by Pippa Wright
I hesitantly pull open the zip, leaning backwards in case anything flies out. I’m not sure what I’m expecting to emerge – Randy himself, one denim-clad leg at a time?
The first thing I discover is a packet of HobNob biscuits, followed by a packet of ginger snaps and then some Breakaway bars. There’s no accompanying note, but it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to detect the hand of Nina the Cleaner saying goodbye in her own special language (and I don’t mean Bulgarian). Then, as I peel back layer after layer of tissue paper, I find, individually wrapped, each item of underwear bought for me by Randy over the course of our so-called relationship. I pull out slippery silk knickers, balconette bras, embroidered camisoles and seamed stockings until the floor around me is littered with them. Underneath these, at the very bottom of the bag, lies a flat, square, navy blue box and a card. I know it’s bad manners to open the box before the card, but seriously, who’s watching? Inside the box, pinned on to the red velvet backing, are the earrings and bangles I wore to Dan and Lulu’s party. The jewellery that was supposed to show how united Randy and I were as a golden couple. I close the lid of the box. The last item in the bag is The Observer’s Book of Grasses, Sedges and Rushes.
Before I open the card, I look in every silk-lined pocket of the holdall to make sure there’s nothing else there, but it’s empty now. The card is addressed to me in handwriting I don’t recognize. Maybe it’s not from Randy after all? Though now I come to think of it, I never received anything from Randy in his own handwriting. Not even a scrawled note in the kitchen, let alone cards or letters. So it’s not like the sight of his handwriting would make my heart leap.
The envelope isn’t sealed, it’s just tucked in at the back, and I push it open with my thumb. Inside is a postcard with a rather incongruous black and white photograph of a couple kissing. Nice, Randy, I think – why not pour salt into the wound. But then I remember the granny-pants and suspect that he probably didn’t pick this one out personally in Paperchase. In fact it’s perfectly possible this card isn’t even from him.
But it is.
Babe. Thanks for everything. You’re a great girl. The best fake girlfriend I could have had. I was a crap fake boyfriend but imagine how much worse if I’d been the real thing. Call it a narrow escape. I’ll miss you.
I think these are yours.
Randy
I laugh despite myself. It’s more than I expected, and yet it’s exactly what I expected. Unreliable, unrepentant, entirely Randy. I never expected an apology from him, but, weirdly, this is enough. It’s not the expensive underwear or the lovely jewellery – to be honest, I don’t know if I’ll wear any of it again. It’s that Randy’s card is an acknowledgement of – what? Friendship, I suppose. It’s personal, and, in his way, thoughtful. For once I don’t see the hand of Camilla behind it, nor Bryan Ross’s gruffness. It’s all Randy, and it’s all okay.
Later that night, I realize it’s also a stroke of genius. Unlike a text or an email, a card limits you to only a certain number of words – no long and rambling self-justification or over-done extrapolation, just a brief window in which to convey your message. Even better, a card doesn’t invite an immediate reply. The recipient actually has to stop and think before they answer. It makes them all the more likely to respond rationally. To keep their temper.
I realize it’s just what I need to send to Dan.
31
Catching up with Lulu has proved to be ridiculously complicated. Although she swears she’s forgiven me for not telling her the truth about Randy, and that she’s not avoiding me, it’s not until Sunday that we finally get together. And only then because I manage to pin her down to a snatched sandwich in the café next door to her salon, between appointments.
She bursts through the door, ten minutes late, in a cloud of tiny hair clippings that disperse, almost unseen, into the chopped salads of our neighbours.
‘Harrison!’ she exclaims in horror. ‘A ponytail? What has Randy Jones done to you?’
Ponytails, Lulu has told me on many occasions, are for bathtime and face-cleansing purposes only. No self-respecting person would leave the house in one unless they had given up on attractiveness, fashion and, indeed, life itself.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Lu,’ I say, laughing. ‘It’s pouring outside, it’s a Sunday, I just couldn’t be bothered doing my hair. My hairstyle is not a portent of doom, okay?’
