Straight Talking

by Jane Green

  At which point the couple on the next table, the couple who had obviously been together for so long they had run out of conversation and had to rely on people like us at neighboring tables to provide their entertainment in restaurants, giggled.

  I could feel my face flaming up, furious at feeling humiliated over something so lovely. I turned, so angry I was almost spitting, “You obviously don’t have a sex life or you wouldn’t be listening in to other people’s. Your boyfriend ought to take you home and fuck you stupid, maybe it would spice your boring bloody life up a bit.”

  She was shocked. The stupid girl looked like a goldfish, with her mouth just hanging open, and her boyfriend struggled for something to say. My eyes were probably flashing red, and I was lucky I wasn’t hit or something, but the bloke was a wimp, and he just looked at his girlfriend and said, “We’re going.”

  I turned back to Simon, and what was the sod doing? Laughing. He was laughing so hard there were tears streaming down his face and he had to take his glasses off.

  “You’re amazing, Anastasia,” he finally managed to gasp. “I’ve never met a woman like you. Shit, you showed those poor boring bastards. She’s probably never even had an orgasm, poor cow. If she’d been any more anal she would have had to order Ex-Lax, never mind a decaf cappuccino.”

  He wiped his eyes and stretched his hand over the table. “Jesus, woman,” he said with a grin, “I could fall in love with you.”

  I’ve heard it before and I’ll probably hear it a million times again, but there was something in his matter-of-fact manner, that he was smiling as he said it, that he wasn’t taking himself seriously, that made me believe in him, that made me believe that wishes do come true after all.

  3

  We may all belong to the sisterhood, my girlfriends and I, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to make an effort. Today’s Saturday, our day for lunch, and I’m still trying to decide what to wear.

  You think it doesn’t matter what I wear? Well, we may all think the sun shines out of each other’s proverbial asses, but we’re a glamorous crowd, and I can’t let the side down, can I?

  Navy leggings, a caramel jacket with big patch pockets and a belt, and flat caramel loafers. I sit at my dressing table brushing my hair, and pout at my reflection, ever so slightly sucking in my cheeks between my teeth, to give me perfect cheekbones.

  Looking at myself now I know I’m attractive, Jesus, I’m more than that, I’m stunning, and I don’t understand it, I really don’t understand why I haven’t got a man. But then that’s the basic problem with being a woman, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter how pretty, stunning, or strikingly attractive you are, even when you look in the mirror and know you look great, meet a handsome bloke and you’re convinced he’ll see through the makeup to the fat awkward kid lurking just beneath the surface.

  But today’s a good hair day, a good makeup day. That fake tan worked, and I’m a lovely golden brown, not too fake though, just a nice healthy glow. I’m ready to take on the world, as long as there are only women in it.

  As usual I’m the first one to arrive. Is this my television training? Why the hell am I always on time, early usually, when everyone else is always twenty minutes late? I should know by now, I should time my arrivals later, but I can’t, I get panicky if I think I’m going to be even two minutes late, I’ve almost got into fights with drivers on the road who are pootling along like goddamned pensioners.

  Well, of course I suffer from road rage, did you really expect anything less? Wankers, cunts, fuckwits, the words stream from my frothing lips when I’m in a hurry. Every now and then, when I’ve calmed down, I worry about it, but I always keep the doors locked, ever since someone tried to wrench it open to swing at me. Fuckwit.

  Mel’s first to arrive. Shit, I adore Mel. I met her just before I met Simon, through another friend I don’t see anymore, and I have to say I wasn’t crazy about her. Mel’s not like the rest of us. She drives around in a car affectionately known as the shitmobile—a filthy beaten up Renault 5 that smells like an ashtray on wheels.

  Mel doesn’t care about clothes, about money, about appearances, and although I respect that, I can’t help but think that if she cared a little more she’d look a hell of a lot better.

  She’s not unattractive, Mel, or at least she wasn’t, when we first met, but she’s put on masses of weight, and her dark curly hair usually looks like it needs a bloody good brush, with about a gallon of John Frieda’s Frizz Ease serum dumped on it. I thought she wasn’t good enough, I was caught up in the superficiality that comes with being successful at an age when you’re too young to know any better.

