Twenty Something

by Iain Hollingshead

  ‘Why would we be going to prison?’

  ‘For stealing the Prunus subhirtella. They’d bang us up, and then we’d get banged up the bum by big black men called Ron.’

  I briefly wonder whether Flatmate Fred might quite enjoy meeting big black Ron. He’d just have to remember not to pick up the soap in the shower — given his current hygiene regime, it wouldn’t be too much of a problem.

  ‘No, seriously,’ he continued. ‘Read this: it’s an anonymous letter to the local residents’ association. It will put us in the clear.’

  Here is Flatmate Fred’s epistle in full:

  Dear Flower People,

  In a moment of madness last Friday evening, we cut down one of the winter-flowering cherries in the private garden in Onslow Mews. Like the forbidden fruit, it is an item of great beauty. We should have left it well alone.

  In a spirit of utter remorse and shame, we now return the item to you. While it may have temporarily brightened our lives, it has blackened our souls for ever.

  To ease this process, we are enclosing some money. We shall also be donating a small sum to a suitable charity. Alcoholics Anonymous would seem an appropriate choice under the circumstances.

  Yours sincerely,

  Stupid White Men

  ‘Fred,’ I said, after rereading the chef-d’oeuvre that has taken him four days to compose, ‘that’s lovely. But we’re not at school any more. You can’t just write an apology note to Matron and hope it’s all going to be OK. And how exactly do you intend to hand over the Prunus subhirtella and the cash anonymously?’

  ‘It’s simple. What comes down goes up. Swings and roundabouts. Circle of life. We’ll take it back down to the gate and leave an envelope full of cash.’

  ‘Like bollocks we will. It weighs a ton and some tramp will nick the cash.’

  ‘Some South Kensington tramp?’

  ‘Yep, or a bunch of filthy-rich yuppies on their way home from a night out.’

  It’s staying in our kitchen and that’s that. Sod the flower people. There are better anonymous gestures than a mouldy tree and a lump of cash. I think I’ll pluck some of the rose-pink flowers and leave them on Leila’s desk.

  Friday 21st January

  Felt like a prize plonker stepping on to the underground in the morning with a bunch of stolen flowers tucked under my suit. I think the person sitting opposite was sniggering at me over his copy of Metro.

  He would have sniggered even more if he’d known what was going to happen later. By some nasty quirk of fate I walk into the lift at exactly the same time as Leila. There are just the three of us: Leila, me and the drooping Prunus subhirtella.

  ‘Are you going down?’ she asks.

  Don’t say, ‘Only if you press the right buttons.’ Don’t say, ‘Only if you press the right buttons. Don’t say, ‘Only if you press the right buttons.’

  ‘Only if you press the right buttons.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I didn’t hear what you said.’ Her voice is a Galaxy bar advert of pure silk.

  She genuinely didn’t hear.

  ‘Erm Yep, free breakfast in the basement for me, too.’

  Free breakfast. Pure bloody Noël Coward.

  She smiles. It’s like someone has turned up a wattage dial in her back. She glows. I’m glowing, too — with sweat. I try to smile back, wrinkling up my forehead so she can’t see the beginnings of my receding hairline.

  ‘Flowers for the canteen ladies?’ She motions to the dripping bunch, which is forming a small puddle between us on the lift floor, a little love loch of my awkwardness.

  ‘Oh, ha! No. They’re for my granny. It’s her birthday.’

  My confidence hits the basement about the same time as the lift.

  ‘See you, then,’ she says.

  I doubt it. I’m a cack-handed, flower-stealing arse of a Casanova. I put the flowers in the shredder. Which broke.

  Saturday 22nd January

  Lucy rang to request a meeting for tomorrow. ‘Somewhere cheap and cheerful.’ A pity that she’s so expensive and miserable.

  ‘What am I?’ I raged. ‘Some sort of awkward fixture that has to be keyed into your little Outlook diary? Private appointment, out of the office, highlighted in pink, set reminder fifteen minutes beforehand.’

