Crappily Ever After

by Louise Burness

  ‘So? I demand, the second our ankles are wet with sea water. I feel I should point that out that we don’t really pee in the sea.

  ‘OK, he doesn’t see a future as he senses you don’t. He’s worried that you don’t see each other as a couple – and it’s not just about the money, it’s about the sentiment behind it. Also, Mike and I talking about kids and marriage has made him think he maybe wants that. But you don’t.’

  ‘Do you believe him?’ I ask.

  ‘Do I bollocks! I know he doesn’t want kids. Marriage, maybe, I can see. I think he’s scared. You scare him, Lucy. It’s OK to be cautious, given your past, but be careful it doesn’t turn you into a ball breaker!’

  ‘I no longer consider any man in my future,’ I reply, with a superior sniff, hitching up my long, white gypsy skirt and tucking the hem into my knickers. ‘Fine if I ever actually meet someone decent and they want to stick around, so long as it’s all on my terms. And definitely separate finances, all straight down the middle. I can’t be arsed with the whole complicated thing. It’s never long term.’

  Becky looks at me sadly for a moment. I know what she’s thinking. I haven’t found what she

  has. Well, I had. Or so I thought. If it all can fall through with Alfie, then it can happen again. For Becky’s sake, I hope I’m wrong. I do hope she does have her fairytale. I don’t believe them anymore. The Brothers Grimm are more my style these days.

  No romantic illusions these days. They’re dead in the water, all of them.

  So what do I do? Break it off, but continue with him working for us? Keep things going so he doesn’t feel he has to go back to London?

  ‘What does he want then?’ I ask Becky.

  ‘I suppose just for things to be as they are at the moment, at a guess.’

  ‘That’s fine. I will leave things how they are then. I’m not unhappy, just not going to hand over half my profits to someone who could take off at any moment and shag some seventeen-year-old Senorita.’

  Our two days off pass without a hitch. They’re true professionals, the Spanish. They don’t moan about long hours, the heat or lugging crates around like the Brits would. They just get on with it. We start to discuss what we will do with our time off in October and November. We have listened to Roberto and his comments that it’s not worth opening; we’d probably spend more on air con and wasted food than we’d take in. And God knows we all need a break. A simple

  ‘Back in November’ note on the door seems to suffice in Spain, But in London a

  ‘Gone for lunch, back in half an hour’ note would be met with a tirade of expletives on your return.

  Anyway, I’m with Becky’s suggestion on this one. A week at home then fly off to Australia for seven weeks, back here for the Christmas rush, and take it from there. I’d love to see Australia. We can go on a holiday visa for up to three months.

  Nick is very quiet through this conversation. These days, he seems to be either very hyperactive and enthusiastic or low and moody. When he’s up there, he’s great. Like the Old Nick. When he’s low, he is snappy and glowers into space. Mike can’t get to the bottom of it, and neither can I.

  ‘Nick? Australia?’ I urge.

  He shrugs

  ‘Dunno.’

  It’s like living with a teenager. Even down to the breakouts on his face. He is regressing.

  ‘Well,’ I breeze to Mike and Becky, ‘I’m in. Let’s book the flights and if Nick decides to come along then he can book his own and catch us up.’ I’m certainly not massaging his ego and pleading with him to come along. A break from him would be just as welcome as a break from work. Becky and Mike glance at each other cautiously.

  ‘OK,’ Mike shrugs, ‘I’ll book tomorrow. Let me know if you change your mind before then, mate.’

  Nick says nothing, just stares grumpily into space.

  Again, the next few weeks pass as a blur. The pace seems to change on our days off. Like everything slows right down. I love it. I love the whole thing, actually. Money aside, I am having a ball. We have started a new chef two evenings a week, so I can be ‘front of shop.’ The atmosphere is amazing. The air almost buzzes. Mike and I are a double act behind the bar; the punters love us, our sarcastic remarks to each other and mock flirtatious behaviour.

  ‘You two should be together!’ shouts Wilma, of Wilma and John from Southall, over the music. ‘We will be back next summer to see.’

  I shake my head at her.

  ‘No, Wilma, I’m with Nick and Mike is with Becky.’