‘Ah, but this is how it starts,’ Lulu says, wagging a warning finger at me. ‘First you give up on doing your hair, next thing you know you’ve adopted six cats, haven’t washed for a month and no one will sit next to you on a bus. You’re worth more than this, Harrison. Come into the salon afterwards – I’m getting one of the juniors to sort you out with a blow-dry.’
‘You don’t need to do that, Lulu,’ I say. ‘It’s fine. I’m fine. Honestly.’
‘It isn’t fine,’ says Lulu firmly. ‘I insist. Bloody Randy Jones. I hope his dick falls off.’
‘Yeah, well, maybe it will,’ I say, unable to muster up much enthusiasm for slagging him off.
‘Come on,’ says Lulu, ‘get on with blackening his name – isn’t that what we’re here for? I’ve been practising my “all men are bastards” face all morning.’
‘Not really,’ I say, shrugging my shoulders. ‘I’ve talked about Randy Jones enough, Lu. I’m over it.’
‘Already?’ she asks, frowning. ‘It’s only been a week.’
I can’t blame her for not believing me, seeing as I’ve lied to her about pretty much everything concerning my emotional life for the last few months.
‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ I say. ‘Given your break-up equation and everything. It’s been a week – I’d call that excellent progress.’
‘Darling, you always did take the break-up equation too seriously,’ says Lulu, rolling her eyes. ‘A week is no time at all to get over being dumped by a celebrity and splashed all over the front pages of every red-top newspaper in the country. By my calculations, you should still be sobbing in a gutter.’
‘I thought you were meant to be cheering me up!’ I laugh. ‘Look, I know it seems crazy, but I feel better now than I have done for weeks. No lies, no faking, no weirdness.’
‘No job,’ Lulu reminds me.
‘But that feels fine, too,’ I say calmly. ‘Something will work out.’
Lulu looks at me sceptically.
‘I can’t explain it. I just feel like I spent all this time thinking I was in control and I never really was. So now it’s all fallen apart it doesn’t feel any less scary than it was when I was trying to keep it all together. Does that make sense?’
‘Not really,’ says Lulu, wrinkling up her nose as if she can smell something unpleasant. ‘Frankly, it sounds like you’ve been spending too much time with your mother, Harrison. Don’t go getting all weird and woo-woo on me.’
‘Give me a break, I’m not going the way of the Cornish pasty shoe, I swear. I just mean that I really do feel fine. Truly.’
‘Hmm, if you say so,’ says Lulu, scrutinizing my face with suspicion. ‘The ponytail still worries me, Harrison. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt this time. But one more dodgy hair day and there’ll be trouble, okay?’
‘Okay. Now, let’s drop it – it feels like we’ve done nothing but talk about me and Randy fricking Jones for ever. How are you? How’s Laurent?’
‘Oh, darling, he’s tiring me out,’ says Lulu, leaning back in her chair and raising the back of her hand to her forehead like a silent movie star.
‘All that shagging?’ I laugh.
‘It’s not the shagging, darling, though God knows there’s plenty of that going on. I’d just forgotten how much maintenance there is in a relationship.’
‘Maintenance?’ I say. ‘What, like shaving your legs every day?’
‘Harrison, could you get your mind out of the bedroom for a moment? I don’t mean that, although it has to be said that there hasn’t been a single hair anywhere but my head for two months. No, I me
an the phone calls, the having to tell someone where you’re going to be, the planning. It’s exhausting.’
She sips her Diet Coke. ‘Exhausting, but actually quite great.’
‘You’re making plans with Laurent?’ I ask, unable to believe my ears.
Planning? Lulu? I’ve lost count of the times I’ve heard her well-worn rant about the dangers of advance planning with a man. Apparently, committing to a dinner date more than a week in advance is the first step on a slippery slope that ends with the two of you arguing over melamine drawer-fronts in Ikea with a squalling baby strapped to your leaking bosoms. And, as far as Lulu is concerned, there can be no worse fate. Her rant usually concludes in a horrified shudder at the very idea.
