by Lisa Jewell
The insufferable women all looked at the red-sweatshirt bloke as if they were used to him being overbearing and obnoxious.
Red sweatshirt patted the empty seat next to him. ‘Come and sit here,’ he said, ‘us chaps have got to stick together.’
Tony looked at Jan imploringly as if to say, ‘Please don’t make me sit next to the horrible, overbearing man, Auntie Jan, please.’ But Auntie Jan just beamed at him and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Everyone, this is Tony. Tony’s our new member this week so let’s all make him feel welcome, shall we.’And then she pointed him in the direction of the empty seat next to red sweatshirt. Tony grimaced and walked through the group towards the seat.
‘Kelvin,’ said the man, extending a meaty hand, ‘nice to meet you, Tony.’
‘Yeah, you too.’ Tony shook his hand and then Kelvin leant in really close to his ear.
‘Bunch of hippos. Look at‘ ‘em. Poor things.’
Tony looked round the group of overweight women, and then back at the even more overweight Kelvin.
‘Tell you what I like about hippos, though,’ he said, wheezing slightly, ‘they’re ever so blumming grateful.’
Tony looked at him with alarm. ‘Aren’t you here to lose weight?’ he said.
‘No. Of course not. I’m here for the lovely laydeez.’
‘And have you… have you been out with anyone yet?’
Kelvin shrugged his enormous shoulders up and down. ‘No. Not yet. I’ve been working on the luscious Tonia, though.’ He indicated a very glamorous blonde with incredibly long fingernails.
Tony lapsed into silence and wondered if maybe he should do the decent thing and tell Kelvin that Tonia was actually quite a babe and that he didn’t stand a chance in hell, but then Jan began to talk and the session started.
In all honesty, Tony found the whole experience quite riveting, in a trashy-TV kind of a way. As he wasn’t yet participating in the programme, he could treat the session as a form of light entertainment. He was fascinated to hear about Tonia’s experience at a hen night the previous weekend when they’d gone to a TGI Friday and she’d been that close to eating everything on the menu – because TGI was her absolute favourite – and how it had only been the thought of Jan and the group and how much faith they had in her that had reined her back in. He was moved by the fact that Arabella had managed to get through the week in which her elderly mother had died without breaking her diet – even at the funeral, with all those canapés. Jenny had had a terrible time, apparently. Eaten pretty much a whole leg of lamb, slice by slice, with bread and butter, over the course of the week. Tony sympathized with her hugely – he’d have done exactly the same thing if he’d had a leg of lamb lying around the place. Jan reassured her that a bad week didn’t make a bad person, that everyone lapsed occasionally and that maybe next time she had a joint of meat left over from the Sunday lunch she should put it straight down for the dog.
The group were incredibly supportive of each other and no one judged anyone for anything. With the exception of the dreadful Kelvin, they were a truly delightful and heart-warming group of people. Tony had been expecting a bunch of freaks and was pleasantly surprised by how comfortable he felt here, in among all these people with healthy appetites and a penchant for overdoing it. And, although they reflected the parts of himself he disliked, he didn’t dislike them. It was strangely soothing and reassuring to know that he wasn’t alone, to know that he wasn’t the only person in the world who would work his way systematically through a quarter of a sheep if left to his own devices.
After the meeting, which lasted about half an hour, he and Jan retired to her little office and had what she referred to as a ‘nice little chat’, during which she asked him about his private life, about whether or not he lived alone, who he’d be able to call on for support, his general eating patterns, what sort of exercise he got. Then she gave him some photocopied guidelines and recipes and told him how much she was looking forward to seeing him the following week and Tony had to resist the urge to hug her and tell her she was fantastic – because she was. This was more than just a job to Jan; this was a labour of love. She did this because it made her happy.
Tony flicked through the notes and the recipes and felt a distinct fluttering of excitement. He felt evangelized, energized, enthused. He could do this, he thought as he put on his coat and headed for the exit, he could shift this weight. He could rediscover the old Tony. He could be slim and youthful again. He could, he knew it. This was just what he needed. He’d known there must have been a reason for him picking up that leaflet all those weeks ago. He’d found his destiny. His whole life might be a mess but this was something, in fact, the only thing over which he could actually exert any control.
He still had Ness’s proposal hanging over his head and yes, it sounded simple, didn’t it? Just to give her a call and say, ‘Well, I’ve given it some thought and, well, no, I don’t want to move in with you.’It sounded simple but life wasn’t simple. It wasn’t simple because for some inexplicable reason he and Ness had ended up having a really nice weekend together. Not for any particular reason, just one of those nice, drifty, carefree weekends. Dinner at Rob and Trisha’s had been surprisingly convivial and then they’d woken up yesterday morning and it had been all sunny and spring-like so they’d had some particularly pleasant sex and driven over to Dulwich for a pub lunch (Tony had a toasted sandwich instead of the full Sunday roast he’d usually have ordered). Then they’d gone for a long walk on the common and Ness had just been… well, Ness, he supposed. But for some reason she hadn’t got on his nerves and Tony had allowed himself to enjoy her company for once. It was one of those strange and unfathomable things. But pleasant as it was it didn’t make things intrinsically any different He still didn’t want to move in with her. He still didn’t want to end up with her. He still wanted to be with Millie. In fact, he’d spent a large portion of the weekend imagining Millie watching him and thinking how much fun it looked to be his girlfriend.
