The Unreliable Placebo

by Gill Mather

  And then….and then….I think I pass out.

  I'M IN A LARGE ROOM full of people. The noise is incredible. I find I’m already seated and have no idea how I got here from the hotel room. As I come round, I briefly see a huge screen on the stage flash off. I’m not sure what it said; something like SPAG WEST. Spaghetti western? Simmsey said he did medieval battle re-enactments. Doesn't sound much like that. Maybe he’s branching out. However I’m not dressed for horse-riding or gun-toting. I can't work it out.

  There are glitter balls revolving on the ceiling throwing differently coloured shapes around the room and onto peoples' faces and clothes, and mixing confusingly with the psychedelic patterns on the walls. Several girls in separate elevated cages are gyrating to the hypnotic music. When I look at them for a little longer, I see that they're all stark naked. Some spread their legs; others face the other way and bend over displaying the full works. This piques my interest and I wouldn't mind going over and having a closer look at some of them, just in order to make a comparison. But I see that Simmsey, sitting next to me in a dinner suit, is eyeing me up analytically. As earlier, I don’t worry about this and none of it seems strange. Not at all.

  I cast an eye around our table. There are men in dinner suits and women in a diverse range of outfits. Some like me are in ultra short sparkly dresses. Others more along the lines of One of Nine. A few are kind of dressed up as Marie Antionettes with white powdered faces, black beauty spots and huge wigs, sporting fans. They all look pretty spaced out. The men with them are nervous and twitchy and move around in their seats. They look worriedly around them, apparently sizing up the opposition. They look at me. I can't tell what impression I'm making.

  I feel a little sore in one of my thighs right near my crotch and I pull up what there is of the skirt of my dress to reveal a small round plaster. I peer at it curiously. What can this mean? I have no idea! But Simmsey is slapping my hand while not actually looking at me. I fail to let my skirt down and, still looking around the room and smiling, he grabs my hand and squeezes it hard until it hurts and I have to let my skirt go. I open my mouth to squeal.

  "Shut up," he hisses in my ear, "I really need this contract. Do you realise that it'll net my company three billion quid if I get the contract.” I nearly pass out again. “Don’t worry. You’ll get your cut. For God’s sake for now just be-have!”

  So unaccountably I do. The money is of no concern to me though. If Simmsey had wanted the money to influence me, then he should have picked a less mind-altering, mood-flattening drug to induce me to do his bidding tonight.

  This is supposed to be a dinner and dance and I do wonder fleetingly where the food is but it doesn’t look like there's any on offer. I look down at the table. I am hungry. I take up a corner of the table cloth and start to gnaw on it but Simmsey soon puts a stop to that by wrenching it from between my teeth. I feel sure he may have loosened a few in the process. I still don’t worry too much though. This stuff I've somehow had administered to me is something else. They say childbirth is painful. My friends with children can't stop talking about it. Rot them! I don’t know why they don’t make this drug available to maternity wards. But maybe it's harmful. Though even this doesn’t puncture my euphoria. I'm still invincible! Or I think I am.

  For a brief moment I compare Simmsey with Milton. Milton seemed to want to use me and so now does Simmsey. I wonder what Dennis would make of this. But at least Simmsey is making it a fairly pleasant experience by virtue of the use of probably illegal substances illegally administered without my consent. With Milton it was in your face unpleasant, start to finish. I can't work out which of them was the more dishonest. Suddenly the music reduces in volume and a compère rushes onto the stage.

  "Welcome to…." he says as Simmsey and the other men on the table, in the room in fact, roar a greeting, drowning out his words. Even my super-hearing can't make out what he’s just said. He carries on outlining a number of obstacles to be overcome by the contestants. They make very little sense. You'd presumably have to be aware of the context and I'm not. Neither are any of the other girls on my table to judge from their glazed expressions.

  "Simmsey," I whisper to him, "I don’t feel well."

