Just a Girl, Standing in Front of a Boy

by Lucy-Anne Holmes

  ‘That’s debatable,’ she says in a deep voice. ‘If you’ll excuse me…’ And she sashays away.

  ‘Wow, she’s awesome,’ I say, as I watch her go.

  ‘Hmmmm. Now, Jenny, let’s go and introduce you to Mr Neville and please no funny stuff.’

  No one’s dancing yet. We’ve finished the dinner, and the music’s been on for an entire hour, but there’s still not a soul on the dance floor. I was quite happy to start the dancing off, it only takes one, but Matt said no. I feel sorry for the DJ. He’s obviously panicking. He played ‘All Night Long’ at half past nine. Still nothing.

  You know a party is rubbish when you look forward to going to the loo to have a break from it. They’re actually very nice toilets. So that’s one positive to getting married at the golf club. Oh, what was your wedding venue like, Fan? Oh, the toilets were nice, very spacious. I lock myself in a cubicle. I put the toilet lid down and sit upon it. I don’t even need to go. Probably because I’ve only had one drink. One drink on a Saturday night. I shake my head at the thought, I hear two drunk girls burst in to the Ladies giggling, it makes me think of Philippa and me.

  ‘Ah, ow.’ One of the girls is panting. ‘These shoes are killing.’

  ‘Take them off!’

  ‘If I take ’em off I’ll only have to put ’em back on again. Then it’ll be worse.’

  ‘They look nice though.’

  I smile. So like Philippa and me.

  ‘Bit shit, isn’t it? What time do you think we can get away to Tiddlies?’

  ‘Oh, not yet. Did you see Matt brought his woman with him?’

  ‘Hmmmm. She looks even more miserable than the last one. Do you remember her? Really pretty, amazing skin, but face like a someone had forcefed her lemons.’

  That’s me and Trudi they’re talking about. Oh, dear, I thought I was doing a good job of pretending to be enjoying myself. Right, I must really concentrate on smiling when I get back out there.

  I listen to the sound of make-up bags being rummaged through.

  ‘He’s marrying this one though.’

  ‘Poor girl. No wonder she looks down.’

  ‘He’s such a bastard.’

  ‘Handsome though.’

  ‘Do you think this one knows about him and Moira?’

  ‘Everyone knows about him and Moira.’

  ‘She probably doesn’t.’

  ‘What do you think he says he does every Friday then when he’s off boffing boss lady?’

  ‘No idea, squash or something.’

  ‘Man, I am so glad I’m single sometimes.’

  ‘Didn’t think anyone could look more miserable than the last one.’

  ‘I feel sorry for her. Maybe we should go and chat to her.’

  ‘Oooh, you know what we should do?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Write a note! Like that thing in the paper.’

  ‘Oh yeah, an anonymous note.’

  ‘It’s a list of ten things, can you remember what they were?’

  Their voices are high with excitement.

  ‘No more than two hours of telly!’

  ‘Yeah! Yeah! Do a good deed was one of them, um, um, bugger, what else?’

  ‘Have you got a pen?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, me neither.’

  ‘Sod it, shall we go and get a tequila.’

  ‘Yeah. Let’s go. Ow, my feet.’

  I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting in here. It could be fifteen minutes. It could be fifty. It’s as though I’ve floated away from myself. I need to snap into some sort of gear. I need to do something but I don’t know what. Matt will be annoyed with me for staying in here so long. I’m surprised he hasn’t sent someone in to find me. Maybe he’s too embarrassed. One thing’s for sure, I need to get out of this toilet. If my legs will carry me. I’m suddenly not sure that they will.

  I take a deep breath and lift my weight off the loo. I wobble for a second but remain upright. Phew. I open the cubicle door. A me with brown hair looks at me in the mirror opposite.

  ‘Hello,’ I say. ‘Bit of a balls up,’ I add. My reflection agrees and nods back. ‘You’re really, really bad with men,’ I tell myself. Again, I agree.

  The brown hair’s actually not that bad, but I wish I hadn’t played down my clothes and make-up so much.

  I take a big, really big, deep breath that almost makes me dizzy and walk out of the toilet as confidently as I can. I try to keep my head up and my shoulders back. I make my way back to the ghastly Function Room. Matt is hovering by the bar, he literally leaps towards me.

