by Marian Keyes
“Hurry up,” she said, “and we’ll walk to the tube together. I need to talk to you.”
“About what?” I asked warily, wondering if it might be about the pros and cons of the morning-after pill.
“You see,” she said, looking miserable, “I slept with Simon yesterday and do you think I’m awful to sleep with two people in the one weekend?”
“Nooooo…” I said soothingly.
“I am, I know I am, but I didn’t mean to, Lucy,” she said anxiously. “Well I meant to when I did it, but I didn’t ever decide to sleep with two people. How was I to know on Friday night that I’d meet Simon on Saturday night?”
“Exactly,” I fervently agreed.
“It’s awful, Lucy, I keep breaking my own rules,” said poor Charlotte, intent on chastising herself. “I always said that I’d never, ever sleep with someone on the first night—not that I did sleep with Simon on the first night, because I waited until the following afternoon—and it was evening really. After six.”
“That’s fine then,” I said.
“And it was great,” she added.
“Good,” I said encouragingly.
“But what about the other guy, the Friday night one—god, I can’t even remember his name—isn’t that awful, Lucy? Imagine! I let someone see my butt and I can’t even remember his name. Derek, I think it was Derek,”
she said, her face screwed up in concentration. “You saw him—did he look like a Derek to you?”
“Charlotte, please, stop being so hard on yourself. If you can’t remember his name, you can’t remember it. And does it really matter?”
“No, of course it doesn’t really,” she said, agitatedly. “Of course it doesn’t. Or it might have been Jeff. Or Alex. Oh god! Come on, are you getting up?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want me to iron something for you?”
“Yes, please.”
“What?”
“Anything.”
Charlotte left to get the iron and I dragged myself up to sit on the edge of my bed. Charlotte called to me from the kitchen, something about having read somewhere about an operation you can have in Japan where you can get your hymen sewn back up and thereby have your virginity restored. Did I think she should have it done?
Poor Charlotte. Poor all of us.
It was very nice and we were very grateful to get the beautifully wrapped (albeit reluctantly given) gift of sexual liberation, but who was the out-oftouch, aged great-aunt that gave us the hand-crocheted coordinating packages of guilt?
She wouldn’t be getting a thank-you card.
It was like being given a present of a beautiful, short, tight, sexy, shiny, red dress on the condition that you wear flat brown loafers and no makeup with it. Giving with one hand and taking away with the other.
Work wasn’t too awful. I certainly felt a lot better than when I had left on Friday.
Megan and Meredia were very contrite and sweet. They
weren’t speaking to each other, but that was nothing unusual. Except from time to time when Megan said casually to Meredia, “Would you like a cookie, Eleanor?” or “Pass me the stapler, Fiona,” and Meredia would hiss in reply, “My name is Meredia.”
They were very nice to me. True, I was still getting the occasional amused look from some of the other employees, but I no longer felt so raw and vulnerable and embarrassed. I could see things differently—I realized that everyone must think that Megan and Meredia were the dumb ones, not me. After all they had started the stupid story.
And, of course, there had been one major change in my life since Friday. I had met Gus. Every time I thought of him I felt as though I’d been wrapped in a protective armor, that no one could now think of me as a sad pathetic loser because, well…I wasn’t, was I?
It was kind of ironic that on Friday everyone had thought that I was getting married, when I didn’t even have a boyfriend and now, on Monday, when I had met someone very special, no one would dare to bring up the subject of marriage in my presence.
I was bursting to tell Meredia and Megan about Gus, but it was too soon to forgive them, so I had to keep my mouth shut until the correct annoyance period had been observed.
Another reason that I no longer felt the centre of attention at work was because I really wasn’t—I was yesterday’s news.
The story had broken about Hetty and the big crush that Poison Ivor had on her. Apparently he had gone out on Friday night and gotten plastered and told the entire company, from the managing director to the mailroom and everyone in between, that he was in love with Hetty and that he was distraught that she had left her husband, al
though strictly speaking he wasn’t distraught that she had left her husband, he was only distraught that she hadn’t left her husband for him.
As for Hetty, there was no word from her.
“Is Hetty coming in today, or is she still unwell?” I asked Ivor, all innocence. That was the pretense that we seemed to have decided to observe.
“I don’t know,” he said, his eyes watering. “But seeing as you’re so concerned, you can take over her work until she gets back,” he hissed at me.
The bastard!
“Certainly, Mr. Simmonds.”
In your dreams, pal.
“What’s happening with Hetty?” I asked Meredia and Megan when Ivor had gone into his own office and shut the door, doubtless to put his head down on his desk and sob like a child. “Have either of you heard from her?”
“Yes, yes, I have,” said Meredia, eager for a chance to rebond with me. “I stopped by her house yesterday…”
“You vulture!” I exclaimed.
“Look, do you want to hear or don’t you?” she asked sourly.
I wanted to hear.
“…and she doesn’t seem at all happy.”
“At all happy,” repeated Meredia, heavily and gloomily, thrilled with the drama of it all.
