The (Im)Perfect Girlfriend

by Lucy-Anne Holmes

  It was awful. If he shot me, I’d never get the poo.

  ‘I think my knees are bleeding.’

  ‘What are you doing in a hedge, ma’am?’

  ‘I was just trying to keep out of the sun. I’m waiting for the man who lives here.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘England.’

  ‘Cup of tea,’ said Stripper Cop with the gun in a terrible English accent.

  ‘Hmmm.’ I tried to smile.

  ‘Show me your passport.’

  I was in a fecking hedge!

  ‘I don’t have it with me.’

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘A hotel. Called Shutters.’

  Stripper Cop did a wolf whistle.

  ‘Yes, it’s very nice there. I recommend it.’

  ‘There is a gun pointed at you. So get up slowly.’

  ‘Ow, thank you.’

  ‘We’ll drive you back to your hotel.’

  ‘Nooo.’

  ‘You’re dealing with the law, lady.’

  ‘I know but I really need to get something from his house.’

  ‘What’s that, lady?’

  A poo! A bloody great bag of poo!

  ‘Just a girly thing I left there.’

  I heard a car on gravel. Please, please God, be Leo, I prayed, not a swat team. Thank you, God. It was Leo, driving an old estate car with a surfboard on the top. He got out. He was wearing a half-pulled-up wetsuit.

  ‘Officers.’

  ‘Do you know this lady?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The dog trundled over to the hedge I’d just been sitting in and had a long pee. I had thought the ground felt damp there.

  ‘What is her name?’

  ‘Sarah Sargeant.’

  ‘Where is she staying?’

  ‘That hotel, Shutters, on the beach.’

  Tony Soprano nodded slowly.

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘We had a call to say that there was a suspect English lady screaming in a hedge outside your house.’

  ‘She’s a friend of mine.’

  ‘Sorry to trouble you then.’

  They drove off. I looked at Leo.

  ‘I just left something inside. I thought I’d wait for you.’

  ‘Sorry, Sarah. I went surfing. Let me have a quick shower and I’ll drive you back.’

  seventy-two

  I was still holding the bag when I got back to the hotel. I felt like Gillian McKeith.

  Leo walked me from the car. His arm was around my waist and I was leaning into him, trying to keep my weight off my bad foot. One of my knees was bleeding after the doggy position in the gravel with the policemen. So I had hoiked my dress up to my knees to stop blood getting on the fabric. Leo was carrying last night’s shoes for me. I was holding the carrier. We entered the hotel like this. There have been walks of shame in my life before. But this was the daddy.

  There was a party going on in the foyer. Lots of people were gathered together, whooping. I kept my head pressed into Leo’s chest, not wanting to see anyone.

  ‘Sarah!’ It was Erin and her dad and lots of other people. I didn’t have a free hand so I waved my little bag of doo-doo at her.

  ‘Do you want me to leave you here or help you upstairs?’ Leo whispered in my ear.

  ‘Do you mind helping me upstairs?’

  ‘No, no . . .’

  Erin broke free from her group and approached us as we were trying to sidle our way to the lift.

  ‘It was my father’s birthday yesterday. All my family came to celebrate. They’re just leaving now for New York. Meet them.’

  We turned and smiled at the strangers she was talking about.

  ‘Lovely to meet you all,’ I said.

  Leo nodded.

  Erin did the rounds and introduced them all to us individually. I swapped hands with the poo so I could shake their hands, which were being proffered, and started murmuring ‘pleased to meet you’s.

  ‘Well, lovely to meet you all. And happy birthday for yesterday, Mr Schneider,’ I said when I thought it wasn’t rude to leave.

  ‘Oh, Sarah!’ cried Erin.

  ‘Yes, lovely?’

  ‘Would one of you mind taking a photo of all of us?’

  ‘No,’ said Leo.

  ‘Course not,’ I added.

  ‘Here, Sarah, you take it, you’ve got the same camera.’

  I took the camera that Erin gave me. They gathered into an awkward-looking huddle. Leo offered to take the carrier from me to free up my hands. I declined.

  ‘OK. Everyone say, “Lesbian!”’ I shouted. The response was a chapel hush. They’d be sorry.