  "Oh dear." He looks at me consideringly. I look back at him and though my visions is somewhat blurred, I see a person I barely recognise. The shared experiences of our puberty all dissipated. All our youthful conspiracies to cause havoc to the educational system melted completely away. He just appears hard, cold, calculating and totally money and business oriented now. Though whatever it is that’s coursing through my veins, it still acts like a major pacifier and stops me from making the mental leap from Simmsey’s air of analytical detachment to what the next few hours might have in store for me. "Oh well,” he says, “I have just the thing to make you feel better." Under the table, he feels about in his trouser pocket and produces a small white pill. He starts the smiling around the room routine again and puts the pill into the palm of my hand.

  "It's important Anna," he says, "that you don’t let anyone else know you're taking this tablet. Otherwise everyone'll want one!"

  "Oh," I say trustingly, "like Limitless!"

  "Er, yes of course just like that. So do something. Pretend to cough or yawn or something and slip it into your mouth then take a slug of the water in front of you to help it down and….er….enhance the effects!"

  I do as he says.

  I HAVE NO further recollection of most of the rest of the evening or what I was asked to do or indeed actually did. I just recall coming round towards the end and seeing in large letters on the screen on the stage the words "SLAG FEST - THE ULTIMATE MID-LIFE CRISIS MALE FANTASY".

  Simmsey excuses himself to go to the toilet. He hasn’t realised I'm no longer fully under the influence. I have a lucid interval, as the Mental Health Act says, and decide to leave before anything else bad happens.

  I don’t know the way out but I walk in the opposite direction to Simmsey. As I leave the room, the compère is saying: "And the winner is…." I don’t care. I don’t want this accolade whatever it is that may be foisted upon me.

  "…..Anna Duke!" The applause reaches my ears outside the hall as I tear off my high heels and make for the exit. I see however several large bouncers turn in my direction. I know they won't let me out. And I haven't got my bag or my car keys or my mobile phone. I turn towards the toilets and the bouncers lose interest. When their backs are turned, I go in the direction of the stairs and, to fool them, I head up the first flight instead of down. Then the next. I'm not sure if anyone's following me.

  I see a large laundry bin on the landing. It’s full of used bed linen. Also I spy a set of french windows at the end of the corridor. I grab of the soiled sheets in the bin and tie them together. I race to the french windows. They have odd, heavy handles to them. I pull and push at the handles and the doors open outwards. I realise that they're fire doors so they can't be locked from the inside for safety reasons. I go out onto the balcony and look down. There are lights on in the area below. It seems a very long way to the ground. Gulping, I tie one sheet to the top of the balcony and push the rest over. I see they nearly reach the ground. I climb over the balcony. Gradually I let myself down. I have to jump the last six feet. It feels further than it really is.

  I run to the shrubbery at the side of this open area in which I landed and force my way through it to a fence. The material of this dress is undamaged. God knows what it’s made of. A new softer version of cast iron? Or maybe graphene even. I follow the fence around to the front of the hotel and climb over the low front wall and onto the street.

  There is a commotion coming from the hotel. I see men in black suits with wrap-around glasses to match run out of the front entrance talking into the cuffs of their shirt sleeves. They separate and dash off round the side of the building in different directions. In my still somewhat semi-befuddled state I can't believe it is to do with me. I'm a free agent and quite entitled to leave the building if I
wish. But all the same I walk further away to put space between me and that suspect place.

  Rounding a corner, I see taxis lined up and take one back to my home. The driver takes no obvious interest in the fact that I am barefoot and dressed like a thirty-something streetwalker at four am. The fare is considerable. When we arrive at my home, I have to ask the taxi driver to wait as I go into my house and get some cash to pay him. I know where the Arsehole kept a stash for emergencies and he left too precipitately to take it with him, the complete Arsehole.

  Then, since my bag with all my credit etc cards is back in that weird hotel bedroom, I spend the next several hours calling up the numbers to cancel all my cards knowing it'll cause havoc for days if not weeks. If it comes to it I'll have to lie to my mother and borrow off her. But I'll try not to as it always creates such a fuss to involve her in any aspect of my life.

