Losing It

by Jane Asher

  ‘We can walk – it’s not far, is it? – or I’ve got my car parked round the corner if you’d prefer. Warren – Mr Chipstead, I mean – said you’d be coming out about now so I brought the car near as it’s such horrible weather. Warren and I are old friends, you see, and I knew you’d been ill – oh, did you get my card, by the way? – and I just thought it would be a nice surprise for you if I gave you a lift home.’

  He was gabbling a bit now – talking too fast for my liking, and I knew he was feeling kind of panicky. But it was bleeding cold and even though I tried to wrap my coat round me it just wouldn’t meet in the middle and keep the freezing wind out. It was spitting a bit too, and I knew it would be just my fucking luck for it to start raining any minute. By the time I came out of the tube the other end it would be pouring, and the thought of the journey was right depressing in any case. Even once I’m down into the tube it’s horrible: I always have to wait while they undo the barrier next to the places you’re supposed to go through. I have to stand there while all the normal people slot their tickets in and them gates open and shut and I get quite dizzy watching them in their little routines: ticket-in/flip/pass/flip/ticket-out. The huge sea of people waiting in the rush hour goes through them like when I went on the Thames barrier trip at school and all them little gates let the water through ever so slowly and once it was out and through the other side it rushed like fuck. All them people are just the same: they all have to move forward ever so slowly on one side and then once they’re through they’re down them escalators like a dose of salts, as my mum would say. But I’m always stood there like a right idiot until they can be arsed to open up the side gate and let me through. And then they give me that look that means ‘are you sure you’ll be able to get on the train at that size?’ and I go through ever so fast before they can stop me. ’Cos it won’t be long, I know that. It won’t be long before I can’t fit into the train any more, let alone into a seat – I’ve given that up long ago.

  So while something in me was screaming not to be stupid and remember all them murders and stuff you read in the papers and they have on Trisha, there was another bit of me saying, ‘Go on, girl – you go for it. Have a warm comfortable ride in his car, and if he rapes you and cuts you up into little pieces and boils them for supper then that’s just something you’ll have to cope with at the time.’ It made me giggle a bit, thinking that, as it sounded funny and he smiled at me. He looked all kind again, and suddenly I decided to do it.

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ I said. ‘Thanks. Let’s go in your car.’

  Charlie

  I’d thought to push the passenger seat as far back as it would go before I’d left the car, so I was able to open the door for Stacey and gently help her in without too much embarrassment. I offered to help do up her seat belt, and to my surprise she accepted immediately and simply sat back like a child while I reached over her and clipped it in. It was the first time I had touched her anywhere except on her hand, and even through the layers of fabric of her coat and the striped dress it was a delight to me to feel her softness under my arm. It was all I could do to prevent myself giving her a quick kiss as I pulled back out of the car, but I was just rational enough, in spite of the joy leaping about inside me like a frisky lamb, to keep my hopes set firmly on the future and to avoid doing anything that could jeopardise it.

  ‘Now, Stacey,’ I said, in what I hoped was a suitably calm and reassuring voice, ‘I know Warren said you lived somewhere in Balham, but you’ll have to tell me exactly where. Or would you rather I dropped you at the underground?’ I added, praying that she’d refuse and that it would simply make her even more convinced of my good intentions.

  I slipped into my seat, did up my seat belt and switched on the radio as I held my breath while waiting for her reply. My finger hovered over the pre-set buttons for a second or two in an agony of indecision: should I put on my usual Radio 3 or 4 in an attempt to impress her with a glimpse of the culture I could bring into her life, or Sally and Ben’s Capital, Heart or Kiss to show I was – literally – on her wavelength? I opted for a kind of honesty and chose Radio 3. Just as Mahler’s Fourth erupted, gloriously, into the small space of the car, Stacey turned towards me and lifted her eyebrows slightly.

