones dispensed of)
Dregs of a bottle of red cooking wine, containing sediment
Rum and raisin ice cream (joke)
Deciding to opt for the brandy, I tipple some into a glass, noticing how pale it is, almost watery-pale. I try a sip. It is water, albeit with a faintly alcoholic tinge. You could feed it to a baby with no discernible i
ll effects. Surely my darling son hasn’t been nicking my booze and topping up the bottle with water? What a cheek, after all the beer and cider I’ve bought him. I finish the glass anyway – despite it being disgusting – and pour a Tia Maria, which is okay-ish, although not my usual tipple of choice. But this is an emergency. I down it and pour another glass, alternating between sips and bites of Kirsch Kisses and promptly feel quite sick – of Stevie, of myself, sitting here in the kitchen drinking all on my own, and of life itself.
Being a sensible, stoical sort, I carry on in this manner, having fetched my laptop now with the purpose of Googling Stephen Dudley Mindfulness Training and glowering at the picture that pops up on the website: my cheekily grinning ex burbling on about a ‘flexible approach to facilitate clear, effective communication’.
‘Arsehole,’ I mutter, not terribly mindfully, then – fuelled by more Tia Maria and a perverse desire to make myself feel even more wretched – I mull over another time I was lied to, deceived, whatever you want to call it, by a man. ‘We can sit in the dunce corner together,’ Hugo said, when he knocks out top-quality dinners for God knows how many, every night of the week. I Google him, and his jolly beaming face appears. Although I try to beam fury at it, I just can’t. The kind grey eyes, the warm, wide smile: it’s just not a glaring-at sort of face. Anyway, compared to cheating on women and splitting up sets of BHS jewellery, playing down your culinary abilities no longer seems like a terrible crime.
I’ll let him off I decide, sipping from my smeary glass. I’ll tell him I know his secret, and that it’s okay, and what does it matter anyway? I hiccup loudly, wiping my chocolatey mouth on my shirt sleeve and Google his pub, The Cap and Feather in Hambleton Willows. I’m the one who needs to say sorry: for subjecting him to the terrible sight of me in my industrial bra and pants, lashed to the bed with a curtain rope. If he can recover from that, maybe we could stay friends? I pull off my shoes, toss them across the kitchen floor and take another big swig of Tia Maria for Dutch courage. Realising I’m having to focus quote hard on the keypad, I tap out the number of the pub.
‘Hello, Cap and Feather?’
‘Hello,’ I start in my best sober voice, ‘could I speak to Hugo if he’s there, please?’
‘He might be busy just now,’ says the efficient-sounding woman, ‘but I can ask someone to check … who can I say is calling?’
I gulp yet more drink. ‘Just a friend.’
‘Could I take a name please?’
‘I, er, sort of want it to be a surprise.’
‘Oh.’ She pauses. ‘Okay then. Hang on please …’ While she’s gone, I refuel with more booze and chocolate, wondering if this is how normal people, like Lottie and Tamara, while away an ordinary Monday night.
‘Hello?’ comes the quizzical male voice.
‘Hugo!’ I blurt out too loudly. ‘Is that you?’
‘Er … yes, it is. Who is this?’
‘It’s Audrey from cook school, remember?’
‘Oh! Yes, yes of course I do. So, er … you’ve tracked me down …’ He coughs awkwardly.
‘Yes, it was easy, and it’s fine, okay? It really is! And I’m sorry I dashed off without saying goodbye …’
‘Was everything okay? We were all a bit worried …’
‘Yes. Well, no. My son’s pregnant. I mean, my son’s girlfriend’s pregnant …’
‘Gosh, Audrey. That sounds more serious than the washing machine …’
‘It is,’ I declare. ‘God, yes, it is!’ A pause hangs in the air, filled with the background hubbub in the Cap and Feather and lasting just long enough for my booze-fuelled confidence to subside. ‘I’m sorry, you’re at work, this is probably a terrible time …’
‘Well, er, I’m okay for a couple of minutes …’
Oh, I know what this means: please get off the phone. ‘I shouldn’t have called,’ I mutter, picking nail polish off my big toe. ‘It’s just, well, I’ve had a bit of a crap evening, to be honest.’
‘Sorry to hear that,’ he says. ‘I can imagine things are pretty tense at home …’
‘No, no, it wasn’t that. Remember Stevie, my, er … friend? The one who—’
‘Yes, I remember,’ Hugo says quickly.
‘Well,’ I charge on, ‘I knew something was going on so I went round tonight and there was a woman there, well, a girl, she’s only 21 – that’s definitely girl rather than woman, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Um, probably,’ Hugo agrees.
‘So he’s seeing her and, God, I feel stupid …’ Without warning, my voice wavers and a tear rolls down my cheek.
‘I’m so sorry to hear that,’ he says gently.
‘It’s okay,’ I snivel, wondering what’s possessing me to tell him this stuff, and why I’ve mistaken a man I barely know for a shoulder to cry on.