  I looked with disdain at Mel’s Marks & Spencer clothes, her haphazard life, and I decided she wasn’t good enough to be my friend. How stupid could I have been? When I hit rock bottom, when Simon left, Mel spent hours with me, day and night. I used to phone her at three A.M., when I couldn’t sleep, when I’d wake up with tear-stained pillows, and she’d come over, she’d leave her boyfriend sleeping and she’d tiptoe out and talk me through.

  She’s a therapist, Mel, the best person in the world to pour your troubles out to, but naturally Mel’s more screwed up than anyone I know. She’s brilliant, just brilliant at sorting out other people’s lives, but hasn’t got a clue when it comes to her own.

  As soon as she walks in I can see something’s wrong, and my heart sinks. I try to be as giving and understanding as she is with me, but a side of me loses patience. A side of me can’t understand why, if she’s so unhappy, she doesn’t just get out.

  “Daniel,” I say with a sigh, and a hint of impatience I can’t keep out of my voice. “What’s he done now?”

  “He doesn’t want to come with me next weekend,” she says, dumping her ethnic tote sack on the floor and collapsing into the chair opposite me. “He’s decided that there’s a party he’d rather go to on Saturday night, in London, and he can’t be bothered to schlep to a wedding in the country.”

  Daniel? You want to know about Daniel? All I can tell you is this is typical of Daniel. A smooth-talking lawyer who’s pleasant looking, charming company, and a total shit to Mel. They’ve been together for five years, but he won’t marry her until she’s changed. He wants her to lose weight, to wear better clothes. In short, to be more like us.

  And shit, does he flirt. I’ve started to dread seeing him, because when Mel’s back is turned he’ll sidle up and whisper that he’s always fancied me, that maybe, when I’m feeling lonely, I should give him a call.

  And it’s not just me. He’s done it to Emma as well. He probably wants to do it to Andy, but I think she scares him. But what can you do? What can you say when your friend’s boyfriend is flirting, and since none of us have taken him up on his crappy offer, how do you know whether he’s all mouth and no trousers? Think about it, what would you do?

  Maybe it doesn’t matter, maybe it’s the fact that he’s saying it at all, but Mel’s such a good person, so genuine, and the three of us have agreed not to tell her, we just want her to finish it, to get out, to get on with her life.

  Because a woman will always blame the other woman. She never thinks her man could have made the first move, or he’s simply a bastard and she should kick him out. A woman will always assume it’s the woman, even when that woman happens to be her friend, even when that woman would do nothing, and I mean nothing, to hurt her.

  I can see what would happen if we told Mel. She’d be shocked, silent, but then she’d pull herself together and thank us very calmly for telling her. And we’d never hear from her again. If we phoned her she’d be cool but distant, and she wouldn’t kick Daniel out, she’d believe his protestations that it was us, that we’d encouraged him, that he was only joking.

  And then, eventually, she’d find a new group of friends, new meat for him to hunt, and so the cycle would continue.

  “Why does he keep doing this?” Mel asks, out loud, but you know she’s asking herself. “Five years and I still have to do everything on my o
wn, he never wants to be part of my life.”

  “God, he’s a bastard. Mel, this keeps on happening. It’s not going to stop, he’s not going to change. Don’t you think it’s time you had some space, just to reassess things? You’re young, you’re attractive, you’re wonderful. Daniel doesn’t appreciate you but somewhere out there, someone else will.” Great words coming from me, aren’t they? But you know, as I say them I believe it, I believe that Mel will find someone else to love her, adore her, appreciate her, just as I believe that I will too, that we all will. That there’s a lid for every pot, no matter how bent, misshapen, or ugly.

  “You’re right, you’re right. I know you’re right,” she says wearily. “But,” and I know what’s coming, what always comes after a row, “but I know he loves me, and we do have great times. Admittedly not often, but you don’t hear about the times he’s really sweet to me, the times he cuddles me in bed and tells me he loves me. I know you think he’s a shit but sometimes I think it’s me. That I make him behave this way.”