  ‘Forty-three Towerbury Street, just off the High Road,’ she said quietly, and her voice seemed to blend with that of the soprano singing of heaven. What an extraordinary child this was! Not for a second did she seem to have questioned why this virtual stranger had appeared out of nowhere to whisk her home in his car, or why, indeed, he had sent her a card or presented himself so frequently at her till. And the slight change of expression – which up to now had been either nervous or bland – to one of wry complicity gave me a glimpse of an altogether cannier creature than the one I had hitherto thought I’d known. I started the engine and then looked back at her. She was still watching me, her plump cheeks and the end of her nose red from the cold and her eyes bright behind the glasses. To my astonishment, she suddenly smiled a little and the tops of her cheeks rose up to be twin hills over which her eyes were rising suns. I felt a stab of intense happiness that made me laugh out loud.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘What are you laughing at, then?’

  ‘Nothing, Stacey. Nothing at all – everything’s fine. Before we set off, though – can I just say one thing?’

  ‘Oh yeah – now what? Now it’s coming out, is it – whatever it is you want?’

  ‘Stacey – please, don’t look so suspicious. I’ve been coming to your till for weeks now and if I’d wanted to do anything to hurt you or take advantage of you or whatever, I’d have surely tried it before now, wouldn’t I? No, I just wanted to say that I will never ever do anything that you don’t like or that makes you unhappy or embarrassed or sad or – this is a very strange situation and you’ll have to forgive me if I sound a bit peculiar but I’m staggering about in the dark here.’ I took a quick look at her still-wary face and knew I must keep talking if I was to save myself. I hadn’t meant to say anything at all other than pleasantries on the way to her house. What on earth had started me on this semi-confession I had no idea, but now I was halfway in I had no choice but to try and dig myself out again. ‘I’m just very fond of you, you see, and – oh dear – that sounds bad, too, doesn’t it? I really am a perfectly ordinary, respectable, rather boring person, Stacey, and I’ve never done anything like this ever before.’

  ‘They all say that.’

  ‘What do you mean? Who do?’ I was panic-stricken in an instant: who were these ‘they’? How many men did my girl have trailing after her besides me?

  ‘The creeps. The weirdos. The ones what say dirty stuff in the street and that.’

  ‘Do they? Who do? What kind of creeps?’

  ‘You know. The men that try to touch you or say stuff. Like the guys that go after Andy. They all say that too. “I’ve never done anything like this before. This is the first time I’ve ever felt like this – I’m a happily married man,” and all that crap. They’re on the common every fucking night, Andy says, with their briefcases and their business suits trying to meet young boys to have a quickie with before they go home to their families.’

  ‘But do you have lots of them after you, Stacey? Do men try to touch you and – say things and so on?’

  The noise of the still-running engine, mixed with the strains of the symphony, filled the moments before she spoke. She was looking down into her lap, fiddling with one of the large, shiny buttons of her coat. ‘Nah – not really,’ she said at last. ‘Only sometimes. And it’s all right – I know you’re not like that, really. Go on.’

  She raised her head again and I felt such relief that I almost hugged her. Without any possible justification this girl trusted me. I could see that now.

  ‘I want you to be happy, you see,’ I went on, feeling safer and calmer every second. ‘I want to – forgive me for this, Stacey, as you’ll very probably say it’s the last thing you want or need, but – I want to look after you. That’
s all.’

  ‘Oh, no, it ain’t,’ she said. ‘Who do you think you’re kidding? That’s not all you want, is it? I may not be as smart as you, but I’m not stupid, you know. But don’t panic,’ she went on, as she sensed my dismay, ‘I’m not saying you don’t want to look after me and all that as well. It’s just – let’s not kid ourselves – you fancy me, don’t ya?’

  I couldn’t help it – I laughed again. The way I had been pussyfooting around with her; my prissy middle-class angst muddled with my lust and guilt and terror sending me into whirlpools of anxiety in my attempts to try and convey to the girl my desperate, pathetic love suddenly seemed foolish and unnecessary. Yes – I bloody well did fancy her, and if she could accept that then who knows what unexpected joys lay ahead?

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Well, that’s good, you see. Not many people really fancy me, you see, me being a big girl and all that. I don’t have a boyfriend, if that’s what you want to know.’

