The (Im)Perfect Girlfriend

by Lucy-Anne Holmes

  And I intensely disliked the word ‘closure’, too. I’d always thought it was a term made up by people from California to sell books. But as I went through the bin in case he’d written a letter and changed his mind, I wished I’d bought one of those books.

  But there was no note. I even checked the bathroom. Nothing. Just floor space where the Cockaconga had been and some blue furry hummus and what might once have been a tomato in the fridge. It wasn’t the ending I wanted. It didn’t even feel like an ending at all. It felt like a DVD you’d buy from a Chinese lady with a big carrier bag, where the picture was fine and the movie was brilliant but it cut out before the end. And you were left staring at the screen, not knowing what to do with yourself. I did pretty much what I would have done had that happened. I just made myself a cup of black tea, as there was no milk, and went to bed.

  I was pleased it was only for one night. Eamonn and Rachel picked me up the following morning to travel to Devon. I thought about Simon for most of the M4 and M5. And I was still thinking about Simon when we turned off the motorway and got stuck behind a tractor going at eighteen miles per hour. But when I thought about him, he wasn’t my Si. The old Simon. The Simon who had gone to Devon with me. The Simon who massaged my feet. The Simon who took the mickey out of my blow jobs. He was a new Simon I didn’t know. Daddy Simon. Ruth’s other half. Someone who doubtless spoke about school catchment areas and weaning and wore a white piece of vomit-covered muslin over his shoulder. Someone who went to bed with a girl called Ruth and woke in the night to cuddle his beautiful baby. Someone who knew his future and knew who the main characters in it were. He had his happy ever after. But where was my bloody happy ending?

  ‘You’ve got to find it for yourself,’ I whispered aloud. Eamonn had The Rolling Stones up as high as the little black knob would let him. So no one heard me.

  ‘Where’s my happy ending?’ I whispered again. But then Rachel turned around in the passenger seat and put her hand on my knee.

  ‘Not long now. You all right back there, Sarah?’ she shouted. She was smiling.

  And I felt bad.

  eighty-three

  Rather than have traditional hen and stag dos, Eamonn and Rachel decided to have a boys’ dinner and a girls’ dinner the night before the wedding. Rachel didn’t want a big exhausting evening where she was supposed to lick squirty cream off a stripper’s bottom. She wanted something simple, somewhere she could slip away easily to bed. Therefore the girls’ night was at the Georgian house where all the guests were housed and the wedding was to take place. The boys had a coach take them to a local fish restaurant.

  Erin and I spent the few hours before the hen dinner decorating the dining room for Rachel. We had made place mats with photocopied pictures of Rachel looking stunning. We’d blown up various embarrassing pictures of Rachel and Blu-tacked them onto the walls. I had some great ones of her from the convent. And I’d taken one of her arse-end-on in a downward dog. We’d put that one on the door with the words IT’S RACHEL’S HEN DINNER – BOTTOMS UP! beneath it. We arranged candles and pink balloons throughout the room.

  ‘We’ve done a good job,’ said Erin, standing by the door and surveying the scene. Her hair was in a ponytail and she was wearing dungarees. She definitely did look like one of the Waltons. ‘’Night, John Boy!’ I wanted to say, but didn’t. I was wearing the jeans that still hadn’t been in the wash and a jumper with a hole under the arm and a cardigan over the top. I had forgotten how cold England was. My hair was down and unbrushed. I was unshowered, because I’d got up late and there’d been a hundred things to do. If people saw me they were probably stopping themselves saying, ‘Here’s 70p, treat yourself to a cup of tea.’

  ‘I think that’s it! Oh! Bugger. I bought a book for us all to sign. It’s up in my room, Erin, give me a second, I’ll run up and get it.’ I walked past her and just had my hand on the big bronze door handle when I felt it move. I pulled the door back to see who was trying to get in.

  ‘Oh, uh, Sarah, sorry.’

  It was Ruth. She stood before me. She looked pretty but tired. But I wasn’t really looking at her face because suspended against her front was a small, ugly, hairy creature. It had wide red cheeks and lots of soft black hair sticking up. It was as if someone had created a mini Simon for a Lord of The Rings film. It was little Anna. She was unimaginably gorgeous.

