Would Like to Meet

by Polly James

  I suppose the only plus is that at least I can wear whatever I like to sleep in now, seeing as no one’s ever going to notice. Joel’s not usually sober late at night, so he doesn’t count, as he’ll either see two of me, or none at all, depending on how close to being shut his eyes are when he finally staggers in after yet another night on the tiles. I’m surprised he wasn’t with Marlon at the club tonight, now I come to think of it, especially now he’s single again. He’s definitely out somewhere, though, as he’s nowhere to be seen when I let myself into the house, so I decide to go straight to bed.

  The bedroom’s freezing, and so is the bed, now there’s no warm Dan to curl up against, so I put on a pair of very attractive red polka-dot flannel pyjamas. After that, I add green-and-white striped socks and a hideous leopard-print fleece Claire gave me for my birthday last year. When I glance in the mirror before I get into bed, I look like one of those oscillating paintings by Bridget Riley. One she produced on a very off day.

  My name is Hannah Pinkman, and I am sex symbol of the year.

  * * *

  No sooner have I fallen asleep (it seems) than I wake up again. You can’t drink much during the evening when you get to my age, and certainly not enough gin and tonic to fell an ox. They say gin dries you out, but if it does, it’s only because it’s a diuretic. Now I’m dying for a wee.

  I try to ignore the sensation for a minute or so, but then roll out of bed and make my way across the room with my eyes still shut. I’m working on the principle that if I keep them closed, I won’t wake up properly, so then I’ll go straight back to sleep as soon I get back into bed, instead of lying awake fretting for the next few hours. That’s what used to happen every night once Dan moved out, until I developed the “eyes-shut” technique. Now there are no more piles of his discarded clothing forming trip hazards across the bedroom floor, I can usually make it safely to the bathroom without having to open my eyes at all. Note the word “usually”.

  Tonight, I open the bedroom door and step out onto the landing with my eyes still closed, and my arms stretched out in front of me. I’m using them to locate the banister rail that runs along the landing, in case I miss where landing ends and stairs begin.

  “Arrrrgh!”

  Now I’m screaming, because my hands have just touched something warm, squishy and unexpected.

  “Ow,” says a voice I’ve never heard before.

  Oh, my God, it’s a burglar, and I’ve just poked one of his manboobs.

  I open my eyes, blink several times to make sure I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing, and then I close them again, out of a misplaced sense of modesty. There’s a naked girl on the landing, right in front of me. For a few seconds, I try to dodge round her without looking at her, but that just leads to more accidental physical contact, so eventually I have to half-open one eye so I can work out how to negotiate my way to the bathroom without any more squishy surprises. I’m desperate for a wee by now.

  “Um, hello,” says the girl, while I stare fixedly over her left shoulder, or as fixedly as you can stare while also hopping up and down.

  For one crazy moment, it looks as if she’s going to offer to shake my hand, until she realises that would involve exposure of even greater indecency.

  “Who are you?” I say, as we sidle past each other, our eyes downcast.

  “Ruby,” she says, as she reaches Joel’s bedroom door, turns the handle and enters the room.

  “Nice to meet you,” she adds, before she shuts the door behind her.

  I’m not sure I can say the same.

  * * *

  It’s not just Joel and the naked girl. Everyone is having more sex than me, or talking about it anyway.

  I wake up early, despite the hangover, and decide I’ll go to see Pearl, rather than hanging around at home. It’s Sunday, and I’ve no desire to spend the whole morning waiting to encounter Ruby again, whenever she and Joel finally get out of bed.

  “Well, you can’t deny your son a sex life, Hannah, just because you don’t have one any more,” says Pearl, as I unpack the blueberry muffins I picked up on my way to her flat.

  “I bloody can,” I say, “while he’s living under my roof, and especially when he prevented me and Dan from having one most of the time. We never knew when he was going to come barging in, looking for a missing sock.”

  Pearl’s fiddling about with a fancy new coffee machine I’ve never seen before, so I’m not convinced she’s giving the subject of Joel’s inappropriate sex life due consideration.

