The Diaries of a Fleet Street Fox

by Lilly Miles

  PS I’ve already filed copy on Cheryl.>

  Ha. Bet he didn’t tell Fatty the baby stuff. It’s not strictly true, it’s more that we weren’t not trying for a baby, but it’ll get him in trouble and throw a spanner in their works. I think it’s the least they deserve after the anvil it feels like they’ve dropped on my head.

  For most of today I’ve been numb, which I suppose is an improvement on crying and screaming. The only thing that makes me feel better is this – writing it down, no nearer making sense of it all, but just a way of marking the time, separating one day from the next. All day and night the thoughts flutter around my head like butterflies, and setting them down in words is like pinning them to a board, so they are finally under control. Like filing a story for the paper.

  So now I’ve started this diary I think I’ll keep on writing it. It makes me feel better, and as Bish always says if a reporter’s overthinking a story too much, ‘Jus’ get it off yer notebook, for fook’s sake. Don’t let the ale get warm.’

  But is it a good idea to be reporting on your own insides?

  DAY THREE

  THE clock says 1.42 a.m. It’s official, herbal sleeping pills are shit.

  Maybe it’s just me. Maybe herbal stuff doesn’t work if you’re a criminal and a rubbish wife. The label on the bottle ought to read: ‘WARNING: May make you drowsy, but probably won’t because they’re only herbal. Do not attempt to operate heavy machinery, drive, eat or make a cup of tea because simple tasks are beyond you. If you feel side-effects just be grateful you’re feeling something. None of the above applies in cases of heartbreak, recriminations and/or betrayal. Will definitely not work if taken by idiot who obsessively rereads emails between Scarlet Woman and Cheating Husband into small hours of the night. No refunds possible.’

  2.19 a.m. Ah, hell – next week’s our anniversary! Not our wedding anniversary, our getting-together one. Does that count?

  3.41 a.m. I might be pregnant. Or maybe she’s pregnant?

  6.42 a.m. Am I ever going to sleep again?

  About lunchtime Cee rang in a combative mood. We’ve known each other all our lives and normally I’m the tough one and she’s the soft one. But today she just asked how I was, and when I said I still wasn’t sleeping, didn’t know what to do, and felt broken, she said: ‘Ditch him.’

  ‘Just like that? Just “ditch him”? It’s that easy, is it?’

  ‘What would you say to me in the same position? If I’d rung you a year ago and said I’d left my husband because I’d found out something but refused to say what because I didn’t want you to think bad things about him, then gone back when he’d promised never to do whatever it was again, and a year later all this had kicked off, what would you tell me?’

  I paused and thought, and then said quietly: ‘I’d tell you to cut your losses and run.’

  Her voice softened, and she said: ‘And that’s why I’m saying it. You don’t have kids, you can start again. I know you, you’d never be able to forget this. What would you do if he did it again? Could you live with that?’

  No, I don’t think I could. For the first time I think about my husband objectively rather than as the man I have loved for so long. All that we had, once the rains came, held as much water as a rusty sieve. Being in love doesn’t matter a damn – that feeling comes and goes with time, like the tide. What remains while you wait is the respect you have for each other, your friendship – your character, your principles, your core. The corners get rubbed off over the years, but what you basically are, deep down, remains the same. I try my best, I have rights and wrongs, and he . . . he has weaknesses. Now I think about it, I couldn’t tell you one thing that he would never do, a single line that he would not cross. He didn’t care enough to try to be better than he was. He put himself before us, and that’s not the deal I thought we’d struck.

  I dug out my mobile. He was still saved in the memory as ‘Scooby’ – after the face he pulled and noise that he made, when . . . well, you know. I renamed him ‘Twatface’. I recorded a new ringtone too, so that instead of playing ‘Scooby dooby doo, where are you . . .’ it will now screech out ‘What a wanker!’ when he rings. If he rings.

  Three days at the homestead is enough for me, and for my folks. I decided to go home because there were plenty of things there to keep me busy, whereas at their house I was just moping about avoiding well-intentioned requests to, ‘Come and help wash the car,’ or questions like: ‘Do you want to turn the compost heap?’ They felt as useless as I did, but at least if I was at home we’d stop being useless at each other.

