‘You never struck me as the self-help type,’ I comment.
‘Nor you.’
‘I suppose not. I’m just trying to work out how to reorganise my life really.’
‘Reorganise it?’
I shrug. ‘Everything really. That’s the problem. I kind of just feel that I have done this whole scene now. London, and jetting to New York, and . . . I want something different now. I want a farm and a veg patch, and some kids.’
‘The Good Life?’
‘Exactly.’
‘You should go for it. According to the telly the world is about to end anyway. Once all the banks have vanished and all the shops have closed, the only survivors will be people who grow their own veg.’
‘Yeah. A little bleak, but . . .’
‘My problem is that I don’t know what I want.’
‘You don’t fancy goats and chickens then?’
‘Oh no. I can’t think of anything worse. But I understand why someone else might.’
‘But I don’t want to do it on my own,’ I tell him. ‘That’s my problem. I mean, a farm on Exmoor, yes. A farm on Exmoor on my own, no way.’
Darren snorts. ‘Honestly, you people. I had exactly this conversation with Victor.’
‘What, Twinkletoes Victor?’
‘Yeah. He wants to move back to France and—’
‘I thought he was Spanish,’ I interrupt.
‘Nah, Basque. Whatever that means. I think it basically means French with a chip on the shoulder. Anyway, he was born near Perpignan, I think. And now he wants to move back, but not on his own. But as I keep pointing out, the chances of meeting someone who wants to live in France would be a little higher if he actually went and lived in France!’
‘Yes, I suppose,’ I say, thinking that if I was a gay man, I’d jump at the chance to move to France with a lovely guy like Victor.
‘Relationships are tough enough anyway, without throwing crazy criteria like must want to move to France into the mix. Waiting for other people to let you live your life is a mug’s game.’
‘I suppose,’ I say again. ‘Though of course there are things you need someone else for. There are things you can’t do on your own.’
Darren wrinkles his top lip. ‘Like?’
‘Like having a baby,’ I say.
‘You want kids too?’
I shrug. ‘Maybe, but it takes two to tango.’
Darren laughs.
‘What?’
‘Well . . . two to tango. You should talk to Jenna about that one.’
‘Your lesbian friend?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, even she needed someone else . . .’ I point out. ‘Even if it was only for a few seconds.’
‘Sure. And a turkey baster.’
‘Is that going well? The whole motherhood thing?’
‘Sure. Fred is a lovely kid. He’s five, I think. They moved in with Catherine, which caused some hassles.’
‘I bet.’
‘Not about . . . Not because she’s a woman. Kids don’t give a damn about that stuff. But Catherine is pretty anal. A place for everything and everything in its place. I think they both have some adjusting to do. But anyway, Jenna didn’t need a man. So you see, there’s always a way. If you know what you want then just seize the day, CC. Carpe diem and all that. I just wish I knew what I wanted.’
‘Yeah.’
‘A problem is never as permanent as a solution.’
‘What?’
‘Dunno what it means really. My mother always says it. Usually when she wants me to see a shrink and go straight.’
‘It’s not yours, is it?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘The kid.’
‘It?’
I pull a face. ‘Sorry. I don’t know why I said that,’ I say. Actually, I do sort of know why I said that. I was thinking about my own, potential, and so far, sexless child, and whether whoever fathered Jenna’s child might want to do the same for me.
Is it an option I would consider? A problem is never as permanent as a solution. ‘Anyway, is he? Yours?’
Darren laughs. ‘No,’ he says. ‘But – and don’t say I said anything – but I suspect that the dad might be Mark.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, he and Jenna are really close.’
‘But he never said so.’
‘No. But I mentioned it once – who the father was – and he seemed funny.’
‘Funny.’
‘Yeah. He just sort of changed the subject.’
‘Right.’
‘Anyway, don’t say I said anything.’
‘No,’ I say.
A movement outside catches my eye, and I turn to see a van parking opposite. ‘Talk of the devil,’ I say. ‘White Van Man is here.’
