Would Like to Meet
Page 23
“Don’t stop – keep going!” shouts the Fembot, who must have been a cheerleader when she was at school. She’s jumping up and down like a maniac further along the cliff, and waving her arms about.
I don’t respond, as I’m trying to breathe through my nose while looking out towards the sea, rather than at the ground below. That’s a very long way away.
“Get on with it!”
The Fembot’s yelling even louder now, and she even threw a star jump in just then, for emphasis. Glaring at her is a useful distraction, which is why I spot what happens next.
She does another few star jumps while she shouts, “Go, Hannah! Go, Hannah! Hannah, g –”
The rest of the word “go” is lost as she loses her footing and disappears off the edge of the cliff.
* * *
Everyone falls silent in horror as they contemplate the section of cliff where the Fembot slid off, and then they rush, en masse, to look over the edge.
I don’t need to, of course, because I’m still dangling on the line below, which is why I can see the Fembot already. She’s fallen onto a small outcrop of rock that seems to be covered in prickly yellow-flowered gorse. She’s groaning and her face is almost as white as her teeth.
“Don’t move, Kristin!” shouts the instructor, and for a moment, I wonder who he’s talking to. I’d almost forgotten the Fembot has a proper name.
I watch, trying not to think where I’m watching from, while the instructor throws a rope down to the Fembot and instructs her to tie it onto the harness that she’s already wearing, but she’s panicking so much, it doesn’t help. Every time the rope comes near her, she freaks out and bats it away again by accident, destabilising herself further and further. Now she says she thinks she’s broken something, so the instructor gives up on the idea that she’ll ever be able to pull herself back up, even if she could stop shaking long enough to grab the rope.
“Just stay still!” he shouts. “I’ll be down to get you, as soon as I’ve configured my equipment. I’ll be as quick as I can.”
Then he starts messing about with ropes and slings for what seems like ages. I glance over at the Fembot again, just as a piece of rock detaches itself from the ledge she’s lying on and slides down the cliff with an ominous rattle. Eventually, it falls onto the rocks at the bottom and shatters into pieces. Oh, God, she’s going to fall if she doesn’t stop thrashing around in such a panic, isn’t she? And I’m much closer to her than the instructor is, and on her level, too.
I take an extra-deep breath, and then I push my feet against the cliff face, experimentally. The action shifts me outwards a bit, so then I push with my feet again, harder this time, while leaning my body to the side. I swing outwards by what feels like a terrifying distance, but when my feet finally make contact with the cliff again, I’ve moved a couple of feet closer to the Fembot. This could actually work, as long as I make sure my rope doesn’t catch on anything as I bounce my way along the cliff.
“Don’t try it, Hannah!” shouts the instructor, who’s just spotted what I’m up to. “I’ll get to Kristin as soon as I’m fully equipped.”
That’s going to be too damn late if the Fembot doesn’t stop shaking soon. Another few pieces of rock have just detached themselves from the ledge she’s on, so I continue bouncing in and out. I’ll be fine, as long as I don’t look down.
Push out, swing sideways, bounce inwards again, and then repeat.
“Go, Hannah!” shouts someone from above. I think it’s Geoff, but I don’t look up at him, or down.
Push out, swing sideways, bounce inwards again – and then repeat. Push out, swing sideways, bounce inwards again – and then repeat.
It’s slow, but effective, as eventually I finish up right next to the Fembot’s ledge. She looks even more terrified close up.
Her face is drawn with pain, and she’s still shaking with fear, so I tentatively take one hand off my rope and stretch it out towards her. She takes hold of it, and grips it, hard.
“It’s okay, Kristin,” I say, “Don’t panic, and try not to move. I’ll stay with you ’til the instructor arrives.”
“Promise?” she says, staring at me as if her life depended on it. Her eyes are like those of a wounded puppy.