  ‘Oh, OK, then. Everyone say, “Cheese!”’

  They all said, ‘Cheese!’ and looked disturbed. I took one photo to prove my point. Then I tried to arrange them in a quirky school-sports-picture arrangement. I was mid telling Erin’s granddad that he should really go behind Erin as he was two feet taller when I saw something. It was a familiar figure moving at speed through the foyer of my hotel. I couldn’t be sure. But it looked like my Si.

  ‘I’m so sorry, excuse me . . .’ I said to Erin’s party without taking my eyes off the figure, who was nearly out of the hotel doors. I started to run after him.

  ‘Argh!’ I screamed. I’d forgotten about my bad ankle.

  ‘Sarah,’ Leo cried as he rushed to my side.

  But I hopped away from him.

  ‘I think I saw someone,’ I murmured as I left everyone behind. It must have been a frightening sight; me, braless breasts bobbing, unwashed in last night’s clothes, hopping through a luxury hotel foyer. But I didn’t care. I reached the double doors. And I saw him. It was Simon. My Simon. He was just about to get into a yellow taxi.

  ‘Simon!’ I shouted. Now I have the voice force of a frigate at my disposal normally, but that ‘Simon’, that all-important ‘Simon’ barely reached gnat power. He didn’t hear me. Or if he did, he didn’t turn around.

  ‘Simon!’ I tried again. His hand was already on the taxi door. ‘SIMON!’ I watched him open the door. I couldn’t let him go.

  ‘SIMON!’ I screamed and this time I charged towards the cab. Again I forgot that I had a sprained ankle, only this time I ended up sprawled on the pavement. It was a disaster. I made the sound ‘urgh’ as loud as I could. And Simon looked. He didn’t smile. He didn’t tell the cab driver to go. He just cast his eyes upon me on the ground.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I shouted. A valid question.

  ‘I had some work stuff over here.’

  ‘Can we go for coffee?’

  Simon looked at me on the ground in last night’s dress with grazed knees and it was a look of absolute contempt.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Nothing, Sare, I’ll leave you to it.’

  ‘Si! You left me to be with Ruth.’

  ‘The baby’s not mine.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, it could be mine. Although I doubt it. But Ruth was seeing her boss at work as well, so it could be his. That photo and sex game note, that wasn’t anything to do with me. There’ll have to be a paternity test when he or she arrives.’

  ‘Oh, Si, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He nodded. ‘And she could have kids. She just didn’t want kids with me.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I was just going to tell you, that’s all. I shouldn’t have come.’

  ‘No, no, please, Si, please, let’s talk, have a coffee.’

  Then Simon’s body language and tone changed completely and he said, ‘I’ll see you around, Sarah Sargeant,’ and got into the taxi.

  I turned around and Leo Clement was walking towards me. He’d obviously just appeared.

  ‘Leo, please could you help me up?’ I said urgently.

  Leo escorted me to the escalator and then he left. I was relieved because I had a plan. I was going to get rid of the bag of poo and change my clothes, then I was going to the airport. I didn’t have a clue
whether Simon would be there. But I needed to at least try.

  Once I was out of the lift I saw a bin. I thought about kissing it. I didn’t.

  ‘You are a beautiful thing,’ I said to it, and lobbed the bag in there.

  ‘Sarah, what are you doing?’

  It was Rachel Bird. She was leaning against my hotel room door. She was wearing a baseball cap and shorts and she was sitting on top of a very big bag. I stared at her. Her eyes looked red and blotchy.

  ‘Oh, you didn’t,’ I said softly.

  ‘I did,’ she replied.

  ‘Oh, Rach.’

  ‘Can I stay with you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Can we order burgers and martinis?’

  ‘Well, I’ve discovered the problem with eating burg . . .’ I started, but then I looked at her sad little face and I changed my mind. ‘Yep, we’ll have whatever you want.’

  seventy-three

  So I never went to the airport. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. But Rachel had come to me at one of the hardest points in her life and I couldn’t leave when she needed me.

  So we had a burger and a martini and we talked. Then I showered all my body, bar one bandaged ankle, and when I had finished Rachel was sound asleep. Based on past behaviour I would have sat on the bed next to her and mulled over the Simon situation before Skype-ing Julia. However, I did neither of those things. I left Rachel a note, a glass of water and a key on the bedside table and I hopped out of the room. I went next door and knocked.