  “He obviously doesn’t realise it’s just as eurgh-inducing for parents to think of their kids’ sex lives as it is the other way round,” I continue. “And my heart’s not up to coping with the stress of meeting naked strangers in the middle of the night.”

  Pearl raises her eyebrows, froths some milk, then pours it onto the coffee that she’s already shared between two mugs. Then she starts farting about trying to create fancy patterns in the froth, until I lose my patience and grab my mug. I need caffeine, and I need it now.

  “There’s nothing wrong with your heart, my girl,” she says. “Apart from being a bit broken, that is, and that will pass with time. Do you like the coffee maker Dan bought me, by the way?”

  Dan’s been to see Pearl? My Aunt Pearl? That’s almost as rich as this fancy coffee.

  “Why did he do that?” I ask, putting my mug down and pulling a face. “You’re my aunt, not his, and it’s not your birthday or anything. He shouldn’t be coming to see you now we’ve split up, anyway. What did you two talk about?”

  “I’ve been Dan’s aunt-in-law for twenty-seven years,” says Pearl, “and I am fond of him, and he of me. That’s why he bought me a house-warming present, but as for your other question –”

  She stops talking and taps her nose. One of her more infuriating habits, I’ve always thought.

  “You’ll have to mind your own business on that front, Hannah,” she continues. “I’m following Joel’s lead when it comes to you and Dan. I’m not telling you what Dan says to me, and I’m not telling him what you say, either.”

  Joel’s lead? What the hell is going on? Anyone would think that Joel’s the adult and I’m the child, especially now I’m the one having to stuff my fingers in my ears to avoid overhearing him having sex. The world is rapidly going mad.

  I scowl at Pearl, then put the kettle on to make some tea. I’ve gone right off coffee now.

  Pearl turns the radio on to alleviate the rather awkward silence that ensues, and picks up a magazine from the coffee table. She flicks through the pages while I sit and stew.

  “Another muffin?” she says, after a while.

  “No, thank you,” I say. “I’m fine as I am.”

  It’s possible that I’m undermining the effectiveness of this claim by the way my feet keep jiggling, and my fists are clenched, so I lean over to the coffee table and rummage around for something to read. Amidst the magazines, I find some of those Sunday supplement-style gadget catalogues, so I choose a few of those. If Pearl can sit there ignoring me by pretending to be absorbed in reading something, then I can do the same to her. And gadgets don’t take much concentration, which is good, given how my mind’s still racing.

  I open the first catalogue and flick through a few pages showing incontinence aids, massage cushions and adult bibs, when something slips out and falls to the floor.

  “Holy shit!” I say.

  Something called “Your Free Kinky Sex Booklet” is lying at my feet. It’s generously illustrated, and it almost makes me lose the will to live. If even elderly people are supposed to carry on like fetish models now, I’m never going to get laid again. Imagine having a hot flush while wearing latex!

  Pearl tells me not to be silly when I ask if she owns anything rubberised, and then she orders me to be “more open to new experiences”.

  “You and Dan got stuck in a rut,” she adds. “Not just when you were together, but in terms of who you are. You both need to be willing to try different things.
”

  “What – like some of these?” I say, pointing to the small ads in the back of “Free Kinky Sex”.

  The men in the photos are ancient, but the girls look as if they’ve just left school.

  “Of course not like those,” says Pearl, chucking the leaflet into the wastepaper basket, “but something more daring than learning to row – though that’s a start. What about internet dating? I’m going to give it a try, seeing as there aren’t any good male prospects here at Abandon Hope. There are lots of men on these websites, though, so you could easily meet someone your own age instead of hanging out with oldies like me.”

  She pauses, but she can’t resist. I knew she wouldn’t be able to.

  “You can’t keep up with us,” she adds.