  I packed my stuff up and went outside to find my dad and say goodbye. He was at the bottom of the garden, guarding the bonfire in that way dads do, wearing oil-stained jeans and an old shirt, and he walked up to meet me. We met in the middle, and I said: ‘I’m off now.’

  He said: ‘Oh, right. Well, keep your chin up.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll try.’

  ‘Things will look better in a bit.’

  ‘Yes, I expect so.’

  I obviously looked like I didn’t believe him, because he took a step closer, put an arm around my shoulders and spoke more earnestly.

  Looking intently at me, he said: ‘I know it doesn’t seem it, but one day it will be much better. It cannot stay like this for ever. Every day that passes will be a tiny bit better than the one before. Maybe not much, but it will be just a little bit better, I promise.’

  And then he started to cry. My dad – my big, tall, strong and always-has-an-answer Dad – put his head on my shoulder and sobbed like a baby. I cuddled him and stroked his back as it trembled, and it was the strangest, most alien thing. He smelled of cut grass and two-stroke oil and soap, just as he always does, but for a moment he was a little boy again, bewildered and sad, in need of someone to hug him and say it would all be OK.

  It lasted for ten seconds or so, then he lifted his head and sniffed, gave me a squeeze around the shoulders and said: ‘Let your mum know when you’re home safe, then.’ I promised I would, said goodbye and drove home.

  I rang to let them know I’d arrived. Mum answered, and I said: ‘Is Dad there?’

  ‘No, he’s in the bath. Why?’

  I told her what had happened, word for word. She was speechless for a moment.

  ‘I haven’t seen your father cry in forty-five years,’ she said. ‘Not once.’

  Lying in bed, waiting fruitlessly for sleep, I felt the roiling hurt and pain inside me begin to solidify around a cold, clinical anger. What Twatface has done to me was because I decided to marry him: my pain, my choice, and my problem. But as a result of that he had also been invited into my parents’ home and family, and now they feel the same betrayal. Because of me.

  So I cry every day and every night – so what? That was my own stupid fault. My mum is worried, but much as I wish she wasn’t that is what mums do. To make my father cry, to make the strongest and tallest and handsomest and funniest and most wonderful man in the whole world, who has never ever cried, break down and sob because for the first time in his life he cannot help his little girl – that is something I will never forgive. The thought makes me furious. I wanted to kill Twatface for that alone.

  I lay there, my hands balling into fists at my sides, and realized that even if I decide to take him back, and run the risk of being hurt again, there is no way I will risk my parents’ heartbreak. He might hurt me again, but I could never allow him to do that to them.

  The more I think about it, the more I can see only one way out.

  DAY FOUR

  ANOTHER night of zero sleep, only this time I thought a bit of music might help to take my mind off its never-ending circle. So the iPod – the only useful present Twatface ever bought me – went on.

  Now, I am superstitious about the shuffle function. I think that whatever comes up means something, or helps to make sense of the events of the day. It’s about as logical as astrology, with the added bonus that if you don’t like what the Shuffle Gods tell you it
is perfectly acceptable to flick to the next random track, and flick again, until you hear something you do like.

  Sometimes the Shuffle Gods are kind, and you get just the right song to make you tap your feet and sing at the steering wheel. Then there are the days when they are cruel and harsh, when you press ‘shuffle’ and sit, poleaxed, as some far-off singer sums up your life in three short, painful minutes.

  And that’s what happened to me, as an anonymous man read out a speech given to some high-school kids years ago. Over gospel music.

  It shouldn’t work, but somehow it does.

  As I sat on the side of the bed and stared at the wall, the deep-voiced man told me the real troubles in my life would be the things that never crossed my worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on an idle Tuesday.

  It was 4 p.m. last Tuesday when it happened: 4 p.m. when I was just bored with nothing much to do; 4 p.m. when I first found out there might be a problem in my marriage; 4 p.m. when I realized there was another woman. My world crumpled at 4 p.m. last Tuesday. My heart contracted into a tiny point of darkness, and then exploded into everything that has happened since.