I nod, to reassure her, but she doesn’t take her eyes from mine – or let go of my hand – until the instructor finally abseils down on his rope to rescue her. He tells me to “get clear” while he attaches her to his harness, and then I watch as they drop slowly towards the ground, while roped together. I get the rest of the way down by myself. It feels like nothing, after sideways bouncing along a cliff.
Chapter 45
The Fembot’s in hospital having a pin put in her broken collarbone, but everyone else at work spends the morning congratulating me on “saving” her yesterday. Everyone except Esther, that is. She hasn’t said a word about what happened so far, even though she must know what we’re all talking about, and she didn’t even react when she answered the office phone to Joel, who asked to speak to “Supermum”. (He only wanted to know what I wanted for dinner, but I was chuffed by my new nickname, all the same.)
When I get home, I’m just about to phone Jude and tell him how much I surprised myself by my “heroics”, but then I realise I can’t, seeing as I’ve been pretending to be both fitter and younger than I really am to him, so I decide to tell Danny, instead. Pammy confessed her anxiety about extreme sports to him the other night, and he was very sympathetic.
Eva isn’t, when she calls just as I’m logging on to my computer.
“You’ve got no excuse not to sleep with Jude now,” she says, when I get to the end of the saga of the HOO awayday accident. “Not when you’ve just proved you’re as good as people half your age. Better, seeing as it wasn’t you who fell off a ledge in the first place, now I come to think of it.”
“Don’t be so unsympathetic,” I say. “The Fembot only fell off because she was trying to encourage me.”
Eva huffs loudly down the phone. She might as well say I’m an idiot, right out loud.
“That’s what I’m trying to do, too,” she says, in that tone which tells you immediately that someone’s rolling their eyes at you. “So just get on with it!”
She’s no more sympathetic when I mention the dreaded question of porn, and what’s expected of everyone these days, including geriatrics, judging by that Kinky Sex booklet I found lying around at Pearl’s. The one she claimed was tucked inside one of those free gadget catalogues.
“You said young guys grow up on porn,” I add. “And I know you’re right, because it’s everywhere these days, even in retirement homes. I’m not sure I can live up to any of it, not even with that stupid wax.”
Eva laughs and asks me if my rash has gone (which it has, but only to be replaced by itching, thank you very much). I’m getting a bit upset by now, which must be apparent in my voice. Sex with someone new is in no way comparable to rescuing someone from a cliff. It’s ten times scarier, which is what I tell Eva, along with the fact that I don’t think I can live up to the competition. That’s when her sympathetic side kicks in, at last.
“Yeah, I know, Hannah,” she says, in a much more serious tone of voice. “It is a challenge, competing with what these young guys look at every day online. But what else can you do? Become a nun? That’s no role for Supermum!”
I pretend we’ve been cut off at that point. No one wants to think of themselves as mum when they’re already freaked out about having sex with someone younger then them.
* * *
Several hours later, I’m having yet another conversation about bloody porn, and it’s all Pammy’s fault for starting it.
She’s talking to Danny about how younger people just don’t get our generation’s cultural references, when he says that landlady Alice found porn on her desktop computer the other day. Porn that didn’t belong to her.
Pammy asks the obvious question before she can stop herself. Or before I can stop myself, to be more accurate.
Was it yours?
I’ll give him his due: Danny doesn’t hesitate before he answers.
No. It was Aasim’s, believe it or not. Anyway, getting back to cultural references, I don’t think he’s ever seen Fawlty Towers – and nor has Alice! They both looked at me as if I was mad when I put on a Spanish accent and said, “I know nothing” about the porn. How many people don’t know a quote from Manuel when they hear one?
I haven’t got a clue, but I do wonder if Jude might be one of them. Then another question occurs to me – or to Pammy, which is far more dangerous. She comes right out with it before I can apply the subjects-not-to-discuss-with-Danny filter.
Why do men use porn, anyway, instead of having sex with their wives?
Apparently, Pammy’s decided that now she and Danny are just friends, the only thing they can’t talk about is his wife. He doesn’t seem quite so sure, as there’s quite a pause before he replies.
