The Perfectly Imperfect Woman

by Milly Johnson

  The across-the-pond sisterhood were beating Marnie down, forcing her to accept that a thinner base was desirable. Then in stepped a fellow Brit, declaring that thick bases ruled, having Marnie’s back all the way. The brave British duo were declared losers of the lowest order but it didn’t matter because the connection they made with each other was a winner. And that is how the paths of Misses Lilian Dearman and Marnie Salt first crossed.

  Normally Marnie didn’t engage with people she didn’t know personally on social media. She had no interest in learning about how some woman she didn’t know in South Shields had got on at Weightwatchers that week, or viewing some circulated footage of kittens or people’s dinners or sharing petitions and patronising inspirational messages. The internet was a nest of fraudulent vipers as far as she was concerned. If they weren’t fleeing from Nigeria and needed her bank details to deposit their millions, they were screwed up dickheads on internet dating sites waiting to pounce.

  Wine, therefore, had been a strong contributing factor to how she ended up having an in-depth email conversation with someone purporting to be a sixty-six-year-old insomniac, who found the Sisters of Cheesecake site particularly well stocked with ‘sanctimonious know-it-all bastards’ with whom she enjoyed a good verbal battle. Her sleeps, Lilian Dearman said, though tardy in coming were superbly restful after giving those stuck-up frustrated old crows a pasting. Thin bases indeed.

  Marnie opened up another bottle of wine as they messaged back and forth. Somehow the conversation segued from recipes for cheesecakes to recipes of disaster – i.e. Marnie’s life. Lubricated by fermented grapes, a dam burst inside her and out it all poured in a torrent. Everything. Starting with Aaron and then reaching back in time to things she hadn’t even told Caitlin. And Marnie went past caring if the person she was typing to was a genuine elderly lady, a Daily Mail reporter or a serial killer called Darren.

  Despite her intentions to clean up her act, Marnie awoke very late on Saturday afternoon with a major hangover, egg on her face and no recollection of getting to bed at all. The last thing she remembered was telling Lilian about reading Wuthering Heights at school and having a crush on her English teacher, Mr Trent. Dangerous territory. What a bloody idiot. How could she have blurted out so many secrets to a stranger? Stuff she had locked away in boxes in her head and yet their locks had sprung at the merest tickle and the contents had come spewing out perfectly preserved in brain-aspic.

  Marnie was a panicking mess; what else she had said that she couldn’t remember?

  She switched on her laptop, after taking two ibuprofen and a Red Bull and tried to log on to the Sisters of Cheesecake site but found that, despite being hammered, she’d obviously had the foresight to delete her account before going to sleep, probably to stop herself reading what she’d written to this ‘Lilian Dearman’ in the private message box. How could she be so thick and rational at the same time? Whilst she was in cringe mode, she also checked that she hadn’t sent an embarrassing email to Aaron but no – there was nothing recent in her sent box to her overwhelming relief. What was there in her inbox, though, was an invitation from Miss Dearman to have afternoon tea with her at a mutually convenient time in the near future. She’d suggested the Tea Lady tearoom in Skipperstone, a market town near to the village of Wychwell where she lived. So, Marnie had given Miss Dearman her email address then. And probably her mobile number, house address, bank details, national insurance number, all her PIN codes and passwords as well.

  Marnie had a shower and an omelette and, when revived, looked up Wychwell on the internet, because she’d never heard of it and it was probably no wonder as it seemed to be in the middle of a big forest somewhere in the Yorkshire Dales. Photographs of it on ‘images’ were more complimentary: twee little cottages standing around a village green, an ancient stone church with a crooked spire and a beautiful manor house on a low hill. There were no pictures of Lilian Dearman, though there were plenty of other Dearmans: Montague Dearman, Ebenezer Dearman, Erasmus Dearman, and more. All with very highfalutin names, stiff poses and handlebar moustaches.

  And as Marnie had bugger-all entries in her diary and she was inexplicably intrigued now, she emailed back that she would like to meet up. At least that way, they could both see that the other wasn’t a serial killer called Darren or a tabloid journo.

