by Gill Mather
"That was very agreeable," I say. "I'll remember that. Especially if it comes to nothing with this other man."
"Me too."
NUMBER SEVENTEEN is packed. My parents don't even appear to have noticed my absence. They must think I was still at the last house. It had some nice paintings I was admiring while we were there. I don't feel like staying any longer here tonight, trying to appear jolly with these hyped up people. I excuse myself. I find Tarquin and thank him for organising tonight. And the Christmas Day lunch. And the quiz afternoon and meal. I tell him honestly I’ve enjoyed all these things immensely. I also seek out our two lots of hosts this evening and thank and compliment them again on their courses. I tell anyone who says goodbye that I hope the street party goes well the day after tomorrow.
All of this takes a half hour then I’m blessedly out in the cold night air looking up and down Baker’s Lane’s picturesque facade, light spilling from the windows, the noise from Number Seventeen still evident out here. I walk slowly to my parents’ home. The whole thing with Michael is tinged with sadness, so bitter-sweet, so poignant. I wonder if I’ll ever see him again.
I’M DRIVING along the A12 back to Essex the following afternoon. It’s already dark and the prospect of arriving at my cold home to be on my own for the evening is uninviting. Against all expectations, I hugely enjoyed my Christmas visit with my parents. I’m starting to re-think this business of advance information influencing the outcome or even being in the least useful. Absolutely none of my experiences since being separated were in any way assisted by my expectations. Even with Dennis, the bits and pieces I’d managed to find out about him before our “date” didn't help at all. In fact they were probably a hindrance. I had to find out for myself. I can only be thankful that I’ve had opportunities since then to see him again and perhaps make some favourable impression. Who knows? No-one really. I missed out last night on something that I’m sure would have been delightful, despite the age difference, provided thoughts of Dennis hadn't impacted too forcefully. I must hope that it was in a good cause.
Chapter 14 Justine
I AM AT WORK and frankly glad to be here. Quite a few have turned in today so at least I'm not miserable completely on my own. I'm miserable in the company of other people instead.
I just about got through last night without calling the Samaritans. I don’t think I've ever felt so low. I cracked open the bottle of Baileys handed to me by my mother as I left, she little realising that it was becoming my ruin of choice during long evenings and nights of bitter contemplation and bouts of self-loathing. At one point in the evening I rallied and decided I should start a new hobby to take my mind off things and occupy my time. Or better still, hobbies. I googled hobbies and opened herinterests.com.
Going through the list, they included squash, horseriding and online gaming. These pursuits ring a few bells. Unfortunately negative ones, though I didn't check to see if the online gaming meant computer games or rather gambling. One of them was to join a band. Now I might well consider that but it isn't the sort of thing you can rely on to suddenly rescue you just like that from a post-Christmas downer. Like I could phone a helpline and say: "I have quite a good singing voice. Possibly at the deep end of the women's spectrum but I would say quite passable. I would like to join a band tonight to stop me from contemplating suicide."
I’m not sure I could actually learn new skills right now. I know I’m only thirty five, but being dumped and being depressed takes it out of you. I feel as though my brain’s slowly been turning to mush this last six month. It’d be great to start a refresher GCSE course in, say, maths or physics but unless they’ve developed a system that allows knowledge to seep into the grey matter by osmosis, I don't think I could hack it at the moment.
As the Baileys took hold last night, I thought vaguely of resuming dress-making. I have a few sundry homemade garments hidden away in my wardrobe. I'm sure given time I could improve. I got as far as looking out my sewing machine from under the stairs and setting it up on the dining table, but the perceived effort of going up into the loft and lugging down the many boxes containing lengths of fabric and patterns, optimistically purchased over a number of years and almost immediately stowed away, defeated me.
About one am, I suddenly had what seemed like a brainwave. Of course! The remedy was obvious. Start up my own business. Become rich and self-sufficient. No unrealistic targets to meet imposed by partners needing to pay the kids’ school fees, no acting for clients who become obnoxious. I could tell them where to shove it. Be your own boss! No more being walked over!
In a more optimistic frame of mind, I decided to go to bed and watch TV and/or read with the rest of the Baileys.
Unfortunately “One Day” has taken a turn for the rather melancholy with one of the characters having gone seriously off the rails. This didn't especially help me last night in my despondency though it’s still a wonderful novel with vivid characters you can utterly empathise with. I hope nothing really bad happens eventually. If it gets happy again I might just leave it and close the book there with the characters forever suspended in a little bubble of bliss.
CLEARLY ONE AM isn't the best time to make life-changing decisions. Now I’ve dragged myself into the office, I’m looking at a memo from the partners about the difficulties of the year ahead, more regulation expected, the need to get more work in, all the usual stuff, but of course they’re right. That’s what you have to worry about if you’re a boss. You can't rely on a regular income each month.
This friend of mine Tamsin decided to do just what I was unrealistically dreaming about last night. She became a sole practitioner and opened her own legal practice at home imagining it would be the ideal way to combine motherhood with a career, that it'd be a doddle and that working for herself she'd earn loads of dosh. It turned out nothing could have been further from the truth. She found the work isolating and gruelling and spent a good deal of her time trying to tell the children as nicely as possible on a good day to go and play as she was on the phone to a client or trying to get something urgent done, or on a bad day she'd scream at the kids to go away instead.