Lots of reasons, I suppose. Laziness, or for a quick release, or –
He must have hit send mid-thought, but Pammy doesn’t wait for him to type the rest of his reply. (That could be exactly the sort of interruption men are trying to avoid when they opt for “quick releases”, now I come to think of it.) She just dives in with another of her tactless questions:
What? Are you saying men prefer porn to sex because it’s easier, or that they just prefer the women they’re looking at to their wives?
Neither. They’re two totally different things. Why can’t women ever understand?
Because we’re not men. Explain it, then.
I can’t believe Pammy’s asking Danny about this at all, let alone demanding further explanation, especially when I hardly ever mentioned it to Dan. Porn didn’t bother me when I was younger, or not much, anyway – but now, it really, really does.
Danny says there’s no reason why it should.
It’s different because you don’t have the feelings you do when you’re with a real person – and you don’t imagine yourself doing it with the women in the magazine, or online. They’re just images, that’s all.
I think about what he’s claiming, for a while, but I still can’t make sense of it. They’re not images that look like me, are they? Or not as far as I’m aware. I can’t see there being much of a market for double-chin porn.
You still there?
Oops. I’ve been so busy mulling over how different my body looks to those of the women on the porn sites I came across while clearing the cache on the computer a couple of years ago, I’d forgotten that Danny was still waiting for a reply. I type as fast as I can, to compensate.
Well, if what you say is true, and images are all they are, then it seems a shame they cause such a loss of confidence for real-life women, especially as they age, isn’t it?
Danny’s simple answer is that they shouldn’t.
They’re unrelated, as I keep telling you – and have you ever considered men might worry about how appealing they are to look at, too? Images don’t judge you if you have middle-aged spread, but women do.
I don’t know what to reply to that, and neither does Pammy, as it’s never occurred to either of us, until now. And could Dan mean me when he says, “women”?
Autumn
Chapter 46
I stood naked in front of the full-length mirror in my bedroom when I got up this morning, and – for once – I didn’t want to scream at my reflection. In fact, I can’t believe how much better Danny’s explanation about porn has made me feel, though I do feel guilty for not realising that Dan was feeling just as unattractive as I was, most of the time.
The Hannah/Dan sex-life meltdown was probably as much my fault as his, now I come to think of it. I’ve got a horrible feeling I mentioned middle-aged spread to him more than once, and he did start hiding his torso from me whenever he was naked after that. My usual response was to take the piss by comparing him to bathers in the 1950s: you know, the ones who could strip off their swimming costumes and get fully dressed, all while hiding every inch of flesh under garish patterned towels.
Maybe I’ll apologise if we ever meet up again, which we probably should if we’re ever going to make Joel feel better about the situation, now that he knows I’m seeing Jude. I told him about that late last night, but he didn’t look happy about it, and he’s been abnormally quiet ever since.
He’s so quiet that even Pearl comments on it during the visit we make to Abandon Hope this evening, though Joel denies it’s because he doesn’t like the Peruvian-style sweater that she’s just knitted him. (She says she’s taken up knitting again to “fill the time” until her next trip abroad with Albert. Apparently, they’re off to Peru next year.)
“I love it, Pearl,” says Joel. “Honestly, I really do.”
He doesn’t sound very convincing to me, but Pearl believes him, and offers to knit another one.
As soon as we drive away from Abandon Hope, Joel takes the sweater off.
“Thank God for that,” he says, adding something about jumpers never making it as streetwear, ever. Then he brings up the subject of Dan and me.
“You two were friends, before you got together, weren’t you?” he asks, to which I nod.
It’s true, we were, though I can’t see what that’s got to do with Peruvian jumpers.
“Then I don’t understand how you can just cut that bit off as well as the romantic stuff,” Joel says. “It’d make me feel a lot better about things if you could still be friends at least.”
He looks so forlorn, that before I know it, I’ve agreed to call Dan later on this evening, once I’ve arranged my next date with Jude. (I need to sleep with him as soon as possible, before my new-found ability to get naked without screaming begins to wear off.)
