Rubbish Boyfriends

by Jessie Jones

  Maybe I should get up off my backside and do something about it, I thought. Maybe I should go for an interview at Hannah’s place. God knows I needed the money and I was sick to death of daytime TV. I mean, a girl knows she’s hit rock bottom when she can make seven-letter words on Countdown.

  I wondered how I could break the news to Emily. I was picturing myself telling her our Beauty Empire would have to be put on hold and she was taking it as well as could be expected by hacking at my jugular with a steak knife and screaming, ‘Die, traitor bitch, die!’ when Hannah kicked me hard under the table. I snapped back to reality and immediately saw the reason for her attack on my leg. Standing at our table, two guys, both from Blue. Or some boy band. No, not really them, but cute enough to make the final ten in the audition.

  ‘Well, are they?’ the one with the hood asked hopefully.

  ‘Are they what?’ I asked, trying to smile through the pain of the growing bruise on my shin.

  ‘Taken,’ he said, gesturing at the pair of empty stools at our table.

  Hannah wasn’t prepared to take a gamble on me answering anytime soon. ‘Please, sit down,’ she said, transforming her eyelashes into giant fans.

  They sat and marked their territory by putting their beers on the table. Hoody turned to me and my heart swapped places with my lungs. Well, something major was going on internally because I was finding it virtually impossible to breathe. God, had it really been so long since I’d been in close proximity to a good-looking man?

  ‘We work round the corner so we come here a lot,’ he said. ‘Never seen you two, though.’ He smiled at me gorgeously. But how else was he going to smile? He was gorgeous!

  ‘I’m Hannah and that’s Dayna,’ Hannah said for me, because it was clear that the paralysis of my vocal cords was ongoing.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ hoody said. ‘I’m Mark and this is Luke.’

  ‘Yeah, and before you ask, we do have mates called Matthew and John,’ Luke added. ‘It’s hell when we all go out together.’

  I didn’t think it was that funny, but I laughed anyway because Mark clearly thought it was hilarious.

  I was still laughing a couple of hours later and by then I wasn’t faking it. Who knows how these things happen, but Mark, Luke, Hannah and I had kind of split naturally into two couples.

  Mark and I had somehow gravitated towards each other and I was loving his company. He was sweet, gentle, generous, interesting and interested in me. All of which was raising my suspicions. He just seemed too good to be true. I’d had plenty of experience of that, hadn’t I? Look at my track record: both Simon and Archie had seemed perfect until, suddenly and shockingly, they weren’t. Even Gabriel – who obviously doesn’t count so forget I’m even mentioning him – was a definite ten until the moment I discovered that in one crucial respect he wasn’t. So what was the catch with Mark because I was certain there had to be one. In between nodding earnestly at all his interesting points and laughing at his jokes, I’d managed to carry out some basic checks. ‘Yes, I’d love to go there,’ he said when I innocently mentioned that I quite fancied the idea of a holiday in South Africa. ‘It was one of the best days of my life when they freed Nelson Mandela.’ Probably not a closet Nazi, then.

  And when I told him an entirely made-up story about a non-existent friend of a friend who cheated on his wife with his secretary and then on his secretary with her sister, he was absolutely appalled. ‘I think that’s the worst kind of betrayal,’ he said, shaking his head in disgust. ‘Absolutely,’ I agreed, crossing womaniser off the list of possible vices. He could have been bluffing, of course, but I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. His good looks had earned him that much. Let’s be honest, if he’d looked like Homer Simpson’s shorter, uglier brother he wouldn’t have stood a chance.

  Across the table, Hannah had been flirting like she’d just invented it, but when the barman called last orders, she suddenly came over all principled. Luke was only offering to walk her to the bus stop, but she told him, ‘It’s very kind of you, but it wouldn’t be right. I’m seeing someone.’

  Did she mean Simon? Honestly, if there was one bloke that wasn’t worth getting principled over … But I kept my mouth shut. I had no such qualms when Mark made the same offer to me.

  We lingered at the bus stop and when it started raining I greeted his offer to share his umbrella as if we were stranded on Mars and he was giving me the last available oxygen tank.

  But still no mention of a possible next time.

  ‘That’s my bus,’ I said as it swung into view.

