It's Not Me, It's You

by Mhairi McFarlane

  Delia lay in the avocado bath and braced her toes on the taps, as she’d done a thousand times in her youth, looking at her burgundy nail varnish. She always wore dark red on her pale feet; it reminded her of a childhood fairy story about drops of blood on snow.

  The house was quiet: Ralph was on a shift and her parents were at their weekly pub quiz.

  In her reflection in the plastic-framed mirror at the end of the tub, she could see the hollows of her eyes as charcoal smudges, after flannelling off her black eyeliner. She’d worn make-up like it for so long, even she thought she looked peculiar without it, like a newborn mole.

  Hmmm. Not so newly born any more. Not long till thirty-four. Delia hadn’t wanted to think about this until now, but there was something about being naked that forced her into stark honesty.

  Here was the thought that had buzzed like a wasp at the edge of her thoughts, ever since the revelation about Celine.

  If she wanted kids, Paul was still probably the safer option than re-launching herself back into the dating scene in her mid-thirties, hoping to find another solid prospect.

  Even if Delia met someone else soon – and this seemed unlikely – she had to factor in the time to get to know and be sure of him, before taking the step into parenthood. She hated to give in to outmoded ideas about being a single woman of a certain age – no choice should be made in desperation, or it wasn’t a choice at all. She’d be the first to tell a friend she had all the time in the world. But you said things like that to make those without a choice feel better. If she was honest, her situation as it stood felt perilous.

  As she and Paul discussed the other night, where would you even start, dating now? Deeply unfairly, at thirty-five, he was still young enough to be the cool rather than creepy older guy to a twenty-four-year-old. He could wait till she was, say, thirty and ready to be thinking about a family.

  Delia didn’t have similar leeway.

  She’d been out of circulation so long, the mindset required to make polite conversation over a gin and tonic with a stranger you might want to sleep with seemed utterly alien and overwhelming.

  Before Paul, she’d pinballed from boyfriend to boyfriend without ever having to consider the getting of them. They’d always been there when required, and sometimes when not required. Modern dating, it needed practice – it wasn’t something you could start from cold and expect instant success. You weren’t without baggage, and neither were your prospectives.

  Emma was long-term single, with the odd dishonourable exception of posh, brusque men she met through work and had brief, brusque flings with. Delia had always shivered slightly at the brutality of it all. Emma had been dumped a couple of times by social media, seeing Harry or Olly with someone else in a ski resort selfie. (Though Delia put these cruelties down partly to Emma’s self-confessed questionable taste in men.)

  Emma had been looking for her Paul online and through friends-of-friends all her life, and had yet to encounter one.

  Then there were further hurdles, if Delia miraculously hit it off with a potential in a drink at The Baltic. New person sex. Gulp.

  Delia looked down at her body.

  She hadn’t needed to assess its aesthetic value quite so bluntly before: it did its job, and it was loved. She might want a flatter stomach, but as long as there were A-line skirts, creamy blue cheese and Paul around, it wasn’t a priority.

  Now she wondered at what restoration work might be needed before it could be opened to the public again. She gazed despondently at the white orbs of her breasts, bobbing in the water. In clothes, they got a fair bit of interest. Double D-cups were popular enough with menfolk.

  However, cosmetic surgery had come in during Delia’s decade off the market. Frighteningly, she had seen the word ‘saggy’ cruelly hurled at women she thought of as aspirationally pert. A larger chest size inevitably meant she had some ‘hang’, when out of a bra. The thought of pinging the clasp on one and being assessed by someone she didn’t know all that well was frightening.

  Delia shivered: Emma had once been hard-dumped right after the first time with someone. Imagine that. Even Emma’s buoyant demeanour had taken a bad knock.

  Delia wasn’t thin, or sculpted. She had little silvery shoals of stretchmarks on her hips. And she had hair.

  Would being a natural redhead startle some? Given that extreme waxes were the near-norm? She used to get teased for having a Ronald McDonald wig in the games changing rooms at school. She didn’t fancy discovering the prejudice was alive and kicking, two decades later, right when she and what she could quaintly call a new lover were about to get down to it.