All It Takes is a Plan
I throw myself at work, and with the European Grunge! campaign going live, the stateside one hitting production (some mornings I arrive to find fifty emails from Harper & Baker in my inbox) and Victoria Barclay still off, there is easily enough work for me to lose myself in it completely.
I think that the reason that Mark’s law – or rather Mona’s law – appears so true is that the human brain is by nature dissatisfied. Dissatisfaction is one of the defining features of being human – if it were not the case we would still be happily living in trees and eating bananas.
The way we modern apes channel our dissatisfaction is to look at our three-piece puzzle and focus all of our capacity for dissatisfaction on the least successful third of our lives until the situation becomes, or at least appears to become, untenable. Equally, the human brain, unable to think about more than one problem at a time, creates a rosy pretence that the other two thirds are, for now at least, just dandy. So when we’re in a bad relationship we throw ourselves with relief at our jobs. It’s not that the job is perfect, it’s simply that we are too busy funnelling our angst at the unsatisfactory home-life to care. We need to pretend that the job and the flat are fine just to survive. Equally, the day we fall in love, the job doesn’t get any worse . . . it’s simply that because we no longer need it to escape the awful ex (and because we would rather stay in bed shagging) we direct our angst at the job.
Right now, I’m loving my job. It’s exhausting and exciting and satisfying and massages my ego on an hourly basis. I have a half- a-million pound international ad campaign swirling around me, and so, professionally at least, I’m right there at the hub of my life.
My job digests my days, and often my evenings and half the weekend as well. By Sunday I’m too tired to do anything or think about anything else anyway. I sit and drink (too much) wine and watch (too much) TV and wait for the Monday morning juggling to recommence.
It’s not that I’m missing much outside of work anyway. Sarah- Jane is cocooning with George (read: shagging for a baby) and Mark is cocooning with Ian (read: simply shagging). As for Darren, he is on a coke-fuelled man-hunt, which also seems to involve vast amounts of shagging, though mainly, from what Mark tells me, with absurdly inappropriate partners.
Indeed, I seem to be the only person I know who isn’t shagging.
But it’s all fine, because, as I say, my job is brilliant. My job is my saviour. My personal life can wait.
At the end of September, the European Grunge! campaign hits full steam, and suddenly there isn’t much to do except watch and wait to see if it works. Indeed, we have a bet on at the office that the first person to take a street-snap of a stranger wearing carpenter pants gets a bottle of Champagne from each of the rest of us. Liking a drop of Champagne but rarely having my hefty camera with me, I even consider lending George a pair of the trousers and getting SJ to send me a photo.
On the last day of the month, the US campaign enters what we call the eye of the storm. This is the moment when the whirlwind of preparation is over and there are a few fallow weeks before the campaign launches and causes a flurry of fresh media enquiries. Being a bit of a last-minute outfit, we rarely experien
ce this moment of spooky calm here at Spot On, but Harper & Baker’s campaigns are organised with military precision, mainly by Tom, and on the first Wednesday of October, I open my email to find no messages at all. Not one.
I stare at my screen, click on ‘fetch mail’ a few times, and then sigh deeply. I have been dreading this moment.
Even our other accounts seem dormant right now, and when by Thursday lunchtime I have made precisely one phone call (to a printer about an unpaid bill) and received two emails (both spam messages which have slipped through the net), I can take it no longer. I head up to Peter Stanton’s office.
‘You might as well take a long weekend,’ he tells me when I explain my problem. ‘Lord knows you’ve done enough hours recently.’
I send a final, hopeful, email to Tom asking if there’s anything I can do to help, but when even this produces only an automated reply that he is out of the office until Monday, I steel myself against the terror of an empty October weekend – an empty long weekend, and shut down my computer, sling my monastically silent BlackBerry in my bag, and head for the door.
It’s raining gently as I step out onto Soho Square.