But he wasn’t ready to finish it either. Relationships, in Tony’s experience, got a sort of stench about them when their time was up. It was impossible to pinpoint the precise moment that a relationship went on the turn, but if you tried to end a relationship before it was over in that stinky sort of way, it always went wrong and you usually ended up getting back together and splitting up again further down the line, a pattern that at its worst could go on repeating itself ad infinitum. No, Tony was sure of this, you had to wait until a relationship was a stinking rotten carcass before bailing out; that way everyone concerned could just walk away from it without any desire to turn around and have another look. His relationship with Jo had gone stinky a few months before she left him. They’d both known it and both politely ignored it, until Jo had done the decent thing and fallen in love with someone else. But his relationship with Ness hadn’t reached the rotten-carcass stage just yet.
It could be argued that Tony was being unfair to Ness by stringing her along. She was twenty-nine, nearly thirty. She was looking for stability, a future and children and every day that she spent with Tony was a day lost in the pursuit of her own happiness. But really, it was her own fault. Tony had never given her any indication that he wanted to settle down with her. He was rude to her, thoughtless and inconsiderate. He didn’t tell her that he loved her, buy her gifts or talk to her about babies and weddings. She was an intelligent woman and it was her informed choice to hang around with him while her youth faded away. Maybe she was subconsciously waiting for the stench, too, Tony pondered. Maybe he was on some invisible countdown, maybe suggesting that they move in together had actually been some kind of masked ultimatum. Maybe she was going to finish it if he said no. Which was exactly why he couldn’t say no. Because he wasn’t ready for it to finish. He wasn’t ready for empty weekends and going to weddings and work dos on his own. He wasn’t ready to be perceived as single, by Millie or by anyone else. It wasn’t time. Not yet.
A few of the people from the grou
p were milling around on the pavement outside the centre. Kelvin, who was busy sweet-talking Tonia, looked up as he saw Tony leave the building. ‘We’re all off to the pub. Fancy a drink?’ he said.
Tony looked at his watch.
‘Go on,’ said Tonia, eyeing him desperately.
‘OK,’ he said, thinking that he could be a hero just for one night, by helping Tonia to extricate herself from the foul Kelvin’s attentions. ‘Just a quick one.’
They went to a stripped-pine-and-blackboard wine bar called Bubbles – Tony didn’t think that there were any wine bars with names like Bubbles still in existence, thought they’d all disappeared with the economic crash of the early nineties. It reminded him of being in his twenties, of the business starting to take off, of marrying Jo, being young and being richer than his wildest dreams. It reminded him of wearing Hugo Boss suits and going for dinner with Jo every night to trendy restaurants full of men in Hugo Boss suits and being served microscopic portions of food. It reminded him of how good life used to be and of how much he’d lost.
After a few minutes, Tony became aware that Tonia was flirting with him, and, although he could see that she was an extremely attractive and utterly charming woman, the awareness made no impact on him at all. He sipped his wine and asked Tonia automated questions about herself – she was thirty-three, lived in Bal-ham, worked in theatre, liked ethnic food, didn’t like dieting, etc., etc. – and felt a terrible despondency engulf him. How had he ended up here? How had his golden life become so tarnished?
But then he reminded himself that this was just the first step back towards the sunshine and the good times. That was why he was here. Because the only person in the whole world who could offer him the glitter he craved so much was sitting alone in a beautiful Pad-dington flat being dragged into the gutter by his selfish younger brother. Because the two of them together could take on the world and make everything golden again. And because there was no way that she’d love him until he loved himself and he couldn’t love himself like this. He had to be thin. It was the only way.
He took another sip of his wine and politely asked Tonia if she’d been on holiday lately.
Nachos with Ned
At seven o’clock on Tuesday night, Sean’s mouse hovered over ‘word count’. He held his breath and clicked it:
Pages
123
Words
28,981
Characters (no spaces)
130,544
Characters (with spaces)
159,300
Paragraphs
724
Lines
2,445
Nearly 30,000 words. That was nearly a third of a book, could even be half a book if he didn’t overcomplicate things. Fuck. He was going to make it. He was going to get this book finished. He’d received a diffident little e-mail from his agent yesterday morning, asking him about his MS and when he might expect it. If Sean had received that e-mail a week ago it would have sent him into a paroxysm of terror and he’d have started hyperventilating. As it was, he’d smiled to himself and calmly penned a reply informing his agent that, although he might not quite make the deadline, everything was progressing very nicely and he should get it to him by July. He’d been working flat out, hadn’t seen Millie for a week, hadn’t seen anyone in a week. He’d been working late into the night, going to bed when it was nearly morning, getting up late and starting the process all over again. He hadn’t even watched TV.
