It's Not You It's Him: An absolutely hilarious and feel-good romantic comedy

by Sophie Ranald

  He stood up, tucking his tablet under his arm, and headed for the door.

  Then he turned and delivered one parting shot: ‘You might want to spend more time focusing on your sales figures. They’ve been disappointing, to say the least.’

  I stood too, fighting back tears of anger and disappointment. But Lisa touched my arm.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t be.’ Her kindness brought my tears closer to the surface. ‘You’re right. And Barri’s right. Chelsea’s stuff isn’t right for us.’

  ‘If she’s as talented as you think,’ Lisa went on, ‘she’ll find a way to succeed in the industry. Well, if she’s talented and determined and lucky. And there’s another thing you could do for her, you know.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Tell her about the mentoring scheme. You’ve volunteered, right? Daria’s interviewing candidates over the next couple of weeks. There’s still time for her to take part.’

  ‘But won’t Barri—’

  ‘Barri won’t know,’ Lisa said. ‘He’s not going to be involved in it, day-to-day. He hasn’t got time and anyway, to be perfectly honest…’

  ‘He’s not that interested?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that. But…’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll talk to her. Thanks.’

  I walked slowly back to my desk, feeling utterly deflated and somehow ashamed, as if I’d made a fool of myself. So far, I’d managed to stay pretty much beneath Barri’s radar: I’d done my job as well as I could, even if I hadn’t been an outstanding performer. My sales figures weren’t what they should be – but nor were anyone else’s. All my colleagues were discounting lines, scrabbling to make their targets, blaming Brexit and weak consumer confidence for the slow-down in sales.

  But now I felt as if I had a different target to worry about: one painted right on my head. If Barri had taken against me, my days at Luxeforless would be numbered.

  If my financial situation that morning had felt critical but stable, now it was in need of intensive care.

  I read Debbie’s email again, skimming past the chatty parts this time and focusing on the bit that made me feel all cold and knotted up inside: the bit about Josh.

  He has money saved up, so he’ll be able to pay his way.

  The extra rent Josh would pay, once Charlotte stopped paying for the room to be kept empty for her in case her travel plans went wrong, would ensure I didn’t get deeper into a financial hole.

  Presumably musicians – or even music producers, although I wasn’t entirely sure what one of those actually did – worked antisocial hours, which at least meant that if Josh moved into Charlotte’s room for a few weeks, I wouldn’t have to see too much of him.

  Even if I didn’t want to help Josh, I did owe a huge debt of gratitude to his mother, and – unlike my other debts – this was one I could quite easily pay. And besides, Josh, like Chelsea, was only trying to make his way in a competitive, uncertain world. And tempting as it was to make it even harder for him, I didn’t want to upset Debbie or bring bad karma on myself.

  My work emails still unread, I opened the WhatsApp group that had just me, Charlotte and Adam as members, and sent a quick message telling them what Debbie had asked. If either of them said no, it would be game over and out of my hands.

  Can we sublet Charlotte’s room to the son of my old boss, who’s coming out from Australia? He’s annoying, but not actually a drug dealer or anything. He’ll pay his share of rent and bills and move out ASAP. He’s arriving in a couple of weeks and might stay a month or two max. If you guys say it’s a problem, I’ll tell Debbie no. WDYT?

  Then I determinedly put my phone aside and cracked on with work. I didn’t check WhatsApp again until lunchtime, and there was a response from Charlotte.

  Of course, babe, whatever you want. So long as I can tell him to sling his hook if I dump Xander and come home – or move into his room and revenge-shag him, haha! Thailand is incredible, sunshine 24/7. Well not at night obvs. X incredible too. Love you, C x

  Adam didn’t respond on WhatsApp, but he’d sent me a text.

  Fine about the room, so long as he likes cats. Reservation made by the target for two tonight at Nobu, 8.30pm. Didn’t want to say but I promised full disclosure. Sorry to be bearer of bad news – or is it for you??

