It's Not Me, It's You

by Mhairi McFarlane

‘What do you mean? Sad cheating? Like if you cry afterwards, it’s OK?’

  ‘I mean,’ Adam found a cushion under his backside and moved it behind his head, ‘when I’ve cheated, it was because I wasn’t happy and wanted out.’

  ‘Oh, so you’ve cheated,’ Delia said. ‘Now it’s coming out.’

  Freya’s reference to Adam’s vigorous activity levels returned to her brain.

  ‘I’ve never pretended to be perfect myself. In fact, it’s precisely because I’m not that I can offer you some valuable insights. Yes, I’ve cheated, to sabotage something that wasn’t working, when I didn’t have the stones to finish it. But I’ve never been unfaithful to a long-term girlfriend who I still wanted to be with, and expected her to forgive and forget.’

  ‘Maybe Paul doesn’t want to be with me and this was his way of escaping.’

  ‘He does want to be with you,’ Adam said, dismissively. ‘He’s in his thirties, I’m sure he knows there aren’t many Delias out there. But he wants you on his own terms. He saw the chance of some extra fun and he took it. And why did he take it?’

  Delia said nothing, surprised at being described as a scarce resource, a valuable ingredient in a life, like saffron. It wasn’t how she thought Adam saw her at all. A ginger tragi-mess oddity in granny clothes, would’ve been more like it.

  ‘… Because he knew you wouldn’t leave him.’

  ‘I have left him.’

  ‘You haven’t though, have you? You’re punishing him and then you’ll take him back. Or that’s what you said last night …’

  Delia was at a serious disadvantage in a debate where she had no idea how much Adam knew.

  ‘Mark my words, one day, he will take the chance again. I also doubt this Celine is the first time.’

  Delia’s self-consciousness twanged and her temper broke.

  ‘God, this is really uncalled for! How can you possibly know that?’

  ‘I’m saying: ten years of good behaviour, a meaningless fling and then back to fidelity is not a pattern of offending I recognise.’

  ‘You seem pretty confident to analyse a complicated situation and a complete stranger from a distance.’

  ‘I’m a good judge of character,’ Adam said. ‘It’s not that complicated, is it? Bottom line is, this is not a guy who’s ever going to stop taking you for granted.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Delia said, hollowly. ‘Just what the hungover woman needed.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Adam said, brightly, adjusting the cushion again, ‘I felt it needed saying.’

  ‘In the end,’ Delia said, chest tight, ‘your reasoning might be sound, but it comes down to loving him. I love him, so I can’t just walk away.’

  ‘But he doesn’t love you enough. You can’t do it for both of you. It doesn’t work like that.’

  Delia sat bolt upright. ‘He doesn’t love me enough? You really said that?’

  A pause.

  ‘Not from what you’ve told me, he doesn’t.’

  ‘Thanks for that completely brutal, unnecessary thing to say.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Adam looked startled. He sat up too, registering the alarm in her voice. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘What could possibly upset me about telling me my boyfriend doesn’t love me?’

  ‘Enough, I said enough,’ Adam said.

  ‘Have you got any idea how cruel that is? I mean, my brother Ralph has no tact, and he wouldn’t say that.’

  Adam watched as Delia leapt up and grabbed for her bag and coat. ‘Come on, don’t storm off.’

  ‘I’m not “storming off”, I’m leaving because I don’t want to listen to any more vicious things about my hopeless life.’

  ‘I didn’t say you were hopeless! You seem like a good girl and you’re being taken advantage of …’

  ‘A good girl?!’

  ‘Argh, woman, sorry!’

  ‘You’re such a superior hey, little lady, let me tell you how the real world works type of … sexist southerner,’ Delia spat, not quite knowing why she chose this moment to go feminist and Geordie on his ass, though goodness knows he deserved it.

  ‘In both work and personal matters, you have an uneasy relationship with the truth,’ Adam said, expression hardening. He looked more disappointed than angry.

  ‘And you …’ Delia summoned all her wits to sass him, and her dehydrated brain failed her miserably, ‘Are a TWAT.’

  Minutes later she was doing the walk of shame down Clapham High Street, among bright-eyed Waitrose advert families out for Saturday brunch, thinking Adam West was an awful human being – apart from the fetching Coke and Nurofen thing.

