by Mike Gayle
‘Looks like the nightmare is over,’ said Ginny, rising to her feet.
‘I think I might be drunk,’ I replied, sounding quite pleased with myself.
‘I think I am too,’ she said, grabbing hold of me. The friends she had been waiting for would be leaving the disco any minute and I had to do something. Just as I was about to take action she planted a kiss full on my lips and in a few moments we were kissing so intensely that I could still taste her mouth (a heady concoction of illicit alcohol, cigarettes and spearmint chewing gum) long after we had parted.
And that night a precedent was set: from here on in we were each other’s consolation prize, each other’s back-up plan, the original friends with benefits long before being a friend with benefits was even a thing. And although it was hardly the most romantic of beginnings our developing friendship enabled us to continue this arrangement through our A levels, our degrees and beyond. But somewhere around our mid-twenties life happened, and jobs happened, and the opportunities for friendship, let alone our temporary couplings, seemed to all but disappear until eventually I forgot about the people who used to mean the world to me and instead concentrated on the people who were right by my side.
Consigning that part of my life to the shoebox of my youth along with much else that, while enjoyable, was inherently bad for me, as I approached thirty I tried to focus my energies on activities that were the complete opposite. Good food, healthy relationships, things that would improve my life. But then as I’ve already remarked, at the grand old age of twenty-nine I split up with my American girlfriend and found myself briefly back in Birmingham. And that ‘hazy warmth of nostalgia’ I mentioned earlier and which I mistook for something more than it was, was of course the one, the only, Ginny Pascoe.
The last time I saw Ginny in the flesh had been at my own wedding. She’d been single at the time but seemed really happy in herself and when she’d kissed me on the cheek that day and wished me well I saw a look in her eye as if to say: ‘It’s OK that this is the end of our story. I think we’ve both got what we needed.’ It was oddly life-affirming, like attending the funeral of an old man who everyone knew had lived a full and love-filled life.
But if all that was true, why after six years without a single word between us had I returned home from a run unable to think about anything or anyone other than Ginny? I’ve tried long and hard to come up with a theory. I’ve considered everything from the possibility that my personality’s gone haywire perhaps due to an undiagnosed mini-stroke on the day of my fake heart attack right through to the idea that I am just too damn lazy to find someone new to fall in love with. The conclusion I’ve come to however is this: the night that Ginny and I first kissed remains one of the happiest of my life. And facing the four-oh as I am without a wife, job, or indeed a home, right now I’d give anything, absolutely anything, to be that happy again.
7
‘So it’s been like this for what? Days? Weeks?’
I look down at the floor like a wayward schoolboy who’s been caught up to no good. My mum sounds angry and disappointed at the same time, which I’ll admit wasn’t the response I had been hoping for. No one on this earth can make me feel guilty quite like she does.
‘More like months,’ I confess.
‘So when we had that get-together at Edward’s in the summer and you said Lauren was working you were what, lying?’
I feel myself growing smaller as I nod. Soon I’ll be invisible to the naked eye.
‘I thought it was for the best.’
‘So where have you been living all this time?’
‘In the house.’
‘And where has she been living?’
A raised eyebrow says it all.
‘You carried on living together?’
There’s hope in her voice and although a lifetime admirer of my mother’s propensity for hopeless optimism, I find this only makes things harder. ‘There’s no chance of us getting back together, Mum,’ I say, dashing her hopes. ‘We carried on living together because it was easier, that’s all, but even the easy stuff gets difficult after a while. That’s why I’m here now.’
‘But you always seemed so happy together.’
People always say this when a couple splits up even though it’s not what they mean. What they actually mean is that when they think of you they don’t think of a couple who hate each other, which isn’t exactly the same thing. Lauren and I never hated each other. That’s not what happened here, and frankly I sort of wish it was. No, what happened to Lauren and me was far more insidious: somewhere between her working all the time and me working all the time we fell out of love, but only one of us was prepared to say it.
I look at Mum. She has tears in her eyes. ‘You’re right, Mum, we did seem happy together but it just wasn’t enough.’
‘You weren’t messing around with somebody else, were you?’
‘No of course not,’ I reply, sounding scandalised even though Mum is not the first person to have asked this question and I doubt she’ll be the last. Everyone I tell about the split seems to believe that I’m to blame for my marriage falling apart as though it would be too far-fetched to even consider laying the blame at Lauren’s door. To be fair, if I’d heard from me that my marriage was over I’d probably blame me too.
I look over at Dad to see whether there’s any chance he might step in and reel Mum in a bit but he’s too busy staring at the tiled floor hoping that this situation will blow over without his involvement to acknowledge my need for assistance. ‘We split up because it just wasn’t working any more. It was working, then it stopped working and by the time we got round to taking a proper look at it, it was broken beyond all repair.’
‘But I don’t understand, why didn’t you tell us when it happened? Why did you have to leave it until now?’
‘So you could have done what, exactly? Whipped out a magic wand and made it all better? She wanted out, Mum, OK? She got sick and tired of putting up with my crap day in and day out so you’ll forgive me if I didn’t feel like broadcasting the news to the entire world!’