  ‘I sense sexuaaaaaal chemistry.’Wilma shakes her booty.

  ‘Get her,’ I laugh, nudging Mike and thrusting a thumb in Wilma’s direction. Mike leans conspiratorially over the bar. Wilma leans in, dramatically.

  ‘The interest Luce and I have in each other…’ he smiles, seductively, ‘is financial.’

  He booms with laughter and Wilma slaps his arm.

  ‘That is so boring,’ she shakes her head, ‘like I said, I’ll be back and I bet you fifty quid…’ Mike and Wilma shake on it and seal the deal. I glance over at Nick. He isn’t even paying attention. Distracted and looking around for someone. Probably fancies one of the tourists. He takes a hell of a lot of toilet breaks. I’m sure he’s working the room.

  ‘He always does that,’ shrugs Mike, when I ask. ‘You just don’t see it because you’re always in the back shop.’ I decide it’s time for a chat.

  The next morning I tentatively approach the subject with Nick.

  ‘Are you happy here, Nick? I mean us, work?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ He rolls over in bed, facing away from me.

  ‘You do know that if you want out of work, or us, that I won’t hold you back. Don’t you? I do want you to be happy, even if it’s not with me. There is always a job here for you if you want it. We can set up the front room as an extra bedroom. Or you can find somewhere else if you’d prefer?’

  ‘Mmmmhmmm.’

  ‘Please, Nick. Listen. If you’re not happy, either with me or the job, I really don’t mind if you want to go.’

  ‘Yes! Lucy. For fuck’s sake, I hear you,’ he snaps.

  I decide to speak to Pablo. He will know if the same woman comes here every night. Someone Nick may be interested in. He is the doorman, after all.

  ‘Not woman, same man,’ announces Pablo, chewing on a piece of gum and closely watching some drunken teens heading our way. He turns away anyone he feels will lower the tone of our establishment. It works. Many of our regulars say part of the reason they come along to ours is the lack of young drunkards.

  ‘What are you saying? That Nick is gay? Pablo?’

  ‘No!’ he looks at me shocked. ‘It is the snaw.’

  ‘Snaw?’

  He places one finger on the right side of his nose and sniffs. He’s been talking to Mike too much. He has now developed a Scottish accent.

  ‘OK, Pablo, by snaw, do we mean snow?’

  ‘Well, we… I don’t know… but me, yes I mean… snow.’ He says the word as if it’s alien to him.

  ‘As in Charlie? Coke? Cocaine? Pablo, are we talking about cocaine?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says slowly, as if I am a tad simple.

  ‘Mike say to me: “If I didnae ken any better I’d say wur wee man was on the snaw.” But I know the signs. My own brother is waste of space. I not let dealer in, but cannot stop Nick from going out. He says is nothing, just mate he chat to.’

  Fine! I know what I’m dealing with here. Ha! Ironic, but no pun intended. That’s exactly what

  Nick has been looking around for, his dealer.

  He did tell me he’d messed around with drugs in the past. No biggie, lots of people have. Personally, I once had a couple of puffs on a joint, aged eighteen. I then chucked my ringer up for the next three hours, the beginning and end of my drug history.

  Nick has a drug problem. OK. It explains a lot. The spots, the mood swings, the manic behaviour. I have coped with worse.

  I approach the subject that night, very gen
tly and tactfully.

  ‘Nick, I think you’re on drugs.’

  ‘What? Lucy, no! Why …Why would you think that?’

  ‘Nick,’ I say gently. ‘I don’t think, I know. Your behaviour is so erratic and, well you know, you have mood swings and…erm… bad skin and…I know you’ve had a dealer coming here, waiting outside for you, unless you’ve suddenly taken an interest in sharing a toilet cubicle with men… I know you and some of the guys have been disappearing in there a couple of times a night.’

  ‘Fine! Yes Lucy, I take drugs occasionally. You knew that I sometimes did, so what?’

  ‘You told me you dabbled a long time ago. That you hadn’t had any for years,’ I reply.