  ‘I think you’re lovely, Stacey – really. Shall I take you home?’

  ‘Yeah – OK.’

  Crystal

  Hiiiya, Stacey!!!!!

  How’re ya doin’, gal? I’m real happy ’cos the weight’s goin’ down again now after my plateau. Have ya heard about the plateau? You always get one sooner or later once you’re on the other side and you gotta be ready for it or it can bring you right down. Bring your spirits right down, I mean, not the pounds, ha ha. You just get kinda stuck and the pounds just won’t get goin’ again. My friend Bobbi got stuck on her plateau real soon after her op, too, and she got so depressed I thought she might do something terrible but the doc put her on some pills and she went to a counselor (councilor??? Sorry, Stace, you know what my spelling’s like) and she got over it but it was edgy for a while. I prayed real hard for her for sure and the Lord got her through.

  Yea! Stacey, I got myself some new lingerie today – matching panties and camisole. It’s made of red lace and Josh says it’s kinda sexy and that makes me feel sooooooooooo good. The panties are still tight so I gotta keep on going with the weight loss but I can just get them on and they’re THREE SIZES smaller than the ones I bought before I came over, so isn’t that cool??? Mind you, I can’t wear them very often because – well, that’s for me to know and you to wonder … I’ll tell ya when I see ya.

  Now I just gotta get the OK from the insurance for my tummy op. My doc says once I’ve lost enough they can take away the apron that’s hanging down and tighten up the folds under my arms and I can’t wait ’cos I still don’t feel right without long sleeves and something hanging down over my waist. But I don’t have to tell you, gal, do I???

  Have you got yourself an angel, Stacey? I mean one of the human ones this time, the ones in heaven are there for you whether you know it or not so you can’t get rid of those even if you wanted to unless you do something real bad and then God turns his face from you and Jesus cries and you may find yourself with LUCIFER LOOKING AFTER YOU!!!! And we don’t want that for you, Stacey. Even tho’ I know sometimes you don’t believe what I tell you about the power of the Lord and prayer I shall never give up on you and I pray every day that you may find the help you need.

  It’s so cool you found that place in Britain that does the RNY. Have you gotten to see them yet? You have some great doctors over there even tho’ you’re so small. I read about how you invented penicillin and stuff over there so they have to be good at getting you over, huh? Did you like the stickers I put on the envelope? Don’t throw them in the trash ’cos they’re lucky and the pink one with the glitter on it is to bring you luck in getting over. Cut it out and keep it in your purse – a friend of mine did that with the same sticker and she had her op in two months and her uncle won the lottery (he only had four numbers but he won two hundred dollars!!!!)

  Do you see Sex in the City? It’s soooooooooooooo cool and I get the hots for all the guys. Josh says I’m a sex maniac!!

  Write back and may Jesus hold you in his arms.

  Lots and lots and lots of hugs and kisses

  Crystal

  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  Ben

  Christmas was bloody awful, but then it’s never been a favourite time of mine – or at least not since the dim, distant days of stockings at the end of the bed and whispered secrets and all that kind of thing. Before the devastating day when Sally told me that Father Christmas was not real I used to get so overexcited on Christmas Eve that Mum would have to put me in a cool bath to try and calm me down. I’m not sure, in terms of peaks of exquisite pleasure, that anything has quite come up to it since – even sex. The feeling of stretching my toes out to the end of the bed in the early morning and finding the rustling, unfamiliar weight left there mysteriously in the night was so fantastic that I used to lie there moving it around with my feet and picturing it for ages before I raised my head to look at it. And then the brilliant time of slowly opening each wrapped little parcel inside the huge stocking that Mum had made specially. She’d based it on a knitting pattern for a sock and had meant to make it three times the size but because she tripled the measurements it came out nine times instead. She never was that good at maths. So it had to have some really big stuff inside to fill it up – I always thought they’d be the really good things but they usually turned out to be clothes of some sort: a big bulky jumper or a new dressing gown or something. And what I was looking for were cars or Ninja Turtles.