  Erin answered.

  ‘Sarah, hey.’

  ‘Hello, Erin, I don’t suppose you’re free? I never bought you that milkshake and I was feeling bad.’

  ‘Oh, no, we’re just off to a prayer meeting.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Come.’

  And I was about to say, ‘Oh no, that’s not really for me,’ but instead I said, ‘OK, although I will have to hop.’ Perhaps it was strange that I chose to hop to a prayer meeting rather than chase after the man I loved. The truth was, I was scared. I wanted to do the best by Rachel. But I didn’t know what the best was. All I knew was that it didn’t involve me having a big dramatic scene with Simon.

  So I hopped the two blocks alongside Erin and her father to the community centre-type place where they held one of their many prayer meetings. I couldn’t help move chairs in a circle so I arranged a bunch of tulips in a vase that Erin had brought and placed them in the centre of the circle.

  A couple in their late thirties were the first to arrive. He was a giant of a man with a donkey-like large chin and she was rounded and kind-looking, a bit like Mrs Tiggywinkle. They smiled at me and shook my hand before they sat down. Erin and her dad greeted them warmly. Then an older woman walked slowly in with the aid of a stick. She didn’t look well and she collapsed into the first seat she came to.

  By the time Mr Schneider began there were seven of us in total.

  ‘Good afternoon and welcome. We come together today to pray with and for each other. We offer up our prayers to God in the knowledge that the big man is always listening. And we get strength and joy from one another. Now, let’s start with you two,’ he said, pointing at Donkey Man and Tiggywinkle.

  The poor couple explained how they’d been trying for a baby for ages before Mr Schneider said a prayer that we all repeated. Then the older lady spoke. Her name was Flo. She had cancer and wanted us to pray that she lasted six months so that she would see her favourite grandson get married. I asked them to pray for my friend as she’d just been diagnosed with cancer. And I asked them to pray that I was the best friend I could be to her in this time.

  All in all it was probably the most depressing afternoon of my life. At the end of the session I stood up to thank Mr Schneider.

  ‘I’m sorry about your friend.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s a bit rubbish, but I’m sure she’ll fight it,’ I replied.

  Flo had joined us in the conversation and immediately responded to my remark.

  ‘Don’t give her lots of positive talk, she won’t like that.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It’s infuriating when people say, “Oh, you’ll fight it.” You want to scream, “I might not, I’m not Lance Armstrong.”’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. My mind was scanning all the insensitive things I’d already said to Rach. The ‘Let’s fight this fucker,’ and ‘Come on, Lance,’ comments. ‘Um, what should I say?’

  ‘Well, don’t trivialize it either.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. The bloody ridiculous omelette rap was on a loop in my mind. ‘Well, thank you, Flo.’

  I hopped away feeling dreadful.

  ‘Sarah,’ it was Mr Schneider following me. ‘Sarah, just be there for your friend. Tell her you care. I’m sure you’re being a great friend to her.’

  ‘Oh, no, honestly, you don’t understand. I’m doing everything wrong. I called her Lance bloody Armstrong and I’ve been making awful jokes, I mean my jokes are largely based on knob gags anyway, sorry, Father.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re doing fine.’ He smiled. ‘And keep the knob gags.’

  And I smiled because it really pleased me that a man of the cloth had said ‘knob gags’.

  seventy-four

  When I returned to the room Rachel was still lying on her back with my First Class eye mask on, snoring lightly. I wrote her a little note and left it by the bed. It simply said:

  Rachel, I don’t know how best to help you through this. But I am going to do whatever I can and whatever you need. I’m not going anywhere. So use me to cry, to moan, to rail, to boss around, to talk to about anything. If I say the wrong thing let me know. Because everything I do comes out of love for you.