‘So, wait a minute,’ I say. Even though Lulu is my very best friend, I do not dare to put into words what I really want to ask her. ‘Are you saying you’re Going To Ikea with Laurent?’
She isn’t fooled. ‘I’m saying, Harrison, that I am willing to consider looking at the Ikea catalogue with him.’
‘That’s quite a development,’ I say, noticing that the two women to our left are eavesdropping with evident bafflement.
‘I’m not ready to visit the Croydon superstore,’ says Lulu. ‘And nor is Laurent. Let’s be clear about that.’
‘No, no, of course not,’ I say. ‘But the catalogue is . . . promising.’
‘Yes, it is,’ says Lulu, twirling the straw around in her drink. ‘It definitely is promising.’
‘And . . . how’s Dan?’ I ask, as casually as I can manage. Which is clearly not very casually at all, as Lulu gives me a peculiarly shrewd look.
‘Dan . . .’ she says slowly. ‘Dan is . . . weird.’
‘Weird how?’
‘Well, he’s started seeing that girl Emma again. You remember the one from the party?’
‘Oh. Right. Right, great,’ I say, feeling a bit sick at the memory of that night. It must have been Emma’s voice I heard when I called round on Monday.
‘Yeah, it’s odd. She’s not his type at all, and he seems constantly irritated by her. It’s hardly love’s young dream.’
‘No?’ I ask, pleased despite myself. Ever since Randy and Dan nearly fought over her golden form, I have had a particular dislike of the ravishing Emma.
‘I don’t really know why he’s with her. To be perfectly honest – ’ Lulu stops twirling her straw and looks up at me – ‘until quite recently I thought Dan was in love with you.’
She says it so matter-of-factly that for a moment I think I must have misheard.
‘You thought he, er – I beg your pardon?’
‘I know. Ridiculous, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘But for a while there, I really did think so. He had total mentionitis – kept bringing up your name at the slightest excuse. He hated Randy with a completely irrational passion. He barely looked at another woman for a year, and then he kept acting all funny around you, picking arguments all the time. Didn’t you notice?’
‘Oh, ha! God, Lu, me and Dan?’ I say, avoiding her eyes.
But I have noticed. I have. It’s something I haven’t wanted to admit to myself – after all, this is Dan, it’s too strange – but I’ve been aware of it for weeks now. Like something that I’ve glimpsed, often, out of the corner of my eye but never looked at directly.
‘Well, obviously I was wrong,’ says Lulu dismissively as her BlackBerry buzzes on the table beside her. ‘He changes the subject every time I mention you these days. Hang on.’
She picks up the phone. ‘Burning? Burning how? Well rinse it off! Quickly! Offer her some free products immediately, and a glass of wine – two glasses of wine. If she’s pissed she might forget about suing us. I’ll be there in two minutes.’
Lulu grimaces as she takes the phone away from her ear. ‘Sorry, Harrison, I’m going to have to go – slight disaster with a Brazilian keratin treatment.’
She kisses me on the cheek and races out of the café, leaving me alone with a half-eaten mozzarella and tomato sandwich, two Diet Cokes and some unsettling thoughts.
Of course I’ve noticed Dan’s been weird with me. Maybe I was first aware of it that night at the comedy club. It was as if I’d never seen before how he always looked out for me; how tall he was; that I had to look up to see him properly; that he tilted his head to hear what I was saying, his dark curls falling across his eyes. The way his long, strong fingers wrapped themselves around his pint glass. But I tried not to notice, while I was playing at relationships with Randy, that the person who was acting the romantic hero – leaping to my defence, coming to my rescue, looking out for me – was Dan.
Lulu is right, not just about Dan having feelings for me, but in her long-ago assertion that I haven’t allowed for the possibility that things might change. That my friend’s brother might become something more to me. It has felt safer to keep Dan in the pigeonhole I’ve always had for him – safe, brotherly, non-threatening – even when it’s been clear he’s been trying to force his way out of it. Safer to lose myself in a pretend relationship than to take a risk on something big and real and scary.
