by Polly James
I shove the dress into one of his old suit bags, pick up my most impractical pair of shoes, and leave for work. Then I hang the suit bag in the staff room, hoping the creases will drop out of my dress before I finish work, and hurl my shoes under my desk.
That was a mistake, as – before you know it – the Fembot looks the shoes up and down and wrinkles her nose.
For once, she doesn’t say what the wrinkled nose denotes, but then she wrinkles it again at the end of the day when she spots me sitting at my desk, trying to finish applying my make-up without anyone noticing. Then her comments come thick and fast.
“Ooh, look, guys,” she says, to no one in particular. “Hannah’s tarting herself up to meet a man!”
All the HOO staff dutifully turn round from their desks to look at me, and then turn back again, without saying a single word. For one delusional moment, I think the worst is over, but then the Fembot adds,
“I guess it takes a lot longer once you get to your age, Hannah. Filling the cracks, you know?”
She giggles to herself, twirls around on her toes a couple of times, then says, “There’s some Polyfilla in the cupboard where the vacuum cleaner’s kept, if you need it. ’Bye, everyone!”
There’s a deathly silence for all of thirty seconds and then a series of dutiful grunts by way of response. (It’s a mystery why the Fembot is always the first to leave when she claims the place can’t run without her.)
I sit and glare at her back as she click-clacks her way out of the office on her Louboutins, and breathe a sigh of relief as the door slams shut behind her. Then Esther pops her head over the screen that separates our desks.
“Sometimes, I really hate the Fembot,” she says. “The other day, she told me all my allergies were in my head.”
“I sometimes think she’s got Asperger’s,” I say. “Then, other times, I just know she’s evil. Oh, shit!”
I’ve just looked at my watch, and I’m going to be late if I don’t hurry up. I aim some red lipstick at my mouth without bothering to put my glasses on, then freak out when I check the outcome in the mirror. By then, the lipstick has already sunk into all the tiny lines around my mouth, so I have to wash it off in the staff-room sink, which removes half of my already ill-applied foundation in the process. I dry my face under the hand dryer (which causes an immense hot flush), chuck some more blusher, eyeliner and mascara on, and then revert to my usual nude lipstick instead of the red. That seems a safer option for someone whose upper lip appears to have lost all definition overnight, but whose wrinkles haven’t.
I put on my still-creased dress, my nose-wrinkling shoes and, finally, my padded coat. It’s freezing cold, so I zip it up to the neck, then add a thick woolly scarf.
“Ready?” says Esther, as she comes into the staff room to collect her belongings and walks straight into the cloud of perfume I’ve just squirted up into the air. (I was planning on spinning around in it, but she got in the way.)
“Where are you meeting Eva?” she says, rapidly rinsing her face to get the perfume off.
“At the Habanero bar,” I say. “Wherever the hell that is. We’re having drinks and tapas before we head for a club. Oh, bugger, I’ve forgotten to shut down my computer.”
“I’ll do it,” says Esther. “You go, in case Eva’s waiting. I’ll meet you there a bit later on, once I’ve been home to change.”
My face must be a picture, as then Esther adds, “If that’s okay with you?”
* * *
Luckily, Eva’s fine with Esther having invited herself along – “the more the merrier”, she says – but there’s a reason I haven’t been clubbing for so many years: it’s horrible, and I am the world’s most useless flirt.
It’s not too bad in the pub, although the heating’s broken down so we have to sit there trying to look sophisticated while bundled up in our coats. Eva pulls it off with her usual panache, but Esther and I look like rolled-up sleeping bags. I’m also starting to regret the gins I had while I was trying to think how to tell Eva about Esther, as I think they’re giving me palpitations now.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Eva, when I mention my fluttery heart to her. “It’s just because you’re shivering. Have another drink and let’s get this party started.”