The phone rang, interrupting her. She grabbed it and listened impatiently for a few moments, then she barked, “Yes, I see, but unfortunately our systems are down at present and I’m unable to check your account. Let me take down your number and I’ll call you back. Um,” she nodded, writing nothing down. “Yes, got that. I’ll call you back as soon as I can.” She slammed down the phone. “Christ! Bloody customers!”
“Are our systems down?” I asked.
“How should I know?” said Meredia, sounding surprised. “I haven’t turned anything on yet. I wouldn’t have thought so, though. Now, where was I? Oh yes, Hetty…”
We did that kind of thing a lot in the office. Sometimes we said our systems were down, sometimes we answered the phone and said that we were only the cleaner, sometimes we pretended that the line was very bad and that we couldn’t hear the customers, sometimes we hung up and pretended that we’d been cut off, sometimes we pretended that we couldn’t speak English very well (“I am not spigging Engrish”). Customers got very annoyed with us and often demanded to speak to our managers and when that happened we put them on hold for a few minutes and then we came back on the line, all unctuous and soothing, reassuring the furious customer that the offending employee was in the process of cleaning out her desk.
Meredia told me at length how miserable Hetty was, how thin and gaunt she looked.
“But she always looks thin and gaunt,” I protested.
“No,” she said, annoyed. “You can tell that she’s suffering a great deal, that she’s involved in a very traumatic…traumatic…er, trauma.”
“I can’t really see what she’s miserable about,” commented Megan. “She’s got two men, instead of just one. Two heads—and not just heads—are better than one, I always say.”
“Oh, God, honestly!” spluttered Meredia in disgust. “How like you to reduce everything to…to…base animal lusts.”
“There’s a lot to be said for it, Gretel,” said Megan vaguely, a secret little smile playing about her luscious, ripe mouth.
She murmured something else before gliding f
rom the room. I think it might have been “threesome.”
“My name is Meredia,” Meredia roared after her.
“Stupid bitch,” she muttered. “Now, where was I. Oh yes.”
She cleared her throat.
“She’s torn between two lovers.” Meredia was passionate. “On the one hand there’s Dick, dependable, reliable Dick, the father of her children. And on the other hand there’s Roger, exciting, unpredictable, passionate…”
On and on she went until eventually it was lunchtime. Which of course was the time when I stopped work and left the office and went shopping for an hour.
The fact that I hadn’t actually started work yet wasn’t of any real importance.
I went out to get Daniel a card and a birthday present, which was always a bit of an ordeal. I never knew what to get him. What do you buy for the man who has everything? I wondered. I could get him a book, I thought—but he already had one.
I must remember to tell him that, he’d enjoy it.
I always ended up getting him something awful and unimaginative like socks or a tie or hankies. And it was made worse by the fact that he always got me something lovely and thoughtful. For my last birthday he gave me a gift certificate for a day at a spa, which was total and absolute bliss. A guilt-free day, lying around by a pool, being massaged and pampered.
Anyhow, I got him a tie. I hadn’t got him one of those for a couple of years, so I thought I might get away with it.
But I got him a nice card, a nice, funny, affectionate card and signed it “love, Lucy” and hoped that Karen wouldn’t see it and accuse me of trying to steal her man.
The wrapping paper cost nearly as much as the tie. It must have been made out of spun gold.
I did the wrapping of the tie in the office but I had to go back out to the post office to mail the package. I could have put it through the office mail but I would have liked Daniel’s present to reach him sometime this century and the two Neanderthals that worked in the mailroom couldn’t necessarily guarantee that. It’s not that they weren’t nice—they were very nice, in fact, their congratulations on my bogus marriage had been sincere and effusive—but they didn’t seem too bright, somehow. Ready, willing, but not overly able, would be the best way to describe them.
Eventually five o’clock rolled around and, like a bullet departing the barrel of a gun, I left for home.
Chapter 31
I loved Monday evenings. I was still at that stage in my life when I thought that weekdays were for recovering from the weekend. I couldn’t understand the rest of the world who seemed to be under the impression that it was the other way around.
Monday night was usually the only night in the week when Karen, Charlotte and I were all at home in the apartment, worn out from the rigours of the preceding weekend.
On Tuesday night Charlotte had her flamenco dancing class. (Or her flamingo dancing, as she thought it was. No one had the heart to correct her.) A couple of us were often to be found missing in action on Wednesday night.
And very often on Thursday night all of us would be out, in a warm-up session for the full-blown socializing that the weekend entailed, when we’d all be out, all the time. (My depression permitting, of course.)
Monday night was the night when we went to the supermarket and bought enough apples and grapes and low-fat yogurt to last us the week. It was the night that we ate steamed vegetables and said that we really must cut out the pizzas, that we would never drink again, at least not until the following Saturday night.
(By Tuesday we were back on the pasta and wine, by Wednesday the ice cream and chocolate cookies and a couple of pints at the local pub, by Thursday the drinking session after work and the Chinese takeout and there was never any restraint to speak of between Friday and Sunday. Until Monday rolled around and we bought apples and grapes and lowfat yogurt again.)
Charlotte was already in when I got home, unpacking groceries and throwing out vast tracts, acres, of very-past-their-use-by-date, uneaten, low fat yogurts that were dancing jigs with each other in the fridge.
