by Lilly Miles
‘Yes. We had a conversation.’
‘Don’t remember. Oh, my head. Can you call me a cab, lovely? Sorry to intrude, izzeht.’ And she stamped back downstairs again.
‘For someone so small she walks very loudly,’ said Tim.
‘Hmm,’ I said, dialling a cab firm. Ten minutes later it had pulled up and they were both dressed. Fifi, bless her, grabbed Tim and shoved him out of the door. I gave them both a peck on the cheek and then slumped, relieved. Unable to face the clean-up straight away – there was an unpleasant odour of spilt beer from every direction – I went to take a shower.
Pulling off the robe as I walked into the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the sink and stopped dead for the second time that morning. The hair, the face, the eyes I would worry about later. But why oh why were there two large, red Xs over both of my nipples? WHY?
As I stared, the memories came flooding back.
The party had a James Bond fancy dress theme. There had to be a theme, because the birthday year had a ‘0’ in it. And while fancy dress is usually a pain in the arse, I reasoned, a Bond theme meant the boys could wear a DJ (yum) and girls could glam up. What’s not to like?
Food was laid out in the living room, with fresh strawberries and a chocolate fountain. Twatface’s booze had been pulled out of its hiding places – bottle after bottle of fine whites, tasty Bordeaux, and Italian Prosecco by the case. I bought some fruity pink pop and a few bottles of vodka, and a roulette wheel was set up on the kitchen table. All my friends and dozens of people from work were invited, and as far as I was concerned they could trash the place. The house was a wreck, anyway.
I went as Shirley Eaton, the girl painted in gold from Goldfinger. Despite the recent and rapid weight loss there was no way I was going to cover myself in gold paint and strut about wearing only a thong, so instead I covered myself in a slinky gold minidress and coated my extremities in fake tan and shimmery leg make-up.
The dress was backless so a bra was impossible; but to avoid embarrassing nippleness I carefully stuck two bits of tit tape in a cross over each boob to keep them in.
People turned up, looking glamorous as hell. The cricket lads arrived in dinner jackets, Nancy came as an Indian assassin from Octopussy, and Buff Arnold covered himself in green paint and told everyone he was legendary Bond producer ‘Chubby Broccoli’. Bridget came in a long black frock, while Porter turned up in red braces and a set of fake teeth as Jaws. Tim from the sports desk was Blond Bond. I made a lot of pink pop and vodka drinks, and drank most of them.
The Prosecco bubbled, the chocolate fountain flowed, the music thumped. For the first time in almost six years, thanks to Twatface’s absence, I was able to throw a party without someone constantly trying to switch my music off and put on Nick Cave instead. We got to enjoy musical legends like S Club 7, Abba and 5ive. When the opening bars of ‘The One And Only’ thundered out at about midnight, Bridget – by now more than a couple of sheets to the wind – screamed ‘CHESNEEEEEEEYYYY!’ and began whirling like a dervish. I loved it. It was freedom. It was my music, my party, my idea of fun. When my personal theme tune, ‘Keep On Movin’ came on, for once I didn’t worry someone was going to turn it down or moan. Instead I turned it up and shouted the words as loud as I could.
My recall of what happened after that is patchy. Everyone left about 3 or 4 a.m. As the last people piled into a cab, Blond Bond turned to me in the hallway and asked if he could stay. We checked the living room, discovered Fifi curled up on a cushion, threw a cover over her and retired upstairs.
We lay in bed and talked for a bit, then kissed and . . . well. You know. Most of it’s a drunken haze, but I remember thinking I had to keep the lights off, because I couldn’t bear the thought of him seeing me naked, telling myself ‘you’ve got to break your duck’, and that being really, really drunk would probably help get over the born-again virgin hurdle. It didn’t help with the keeping awake hurdle, and that was the problem occupying my mind as I lay back and gazed blurrily at the ceiling and Tim started kissing me all over.
‘Just keep your eyes open and make encouraging noises,’ I told myself. ‘Falling asleep would appear rude.’ Then he raised his head.
‘Have you got something on your boobs?’ he asked.
‘Hmm? Oh . . .’