  Marnie slobbed around in her dressing gown for the rest of the day feeling weak and wobbly. She had planned to go out and buy her sister a birthday card but ordered one from the internet to be sent directly to her instead. They didn’t do presents. They never had. Only at Christmas, which was an ordeal in itself because Gabrielle was allergic to soaps, perfumes, wool and animals, didn’t eat chocolates, didn’t drink, only read certain literary novels, didn’t want anyone else to buy her clothes and flowers set her hay fever off. Marnie spent from August onwards trying to source something that showed she’d put a bit of effort in, whereas Gabrielle bought her an M&S talcum and hand cream gift set in a meh flower fragrance every year. Gabrielle was brazen about her lack of effort in present-choosing.

  Marnie looked again at her diary and found she had filled in some entries, in a looping drunken scrawl, when she’d been off her face. Amongst others she had blocked in a four-hour lunch on Wednesday with Hugh Jackman and a trip to Lanzarote with Justin Fox on Thursday. Saddest of all, she had booked the following Saturday and Sunday for a catch-up, spa and shopping with Caitlin. She was pathetic with a capital ‘P’ and she’d ruined her diary with the stupid inclusions. She ordered a new one from Amazon and then took out the recycling, noting that she’d put away two full bottles of wine. Usually after two glasses she was comatose. No wonder she’d told a perfect stranger her entire life story and filled her diary with pitiful gobbledygook. Regrettably, she had more chance of having lunch with Hugh Jackman than she did of a whole weekend catch-up with Caitlin or that holiday in Lanzarote with Justin Fox.

  Chapter 4

  A big part of why Marnie felt unable to really chill out at home was because it wasn’t her home. It was just a house filled with someone else’s furniture, none of it fitting her concept of ‘aesthetic’. She was renting 34A Redbrook Row in Doreton on the outskirts of Sheffield on a short-term lease and she hated the damned place. She had shut herself away for Christmas and cried herself stupid in this alien house, where every room was decorated in miserable greys which reflected her mood perfectly. Her mother had gone down to stay with Gabrielle in Leicester for the festive season so at least Marnie didn’t have to hide behind a facade that all was well with her. A lone Christmas was, at least, better than putting herself through the strain of all that acting.

  Since moving into the house in early December, she had felt increasingly restless and agitated, unfulfilled and frustrated. She did love her job at Café Caramba, but she had to try so much harder than her male counterparts to be taken seriously. Sometimes life felt like such an uphill slog and she had too many anxiety dreams about trying to catch up with a figure in front of her whilst she could only walk in slow motion, or screaming and no sound coming out of her mouth. The only light relief in her present existence was meeting Lilian Dearman in the cheesecake forum every weekend. Someone who may or may not be a sweet old lady. Someone who had a wicked sense of humour, whoever she – or he – was.

  Marnie had set up a new account with the Sisters of Cheesecake and she was so glad she had because it had been the best entertainment. Without fail, for the last three Friday and Saturday nights Lilian had been causing merry hell on the far-too-serious baking forum to Ealing comedy standard and Marnie hoped that this weekend would be no different. Lilian operated under multiple personas to cause maximum havoc: BigBase, Yorkpud, Creamtop, Lilette amongst others. Marnie powered up her laptop to find ‘Lilette’ single-handedly battling an army of cheesecake fanatics as always. Marnie grinned, suspecting that Lilian was being deliberately controversial.

  ‘I have on occasion had a very successful result replacing butter with extra virgin olive oil,’ L
ilian had typed, causing a woman from Kings Lynn to resort to capital letters in her vituperative response. Marnie waded in. ‘Or goose fat. Though more sugar should be added to the crumb.’ She chuckled heartily at the wave of abuse that started scrolling up on the screen, turned to scratch an itch on her neck and caught sight of her cheerful reflection in the mirrored glass door. She realised then that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed properly before this.

  ‘What a bunch of old farts,’ wrote Lilian on the forum private messaging page. ‘How are you, dear?’

  ‘I’m good,’ replied Marnie. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Could be better. Crumbling spine, alas,’ came the answer. ‘More crumbly than a Digestive base, in fact. I’ve become intolerant of sleeping tablets but I’ve found a good debate wears me out and helps me to have a decent sleep. Have the new mugs arrived? How’s Mr Fox?’

  Lilian knew everything about the new swanky mugs and her involuntary attraction to Justin. In fact she seemed to know everything about Marnie, thanks to that first communication, which Marnie tried not to think about.

