The Diaries of a Fleet Street Fox

by Lilly Miles

  ‘Going in front of a judge will take another three months or so, and cost thousands more, all to argue over £5,000,’ I pointed out through gritted teeth, as reasonably as I could. ‘What’s the use in that?’

  ‘But if I do that, the house price will go up in a few months and you won’t be able to get it,’ he said, somewhat slyly. ‘So it’s in your interest to take the house now, and leave me the money.’

  He had me in a corner and he knew it. There was nothing I could do but bite it down. I don’t care a damn about his money, I’d rather not touch a penny, but I wanted to punish him. He should be made to pay in some way for being such a ratbag.

  And that in itself makes me feel greedy, and bitter, and vicious, and I’m none of those things. I hate money, and I hate arguing about it, and I hate haggling with my own husband. The whole thing sticks so deep in the back of my throat I feel like a cat bringing up the world’s biggest furball.

  ‘Fine,’ I growled. ‘You leave the house and I’ll leave your poxy smegging money.’

  ‘Well, now I’m not so sure. I mean, after all, I’m basically giving you a house.’

  ‘Oh, for . . . you’re not giving me a house, you’re walking away from a massive mortgage and a renovation project. All you’re giving me is a lifetime of debt and a headache. Stop being such a fucking TWAT!’

  I immediately regretted losing my calm, and took a breath. We were close enough that I didn’t want to ruin his mood now. He sighed dramatically. ‘I’m doing you a favour. I could make you fight me in court, and I can afford to pay the lawyers, which you can’t. This way you keep a house which will have loads of equity in it in a year or two when the market picks up, and I’ll keep my money. So basically we’re even.’

  This was just too much to bear. It was the kind of cracked logic that used to drive me demented when we were married. ‘You have a big PILE of cash; I have a big HOLE of cash. The fact that those two things are both worth the same figure does NOT mean we are even; it means I’m several hundred grand in debt. And the house isn’t going to earn any money unless I can find the cash to do it up . . . oh, for goodness’ sake!’

  I took another deep breath. ‘Look, fine. I want the house, you want your money. Let’s both tell our lawyers we’ve agreed that’s reasonable, and then they can write it down in a financial settlement and we can get the decree absolute. All right?’

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you’ve seen sense. Can I come and get the bed?’

  ‘The what?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘The bed. It’s mine. I need it because I’m moving house.’

  He was obviously setting up home with Fatty. ‘You want the bed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Our marital bed?’ This was beyond belief, even for him.

  ‘Yes, it’s mine – I bought it.’

  ‘Are you fucking joking?’

  ‘There’s no need to swear – it’s my furniture.’

  ‘Have you asked Fatty if she wants to sleep in the marital bed?’

  ‘No. I’m sure she won’t mind.’

  ‘I’m sure she bloody will mind. It’s the bed you spent five years shagging me in – when you could be bothered.’

  ‘Well, I need it,’ he said, bullishly.

  ‘Are you moving in with Fatty? With our bed? You haven’t actually told her it’s ours, have you? You’ve just told her you’ve got a bed somewhere. Jesus!’

  Why can’t he be a normal kind of shit? Gamble his money away, find a prettier, younger bird who’s bright enough to insist on a new bed, and then cheat on her too, like all the other rotters in the world? Why does he have to find one bigger than me, ask me to organize their holidays, demand I give them my bed, and then be faithful and decent enough to move in with her a few months later? What did I do to deserve this kind of weirdness? I feel increasingly unhinged every time I speak to him, and am starting to feel I must be as mad as he always said I was.

  Yet it wouldn’t do to upset him when this agreement has yet to be rubber-stamped by the lawyers. ‘Look, I don’t want the bloody bed anyway – it’s just some cheap IKEA tat. But I doubt Fatty would want it if you explained. Why don’t you ask her, and if she wants it by all means come and pick it up. If she doesn’t, I’ll chop it up for firewood, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Can I ring you again? You know, for a chat?’

  ‘NO!’ I said, banging the phone down in the cradle.