  A new lover – it seemed impossible. Paul and Delia. Delia and Paul. They belonged to each other. Yet he’d loaned himself out.

  She added more scalding hot water to the bath, to make up for how cold she felt.

  Was this how it worked, coming to terms with an affair – like passing through the stages of a death: anger, denial, bargaining, acceptance?

  Yes, a bereavement was exactly what it was. Accepting that the old relationship with Paul, the one where he’d never be unfaithful and she had unshakeable belief in him, was dead. If they got back together, it would be a new relationship. Many features of the old, but not the same. Realising that gave her much sadness, but some peace.

  What if she went to London? Got away from all this and gained some perspective with distance? Only that would mean becoming unemployed. As much as she was indifferent towards her job, Delia couldn’t quite countenance it.

  Delia dipped her head under the water and let her hair float in a warm halo of snakes around her skull, thinking of herself as a modern-day Ophelia, submerged in Radox pine bubbles. Her feelings for Paul hadn’t vanished over the course of one ugly evening.

  She could see a time she would go back to him. She also knew she had a giant lump of stone inside her stomach, a dead hard weight of hurt and resentment that would have to dissolve, slowly, until she could feel love towards him again.

  Delia didn’t know how or when or if she’d be able to rid herself of it. It seemed a big enough challenge to have admitted that she would try.

  ‘We’ve had a major security breach and this Peshwari Naan pest has ratcheted up to Threat Level: Amber,’ Roger barked at Delia, causing everyone to look at them both, obviously wondering how words in their native language could be strung together to form something so incomprehensible. ‘There have been some developments.’

  Delia looked at him blankly.

  ‘Are you, or are you not meant to be updating and monitoring our Twitter feed?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, bewildered.

  ‘When did you last tweet?’

  ‘Erm, an hour or so ago?’

  ‘Then log on to our account,’ Roger said, leaning over Delia and heavy-breathing decaf Caffe Hag down the neckline of her sweater. He adopted the hand-on-hip lean-in pose, with the self-importance of a security spook briefing the POTUS at a COBRA meeting.

  Delia obliged, feeling a significant prickle of fear. Should she mention the Naan emails yet?

  She brought up the council’s timeline and instantly clenched her jaw to keep the muscles in her neck from spasming in laughter.

  It was full of fake tweets.

  Comrades! It’s Awards Season Again! Please nominate in the following categories …

  Ugliest Planning Decision

  Most Harrowing Public Toilet Experience

  Hottest Councillor

  Best Dogging Spot

  Delia said: ‘Oh dear,’ and cleared her throat. Do not laugh, do not laugh …

  ‘You hadn’t seen this?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Delia said, hastily moving to the Edit Account Settings section. ‘I’ll change the password right now.’

  ‘We’ve been hacked?’ Roger said, pushing his science teacher glasses up his nose.

  No. I thought it might be fun to pretend the council has an award for Most Specific Graffiti.

  ‘How do we know it’s Peshwar
i Naan?’ Delia said.

  ‘Same M.O.’ Roger took the mouse from Delia and scrolled down the page. ‘The fictionalised quotes.’

  Coun. Janet Walworth said: ‘The awards are a chance for you to tell us which of our policies really twat you off.’

  ‘This has never happened before. That password change may hold him off for now but in light of this, I wonder how many vulnerabilities the system has. I will put our I.T. team on it. Now, please take a look at what’s happening over at the Chronicle.’

  Roger was absolutely loving this, Delia realised.

  Delia pulled up the Chronicle site and under Roger’s guidance, put ‘city council’ into its search engine. The first story that came up was about an unemployment seminar.

  Delia scrolled the comments, not expecting to see anything, but there, third down was Peshwari (did this person really have a job?).

  Hey guys: got to let you know that the Powers That Be and pen pushers up at City Hall are on to me. Guess some people don’t like The Sheeple to see with their own eyes. I’ve been asked to ‘mind my manners’. Well, this truther won’t be silenced! The chief executive sits on a throne of lies. And signs off expenses for big platters of Ferrero Rocher at receptions. This genie is OUT of the BOTTLE.

