Pretending: The brilliant new adult novel from Holly Bourne. Why be yourself when you can be perfect?

by Holly Bourne

  It’s only when I reach the end of my road, that I realise it.

  I’ve gone the whole journey home without thinking about my date with Joshua.

  He left my thought process the moment I walked away without looking back. I didn’t even wonder if he watched me as I walked away, and I normally always wonder that.

  I have not analysed my behaviour for anything I did or said wrong, and then tortured myself with all the nuggets of non-perfect-humaning I’m quickly able dredge up. I have not pored over every single thing he said, sifting it for evidence of commitment issues, personality disorders, a desire to have children, and/or ex-girlfriends he may still be in love with. I’ve not obsessed over the moment he took my hands, and how he almost kissed me, or berated myself for not letting him kiss me, because it may have put him off, even though I didn’t particularly want to be kissed anyway. I’ve not checked my phone the instant I’m above ground to see if he’s messaged, and let the outcome of that dictate how I feel about myself and my life. I’ve not rung Megan immediately to debrief her on all the above and to get her take on it because I do not trust my own instincts because, well, have you seen my track record?

  This has never happened before.

  I actually stop on the pavement and say ‘huh’ out loud.

  Then, of course, my phone buzzes and comes up with his name.

  Joshua: Hey Gretel, I had a really lovely time tonight. It would be great to do it again soon. X

  The perfect post-date message. The message we all hope for. Straight away. ‘I liked our time together.’ Bish bash bosh. No game-playing. Saying they want to see you again. Oh, you’ve clearly hit it out of the ballpark. One kiss at the end. Already. Just the one. But one is good. Any other number of kisses at this point would be weird. All in all, as I said, the perfect message. It says, ‘I like you, and I’m not going to be a dick about saying as much or play games, but I’m still a normal human who isn’t going to pin all my hopes on you.’

  Way to go, Josh, I think. I don’t deliberate about how to reply. Or squeal with happiness. I just think, I hope Megan hasn’t eaten my bloody eggs, and then speed-walk home to check.

  • Easy Breezy Lemon Squeezy – Gretel’s Guide to Messaging Between Dates

  * * *

  The most important thing to remember about messaging between dates is that none of them mean anything. They’re just fun, ok? Their only real purpose is a) to sort out admin details, and b) to flirt and entertain.

  Certainly no woman worth any worth is going to read anything into them, obsess over their content and their own replies, and jump into the air like a startled cat whenever they receive a new message. Like, who does that? Not Gretel, that’s who.

  Definitely do not reply straight away regularly. That’s an instant way for him to lose his hard-on. The minimum reply time is an hour. Not because you’ve set an hour timer on your phone, but because you’re literally just too busy being amazing and fabulous and Gretel to have time to reply sooner.

  Make sure every message you send will make him smile in some way. Cheer up his day. Cheer up his life! Not too often though. Don’t want to freak him out with all your availability. You need to strike the perfect balance of reassuring him you’re thinking about him, while also reassuring him that you’re not constantly thinking about him. Keep in mind that he’s probably messaging other girls too. That’s cool. You’re cool. That’s so totally fine, ISN’T IT? I mean, you are totally messaging other guys too. And by ‘messaging’ you mean receiving unsolicited photographs of pubey, flaccid penises; constant requests for bra sizes; hate mail from that psychopath you dated three months ago calling you a ‘slut’ for not sleeping with him and considerately telling him you didn’t want to see him anymore; countless messages from people who literally cannot spell; countless messages that just say ‘hey’ at you, over and over again, followed again by good ol’ ‘slut’ when you don’t reply. And you regularly look at your phone in complete despair and wonder how anyone meets anyone when it’s so obvious all men are broken and you can’t believe you’ve managed to find one, just one, you’ve vaguely clicked with so you’re pouring all your remaining hope into him and cannot fucking believe it’s been two hours now and he’s not replied and you have no idea if he’s going to ask you out again and you may cry if he doesn’t … yeah, he doesn’t need to know all this. All he needs to know is, like, you’re totally playing the field too. This over-ploughed, scorched mess of a field scattered with the decaying corpses of all your past hopes … So, yeah, a really good message to send is a frothy cool one to let him know how busy and fun and spontaneous you are. One like: ‘I’m out in so-and-so playing badger-themed, glow in the dark, minigolf – you should totally join!’ or ‘OMFG did you know you can currently buy mint choc chip Viennetta for a pound?’

