Hoping this didn’t end up in the bin.
I do love you, you know.
Joey xxx
PS. Nightcap?
I re-read the bit about me finally knowing what I wanted from life and going out and getting it, then I ripped the letter up and put it in the nearest bin.
That night I went out and got hideously drunk. I woke the next morning on a patch of grass, clutching an empty bottle of gin, with no idea where my shoes were. I took the bus home and staggered all the way along Clapham Road, barefoot. Fortunately, no one from college saw me. Thus far, I had never let my hair down in front of them. And I didn’t intend to start now.
THIRTEEN
I pulled back the cheesecloth curtain in the bedroom of my basement flat and looked out onto the grey pavements of Clapham Road. The speckled black tarmac of the road. The terracotta bus lane. There was a light breeze outside and an empty Doritos packet floated past, landing, then taking flight again, a bird trying to soar for the first time and not quite making it. Stilettoed feet hurried by. The shiny shoes of businessmen. Another day was dawning in old London town, and in my new flat.
After a quick shower and a breakfast of black coffee and a piece of toast, I threw on my usual uniform for college, black leggings, black pumps and a baggy black jumper, scraped my hair back into a topknot with some clean, red polka-dot knickers, hastily drew black circles round my eyes with kohl and headed out.
In the hallway I found Moth crying. I was now Moths flatmate. In fact, her parents had bought this flat for her and only charged me a peppercorn rent. Poor Moth always seemed to be crying. She stood there in a similar black outfit to mine, leaning against the wall as if there was an earthquake rumbling and she was seeking sanctuary.
‘Moth, what is it? What’s the matter?!’
‘Oh, Jodie. Jodie!’ she was crying so hard her stomach was making involuntary contractions. This didn’t look good, the enormity of her pain instantly suggested to me that she had lost a close relative or vital organ. As she seemed to be in one piece, albeit quite a juddery one, I plumped for the bereavement.
‘Babe?’
‘I’ve got my private moment this morning. And I’m really scared!’
And with that she launched herself at me, threw her arms round me and sobbed into my shoulder.
Moth and I were now in our second year. As part of our course we had to do something called ‘private moments’. This meant you had to get up in front of your class and do something you would only usually ever do in private. One boy in our year had shaved all his pubic hair off and then studied himself in a full-length mirror. Another had danced with abandon to a song on his Walkman that none of us could hear. I’d recreated my bedroom from the flat and gone about tidying it and making the bed, dressed in my pyjamas.
‘What are you going to do, Moth?’
She stepped back and wiped the tears from her eyes, smudging her kohl to create two warpaint stripes across her cheeks. She took a deep, staggered, breath, her tummy still contracting wildly, and said, ‘I’m going to cut my toenails.’ Then she burst out crying again and launched herself back at me.
I stroked her hair as I felt my shoulder become wet and cooed, ‘Oh, Moth. Moth, babe, that’s so brave. So brave.’
Of course, I’d not told anyone at college about my three-hour marriage, not even Moth. As far as my fellow students were concerned I was just some girl from the sticks with no baggage or past, who was focused on her studies and gave the boys a wide berth. Such a wide berth, in fact, that they called me Jodie the Fridge behind my back. Amanda kindly told me, but I didn’t particularly care – let them think what they liked. I didn’t even tell Moth when my decree nisi came through – my dad had applied for it on my behalf and Greg hadn’t contested the divorce – I just put the form in the bottom of my knicker drawer and carried on as normal. I didn’t feel jubilant, I didn’t feel sad, I just felt a bit numb.
‘People do like you,’ Amanda informed me one day as she ate sushi and I chomped on a bag of Monster Munch in the canteen.
‘Do they?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Even though they call me the Fridge?’
‘That’s just the boys, take no notice of them.’
‘Maybe they’re jealous of my talent,’ I said, then laughed to show I was joking.
Amanda laughed a bit too loudly for my liking, then shifted uncomfortably in her seat and pulled a face.
‘Are you OK,’ I asked.
She rolled her eyes. ‘Oliver’s really into anal.’