  ‘Can I see you again?’ he asked hurriedly.

  Yeeeeessssssss! I thought triumphantly. ‘OK,’ I said coolly.

  As my bus pulled away he waved me off and as I watched him recede all I could think was there goes Number Five.

  As soon as I spotted the card in the window, I applied. It was the hairdresser at the bottom of the road. Kool Kutz it was called, which kind of says it all. They needed a receptionist/tea girl/sweeper-upper and I was in like a shot waving my CV. ‘You’re a bit overqualified,’ the owner sniffed. I’m also a bit desperate, my overly keen expression told her. She must have been feeling sympathetic because she gave me the job. Emily was furious. ‘What does this say about your commitment to us?’ she yelled.

  ‘It says I’m still totally committed, that’s what,’ I told her.

  ‘Oh, and how’s that?’

  ‘Well, if I wasn’t, I’d be out getting a proper job, wouldn’t I? Look, Emily, I only took the job a) to give a tiny bit of meaning to my life and b) to get some money coming in. If I didn’t want to set up with you, there’s no way I’d work in the local hairdresser’s.’

  ‘So, why didn’t you just say that in the first place?’ she said, smiling one of her little ‘sorry’ smiles, which meant she didn’t actually have to say sorry. ‘Let’s change the subject. What’s this Mark like?’

  ‘Too good to be true,’ I murmured. Emily hadn’t met him yet, but I’d got to know him pretty well over the previous month. I’d seen him five or six times and I was beginning to think seriously that he might be The One. I was also thinking that there HAD to be a catch. I mean, no one could be that good, could they? Not all the time. And I do mean all the time. Here’s a typical day in the life of Mark Fraser:

  Catch bus to work, giving up seat for old/pregnant/ slightly tired-looking lady.

  Arrive at work. At Shelter, the charity for the homeless. Yes, he earned a pittance in return for helping those in need.

  Take lunch break. Spot elderly man with Zimmer Frame struggling with shopping. Help him across road. Then help him home. Then make him lunch.

  Resume lunch break. On way to sandwich bar give last fiver to tramp.

  Return to work hungry and spend afternoon helping more homeless people.

  Knock off at eight (only three hours of unpaid overtime).

  Go home to shoot up heroin and have sex with a couple of prostitutes.

  No, I’m joking. When Mark went home, he carried on where he’d left off at work. He was a voluntary worker at a soup kitchen, a children’s home and the Whittington Hospital. He was a Samaritan as well and thought nothing of talking depressives out of suicide at three in the morning.

  And I worked at Kool Kutz.

  * * *

  ‘You make me feel so crap,’ I said to him the next time we met. He’d just told me about the guy who’d been living rough for the past five years, but who, all thanks to Mark, was now in secure housing and was finally thinking about making contact with his family again. ‘It’s wonderful what you do, Mark.’

  ‘It’s just like any job. You do whatever’s put in front of you. I don’t really see the difference.’

  ‘Oh, come on, there’s a huge difference between getting the homeless off the streets and sweeping up bits of blue-rinsed hair.’

  ‘And your blue-rinse ladies don’t feel a whole lot better after a cup of tea, a bit of chat and a hairdo at your place?’

/>   ‘Oh yeah, it’s just like Help the Aged at Kool Kutz,’ which, actually, wasn’t a million miles from the truth.

  ‘Stop doing yourself down. You’re a terrific person. You’re always doing stuff for others.’

  ‘Am I? I don’t even help out the people I know, let alone strangers. Remember how I chucked out you-know-who?’

  I’d told him all about Archie. Strange, but after my initial rush of disgust with him had passed, I’d been consumed by guilt. Whatever the man’s vile politics, he had saved my life. And I’d repaid him by dumping him and refusing to return his calls.

  ‘I should have at least tried to talk him round, shouldn’t I?’ I went on.

  ‘Maybe you’ll see him again. You can try then,’ Mark said. ‘Never say never.’

  ‘See him again? God, I hope not. The man’s a monster,’ I said, momentarily forgetting we were having a conversation about doing good.

  Mark laughed. ‘Everyone has at least one redeeming feature, Dayna.’

  ‘Everyone?’