  Roger’s lips moved as he read the words, and cogs turned. He looked at Delia with scarily maniacal eyes, like a Blue Meanie in Yellow Submarine.

  ‘Thoughts?’

  Delia had very little time to decide what to do. In the brief window afforded for calculation, she concluded that playing completely dumb was not going to work. The Naan was describing her approach, right after Roger had asked her to make it.

  ‘I had … opened a dialogue,’ she said.

  ‘How?’ Roger said. The air of menace could be cut with a potato peeler and Delia knew every single one of her colleagues were watching the show avidly.

  ‘On email. I …’

  ‘Forward me the correspondence!’ Roger bristled. Literally bristled. He looked like a Quentin Blake illustration: scribbly hair, beard made of hay, thunderous brow, pinprick eyes, magnified behind thick, square teacher glasses.

  He stalked back to his screen to await the evidence and Delia felt sick.

  The playful exchange between her and Naan only looked acceptable on two conditions: 1) she had time to present it carefully and sympathetically and 2) Naan had indeed backed off.

  Given neither applied, she was fucked.

  She looked at the discussion again and tried to tell herself, well at least you’re not outright saying HAHAHA GOOD ONE STICK IT TO THE OLD SCROTES. She didn’t think she came off as issuing the sort of schoolmarm admonishments that Roger’s wrath demanded though, to put it mildly.

  Delia hit forward with the heavy heart of the condemned woman and prefaced it:

  Hi Roger. As you can see, I am making the first steps in gaining his trust here.

  It was a craven ‘Please do not bollock me’ plea. She also offered a brief explanation of staking out Brewz and Beanz. It didn’t really help Delia’s cause that the whole interaction started with the Naan spotting her, not vice versa. Or that Roger’s testicular fortitude as a boss was alluded to.

  Some extremely tense minutes ticked past. Roger was hunched over his screen, Delia trying not to look over at him.

  Ann said: ‘Was that to do with the things you kept laughing at?’ loud enough that Roger’s head jerked up.

  What an absolutely traitorous cow, Delia thought. Ann probably only found natural disasters and jihadist attacks funny.

  The appearance at her shoulder took less than fifteen minutes. It felt as if Roger appeared with a gust of icy air and the opening chords of ‘Enter Sandman’.

  ‘Follow me,’ he said.

  Roger took Delia into an airless deserted office down the corridor, full of filing cabinets and an old whiteboard, with FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES = ACTION? -> FACILITATION marker-penned on it.

  ‘Any idea what I want to talk to you about?’

  ‘Peshwari Naan?’ Delia said, hoping her tone didn’t sound insubordinate.

  ‘I’d like you to explain the rationale behind the informal correspondence you’ve entered into with someone who is a declared enemy of this organisation.’

  Oh for goodness’ sake, why did Roger always have to talk as if he was in a Tom Clancy? The battle fleet will never be ready!

  ‘I was winning his trust by speaking to him in his own language,’ Delia said.

  ‘The impression you gave the Naan – and myself – was that you found the tenor of his contribution acceptable. No doubt emboldening him to commit his latest infraction.’

  He was officially the Naan now, like the Zodiac or the King of Pop.

  ‘I had to be careful about steaming in and saying “You can’t do that,” because technically, he can do that. I thought the softly-softly approach would work better.’

  ‘We’ve seen how well it worked. Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough, Ms Moss, but as a representative of the council you were not expected to engage in ribald badinage and casually ask he “tone it down a bit”.’

  This was so unfair. Roger had said: any means, foul or fair.

  ‘I don’t think he would’ve responded to a simple cease and desist request or I would have made it.’

  Roger’s nostrils flared.

  ‘You could’ve come to me at several points to have me sign off on what was best to do. Instead you saw the trust I placed in you as licence to indulge in sophomoric sniggering and inflame the situation further. Do you have any idea how this is going to look when I have to explain it to Councillor Grocock?’