  * * *

  I drive home from Pearl’s thinking about what she said about trying new things and, by the time I get there, I’ve decided I’ll join one of those singles’ supper clubs. That’ll kill two birds with one stone: it’ll get me out of the house and meeting men, and save me the bother of having to cook. Joel can go and eat at Dan’s new place on the nights I’m out if he misses Dan’s cooking as much as he says he does. I miss it, too, though not as much as I miss some of the other things Dan used to do. Like dealing with Joel, when he’s being a pain.

  I pause on the front doorstep as I recall the naked girl. If she’s still in the house, I hope she’s put some clothes on now. I’ve seen enough naked people in the course of the last twelve hours to last me a lifetime – which it may have to, if I can’t even get my head around flirting with someone new, let alone seeing them naked. Or them seeing me.

  When I open the door and step inside, I can tell immediately that the house is empty. You always can tell, though I don’t know why. It must be something subtle only the lizard part of your brain picks up: a lack of disturbance in the air or something like that. Joel’s probably avoiding me, to give me time to calm down about last night’s shock encounter, though it’s going to take a while for that to happen, when I’m still so cross about it.

  The stillness of the house is a bit depressing, so I heat up some more of Joel’s ageing pasta sauce and eat it without spaghetti, but with a spoon. Then I take my sketchbook into the garden to make the most of what little daylight is remaining. I know it’s boring, and solitary, and all that, but for the rest of today I’m going to do something that makes me feel good, and drawing fits the bill.

  I spend an hour or so sketching – first the violas, from every angle, and then the dormant lilac tree, though that just looks like a collection of twigs. Now I’m at a bit of a loss to know what to draw next, seeing as most of the garden is still in bleak post-winter mode, much like me.

  I stand in the centre of the overgrown lawn and turn around in a circle, looking for inspiration, and then I decide to draw the house. That turns out to be quite testing – getting the perspective right when I’m so out of practice – but when I stop concentrating on how depressed I am, and start concentrating on what I’m looking at, eventually I get my hand in, and the result is pretty good. In fact, the process proves so enjoyable that I feel miles better by the time the light starts to fail and I go back indoors. I haven’t drawn anything for years, apart from stupid website banners and icons, and now I can’t imagine why I ever stopped. Was it something about being with Dan, even though a love of art was the first thing we shared? The whole thing suddenly strikes me as so odd that, if we hadn’t split up, I’d be asking his opinion about it right this minute.

  But we have split up, and now I’m miserable again … until I walk upstairs to the bathroom and find a message Joel must have left for me before he went out.

  There’s a large piece of paper on the floor of the landing, which looks as if it’s been torn from one of my sketchbooks. On it Joel has drawn a self-portrait in charcoal, showing him wearing a very penitent expression along with an outfit that wouldn’t look out of place on a rap musician. Beneath his feet, which are encased in a pair of extremely elaborate trainers, he’s scrawled, “I’m sorry, Mum”. It’s all a bit smudged due to the charcoal, but the drawing isn’t bad at all, and I’m just wondering whether to suggest Joel reconsider his decision not to go to art school when I hear the front door slam, and then him shouting, “Mum?”

  I go downstairs intending to demonstrate that all is forgiven by giving him a hug, but he shrugs off my attempt.

  “Have you been annoying Dad?” he says. “Or doing something stupid?”

  “No,” I say.

  Joel glares at me, then says, “You must have done. Dad says he’s taking that secondment he was going to refuse because he ‘needs some space’. So now he’ll be moving miles away at the end of the week.”

  I’m so nonplussed, all I can do is to stand there, my mouth gaping open as if I was a fish, while I rack my brains for why Dan would need more space from me. Maybe he objected to my drunken texts – unless he realised I was hiding behind the bush in his garden the other night? I should’ve killed that bloody dachshund, as soon as the damn thing started to bark.

  Spring

  Chapter 12

  It’s March the 21st today – the first day of spring – but I can’t say I’m enjoying it, so far. It’s pouring with rain when I wake up, and I seem to be pouring, too. I thought all that unpredictable crying had finally stopped after the apricot tart meltdown in M&S a week ago, but this morning I can’t seem to stop because of this secondment thing. If Dan’s not even living in the same town as me any more, then that must mean he’s really gone for good.