  ‘This is Anna,’ said Ruth. But I couldn’t speak back. I couldn’t do anything but look at Anna. She was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. This was the closure I had been looking for. This was everything I needed to know. She was part of Simon. She was a little bundle of his genes and his energy and she was at the very start of her journey in the world.

  ‘I was trying to find a quiet spot to sit and feed her.’

  I really needed to do some speaking. But I was rendered mute by this crazy-haired thing.

  ‘Come in, we’re nearly finished. It’ll be quiet in here if you need to feed her,’ said Erin, walking towards us. She looked at Anna and cooed, ‘She’s adorable.’ But Anna was looking at me.

  ‘Yes, sorry, Ruth, come in,’ I eventually achieved.

  ‘Thanks.’

  She strode in, little Anna bobbing up and down on her front. ‘How are you, Sarah?’ she asked, putting her bag down on the floor and sitting herself on one of the dining-room chairs.

  ‘Fine. You?’

  ‘Not bad,’ she said, taking Anna out of the baby carrier and resting her on her lap. Anna was wearing a little baby-blue-and-white stripy Babygro. It looked part convict, part Baby Gap. ‘Oh, that’s my phone, could you . . .’ Ruth stopped there but she seemed to be offering Anna to me.

  ‘Um, should I take her?’ I asked, and I manoeuvred my arms around the soft bundle that was little Anna and took her weight. I held her away from me at first, but then I brought her to my chest. How can I describe her? She was beyond amazing. She was like a priceless miracle that I wanted to protect forever. I know it sounds trite and wanky but I felt like I’d just met this little person and I already loved her entirely. I would probably never see her again but I knew that if she needed anything at all during the next sixty years I would do it. Whatever it was. This was little Anna. Wow.

  I looked down at her. I thought I was imagining it at first. I thought it might be the acid flashback. But she smiled at me. She opened her mouth and showed me her gums and it wasn’t a grimace of pain or the start of a bawl. She smiled at me. I realize that it could have been a touch of wind as she was quite small to be smiling. But I like to think it was a smile. And I tried to smile back but no matter what I did that smile insisted on becoming a tear filled grimace. I pulled out a chair and sat down with her, cradling her in my arms. The only baby I hadn’t made cry, made me cry. I’d met my match here.

  ‘Sarah, are you all right with her?’

  ‘Hmmm,’ I mumbled. I didn’t want Ruth to see me cry. This one was between me and Anna.

  ‘Here, I’ll take her,’ Ruth said, walking towards me and taking Anna from my arms.

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ I said, and swallowed.

  ‘She takes after her dad.’

  I nodded and smiled and looked at my lap.

  ‘Least she didn’t get my big nose.’

  ‘You haven’t got a big nose,’ I lied.

  There was a pause. I felt calm. Slightly emotionally battered, but calmer about this whole situation than I ever had. Simon and Ruth had made this awesome smiley, hairy little thing in a Babygro. I couldn’t be jealous of this. I could walk away now. It was right that they were all together. Wow. It was going to be OK.

  ‘Um,’ started Ruth. ‘I’m sorry, Sarah, about . . .’

  I made one of those ‘don’t worry about it’ gestures that you do if you’ve just spent 20p on someone and they’re trying to give it to you. It struck us both as ridiculous so we both laughed.

  ‘It’s OK. I’m glad you’re all happy.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ruth, but she didn’t look happy as she said it.
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  ‘Right then, I’d better go and get sorted for this hen’s dinner . . .’

  ‘He’s not happy, Sarah.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Simon’s not happy.’

  ‘Oh, er, Ruth . . .’

  ‘I mean, he’s worried about business. That Viagra thing has hardly sold at all. But he’s not happy with me either. Don’t think he is. We want to all be together but it’s not a big love job.’

  I felt my hand clench. Not because I wanted to wallop her but because I didn’t want to hear why Simon wasn’t her perfect man. My breathing quickened slightly. I had to speak.

  ‘Ruth . . . I don’t think we should have this conversation, so I’m just going to say one thing and then I’ll bugger off.’