Esther and I look over at each other, and – although we don’t say anything – I get the impression she’s almost as tempted to make a run for it as I am. It’s scary going out when you’re not used to it, especially when everything’s changed so much. Although Dan and I used to go to our local pub every now and then, the bar Eva’s taken us to looks more like a nightclub. Most of the women inside are wearing barely any clothes, despite the heating problem, and they’re all wearing loads more make-up than me. There are a lot of those drawn-on, squared-off eyebrows, and everyone’s covered in tattoos. Some of those are spectacular, but others look as if their owners sketched them on the backs of envelopes while they were pissed.
Eva points in the direction of one girl with a shock of dyed black hair and the heaviest eye make-up I’ve ever seen in my life. It makes her look half-asleep, though in a sexy way, and I’d be quite tempted to slap on the make-up myself if I didn’t think I’d just end up looking knackered and ancient, instead of appealing. The girl must sense I’m looking at her, because she turns towards us, revealing a large tattoo beneath her collarbones. It’s a life-size (and very lifelike) portrait of her own face.
“She’s going to regret that in another twenty years,” I say, “when she looks in the mirror and spots the difference.”
“She ought to regret it now,” says Eva, “seeing as she looks as if she’s got two heads, especially from a distance. Whatever was she thinking?”
I can’t imagine, and the tattooed girl’s starting to look a bit irritated by our staring now, so I suggest we go and get another drink before we accidentally cause a fight.
There are people queuing ten deep at the bar, so getting served takes forever. Most people don’t even walk away when they’ve been served, as they’re all drinking shots, so they just chuck those down their necks and order more straight away. We’re never going to get served, and I’m beginning to feel claustrophobic. A huge group of girls has just surrounded us, most of them with the kind of voices that make your ears hurt, and they all smell strongly of vanilla.
I like vanilla in food, but not on people.
“Why do all modern perfumes smell like some sort of foodstuff?” I ask Eva, as she waves a fifty-pound note above her head in an attempt to attract the bar staff’s attention. “If it isn’t vanilla, it’s mango or chocolate.”
“It’s because the EU banned all the ingredients that used to make perfumes smell sophisticated,” she says. “That’s why there’s such a market for vintage scents.”
If only there was a market for vintage women – real ones, not the fakes. There are plenty of those in here, ranging from young women dressed like burlesque dancers to those who’ve obviously spent hours creating victory rolls with their hair. I’m starting to feel less pathetic about the half-hour I took to get dressed and made-up now, even though Dan listed “taking ages to get ready” as one of my most annoying habits.
The trouble is, the effort these young women have put into getting dressed up has (largely) paid off, whereas I’m pretty sure I’ve wasted my time. I know I have, once we walk into the club and remove our coats.
“What’s this?” says Eva, pulling a face. “Have you two come as Siamese twins?”
Esther’s wearing an identical dress to mine. She claims it was an accident, but when Eva corners me in the loos a little later, I have to admit I’m sure I showed it to Esther straight after I bought it.
“It’s all a bit Single White Female, isn’t it?” says Eva, as I try to work out if I can get away with wearing my dress back to front.
I can’t, so Eva rummages in her gigantic bag and pulls out a selection of what she calls “statement necklaces”. They all weigh a ton, but the largest one does succeed in making my ou
tfit look marginally different to Esther’s, even if its weight pulls on my neck so much that I feel like a hunchback.
“You’ll be fine, as long as you don’t bend forward too quickly,” says Eva, as I do exactly that to check my make-up in the mirror – at which point the necklace swings into my face and almost loses me an eye. That’s still weeping by the time we rejoin Esther, who’s found us seats in a corner. The Siamese twins impression is now even more marked than it was before, seeing as Esther’s obviously allergic to the perfume I accidentally sprayed into her face. She’s covered in blotches and both her eyes are running continually, so we both sit sipping our drinks and dabbing our eyes with bits of tissue, while Eva concentrates on making eye contact with men – or boys, to be more accurate, if being Joel’s age still counts as a boy.
“I’m going to circulate,” she says after a while. “It’s never a good idea to go hunting in packs, and you two look like wounded animals.”
Apparently, we look less like wounded animals than employees of the club. As soon as Eva walks off, Esther and I are approached by five people in quick succession, who all want to know why women’s handbags are being searched when none of the men’s pockets are. Then some drunken bloke staggers backwards and falls over Esther’s extended leg, spilling his drink onto her dress.
