Getting Over It

by Anna Maxted

  ‘But then you’re thinking about this one mingy biscuit all day!’ I squeak. ‘Doesn’t it make you obsessed? Wouldn’t it be better to wolf it down and get it over with?’

  We erupt into loud debate about our own biscuit habits. Tina can have a packet of biscuits sitting on her bedside table for literally weeks and not even feel a twinge as biscuits ‘do nothing’ for her. If she has a weakness it’s for smoky bacon crisps and (inexplicably) ‘they’re good for you’. I can devour fifteen biscuits in one fell swoop and still have room for pudding although to be fair, it does depend on the individual biscuit. And no I do not feel guilty. ‘I’d feel guilty if I killed someone,’ I say sternly to Lizzy who is gasping and shuddering like a landbound halibut and obviously needs the crime to be put in perspective.

  Adrian laughs at this and says, ‘So we’re discussing biscuit eating as a moral issue!’

  Brian – the earnest old goat – pipes up with ‘You say that, but in fact there are many women, and indeed men, who would describe themselves as feeling “bad” for eating a biscuit, even “terrible” – and wouldn’t you say, the use of such highly charged emotional language is enormously significant in terms of their self-judgement and in consequence, their self-estee—’ No doubt he would have rambled on forever if Tom hadn’t picked this perfect moment to walk into the pub. I greet him joyously (apart from anything he looks gorgeous) and Brian is forced to terminate his diatribe. Adrian, for one, looks relieved.

  I introduce Tom to everyone – ‘and you remember Tina but we’ll leave it there, shall we?’ – he smiles, kisses, shakes hands and insists on getting the next round.

  ‘You know Tom already, I take it,’ says Adrian to Tina, quickly, before Brian can resume his lecture.

  ‘I only met him once,’ says Tina nervously – aware that I am monitoring every word and am willing to douse her in beer if she even dares to hint at a urine joke – ‘we went out with Helen for a quick drink.’

  Adrian is intrigued. He narrows his gorgeous eyes and says, ‘So why do we have to “leave it there?”

  I have no intention of allowing Tina to blurt out the hilarious tale of my alcohol-induced incontinence so I interrupt: ‘Because I drank too much and got a bit tipsy.’

  I stare at Tina in a way that I intend to appear benign to everyone else and threatening to her. It works. Instead of declaiming me as a drunken liar, she says meekly, ‘Helen was embarrassed. She doesn’t like to be reminded of it.’ I beam at her.

  Adrian suggests, ‘Then it can’t have been that quick a drink,’ but Tina insists – as poker faced as a guard at Buckingham Palace – ‘Helen’s like me, she doesn’t drink much so her tolerance is low.’ Frankly I am surprised her nose doesn’t grow to Concorde size and smash through the pub window. I feel the rise of a giggle fit so I smirk gratefully at Tina and gabble that I’m going to the loo.

  When I return, Tina and Adrian are deep in touchy-feely conversation, and Tom is chatting to Lizzy and Brian. My heart lurches in fear, please don’t let Lizzy be ranting on about yurt weekends and Jungian psychoanalysis. Please let Tom like her, and please let her like Tom. (Brian is on his own.) Happily, they turn out to be discussing Cornwall. Brian was born in Morwenstow – right on the coast – and although he’s lived in London for twenty years he misses the tranquillity.

  ‘Doesn’t t’ai chi compensate?’ I say wickedly.

  He smiles and replies, ‘A little. But above all I find t’ai chi extremely useful if you suffer from pointy foot syndrome.’ He bursts out laughing as that flap-mouthed ratbag Lizzy glides to the Ladies and I cough-splutter into my drink.

  In a very small voice I say ‘I am so so sorry.’

  Brian waves away my apology and says, ‘Forgiven, forgotten, just teasing.’

  I know Tom is about to cry ‘What?’ so I say quickly, ‘Do you do, er, any sport, Tom?’ It’s a nerdy question but it’s also an emergency.

  ‘I run. And box,’ he says obligingly, ‘although I’m not that good.’

  I exclaim, ‘Rubbish, I’m sure you’re brilliant!’ mainly to sweep the conversation way and beyond the pointy foot episode.

  ‘Oh?’ says Tom, bestowing me with a sunshine smile, ‘and why are you so sure?’ He is looking at me in a way that would melt chocolate.