  ‘Even Hitler. He loved his dog, you know, and he was really sweet with kids – well, the blond, blue-eyed ones at least. Seriously, though, you liked the guy enough to go out with him in the first place. And saving you from that mugger was pretty noble.’

  True, but that was why I’d been feeling guilty in the first place. ‘He didn’t look so noble when he was kicking the crap out of him,’ I reminded Mark.

  ‘All I’m saying is there must be good in him and, even if it was drowned out by the bad, you must have glimpsed it. After all, you’re not so shallow that you’d only go out with someone because they’re good looking.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ I said, gazing into his luminous green eyes set in that perfectly proportioned and oh-so-kissable boy-band face.

  ‘Shame Hannah and Luke didn’t hit it off,’ he said after a moment. ‘He really liked her, you know.’

  ‘Oh, and she adored him too,’ I said far too quickly, ‘but she has these misguided feelings of loyalty to a bloke who cheats on her at every opportunity.’

  I didn’t get Hannah’s thing for Simon at all. As long as I’d known her she’d been pretty sharp when it came to men. She’d never been a dewy-eyed romantic. So why did Simon have this effect on her? Did she think that if she hung around for long enough he would mend his cheating ways and devote himself to her? Mad.

  ‘I’d never do that to a girl,’ Mark said.

  ‘Really? You reckon that if you were walking home one night and a naked girl jumped out from the shadows and tried to have her way with you, you’d turn her down?’

  ‘Listen, if a naked girl jumped me in the street, I’d have her in a hostel, wrapped in blankets and drinking tea before she had a chance to do anything. Force of habit, I guess,’ he laughed.

  And I believed him. Mark would never cheat on me. Not ever. He was just too good to be true …

  Exactly! Too good to be true. Nobody could be that perfect. There had to be at least one skeleton in his closet and I was going to find it if it killed me.

  I was doing my final sweep at Kool Kutz when my mobile rang. The junior had been off and I’d been covering her job. That had meant washing hair – lots of it. My hands were so wrinkled I could barely feel the phone. It was Dad. We hadn’t spoken for a while, so I was glad to hear his voice. At first.

  ‘Look, it’s a bit hard to talk at the moment,’ I said, spotting the owner shooting me a dirty look. She didn’t like us taking personal calls on her time. ‘Shall I call you back when I get off?’

  ‘Don’t bother. You’re obviously far too important to talk to your dad.’ There was an edge to his voice. He was clearly spoiling for a fight. And he was slurring his words. Was he drunk? At not quite six?

  ‘What are you talking about, Dad?’ I whispered. ‘I’m at work. I can’t really talk. I’ll call you ba––’

  The line was dead. He’d hung up on me.

  Things had been pretty sweet since he’d come back from Dubai. We hadn’t talked about anything, admittedly, but the good thing about that was that we hadn’t argued about anything either. Was he having marital problems? Was it something I’d done? And why was he drunk? He was a sociable guy and he liked a drink, but he wasn’t a drunk. I put my phone back in my pocket and started to worry.

  I called him back as I was leaving work, but I only got his voicemail. I didn’t leave a message. I was debating whether to catch a bus straight round to his place or go home first when my phone rang again. It was Mark.

  ‘What are you doing right now?’ he asked.

  ‘Trying to decide what to do with my life,’ I said, trying to sound jolly.

  ‘Well, I don’t know how many options you’ve got, but here’s another. Fancy coming to a concert tonight?’

  ‘Really? What sort of concert?’ I asked, my mind still on Dad.

  ‘You know, just rock music.’

  Wow. I felt as if I was getting a glimpse of Mark’s dark side and I was quite excited. OK, it was only a rock concert. But until that moment I’d pretty much seen him as Saint Mark, so this felt like something of a breakthrough.

  ‘I’d love to come,’ I said, ‘but I should call round my dad’s first.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up and take you round there if you like.’

  Blimey, a rock concert and introducing my boyfriend to my (possibly drunk and stroppy) father. This was shaping up to be quite an evening.