  She looked a bit taken aback, as though she thought I would wallop her. So I unclenched my fist. ‘Simon is one of the kindest, funniest, most special, most emotionally intelligent, positive, pretty bloody gorgeous people on the planet. Don’t lose him. I can say this because I did lose him. But I lost him to valid winners.’ I looked at Ruth and Anna. ‘Don’t lose him, Ruth, because you’ll regret it. There’s not a day gone by since Si and I split up when I haven’t looked in the mirror and said, “Sarah, you knobhead! What have you done?” But it’s good that you’re a family. Learn from my mistakes, Ruth. Make it work, because you won’t find a better bloke than Si.’

  Ruth’s mouth was slightly open as I left her. And she appeared ruffled for the short time she was at the hen dinner later on. I knew she wanted to talk to me and I am ashamed to say I avoided her all night. But a conversation along the lines of, ‘Sarah, I nicked your boyfriend but he’s not up to much,’ was not on my list of priorities for the evening. I didn’t want to get dragged down into a mire of Simon and Ruth trouble. So I didn’t. I sat next to Rachel. I met her family and Eamonn’s family and a host of attractive women who were married to film directors. And after dinner I organized an English-versus-Yanks game of charades in the drawing room while we had our coffee and liqueurs. When I went to bed that night in Rachel’s room, she turned to me before she put out the lamp and said, ‘Thank you, Sarah, that was perfect.’ And I knew she wouldn’t have said that had I spent part of the night crying in a corner with Ruth. So I vowed to adopt Simon and Ruth avoidance tactics the next day. Although I was hoping for another little cuddle with Anna. And that’s who I was thinking about when I passed out.

  eighty-four

  ‘SARAH!!!!’ It was Eamonn’s voice. He was banging loudly on the door. I unstuck one eye and focused it on the bedside clock. It was 7.14 a.m.

  ‘He can’t see me before the wedding,’ Rachel grunted.

  ‘Jesus, Eamonn,’ I whispered when I got to the door. ‘You can’t introduce me to the mad Irish side of your family one night and then shout at me the following morning. That’s abuse. I’ll be on to Equity about you.’

  ‘Have a look at this,’ he said, hurling something at me. It was a cheaply manufactured celebrity gossip mag.

  ‘The National Enquirer. Cool. Thanks,’ I said, staring at a photo of Angelina Jolie with a circle around some armpit sweat and wondering why Eamonn chose this morning to be a paperboy. Must be pre-wedding jitters.

  ‘Have a look at it.’

  I started flicking through it.

  ‘I really need a cup of tea,’ I moaned.

  ‘It’s on the next page.’

  ‘What?’ I said, raising my head from an article entitled ‘Plastic Surgery Shockers’ and looking at him. There was something in his expression telling me that I really didn’t want to see what was on the next page. ‘Wha, wha, what’s on the next page, Eamonn?’

  ‘Look at it.’

  ‘Nooooooo,’ I squeaked. But then I thought to myself, what can be on there? The only embarrassing thing I’ve done in ages is an unfortunate incident involving a toilet and a hedge but there’s no way there could be an article about that in the National Enquirer. So I turned the page.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yes. Oh.’

  The headline was

  I DIDN’T SHAG HIM SAYS ENGLISH STAR.

  I admit the use of the word ‘star’ was quite nice and would normally have me cha-cha-cha-ing towards a bottle of something fizzy. But in this case all I could do was groan. Because there was a photo of me below the headline. The main problems with the photo were:

  1 I had no make-up on. Actually, that’s a lie. I did have quite a lot of black eyeliner on, but it was from the night before, and it was halfway down my cheek

  2 I was staring down at my laptop on my lap. And it didn’t look as though I had the general neck-to-chin ratio. Instead it looked like I had an obese man’s belly where my neck should have been

  3 I was pulling the ‘difficult stool’ expression. I didn’t look the brightest. I looked like someone from a limited gene pool who had a reputation for forming relationships with chickens

  I read the article.

  English actress outraged by sexual slurs. Sarah Sargeant, 34,

  ‘Thirty-four!!!!?’

  discovers that Leo Clement has made salacious remarks about her in an English publication called Nads. This begs the question: Is Leo Clement the ladies’ man he purports to be and is Palmer Newsome giving publicists a bad name? Carol Bronchstein investigates.

  ‘Oh. Carol,’ I said sadly.

  ‘Is that who you spoke to?’