  * * *

  Gretel: Did you know you can currently buy a mint choc chip Viennetta, a whole one, for only a pound?

  Joshua: No way? I love those things! Where?! Other than in my dreams?

  Gretel: Iceland. Yes, I’m a classy broad.

  Joshua: Can’t talk. On my way to Iceland.

  Joshua: *Sends photo of a mint choc Viennetta*

  Gretel: I can’t believe you actually got one!

  Joshua: Do you want me to send you a video of me cutting a slice?

  Gretel: Too early to send porn to each other, right?

  Gretel: Food porn, I mean.

  Joshua: Glad I’ve got this Viennetta to eat now to cool me down.

  Joshua: It would be nice to see you again.

  Gretel: Oh would it now?

  Joshua: You free tonight?

  Gretel: Alas, I’m out with my housemate Megan. But maybe another time this weekend?

  I’m slightly worried Megan is about to fall off the wagon the moment I’ve climbed onto it.

  ‘I’m too stressed out,’ she announced on Thursday, her head facedown on the table – where it’s been so often this week that I’m surprised it’s not started to make a little head-shaped mark. ‘Can we go out tomorrow? I need a ride.’

  My eyebrows drew up. ‘A ride? Since when are you Irish?’

  ‘Since I’m overworked and horny.’

  ‘And that makes you … Irish?’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake! Will you come out with me or not? I promise I won’t get emotionally attached to my ride.’

  ‘Please stop saying ride.’

  ‘It will just be sex.’ She raises her head from the table. ‘I’m so stressed with work, April. I have this stupid fucking launch to do, but they’ve not given me enough budget. And then my psychotic cuntbag of a manager is micromanaging me so hard I can’t get anything done, and then she keeps complaining that we’re behind and I’m like, HELLO, it’s because I’m having to reply to all your psychotic cuntbag emails.’

  ‘Why are so many managers so bad?’ I ask, deciding it’s probably a good idea to open a bottle of wine. For both of us. Megan’s stress is highly contagious when she’s like this.

  ‘Shit floats to the top, doesn’t it?’ she wails, before returning her face to the wood.

  ‘Megs, I love you, you know I love you, but are you sure this is a good idea?’

  ‘What’s a good idea?’

  ‘Going ride hunting?’

  ‘It’s fine! We’ll go somewhere super awful so I’ll find someone super awful who I have no chance of falling for. It’s just stress relief, April, honestly! I’m a modern woman.’

  ‘Whatever you say.’

  Twenty-four hours later, and I’m all dolled up for Megan’s ride hunt, standing in a queue in a part of London I never go to, and feeling way too old for this.

  ‘I’ve not been to Calculus since I was 25,’ I whisper as we inch forward. ‘And even then it was terrible.’

  ‘You could totally pass for 25,’ Megan says, reaching out and squeezing my arm.

  ‘That is not my point.’

  ‘You should take that as a compliment. You never know if and when you’ll ever hea
r it again at our age.’ She smiles and rakes her fingers through her hair to fluff it. ‘And thank you for coming. It’s the easiest place to pull someone. That is the point of Calculus.’

  ‘Easy if they’re looking for an older woman. The boys here are so young they look like the kids wearing suits in Bugsy fucking Malone.’

  Megan laughs. They really do. We’re sandwiched by a thick bread of fresh-faced and recently-graduated boys on banking graduate schemes, dressed in their first tailoring, hardly needing to shave yet, and playing at being grown up. The queue moves forward and we step along, being pushed slightly by a rowdy group of equally fresh-faced girls giggling behind us.