  I jiggle my foot to stop myself blushing. Then I return the look, playfully squeeze his upper arm, and purr, ‘You look quite hard – ooh you are hard!’ To be honest, I’m useless at playing the vamp. I’m invariably thwarted by loose paving stones, dogs on heat, and stubborn revolving doors. But tonight I am shameless. I bite my lip suggestively (I hope) and say under my breath, ‘Mm, very hard’ and pray to God that Tom doesn’t burst out laughing at me.

  Tom puts his mouth to my ear and mutters casually, ‘Try me.’

  My heart does a massive thump – either there’s a rabbit’s foot lodged in my chest or I’ve got palpitations and need to see a doctor. I hold his ice-blue gaze and my cheeks burn and I murmur, ‘Try and stop me.’ By this point, Lizzy and Brian are tactful enough to be talking amongst themselves.

  I move closer to Tom until our thighs are brushing and my heart hammers. It is lust but not pure lust, there’s something else in there too. I can’t work it out. We sit in the pub and flirt disgracefully till chucking out time, we go to a poky little club in Soho and shout above the music and touch hands and still I can’t work it out. Tina and Adrian go home because they’re exhausted and Adrian’s working tomorrow, Lizzy announces she’s got to be up early to do her Christmas shopping (only three weeks to go!) and I still can’t work it out.

  Tom and I roll into the street and hold hands and eat revolting kebabs and my heart is still racing and I still can’t work it out. And then I spit my kebab into a bin and he pulls me to him and we kiss and kiss and clutch at each other and the rabbit foot is thumping at ninety miles an hour and we kiss and kiss and we’re kissing and kissing and then I realise and I pull away for air. It’s fear. I don’t know why and I don’t know if Tom knows but he doesn’t say anything. He kisses me slowly and strokes my hair. Then he hails a taxi.

  And then he hails another one for himself.

  Chapter 25

  WHEN I WAS at college and a stranger to grim reality, I briefly suffered from a surfeit of confidence. This had much to do with escaping my parents. Also, the majority of students were present to extend their sex education so if you wanted action you could usually find it. Jabba the Hutt would have pulled. Indeed, I snogged him myself on several occasions.

  So it was a shock when I went on the prowl with a girl named Beatrice who was as plain as a blank wall, and the guy I’d set my night on bought us both drinks but asked her to dance. The next morning Luke visited and – planting the seed of my misplaced passion – brought Marcus along. I decided to chew over the riddle in his presence. I was, no doubt, hoping that horniness was contagious. ‘Do you think,’ I said as I spooned peanut butter out of the jar, ‘that he was playing hard to get? Using Beatrice to make me jealous?’

  Marcus followed the spoon’s progression to my mouth with fascinated revulsion, and declared (the first and last words he spoke to me for five years): ‘Sweetheart, there’s no mystery – he fancied Beatrice! If a bloke fancies you, he’ll do you!’

  I am reminded of these poetic words at 3 a.m. on Saturday as I pay the taxi driver and walk to the front door, alone. Yes, I pulled away from Tom first. I’m not sure about him anyway. But why did he have to follow my lead like a thick puppy? Hasn’t he got a mind of his own? I flounce into the flat and am about to karate kick open my bedroom door when I see a note stuck to it: ‘Flat Meeting, lounge, Sat morning, 10 a.m. Attendance compulsory.’ And I think, living with Marcus is like living under martial law. I scrumple up the note and set my alarm for 2 p.m.

  I fall asleep and dream the empty house dream. I am still being pursued by baddies, and still hiding in cupboards, but having been there forty times I am now used to it. I’m hunched in a wardrobe and someone, something, is thumping
up the stairs, thump! thump! and now they’re banging on the wardrobe door, bang! bang! louder and louder. I wake up with a start, sweating, and hear bang! bang! Marcus is banging on my door and singing ‘It’s nine forty-five! This is your wake up call!’ I hurl a boot at the door and pull the pillow over my head. Marcus keeps banging, bang! bang!

  ‘All right!’ I scream, ‘I’m coming to your frigging meeting, leave me alone!’

  I drag myself out of bed, muttering. I pull on my dressing gown, plod to the kitchen, and make myself a coffee. There’s no milk in my section of the fridge (there’s nothing in my section of the fridge) so I steal from Marcus’s. There are two milk cartons in his section and propped against them is a note reading ‘I have put bleach in one of these cartons and only I know which one.’ I am tempted to replace it with a note reading ‘Fatboy has peed in both of these cartons . . .’ but then I realise one of the cartons is unopened. Berk.