  ‘Oh for Christ’s sake, Lucy! What I do with my money and my body is up to me, and nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Fine, well, I’m not sharing my living space with someone as erratic as you. You can sleep in the front room for a few days and then I want you out. Your mood swings have become so out of control – God only knows what you could do to us while we sleep.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Nick spits the words at me, ‘a little pick-me-up to get me through all those God forsaken hours you make me work does not turn me into a serial killer.’

  I head downstairs to the bar. Mike is surrounded by till receipts, the cashing up book and bank book. He looks up guiltily as I approach.

  ‘What’s wrong, Mike?’ Instinctively I think I already know.

  ‘Lucy,’ he sighs, ‘now, don’t take this the wrong way but…’

  I’ll save him the embarrassment.

  ‘How much are we down?’

  Mike exhales with relief. ‘We are missing around two hundred Euros.’

  ‘Not as bad as I thought,’ I say dismissively.

  ‘Per day!’ Mike looks serious. I storm up to the flat, Mike following closely behind.

  ‘Where is it?’ I scream, bursting into the bedroom. Nick looks startled and sits up in bed.

  ‘Where’s what? He has an attempt at nonchalance, but doesn’t even convince himself. I start throwing things out of the wardrobe and drawers. I find a bag of white powder at the back of his sock drawer.

  ‘Is our fucking money up your nose?’ I yell. ‘Is it?’

  I storm to the bathroom with the bag, in an attempt to tip the whole lot down the toilet. My head is suddenly pulled backwards as Nick grabs my hair. I whack my head on the wall as I try to pull away. My head spins, there’s a ringing in my ears. I stagger and then fall against the cistern. Mike pulls Nick off me in one easy move.

  ‘Never, ever, hit a woman!’ he shouts in Nick’s face. He forces him down the stairs and through the back door. Becky joins us outside, looking puzzled and drying her hands on a tea towel. In the distance we can hear sirens, thanks to Pablo. Finally! Someone knows the phone number for the police. Nick is arrested. Charged with possession of an illegal substance, theft and assault, Pablo tells us later. It was in Spanish. I head to hospital with Mike for stitches. Becky stays behind to hold the fort and call in the part time staff to cover the next couple of days.

  Over the next few days Mike and Becky couldn’t be nicer to me, bringing me cups of tea and setting up a bed on the sofa. But, by day three, I’m bored and insist on going back for some of the quieter shifts. Mike looked through all Nick’s things, which had been strewn over the room after the police had searched for narcotics. He finds a bundle of rolled-up notes in a hidden pocket in Nick’s rucksack. Mike has the same rucksack in black – you would never realise the pocket was there unless you knew. Mike finds 6,753 Euros. Nick’s been cleaning us out for a long time. This infuriates us. We paid him so well and he still felt the need to steal. I guess he was angrier than we all thought about my insistence on us having separate finances. He had always insisted on cashing up every night – I didn’t think much of it. Perhaps seeing what he was missing out on and how lucrative sticking with me could be, but never did I suspect theft. I could never be bothered cashing up, too exhausted after the kitchen shifts and usually a bit tipsy after the bar ones. I was happy to leave it to the boys. When Nick did do the money, he counted it right in front of us while we sat at the bar. How dodgy could it be? But how clever, doing it right under our noses. The till receipt nightly totals did not match with the amount in the cashing-in book, and sometimes even the amount banked differed from both the till receipt and the cash-in book. How could we have been so stupid? We barely knew him. But then Mike and I barely knew each other. What a risk we had taken.

  Mike and I decide that, from now on, only we do the cashing up. No matter how tired we are. Now that we have a lot of our money back from the rucksack, it seems that a fairly small amount of our profit has disappeared up Nick’s nose. However, it turned out a huge price for Nick. In

  time, that is. Receiving somewhere in the region of seven years, or so we heard from some insiders Pablo knows. That’s it. I am officially done with men. I am so sick of this constant cycle of users and losers. From now on it’s me, my friends and family – and no room for anyone else. The male species have finally got on my last nerve. I reiterate this to Becky, Mike and Pablo. From now on I have no interest in a relationship. I want no attempts to be made at matchmaking. I will run my business and forget about men altogether. There’s only so much I can take and every time it goes wrong. It’s fine for Becky and Mike and other people, but for me, I’m taking early retirement from men.