But while I was flaunting my fake relationship in the pages of Hot Slebs magazine, Dan moved on. And now I’ve lost him. Not only what might have been, but the friend he has been up until now. I never appreciated how much a part of my life he is – his steady presence a constant in the background. I’m not saying I’ve realized I’m desperately in love with him or anything – don’t be ridiculous; this is Dan we’re talking about. But I never knew until now that he’s someone I want to have in my life in his own right, as my friend Dan Miller, not just as Lulu’s brother.
I still haven’t sent him a card. Although I have an unwavering belief in the power of good stationery, I know it’s going to take more than a card to win Dan back as my friend. But it’s a start. I’m sending one today.
When I step inside the tiny stationery shop off the Fulham Road, I sigh happily. I’ve always loved stationery in all its forms, from sensible brown envelopes in recycled paper to letterpress cards from tiny San Francisco collectives to notebooks for the writing of deep thoughts or, even better, shallow ones. But I pass the notebooks today. I pass the birthday cards, the cards of congratulation, the thank-yous and the invitations. There, next to the tasteful expressions of bereavement and loss, is a subsection devoted to apology.
‘Sorry’ says a mournful puppy looking upwards with appealing eyes from a tiled floor strewn with half-eaten spaghetti Bolognese. ‘Forgive me’ begs a pen-and-ink octopus clasping its tentacles pleadingly, though what seafood-related incident that card might be relevant for I cannot imagine. There’s a preponderance of animals on these cards, as if it’s easier to get a mute creature to make the apology on your behalf than to say it yourself.
Surprisingly enough, there isn’t a rugby-themed card of apology. Nor one that features an apology for misleading one’s friend over the nature of one’s fake relationship with a famous comedian and legendary shagger. Sending one of the fluffy bunnies or puppies to plead for lenience would surely necessitate the sending of another card apologizing for being so wet. In the end I decide on a plain card with a typewritten Sorry in black on a white background. Simple, to the point, no beating around the bush.
As is the message I write in it when I get home.
Dan,
I’m so sorry for not telling you the truth about me and Randy Jones. I’m afraid that, at the time, I’d totally lost sight of what was real and what was fake. That’s no excuse for lying to you, especially when you had gone to such trouble to warn me about Randy. I hope you can forgive me, and that we can still be friends. I miss you.
Lizzy
I post it that afternoon.
Two weeks pass. I don’t get a reply.
32
I’m sitting in the French bar on Dean Street, fending off all attempts from after-work drinkers to encroach on the space I’m saving for Lulu. I’ve hung my coat over the back of the empty chair and left a copy of the Evening Standard o
n the seat, but that doesn’t prevent hopeful table vultures from approaching every five minutes to ask, ‘I don’t suppose this chair . . . ?’ I shake my head politely – ‘Sorry’ – and pour red wine into the empty glass to bolster the illusion that someone is actually sitting here with me. Any minute now I’ll start conducting a conversation with my imaginary friend – that should put people off.
Although the Spinsters’ Social Club has officially disbanded since Lulu has become fully loved-up with Laurent – I admit I’m still a spinster, but there’s nothing social about being one by yourself – we’ve reinstated our Wednesday night drinks as of this evening.
It’s the first time I’ve been back to this place since the fateful evening Lulu told me I needed to lose control. I think we can safely say I fulfilled her remit beyond either of our hopes. I might be the sole remaining member of the Spinsters’ Social Club, but at least I’m no longer the accidental celibate of three months ago. So Randy turned out to be a bit of an idiot – I survived it. I’m not saying that if Randy walked in here right now I’d be thrilled, but when I saw in the latest issue of Hot Slebs that he has added Paris Hilton to his list of conquests, it made me smile rather than cry myself to sleep. And this whole experience is proof to myself that the end of a relationship doesn’t mean I’m destined to become a hideous sobbing wreck like I was after Joe left me. I can walk away from my relationship with Randy, despite its fakeness, despite its attendant humiliations, and still be fine. And still be me.