  Luke has also been turfed out of bed to attend. He looks rumpled and tired. ‘Do you want a coffee?’ I say.

  ‘Please!’ he says.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, ‘the mug’s on the shelf, the coffee’s in the jar, and the milk’s in the fridge.’

  He looks crestfallen and says ‘Oh!’ so I pinch his cheek fondly, sing ‘only joking!’ and make him a coffee. Fatboy is also up, stretching and yawning and prrrp!ing for breakfast. We’re used to Marcus’s Flat Meetings. He always hauls us in for a bollocking when our slobbiness reaches a crescendo and we always say that we’re sorry and we won’t do it again and continue exactly as we were.

  So it’s a shock when Marcus tells me he wants me out of the flat by the end of the week.

  ‘But I’ve got nowhere to go!’ I bleat.

  ‘Not my problem,’ says Marcus coldly. I stare stonily at a black hair poking out of Marcus’s nose – I refuse to cry or argue as nothing would please him more. Luke tries to stand up for me but I don’t want him to be booted out too so I shush him.

  ‘Marcus,’ I lie, ‘you’re doing me a great favour. And you’ve got a black hair poking out of your nose. It’s like a hamster’s tooth.’ And I stalk out of the lounge, into my room, and flop on the bed.

  I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it but I should. Of course this was going to happen. How could it not happen? Marcus may be a grasping tightwad but he’s also as proud as, well, as a man with a ripply back. I know this. And yet, ever since he rebuffed me I’ve been kicking him where it hurts. Although it does require careful aim with a target that small. See what I mean? Did I expect him not to retaliate? I suppose that I was so caught up in personally effecting his eternal punishment that the consequences didn’t occur to me.

  I look back and I don’t think I could have stopped baiting him even if I’d wanted to. I have this stagnating pool of hatred for him that kills rationality, and I don’t know why. If I’m honest – something I’m not very good at – what did he really do wrong apart from trying me for size and deciding I didn’t fit? (And likewise.) Marcus’s brittle ego was bound to snap one day, and it has. I should be steeled for it, but I’m not. I’m scared. Again. A timid little girl-mouse. I should rejoice in my enforced freedom but I can’t. Living with Marcus may be purgatory but it’s safer than striking out alone. Living with Marcus is like being stuck in a job you hate. You know you should stop bitching about it and resign and find something better but the terror of what’s out there constrains you. But now Marcus has made me redundant so I have no choice.

  I call Tom.

  I didn’t intend to. After the meeting I think about last night and decide that the fear I felt was instinctive. A warning. You see, I like Tom. I feel drawn to him like a sailor to a mermaid on a rock. Tom’s all fuck-me eyes and silvery tail, his siren promise drawing me slowly in. He’s so squarely there for me, how could I resist? Thing is, I’m unsure if I’d despise him more if his eagerness was real or an act. At least I know where I am with the likes of Jasper. There’s no pretence. Men who behave willing and artless and forever yours are myth. Maybe I want to be deceived. But I paused and Tom ran away. Slipped into the Soho sea and vanished. What kind of forever is that?

  I think all this, and then I think bollocks and call him anyway.

  And the bastard isn’t in!

  I call my mother instead. ‘Nana Flo wants a word with you!’ she says, before I can utter a syllable. I am about to ask why, but am handed over to my grandmother on the ‘w’.

  ‘Hello?’ she shrills.

  ‘Hello, Nana, how are you?’ I say.

  ‘Well thank you. I saw a very interesting programme on the television last night.’ Hm. Where’s this leading.

  ‘Oh yes?’ I say politely.

  ‘About freezing your eggs,’ says Nana. Odd. She doesn’t know what I eat and has never betrayed any sign of caring.

  ‘But can’t I just buy them when I need—’ I start, but my grandmother interrupts:

  ‘Freezing your eggs! Putting your eggs on ice! You’re not courting! You’ve not settled down! You’re not getting any younger! Your eggs are dying inside you! It looked a very simple operation on the television!’

  I thank Nana for her concern, tell her I’ll consider it, and ask to be put back to my mother. My mother’s first words are, ‘Nothing to do with me!’ Aided and abetted though, I’ll warrant. But I let this pass as I have a more pressing matter to discuss.