  ‘It’s green for private appointments,’ she said calmly. ‘Magenta pink is for vital appointments that absolutely can’t be moved. And you’re not one of those.’

  Cow. What kind of colour is magenta pink, anyway? Magenta pink cow.

  Before Lucy rang, my mind had been on other things such as Excel spreadsheets, stolen trees and Leila. But her call made me realise how much I’d been bottling up my thoughts again. I know I’ve written some horrible things about her, but my mind is all jumbled up. I’m scared by commitment, but I’m equally frightened at the prospect of losing her for ever. I don’t want her myself, but I don’t want anyone else going within five paces of her, either.

  Maybe all relationships go through this ‘I hate everything about you’ stage and then you come out the other side and get a mortgage and get married.

  Then again, maybe I should develop a spine at some point.

  Sunday 23rd January

  My spine and I went along after lunch today with the intention of having a brief chat about our trial separation and proposing a lengthy adjournment before making a final decision.

  I hadn’t counted on her looking stunning. She’d stuck to the first rule of meeting up with your exes/trial exes: Make it look like you’re coping very well without them.

  Unfortunately, she really was coping very well without with me.

  ‘Jack, I kissed someone last night.’

  I felt like my entire world had caved in. I wanted to be sick — preferably on her. How dare she? I was not happy first. No wonder she hadn’t replied to my text requesting further information on the rules regarding pulling during our trial separation. She had been too busy getting on with it herself.

  But I was determined to be big about it. Rule two of meeting exes/trial exes: Never let them realise that they can hurt you. After all, hadn’t I almost given a bunch of stolen flowers to a colleague who didn’t know my name in a lift? 15—15.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I’d rather not say.’

  ‘Is it someone I know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then, who the hell is it? Whose dirty little tonsils have you been playing hockey with?’

  She paused, and then, with a flash of triumph in her eyes, dealt the deathblow: ‘Rick’s.’

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. So I cried. Right there in an alfresco bar in Covent Garden, I, Jack Lancaster, wept my bloody eyes out for the first time since my hamster died when I was thirteen. But it was easier back then. At least Frisky had just died. He hadn’t been playing tonsil hockey with my best mate.

  For some reason, the whole twenty-first century man thing went down quite well with Lucy.

  ‘Oh, Jack,’ she simpered. ‘I’m so sorry. It was a silly drunken thing. I didn’t know it would cause so much emotion in you.’

  Not so much so much emotion; more like, so many emotions. Part of me wanted to kill her. The other wanted to run my hand up her little skirt and take her there and then. In some weird way, that would solve everything. Cock my leg. Reclaim my territory.

  Lucy, however, wasn’t a lamppost and didn’t want to be peed on. She wanted to talk. I didn’t. If she wanted a conversation, there was only one way it was going to end.

  ‘Lucy Poett, this is not a mutual breakup; I am dumping you. Be mine no more. Go forth and multiply in dark corners in dank little clubs. Live long and weep. Never again will I go shopping with you on Oxford Street in mid-August. Never again will I stroke your hair while you puke up your four JD and Cokes. The Jack ’n’ Lucy roadshow has come to an end. Kaput, finito, over and out. Sod off out of my life.’

  It wasn’t that fluent, of course. But it did the tri
ck and made her cry, too.

  30—30.

  And with that I turned on my heel and sodded off out of Covent Garden, tears streaming down my face, heading towards Leicester Square for no particular reason, occasionally pausing to practise my monologue of rage with a passing shop window. Like bollocks, she didn’t know it would hurt me. She’d done it on purpose. Hit me at my weakest point.

  And, as for Rick, what a ginger dickhead. No wonder he didn’t want to come round and play FIFA on the Xbox with me and Flatmate Fred last night. He was too busy trying to get into my ex’s box. I hate the little carroty bastard.

  I ring him up to share my thoughts, but he has the good grace to put me straight on to answer machine. So I share my feelings with the mechanised Orange woman. ‘If you want to re-record your message, press one at any time.’ Why, thank you. So I re-record my message about ten times in an attempt to get the right combination of invective and bile.

  It’s a hollow victory. I go to bed a broken excuse for a man.