I was so drunk I’d forgotten all about the tape, and had merrily undressed without giving it a second’s thought. Now tit tape is very thin and papery, and sticks to you with the same persistence as NASA’s favourite superglue. After eight hours of body heat the stuff had bonded to my skin on a molecular level, and me trying to peel it off when absolutely spannered must have been like watching a blind dog chasing its own tail.
There was I, drunker than George Best on a late-night chat show, picking furiously at my own tits in pitch darkness at 5 a.m. with more vodka in my bloodstream than actual blood. And all the while trying to make small talk with someone I barely knew about how all of this was really funny and happens ALL the time, honest, every girl I know does the same thing . . .
I must have been at it for five solid minutes. Eventually I found the ends of the tape, ripped it off along with several unnoticed layers of epidermis, and Tim carried on with the business at hand.
And now here I was looking at this creature in the mirror, a sexually promiscuous woman approaching middle age, with bloodshot eyes and an ability to skin her own boobs.
Please God, let him have been so drunk too that he won’t remember it. Please.
When I rang Fi, she stopped laughing long enough to say: ‘That’s faberluss. You’ve broken the seal, you’re over Twatface. I love Tit-Tape Tim. You’re only thirty once, izzeht?’
But then she doesn’t have to see him in the office tomorrow.
:-(((((((((((
(But only because there isn’t an emoticon for burying your head in your hands or hitting it against the wall.)
DAY FORTY-FOUR
WELL, work this week has been fun – running to the loo every hour to reapply Germolene to my wounded boobs while avoiding Tit-Tape Tim from the sports desk out of sheer embarrassment.
It would be a lot easier if I didn’t bump into him everywhere I go. It’s like he’s homing. Go to the canteen for a cuppa – he’s there. Go to the paper shop – he’s there. I would think he was following me except he looks more embarrassed than I feel every time it happens, so I think it’s just one of those horrible tricks of fate. We’ve worked together for years, and only chat at the Christmas bash, and now, suddenly, it’s like the world keeps tilting to throw us in each another’s path while we try to scramble pink-faced out of the way.
I got in the lift on Wednesday, late as usual, and just as the doors were closing he snuck in between them. We recognized each other, smiled politely, then said nothing for the slow grind up to our floor, staring at the blank metal doors in a hot blush, willing them to open so we could both scoot out in opposite directions and pretend we hadn’t been ignoring someone we’d had drunken congress with only a few days previously.
Ick, I HATE this! I mean, I worked with Twatface when we got together, but that was love, and so it was nice to see each other all the time. This is hot and uncomfortable, and makes me cringe in shame and want to crawl under a rock. Maybe if I’d had more experience of these things I could be more nonchalant about it, or would it be just as bad?
It feels very weird to have slept with someone other than my husband. Adulterous. All right, he’s doing the same, and we’re separated, and probably going to get divorced, but yet it’s odd. Strange to wake up next to one man when you know your husband is waking up somewhere else in the same city with another woman. It’s not how it was supposed to be, and makes me feel disjointed, like I’ve put my shoes on the wrong feet. I doubt the Archbishop of Canterbury would have a problem with my having slept with Tim (although I’d be interested to hear his views on the tit-tape debacle), but there is still a low-level, niggling sense of wrongness that I cannot overcome.
/> And the bed, of course, the marital bed. It feels empty without Twatface there, so I just curl up in a corner of it, trying not to fall into the hole he left behind.
I had just had a run-in with Tim at the water cooler – ‘Oh, hi’, ‘Morning’, ‘Scuse me’, ‘Of course’ – and had got back to my desk where I was fanning myself with the Wellygraph, hoping the sexual humiliation would soon pass, when ‘What a wanker!’ rang out. I sent it to answerphone, telling myself I really ought to change the ringtone.
This was his message. Said in a thin, mopey, sad little voice.
‘Hello, you. Um. How was your party? Err. Is it true you might be made redundant? I miss looking out of the train window and seeing the river on the way to work. Um. I miss the house. There was a story today, too, about Venice being flooded again; it made me think of our holiday there a couple of months ago. That was fun, wasn’t it? Anyway. It would be nice to talk to you, you know, if you like. Um. Bye then.’