‘Audrey, listen …’
‘No, it’s all right,’ I whimper, tippling more Tia Maria into my glass. Another tear drips down my face. ‘Anyway,’ I go on, ‘I don’t know why I called you. I was just feeling, I don’t know, a bit lost, I suppose. Morgan’s away at his dad’s until tomorrow. Not that he’d be interested. Got enough of his own stuff to figure out …’
‘Yes, of course he has,’ Hugo murmurs. ‘Are you going to be all right tonight?’
‘Yeah,’ I say firmly, ‘I’m fine. I shouldn’t be bothering you. Look, I know you’re a chef, okay? Of course I do. You know I know. I just phoned you at the pub and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry …’
‘Please, Audrey,’ he interrupts, ‘could you listen for a minute?’
‘You are a chef, aren’t you? A proper one in a white jacket, like Brad?’
I hear him inhale. ‘Er, well, yes, I must admit I do have some experience in the catering trade.’
I laugh bitterly. ‘You’re making it sound like you’ve dished out soup in a church hall. D’you have proper chef’s knives?’
‘Um, I do have knives, yes. They’re kind of pretty essential …’
‘And a blow torch for burning the tops of things? D’you have one of those too?’
‘Please, Audrey, listen …’
I try to sip from my glass, but it’s empty. ‘Remember I told you about Morgan jamming the hoover by sucking up socks? Phoney ineptitude, you called it. Pretending you can’t do something when really you can …’
‘Yes, I think I might have said that,’ he says with a trace of exasperation, ‘but look, I just wanted to say—’
‘You don’t need to explain,’ I trill, knocking the bottle with my elbow. As I try to catch it, my phone flies out of my hand. The bottle shatters on the floor, and shards of glass skid in all directions across the kitchen. I stare down at my mobile, which is sitting in a puddle of Tia Maria. ‘Oh, God,’ I groan, scrambling up from my chair and retrieving it. Its screen is cracked, and it appears to be dead. At least, Hugo isn’t there any more. Maybe he heard the bang and thought I’d shot myself. Bet he’s just relieved I’m not still babbling on at him. He’s probably sauntered back to the kitchen to deftly fillet some sodding sole. I dry my phone with a tea towel and lower myself back onto a kitchen chair.
That was sensible, I decide: calling him while pissed. If anyone’s ever needed to make a complete arse of themselves, I’m your woman. Maybe that’s a career path I should consider: that of a middle-aged joke, cheated on by a man I was never properly in love with. Sex, that’s all it was. Tons of hotel sex, followed by oily sausages and coffee from a machine in the morning. A fleeting image of Stevie and Danielle pops into my mind. So she’s allowed to visit his flat, and she gets the whole hotel routine too. Christ, I’m amazed she can even drive. Bet she still lives with her mum and dad and has piles of teddies on her bed …
My thoughts turn to Morgan who at least is far away from this pitiful scene, at Vince’s. That’s what I need to focus on: not men who don’t matter, but on setting a good example to my son.
I stare down at the mess on the floor then, still clutching my sticky phone, step barefoot
through the shards of glass to the living room as if that will make everything go away. I curl up on the sofa, aware of a spiking sensation on the sole of my left foot. Prodding at it makes it worse, and my fingers come away sticky and dark red. Further investigation reveals that a fragment of glass has embedded itself in my foot, and blood is oozing from the wound. I try, ineffectually, to squeeze it out like a splinter and, when that doesn’t work, I close my eyes in the hope that, like when you can’t be bothered to take off your make-up, it will miraculously disappear during the night.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Fish Bone
I wake up on the sofa at 4.27 a.m., with memories of Danielle in her tight dress and heels filtering as if through dirty gauze into my dehydrated brain. As I peer around the living room – at least the curtains are drawn, sparing anyone passing the sight of me sprawled in my shirt and knickers – more recollections nudge their way in: a broken phone and – oh, God, calling Hugo … My eyes, which had been momentarily opened, clamp shut again. So this is what my life has come to: getting drunk on a spirit I don’t even like, without mixers. But then, I am over eighteen, and we didn’t have any Coke, and I’d just discovered that my boyfriend’s been sprinkling cheap jewellery all over Yorkshire. So I was allowed, surely?
I scramble up and examine my hands. This is becoming a habit, I realise: waking up thinking I was lying on gravel, and now wondering why my fingers are all bloody. Either my memory is deteriorating or I am simply drinking too much. Did Stevie and I have an actual fight? Surely not. I’ve never hit anyone, apart from Marianne Cheadle at primary school when she said I was a swotty little bastard for playing the clarinet …
My foot throbs, and I hoik it up to examine it. Of course, the broken bottle. I peer at my sole and try to ease out the glass with my fingernails. It won’t budge. Grabbing my phone and crumpled skirt from the floor, I dress quickly and hobble upstairs to the bathroom, briefly wondering how Natalie would view me now. We shall be sharing grandmotherly roles: her with her posh grown-up blouses and pencil skirts, me with my cheap highlights and booze injuries. I’m sure she’ll be delighted. Having washed my hands and foot, I finally manage to extract the glass with the help of my eyebrow tweezers. My sole’s still sore to walk on, which feels sort of right: punishment for my foolish actions last night. I slope up to bed and, without bothering to undress or even slither under the duvet, I sink into a heavy sleep.