  ‘I shan’t be online for a couple of weeks,’ Lilian typed after half an hour’s jolly chat. ‘I have to go to hospital on Monday to hang upside down like a bat. Or at least that’s what happened last time I went on traction.’ She added a couple of smiley faces but Marnie didn’t feel comfortable making a joke of it.

  ‘Doesn’t sound too great,’ she fired back. ‘Hope it goes well.’

  ‘Lots of love,’ Lilian replied quickly. ‘I am now off to bed early for a change. Sweet dreams. Hope you have something to report about Mr Fox the next time we converse.’

  Marnie doubted it, but she was wrong to. It would shortly go from zero to ninety miles per hour, commencing with a screaming orgasm.

  *

  The next week began on a particular low as Marnie broke her resolve not to look at Aaron’s Facebook page and found that he was in Sorrento with his girlfriend looking very loved up. They were staying in the hotel that Marnie had found online the week before they split up. She’d wanted to book it for them but he’d said that he didn’t fancy Sorrento. He’d meant, of course, that he didn’t fancy Sorrento with her. The next picture featured a close-up of his girlfriend’s hand showing off a big sparkly ring. Marnie forced herself to close the app and gave herself a stern word when she felt a prickle of tears behind her eyes.

  She had a lunch meeting on Monday with the departmental heads though Justin Fox didn’t attend as he was away in London until Thursday. She got lumbered with Sweaty Andrew who put her off her quiche with his sour odour and bored her to death with his flawed vision of million-calorie dessert coffees. The days after that dragged uncharacteristically, though there was a retirement party on Friday lunchtime in the pub local to Café Caramba for the old bloke who worked in the post room to look forward to. It spoke volumes when that was the highlight of the week.

  Clifford Beech had been in the building since before it was Café Caramba, even before it was the HQ of the West Riding Building Society and was Fraser & Lunn Insurance, where he was taken on as a school-leaver to be a post room boy and, over his fifty-year stay, he worked his way up to post room man. He liked it there; he had no interest in fancy job titles and no ambitions further than working in the post room, though he had trained many other entry-level post room boys and girls – some of whom were now management. He was as much part and parcel of the building as were the cavernous cellars which sprawled under the city and the oversized cockerel weathervane that spun on the rooftop and if someone had cut Clifford Beech in half like a stick of rock, they would have found the words ‘post room’ written through the middle. Thank goodness no one had, though, and he was able to retire healthy and intact.

  More or less the whole building popped into the Dirty Dog on the Friday lunchtime to buy Clifford a drink, or give him a present or an envelope with money in it collected by their department. Laurence the CEO had done the formal gift presentation in the atrium: a set of golf clubs and two all-expenses paid tickets to a course in Spain for a week. Clifford was delighted to tears, especially because Laurence had the reputation of being tighter than a worm’s arsehole and he’d been expecting a carriage clock. Marnie let her staff have an early and extended lunch break so they could join him and say their goodbyes. She went to the pub herself after they’d returned and would go home straight from there because she’d booked half a day off to sort out her car. She took with her the envelope of money that Beverage Marketing had collected for the old lad and a bottle of rum that she’d bought for him herself.

  As she turned the corner into the Headrow, who should she see about to go into the Dirty Dog but Justin Fox and her heart gave a stupid teenage leap. The odd thing was that the more she had tried to avoid him, the more their paths seemed to collide. It’s Fate with a capital F, said some stupid hopeful voice inside her that still – despite her back catalogue of disastrous relationships with men – clung to the belief that one of them would walk straight out of the pages of a Midnight Moon romantic novel and into her heart. Could he be the one?

  The timing was off. It was far too soon after the Aaron debacle. Plus she didn’t want to be distracted. She was throwing everything she had at the massive company overhaul and didn’t want to zone out at her desk with a head full of soft-focus images of Justin Fox holding her hand as they strolled through a sunny field of cowslips. She needed to keep her mind on a track of cappuccinos, lattes, flat whites and espressos. Unrealistic hope was her worst enemy at the moment.