I retreat and linger for a moment with the smokers as I wonder where to go. I have the whole of London surrounding me. People travel the world to come to our museums and our galleries – surely I’m not going to just go home and sit at the kitchen table. Am I?
Surely I’m going to go and visit the Tate Modern, or the National Portrait Gallery, or the V&A . . . Aren’t I? On my own, all of these options just strike me as depressing.
What is this inability to take joy in doing things on my own, I wonder. Isn’t that what they call co-dependency? I nod, suddenly decided, and head off towards Foyles. A book on co-dependency is clearly what’s required.
It turns out that whatever I am suffering from isn’t codependency. Co-dependency is another pleasure reserved for people in relationships.
Instead I pick up a copy of the best-selling Single Blues: Beat them from the get-go, and another: Living Life Lightly: a guide to creating joy in your life. I hesitate over Living Life Lightly because, ironically, the book (a hardcover) is so heavy I’m not sure I can be bothered lugging it around. But in the end, the bullet points all seem suitably uplifting to make the effort worthwhile.
Then, still not wanting to face my kitchen, I stop off at Nero’s for a cappuccino. Sitting in Nero’s with a copy of Single Blues on the table is a bit like walking around with a sandwich board marked ‘I’m available. Please chat me up.’ At any rate, I hope it is.
I’m Available, Please Chat Me Up suddenly strikes me as a brilliant idea for a book. I reckon millions of single women would buy copies. It would be the ultimate dating aid. Maybe I should write it.
I decide, on further reflection, that advertising that I have the blues probably isn’t the nub of a good campaign, so I hide Single Blues beneath Living Life Lightly: a guide to creating joy in your life. Figuring that advertising my need for joy isn’t going to do much better, and noting that the only single guy in the place has a crazy Bin-Laden beard anyway, I give up and put both books back in my bag and resign myself to the non-judgemental sanctuary of home.
It’s five when I get in. I dump my bag on the table and look around the kitchen. Winter is closing in and it’s already pitch- black outside.
This was a bad decision. I don’t think I can bear to spend the next hour in my flat, let alone the next three days. I need a plan.
Perhaps I should accept the invitation to help Mark and Ian paint their kitchen. I wrinkle my nose and look around. I haven’t painted anywhere since Brian and I painted this room, and that was five years ago, and I didn’t enjoy it much then.
And then I smile. Bugger Mark’s walls! I’m going to paint my kitchen.
I remove the books from my bag and swipe my keys from the table.
Amazing how quickly emotions can swing from one extreme to the other. I suddenly feel energetic and elated.
All it takes is a plan.
It takes most of Friday for me to wash the walls, move the furniture out, and to tape plastic sheeting around the kitchen cabinets. I have a fleeting moment of despair when I realise that I can’t manoeuvre the table out of the kitchen on my own, but then the postman unsuspectingly asks me to take in a parcel for Mark so I co-opt him into helping me with the table.
On Saturday the first coat takes considerably less time than I had hoped, but even this works out fine. The smell of paint drives me from the house and, at a loss for anything better to do, I simply go to the cinema. Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the latest Woody Allen film, does just the trick: it demonstrates that people in relationships are as miserable as I am.
By the time Sunday evening comes, my kitchen is looking positively perky.
To reward myself and to find a fresh victim for table-moving duties, I order a pizza from Domino’s. The delivery guy is the usual spotty adolescent, but he eventually agrees (on hearing my offer of a five quid tip) to help me move the table back where it came from.
It’s only once I have eaten my pizza and downed a third of a bottle of Chardonnay (my first drink for three days) that my carefully constructed optimism finally starts to disintegrate. For how much nicer it would be to have a boyfriend to help move tables! How much nicer to have a man to share the wine! How much nicer to have my boyfriend drop in unexpectedly and congratulate me on my stunning handiwork!
Just as I am wavering over whether to drink the rest of the bottle and collapse into a satisfying state of misery or put the bottle away and heroically resist, my period starts. I have to run, knock-kneed to the bathroom. I’m now nearly a week late so the relief is stunning.