  And there it was. Roger had a flea in his ear, so he was bloody well going to pass the flea on to Delia. Only by this time, the flea had become the size of a walrus.

  ‘Do we have to say we’ve been in touch at all?’ Delia said.

  Roger went puce.

  ‘Yes, we do. Your attitude towards what constitutes proper disclosure is extremely worrying. I’m giving you a written warning and it will go on your file,’ Roger said.

  ‘That’s not fair,’ Delia said. ‘I was working undercover with special rules …’

  ‘You were not undercover when he contacted you on your email here! Do you have any idea how he knew you were looking for him?’

  Delia miserably shook her head.

  ‘Your achievements are exactly nil. Game, set and match to the Naan.’

  It occurred to Delia that the Naan might not have finished making her look bad. The Twitter account hack signalled unlocking a new mischief achievement level.

  When Delia got back to her desk, she started as she saw she had an email from the Naan waiting for her. She felt considerable anger towards this invisible architect of her misery, and had absolutely no freedom to say so.

  Hey: what if Councillor Hammond meant his bleached bumhole looked like a RUBY grapefruit? Make you think.

  She hit delete.

  Delia doubted her day could get any worse.

  Then mid-afternoon, everyone uncharacteristically got out of their chairs. Delia glanced around in confusion.

  ‘Fire drill?’ she asked Mark.

  ‘Team-building thing,’ he mumbled, apologetically.

  Delia noticed he was sheepish because she was getting the sotto voce tone reserved for someone in trouble. She had been branded with The Dark Mark, and no one wanted to be seen colluding and fraternising with her for the time being. It was vaguely ridiculous.

  Roger might favour a degree of quivering melodrama – Delia wondered if it was his way of offsetting a very quiet life of chess and golf – but she didn’t see why proper adults had to play along.

  They trooped down to a meeting room on the next floor. There was another whiteboard at one end, this time with a list of commandments, an agenda for discussion. (No.4 was ‘Overcoming Diversity’, which Delia was pretty sure was meant to be ‘adversity’, but she wasn’t going to mention it.)

  Once they’d all been herded in the doorway, a woman in
a plum two-piece skirt suit with a badge bearing the name LINDA addressed them all. She had the air of worn down but persistent jollity that could only have come from twenty years ploughing the ever-decreasing returns of the regional training circuit.

  They couldn’t sit down because the desks had been dragged around into a formation that Delia couldn’t fathom, with one sat on its own in the middle.

  ‘Good afternoon! Are we happy campers?’

  Muttering.

  ‘Oh dear, that’s not very upbeat. I said, ARE we all HAPPY campers?!’

  Slightly louder mumbling.

  ‘We’re here today to run a workshop that’s going to leave you all with an invigorated sense of what you do, and who you do it with!’

  Delia glanced sidelong at Ann. She didn’t want an invigorated sense of Ann.

  ‘First up, the purpose of the Table Fall exercise is to create a sense of trust in co-workers.’

  Oh God no, they were doing the ‘falling backwards and being caught’ trust thing? Had the city council finally got wind of this decade-old fad?

  ‘This is about how we support each other and co-operate to create a real physical sense of togetherness as a team.’

  Delia didn’t want that either.

  ‘Who would like to go first, and win extra bravery points?’ Linda twinkled merrily, in the manner of all perky sadists.

  Delia’s colleague Jules put her hand up.

  ‘Right, so if we have the volunteer step onto this chair, and everyone else stands like so, with arms outstretched and linked, to create a net …’ Roger said, suddenly Linda’s helper. Delia betted he’d done that to distract from the fact he wouldn’t be doing it, and risking them all dropping him.

  Delia reluctantly joined the group who’d made a hammock with overlapped arms and winced at how embarrassing this was going to be. She was in a flared cotton skirt, what if it flew up when she flew down? She had a phantom shiver at the memory of aggressive, knicker-flashing birthday bumps at primary school. In fact, this situation bore uncanny resemblance – the pretence of positivity masking intent to humiliate, with no option to decline.