* * *
I wait for Joel to go round to Marlon’s before I phone Jude, or Dan.
Jude gets so overexcited when I hint that sex may finally be on the cards, he tries to persuade me to stay over at his flat, and for the whole weekend, not just one night.
“Don’t be daft,” I say. “Just because Joel knows I’m seeing someone now, I’m still not shoving it in his face like that. He seems a lot more depressed about me and his dad splitting up since I finally told him about you, and I only got round to doing that last night. It took me ’til then to pluck up the courage.”
I don’t mention that I wouldn’t even have told Joel at that point, if I hadn’t decided that real Supermums don’t deceive their sons.
I shiver, suddenly, probably at the thought of Joel’s expression when he heard that I’d met Jude, unless it’s just because I’m cold. France seems a long time ago now that it’s September. There’s definitely a chill in the air tonight, so I put Joel’s abandoned Peruvian jumper on. It’s almost as itchy as my waxed unmentionables, so then I take it off again.
“Can you hear me, Hannah?” asks Jude, who’s been silent for what seems like ages. His voice sounds as if it’s a long way away, and it’s tinny, too.
My headphones must be loose, so I go to push them back into my ears, then realise that they’re not there. Shit. Jude’s obviously been talking the whole time I’ve been shoving my head in and out of jumpers, losing my headphones in the process. They’ve completely disappeared.
“Hold on!” I shout, in the direction of the tinny voice, which seems to be coming from somewhere further along the sofa.
A few minutes later, I find my headphones inside the now-discarded jumper, put them back into my ears, and apologise.
Jude laughs, and tries again.
“Who’s that hairdresser you’re friendly with?” he asks. “Frankie, isn’t it? The one who lives in central London. Maybe you could tell your son you’re staying with him, if you don’t want to admit you’re staying with me.”
Frankie did offer to put me up any time, almost as soon as we’d bonded over Edith Piaf and the Andrews Sisters, so it wouldn’t be a total lie – except it would, because I’ve just remembered that he’ll be in the States this weekend.
“If you pretend that’s where you’re staying, then you won’t have to rush back the same night like you usually do. There’s a private view on Saturday night I want to take you to, followed by an after-party, which you’ll miss if you have to get the train. Then we could chill out together for the whole of Sunday, preferably in bed.”
I promise I’ll think about it before Jude rings off, but I don’t need to. Joel made me ask Frankie to pick up a pair of trainers for him from Niketown in New York, and he’s so excited about those, he won’t have forgotten that’s where Frankie’s going this weekend – and I’ve got no intention of lying to him, anyway. He’s going to need plenty of time to get used to the idea of Jude if the two of them are ever going to get along – and that’ll be important, won’t it, if Jude turns out to be a keeper?
In the meantime, I’ll just do my best to improve things with Dan, for Joel’s sake. If all he wants is for us to be friends like Danny and Pammy, that doesn’t seem too much to ask.
I dial Dan’s number, before I change my mind.
“Can I talk to you about something, Dan?” I say, as soon as he answers.
He sounds so surprised to hear from me that I start gabbling like a maniac, though he listens patiently while I spill out my concerns about how much Joel’s drinking, and how depressed he sometimes seems. I don’t mention Jude, but I’m about to suggest that Dan and I try to be on more friendly terms, when he starts to speak, at last.
“I know,” he says. “I’d already noticed Joel seems a bit low, so that’s why I’ve just phoned him to suggest he comes away with me this weekend. It’ll give us quality time together and we can chat about stuff, man-to-man. Maybe that’ll help a bit.”
It turns out that Dan’s separated flatmate, Aasim, talked Dan into accompanying him on a European mini-break ages ago. Now he’s pulled out at the last minute because his wife’s agreed to a trial reunion.
“I did offer to bow out and let them go together, but Aasim said his wife hates flying,” adds Dan. “So now his ticket’s going free, and the accommodation’s booked and paid for, too.”