My mouth dropped open. ‘I didn’t even know you were going out!’
She looked horrified. ‘We’re not. No WAY. God, I couldn’t think of anything worse and stuff?’
Then she started talking about Stanislavski, as if we’d just discussed the weather.
And I thought I was unshockable. I ran and told Moth the next time I saw her.
‘Ollie and Amanda did anal last night!’
Moth looked bewildered.
‘Is that by Steven Berkoff?’
I was even more shocked. Was no one else on my course normal, like me?
There is a perceived wisdom that all students are feckless and fancy free, displaying the morals of a pack of particularly slutty alley cats. Now if I bucked the trend, the rest of my class were like Amanda, and certainly didn’t. At one point it appeared that everyone, save me, had either Chlamydia or some other form of venereal disease. It felt like if one of us got a cold, pretty soon the whole group were sniffing. I suppose at least I had a few things to be thankful to Greg for.
I went on a few dates during my time at college, though admittedly I never realized they were dates till I got there. We were encouraged to go and see as many shows as possible, but it was hard for me as tickets were always so expensive. Our year broke down into two socio-economic groups: the haves and the have-nots. I came in the latter category. The have-nots spent every Easter, summer and Christmas break working their veritable bollocks off in pubs and shops, trying to earn enough money to buy food and books during term time. We would return to each new term completely exhausted, the stench of stale booze or half-price batwing jumpers still stinging our nostrils. The haves returned suntanned with heady tales of backpacking in Thailand or treking in Nepal, shaking sand from their espadrilles and forever pulling out Euros in the pub and saying, ‘God, I meant to change them and stuff?’ really loudly, which got on my tits.
More often than not, I’d only go to the theatre if I knew another student who was ushering there, who could sneak me in on the sly, or if one of the haves invited me to go with them and they were paying. Oliver sometimes asked me to go with him, usually to see something classical or obscure at the National Theatre so he could enjoy patronizing me afterwards by explaining what had gone on on stage. I always pretended I’d completely ‘got it’, but most of the time his discourses were welcome. The first time I agreed to go with him he arrived with a single red rose, which he handed to me. My sphincter clenched. Mortified, I gave it to a homeless person on the way home – he rolled his eyes and said the most sarcastic thank you I’d ever heard. Oliver asked after the rose for days afterwards and I reported back on its imaginary lifespan, before Moth told Amanda what I’d really done with it and Amanda told Oliver and he stopped speaking to me for a whole term.
It was weird going on quasi-dates with boys from college. They wereso different fromnights out withthe boys fromhome. The student actors discussed their feelings, their knowledge of theatre, they shared and at least pretended to listen when I attempted to join in. Most lads back home took you to the pub and pretended not to be gutted when you couldn’t name the line-up at the latest Liverpool game. Obviously Greg had been a bit different to that, but probably only because he was ‘a big fat gayer’, as Hayls and Debs so succinctly put it.
I was, of course, having less and less contact with the girls back home. Initially we’d phoned and written letters, as promised outside the Blue Lagoon. They’d come to stay with me
a few times, when Bernard was away visiting his relatives in Neath. But as time drew on I think they thought I’d gone a bit weird. They were still working at the supermarket, whereas all my reference points for witty anecdotes or moments of gossip had changed drastically. I’m sure they thought my sole purpose in London was to arse around and spend my days watching other students cutting their toenails or shaving their pubes off. Which it was in a way. They were also distinctly unimpressed that someone as gorgeous as me – their words, not mine, I hasten to add – hadn’t managed to bag myself a fella, getting over the tragedy of my mini-marriage to a confirmed homosexualist by jumping on some ‘dirty big bastard’ of a cockney. I saw them when I went home to Liverpool, but there was a distance between us now, and it wasn’t just geographical. When I said anything they wouldn’t just jump in and agree with me any more, there’d be a pause and I’d see a hesitant look dart between them, as if they were saying, ‘See? She has changed. Her with her fancy London ways.’ They’d eye my clothes suspiciously and ask if I’d bought them in ‘that London’, and when I moaned that I didn’t have much money they reluctantly bought me drinks with the irritation of women who thought I’d intentionally gone out of my way to earn precisely nothing, daring as I had to turn my back on a life of shelf-stacking. Hayls was still seeing Lotan, though no date had been set for an engagement or wedding, and Debs had started seeing a scaffolder called Mick the Brick. Occasionally they tried to set me up with potential boyfriends, but as with them, I was beginning to feel we were poles apart.