  But even as she was thinking that, she pulled into the disused doorway of a recently closed clothes shop and checked her face in the mirror of her compact. Her eyeliner was in place, her foundation hadn’t clumped around the sides of her nose and there were no Alice Cooper runs of mascara. She touched up her power-red lipstick and bared her teeth to make sure it hadn’t transferred, then blotted her lips with a tissue. Just for good measure, she gave herself a spray of perfume, then tipped her head upside down and flung it back to trap some volume in her thick black hair. She lifted each leg behind her and checked over her shoulder for ladders then took a deep breath, jutted out her more-than-fair share of breasts, sucked in her stomach – whilst all the time a counter-romantic voice in her head was tutting disappointedly – and walked the remaining fifteen steps to the front door of the pub.

  It was empty apart from a bleary-eyed Clifford who was grinning like Michael from Ryan’s Daughter, a couple of stragglers who didn’t want to go back to the office and Sweaty Andrew who was chatting to the man who threw Ben Affleck right into the back of the shade, Justin Fox. Marnie could feel his eyes on her sashaying bum as she journeyed across to Clifford to give him a kiss and a hug, rum and the envelope. The table behind him was covered in boxes and a stack of other envelopes . . . and a line of cocktails, pints and shorts.

  ‘Lovely Marnie, help me out here,’ slurred Clifford. ‘I can’t drink all these. Take what you want. There’s a slex on the beach, there’s a snippery whipple, pina colander and that, I do believe, is a . . . oh, I can’t remember.’ He pointed to a small glass full of muddied liquid: a lethal blend of Baileys, vodka, Kahlua, amaretto and cream. It had more calories in it than one of Elvis’s special burgers. But it looked deceptively innocent against all the others and so Marnie lifted that one and chinked it against Clifford’s glass, just before he was stolen away by someone who had decided he really should have a cup of tea and a sandwich from the buffet before he threw up. Marnie sipped her drink, trying not to notice that Justin Fox was on his way over, holding a tall glass that appeared to have half a harvest festival balancing on its rim.

  ‘So you’re partial to a Screaming Orgasm then?’ was his opening line.

  ‘Pardon?’ said Marnie. Blimey, he did move fast.

  ‘The cocktail. It’s a Screaming Orgas— oh you didn’t . . . did you think . . . Oh . . .’ He threw back his head and laughed and Marnie saw how beautiful and white and even his teeth were. Shark-l
ike, her brain said, which she thought was a bit unkind of it. ‘I thought you knew what it was called,’ he went on. Marnie didn’t buy his innocence. Nice try, though.

  Her laughter joined his nevertheless. ‘Nope, I didn’t know. I thought you’d been reading my diary—’ Shit, too flirty. ‘. . . Er, so what did you go for then?’

  ‘A very tame Tequila Sunrise,’ replied Justin, touching his glass against Marnie’s. ‘Nice to meet properly over a drink instead of stale sandwiches in the boardroom. Or women sprawled over your carpet.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Marnie answered, feeling her cheeks begin to heat up. She flapped at her face. ‘Hot in here, isn’t it?’

  Justin grinned as if he knew that the room temperature had nothing to do with why Marnie was standing in front of him with cheeks the colour of a red velvet cake.

  ‘So, tell me what you really think of Café Caramba’s new marketing slogan: “Flat white – it’s buzzing”?’

  ‘I think it’s. . . very Laurence,’ said Marnie diplomatically.

  ‘I think it’s very crap,’ said Justin. ‘What the fuck does it even mean?’

  Marnie pulled an ‘I have no idea’ face.

  ‘And let’s not even talk about “Make every day a Macchiato day”. Good grief. Is this really the man who turns companies around?’

  Marnie throttled back on a hoot of laughter. She should be careful, though. What if Justin was a spy? Laurence was surrounded by yes-men and if she was honest, Justin had been nodding very approvingly in the aforesaid Flat White meeting, where Laurence rode over everyone’s ideas and implemented his own.

  ‘He has some good concepts,’ she delivered cautiously.

  ‘Absolutely. Really liked the one for espresso. “Black. It’s the new black”. Have to give him that.’

  Marnie’s lip curled. That had been her brainchild. She’d asked Laurence in a one-to-one meeting in December what he’d thought about it. ‘Not a lot,’ he had replied with a condescending sniff. Then he’d only gone and nicked it for himself and the whole building was raving about it. Marnie tipped the tiny cocktail down her neck and reached for another. There was nothing like a couple of screaming orgasms for blotting out some blatant plagiarism.