Break-Up Club

by Lorelei Mathias

  ‘Thanks, voices of doom,’ Holly said. ‘Next you’ll be saying we’re all being evicted, and our triptych of pain will be complete.’

  ‘Hol. It’s not that bad… yet,’ Bella said.

  ‘Sorry to cut you off, guys,’ Olivia said, ‘but I’m going to have to sign off now. I’ve got a not-date with Jonny to get ready for.’

  ‘And me,’ Harry said. ‘But listen, Holly, remember what Louis Armstrong always says.’

  ‘We have all the time in the world?’

  ‘NOOOO! Don’t worry, be happy.’

  ‘I know what you need,’ Olivia said. ‘A haircut. Tomorrow after brunch. My treat.’

  ‘That’s so sweet of you! Actually, maybe it’s time I did something drastic. I have had the same hair for fifty years.’

  ‘Oooh, yes. Get bangs. They’re very in right now,’ Olivia said.

  ‘I haven’t had a fringe since I was seven. But why not, things can’t get much worse can they?’

  Everyone was silent.

  ‘Fair. Well, guys, thanks again for being my lifeline.’

  After they had all signed off, Holly shut her laptop and headed to the bathroom. She stared at herself in the mirror, and attempted to bend the front bits of her hair under, to simulate a fringe. It was hard to tell if this would be a good look or not.

  She turned away from the mirror, noticing with sadness that the bathwater had long since gone cold. She stared at the floating tendrils of aromatic lavender as they bobbed about on the surface. She touched them with her finger and briefly debated getting in, so that at least they wouldn’t go to waste, along with EVERYTHING ELSE EVER. Instead she pulled the plug. No need to wash anymore. For what? For whom? She went to sleep without doing her teeth, and wailed into her pillow – until she got a crying headache worse than that time when she was four and she’d dropped her mint-choc-chip ice cream in the sand.

  *

  Jeremy.Philpott@Totesamaze‌Productions.com to

  Holly.Braithwaite@Totesamaze‌Productions.com

  Subject: C5 Want in

  Braithwaite,

  Great news; just heard back from Channel 5. You and your mates are about to become reality TV stars! Got the impression you weren’t all on board, but I’m sure we can make it worth all of your whiles. Except Olivia, but perhaps we can re-cast for someone that’s a bit less of a rottweiler?

  Let’s chat.

  Holly.Braithwaite@Totesamaze‌Productions.com to

  Jeremy.Philpott@Totesamaze‌Productions.com

  Subject: Re: C5 Want in

  Jez,

  My fuckwit friends and I are not for sale.

  I don’t really understand how it happened, but please can you UNDO whatever chat you’ve had with Channel 5 or anyone else?

  As a humble alternative, here’s an idea I think could be great. Please like it!

  BRITAIN’S GHOST PETS – A documentary exploring all the haunted houses in Britain.

  Not your normal ghosts though – the feline and canine ones! Think… Little Tammy comes back to visit the Joneses of Mildew Close. Young Boxer has some unfinished business in West Wycombe, and comes back to haunt the bloke wot ran him over on that country lane off the A40.

  A quick dip into the research pool reveals that there are loads of true stories we could mine. Just think, even little ghost hamsters, or phantom bunny rabbits! It’s cute meets scary.

  I should add – I have it on good authority that our very own Phil The Barman is MEGA keen to be the presenter.

  Holly.

  Jeremy.Philpott@Totesamaze‌Productions.com to

  Holly.Braithwaite@Totesamaze‌Productions.com

  Did you not hear me, Braithwaite? This is TERRESTRIAL, BABY!

  19. Bang on Trend

  The next day Holly was up with the larks or, more specifically, the Camden Council Recycling truck. As she walked through the pristine glass doors five minutes ahead of the appointment time, she resisted the urge to publicly pat herself on the back for managing to not be late for an appointment for the first time in her short life.

  Having taken her seat in front of the mirror, she was looking forward to ninety minutes of relaxation and pampering. As she began watching the cup and saucer of tea which Josie, her Welsh hairdresser, had put on the glass sill in front of her, she remembered that, actually, having your hair cut was anything but relaxing. For one thing, agreeing to drink a cup of coffee or tea was a decision fraught with ergonomic quandaries. Do I reach for the mug or not, she wondered as Josie savagely tugged a comb through her hair, clipping her ear each time in a way that made her want to cry out, but instead she smiled sweetly and answered questions about plans for Easter and the bank holidays. Then Josie started cutting Holly’s hair, which involved her clamping Holly’s head into a specific upright position. Holly went in for a sip of tea, but this meant moving her head fractionally, which resulted in a Josie emitting a discrete yet definite sigh, followed by Holly apologetically adjusting her head angle again. That one sip tasted so heavenly, but that would be the last, she realised as the lesson sunk in again: you’re not meant to drink the tea they give you at the hairdresser – it’s just for show.

  After a while she turned to reading, and attempted to concentrate on her magazine. But she couldn’t read it because Josie’s scissors were now chopping away in her eyeline. Eventually, she decided to give up and close her eyes. Before long she drifted into a half-sleep, her mind serving up footage from the childhood archives, of a seven-year-old Holly with a fringe, on the playground with a young Harry who was trying to make her join his new club collecting Panini stickers, and she was telling him to bog off because clubs were silly.