One morning when I was back in London, at the beginning of our third and final year at college, I found Moth in the hallway studying the post. Amongst the free pizza delivery notices and offers for double glazing, she had found a postcard with a rather colourful scene of beach huts and sandcastles on the front.
‘Ooh!’ I said, feigning interest. ‘Who’s on holiday?’
Her parents were always going away somewhere fabulous: Mustique, Mauritius, Koh Samui. Places I could only dream of going.
Moth shrugged. ‘It’s been delivered to the wrong building.’
And with that she threw it on the floor. ‘Come on, we’ll be late.’
‘But shouldn’t we . . .?’ I looked at the postcard on the carpet, thinking we should pass it on to its rightful owner en route to college, but Moth grabbed me and linked arms with a stern, ‘There’s no time, Jodes. I’ll do it later,’ before opening the front door. ‘It’s only a bloody postcard. It’s not even from abroad, cheapskates.’
And off we went. When I got back that night I couldn’t see the card anywhere, so I assumed Moth had done her duty and popped it through the correct letterbox.
About a week later I couldn’t find the gas bill I was meant to be paying that week and turned the flat upside down looking for it as Moth watched, fingering a packet of Monster Munch and saying stuff like, ‘It’s just, like, a bill, Jodes,’ and, ‘God, yeah, get a life and stuff?’ She had taken to speaking like Amanda recently and it got right on my tits. And stuff?
Eventually I found it. But I also found, in one of the kitchen drawers, the undelivered postcard. I rolled my eyes and Moth tutted.
‘I meant to take it round.’
I gave her a look.
‘It’s only a postcard, Jodie. God!’ Then she galumphed into her bedroom and started playing Tracey Chapman loudly. I turned the postcard over to check the address. It was meant for someone called Stuart Moses and he lived in a flat a few doors up. Oh well, I could just go and slip it through his letterbox. Moth was right, it was only a holiday postcard, it wasn’t like someone had actually died.
And then I read it. I couldn’t help myself. Well, people don’t write anything too personal on postcards, do they?
Oh yes they did. I immediately felt awful and wished I’d not looked. It said:
Hi Stu,
I have come away for a few days with Ricky. I am seeing him now. Sorry to tell you like this, but maybe you shouldn’t have been such a tit.
Have a nice life.
Karen.
P.S. Your Armani shirt that got burned on the iron? I done it on purpose.
Oh. My. God. It wasn’t just a normal holiday postcard, it was a break-up card! This woman. No . . . this bitch Karen had dumped this Stuart guy by postcard. Something that anyone could read. It was hardly private. Wow! Some people could sink really low. I felt awful and sunk low myself, onto a kitchen chair, leaning on the table and taking in what had happened. I felt my right elbow slide a bit as I’d leaned in a small mess of marmalade, but I didn’t care. I had bigger things to worry about.
A guy called Stuart, a few doors down, had been dumped by his girlfriend. And he had no idea! She had left him for another man and he was probably wondering where she’d got to. And yet the truth of the matter was that the . . . skanky bitch was sunning herself somewhere fabulous. Where was it again? I checked the front of the card. Sizewell Beach. She was in the stunning, uber-glamorous location of Sizewell with someone called Ricky. And poor Stuart had no idea. Oh Gosh, this was awful. I re-read the message and my heart plummeted to my boots. Well, slippers. And to top it all she’d been sabotaging his designer labels. It didn’t bear thinking about!