  Xxx

  And then I turned on my computer and braced myself for Nads.com. Hmmm. What the National Geographic is to natural science, Nads is to boobs. The holding page showed two teenage girls wearing nothing but diamante pants. They were both grinning, probably in agony as the diamante pants couldn’t be much fun, especially when you sat down. One of the girls was helpfully holding the other’s breasts, obviously to protect her modesty because she was shy. The contents page promised to show me ‘sizzling pics’ of someone called Eva naked, a strip by someone called Emma, saucy pics of Sandra, a section called ‘Bank Holiday Boobs’ and another called ‘Best of Breast’. I suspect it was the diversity of commentary that set Nads apart from other literature on the market. I clicked on Eva. She did have truly amazing boobies. They were massive and she seemed to spend most of her time lying on the floor in just her shoes, touching them, which was good news for Nads. Eva was very lucky, though, because although she had mammoth mammaries, nothing else on her body was big. She had a tiny little waist and the tight bottom of a prepubescent boy. Even her bloody hands were wee. I could increase the size of my boobs. I had done it before. It involved eating a lot of peanut butter on toast late at night. The only problem was that every other body part grew too.

  I went back to the homepage. I scanned it closely but I didn’t see Leo’s name anywhere, although there was a section called ‘JizBiz’ and something was telling me that I really, really, really, really, really didn’t want to click on that.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ I said aloud.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hey, bubba. I thought you were sleeping. Can I get you anything?’

  ‘No,’ she reached out to the bedside table and picked up her phone. She looked at it and blinked sleepily.

  ‘Has he called?’

  ‘Hmmm,’ she said quietly.

  ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

  ‘Are you looking at porn?’

  ‘What? No. Did you know that Leo Clement has a column?’

  She smiled.

  ‘I would say that Leo Clement has a phenomenal column.’

  Flashback of those tight grey short pants and the maxi.

  ‘He’s got a column in a magazine called Nads.’

  ‘Classy. Let’s have a read.’

  �
�OK.’ I handed her the computer.

  ‘Wow, she’s got nice breasts,’ she sighed sadly.

  ‘Look. I think Leo’s stuff might be there, under “JizBiz”.’

  She clicked on the icon and I turned back to make the tea.

  ‘Oh, you have to buy the magazine to read the column, it says.’

  When the cups were ready I turned round and I said something I had been thinking since Rachel arrived.

  ‘Rach, I’m going to tell Eamonn for you. I’ll explain it all so you don’t have to. It doesn’t mean that you have to get back with him. It just means he’ll be able to understand.’

  She looked at me. I didn’t know what she’d say. I was fully expecting a ‘Bugger off, Sare, it’s got nothing to do with you.’ But instead she just looked at me and nodded.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. And then she lay down again and closed her eyes.

  seventy-five

  Like a sleuth, I tracked Eamonn down through a tight-knit group of personal assistants and I learnt he was at the Chateau Marmont Hotel. Now the Chateau Marmont hotel is famously where the Hollywood hellraisers hang out, so if I didn’t find Mickey Rourke and Courtney Love snorting coke off each other’s bottoms in the reception I planned to demand my cab fare back. And it was on Sunset Boulevard. Sunset Boulevard as in the musical we did at drama school. Well, the musical that the rest of the year did except me, on account of it being a musical. This Hollywood history was useful because it distracted my mind from the job in hand. Leo called me as I was on that journey. I didn’t answer.

  I hopped into the hotel. It was very dark. I squinted. I wished they’d turn some lights on so I could see the hell-raisers. I kept my eyes peeled for them as I jerkily made my way through a lounge area. But I didn’t see anyone of note and I tripped over a rug. I paid more attention as I negotiated my way out into a large patio area with a canopy over it. The patio was furnished with sofas and rugs. The first person I saw was Dolph Wax sitting in the centre of the large sofa. It appeared he didn’t know what to do on comfortable seating. He looked unsure whether to lie back or lean forward, so he’d opted for a mid-sit-up position that hinted at torture. He was flanked on one side by a middle-aged lady who made Margaret from The Apprentice look fun-loving. I wondered who she was; possibly the lawyer or the bongo player. To his other side was a large man in a suit who was holding a walkie-talkie. I assumed he was a bodyguard. I noticed that when Dolph saw me the muscles in his neck tensed like he was having trouble with the piano again. Eamonn registered Dolph’s expression and turned his head to locate the object of his displeasure. There was another man with him but I could only see the back of his head. Eamonn looked very tired. But he smiled at me and gestured me towards them.