  It lost its thrill once I knew it was Mum doing it. She and Dad used to keep up the pretence, and Sally and I had to take all the stuff into their bedroom and show it to them and they’d pretend to be surprised and I’d feel really embarrassed. I suppose I should have come out with it – told them straight out that I didn’t believe in him any more, I mean – because, although they knew perfectly well that Sally had told me (in fact, Sal said there was a huge row about it) we’d never openly acknowledged it. But it’s not that easy for a seven- or eight-year-old or whatever I was to tell his parents that they can stop lying now because he’s perfectly well aware that this old guy who’s supposedly invading his bedroom once a year is invented.

  Even though it wasn’t quite as exciting, it kept on being fun for a few years of course; it’s hard to remember now when it all became a bit of a chore. Probably about the time that I realised I’d rather be out with my friends than doing things with my parents. But this year takes the prize – if I thought I’d been pretending to have a good time before now, then this Christmas I get the Oscar. And Sal, too. I hadn’t realised just how much the whole occasion had become an established routine, and when one of the key players is missing it’s really hard to pretend it’s anywhere near normal any more – let alone enjoyable. Both Sal and I longed to tell Mum just to drop the whole idea for once – to have no presents or Christmas lunch and all that but just a quiet time on our own watching a few films on TV and having some ready meals or takeaways to save her cooking, but of course we knew we couldn’t do that. It would have hurt her far more to abandon the celebrations than to stagger on with them as if nothing had changed.

  Every other moment there seemed to be reminders that Dad wasn’t there: like the terrible puns and corny jokes that were missing as we opened our presents round the tree. Christmas Day was the only time he ever drank in the morning, and he’d sit there with a glass of sherry, eating chocolates and making comments as each parcel was opened – and they really made us laugh. This year when Sally opened the one from Aunt Cherry and it was the same old tin of biscuits that she always sent there was an awful silence and you could tell we were all trying to think of the kind of joke Dad would have come up with. And the carving of the turkey: it was so cringe-making when Mum said, ‘You be the man of the house, darling’, but I had to give it a go. I could see Sally was trying not to giggle, because I was cutting it into strange square chunks instead of slices, and I couldn’t look at her or I knew I’d go too. And it was really sad how Mum was making such an effort to be smiley and all that – I’m not sure I woul
dn’t have cried instead of laughed if I’d once let go.

  Anyway, we got through it, and Dad phoned about four o’clock and we had a strange, awkward conversation without really talking about anything. Mum had answered it, and I thought it must be a distant cousin or something, because her voice sounded so normal but kind of detached, and then she passed it to Sally and Mum had a desperate look in her eye and I just knew she needed us not to make trouble. So we both spoke to him as if nothing had happened and as if we were always separated on Christmas Day and just kind of clocked in with each other and checked on each other’s health and so on. It reminded me a bit in a funny way of the years of pretending about Father Christmas, because I found myself telling him what we’d been doing as if he didn’t know perfectly well exactly what we always do on Christmas Day. And, in both cases, I never dared say the really big thing – that I didn’t believe in him any more.

  I was longing to go round to Hol’s, which I’d done the year before at about six o’clock. I can remember leaving Mum and Dad sitting in their armchairs in front of the TV; they were still wearing the paper hats from the crackers and they’d drunk a lot of wine. You could see they’d be asleep long before they got to the twist at the end of Fight Club so I knew in the morning they’d dismiss it as just another violent film without knowing what the fuck they were talking about. I felt quite irritable about it, because they were already muttering about modern films being all the same and stuff, and I didn’t really thank them for the day or anything. I know they didn’t expect it, but Mum worked really hard at all that food and wrapping and things, and I wish I had. Because that was probably the last good Christmas I’ll get. I can’t imagine it ever being like that with my kids, partly because I’m probably not going to have any and partly because, even if I did, I’m not going to lie to them about things – ever. Even about Father Christmas. And I’ll let them do just what they want at times like Christmas and birthdays and all that.