She built up a huge body of bulky files that had to be kept for just about ever. When she decided to give it up as a bad job after ten years, it took a considerable amount of time to run her practice down during which she had the same outgoings but a declining income, she had to pay a substantial amount in "run-off" insurance in case of a claim in the next six years and she had several outbuildings full of files in not that great order.
When she and her husband decided to move to the Cotswolds where her husband's parents had left them a house, a pantechnicon of stored files had to be transported there and somewhere found for the files to be stowed at her new home just in case some vindictive bastard tried to take a pot shot at her through the courts or the Legal Ombudsman's Office. Without the files her insurers might not have been prepared to accept and deal with a claim.
Tamsin is looking forward to taking all these mouldering old files outside and burning the lot in about another ten years by which time it would hopefully be safe to do so. She says she'll have a file burning firework party combined with her son’s twenty first and that I'm invited. We’ll dance around the fire like a couple of old hags screeching incantations against the Law Society and the SRA.
Tamsin is now selling posh handbags online and making a lot more money than she ever did out of her legal practice. And she says that twelve months after each sale she chucks out the paperwork reckoning that there's a limit to the damage a year old handbag can cause.
The little bubble of optimism that I built up last night bursts just like that and my mood deepens. It strikes me that you go through life struggling from one hurdle to the next, probably unconsciously most of the time, but that you need some obstacles to overcome to maintain a reasonable equilibrium. I spent several years with the Arsehole trying to conceive and though I didn’t realise it at the time, it kind of dwarfed everything else. I didn�
��t have time to think about being unhappy beyond the monthly disappointments. But the hope would start up again until the next time. And the next time. And so on. But it kept me going OK.
Then after the Arsehole's departure the anger sustained me for a decent interval coupled with the possibility that my dumb efforts to jinx him and the Backside, mostly it has to be said through thought waves alone, might have borne some results. Thereafter as I was persuaded to start to cast about for a replacement Arsehole, I was able to believe that there was some hope of a brighter future and it kept me occupied. In fact the disastrous nature of most of the encounters acted as a diversion at least. Now though I don’t feel that there's any hope. I certainly don’t want to attempt to date anyone new. I've got nothing to aim for.
I can't see how I can move on but I certainly don't want to go backwards either. There's almost no-one I'd remotely consider as a candidate for even a casual relationship. And, in the event that the Arsehole wanted to re-unite, there's no way on earth that I'd agree such a retrograde step, not in a million, billion, trillion years.
I've got a hopeless obsession for a man who, when I last saw him, was trying to start something with another woman and I must assume he's pursuing that now.
So I have nothing. And no-one. The other nicest (excuse the grammar) man I've met is over twice my age and we both acknowledged that it wouldn't work, apart from perhaps as a one-night stand. Though of course had I not refused, I might have got pregnant. That would certainly have caused a stir in Baker's Lane not to mention consternation at one of the properties whose occupants, however much they may yearn for a grandchild, might have drawn the line at their seventy-three year old neighbour as the fatherer of the offspring. Even in my wretched state, I sit at my desk today and chuckle at this.
Slightly more upbeat, I consider that I might contact Jeremy some time. He was pretty cool. But can I be bothered? Would it be fair when I know I’d feel lukewarm to indifferent about it? Probably not.
At lunchtime I can't motivate myself to go out and get anything. I’m sitting languidly at my desk unwinding a paper clip and then winding it up again, repeatedly, when Justine, all sign of facial injuries completely gone, happens by and asks me if I'd like her to get me anything when she's out. Uh-oh, I think. Ned, arch-purveyor of gossip, has put it about this morning that Justine and Sheila have split up already, hardly surprising when they're both so butch and aggressive. But she is extending the hand of friendship therefore I don’t want to refuse and, at risk of going back to my bad old comfort-eating days just after the Arsehole left me, I ask for a caramel flavour iced doughnut with custard filling and, in case that's not enough, a Toffee Crisp and while she's out, I make a cup of coffee to have with these and take it back to my room.
Justine soon returns with my treats (I don’t see why my mother should be the only one to get regular, or in my case any, treats) and her own lunch and coffee. I gratefully accept them and she walks to the door, but instead of going out, she shuts the door. I have to consider that it's possibly pay-back time and I brace myself, but she sits down in the chair opposite me. Without preamble, she apologises for her actions the night I went to her flat. I am of course much surprised. I almost automatically start to apologise too for punching her but I stop myself just in time and think, why should I. It was me who was defiled after all.
"I know," she says, "that I defiled you, or tried to. It's very difficult when you're a lesbian like me to know who's straight and who isn't. And when someone tells you that it's quite certain that a colleague is one of us and moreover that she's currently unattached and that she likes to be taken by force, I thought I'd give it a go at least, you being as attractive as you are."
"Oh….I….Well. Er, someone told you that about me?"
"Well, yes."
"Was it Sheila?" She’s the only person I can think of but I frown to myself because I don't see why she should say that.