  It wasn’t, of course. But I noticed Felicity return from her lunch break with a bulging Selfridges bag, and when I went for a final wee before I left the office well after seven that evening, she was doing her face in front of the mirror, wearing a black Roland Mouret dress that she certainly hadn’t had on when she’d drifted into the office that morning.

  The colour on her face when she saw me wasn’t just down to her Nars blusher, but she styled it out.

  ‘Short-notice date!’ she said. ‘You know how it is! If only I’d worn my lucky pants, ha ha!’

  ‘Ha ha,’ I echoed hollowly, and headed for home.

  Year Ten

  One day at school, I overheard Kylie and Anoushka talking in the toilets.

  ‘So is she actually your brother’s girlfriend?’ Anoushka asked, and I froze, silent behind the cubicle door, wondering whether they were talking about me or someone else. I didn’t know which would be worse.

  ‘Girlfriend?’ Kylie sneered. ‘Of course not. Connor wouldn’t go out with that.’

  ‘But they go off together practically every afternoon,’ Anoushka said. ‘Here, give me some of that lip gloss.’

  ‘Lend me your eyelash curlers, then. She’s dead easy, he says. Went to second base the first time he met her. She’s a slapper.’

  ‘So are they… you know?’

  ‘You won’t believe what he told me.’ Kylie’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘He says she…’

  Someone flushed the toilet in the next-door cubicle, so I couldn’t hear what she said next. But I’d heard enough. My whole body felt flooded with shame. If they were talking about me, it meant everyone was. The whole school would know stuff about me – probably stuff that wasn’t even true.

  All that day, I was sure eyes were watching me everywhere I went, whispers beginning as soon as I was out of earshot, waves of giggles suddenly stopping when I walked into the classroom.

  I didn’t go to meet Connor that afternoon. I went straight home and closed my bedroom door and did my homework, and when Mum called me for tea I said I wasn’t hungry.

  Connor didn’t have my mobile number – he hadn’t needed it, he’d just had to say, ‘See you Thursday,’ and know I’d be there. So, after a couple of days, he came to find me as I was leaving school.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ he asked. ‘Been ill?’

  ‘Just busy.’ I ducked my head.

  ‘Busy. Right. Come on.’ He roughly took my hand and I let myself be led away. I don’t know why. Maybe I felt I owed him an explanation. Maybe I was flattered that he’d gone to the trouble of seeking me out, even though he must have known exactly where I’d be. But I went.

  Leaning against the wall, he asked again, ‘So what’s up? I waited for you and you never came.’

  I felt a thrill of something that was part guilt for having abandoned him, part happiness that he’d been there, waiting for me.

  I replied, ‘They were talking about me. About us. Your sister and her mate.’

  ‘So? Why do you care about a couple of girls gossiping? I don’t.’

  You don’t have to, I thought. You’re so far above them, nothing they say can hurt you. But it can hurt me.

  But I just said, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Tansy, look at me.’ He put his strong fingers around my jaw and tilted my face upwards. ‘They’re just kids. Ignore them. You and me, we’ve got something special. Haven’t we?’

  ‘Have we?’

  ‘Course we have.’

  Then he kissed me. His mouth didn’t taste of chocolate that time, or vinegar or blue WKD, just of cigarettes. I wasn’t enjoying his kiss, and I felt myself wondering
if I’d ever enjoyed it. But I let him carry on. I let him do more than he’d ever done before, until my knickers were round my ankles and my school skirt up around my waist and his jeans were unzipped, and he moved my hand down underneath his boxer shorts.

  ‘Feel that. That’s how much I love you.’

  I was only a kid, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew perfectly well this wasn’t about love. But, at the same time, I lacked the willpower to say anything to make him stop. Maybe I knew he wouldn’t; maybe I thought that since the other girls believed I was having sex with Connor, I had nothing to lose by letting it happen. Maybe I thought that if I let him do it, he really would love me.

  I don’t know. I can’t remember what I was thinking; only the hard stone of the wall pressing into my back, the aniseedy smell of the cow parsley around our feet, the sudden stab of pain when he pushed himself inside me.