  Monday 24th January

  Pulled a sickie at work. Just couldn’t cope with heading in today and facing an email barrage of emotional blackmail from Lucy. I’ve got a fairly croaky voice in any case in the morning, so I thought I’d find it pretty easy to hoodwink my line manager over the phone. What I hadn’t counted on was the company’s new policy of transferring all sickie-takers through to the corporate nurse.

  ‘What exactly is wrong with you?’ she asked.

  ‘Er, I think my thyroid is swollen and my left ventricle is playing up again. I’ve been vomiting all weekend.’

  Arse, I wasn’t prepared for this.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘So am I. My ulna and my nephrons are in absolute agony. I think I’ve got food poisoning.’

  She wasn’t convinced.

  ‘Look, OK, I’m faking. But my heart was broken yesterday and I need some time off.’

  ‘We’ll see about that.’

  She could see about it by herself. I hung up, feeling genuinely ill by this point.

  The best thing about pulling a sickie when you’re sharing with Flatmate Fred is that you can count on him to be free during the day.

  ‘Any important meetings today, Fred? Any conference calls with the Washington office? Any quarterly appraisals? No? Right, get out of your dressing gown, put on some clean clothes and we’re going to the pub.’

  And so we did. Looking like two well-heeled alcoholics (which, I guess, is exactly what we were), we went to our local at 11am and drank until closing time. Interesting landmarks along the way included:

  11.30

  Lucy texts to ask why I’m not replying to her emails.

  12.14

  Lucy texts to ask why I’m not replying to her texts.

  14.52

  Rupert (bald) rings to ask how I’m feeling. ‘Fucking fantashtic,’ I reply, which in retrospect was probably a poor answer.

  15.30

  Flatmate Fred declares that he loves me.

  15.35

  After due consideration (this is no light matter), I declare that I love Flatmate Fred.

  16.47

  Buddy rings from work to tell me that I’m, like, in big fucking shit, man.

  18.01

  Lucy rings and leaves a message on my voicemail asking why I’m not answering my phone.

  19.23

  Lucy texts to ask why I’m not listening to my voicemail messages.

  19.24

  Flatmate Fred comes back from the loo with lucky-dip, curry-flavoured condoms. ‘I was hoping for glow-in-the-dark ones,’ he mourns. ‘Only way they’d find your cock,’ I suggest. ‘That’s harsh, but I still love you.’

  22.35

  Rick rings to say that we really need to talk. No we don’t. We really need to fight. Flatmate Fred wrestles the phone from me and hangs up on Rick. He hates Rick, too. I love Flatmate Fred.

  22.44

  Pretty barmaid suggests that we’ve had enough and might want to leave.

  22.45

  I ask pretty barmaid whether she’d like to leave with us.

  23.30

  We leave. By ourselves.

  23.50

  Flatmate Fred and I carry the Prunus subhirtella (minus five flowers) back to the scene of the crime and leave it there with the letter and some money (£1.25 — our collective change from the £50 we both took out in the morning).

  00.45

  Blissfully innocent and comatose sleep.

  Wednesday 26th January

  This is agony. No one at work has mentioned anything about my little sickie misdemeanours on Monday. I feel like they’re playing mind games with me. Am I meant to come forward and confess? I’d rather just have a bollocking and get on with things as normal.

  Only Buddy can be relied on for continuing moral support.

  ‘Oh. Still here, are we, mate?’ he asks every time he walks past my desk. Buddy calling me ‘mate’ causes almost as much distress as seeing his emails with the words ‘color’ and ‘thru’ in them.

  ‘Yes, Buddy, old buddy, I’m still here. Milk, two sugars, there’s a good boy. Make one for yourself while you’re there.’

  Friday 28th January

  There was a generic email to the entire company awaiting us this morning asking everyone to be at their desks for a short announcement at 2pm. The rest of the morning rushed past in a flurry of nerves and excitement. Internal email speculation pinged backwards and forwards.

  Buddy: ‘This is it, Jacko, boy. They’re announcing your promotion to everyone.’