  “Mel, that’s crap. What, so you make him disappear for nights on end without telling you where he is? So you make him tell you you’re fat and you should lose weight? So you make him force you to go to everything on your own just so no one should think he was in a relationship?”

  “But he says I’m a nag, that if I wasn’t so demanding he would want to be with me more.” She’s wimping out, as she always does, and it’s the most frustrating thing in the whole damned world.

  “Mel, you’re a therapist, for Christ’s sake. Why is it you think this is all you deserve? Why are you putting up with second best? Do you not think you deserve someone who adores you? It can happen, look at Freya.”

  Freya used to be in the sisterhood, but she committed the unforgivable sin of getting married. Actually we were all delighted and more than a touch envious. We miss her but she’s our role model, she makes us believe, she makes us think we’ll find our lids, or our pots. Whatever.

  Freya met Paul on holiday. They were friends and then they were lovers. I remember meeting him for the first time, at Freya’s flat, just after I split up with Simon and I was dreading it, I was dreading seeing a happy couple, still in that stage where every sentence is punctuated with a touch on their loved one’s hands, or shoulders, or leg. Where they can’t keep their hands off one another.

  But when I met Paul, and saw them together, and saw that he adored her as much, if not more, than she adored him, I felt ridiculously happy and I left their flat smiling, filled with inspiration and hope. It can happen, and I realized that Simon hadn’t treated me like that, that it hadn’t happened, but that it could. That it would.

  “I know. I’ve got to leave him. But I’m so scared. I’m thirty-three, I want children, I want to get married. I don’t want to be on my own.”

  “But, Mel, isn’t it better to be on your own, to be single and happy than to be with a man who treats you badly, who undermines you, who damages you? Look at me, I’m blissfully happy being single.”

  Mel looks up and we both laugh at the irony, and I know then that nothing will change, that we will be having this conversation again in a week or a month, the same conversation we have been having for nearly three years.

  “Hey,” a big kiss is planted on my cheek by Emma. “I can’t stay all afternoon, Richard’s coming back to get me. We’ve got to choose a new bathroom this afternoon.”

  Emma and Richard. Three years and they still haven’t got married, but not for want of Emma’s trying. I think Richard does genuinely love Emma, he does want to be with her but he keeps saying he’s not ready to get married, and as far as I’m concerned when a man says he’s not ready to get married what he means is he doesn’t want to marry you.

  You probably don’t understand why that’s a problem, I admit it took me a while to figure it out. But Emma’s thirty-six, and she’s already been engaged three times. Each time she’s issued an ultimatum, marry me or I’m leaving, and each time they’ve agreed. For about three months. They’ve always walked out on her, and she should have learned, but she hasn’t. Ultimatum time is coming around again, I can feel it in my bloody bones.

  “New bathroom?” says Mel, smiling mischievously. “Does this mean . . . ?”

  The question tails off and Emma sighs. “I don’t know,” she says. “The latest excuse is that he’s waiting for his business to take off, and hopefully by the end of the year he’ll be settled and he’ll be ready to get married then.”

  You see, there’s always been an excuse. First it was that he had to find a flat, but then they decided to live together so he had to think up another one. Then he left his stockbroking business to set up by himself, so this is his latest, he has to settle. Never mind the fact that he probably earns more than all of us put together, he has to settle, whatever the hell that means.

  They make a great-looking couple. He’s big and brawny, an ex-rugby player, and she’s tiny and petite, with perfect features and big brown sad puppy dog eyes, eyes that make men melt, that make them want to take care of her.

  On the surface Emma and Richard have everything. Looks, money, friendship, but scratch the surface and you find Emma’s lack of confidence, her neediness, her desperation. And Richard? Classic fear of commitment.

  The older I get and the more people I meet, the less I think I know. How do you know people? How do you know relationships? How do you know? You only ever know as much as people want you to know, and anyone can pretend to be anything, if it suits them.