  She also had a sense there was something she didn’t know, from the night before, amid all the gruesome things she did know of.

  Something she’d forgotten, and needed to remember.

  ‘Then he said he betted Celine wasn’t Paul’s first indiscretion!’ Delia concluded, indignantly.

  For a second, there was a flicker in Emma’s composure, and Delia saw she agreed with Adam. Adam West couldn’t be right. He just couldn’t. He was all that was wrong. It must be because Emma fancied him. Yep, that was it.

  Emma was in her White Company grey marl pyjamas on the giant sofa, having returned from Rome in the dead of Saturday night, looking wan. She regaled Delia on Sunday morning with torrid stories of the rigidly spreadsheeted hen do, where every chunk of time was accounted for.

  ‘3.30 p.m. to 4 p.m., “Relaxing at Hen HQ”. Thanks for saying we can have a half hour break if we want to! It was like one of those Tough Mudder assault course things with the sweatbands, only at least they last a day, you’re paying people to shout at you and you lose weight.’

  Emma bought Delia a bottle of Aperol and a glow-in-the-dark plastic Virgin Mary.

  ‘The other bridesmaid India said I was trivialising a religion and I said oh I didn’t realise you were showing proper respect when you were taking selfies making peace signs outside the Vatican.’

  Delia laughed and gave thanks she wasn’t on the ‘Hen Don’t’, as Emma called it.

  Emma perked up and whooped with delight at the sight of the food Delia had loaded the kitchen with.

  ‘These look like … homemade chicken nuggets?’ Emma said, with awe in her voice, as if discovering a knobbly lump of Inca gold in her fridge.

  ‘I made a batch for Ralph last week and thought you’d like them too. I’m experimenting with a buttermilk and Ritz cracker crusting.’

  ‘Handsome. Please never leave.’

  They’d taken a picnic to the sofa.

  ‘What’s that?’ Emma said, as Delia moved an envelope and a set of pictures cut out of magazines.

  ‘Oh …’ Delia found herself strangely shy. ‘It’s from Paul. He’s sending me things to remind me of our past. We had a conversation once where I got Jean Cocteau, Jacques Cousteau and Jean Michel Jarre mixed up.’

  Paul was choosing wisely, and wittily. They’d been on holiday, a village in Greece full of whitewashed villas with cobalt shutters and splashes of amethyst bougainvillea. Paul had concluded: ‘Please, please don’t bring the Cocteau Twins into this or I may not cope,’ while physically holding his sides. They’d laughed till tears ran down their faces and Delia had thought how Paul was her perfect foil, and she was his.

  ‘Nice gesture,’ Emma said, with an appraising look that Delia returned steadily, keeping her face neutral.

  ‘You told Adam about Paul?’ Emma said now, of the Adam outrage.

  ‘Apparently I ran my mouth when I was out of it. So embarrassing. He shouldn’t have been talking to me about personal things, when he knew I was in no state.’

  They both paused, as it was obvious it wasn’t possible to safely convict Adam on an episode where Delia had zero memory.

  For all they knew, Adam was saying ‘Mmm, hmmm, anyway …’ as Delia shrieked about Paul’s penile crimes the whole way up the stairs.

  ‘It wasn’t his place to say that about Paul,’ Emma said, and again Delia noticed t
he political choice of words.

  Could this be true? That with manifold opportunities, Paul had fallen from the wagon once or twice before? He’d mentioned women occasionally, and Delia thought that was a sure sign there was nothing to worry about.

  Was Paul that very smartest of liars, those who understand that to make something invisible, you hide it in plain sight? Delia was now dredging the ocean floor of memory to see what debris floated up. Hmmm. The leggy wine merchant woman who Paul laughed was trying to flirt her way into a contract, a few years ago? Becky, was it?

  She felt like a detective assigned to a cold-crimes unit, reopening investigations into incidents previously classified as non-suspicious.

  She recalled Aled being slightly odd about that Becky, actually. And when Delia asked Paul why, he said: ‘I think Aled’s got a bit of a soft spot. Nothing for Gina to worry about. You know what they’re like as a couple though, they’re not like us. If she got wind it’d be a big deal.’

  They’re not like us. If Delia had a time machine, and confronted Past Delia on why Becky was no threat, Past Delia would laugh in Present Delia’s face. One of her pieces of immutable evidence would be: Aled would tell me if Paul was playing away.