He sounded down, sad, lost. I felt sorry for him. Maybe he wants me back? At that very moment an email from him plopped into my inbox, in which he complained about falling down a Tube escalator, cutting himself with a razor, and wearing a stinky suit. He said he’d found a flat to move into in a few weeks’ time but was tired of relying on friends and wanted to move back in to the house. ‘See you there at 7?’ he finished, rather peremptorily.
Wordlessly, I turned my screen round so Bridget could read it. Her advice was simple. ‘Don’t. He’d change the locks as soon as you were out. Or move his fat fancy-piece in.’
I emailed him back and told him to meet me in the Cutty Sark at 7 for a chat.
I spent the rest of the day brooding, turning it all over in my head. Not him moving in, that’s not going to happen, but just him, his phone calls, the late-night texts, the worry. The constant drip-drip of ‘Is he with her? What’s he thinking, what’s he doing? What would he think of what I’m doing?’ which makes my mind turn like water on a prayer wheel, producing a never-ending stream of permutations. And the certain, rock-solid knowledge – thanks to more than enough stories I’ve written on this very topic – that if they cheat on you once, they’ll cheat again. Plus if he’s falling down the escalators he’s been hitting the bottle, his habitual escape route from worry. It’s all such a mess.
At the pub he was waiting for me in the garden, at the bottom of his first pint although I was only five minutes late. We said hello and he lit a cigarette, his hands shaking really badly. What on earth was that about? I wondered. Was he nervous?
We talked about boring stuff – the house insurance, council tax – and he complimented me on my dress. He said he needed to pick some stuff up. But he kept trembling, looking at his feet, fidgeting nervously, talking too fast. He asked about moving in, and I laughed, said there was no way. He smirked nervously and said he’d go to court. I told him to feel free, but considering there’d been violent rows no judge was going to order me to let him back in the house. Then he asked if I’d seen a lawyer yet to start the divorce, and I said I had, but needed to give the guy money up front so was waiting until I got paid.
Then he said: ‘If you don’t start the divorce, I will.’
Me: ‘On what grounds, exactly?’
‘Your unreasonable behaviour.’
I laughed so hard I nearly fell off my chair. Then he said it again, and I told him I’d fight it, and that seeing as he was earning £50,000 a year sat on his arse in the newsroom of a top newspaper he could more than afford a flat and let me have the house.
He said: ‘The flat’s quite cheap, but it’s not very nice. It’s in Walthamstow and four of the neighbours were arrested for running a bomb factory last week.’
‘Ha,’ I told him. ‘Maybe they’ll drop one. This would all be a lot easier if you died.’
He looked horrified.
‘It’s true,’ I told him, ‘although a horrid thing to think. When I walk in from the car park in the morning I reach for my phone to ring you, and have to remind myself I can’t do that any more. The same thing happens at lunchtime, or when I’m on a doorstep, and when I go home. There’s a big gap where you used to be, just like when someone dies. Except there isn’t a death certificate, and mourning, and a funeral and a recognized way of going about things.
‘Instead the corpse keeps jerking back to life, and is shagging a woman who is, shall we say, jolly. I feel like I’ve been bereaved: the pain and loss is the same, but instead of remembering someone with love there’s just hurt and hatred and it feels like you’re trying to drag me into the grave with you. Instead of mourning, I have to fight you. It would be much easier if you died. I could think nice things about you. All the suffering would be done with. Instead I’m in pain and I know there’s only more to come.’
His face was white. He took a drag of his third cigarette; he was smoking much more than he had done when we were together. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t thought how it felt for you. If it’s any easier, I have to stop myself ringing you, too.’
‘You’ve never thought for a second how I feel about anything, or you would never have behaved like you did.’ With that, I gathered my things and left the pub. He followed me in silence. Outside he stopped and turned to me.
‘I do miss you, you know,’ he said. ‘Do you miss me?’