  I was just telling myself that everything can be fixed, if you try hard enough, when the gravelly man went on: ‘Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.’

  And that was the moment – the point of clarity, of no return. I saw for the first time that was exactly what had happened. My husband, the father of my unborn children, my best friend and person I love above all others, had held my heart and had recklessly dropped it. He’d stopped loving me.

  Once it was light I pulled myself together and went to the supermarket to stock up on meals for one. (Oh, that was depressing. Standing in front of the freezer compartment, looking at a selection of individual microwaveable packets, and realizing I might as well fill the trolley. Then waiting at the checkout, looking at the shop assistant as she glanced at the food, then back at me, and thought to herself: ‘Single’.). I got some veg too, for the look of the thing, and ice cream, of course. Back home I emptied the fridge of everything that was dead or dying, chucked in the new stuff, and then grabbed some black bin bags.

  I toured the house and everything that was Twatface’s went in – shoes, clothes, bags, coats, CDs. (Almost all of them Nick Cave or Bob Bloody Dylan, including the ‘B’ sides and stuff no one knows – I am never going to listen to that crap again.) I piled it up in the living room for him to collect. Other bags I filled up with papers and junk to chuck out, like the interminable bloody lists he used to write about everything and never complete. If he had a day off he would always have a list of things to do, starting with ‘groceries’, ‘buy papers’ and ‘walk in park’, and finish up, two sides of A4 and six hours later, with ‘learn Mandarin’ and ‘drink less’– both equally unlikely.

  In the bureau were a bunch of bank statements I seized to shove in a bag, but then something caught my eye – cash taken from an ATM in Sloane Square, round the corner from her house, the previous week. I looked through the papers and saw there were trips to restaurants I’d never visited, and receipts for takeaway pizzas I hadn’t eaten. Then, and this was the kicker, £120 spent in Maggie Jones in Kensington. Our restaurant. The place where we’d had our first date, and where the manager used to greet us with open arms saying, ‘Hello, you two lovebirds!’ and give us free champagne.

  He’d taken her to Maggie Jones. I could barely believe it. Although it was the least important thing, it seemed like the biggest betrayal. Was it so he could always remember it as ‘our’ restaurant whichever woman he was with?

  Then, somehow, I found myself standing over my jewellery box and taking off my wedding ring. He had left his on my dressing table. He was always taking it on and off and was never really comfortable with it – should have seen it coming, I suppose – and I put them both in a ring box with my engagement ring, and shoved it into my sock drawer where I wouldn’t have to see it.

  I hunted through my stuff and took out every necklace, bracelet and pair of earrings he’d bought me – not many – and on top of the wardrobe found my wedding handbag and shoes, and at the back of a drawer the posh underwear I’d worn. I looked at my wedding dress hanging in the wardrobe; it was too painful to touch. I took down the picture of our happy day, which had pride of place in the living room, and my dried bouquet, which was stuck in a vase, and packed most of it in a box along with the wedding album. I closed it up with several layers of duct tape, carried it up to the loft, and shoved it into the furthest corner. I never wanted to see any of it again, but I couldn’t bear to throw it away.

  Just as I was piling the rest of his crap in an angry corner of the living room, I suddenly heard a woman shout: ‘What a wanker! What a wanker! What a WANKER!’

  I was scared for a moment, wondering how some screechy loon had got into the house, before I remembered it was my new ringtone, and laughed in relief. Then I stopped, because it meant Twatface was on the phone.

  He didn’t say much, except that he was coming round tomorrow ‘for a talk’. Can’t wait.

  DAY FIVE

  AT 6 a.m. I woke up – well, I didn’t, but morning arrived and there didn’t seem any point in staring at the ceiling any more – and heaved myself upright simply out of boredom.

  The bedroom seemed empty, with conspicuous spaces where Twatface’s pants would usually have spent the night on the floor, his lists drifted under the chest of drawers and his watch sat on my dressing table.