I don’t get that irritable with PMT, thank God, but when the dam finally breaks, there is always a weird moment of clarity – a fleeting instant of comprehension – in which I realise that at least fifty per cent of whatever emotional state I was in was caused by PMT after all.
A wave of calm rolls over me. Within minutes, I feel centred, composed and thoroughly relaxed: at one with everything and everyone – even with the rain outside. Even with Mrs Pilchard. Even, dare I say it, with her Leylandii.
By ten I’m tucked up in bed with Living Life Lightly, trying to concentrate on exercise one.
Thoughts, the book says, become reality. Exercise A is simply to force oneself to imagine the outcomes one desires in life.
It takes me quite a few attempts to create a mental picture of a brown-eyed man who is neither alcoholic, nor balloon fetishist, nor bastard, but in the end I manage it.
By the time I drift off to sleep, I am daydreaming, and then suddenly dreaming, of a man and a baby and a big farm kitchen. A big farm kitchen with freshly painted walls.
What a Waste
On Monday morning, the post-apocalyptic silence of the office continues and I wonder for the first time if there is something more to this than the usual lull of the project cycle. There doesn’t, after all, seem to be much new work coming in either . . . Perhaps the doomsayers have it right. Perhaps it is going to be the eighties all over again.
The open-plan floor I work on is so quiet that people are whispering to each other. A couple of times, I pick up the phone just to check that it is still working.
At ten, out of sheer boredom, I phone Sarah-Jane.
‘Hello, dear, how are you?’ she says.
‘Bored. It’s like a morgue here. No emails, no calls . . . it’s bizarre.’
‘You’re the only person I know who says bizarre,’ she comments. ‘It’s the same here, by the way.’
‘What, bizarre?’
‘Yeah, scary. They reckon recessions hit charities really badly too.’
‘Do you really think it’s going to be that bad?’
‘Do you have a telly?’
‘Well, yeah, but I only really watch Desperate Housewives. And The Apprentice. And Dragon’s Den. Everything else is too depressing.’
‘Well the stock market crashed again this
morning, and another bank almost folded too.’
‘Another American one?’
‘Yeah, Bear Sterns or something.’
‘God, it makes you wonder.’
‘George is busy moving our savings into as many banks as possible, just in case.’
‘The Guardian said that the Nationwide is really safe. I don’t remember why, but that’s what they said.’
‘I’ll tell George. Though he probably knows already. He’s pretty up on these things.’
‘Anyway, how are you?’
‘Bored too.’ I hear her yawn as she says this.
‘So how’s the treatment going?’
‘Good. I’ve been regular as clockwork since June. I’d rather be preggers, but at least the pills seem to be doing something.’
‘And how are you coping with all the shagging?’ I laugh. ‘Must be awful.’
‘Actually, we’re limited to twice a week. Sundays and Wednesdays. Produces better sperm or something.’
‘I didn’t know sperm knew about days of the week.’
‘Nah, you dap. But every three days is best, they reckon.’
‘I’m aiming for every three years myself.’
‘You must be due then.’
‘I am. Talking of due . . . my own have been a bit hit and miss lately.’
‘Could be just stress and stuff. How hit and miss?’
‘Four days last month and then . . .’
‘Four days is OK.’
‘Yeah, but I’m usually regular as the atomic clock. And this month I was a whole week late. I felt like a whale by the time it finally happened.’
‘God, I hate that. But you should get it checked out.’
‘Yeah, if it continues.’
‘Well, it’s up to you. But I wouldn’t hang about if I was you. Not at our age.’
‘Right. Thanks for that.’
‘You want Doctor Yinkchovsky’s number.’
‘Yinkchovsky? What sort of a name is that?’
‘Dunno. He looks sort of Latino.’
‘Sounds more Russian.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘This is the sexy one, right?’
The Case of the Missing Boyfriend Page 20