  It didn’t last long. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes against the sun, and heard his breath coming faster and faster until he made a sound that was more than a groan – almost a shout – and stopped.

  He moved away from me and I felt a hot gush from inside my body. I didn’t say anything – it hurt so much I knew that if I opened my mouth I’d cry. But I opened my eyes.

  Connor was doing up his belt; the clink of the buckle sounded very loud in the still afternoon. He lit a cigarette and the smoke blotted out the smell of the cow parsley, but not the smell he’d left on me, damp and somehow clammy, like the way the changing rooms smelled at school when we got ready for swimming.

  ‘See you around,’ he said. ‘I guess.’

  I didn’t reply. I closed my eyes again and waited, watching the red spots the sun made dance across my eyelids, and waited, listening carefully until I was sure he’d gone. He hadn’t said anything about meeting me there again, not that I expected him to. He didn’t say anything more to me at all, and nor did I.

  When I opened my eyes at last, I could just see his red T-shirt disappearing over the hill, and that was the last time I ever saw Connor there.

  Ten

  The following week, I finally made good my promise and called Chelsea. She didn’t answer, so I left a voicemail: ‘Hi, this is Tansy calling. We met at your stall on Roman Road a couple of weeks ago. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get in touch, I’ve been kind of busy. My sister had a baby, and work, and… yeah, anyway. I’d love to meet up with you and chat about what you do, and see if there’s an opportunity to work together. Give me a call back when you can.’ And I recited the eleven digits of my mobile number.

  If she didn’t ring back, I decided, I’d try one more time and then leave it. Maybe she didn’t need my mentorship. Maybe she was happy making and selling a handful of amazing, unique garments a week to women who felt like princesses in them, like some kind of street-market fairy godmother. And even if she did, I wasn’t sure what I could actually do to help her.

  But thoughts of helping Chelsea – whether it was welcome or not – were at least a distraction from my endless, futile preoccupation with Renzo. Renzo and Felicity. The two of them at Nobu, where he’d taken me for our first date. Remembering every detail of that night – and imagining Felicity there, maybe even in the same chair where I’d sat, eating the same food, seeing the same wicked half-smile on Renzo’s face when she made a joke – was agony. I spent most of the weekend trying to blot the picture from my mind, and failing.

  So at last, that Sunday, I filled in the empty hours of the afternoon sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop, drinking coffee and tinkering with a business plan for Chelsea. Reluctantly, I had to conclude that Barri and Lisa had been right. However many times I tweaked the numbers on my spreadsheet, it was impossible to see how her business could be made into something viable.

  I worked until evening, then got up, stretched, poured a glass of water and looked unenthusiastically at the contents of the fridge before fishing out a tub of hummus, cutting up some cucumber and pepper and shoving a frozen pitta bread in the toaster. It was almost six – soon I’d be able to have a bath and go to bed without feeling totally tragic.

  Just a lot tragic.

  Returning to my laptop, I scrolled through my social media. Charlotte and Xander had posted loads of pictures from Thailand, where they were spending a week at a fabulous-looking lodge right on the beach before heading to Bangkok and then on to Cambodia. I scrolled through pictures of plates piled with juicy pink prawns, Charlotte’s feet half-buried in sand, their bed swathed in mosquito netting like a bridal veil, and imagined being there with Renzo.

  Everything, I thought gloomily, ripping off a strip of bread and raking it through my hummus, came back to Renzo. I’d resolved to get him back, but now Felicity had got him, and my chances seemed to have gone from remote to zero. It had been more than three months since he dumped me; soon it would be four. Soon, if I wanted to carry on counting the hours and days, I’d need to set up another of my stupid spreadsheets.

  I clicked on Felicity’s Instagram feed. There she was, making a silly face in a fitting-room mirror. And there, sweating in a Nagnata sports bra after a hot yoga session and tucking into a massive bowl of out-of-season fresh berries and double cream to refuel #virtuous, she’d posted, presumably ironically, #mybodyisatemple. And there again, her dark hair tangled up with Pru’s as they made their best duck faces for the camera, clinking glasses of pink Pol Roger fizz together (#sistersofinsta #pamperday #restylane). Knowing what I’d suspected for a while – that the sisters’ plump, dewy complexions weren’t just down to good genes and sunblock – was no comfort to me. I couldn’t afford work like that myself, so I’d just have to carry on looking more and more haggard with every passing day.