  My impending homelessness. ‘You can come and stay with us!’ she cries. I can just imagine it. Three witches and an orange cat. It would be like living in a tin drum. I tell her it’s a sweet offer but no thanks. I spend from noon till five moping and grizzling and grooming Fatboy – who is desperate to escape and claws at the door – and hoping that a passing fairy godmother will save me from being turfed on to the street or (worse) being forced into cohabitation with Psychomum and the Eggwoman.

  At 5.05 there is a loud toot-toot! in the driveway. I peek out of the window and see Ivana Trump emerging from a red Golf. Her hair is as big as a barn. She and Marcus must be going somewhere swish tonight like the Hard Rock Café. How could he? Choose her over me? Even though I now hate him and wouldn’t shag him for practice, it smarts. Michelle’s betrayal pales in comparison. I squeeze out a tear and, for lack of anything better to do, look side-on at my stomach in the mirror. I stick it out as far as it will go – eight months pregnant, the virgin birth!

  I stroke it in fascination and remember once, before I knew better, telling Marcus that I wasn’t sure but I thought I’d gained weight on my feet. I said it as a ‘wonder of the world’ type statement and he snapped: ‘If you eat shit, you look like shit!’ I pull my dressing gown together, and slump on my bed. I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I know, Luke is shaking me awake and brandishing the phone in my face. ‘Phone!’ he shouts, unnecessarily.

  ‘Who?’ I mouth.

  ‘Tom!’ he shouts.

  I snatch it from him. ‘Thanks, Luke!’

  Tom is friendly but says nothing about last night except he had a good time. Well what’s that supposed to mean? He enjoyed his kebab? He asks how I am. I start off airy and defiant but the confusion and envy and self-pity merge and, to my absolute mortification, my voice cracks. ‘Basically,’ I sniffle – a word I usually veto on principle – ‘me and Fatboy have got nowhere to go!’

  Tom is silent. Then he says, ‘What are you and Fatboy doing tonight?’ I consider spinning him a glamorous lie.

  ‘Nothing!’ I bleat.

  ‘Do you want me to come round?’ he says.

  I know I should say no to, if nothing else, reclaim a sliver of dignity. But as I’ve mentioned before I hate the word should. ‘Yes!’ I say.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he says, ‘I’ll be with you in a couple of hours.’

  I stand dazed for a picosecond before leaping into action. My first port of call is the fridge where a trusty cucumber – labelled ‘this belongs to Marcus’ – awaits me. I cut off two generous slices to place over my red puffy eyes and, as a symbolic gesture, stick the r
est of it down the waste disposal.

  Chapter 26

  I’VE ALWAYS FANCIED being psychic – forgo the crystal ball and tasselly skirt and it’s a darkly glamorous talent. And I could always hide Fatboy in a cupboard and buy a sleek Burmese with golden eyes and warm chocolate coat to complete the mystical allure. But as I’ve failed repeatedly to predict the weather or what shoes Michelle is going to be wearing on a certain day, I’ve had to get over my big-earringed fantasy and resign myself to mental banality. Anyhow, I’d rather be burned at the stake than exchange my orange yob for a pedigree. But hope springs eternal so when the phone rings as I storm around trying to transform my room from a fleapit to a boudoir, I guess: Tina. It’s Lizzy.

  I ask her how the Christmas shopping went. ‘All done!’ she replies.

  ‘You’re amazing,’ I tell her, ‘amazing. What did you get?’ Lizzy reels off an ingenious list of perfect presents. I’m duly admiring. ‘I can never think of what to buy people! At least’ – and here, I say ‘huh’ to indicate this is a joke – ‘I won’t have to worry about what to get Dad this year. Nightmare! Even when I got him a golf book he never read it!’

  Lizzy tuts. ‘I’m sure you’re mistaken! Although Christmasses and birthdays are the worst! How are you feeling about all that, Helen?’ she says. ‘You never talk about it.’

  I’m touched, but feel obliged to correct her. ‘Lizzy!’ I say, ‘You’re so sweet but stop asking! I’m fine. Mum loves the Gregorian Moods tape. And Vivienne’s told everyone the dramatic tale of how she single-handedly saved my mother from a bloody and violent death so all her ghoulish friends are paying her masses of attention at the moment. And what with Nana Flo, she can’t move for people fussing. It’s great.’