  Joel’s still pretty fed up, too, though at least he’s stopped blaming me for Dan’s decision now.

  “I know it’s a bit shit about Dad moving away, Mum, but maybe it’s for the best,” he says, as he plonks a cup of tea down on my bedside table. “It isn’t easy, bumping into each other all the time, not when you’ve split up. Izzy walked past my shop yesterday and even that was awkward.”

  He doesn’t mention Ruby, so presumably Izzy only counts because she’s Joel’s “official” ex-girlfriend, rather than a random naked person on a landing. I don’t say anything, anyway, as I don’t know what to say. “A bit shit” is the understatement of the year, unless it’s being used to describe this cup of tea. Joel never waits for the kettle to boil.

  I sit and sip the lukewarm sludge while tears roll slowly off my nose and into my cup.

  “You’re in no fit state to go to work, are you?” Joel says, after a while.

  I agree entirely, but I’ve got no choice. The Fembot was off sick on Friday, with some sort of unspecified virus, and if she’s still claiming to be unwell today I’ve got to cover for her at the stupid strategy meeting after lunch.

  Joel asks what I mean by “claiming to be unwell”.

  “I’m not convinced she was genuinely ill,” I say. “She’d already asked for Friday off to have a long weekend at a spa, but the MD refused because we’re too busy. Then she rang in sick that day.”

  “Well, if she’s been faking it, then your problem’s solved,” says Joel, passing me a box of tissues. “That’s the great thing about imaginary illness syndrome. You can just say you’ve caught it from her, and then she can’t prove you’re lying without admitting she was too.”

  I admire the genius of Joel’s reasoning but go to work anyway, not only because he didn’t inherit his disregard for authority from me, but also because I need to check whether Esther’s got over the Mr Flobby incident at the club by now.

  Her face is no longer blotchy, which is a plus, but she’s still in a foul mood with that horrible man, and with me.

  “It comes to something,” she says, “when a man thinks someone decades older than you is more attractive, doesn’t it?”

  It’s not decades, plural, it’s only one and a half (if Esther’s referring to me, as I assume she is), but I bite my tongue. I suppose I can’t blame her for being upset, so maybe she’ll feel better if I tell her about Dan’s secondment? Then she won’t think she’s the only one
whose love life most resembles a pile-up on a motorway.

  “Are you serious?” she says, once I’ve finished speaking. “Dan’s gone to Birmingham? Bloody hell, he must have been desperate to get away.”

  She doesn’t add, “from you” but it feels implicit, and I’d forgotten how much Esther hates Birmingham, too. It’s where she was living when her last relationship ended badly, though that’s all I know about it, apart from the fact that she now detests anyone with a Brummie accent.

  Maybe Dan will hate Birmingham as much as Esther does, and then he’ll come back sooner than planned?

  Esther says she thinks that’s unlikely, as she walks back to her desk, humming, while I feel the tell-tale prickle of tears and head for the loo.

  By the time I return to my desk, I’m in a much better frame of mind, mainly because I’ve just called Eva who said she’s coming to see me after work.

  “It’s time to put Hannah Pinkman Moves On into action,” she explained. “After that, you’ll be too busy having fun to even think of crying.”

  * * *

  Joel sends a text just as I’m leaving work to tell me to hurry home because he’s locked himself out, so I power walk all the way while talking to Pearl on my mobile. I get horribly out of breath, but Pearl doesn’t notice because she’s too excited. She’s set up her online dating profile and has already been offered loads of dates. I’m impressed, until she admits her profile photo “isn’t one hundred per cent accurate”.

  “What d’you mean?” I ask, trying to keep talking-while-walking to a minimum.

  “I look quite a lot like Sophia Loren in it,” says Pearl, who has never looked anything like Sophia Loren in her life.

  It turns out that the reason Pearl looks like Sophia Loren in her profile photo is because she used a photo of Sophia Loren as her profile photo. I’m so horrified that I prioritise talking over breathing when I respond.