I put my bag down next to her bag, so that they could chat with each other.
“Show me, show me, what did you get? Anything good?” asked Charlotte.
“Apples…”
“Oh. Me too.”
“…and grapes…”
“Me too.”
“…and low-fat yogurts…”
“Me too.”
“So, no, sorry, nothing good.”
“Oh dear, but it’s just as well because I’m going to eat sensibly from now on.”
“Me too.”
“And the less temptation the better.”
“Exactly.”
“Karen’s gone up to the corner shop. Let’s hope she doesn’t buy anything good there.”
“Mr. Papadopoulos’s?”
“Yes.”
“She won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because there isn’t anything good there to buy.”
“I suppose you’re right,” said Charlotte. “Everything there looks a bit…well, dusty, doesn’t it? Even things like the chocolate looks like it’s been there since before the war.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “We’re very lucky, really. Can you imagine what we’d look like if we lived near a nice store, that sold delicious things.”
“Huge,” agreed Charlotte. “We’d be enormous.”
“In fact, if you think about it,” I said, “it’s really one of the amenities of the place. It should’ve been in the ad—‘three-bedroom apartment, fully furnished, zone two, close to tubes and buses, miles from a shop that sells chocolate.’”
“Absolutely!” said Charlotte.
“Oh, here’s Karen now.”
Karen marched in with a face like thunder and banged her shopping down on the kitchen table. She was clearly annoyed.
“What’s up, Karen?” I asked.
“Look, who the hell put some pesetas in the change jar? I’m so embarrassed. Mr. Papadopoulos thinks I tried to cheat him and you know what everyone says about Scottish people and money!”
“What do they say?” asked Charlotte. “Oh yes, that you’re really cheap.”
She stopped when she saw the expression on Karen’s face.
“Who put them there?” Karen demanded. As previously noted, she could be very scary.
I toyed with the idea of lying and blaming, say, the guy whom Charlotte had brought home Friday night. He called on Sunday evening to speak to Charlotte, only to be told that there was no one of that name living here.
I thought about denying all knowledge.
“Er…”
And then thought better of it.
Karen would find out eventually. Karen would break me down. My guilty conscience would eat away at me until I confessed.
“Sorry, Karen, it was probably my fault…I didn’t put them into the change jar as such, but it’s my fault that they’re in the house at all.”
“But you haven’t even been to Spain.”
“I know, but Gus gave them to me and I didn’t want to take them and I must have left them on the table and someone else must have put them in thinking that they were real money…”
“Oh well, if it was Gus, that’s okay.”
“Really?” chorused Charlotte and I, in surprise. Karen was rarely so compassionate and merciful.
“Yes, he’s a sweetie. So cute. Crazy as a loon, of course, but in such a cute way…Elizabeth Ardent…” she chuckled to herself. “He makes me laugh.”
Charlotte and I exchanged alarmed looks.
“But, don’t you want to smack him?” I asked anxiously. “And make him go to Mr. Papadopoulos and explain that you’re not a dishonest Scottish skinflint and…”
“No, no, no,” she said, waving her hand dismissively.
I was touched by the change in Karen; she seemed so much less aggressive, so much nicer.
“No,” she continued. “You’ll do. You can go. You can go up to Mr. Papadopo
ulos and apologize.”
“Er…”
“But you needn’t go right now. Wait until you’ve had your dinner, but don’t forget he closes at eight.”
I stared at her, unable to figure out if she was serious or not. I had to be sure because I didn’t want to go to all the trouble of feeling nervous, just to find out that I didn’t need to.
“You are joking, aren’t you?” I asked hopefully.
There was a tense little pause and then she said, “Okay, I’m joking. I’d better be nice to you now, what with you being Daniel’s friend and all.”
She gave me a charming, disarming, I’m-so-brazen-but-you-can’t-help-liking-me-for-it grin, and I grinned back weakly.
I was all for bluntness. Well, actually that’s a complete lie, I thought it was one of the most overrated things I had ever heard of. But Karen behaved as if being blunt was a great virtue, the kindest act she could do for you. Whereas I felt there were some things that didn’t need to be said or shouldn’t be said. And that sometimes people used “I’m just being honest” as an opportunity to be malicious. That they opened the nastiness floodgates, were viciously cruel, completely trashed a life and then absolved themselves with an innocent face and a plaintive, “But I was only being honest.”
But I had no right to complain about these people—Karen may have been too fond of confrontation, but I was phobically frightened of it.
“Just make sure you keep telling him what a fabulous person I am,” she said. “And tell him that millions of guys are in love with me.”
“Er, okay,” I agreed.
“I’m steaming some broccoli,” said Charlotte, turning the conversation to matters domestic. “Would either of you like some?”
“Well, I’m steaming some carrots,” I said, “so would either of you like some of them?”
We hammered out a tripartite agreement concerning the equable sharing out of our steamed vegetable assets.
“Oh, Lucy,” said Karen casually. Too casually. I braced myself. “Daniel called.”
“Oh, er, good…did he?”
Was that noncommittal enough for her?
“For me,” she said triumphantly. “He called to talk to me.”