  Calculus on a Friday night is where humanity comes to puke up just before it dies. A club in Bank made for one purpose and one purpose only – for bankers to go to pull girls who are only there to pull bankers.

  ‘Why bankers again?’ I ask Megan, quietly marvelling at the girls’ toned legs and wishing I was still at the age you could eat crap without your body noticing.

  ‘Because I hate them.’

  ‘That’s a very healthy reason to be trying to have sex with one.’

  ‘You don’t get it. That’s precisely why it’s healthy! I have literally no chance of getting psychologically attached to one. And you know how much I like to get psychologically attached to men.’

  ‘Who you? Really? Oww don’t hit me.’

  We inch along towards the hell mouth, while I try to calculate if it’s possible that I could’ve mothered anyone here yet. Maybe I’m still a year or two away, but, regardless, this group of girls are doing nothing for my self-esteem. I twist around to grab a peek at them and their youth oozes out of them. A scent of naivety, optimism, and loads of still-viable eggs lurking in their ovaries. They’re conducting some complicated verbal orchestra – each of them interrupting and hardly listening – as they psychoanalyse an ex-boyfriend’s behaviour.

  ‘And then I said, look, at our age, it’s normal to want to label it. But he made me feel like I was crazy …’

  ‘They’ll do that. They’ll do that. How long had you been seeing each other anyway?’

  ‘Six months …’

  ‘And he still wouldn’t call you his girlfriend?’

  ‘He said labelling it ruined it, and he thought I’d be cooler than that.’

  ‘I’m so confused.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Tim was like that, remember? I went to his grandma’s fucking funeral but he still wouldn’t make it official.’

  ‘Fuck him.’

  ‘Fuck all of them.’

  ‘You can’t message him tonight.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘You will. If you have more than five Jägers, I’m taking charge of your phone …’

  ‘No, I’ll be fine …’

  Megan overhears too and rolls her eyes at me, before digging in her bag for a kirby grip. I twist back to the front, exhausted just from listening. I remember all those conversations. How my girlfriends and I would meet up and no matter how exciting the rest of our lives were, talk mainly about some guy: ‘Why did he do that?’ ‘What does it mean?’ ‘No, I do think he loves me, he’s just not making it clear at all with any of his behaviour.’ I remember feeling exhausted even back then, as we collectively squeezed ourselves out of juice trying to convince ourselves men did really like us, despite all the evidence to the contrary. There were so many luxurious excuses we could lather on back then. Like we were young, and of course men don’t want to settle down at this age. We could sort of give them the benefit of the doubt, even though it hurt us and made us worry they wouldn’t get there by the time we needed them to. I remember wishing, just wishing, to be the age I am now, when I assumed all men’s lights would turn on, like taxi cabs that are finally ready to take you home. I imagined that once you were older you’d fly over previous hurdles, because we’d be grown-ups now and now is not the time to piss about any more. But nothing has changed. No one has evolved. Not really. Even my female friends who have managed to catch a husband in their determined butterfly nets whinge about men. Their marriages are more like an elaborate charade to cover the fact they’re essentially just babysitting a resentful, overgrown Man-Child:

  ‘Brought back all his friends the other night. Insane drunk. They all thought it would be hilarious to take their trousers off. Woke me and Charlie. Found that even more hilarious. I honestly thought he’d grown out of this … It’s his job. A bad influence. If he could just change companies, then I think it would all be fine.’

  ‘Oh April, I probably shouldn’t tell you this. I’m drunk. It’s just … I guess I just assumed, since we were married, that we’d start a family, but he says he isn’t ready, which is fine, but I’m 33 and I want a big family and I’m not sure how wise it is to wait but he said it’s selfish to rush him.’

  We step forward again. The bouncers are in sight now, standing in direct sunlight in their black uniforms and looking like melted icing on a cake. The sun is still high and honking in the sky. I don’t think it’s ever going to rain again, or that this new anger I feel will ever wane.