  At 2pm exactly, the plummy tones of the chief executive came over the Tannoy.

  ‘I am delighted to announce that, due to market conditions, there will be an element of restructuring at Citicorp. This is part of our commitment to providing a 360-degree approach to client-oriented relationships in the twenty-first century. Our greatest asset is our people. The following assets, in alphabetical order, will no longer be required.’

  I couldn’t believe it. The wanker of a banker was planning on sacking half the workforce over a loudspeaker.

  ‘Ahmadi, Alexander, Atkinson, Babbington, Baker-Wilbraham’ Actually, I’d sack someone with a name like that. ‘Holloway, Holston, Laird’ I look up at my computer screen. The log-in is no longer working. Sod a dog backwards, I’m going to be next. But no, Laird is followed by Robson who is followed by Waterman. People with surnames in the early part of the alphabet must be worse at their jobs.

  So I’m safe in the career that I hate more than life itself. The only consolation is that Leila Sidebottom is safe, too. Buddy Wilton-Steer had a rather long and nervous wait, but he also made the cut.

  I rang my dad to tell him the bad news.

  ‘Don’t worry, Jack. You’ll get out of there one day,’ he laughed. ‘In the meantime, your job still gives your mother something to boast about at dinner parties.’

  Oh, good.

  Sunday 30th January

  Rick finally rang, after waiting six days and playing me like a girl.

  ‘DonthangupJackIvereallygottoexplain,’ he says in his best radio advert voice.

  ‘OK, you ginger scrot-face, but terms and conditions apply. This better be good.’

  And so I go round to his flat in Angel.

  ‘Did it happen here?’ I ask plaintively, nervously examining his bed for signs of Lucy’s existence.

  ‘No, you fool, if you’d just shuddup and listen, innit.’

  For all the benefits of his outrageously expensive education, Rick remains incapable of constructing a full English sentence without a nod to street vernacular. Rick’s dad QC talks like Prince Charles. Rick is Prince of Estuary. He maintains this is natural, whereas the rest of us argue that he picked it up to avoid getting beaten up at the university formerly known as the Anglia Polytechnic.

  Eventually, Rick manages to explain that he didn’t pull Lucy at all. She’d launched at him in a club on Saturday night and he’d jumped backwards to avoid her.

  ‘So why
the hell did she tell me that she’d pulled you?’

  ‘Easy, Jack. Get with it. She was just trying to make you jealous, izzit. Win you back for herself. Drive a wedge between you and your best mate.’

  Oh God, I feel awful. I start crying for the second time in a week. What a loser.

  ‘Did your lips touch?’ I ask, between shuddering sobs.

  But Rick doesn’t hear, as my face is muffled into his shoulder and he’s thumping me on the back in a manly, syncopated way. We’re bestest mates again and all is right with the world.

  FEBRUARY

  Tuesday 1st February

  Found out at work why they didn’t sack me — apparently I’m too expensive. Now that I’ve been here for four years, they’d have to give me a hefty payoff, which I’d probably spend on an expensive car and a backpacking trip before picking up a better-paid job in a rival bank. It’s reassuring to know that I’m such a valuable asset to the company — too crap to be promoted, too good to be sacked. My sly sickie last week seems to have been overlooked in the general excitement of firing everyone else.

  As it is, ninety per cent of the ‘assets’ whose services are no longer required are from the new graduate intake. Leila seems to have sneaked through the net, which is probably because she’s only just arrived and the bosses would rather get in the sack with her than sack her. For the first time in my glittering career, I find myself applauding the result, if not the motive, of one of their decisions.

  Friday 4th February

  I’m in heaven.

  Corporate restructuring has led to Leila ‘netball wing defence’ Sidebottom moving to the same desk as me. Admittedly, we’re at opposite diagonals and there’s a sizeable partition blocking our view, but if I sit up straight in my chair I can just make out a perfect rectangle of forehead and blonde hair. As long as I keep below her eye line I can watch her all day. I feel like Camus’s prisoner who’s content to stare at his fragment of sky through the bars. I also feel like a pathetic old pervert.