  ‘Jesus, Fan, where the hell have you been?’

  ‘I thought I was Jen now.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘In the toilet, I did tell you.’

  ‘Not for half an hour! What the…?’ Matt looks at me with alarm.

  I’m struggling to take my ring off. I didn’t want to do it dramatically, but my finger must have swollen up this evening. I’m having to tug and tug.

  ‘I’m just trying to take this engagement ring off, Matt,’ I say quietly.

  ‘What the…?’ he hisses back.

  ‘I just found out about you and Moira and I don’t feel so good about the wedding now.’

  ‘Shhhhhh,’ he sputters.

  ‘Everyone knows about you and Moira, Matt, I don’t think I really do need to shhhhh.’

  ‘Well, er, Jenny, listen, you can’t talk, you…’

  ‘Yes, I did. If you’re going to say, you slept with someone else. Yes, I did. But I told you, Matt. I didn’t try to deceive you. Not that it matters.’ I look into his despairing face. ‘Come on, we’ve both had other partners during our engagement, it probably isn’t the best indication of a blissful marriage.’ The penny drops. ‘Was this all because you wanted to be made a partner? You thought you’d stand a better chance if you were married?’

  I have never seen a man look as uncomfortable as Matt does now.

  ‘But we were all right together. It wasn’t as if…’ he trails off.

  I’ve finally got the ring off. I hold it out for him. He looks at it.

  ‘I don’t know what to do, Fan,’ he says and he really does look very lost.

  ‘Well, just concentrate on your work,’ I say, which sounds a little ridiculous.

  He opens his mouth but nothing comes out. He’s not taking the ring so I clutch it back in my hand.

  ‘I’m going to go now,’ I say, and then for some reason I add the words, ‘I hope you do get made a partner.’

  And then I turn and I walk away, just as the DJ starts playing ‘Sex on Fire’. I stretch my arms in the air as I walk and I think of Joe King.

  The cold night air slaps me as I step outside. It knocks my confidence. I freeze. How could I have got it so wrong? All of it so wrong. Repeatedly. If there was an award for ‘Woman With the Worst Love Life’ I would definitely be in contention. In fact I’d be raising the cup above my head right now. At least there’s a taxi coming down the driveway. I hope it’ll take me back to Tiddlesbury. Back to the flat. Back to Mum and Al and pyjamas and my Larry Lemon DVD. Back to where I should have stayed.

  The cab pulls up in front of me. I step towards it to speak to the driver, just as the nearside back passenger door opens, and out steps… out steps… this is the strangest thing… out steps my mum.

  ‘Jenny,’ she says, as though she’s surprised to see me.

  ‘Mum!’ I exclaim.

  ‘Are you leaving already?’ She looks tired, incredibly tired. And she sounds tired too. She’s almost slurring her words.

  I nod. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Oh, Jenny, I just couldn’t sleep. I had to see you.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Actually, Mum, let’s get in the cab, and get him to take us home.’

  ‘But what about Matt?’

  ‘Matt and I are no more,’ I say. ‘And we never will be again. He’s been bonking a lady partner a
t his work.’

  Oh,’ she says, and her shoulders seem to release. ‘Oh, that is good news.’

  ‘I’ve had better, to be honest, Mum.’

  ‘You can call that nice Joe King,’ she murmurs.

  I sigh at the mention of his name. I think I’ll always sigh when I hear the name Joe King.

  ‘Well, I could if he hadn’t brutally dumped me.’

  We climb into the back of the taxi and tell the driver to drive us back to where he just came from. I take Mum’s hand.

  ‘So let me get this straight, you got a cab at ten at night, to come to Matt’s work do, where all his partners were, in order to talk to me.’

  ‘I just wanted to see you,’ she says dozily.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I just knew you would be here, and I wanted to see you.’ She smiles.

  ‘But why right this minute?’

  She shrugs. ‘Sometimes you have to do what’s on your mind there and then.’

  I shake my head and laugh.

  ‘Have you been smoking the doobies again?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  I turn my face towards hers and smile. She smiles back and I squeeze her hand.

  ‘I love you, Mum,’ I say, and I stop myself from saying ‘even though you are bonkers’ because I love her just the way she is.

  ‘And I love my beautiful girl,’ she replies.