  The empty side of the bed sprawled mockingly behind me, but I could not look.

  I pulled on a pair of jeans, which seemed to be a lot roomier through lack of eating anything, and wandered into the hall.

  We’d bought the house a year ago from an elderly couple as a renovation project – it was the only way we could afford to buy in Greenwich, a nice part of town near the river. The wallpaper, carpets, plaster, wiring – everything – needed changing. We’d chucked our cruddy collection of loaned furniture into it and were coping until we could afford to do the work.

  The previous occupants had not held with normal decorating practices. The wallpaper was stapled up rather than pasted, gaping holes in the walls were covered with strange wicker hats stuck on with double-sided Sellotape, and nasty vinyl floor tiles had been superglued to the kitchen ceiling.

  Twatface and I had stood in the hallway on our first viewing, looked around, and held hands as we imagined our children running down the stairs and into the garden. After we’d moved in we’d agreed that a sunny yellow would be best for the nursery. We’d decided we’d get a cat called Fang for him and a dog called Dave for me. I’d thought it was a shared dream we’d built together, but now it felt as if I had been muttering to myself in a mirror.

  Clearing the garden cost nothing, but he couldn’t be bothered to help me much. He got comfortable with the interior, vile as it was, and if I so much as picked at a bit of wallpaper to see what was behind it he would shout that I was ‘destroying’ the house and tell me to leave it to an expert.

  ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘he’s not here any more.’

  Standing in the hallway, I slowly pulled at a piece of pink-and-yellow-striped hairy (yes, really) wallpaper, stapled top and bottom to the wall and billowing loosely in the middle. Off it came. Then another, and another. It wasn’t long before the halls and stairs were stripped of their disgusting coverings, back to the bare plaster, and I was up to my knees in swathes of crusty, dusty wallpaper.

  I bought an industrial-sized tub of the most boring magnolia paint I could find, slapped it over the walls, and was stood at the top of a stepladder with the radio on when I began to feel happy.

  My body was busy, and my mind was occupied, calculating how much wall was left, and telling myself that if I did that bit next I’d be 60 per cent, no, call it three quarters, of the way through one wall, and then, when I’d done that, maybe I’d have enough appetite for a sandwich . . .

 
; Then the tinny sound of the radio penetrated the happy humming in my head, and the grating Welsh vowels of Bonnie Tyler fell through my ears like acid rain.

  She sang about listening to the sound of her tears and wondering if the best years had passed, and when she fell apart so did I.

  I collapsed like a paper hat in a rainstorm, slumped on the top step of the ladder, and wailed as the pain washed over me again. Head dropped on to my hands, I sat on my perch and screamed until I tasted blood.

  Then I realized that one of those hands still held a paint roller, and I’d wiped magnolia over most of my hair. Instead of being an attractive, grief-stricken, wronged woman when Twatface came round I was going to be a paint-smeared loon covered in snot and coughing blood. Making a conscious effort to pull myself together, I doused my face in cold water and carried on – but changed radio stations. Soft rock is not your friend in times of emotional crisis.

  My mobile rang, and I checked who it was before rejecting the call, but stopped when I saw it was Buff Arnold. A lovely fellow and a good friend, but shallow as a puddle when it comes to women. He’s a news reporter like me, with a natural tendency towards lapdancers and hookers so tends to do the sleazy stuff. We’re mates and he doesn’t usually ring unless he wants something, so the call was odd. I decided to answer it.

  ‘Hello, Buff,’ I said.

  ‘Babe, am I bothering you?’

  ‘Nah, I’ve got a few days off. To what do I owe the honour?’

  He spoke very carefully and slowly. ‘Well, I’ve heard something dreadful I really hope’s not true, but I wanted to make sure you were OK . . .’

  My heart sank. If Buff – who’s rarely in the office – had heard the news of my zombie-frenzy then I’d made the rounds very thoroughly indeed.

  ‘Depends what you’ve heard, mate,’ I sighed.

  ‘There are rumours that you’ve split up with your man. It can’t be true?’

  ‘It is, I’m afraid.’