“Watch out, you clumsy idiot,” she says, which turns out to have been the worst thing she could have said. Never insult an 18-stone man who’s drunk his own body weight in beer.
Mr Flobby glares at Esther, and then looks over at me. His vision must have cleared temporarily, because – somehow – he manages to spot our matching outfits. Then he moves closer to Esther, until he’s almost nose-to-nose with her.
“Well, love,” he says, his mouth distorted by a sneer. “I might be clumsy, but at least I’m not fucking ugly. You might dress like your friend over here, but with that horrible spotty face of yours, you sure as hell don’t look like her. You’re fatter, too.”
Then he lurches off to annoy someone else, while Esther stands silently, watching him go. She looks absolutely stricken, and I feel incredibly angry on her behalf as well as horribly guilty. I know I didn’t make that absolute git say what he did, but if I hadn’t sprayed her in the face, she wouldn’t have been blotchy. And she isn’t “fucking ugly”, either – or fat. She’s just got a bigger bosom than me, that’s all, and shift dresses were created for those of us who are flat of chest.
I tell Esther this, several times, but she just raises her eyebrows at me, and doesn’t bother to reply. The whole thing’s getting more stressful by the minute, especially as Eva’s still on the dance floor getting up close and personal with a young guy who looks familiar – and now an attractive man has come over to ask if he can sit next to me.
I have NO idea what to say in reply – and these horrible sensations are definitely not shivers. It is boiling hot in here.
* * *
Well, this is going well. Eva’s still dancing, Esther’s disappeared, I’ve drunk too much and the good-looking guy keeps trying to talk to me, even though I can barely hear a word he says. Have I suddenly developed early-onset deafness or something? There’s a weird roaring noise in my ears, so maybe it’s my blood pressure rising.
Even when I can hear Mr Good-Looking, I’ve just realised that I have absolutely no idea how to talk to men that I don’t know – or how to flirt with them, anyway. Every time Mr GL says something complimentary, I either try to laugh it off or I find myself giving him a sceptical look, as if he’s taking the piss. I even say, “Yeah, like that’s true” once, like a sulky teenager. I don’t know why he’s still bothering with me at all – or why I’m bothering with him, either, if I’m honest. I’d far rather be sitting at home in comfy clothes and watching TV, while chatting sporadically with Dan. That seems far less boring now than it did when it used to happen every evening, and being with someone without feeling you have to talk to them is like the Holy Grail, at the moment.
What if I never find anyone else I can sit comfortably in silence with? Mr GL’s fine to look at, and he could be the world’s most fascinating conversationalist for all I know, but he’s not Dan. That thought makes me feel as if I’m going to do one of those sudden sobs that keep catching me unawares, so I clamp my lips together and concentrate on breathing in through my nose, thus rendering further conversation impossible on my part, though not on Mr GL’s.
He doesn’t give up easily, I’ll give him that. In fact, he leans in closer and keeps up a continual stream of chatter about God knows what for the next few minutes, until the buzzing of my phone gives me the perfect excuse to move away from his arm, which has just started sneaking its way along the back of my seat. Too much, as well as far too soon.
“Excuse me a minute,” I say, meaning “for the rest of the evening”. Or even for the rest of my life.
Maybe it’s suddenly become obvious that’s how I feel because, as I open my messages, Mr GL stands up and says he’s going to the bar.
“I’d offer you a drink,” he says, “but … well, you know.”
“Yeah, I do,” I say. “Sorry, but thanks anyway. It was nice meeting you.”
I can’t do this stuff. I just can’t. And it seems Esther can’t either, as the text’s from her, apologising for disappearing, and saying she started to feel unwell so she walked to the taxi rank and is now on her way home. I think I’ll follow her example as soon as I find Eva … and send Dan a drunken text.
* * *
Two people complain to me about the state of the loos as I make my way across the club towards where Eva’s still dancing her arse off. Another asks why there are so few bar staff on duty tonight. They might as well just come out with it and say, “You look way too old to be here, unless you’re running the place.”