  I look at the clock and it's six thirty in the morning and I feel terrible, like the worst hangover ever and I decide maybe mums in labour shouldn't be given that stuff after all. They'd go into a sharp decline the next day as I do and not want anything to do with their offspring. It takes me at least the weekend to overcome the effects. I've seldom felt quite so depressed, and I've been pretty depressed of late.

  Towards the end of Sunday afternoon, I toy with the idea of calling Simmsey and asking for the antidote but I know that'd just be asking for trouble and possibly spiral me into an up-down up-down cycle I'd never get out of. Simmsey always was into drugs. Probably he can control them OK. But other people like me can't. I'd end up giving up my job and becoming a template for "SlagFest", known to millions as the middle aged man's fantasy virtual shag. My face and other parts on the wrappers of a trillion jewel cases thereby earning me a fortune. Retiring rich to Monaco and spending the rest of my life in idle luxury, isolated from the rest of humanity. If I was lucky, having occasional visits from Simmsey to replenish my store of propping-up substances, paying more and more frequent trips to cosmetic practitioners, trying to attract younger and younger men to assuage my feelings of inadequacy.

  I think I'll stick to village life actually.

  Chapter 7 Internet Date No 2 - Ebden Andrews

  MY MOTHER’S BEEN on the phone wanting to know how my separation’s going. What she really means is have I found a replacement Arsehole yet. If not what am I doing about it. No-one’s getting any younger. Have I seen that nice Dennis man again and I tell her I have. I can clearly hear her face light up over the telephone wire.

  “So what happened? Are you seeing him again?”

  “It wasn't that sort of seeing. I was out with someone else and so was he and our paths happened to cross, that’s all.”

  “Oh. Well did you speak? What did he say? Did he still look interested?”

  “Mum, I didn't say he was interested the first time. He likes opera apparently and he was with someone and they’d been to see an opera - or at least a film of an opera,” I rush to say as she’d be confused otherwise as there is no known opera house in my part of Essex unless you count amateur opera and I certainly wouldn't.

  “Well there’s something you have in common!” says my mum.

  “No we don't!”

  “You had a nice voice when you were a little girl but you wouldn't take it seriously. You’d sing a few lines nicely and then you’d start howling like a dog or caterwauling.”

  “Well that was probably because I couldn't reach the high notes.”

  “Rubbish. You could have been a classical singer yourself. And a doctor and a good artist, but you’d never take anything seriously. You’d just send everything up. All the time!”

  “Mum, I have to go out so I’ll have to say goodbye now. Goodbye.” And I hang up before she has a chance to protest and then take the land line off the hook and turn off my smartphone. It does my ego no good at all when she starts on me like this. She makes me feel like a total failure. And it reminds me of what the Arsehole said about me. It’s not fair. As though all the effort necessary to become a solicitor is completely meaningless. Though in fact being a solicitor is largely meaningless these days.

  I feel like punishing them both by setting them up to meet each other some time without their prior knowledge (because forewarning would scare them off entirely). Once they got into a suitable groove, they could rant about me for days on end, compare notes on my many inadequacies and obvious faults, they could verbally tear me apart, they could between them justify one hundred per cent the Arsehole having left me. I feel very sorry for myself and start to cry. It goes on for some time.

  Eventually I mop up the last of the tears and start to feel more positive. Stuff the pair of them but all the same it would be nice to have someone to love again. I’ve decided I don't love the Arsehole any more after seeing him. I hadn't realised what a mean looking weasel of a vermin he is. I think he looks shifty and untrustworthy and not really handsome at all. I used to think he was handsome but his features have become more pointed as he’s lost a bit of weight. In fact he doesn't look as muscular as he did before he left. No doubt he and the Backside haven’t had the time to go to the gym much; they’ll have been too busy shagging each other. Stuff them too I mutter as I set up my laptop, pour myself a large glass of Baileys and decide to check the dating website.