  I remember a blind date I had last year. I met a woman on the program, she was being interviewed, and we really hit it off. Six weeks later she phoned and said, “Can I ask you a personal question? Are you single?” After I’d stopped laughing hysterically, because I’m not just single, I’m famous for it, I told her I was.

  “I’ve got this friend, you see. Gary. He’s forty-one, tall, good-looking, and I think you’d really hit it off. I’d love you to meet him. Can he call you?”

  Of course he could call me, you never know how or when the right man will come into your life, so he called, and he came and she was right, he was tall and good-looking, and funny, but there was something about him, maybe it was his over-familiarity, and I decided immediately that we wouldn’t make a good couple, but that I’d make the most of the evening anyway.

  He took me to L’Altro in Notting Hill and halfway over dinner, halfway through a bottle of wine, I realized that I didn’t like him, but Jesus did I fancy him.

  He drove me home, walked me to the front door and as I put the key in the lock I turned to face him and this amazing chemistry just locked us together. We were like a pair of bloody teenagers, standing on the doorstep of my flat in this passionate embrace. “I want to make love to you,” he whispered. “Not yet,” I whispered back. Not because I didn’t want to, you understand, but because I hadn’t had my legs waxed in weeks and I was wearing a pair of my oldest knickers, where the lycra had turned blue.

  “Can I see you again?” he said, when we finally pulled apart, and we arranged another date, a week later. I went to his flat this time, legs shining like a newborn baby’s bottom, and black lace underwear hidden beneath my suede trousers. I knew I was going to sleep with him, and I also knew it would never be anything more. I brought condoms with me, and then he said he was allergic to rubber, that this whole AIDS thing was a myth, that he’d never used one.

  You don’t have to tell me that I should have got out of there faster than my legs could carry me but I was too far down the line. By that time I didn’t even want to sleep with him, but I’d talked myself into a situation, and I felt I needed to see it through.

  “We can just play though, and not have sex,” he said, when I told him no glove, no love. So we played, or rather I played with him. The fucker had about an hour of foreplay, complete with a full massage with baby oil that just happened to be on his bedside table. I had about a minute of clumsy fumbling at my crotch. And then he climbed on top of me, pinned my arms d
own and started thrusting between my legs.

  I twisted and turned, terrified he was going to enter me, and when I looked into his eyes I saw nothing, just an empty space. I don’t know how I managed to stop him, but I did, and I cried all the way home. I trusted him because I liked his friend. I thought he was safe and I nearly got raped. How do you know? You only know as much as they want you to know.

  And then the last to arrive is Andy, long straight blond hair hanging down her back, big Jackie O sunglasses, a shining open smile.

  However much Andy pisses me off, and she does, frequently, when it’s just the girls, I love her. I love her excitement at life, her humor, her willingness to see the funny side in everything. I love the fact that she’s single and she genuinely loves it. She sees all men as being adventures, and every fling as being an experience, something she has to learn from, that there’s a lesson in everything that happens to us.

  “Oh my God, I’ve met the most amazing man,” are the first words she says, the first words she usually says. “Go on,” we all sigh in unison, although we’re smiling, and Mel adds, “Who is it this time?”

  “He’s a client of mine, and we’ve been flirting on the phone for weeks, and then yesterday he rang and said we ought to go out for a drink, and why didn’t we meet later on.” Andy works in advertising sales, and flirts with all her clients on the phone. Even the women.

  “I walked into Kettners in Soho and there was this gorgeous man at the bar. I thought, it couldn’t be, but it was, and he was amazing, he looked like a model.”

  A ghost of a smile brushes over my and Mel’s faces as we catch one another’s eye across the table. All the men Andy meets look like models. Until the rare occasions we meet them, when they look like mechanics.

  “I know what you’re thinking, that he wasn’t that good-looking, but I swear, he was divine. Tall—well, maybe five feet, ten inches—black hair and bright green eyes. He looked like Pierce Brosnan. We got on so well, we didn’t stop talking all night and he’s asked to see me again.”