  In a surge of efficiency, we’re suddenly past the bouncers and entering the throbbing darkness of Calculus. The summer sun becomes a instant memory as the doors swing closed behind us. The place is covered in red carpet, so the rich men can feel like, yes, this is how things are supposed to be. And gold everywhere, because of the aforementioned rich men.

  ‘This is going to be terrible,’ Megan announces, with a wild smile on her face. ‘God, you’re a good friend for coming.’

  ‘Can you please just pull quickly so I can go home and watch Dawson’s Creek?’

  Megan pouts. ‘Honey, please, you are dealing with a professional. Though God it’s uncomfortable wearing a bra,’ she adds. ‘How do you do it every day?’

  We clop along the red carpet towards the bag check at the top of the stairs, where cheesy music burps up from the mouth and lights scatter the wall. After a swift argument with the security about why I’m not allowed to bring in my emergency cheese and celery sandwich, we descend, sandwichless, to the bar.

  In the space of one staircase it’s gone from being 7 p.m., still light outside and 27 degrees, into feeling like 3 a.m. and that the night could go on for weeks. The place is dark, crammed, and everyone seems incredibly drunk already. There’s a five-person-deep queue at the bar. People are sunburnt and bleary-eyed and stumbling into one another, and then holding each other when they apologise and using that as a way to start kissing. Couples already grind on the horrendous light-up dance floor. Young women bend over and rub their pert arses into the groins of older men in expensive suits.

  ‘Let’s get some drinks,’ I say, steering Megan away. ‘Try to catch up with everyone here.’ We push our way through the throngs of obliterated people to join the scrum waiting to order £8 Jägerbombs. Megan’s already on the scout, standing with her shoulders back, breasts popped, hair flipped behind one ear. A green light from the club hits her face, and, for a second, I’m afraid to admit that she looks her age. There are wrinkles around her eyes that aren’t around the eyes of many of the surrounding girls. Her foundation might be expensive but it still sinks into the wider pores of her skin. Her outfit, like mine, is just that tad too conservative compared to everyone else’s. I suddenly feel desperately pathetic to be standing in this bar and can’t believe my life has come to this, when I really, truly, thought that, by now, I would be spending my Friday nights putting the baby to bed. That me and my imaginary husband would be sharing a takeaway, laughing about how old we are now, and reminiscing about how shit it was to go out in London on a Friday night ‘back in the day’ … Then the light swings around again, and Megan looks just like Megan again. I blink away the pain of the life I thought I would have by now.

  ‘Shall we get shots?’ I call over.

  ‘Let’s start with three each.’

  It’s just as well I’m drunk, I think, as I look at the carnage around me.
My phone tells me it’s somehow still only eight-thirty. I keep checking it to try and look less like a lemon while Megan talks to Potential Ride Number One. A girl is already vomiting in the toilets, crying about the state of her life while her friends slur, ‘He’s not worth it, love. You can do so much better.’ There’s nowhere to sit down. Steam rises from the dance floor in giant clumps around me, and I’m getting hungry because I wasn’t allowed to eat my emergency sandwich.

  But I’m drunk, totally freaking drunk, so I don’t mind much.

  Megan’s talking, her hands gesticulating wildly, as she leans into Mr Potential Ride. Snatches of their conversation float towards me over the general din of cheesy music. ‘No way! You boarded at Glenalmond too? My sister went there before our family moved to London.’

  Mr Potential Ride leans further in, puts a hand on the small of her back. ‘Really? How old is she? Maybe we were there at the same time. Was she on the lacrosse team?’

  Megan’s already-posh voice has gone up a gear now she’s found someone of her own kind. It may be the music distorting it, but I swear she just said ‘yah’ instead of ‘yes’. It’s hilarious, yet ultimately unsurprising that she’s found the poshest banker here. Upper-classers have this extraordinary ability to find one another in any given social situation. Like they emit a sonar signal if their family goes hunting on Boxing Day.