  While it’s opening, I reflect that I’ve recovered a lot more quickly and painlessly from the Arsehole leaving me than I might have. I once read an account of a woman who’d been married for decades and had been almost mortally affected by her husband’s adultery. The couple didn't separate for various practical reasons and the adultery finished. Her account said that, like a small animal, after she found out she just carried on as before, trying to have a “normal” marriage. But she found that she simply didn't get over it. She continued to have hysterics and eventually told herself that she was going to have to devise a way to force herself to get over it and what she hit on was simple really. She decided to make herself not love her husband any more. And apparently it worked. She rearranged her emotions and stopped having physical contact with him, the latter of which was by her account a prolonged process and one he found difficult to accept but ultimately he did. So they now have this sterile marriage with obvious tensions as he’d still like to have all the usual perks of marriage but isn't able to.

  I think I’m lucky. I’ve got through this process to the point of falling out of love with the Arsehole without having to do any mental gymnastics. I’m still angry at having had my life changed for good and my circumstances upended without any consultation whatever but I can put up with that. I’m glad he left and didn't hang around to provide a constant source of torment and slow down any recovery.

  But the site is now displayed before me. As before I’m poleaxed by the number and variety of men who’d like to meet me. Maybe I should try a few speed dating sessions instead. This business of going through men one by one on separate evenings is so time-consuming and long-winded. I can't decide and in desperation I try the dartboard approach. Apparently it works for investors just as well as spending lifetimes learning about economics and reading the financial press. Better in fact. So I scroll up and down and up and down haphazardly and suddenly stop with the intention that whoever is highlighted, I’ll contact him and that’ll be that.

  So this I do, expand the selection and read about him. He says he’s five foot eleven, brown haired, aged thirty seven, divorced. He gives some average sounding hobbies and his job in the category of “professional”. He lives near the next County town. That’s all there is to go on. No photo. There’s the name “Ollie” but he says it’s a nickname. I send a short message saying how about going out for a meal (just going out for drinks hasn’t served me well so far) and then switch off quickly. I don't want to know any more.. I’ve had enough for tonight.

  I get ready for bed and a nice read of my current book, “Gone Girl”. I’m liking it so far and trying not to compare its initial detailed examination of the breakdown of a marriage too closely to
my own circumstances. Anyway I’ve got beyond that bit now to the possible substance of the thing but we’ll see. As ever and somewhat ironically if I’m liking a book or something on TV, I fall asleep so much more quickly than if it’s all very tedious.

  Half a page later I’m reaching for the bedside table lamp switch to kill the light, imagining two strong male arms around me (more would be a bit odd) and before I know it, it’s.…I peer blearily at the bedside clock display….it’s two a.m. and I know I won't be able to go to sleep now for another two hours. There’s only one thing for it.

  I pad downstairs and fire up the laptop again. I go on the website and check for messages. There’s one about fifteen minutes ago from Ollie suggesting meeting in an Indian restaurant on the back road running from the town he lives near to the town I live near, though nearer to mine. He gives a number of possible evenings next week. I like Indian food and reply to agree to the Tuesday evening, say about seven thirty. Almost immediately he responds that he’ll book the table then. He’s already established online that it’s not fully booked next Tuesday.

  I trundle up the stairs again. I have a date. I still don't know much more about this Ollie, except that he likes Indian food and can’t sleep at nights either. It sounds like “Sleepless in Seattle”. I like that film but I really like the other one with the same leads, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, “You’ve Got Mail”. So romantic. I always cry at the end. I should be done with crying over sad and/or romantic films but seemingly not. I’m glad actually that my experiences with the Arsehole haven't extracted every ounce of emotion from me and made me into a hardened old harridan. I glance at the mirror before falling into bed and I’m afraid the face that stares back at me is as gullible and credulous as ever. Some things will never change.