  Or maybe he’d tell Paul to knock it on the head, and sit there looking deeply uncomfortable when her name came up.

  Delia shook off thoughts of painful imponderables of the past and returned to the painful ponderables of now.

  ‘This was after Adam manhandled me into a taxi and took me back to his place. Ugh. The people I’ve got involved with, Emma. I’m glad I met Steph or I’d think I was in the sewer with only rats for company.’

  ‘Although,’ Emma began, hesitantly, ‘what Adam did was quite nice, though? Taking you home?’

  Delia wasn’t ready to agree. Taking that at face value, she felt, was naiveté and she’d no doubt figure out his motive at a later date. I mean, it felt cynical given all he’d done, but for all Delia knew he had tried it on with her. The fact that she had no memory equally meant she couldn’t entirely exonerate him. Caution was advisable. He didn’t make sense to her and amid these contradictory pieces of evidence, she needed to hold on to the simple sincerity of her initial dislike.

  ‘He’ll have weighed up that it had something in it for him. That’s how he operates. He probably wanted to infuriate Kurt.’

  Delia also hadn’t forgiven him for spoiling her first flush of enthusiasm for London, and Twist & Shout. Before that bloody folder mistake, she was enjoying herself.

  Emma nodded.

  ‘Your boss sounds a total scumsock.’

  Delia could only agree. She thought he was a flirt before, but now she saw he might be dangerously predatory. She’d never get pissed around him again, that was for sure.

  ‘I don’t want to go to work tomorrow.’

  ‘You and me both,’ Emma said. ‘Inbox of doom.’

  Delia resolved to manage the Kurt situation. She’d got too drunk, from now on she’d be on her guard. Surely he wouldn’t try again, now he knew he’d get nowhere with her? And it’d be dropping Steph in it to deal with Kurt alone. No, onwards and sort-of upwards. If she got enough experience at Twist & Shout, it’d stand her in better stead for moving somewhere else.

  Nevertheless, Delia had forgotten Sunday night blue dreads were the worst thing in the world.

  Newcastle City Council had served up a lot of dull days, but not many terrible ones. Which was one of the reasons she’d stayed so long in that job: not actively bad was easier than chasing the dream of actually any good in your working life, and ending up with often awful.

  However, there was a little bright spark in the dark of a long night: an email from the Naan. Delia was still adjusting to thinking of him as Joe. She’d scanned in pages from The Fox, using a printer Emma had left in the box under the stairs. Delia had thought she’d be shy, but as the pages stacked up, she thought: they look good! They look proper.

  Delia, The Fox. I love it. I absolutely *love* it. It’s brilliant. You’ve never done anything with it? You’ve not put it on show anywhere? Why not? J

  Hi Joe! Thank you! … Fear. Dx

  I don’t see what there is to be afraid of. Jx

  … Nor do I, any more. Dx

  Wellokaythen. Jx

  A name came to her: Fantastic Miss Fox. What about putting the comic online? And seeing if anyone asked, as Ralph once did – ‘what happens next’?

  Delia’s nerves mounted as she walked the now-familiar wide streets of Charing Cross. Past the Foyles where she sometimes wasted half an hour at lunchtime, towards the building where she mysteriously never saw another soul other than those in her own company …

  What was she walking into at Twist & Shout this morning? A bear trap? Kurt was a lot like a bear himself, an Antipodean grizzly. Perhaps Delia was like that poor man in the documentary who was convinced he could make pals of grizzlies, and ended up being turned into a mixed kebab.

  Her phone pinged with a text.

  Delia, I’m going to call you in a sex. Please answer, it’s important I talk to you before you’re in the office. Ax

  PS SEC I hate auto correct/Freud

  A kiss? This oily sardine was sending her electronic kisses now? And right on cue, her phone began to ring.

  ‘Ah, you answered! Morning.’

  ‘I didn’t have much choice. What do you want, Adam?’

  ‘Listen. Kurt’s probably going to ask you about where you went on Friday.’

  ‘Oh, so now you’re admitting we were seen together?!’

  Minutes before Delia had to walk into the room with Kurt, he coughs the truth. Bloody Adam bloody West.

  ‘I don’t think we were, but you can never be sure and he’ll naturally be suspicious.’

  Delia’s medium-level stomach turmoil became a faster spin cycle.