  Chapter 66

  He looked me in the eyes and proposed to me when he was having an affair with someone else. Did they lie in bed talking about me? Blimey, they must have thought I was really stupid. She must have been with him when I told him I’d slept with someone else. He wouldn’t let me up to his flat and his hair wasn’t even wet even though he said he’d had a shower. Bonking Moira, that’s what he’d been doing. He even invited her to our wedding. Thank goodness I found out when I did.

  I’ve just been on a very long run. I added miles onto my normal route but nothing seemed to exhaust me. It was as though my whirring mind was propelling me.

  ‘Hey, Al,’ I call, as I stand by the kitchen sink draining a pint of water. ‘Why aren’t you at work?’

  ‘I’m very ill.’

  ‘Oh, right. Sorry about that.’

  ‘No, I overslept so thought I’d feign sickness, how you doing this morning?’ he says, stopping and leaning against the door arch on his way to the bathroom.

  ‘I seem to have a lot of… a lot of…’ How can I describe it? ‘A lot of “arrrrrrgghhhh” to get rid of.’

  ‘I can’t think why,’ Al says. I sat up with him last night, after Mum went to bed, and I ranted and I ranted and then I ranted some more.

  ‘Ah, it’s my fault you overslept. Sorry.’

  ‘No, you’re all right, it’s my fault for setting my alarm for seven tonight. Fan, I meant what I said last night, if you want me to hit him.’

  I smile. ‘You’re very kind but no, Al. Where’s Mum? Has she gone out?’

  ‘No, don’t think so. I didn’t hear her go out.’

  I look at the cooker clock. It’s nearly half past eleven.

  ‘She can’t still be in bed. Can she?’

  ‘She was exhausted last night,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I put her post under her door first thing, I’m sure she called “thank you”. And I think I heard her making tea earlier.’

  ‘Oh, maybe she did go out, then.’

  I check the kitchen table and the fridge in case I missed one of her ‘morning all, just popped to the shops’ notes. But there isn’t one. I head to her bedroom door.

  ‘Mum! Mum!’ I call. ‘Mum! Mum!’

  ‘Mum!’ I call again, knocking on her door. ‘Mum,’ I shriek, knocking again.

  There’s no response.

  ‘Mum?’ I try again.

  I turn the door handle, and open the door a few inches.

  ‘Mum.’ I smile, she’s propped up in bed. ‘Hey, I thought we could…’ I start. But then I stop. ‘Mum!’ I exclaim when I see that a cup of tea has fallen from her hands and spilt all over the duvet. I rush to the bed. She’s not moving. At all. She doesn’t even respond when I start shaking her arm.

  ‘Fan, calm down!’ Al is shaking me. ‘Try to keep calm,’ he is shouting at me. He’s shouting at me because I’m screaming. I’m screaming and I hadn’t even realised.

  Chapter 67

  Al called an ambulance. They came in minutes that felt like hours.

  ‘Is she allergic to anything?’ an ambulance man asked.

  ‘I… I… I don’t know,’ I responded.

  ‘Is she on any medication?’

  ‘Oh, um,’ I remembered the paper pharmacy bag that I’d seen that day in her case. I dashed towards the case and opened it, wide this time. ‘Oh my…’ I said. There wasn’t just one paper pharmacy bag, there were plenty. I clutched at two and upturned them on the carpet, packets of pills spilling to the floor. I turned towards the ambulance man. ‘Um,’ I said again, as I hurriedly reached for two more bags.

  ‘How long has she been ill? he asked me urgently.

  ‘I didn’t know she was ill!’ I cried.

  The ambulance man looked at me in surprise. Then he left the room to radio someone. The other ambulance men had Mum on a stretcher by then and were wheeling her out of the room. Al appeared beside me. He put his arms around me. I gasped into his chest.

  There aren’t many things that I don’t like, however, if pushed to come up with something, I would probably say secrets and lies. But it took years to realise this. Life at home with Mum and Dad was clearly full of secrets and lies, Dad was bonking Sue and I was being bullied, but no one said a thing. I thought we were past all that, but my mother has been staying with me for six weeks and she’s been keeping a monster to herself.