  ‘Yeah, but I thought she was nice.’

  ‘Oh, Sarah.’

  ‘Cow.’

  ‘Yes, well.’

  ‘I met her in the foyer because you were proposing to your bird,’ I said to him. ‘So, technically, it’s all your fault.’

  I stared sadly at the photo. The National Enquirer had been kind enough to offer an alternative image of me. Now, one would hope they’d have used an acting shot so the reader might think that this one was just unflattering. But no. They’d used a still from the YouTube Cockaconga viral ad.

  I read the article. It turns out that Carol was stalking Leo and Palmer the publicist. She claimed that Palmer wrote Leo’s column. The week he was supposedly having a three-some in his hot-tub in Malibu he was actually surfing in Lanzarote.

  ‘That was nice of them to include my quote, “Leo Clement is a star star star star head,”’ I muttered.

  ‘Eamonn, is that my phone? I better take it in case it’s wedding stuff. Hang on a sec.’ I ran back into the room quickly and snatched it from the bedside table. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Sarah, Sarah, Sarah.’

  ‘Is that my favourite agent? Blimey. Calling me on a Saturday at this time. Is this like star treatment?’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  ‘What’s up? You sound like you’re going to put your head in an oven.’

  ‘Next time you go moonlighting, please could you tell me?’

  ‘What are you on about? I haven’t been moonlighting.’

  ‘Sarah, I’ve had Crème de Menthe on my phone today screaming at me.’

  ‘Why? What have you done?’

  ‘I omitted to tell them that their beloved actress, face of the newly re-branded Crème de Menthe, is also the face of a herbal-based Viagra product. And Sarah, if you were the face of an exotic perfume or make of jewellery I don’t think Crème de Menthe would mind, but as it is, you’re the face of a product that cures erectile dysfunction! And Crème de Menthe doesn’t want to be associated with erectile dysfunction! So the commercial is, unsurprisingly, off.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said sadly. ‘But. But. It’s only a little Internet thing.’

  ‘Yes, but that little Internet thing has had over two million hits.’

  ‘What? Has it? Shit. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yes, so am I.’

  I hung up.

  ‘They don’t want me in the commercial now either,’ I said to Eamonn. He pulled a kind face and then gave me a hug.

  ‘You’ll be all right, Sarah Sargeant. Just a case of a little too much communication, I think,’ he said, releasing me. ‘See you later. Look after my brid
e.’

  I’d never work again because I call fellow actors ****heads. I’d lost a lucrative commercial. It was a lot to process. I couldn’t go back to sleep. I put on Rachel’s Ugg boots and a cardigan and went for a wander.

  I had been hoping to secure a cup of tea. But there were already guests in the breakfast room and I felt it wise to avoid people. So I snuck outside the front door and skipped along a path. The air was fresh and crisp and nothing like Camden or LA. I followed the wooded path until I came to a bench where the trees cleared in front so you could see the sea. It was beautiful.

  I would have sung ‘Devon, I’m in Devon’ but I was somewhat distracted. I was about to see Leo at the wedding and I had called him a cockhead in a gossip magazine. I would have to put him on my list of people to avoid. If it kept getting longer I’d probably be advised to eat in my room. And I had gone and lost my lucrative commercial for a lifeforming liquor. That wasn’t just rubbish. It was four-week-old rubbish during a bin-man strike. But although it was stinking and putrid, it gave me an idea. I quickly took my phone from my pocket and dialled the number of the hotel I had been staying at in LA.

  ‘Hello, could you put me through to the beach restaurant? Thank you. Hello, there’s a pretty waitress who works there. She’s got dark hair and she went on a fast with vinegar . . . oh, yes . . . that’s the one . . . I don’t suppose she’s there, or I could have her number? Brilliant, could I speak to her? Hello, this is Sarah Sargeant, you lent me your The Secret book . . . Oh no, he’s still with her. But listen, I’m not doing that commercial any more. So you should get in contact with the director. Why not? Well, you’ve nothing to lose. Cool.’ We swapped numbers and I was just forwarding her the information she needed when I heard something. It was the crunch of gravel and a familiar voice coming towards me. I needed to hide. I darted from the path and scampered up the wooded hill. I leant behind a tree, quietly catching my breath, and listened.