  I went and looked at the bed, an ugly, orange pine boxy thing we’d had ever since moving in together in our first flat, about six years earlier. After we bought the house we would lie in it and talk about what kind of built-in wardrobes we wanted, and what colour the walls should be. Later I lay and cried in it, sometimes waiting for him to come home, and sometimes trying not to wake him with my tears. But the whole time, if I’m being honest, I thought the damn thing was bloody uncomfortable, and I never really liked it. Come to think of it, he’d had it at university, so his previous girlfriends had been miserable in it, too. Grabbing the car keys I drove to the nearest IKEA and bought a new, metal bedstead with knobbly bits, brought it home and put it all together.

  Rather than give in to the urge to chop Twatface’s bed up and have a bonfire while I danced around it naked, swigging whiskey, I carefully put all the bits in the back bedroom, because a bit of me knew he’d cause a fuss if he couldn’t get it back, and he was easily stupid enough to refuse to agree the financial settlement purely on the basis of a ten-year-old pine bedstead worth £150 that his girlfriend would never sleep in.

  And now that bitch thought she was going to clamber in it, did she? Well, we’d see about that. I took the slats, held together with bits of cotton, which formed the base the mattress was supposed to sit on, and pulled out two out of every three bits of wood. They’d bear her weight, but not for long. Then I dug through the bag of nuts and bolts and pulled out a few handfuls, so the damn thing couldn’t even be put together properly, and threw them in the bin. I chopped up the slats, and that evening sat by the fire, feeding them into the flames one at a time to keep the chill out of the living room, because I was trying to keep the heating bills down. ‘Loads of fun and it’s completely free,’ I told myself. ‘If he tries to shag her in that bed it’ll break.’

  Then my phone rang; it was Twatface.

  ‘Hello,’ I said. Tell me he hasn’t changed his mind, I asked the universe.

  ‘Hi. Look, you were right about the bed. Fatty doesn’t want it. So, you know, chop it up if you want.’

  I sighed.

  He went on: ‘And, er, thanks for, you know, sorting all this out. It was the right thing to do, I’m glad you rang. Anyway, goodnight.’

  He rang off and I lay there, grinding my teeth. He has no worries at all. He has a pile of money and can start a new relationship just like that. I have a hole of money, my teeth are worn down to stumps, and the thought of a boyfriend makes me break out in a cold sweat.

  At least if I make it through all this then I’m bound to be a better person, right? I at least know exactly how much money is coming in and going out every month, which I never did with him. There’s no one shouting at me about how much I spend in Sainsbury’s while simultaneously complaining the sausages aren’t organic.

  There’s just me, now. Ha, for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer. Everything is going to be a struggle, but somehow, strangely, I’m certain it’s better like this.

  DAY ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-EIGHT

  WHEN parents lie to their children, it’s with the best of intentions: Father Christmas won’t bring you a present unless you’re good; if you eat your greens you’ll grow big and strong; if you do that any more it’ll fall off. They insist none of these falsehoods are really wrong, and that white lies are perfectly acceptable so long as: a) the child will be better off believing them, or b) the adults get a giggle out of it. I was told Santa was a clean freak who would refuse to enter a messy bedroom, and on one memorable occasion was made to believe I would only get my Christm
as presents if I stood on my head and clapped my feet. I was at it for ages, while Grandad manfully kept a straight face and gave me helpful hints.

  But every lie follows a continuum: there always comes a point where it’s impossible to maintain the deception, and you find yourself in the quicksand of crushed disappointment.

  It’s the kind of realization that trains you for the disenchantments of adulthood. But alongside the kindly-meant deceptions of youth are greater untruths which are passed down the generations without being questioned, and which make you grow up slightly twisty. There’s being told that ‘big boys don’t cry’, which just sets lads up for a lifetime of emotional repression, and the belief that little girls must wear pink and play with dolls, even if the most fun they ever have is playing with their brother’s Lego. Somehow or another the message is driven into our heads that it is more important to be attractive than it is to be bright, and that pretty people are better human beings.