Even before the words have left my lips I hate myself. How hard is it to let Mum say what’s on her mind without making her feel like she doesn’t count for anything? I’m dealing with a lot of stuff but now she is too. I’ve dropped my life and its problems in her lap and she’s responded in the only way she knows: by sifting through all the information she can find in the hope that a solution might lie somewhere within. It was pointless having a go at Mum for being herself and having given vent to my exasperation all I’d succeeded in doing was making us both feel worse.
She turns her back and starts tidying away our mugs even though they’re still half full. Dad throws me a look that says: ‘You made the mess, now clean it up,’ and so I follow my mum to the sink. ‘I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.’
She wipes her eyes and looks up at me. ‘You’ve obviously been in the wars and I should’ve given you time to adjust. I won’t keep on at you, I promise. I just worry, that’s all. All your dad and I ever wanted was for all of you to be happy and when things like this happen it feels like we’ve failed.’
She gives me a hug and I hug her back to let her know that I have accepted the terms of our truce but I know that I’ll feel guilty for days to come. This will lead to me offering to run numerous errands for Mum which in turn will mean us spending more ‘quality’ time together which will (despite our newly signed accord) inevitably end in one or other of us losing our temper and saying something we’ll regret. Once again I consider getting the train back to London and begging Lauren to let me sleep in my shed until we’ve sold the house. Then I think about how cold it was the night before last and how nothing puts a potential buyer off a house like finding a homeless man in a garden shed recovering from frostbite.
‘How long are you actually here for?’ Mum asks.
‘I’m not sure,’ I reply. ‘A while I suppose.’
�
�What about your job?’
It’s time to drop my second bombshell.
‘I quit.’
This time even Dad looks up at me.
‘You quit?’ he says. ‘To do what?’
I shrug and my parents exchange looks of bewilderment. In their world people don’t just give up their jobs to do nothing.
Dad eyes me as though I am mentally ill, on drugs or possibly both.
‘Will they take you back?’
‘It doesn’t matter, Dad. I’m not going back.’
‘But it was a good job!’
‘I know it was,’ I reply, ‘but it wasn’t making me happy.’
Neither of my parents is the kind of person who spends a great deal of time thinking about happiness. They are very much in the ‘keep your head down, get on with it’ camp and to be fair that has seen them through all kinds of troubles in their lives. Maybe if this had been a different time I would’ve been like that too. But I was born in an age in which happiness is supposed to matter even if you’re not 100 per cent sure what exactly happiness is and have to make yourself unhappy trying to find out.
There’s a further exchange of worried glances but neither says a word. I can tell they both have a million questions but are afraid to ask in case I go off on one again. Finally Mum says: ‘You must be tired after all that travelling. Why don’t I show you up to your room and then you can come and have a bite to eat?’
I don’t argue, even though I’m well aware of the location of the guest bedroom that used to belong to me and my brothers. I allow Mum to lead the way upstairs and follow with my bags.
‘You’ve decorated,’ I say.
‘I just gave it a little spruce.’
When Lauren and I had last stayed here, the room had been little more than a freshly painted magnolia box but now the walls are adorned with floral patterned wallpaper, swags of decorative material hang round the windows, pictures of my nephews and nieces have been artfully displayed on every free surface and there’s a large Constable print of a countryside scene in an ornate gold frame on the chimney breast. The room looks like one HRH Queen Elizabeth might have chosen had she been evicted from Buckingham Palace, stripped of her fortune and forced to live in a terraced house in south Birmingham.
‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ says Mum even though I can see she’s got something more to say. Given the circumstances I decide the least I can do is give her an in: ‘I am OK, Mum, I’ll be fine.’
‘I know you will,’ she says but the abject sorrow in her eyes says otherwise.
8
I’m woken the following morning by a sharp knock on my bedroom door. I open my eyes to see Mum standing over me wearing her outdoor coat.
‘I’m checking to see if you’re awake yet.’
I look at my watch. It’s just after ten. Given the bombshells I dropped yesterday plus the fact that she gets up at six in the morning every day it’s hardly pushing the boat out to suggest that she’s been lurking at the door waiting for me to emerge for some time.
I sit up in bed. ‘What’s on your mind, Mum?’
‘I’m nipping to the shops and I wondered what you’d like for your tea tonight.’
‘Tea?’
She nods. ‘Yes, it’s either lamb chops or pork chops because I’ve just heard on the radio they’re on special at the supermarket. Which is it to be?
It would be futile to point out that I haven’t got a clue what I want for breakfast let alone tea, so I hope to bring the conversation to a close by saying, ‘Pork,’ very firmly.
Mum pulls a face. That is clearly the wrong answer.
‘Are you sure? I’ve never heard you say they’re your favourite. Did Lauren cook them a lot?’
‘No,’ I sigh. ‘Not really. I tell you what, though, get the lamb chops. They sound nice now you mention it.’
‘I’ll get both,’ she says, clearly pleased with this decision. ‘I can always put one lot in the freezer can’t I? What are your plans for the day?’
‘I might take a walk,’ I say, ‘you know, clear my head a bit. It’s a shame we haven’t got a dog. That’s the kind of walk I could really do with right now.’