  Chapter Nineteen

  And so the season ends. To say that it’s been eventful would be putting it mildly. I receive a letter from Nick in prison, asking if I’d visit him since he is so far from home and knows nobody here. The nerve of him! After all he has done. I don’t even bother replying. I tell Becky and Mike that I won’t bother going on the Australia trip. We are several weeks later than planned as it was still busy. We didn’t want to close up while our trade was still there. We won’t be earning anything over the quiet times, but still paying our huge rent. Mike put our flights back by three weeks. Luckily, it had occurred to him to take out insurance, which covered the cost of the change. We now have one week at home and only three weeks in Australia. Mike and Becky won’t hear of me bailing out and I insist I won’t be a gooseberry.

  We pack up the restaurant until the end of November, and ask Pablo to keep an eye on the place a few times a week. He and his family are moving to another house, but will be renovating it in the meantime. He can do better than keeping an eye on the place; they can all move in to keep it extra safe. Sneaky, but very true. And it makes us happier about leaving the restaurant. Even if we will spend months afterwards cleaning crayon off the walls. He is astounded that we are paying him to not work. Roberto never did. I tell him that this way we make sure he comes back to us. He nods seriously and seems genuinely upset when we leave. I give him a hug and tell him it’s only for a month.

  ‘I will miss you, but is not why I am sad. My wife say I must look after the children while not working as she has to look after builders.’

  He drives us to the airport and waves us off. After that, a white-knuckle ride of a journey, I am no longer scared to get on the plane.

  We arrive back in Edinburgh and walk out into the freezing cold evening.

  ‘Bloody hell! Was it always this cold?’ asks Mike, ‘and did we always have Christmas lights up in October?’ He glances along Prince’s Street in confusion. We all head to Waverley station to catch the train home. Edinburgh looks even more beautiful than usual. Prince’s Street twinkles with fairy lights. People hold hands and skate around on the man made ice rink in the park. Everything is covered in a soft haze of frost. Beautiful. Then a nut seller on the corner breaks the spell.

  ‘Hot chestnuuuuts. Get your nuts!’

  ‘Welcome back to Scotland,’ I laugh. We fall asleep on the journey home, soothed by the gentle rocking and the repetitive sound of the train on the tracks. I wake at Dundee station as some drunks alight, making lots of noise. I yawn widely and stretch, nudging Becky awake so I can
say goodbye. Time to phone home.

  I gather up my bags and three stuffed donkeys with sombreros. Yes, I have taken home tacky gifts, but it’s intentional. I know full well that no-one will throw out anything I give them. I like the thought of annoying my family when I’m not there. As they open a cupboard and a large stuffed donkey with a hat on falls out every time. I can imagine them kicking it with frustration for several months, before guiltily wrapping it in bin bags and shoving it up the loft. I aim to take home one for each person. Four in one house will

  be funny. Three in my sister’s new flat – and she doesn’t even have a loft. I chortle. I’ve missed my family. Annoying them is long overdue.

  I hug Becky and Mike goodbye, telling them I’ll see them in a week’s time and clamber out of the carriage in as dignified a way as I can, and make my usual trip up the staircase and down the other. There’s Mary, in her usual parking spot, usual pose. But she’s not smoking any more. Happy with her Bill-free life now, she gave up. She still enjoys a drink or two. Well, when the kids are away for the weekend, as they are on this particular one. They’ve seen enough debauchery in their short lives thanks to their father. The new Mary wants to show her children how they should live, in a happy and healthy way. She feels and actually looks like a teenager again; I’m sure that’s due to being much happier. I’m desperate to catch up on gossip.

  ‘So how did Bill take it?’ I ask, as we reverse, narrowly missing a man with a suitcase.

  ‘Stupid cow!’ he shouts.

  ‘Up yours!’ shouts Mary jovially.

  Mary told Bill to sling his hook a few months ago. He was extremely shocked. Even more surprised was his father, Bill senior, who shortly afterwards was booted out by his wife. Inspired by Mary, Joan was happier than she had ever been, and was currently causing havoc on the speed-dating circuit.