  And there was a photo without Felicity in it, of grey sky looming above bare branches, a flash of green grass in the distance and a wrought-iron railing in the foreground. She’d written just one word alongside the image: #view.

  Except it was a #view I recognised, because I’d looked out over it so often myself, in various states of quiet happiness, giddy laughter and nervous excitement. I’d even seen it while bending over, the cold steel of the window frame digging into my hips, glimpsing Renzo’s reflection in the window as he kissed his way tenderly down the length of my spine.

  It was the #view from the balcony outside Renzo’s bedroom.

  Felicity wasn’t just dating Renzo. They were sleeping together. It was serious. I squeezed my eyes shut to try and block out the image of them in bed, their dark hair tangled together on Renzo’s pillow, their secret smiles – but I couldn’t. I slammed my laptop closed and stood up again, stretching the tension from my neck and shoulders. I’d started the year resolving to get him back, and now it was almost a quarter over and I’d achieved nothing. Less than nothing, because now he was with someone else – someone I’d inadvertently introduced him to. Someone who I’d practically given my blessing to to go after him. Someone who was meant to be my friend, who I’d have to see every day at work for the foreseeable future and pretend to be happy for.

  I picked up my phone and an empty pint glass from the cupboard and was wearily climbing the stairs when my phone buzzed in my hand with an incoming text.

  Hi, got your message. Wanna meet up?

  Chelsea didn’t waste any more words in texts than she did in person, I thought, with the beginnings of a smile. I replied in the same vein.

  Sure, love to! Where and when?

  Maybe, after I’d been to Daria’s meeting, I could suggest she come into the office and show her around.

  I’m free now. Now? Really? The front of the girl was quite something. It was Sunday evening, for God’s sake. I could be putting my baby to bed. I could be lingering over a final glass of wine at the tail-end of a sumptuous lunch with twelve of my closest friends. I could be in a cab on my way back from the airport, having spent the weekend shopping in Milan.

  Except, of course, I wasn’t.

  Right, okay. Let me know where and I’ll tell you if I can make it.


  Her reply flashed up straight away: an address that sounded like a flat in a council estate. (Wadsworth Heights. I mean, you just know, don’t you? I did, anyway, given I’d spent my teenage years on Mitchell Crescent.) And then a postcode, which I had to read a second time because at first I thought she’d somehow guessed my own address and was trolling the fuck out of me.

  But no – the last two letters were different. It must be pretty close by, though. And it was; when I clicked through to Google Maps, I saw that the place she wanted me to go to was on the Garforth Estate, and literally five minutes’ walk from our house.

  Wow, right, looks like we’re almost neighbours! I can be there by 7.

  To that, the only reply I got was an ‘okay’ emoji.

  I took off my dressing gown for the first time that day, brushed my hair and teeth and thought about an outfit that would project the right message: professional, creative, accessible. A leather skirt, thick woolly tights and a jumper, maybe, with a cross-body satchel. Or wide-legged trousers and some sort of floaty, layery thing going on, with a crochet coatigan and a faux-fur bolero.

  Then I said, ‘Fuck it,’ and pulled on yoga pants, a sweatshirt and trainers, and an ancient parka I hadn’t worn in ages.

  It was freezing, I was in a hurry, and Chelsea would just have to take me as she found me.

  Every day for the past nine months, I’d walked past the Garforth Estate on my way to the station. Its three grey towers and four low-rise blocks were so familiar I could almost have drawn them from memory, but I’d never actually walked through the estate before. This dark, drizzly night wasn’t exactly the ideal introduction. Without sunshine to show the cheerful window boxes planted on balconies and the clean washing flapping in the cold breeze, without children kicking a football underneath the NO BALL GAMES sign, without neighbours pausing to chat on the concrete walkways, it felt desolate and almost sinister.