Mum nods as though she understands the whole walking-a-dog-that-we-don’t-own thing, which she clearly doesn’t. I can see the cogs whirring. Why’s he talking about dogs? We haven’t got a dog. Is he saying he wants a dog? We haven’t got room for a dog!
‘Do you need some money? There’s a twenty-pound note on the mantelpiece behind the clock. You must be getting a bit short with you not working.’
My heart melts. This is typical of my mum. Just when you’re at your most exasperated, having been woken up early and interrogated about evening meals, she’ll make a gesture so full of love and compassion that you feel terrible for all the horrible things you’ve been thinking. My little old mum giving me – who used to think nothing of spending a hundred pounds on a bottle of wine in a nice restaurant – money from her pension: it’s heartbreaking.
‘I’m all right for cash at the minute, Mum, but thanks anyway.’
As she leaves the room I head for the shower and set the controls to a few degrees below scalding in the hope that the intensity will clear the fog currently clogging up my head. Grabbing a bottle of suitably masculine-sounding shampoo that has been my brand of choice for years I give it a big squeeze and am disappointed to see that nothing is coming out. I exchange it for a bottle on the lower shelf that I know to be my mum’s (Dad has never used shampoo in his life, preferring a bar of soap ‘It’s exactly the same stuff but three times cheaper!’) and feel depressed. My mum’s shampoo is a generic supermarket brand a million miles from the fancy-monikered, floral-smelling gunk that Lauren uses and I’m struck by the thought that I may never live with a woman who buys fancy shampoos again.
Ready for the day ahead, I’m about to head downstairs when I think about Ginny. She’s the reason I’m here, the reason I’m enduring the indignities of living with my parents, and yet aside from getting on the train at Euston I haven’t actually done anything to further my plan. Should I simply call her out of the blue? Or perhaps I should drop in on her at home or engineer an ‘accidental’ meeting in the street? In the end I decide that the only thing I can do is the one thing everyone in the world has already done bar me: join Facebook.
As someone who worked in the IT industry and regularly spent huge swathes of my life staring at one screen or another I’d always found the idea of Facebook entirely unappealing. With barely enough time in the real world why would I want to waste time I didn’t have in a virtual one social networking with people who under normal circumstances I would have lost contact with? Did I really need to keep in touch with sixty-odd people I had only ever met once and would never meet again? And even if I did why would I need to see their holiday photos or receive notifications whenever they visited the pub? But as I open up my laptop, join my parents’ next-door neighbour’s unsecured Wi-Fi network and set about searching for signs of Ginny, it occurs to me that as a tool for hunting down old on/off girlfriends it is unparalleled.
I spend a couple of minutes trawling through a dozen or so Ginny Pascoes from Bristol to North Carolina but when I find the right one I know it’s her straight away. She looks just the way I remember and just as beautiful. Gazing at her photo I can’t help but wonder how I will look to her after all this time. I always imagine myself looking cool and debonair but in reality I fear it may be more off-duty geography teacher.
I try to find out more information about her life (where she’s living, what she’s doing and most importantly whether she’s single) but her privacy settings are set pretty high so that the only thing I learn is that she’s still living in Birmingham.
Frustrated, I consider sending her a friend request but somehow it doesn’t feel right and so instead since I’m here I look up a number of former school mates whose privacy settings are low to non-existent just to see how their lives are treating them in comparison to my own. I discover
the following: Emma Francis (then the girl most likely to be a vet) is living in Bromsgrove, has two kids with a third on the way; Joseph Maloney (then the boy most likely to die at the hands of the police during a shoot-out) is back from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, living in Bristol, and likes Metallica and playing Xbox; Neema Patel (then the girl most likely to become a GP) is a part-time optician in Glasgow with two teenage daughters, and describes her relationship status as ‘complicated’; and Gary Turrell (then the boy most likely to turn his obsession with Dungeons and Dragons into a career) is now living in Indonesia, teaching scuba-diving and (if his profile picture was to be believed) sporting the kind of six-pack only ever seen on the cover of Men’s Health. So this is what turning forty is all about, I conclude as I close my laptop: kids, war, scuba-diving, complicated relationships, excessive body building and a whole lot of shattered dreams.
Desperate to keep my spirits up I follow through with my idea about taking a dogless walk up to Kings Heath park but even after several laps I’ve still got energy to spend so I carry on towards the environs of Moseley, a better-off cousin to Kings Heath popular with university lecturers, medics, renting graduates and (judging by the flash cars) the occasional highly paid executive. Maybe if I’d opted to live in Birmingham while earning the kind of money that I’d been earning in London I would’ve lived here too – a nice five-bed residence tucked away from the high street but not so far that I couldn’t stagger home from a night out at the King’s Arms.
Reaching the high street I take a walk along St Mary’s Row and reminisce about some of the shops and cafes that were here when I was seventeen: the hippy place that sold tie-dyed T-shirts and silver jewellery that Ginny loved; the tiny café that would turn a blind eye to us bringing in sausage rolls from the bakery next door; the chain pub that served the cheapest beer for miles but played the world’s worst music.