  You don’t want to know how nervous I was feeling as Mark and I stood on Dad’s doorstep. I’d only ever brought one boyfriend home – Simon – and that had been years ago. Not only that, but it struck me that I must be mad. When I’d talked to Dad just over an hour before, he’d been drunk and he’d hung up on me. And now I wanted him to meet my bloke? Yes, I was utterly insane. The door opened and I shrank back in fear.

  ‘Hi there,’ Suzie tinkled, immediately looking Mark up and down. ‘Come to see your dad, Dayna? He’s not home yet …’

  Thank God for that, I thought.

  ‘… but come in anyway.’

  She ushered us into the living room, then disappeared into the kitchen to make us a drink and, knowing her, a selection of ten different club sandwiches.

  ‘Make yourself at home, Mark,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and see if Suzie needs a hand.’

  I found her cracking ice from a tray and dropping it into tumblers.

  ‘Everything OK?’ I asked.

  ‘Everything’s lovely,’ she replied, opening a huge packet of Kettle crisps.

  ‘Now tell me the truth. I know you too well. What’s wrong?’

  She turned and looked at me then. ‘Is it that obvious?’

  I gave her a look and she did this strangled little laugh.

  ‘We’ve had a few arguments,’ she said, ‘but it’s nothing to worry about.’

  I wasn’t buying it. ‘He’s going funny again, isn’t he?’ I said. ‘Like he did before he went to Dubai. He called earlier just to have a go at me about nothing and –’

  I stopped because Mark had appeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but we’d better be making a move, Dayna,’ he said.

  I watched the relief wash over Suzie’s face as she realised she wasn’t going to have to talk to me about difficult stuff. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked. ‘Anywhere nice?’

  ‘Just a concert,’ Mark told her.

  ‘A rock concert,’ I beamed, feeling quite rock ’n’ roll.

  ‘The sort of thing I used to go to years ago,’ she said. ‘I heard a lovely song on the radio today. Such a pretty tune. What was it called …? “Yellow”, that’s it. Have you heard it?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s great,’ Mark said. ‘Coldplay. They are massive at the moment.’

  ‘C’mon, let’s go, Mark,’ I said, not wanting to dwell for too long on Chris shooting to the top of the charts while I was stuck holding the broom at Kool Kutz.

  I let Mark walk ahead to the car while I hung back on the doorstep with Suzie.

  ‘He is lovel
y,’ she said, ‘absolutely gorgeous. You can bring him round any time. Michael would love to meet him.’

  I gave her a look.

  ‘Don’t worry about your dad, Dayna,’ she told me, squeezing my arm affectionately. ‘It’s really nothing to worry about. It’ll all blow over soon, you’ll see.’

  I don’t know who she was fooling, though. Not me and certainly not herself.

  The venue was no Wembley Arena. It was a smallish hall in Shepherd’s Bush, not somewhere I’d been before. The foyer was heaving with people, all young and jeans-clad and kind of rock ’n’ roll. Luckily, I’d dressed for the occasion too. I’d put on some fashionably torn Levi’s and dug out an old black T-shirt that I hoped looked purposely distressed, but was just actually old.

  ‘Drink?’ Mark asked me as we weaved our way towards the bar.

  ‘Yeah, I’ll have a beer, thanks,’ I replied on autopilot. ‘Actually, scrub that. Make it a Diet Coke.’

  I’d remembered my drunken dad and I’d had the sudden thought that if these things were hereditary and I was going to have to fight those alcoholic DNA fuckers, I’d better make a start on it there and then.

  Mark ordered two Diet Cokes and I wondered if he was following suit out of politeness, but, of course, he was driving, wasn’t he? Then, as I looked around it struck me that I couldn’t see too much alcohol being downed. Everyone seemed to be drinking Coke or lemonade or orange juice. And was that a lemon squash in that man’s hand? Very strange.

  Mark took my arm and said, ‘C’mon, let’s go through. It’ll be kicking off soon.’

  Whoo, I thought, soooo rock ’n’ roll!

  He led me into the auditorium and all at once I was impressed. Front row seats! Wasn’t this what they called the mosh pit? The place where wide-eyed groupies gathered, waiting for one of the roadies to pluck them out and take them backstage, where they’d become the plaything of the lead guitarist at the after-show party. Of course, I didn’t want that to happen to me, but simply being there felt exciting and just a little bit dangerous.