But then, hang on. This Karen was making out her behaviour was justified because Stuart had been ‘a tit’. Tit was mild. She could have used several much stronger words, any fool knew that. Behaving like a tit suggested minor misdemeanours like . . . like . . . well, like turning up at a fancy dress party dressed as a piece of toast. I’d seen someone do that once. He wore a huge brown latex square thing with his arms poking out of either side. In fact, they were poking out at such an angle he couldn’t actually pick up a drink, and everyone agreed he was a bit of a tit because his girlfriend had to spend the night holding his drink to his mouth for him to sip it.
Oh no! What if that had been Stuart? No, that was a ridiculous notion. That was back in Liverpool, several years earlier. What would be the likelihood of him living a few doors down from me now?
I knew what I had to do. I had to go round to his place and apologize, hand him the card and explain that I was convinced my flatmate had already delivered it. None of this was my fault, I could explain, I really thought she’d redirected it. Don’t blame me, I would say, blame the Post Office. Some vacant type in blue shorts and trainers had idiotically shoved it through our letterbox by mistake.
Or maybe it was on purpose. Maybe he was in cahoots with Karen. Or this Ricky. Maybe he was Ricky’s brother and didn’t want Stuart to find out, for some reason – or reasons? – none of which were very clear to me right now. I certainly knew from my postman father that it was practically a hangable offence for a postman or woman to lose mail in any way, shape or form. Maybe I should report him? Send the bugger down! Lock the door and throw away the—
I was getting ahead of myself. I sighed, stood up and headed out.
It was only when I arrived at Stuart’s house that I realized I had come out in my slippers. I was tempted to nip back and change, but this was too urgent. I had to let this poor fella know he was dumped, and the sooner the better. It was very nearly a matter of life and death.
Like our house, the front door was up a load of steps, where a veritable xylophone of doorbells hung off the side of the doorframe. I checked Stuart’s flat number again and rang the bell. No reply. I’d not bargained for this. What should I do? Pop it through the communal letterbox or come back later? I have to admit I was torn. On the one hand it would have been very easy to post it through the letterbox, but on the other . . . well . . . I was intrigued. I wanted to put a face to the name and see what this Stuart was like. I felt I’d invested in him somehow. I thought we had lots in common. He’d been dumped by Karen, even though he didn’t know it yet, and I’d been—
Just then a voice crackled over the intercom. ‘What?’
It was quite a surly ‘what’ and it brought me up short.
‘Erm. I was looking for Stuart Moses?’
�
�Who is it?’
‘Just . . . a neighbour.’
‘Hang on.’
The intercom went silent and I heard footsteps inside, thudding down the stairs. Oh God. He was going to hate me. Not only was I the bearer of bad news, but he would know I’d read his very personal postcard. The front door swung open and a – OK, I have to be honest here – very fit guy was standing before me. And when I say fit, I’m not talking bodybuilder ‘I take too many steroids and have massive biceps and a tiny winkie’ fit, I’m talking ‘throw you across the room after too many snakebites’ fit. There was something irrefutably masculine about him.
‘Yeah?’
He was sweaty, but in a good way. The fact that he was wearing footy shorts and a grey hooded top made me think he’d just been for a run or I’d caught him doing press-ups. He had a towel in his hand and a tattoo on his thigh, just beneath the hemline. He saw me looking and readjusted his shorts. Jeez! I hope he didn’t think I was checking out his package.
‘Sorry, I. . . just wanted to give you this. Are you Stuart?’
He nodded and took the postcard off me.
‘It was delivered to my place by mistake. I hope you don’t mind, but I accidentally read it.’
God that sounded like complete and utter bollocks. How could you accidentally read something? You either choose to read something or you don’t. When did you last hear anyone say, ‘God I really enjoyed that book. I read it by accident.’
‘Gosh, how does that work?’
‘Well. The book flew at me, flapping its pages in my eyes, and I had no choice but to read its printed sentences. I hadn’t meant to. I was trying to watch reruns of Fantasy Island at the time.’
I had never heard anyone say that. Nor was I likely to.
Stuart didn’t look up. He was reading the card. He showed no emotion, but he did do a big sigh and then nodded.
All She Wants Page 18