‘Miss you?’ I thought about it. ‘I don’t miss you, no. I miss having a husband. I miss talking about what we’d call our children, and where we’ll go on holiday next year. I miss having someone to run my bath when I’ve had a long day, sit on the toilet and talk to me. I miss cuddling on the sofa and watching the telly, I miss having someone to cook for, or shave my legs for. I miss having someone to put their hands on my tummy when I have period pains, or let me warm my feet up on them when I’m cold. I miss having a companion, planning your birthday, having an extended family. I miss the dreams we had. But no, I don’t miss you. I don’t miss talking to your answerphone, I don’t miss wondering what time you’ll come home, I don’t miss apologizing to my friends when you’re drunk, I don’t miss checking up on you, and I don’t miss worrying what you’ll do if I make you angry. I don’t miss you at all.’
Tears had poured silently down my face as I spoke. He stood and stared, shocked.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly.
I turned and walked away, and didn’t look back. The tears kept falling as I walked home, and I decided it was time to cut off contact. It was too painful, and it didn’t get us anywhere. No more emails, no texts, nothing. From now on it would be through lawyers, because I was simply not strong enough to do it on my own. I decided to make an appointment with the solicitor and start things moving.
It was time to move into the centre of the bed.
DAY FIFTY-ONE
THERE are days when you despair, when everything in the world seems not just to be against you, but actively out to get you. And you start to wonder whether killing all of humanity might not be a bad idea.
Evil Elliot has been spectacularly insane this week. He’s one of those bosses that’s quiet but deadly, an unpleasant little playground bully in his treatment of staff but still, somehow, incredibly polite to them – which only makes it worse.
A typical phone call from him to a reporter on the road will start off with, ‘It’s Elliot. Can you talk?’ before his clipped, public-school tones slice you carefully into delicate little pieces. ‘Where are you? What are you doing? Have you found his sister? Why haven’t you rung in to tell us what you’re doing? Are you aware that the London Evening Post have already spoken to him on page thirty-four of their late edition? Why haven’t you seen the London Evening Post? I don’t care if you are in Shropshire. Find one. Go back and knock the door again. Rewrite the copy, it’s dreadful. And when you’ve done that I want you to get to Norfolk before first edition. It shouldn’t take even you that long, it’s only an inch away on the map. Don’t come back until you make it work.’
I have, in the past, had to file five
different versions of a two-thousand-word spread for Elliot before he was satisfied. He is just as hateful to everyone, and a terrible brown-nose to The Editor. He’s got family on the company board, so is secure yet chippy in his job, safe but resentful as Bish’s deputy. He never drinks, never has a girlfriend or boyfriend, and is stretched tighter than a drum. On Tuesday he made a trainee cry, on Wednesday the news desk secretary retreated to the loos traumatized and refused to come out, and on Thursday Bish rang me at my desk.
‘Come t’Bunker, lass,’ he said.
The Bunker – where Bish’s twenty-year collection of old newspapers are piled up to the ceiling – stinks because it’s the last place in the building anyone can smoke. Elliot, who shares the office, has so far failed to separate Bish from his beloved Woodbines. On one wall is a pin-board which is a schizophrenic mix of newspaper cuttings Bish thought were funny – ‘ASBO FOR YOUTH WHO MOLESTED DOG’, ‘SEX PEST UNZIPPED IN FRONT OF NUN’ – and his favourite Page Three girls, as well as Elliot’s charts showing how many stories each reporter has brought in, with black dots next to those at the bottom of the league table. When he finds a suspicious expenses claim Elliot pins it up until the reporter, broke and after phone calls from the bank manager, finally plucks up the courage to enter the Bunker, asking why their expenses haven’t been signed off and paid into their account. Elliot will question the poor sap about why they said it was 120 miles return to Hastings, and why they went via the M25 if it was only a hundred if they’d gone another way, until finally, desperate for cash so they can eat and pay the bills, the reporter will agree to have the claim sliced. Elliot wields his red pen, knocks £4 off, and struts around like he’s king of the moral high ground.
Elliot is a pain in everyone’s neck.
Bish was sat in his chair, scowling like normal. ‘Shut t’door,’ he said grumpily. ‘Right. Some little toad’s rung up wanting to flog a sex tape. Says it’s got somebody important in it. You’re to meet ’im and get it off ’im.’