  Well, the gossip pages prove the best-looking people on the planet are among the most screwed-up, and Faceache tells me that almost everyone who was terribly pretty and popular at school is now fat, ugly and working somewhere grim. I think that if everyone loves you as a teenager then life seems to come easy and you never need to try; teachers mark you slightly higher, the opposite sex chases you, and consequently you learn nothing. The misfits, outsiders and dweebs, the ones who struggled with NHS glasses, acne and unrequited love, have to strive to flirt, be interesting or funny, and as such have the corners rubbed off and get a few street smarts.

  But not crying, and the colour pink, and being pretty are mere rubble around the ancient moss-covered monolith of the Greatest Lie of Childhood, a house of sod built on the pillars of You Must Find the One, Happy Ever After, and You’ll Just Know. It’s these teachings about love that are handed down via fairy tales, books and films, which mean that when you fall for someone you presume you MUST get married and it MUST last for ever, that once you’ve Found The One you can stop striving. They don’t allow for the possibility that maybe the relationship will have a finite course to run, that love is fragile, or that marriage is something you need to work at every day. Cheating is common – just open any newspaper – yet everyone blithely promises not to do it, as though by saying so you can ensure that it doesn’t happen, like saying ‘white rabbits’ to ward off bad luck. A healthier attitude might be to expect temptation – anticipate it even – work hard to overcome it, and qualify for some kind of prize if you do.

  I talk a lot about Twatface’s failings, and it’s only natural, because divorce is about as polarizing as Marmite on a magnet. It’s an attitude that is necessary for my survival, if nothing else. But I’m starting to find that what goes along with it is a greater pragmatism about matters of the heart, which means that I can see my own mistakes in a way I couldn’t when I was making them.

  We fell in love, fine, but we got married because I believed that was what you did when you loved someone, and he went along with the idea. It didn’t cross my mind that being a husband or a wife is a job, and it’s something you should only do for the rest of your life if you have the aptitude for it. Twatface plainly didn’t, but I do think he wanted to try, at first. I should have known better maybe, assessed his character a little more before tying myself to it. But I was young and stupid, and I thought that the things we had in common outweighed all the things we didn’t, and the differences just made life more interesting.

  After we got together I learned to eat tomatoes and drink dessert wine, developed a love of absinthe and a loathing for Bob Dylan, heard my ovaries tick for the first time, and became part of someone else’s family; all things I never thought likely before. Of course there’s bad stuff, too, and I also learned to distrust and fear the person you love the most.

  I never thought, for a second, that it would end. I never thought there’d be a day when he wasn’t my best friend. Yet the marriage lasted only a little over a thousand days, and while I’d argue on my deathbed he bears the greater responsibility for its demise, I know that maybe 30 or 40 per cent of the problems were down to me. I stopped doing all the things you do when you’re a girlfriend and trying to get a guy to like you: I didn’t wear make-up at weekends, I cut my hair short, couldn’t always be bothered to shave my legs, spent all my time nagging him about the things he did that I hated, and generally wasn’t much fun any more. I was miserable, but I didn’t know why, and it didn’t occur to me that he might be miserable too.

  As a result, while he might have wanted to try at first, he didn’t feel the need by the end. He stopped taking me out to dinner, stopped caring what I thought of him, wasn’t bothered if he trod on my toes. Even the class thicko could work out that the first woman who came along who was more of a laugh would turn his head.

  I realize now that the point at which the ring went on is when the work should have begun. Maybe we get it all the wrong way round, and should actually be boring and plain and dull when we meet someone, and then save up all the effort and sexy underwear for after we’ve caught their attention. Which, of course, we’d somehow have to do while looking like a spod.

  So if we both stopped working at it, who’s to blame? Who made whom miserable first? No single person or thing is at fault, but both of us and maybe neither, because when we were growing up we were filled with stories and messages which told us that when you’ve Found The One there’s nothing more to aim for beyond healthy children and old age.