  ‘It’s in both our interests that he doesn’t know. When he asks you, say you saw me leave entwined with Freya. She’ll back this up if he talks to her.’

  Hah, I bet she will, Delia thought.

  ‘… Please do use this line if possible, because it’s cost me a hell of a lot of grief to get Freya onside.’

  Delia felt some guilt at causing a domestic row, in her rescue.

  ‘I didn’t mean to upset your girlfriend.’

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ Adam said, with emphasis.

  ‘Oh yes. She said you’d slept with everyone,’ Delia said, also with emphasis, enjoying wielding a small piece of revenge.

  A short silence and Adam said, tersely: ‘Freya does my PR.’

  What was the thing? The thing she needed to remember?

  ‘OK, I’ll say you left with Freya. You should be a couple, you know. My gran has a saying: when God makes ’em, he pairs ’em.’

  ‘Ack. Stop it,’ Adam said. She could sense him grimace. Delightful role reversal. ‘Another thing … I did go too far with what I said on Saturday morning. Please accept my apology.’

  Delia made a ‘hmph’ noise.

  ‘Never change careers to become a counsellor, will you.’

  Adam laughed with genuine warmth rather than cackly snark.

  ‘Fair point. Dougie’s choco Crunchy Nut Cornflakes made a noisy return, by the way. It was sheer hubris, he was only at the Lucozade Sport stage at best. I thought you’d want to know.’

  Delia laughed, despite herself.

  ‘Chocolate milk on Crunchy Nut Cornflakes is a serious sugar hit. I’m surprised he wasn’t juddering.’

  ‘Oh yeah. Dougie’s eating habits fully support Scottish stereotypes. He’d try to put me in batter if I stayed still long enough. He refries leftover KFC.’

  ‘Sounds like my brother Ralph. He’s been known to pour Bird’s custard into a brioche hot dog bun. He says the egg in brioche makes it like a bread and butter pudding.’

  ‘Dear God. That’s some next-level shit.’

  Why was Delia chatting to Adam? Ah: trying to distract herself from the hubbub of her nerves. He was surprisin
gly easy to talk to, and she wondered how many people had noted this trait, right before he wooed them into their downfall. That said, she couldn’t see how swapping ‘food mourn’ tales mattered. And given she’d blapped about her broken relationship while mentally absent on booze, there wasn’t much point trying to maintain a stiff upper lip.

  ‘… Did your brother have a nice time when he was down, by the way? Madame Tussauds, wasn’t it?’

  Adam obviously did that well-brought-up boy thing of remembering details and making polite inquiries.

  ‘He did, thanks. Ralph especially liked Dr Crippen. He said he reminded him of the chief fryer at the chip shop where he works.’

  Delia deliberately put that detail in, to see if Adam would take the chance to mock her brother.

  ‘One of the great homeopaths of all time, Dr Crippen, among stiff competition. Woah, and Ralph has access to a deep-fat fryer? Dougie would be in hog heaven. Don’t suppose he likes gaming?’

  ‘Does Ralph like computer games?! He lives for them.’

  ‘This is spooky. Dougie’s moved into the fantasy ones. He’s currently trying to drink the magic drool of the grey owl of Gahoole, or something. We should’ve hooked the two of them up. Sounds like we’d soon both be buying hats for the wedding.’

  Delia laughed again. She didn’t think a character like Adam would be certified safe to be around a gentle Ralph. That said, Dougie did seem in the same genre as her brother: not the kind of merciless show-offs she thought Adam West would associate with.

  Delia said goodbye in safe distance of the office, and walked in feeling surprisingly bolstered by the conversation: she was cornered, but she had a plan.

  Kurt arrived only minutes after her, BlackBerry clamped to ear. (Delia had remarked on his choice of BlackBerry, instead of iPhone. ‘You can’t properly encrypt communications on an iPhone. Obama doesn’t have an iPhone.’ Kurt’s explanations often made Delia more confused than if she’d left the thing unknown.)

  ‘… Oh fucking hell, what a mess. Where is she? St Barts? OK. There in twenty,’ Kurt said, before turning to Delia and Steph.

  ‘Marvyn Le Roux’s managed to perforate someone’s bowel by messing up a knife-throwing stunt, the complete idiot. I need to get down there and make sure his victim doesn’t talk to anyone. You OK to hold the fort?’