"No. It was someone I used to work with. We have reunions sometimes and when I said where I was working now, she told me about you."
"So this person is?"
"Her name's Perdita. At least that's a pet name she uses. I'm sorry. I had no idea she was your ex's new squeeze at the time she told me. But I went to a bash at my old firm over the Christmas break and she was there with this man. And when I asked around who he was, it turned out he had your surname and I put two and two together. I'm really sorry."
I'm flabbergasted.
"Just to be clear we're talking about the same person, could you describe her," I say.
"Corporate lawyer. Late twenties. Has an apartment in Docklands. Enormous knockers and the biggest arse you've ever set eyes on."
I sigh. It's her all right.
“But why did you believe her just like that?”
“Well actually, she and I had a bit of a fling at one time.”
“You mean…..?”
“Yes. We sing from the same hymn sheet. Or did. I don't know if she still does. She might be a hasbian. Or perhaps she likes a bit of both now. Before, you know, our “date”, Perdita told me she’d had a relationship with you and that you, you know, liked a bit of rough.”
I gasp. I can hardly believe it. “The lying, manipulative bitch,” I say. Though it’s still so hard to swallow. “OK,” I say, “but even so, didn't you think it was too much of a coincidence, you ending up working at a firm where someone worked who’d supposedly also had a relationship with your old girlfriend?”
“No not really. No stranger than what did actually happen i.e. me working with my ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend’s wife.”
I suppose this is true.
"Anyway," continues Justine, "I hoped we could be mates in spite of what happened. I've got lots of straight friends. I may hate men, but I usually get on OK with women, whatever their inclination."
I consider this proposition for a moment, but not for long.
"All right. I think that's a good plan," I say and we toast it with our coffee cups.
I feel a bit happier after this. It's not much to blow away my winter blues, but an apology always has a mollifiying effect and it’s a brave thing to do. And although I don't care for her attitude regarding men, she's now my mate and I won't hear a word against her. If Ned runs her down, he'll have me to answer to.
“And by the way,” says Justine before going off to her room, “Perdita apparently gave an old photo of you to some man who was trying to sue you for personal injuries. That’s what she told us at the Christmas do anyway. She said you told her boyfriend about some incident last summer, that she saw some emails about it between you and him and went through all the photos on her boyfriend’s laptop to find the worst one of you and did it for a laugh.”
“That’s awful.” I’m stunned. It must mean she’s been actively keeping tabs on me to know enough about me to have supplied a photo to Ebden Andrews, even though she mustn’t have given him my name. I must suppose she thought it would be less likely to backfire on her if she withheld my identity and probably hers too. It’s pretty creepy actually. It puts my dumb aspirations at spell weaving well in the shade. But I won't let this get on top of me. She’s obviously a head case.
MY SPIRITS THUS buoyed up, I actually manage to get down to some work this afternoon. I take a few calls and speak to some prospective new clients. I've noticed a trend recently of men calling and saying more or less the same thing and one phones me this afternoon. I give him some figures for what the transaction would be likely to cost and say if he's interested to just call again or email and he says:
"Oh. I'm just the man." Then he goes on to say that he'll have to discuss it with his partner and she'll decide. As usual I offer to email the figures and do so. This has happened several times. I'm not sure if these men are being serious or not. Several have instructed me to act and I'm still not sure. They say in effect that the woman is the bread-winner and that she makes the decisions. Sometimes it turns out that the man does actually have a job himself and as things progress, h
e comes over as a confident man, the sort of man who could say "I'm just the man," but not really mean "I'm the subservient one in this relationship." I suppose it's a power thing. He says he's just the man, but what he really means is: I may not earn as much money as her but she's dependent on me in hundreds of different, not necessarily material, ways.
I’ve reached the conclusion that it's probably simpler when the man is the main or equal income earner then you don't have to have these little power struggles. Each party is dependent on the other for all sorts of things as is normal. No need to start to try to apportion it.
Just before leaving time, Justine drops by my room and asks me what I'm doing for New Year’s Eve, which is the next day. I've had a couple of invites but I haven't decided where or whether to go. In view of my recent doldrums, I might possibly just mope at home. I don’t know yet. Justine says she wants to go extreme underground night-time orienteering. This means nothing to me. She says the person she was going to do this with has blown her out. She'd like to do it but it means finding another partner. It's a rule that you can't do it on your own.
I turn the phrase over in my mind. Extreme sounds a bit violent. If you go mountain biking say, then extreme mountain biking is like ten times rougher and more difficult. Underground? I assume this means potholing or similar. I can't think of any deep caves around here. This is more or less East Anglia for God's sake. It's flat and boring. We'd probably have to go to Wales or Scotland or at least Yorkshire to find caves.
Orienteering I've heard of. What I can't make out is how they can be stopped from using GPS on the sly. No doubt it's against the rules but you couldn't drug test for it and I assume that the participants couldn't legitimately be subjected to a strip search before and after and at regular intervals during such an event. Perhaps they get tagged with devices that tell if they're using TomToms or the like. Or maybe the battery life of such devices is against it. I don’t know. Or perhaps orienteerers are simply the most honest individuals in the whole world. Not very likely.