  And, of course, part of the lie is that if you can dance with a guy then you are destined for each other, you’re subconsciously in sync, and it will all, magically, work out fine. If you find someone who can waltz you round the floor like Prince Charming did to Cinders then he’s The One, that’s the rule we all secretly believe. The first time I danced with Twatface was in a friend’s flat, after dinner, a couple of weeks after we got together, to an Andy Williams’ song. We were both a little drunk, but each seemed to know exactly where the other would put their feet, and I remember thinking it was just perfect. The song we danced to was played everywhere that summer, so of course it became Our Song and was the first dance at the wedding. We were drunker then, but it was still fun, except that over the following years we stopped dancing altogether, until it got to the point where we were such a bad pairing that if he took me in his arms I sighed inwardly and tried to wriggle away as quickly as possible before my toes were stamped to mush.

  Seeing as I’ve spent the past few months drinking, the only dancing I’ve done recently is barely deserving of the name. So when Fifi demanded I attend the cricket club’s Christmas party I didn’t stop to wonder if there might be dancing. Instead I donned my normal groupie uniform – short skirt plus tit top – and went with her to some dive bar in Stockwell, where two dozen handsome yet oafish louts had spent the whole day on the sauce.

  We walked into a dark and gloomy hole with a live band playing in one corner. The bar was closed off to anyone not with the cricketers, so it was kind of empty, while at the same time quite full. Half a dozen guys waved at us – the recently-turned twenty-one-year-old Porky initially looked a little perplexed on seeing me. Then I could see him thinking, ‘Oh, it’s that pissed girl’ – and Beamy got us a drink. I watched while Fi did the rounds of the boys, pecking cheeks and squeezing biceps or bums while cackling loudly. There were the normal crew of shaggers and misfits, some new faces I hadn’t seen before but who Fi seemed to know, and hardly any females in sight.

  After a couple of drinks the band kicked in with something loud and raucous and Fi and I took to the floor, and there began the longest night of dancing I’ve had since the school disco of 1988, when I won a seven-inch single for knowing all the moves to ‘Superman’ by Black Lace. I danced so long and so fervently that Fi – a professional partygoer – had to have a rest, and people started bringing me ice, which I just put in my bra. At one point I was in the middle of a circle of cricketers – Raffles, Bazzo, a bunch of others I couldn’t put names to – and danced
wildly with each of them in turn. One grabbed me and spun me round, and I noted only that he was tall before we both threw ourselves into the music, somehow managing to pull off moves you only normally see in films.

  He and I kept dancing like dervishes until the music died and the ugly lights came up, and there I was in the middle of the floor with one leg wrapped around his waist, my head thrown back, and a hand in his hair as he bent me backwards over his knee. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’m Paul.’

  Finally exhausted, I threw myself on a sofa and knocked back an icy drink. Paul joined me and said he was visiting his brother Raffles for the week and lived in Leeds. ‘That’s nice,’ I said, and squinted at him blearily while thinking he was quite cute. Then he completely blew it by firmly placing one ham-sized hand on my thigh, uninvited, and making me feel like a pig carcass on a butcher’s hook. I was offended, inexplicably so, seeing as I had just been literally wrapped around him, and to shake off the hand I stood up, swallowed a burp and dragged him back on to the floor.

  By 2 a.m. my feet were killing me, and I’d spent maybe four hours spinning around in heels, throwing myself over every cricketer in the room, but mainly my new pal Paul. On my way back from the loos Fi announced she was off in a cab, and I told her to wait for me while I said goodbye to my dance partner. With a coat in one hand I tracked him down to the bar and said, ‘Well, ’bye then, nice to meet you,’ and gave him a peck on the cheek. He tried to grab me for a deeper kiss but I ducked it and headed out to the taxi.

  ‘Sooo,’ said Fi as she leaned back in the seat and we rumbled up to the Old Kent Road and home, ‘why are you here?’

  ‘Well, Dad says they found me under a gooseberry bush . . .’ I said, thinking only of my aching toes. God, I’m getting old.

  ‘I mean, why aren’t you goin’ ’ome with that faberluss man?’

  ‘I can’t do that, Fi, I’ve only just met him. Besides I’m still married.’