  I sit here, now, in the hospital, holding her limp hand, looking at her drugged, sleeping body, and I wonder how and why she did it. And how I didn’t realise. The doctor said, ‘Did you not notice any changes in her behaviour?’ Well, yes, but I thought she was having a midlife. Except I didn’t say that, I just nodded. Did she have headaches? Oh, yes, terrible headaches but I thought they were stonking great hangovers, although I didn’t say that either, I just nodded again. Loss of memory? Yes, a bit, but I put it down to the dope smoking. Again, just a nod. Has she been sleeping a lot? Well, yes, but my dad was having an affair with her friend, I thought she was sleeping to block it out. Again, just a nod. But, no. It wasn’t a midlife or a menopause, malignant cells were growing on her brain. And she knew. She knew. Knew it was untreatable, knew at some point they’d swell to such a size that she’d lose consciousness. But she never mentioned it. The doctor said that from her records she was told four months ago that she’d have approximately six months to live. It would have been about the same time she found out about Dad’s affair.

  The doctor also said she might not regain consciousness. He said I should prepare for the worst.

  Chapter 68

  She didn’t regain consciousness. I sat by her for thirty hours and just before 7 o’clock this evening she slipped away. Slipped away. I think that’s the best way to put it. Like when you’re at a party that you’ve had enough of and you say, ‘I’m just going to slip away.’ Unobtrusive, without wanting to cause any fuss, I’ll just slip away. That’s what my mum did.

  In many ways, everything makes perfect sense now but then at the same time nothing does.

  Little tears have been trickling from my eyes but I couldn’t say how I feel. I have so many questions and I know they’ll never be answered. Why didn’t she tell me? Why did she come to stay with me? Didn’t she want to go to Rome or see the Northern Lights? Was she afraid? Was she in pain? But most of all I just want to hug her. She lay on the hospital bed and I put my arms around her and I pretended that she was hugging me back. I want to tell her that I love her. I told her as she lay lifeless, but I wanted her to hear it. I thought our new relationship was just the beginning. It was actually an ending. But most of all I want to say th
ank you to her for giving me this time. And to say I hope she enjoyed it as much as me. And to say, Mum, I’m so proud of you. And I want you to be proud of me too.

  I didn’t get back to the flat until gone 11 p.m. Al was already in bed. It must now be the early hours of the morning. I’m in the bathroom. Sitting on the floor in my bathrobe. I got out of the bath ages ago but I don’t want to leave the bathroom because Mum’s bits are everywhere. It’s as though she’s still here. And maybe she is.

  ‘Mum, ’ I whisper. ‘If you’re here, I love you.’

  I curl myself up in my bathrobe and lie upon the bathroom floor until morning.

  Chapter 69

  The funeral will be just a small affair at the local crematorium, with a picnic afterwards on the common across the road. I was getting into a tizz about where to hold the wake, but then I remembered Mum saying how we often over-complicate things, and really it’s sometimes enough to feel the wind on our skin or the ground underfoot. It felt right to do something outside, and every weather forecast (I checked sixteen) assures me it will be fine on the day. At some point afterwards, I’ll take her ashes and scatter them. At sea, I thought. I keep remembering the delight on Mum’s face as she paddled in the sea at Skegness. Most people have to organise a funeral for a parent at some point in their lives, I’m trying not to feel sorry for myself, and at least having something to do takes my mind off this overwhelming ache I have inside. It doesn’t feel like an ache that will ever go away either, just something that I’ll have to get used to.

  Philippa and Al have stayed with me. They’ve been wonderful. They even went through Mum’s address book and papers and sent funeral invitations to all the people they could find, so that I didn’t have to. They’ve both gone back to work today. This is my first day alone and that in itself feels like a hurdle to overcome. They’ve both been calling and texting me repeatedly though. Al, largely to discuss his menu plans for dinner, Philippa to read me the responses the Tiddlesbury Times has received from people who were given anonymous notes, twenty-six so far. So, in spite of everything, I’ve been hearing a lot of good news.

  So when I’m not on the phone to them, I’m bearing up, as they say, getting by, moment to moment. Philippa wrote a lovely obituary about Mum in the Tiddlesbury Times. It went in today, along with the photo of Mum dancing to the Arctic Monkeys, she’s smiling and squinting in the sun. We put that one on the order of service too. I hope that’s the way Mum would like to be remembered.