Millie, obviously, wasn’t pleased with this turn of events, but that was tough shit, quite frankly. He’d already put his career on hold for her, put his whole life on hold for her. He’d explained to her exactly what he was going through, that he’d got into a groove and that if he took himself out of the space he was in right now, everything might come to a grinding halt again. She’d said that of course she understood, in a tone of voice that suggested that she really didn’t. ‘When can I expect to see you again?’she’d said in her clipped, polished English. ‘I don’t know,’ he’d said, ‘when it feels like I’ve reached a natural break.’ He could almost hear the subtext in her voice: ‘But I’m pregnant, what in the whole world could possibly be more important than the miracle of life?’
But right now this was more important. It was more important than babies and relationships and eating three proper meals a day. It was more important than anything. And he, of course, had his own subtext. It wasn’t just the book, it wasn’t just making deadline – it was being away from her. It was doing him good. Rediscovering his old routines and habits, drinking PG Tips instead of English breakfast, going to bed whenever the fuck he wanted, not having to consider anyone else’s preferences. He had no idea if he’d be feeling this way if she wasn’t pregnant, but he suspected not. Un-pregnant Millie had been unpredictable and exciting – he’d wanted to hang around with her and take on board her preferences because he never knew where he might end up and there was always some form of pay-off, be it a great night out, a surreal encounter or the discovery of something new and exciting. Pregnant Millie was just a drag, to be quite honest. There was no longer any promise of the unexpected. He found it really hard to relate to her while she was in this condition. It was like she’d found Jesus or something.
He still thought about what Tony had said to him and he knew that he was right. He did need to make decisions. He did need to think about the future, but the problem was that he didn’t have room in his head to think about it at the moment. He still loved Millie; of course he did. But he didn’t really know what he felt about weddings and babies and the future. Every time he tried to free up some mental disk space to ponder the situation his head would crash and he’d start thinking about his book instead. Millie, her flat and her cats all felt like a distant, lost world, like something from his past.
He looked at the time on the computer screen again. Ten past seven. He re-read the last bit of text he’d written and realized with some surprise that he’d reached a ‘natural break’. He could easily jump on a train, make his way over to Paddington, spend the evening with Millie. But he didn’t want to. Not in the slightest. But he did have this sudden need to get out of the flat and talk to another human being.
He gave his predicament a moment or two of thought and then picked up the phone and called Ned.
Forty minutes later Sean was installed on the sofa at Beulah Hill watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a beer in one hand and the remote control in the other. Mum was in the kitchen delightedly rustling up a big plate of nachos for her boys, Ned was stretched out full-length on the other sofa reading heat magazine and picking his nose, and Goldie was lying in front of the TV with his front paws in the air, snoring contentedly. Sean breathed a sigh of relief. This was nice, he thought, this was right. He was back where he belonged.
He’d managed to sidestep all the questions from Mum about him and Millie. No, they hadn’t set a date; no, it probably wasn’t going to be a summer wedding; no, he had no idea whether it was going to be religious or civil. He and Millie were having a long engagement, he’d said, and Mum had smiled and looked more than satisfied with that. ‘That’s good,’she’d said. ‘There’s no point in rushing into anything, is there?’
He still had no idea when he was going to tell his family that Millie was actually pregnant. Luckily, she was being cautious about it, wanted to wait until she was twelve weeks gone, until she was ‘safe’. She’d told her sister and a few close friends, and Sean had told Tony, but apart from that no one in the whole world knew about it and Sean liked it like that. Other people knowing wasn’t going to make Millie any more pregnant than she already was but it would make it harder for him to pretend that it wasn’t happening.
‘How’s the book going?’ said Ned, putting down his copy of heat.
‘Brilliant!’ said Sean, appreciating Ned’s unwitting diversion of his thoughts away from the more problematic areas of his life. ‘Yeah – it was a bit shaky to start off with, but now it’s going really well.’
�
�What’s it about?’
‘Well, it’s about this bloke who falls in love with this woman…’
‘What – you’re writing a romance?’ Ned looked appalled.
‘No, no, no – he falls in love with this woman, right, thinks she’s the one for him. And then she gets pregnant.’ He looked at Ned, waiting for his reaction.
‘Right. And then what?’
‘Well, she gets pregnant and wants to keep it and it’s about the guy’s perspective on the situation.’
‘Oh,’ said Ned, sounding slightly confused. ‘Right. What’s the twist?’
‘It hasn’t got a twist. It’s just, you know, women have all this power over men, make all these decisions about babies and everything and men just have to go along with it. And it’s not just babies, you know, it’s everything. All those TV adverts they have on all the time with some ‘stupid’ man being shown how to put up bookshelves or fit the car radio or buy the car insurance or scrub out the fucking bath properly by their superior wives. It just pisses me off. There’s this attitude in this country – and it’s not just perpetuated by women, it’s men too – that men are these big, dumb, useless creatures who get everything wrong – like we’re one rung above fucking Goldie on the evolutionary ladder. And women are these celestial beings of wisdom and insight and emotional fucking intelligence. It’s so fucking patronizing.’
‘So what does he do, then, this bloke with the pregnant girlfriend?’