That’s not an attitude Eva seems to be contending with. As I push past a group of young guys who are standing watching while she shakes her enviable booty, I overhear them taking bets on “who’s going to shag the cougar”. I just hope it’s not the one I know: Joel’s best friend, Marlon, who I’ve always thought was such an innocent! I make a point of saying hello to him in a very disapproving voice, because I’m in loco parentis as his mum’s not here.
Eva nearly has a fit when I tell her Esther left hours ago, and then she demands to know why I didn’t come and join her, rather than sitting on my own “like a Billy-No-Mates”.
“I wasn’t on my own,” I say, “but I’ve had too much to drink and now I want to go home. You stay, and I’ll call you tomorrow. Just don’t sleep with Marlon, Eva – his mum would not approve.”
Eva promises she won’t, albeit with a certain degree of reluctance, and then she peers at me suspiciously.
“Are you all right, Hannah?” she says. “You look a bit tearful, as well as pissed. You’re not going to do anything stupid when you get home, are you? Like drunken texting, for example?”
“No,” I say.
I’ll probably do that as soon as I get into a cab.
* * *
Dan didn’t answer my texts, or his phone, when I rang that instead – which may explain why I’m now hiding behind a bush in his new back garden, watching him through a ground-floor window. I am officially going mad.
Chapter 11
I had no idea Dan’s landlady had a dog! Luckily, it’s one of the handbag kind, so although it snaps at my ankles and yaps when it’s let out into the garden, it doesn’t do any permanent damage, although it does nearly give me a heart attack. If the music Dan, Aasim (the other housemate) and the landlady are playing wasn’t so loud, they’d definitely hear the dog barking and come outside to investigate, so I suppose I should count myself lucky I don’t get caught in fully fledged ex-wife stalker mode. The trouble is, I don’t feel lucky in the slightest and I’m worried I may be losing my mind.
I can’t imagine what got into me, telling the taxi driver to take me to Dan’s on my way home from the club, but seeing my husband enjoying himself with his new housemates when m
y evening’s been so shitty, certainly doesn’t make me feel any better – and nor does having to fend off a stupid sausage dog with chilly blue eyes and very sharp teeth.
When it first starts trying to bite me, I’m stooping down behind a large evergreen bush, looking in through the uncurtained windows of what’s presumably the dining room. Dan’s in there, sitting at the table with a glass of wine in his hand and engaged in what must be a fascinating conversation, given that he’s paying far more attention to what Aasim is saying than he’s paid to anything I’ve said in years. He looks both animated and relaxed, if one of those adjectives doesn’t preclude the other.
After the dog incident, I probably look even more animated than Dan does, though considerably less relaxed – especially since I’ve just realised who his landlady is. It’s Alice, one of the more junior officers in Dan’s department, the one he always describes as bonkers. I’ve only met her once, briefly, at one of the Council’s Christmas work “do’s”, when she looked at me and nodded when Dan introduced us, then immediately turned her head away and carried on talking to him as if I wasn’t there. While wriggling about a lot, and pulling the wide neckline of her dress further and further off her shoulder, as I recall. She kept saying, “Oops” whenever the top of the dress threatened to fall off completely, as if it was an accident.
Dan said he hadn’t noticed, and he found it funny when I told him later that I thought Alice fancied him.
“She fancies anything in trousers,” he said. “That doesn’t mean anyone fancies her back.”
I took that claim at face value at the time, but I spend my next taxi journey – this time genuinely heading for home – stewing about whether what I’ve just witnessed involved any flirting with Alice by Dan. I’m still undecided by the time the taxi draws up outside my house, as I can’t actually remember how Dan behaves when he is flirting. Hopefully, he’s as rubbish at it as I’ve proved to be tonight. On the basis of that embarrassingly shoddy performance, I’m never going to find a new man and I’m going to be doomed to sleep alone for the rest of my life. Well done, Hannah. Fantastic achievement. Ten out of ten for gross incompetence.