  ‘So? What do you reckon, my lovely?’ said Josie, and Holly landed back in the present with a thud, to find a girl with ‘bangs’ staring back at her in the mirror. She looked every inch the same as the girl on the playground, with the ruler-straight fringe. The only differences now were the tell-tale bags under her eyes, a splattering of wrinkles, and a few extra pounds.

  Holly thought for a moment, still lost in her daydream. ‘I think, for the first time in my life, I actually feel like I belong to a club.’

  Josie looked puzzled. Not the answer she’d been given to expect from new fringe clients. ‘Of the fringe, my lovely?’

  ‘Oh,’ Holly said slowly, gradually realising an undeniable truth, that she didn’t look like a sweet seven-year-old anymore. The fringe was an unmitigated catastrophe. ‘It’s great, thank you,’ she said, preparing herself for a month of hibernation.

  ‘It does wonders for you!’ Josie said in that way hairdressers are so good at. ‘Really lifts your face.’

  Josie brushed off the last of the stray hairs before unfettering Holly from the shiny black straitjacket. The thing was, ever since the days of standing in a sports field at school in a minuscule netball skirt, thighs goose-pimply, nerves in shards as she became once again the last to be picked for the girls’ hockey team, Holly had never managed to be the kind of person that – well – joined things. But now, twenty years on, she finally felt ready to be a fully paid-up member of a club. And that was rather a nice feeling, she was realising.

  ‘Do you use any product on your hair?’ asked Josie in that way that Holly had never understood. Surely it was a plural, wasn’t it? Surely it’s ‘products’, the octogenarian pedant within her wanted to shout.

  ‘No I don’t, actually. I’m all right thanks,’ she said as Josie shovelled product onto Holly’s head in spades.

  ‘Oh, it’s just lovely,’ she said, smiling as Josie held up the small mirror behind, allowing her to see the back of the hair. The back was OK, but by Jehovah, the ‘bangs’, on the other hand, somehow conspired together to conjure up the vista of an emaciated heroin addict. Nope, there was nothing for it but to smile and nod, then get the hell home, dig out the Kirby grips and OD on St Johns’ Wort.

  Holly awoke four hours later with the afternoon sun blazing through the gap in her blind. She sat up and caught a glimpse
of her fringe in the mirror on the other side of the room. She lay back down, closed her eyes and hoped that sleep would come soon and liberate her from the reality of her new appearance.

  When she next opened her eyes and turned on Radio 6 Music, the Violent Femmes’ ‘Blister in the Sun’ came on. One of her favourite songs in the genre of perky, quirky upliftingness, she took this as a cue from Broadcasting House to get her lazy ass out of bed and make something of her life. Yes. It was time to create.

  With fresh resolve, she picked up the laptop that was still sellotaped together from the time she’d trodden on it. She turned it on – amazing, it still worked! As she waited for it to boot up, a new strategy popped into her head: she would simply avoid mirrors for a whole month. Genius! Other people might have to see her hideous fringe, but that didn’t mean she had to. Also, there was one blessing: at least she wouldn’t risk breaking her notice period again. No man would look at her now, let alone ask her to get off any buses.

  Yes. The fringe represented a new start. New Holly was going to turn this shit around! There were only six weeks to go until Prowl came off the air, so she really should try and pluck one more idea out of the sky.

  She opened up a Word document, and began typing up all the new telly ideas she’d had so far, ending with Band Swap, for which she wrote a quick blurb, ready to send to Jeremy. After trying to dream up some more telly ideas from scratch, she kept finding her mind drifting back to the short film idea. She opened up a new document and typed the words ‘Mind the Gap’. Then she stared at the blank page some more.

  What am I thinking, doing this in Times New Roman, she mused. She highlighted the text, right-aligned it. Then centre-aligned it and then changed it to Courier New, point size 12. There. Am now officially a scriptwriter, she thought, typing in her name underneath, hitting Return, and admiring her handiwork.

  Although, strictly speaking, any scriptwriter worth their salt works in Final Draft, don’t they, she thought, going online and downloading a free 30-day trial. Now what? Open New project. She retyped in her name and the title. Now we’re cooking with gas, she thought as she began to type.

  ‘Scene One. FADE IN…’

  Fade in on what? Are we Interior or Exterior? What time of day is it? Are we starting on the Tube already, or are we starting with a flashback? Who is the main character, male or female? Who knew the answers? Why hadn’t anyone told her this writing malarkey was full of so many arbitrary decisions?

  She took out the notebook she’d started months ago and opened it to reveal some half-baked scrawls:

  Short film idea – someone mourning their loved one who was once a TFL voice. Could be jobbing actor and this was one thing they did in between West End shows or Holby. Ended up weirdly immortalised by TFL. Show the widow on their journey of grief somehow.

  How to magically transform these notes into an actual script, she wondered. She dug out the scribbles she’d made the other day about a woman named Clara Thomas, the voice of the Northern line. As it turned out, she sounded a lot more old-fashioned than she really was. In her thirties, she was a long way from leaving behind a widow. As it turned out, she wasn’t trapped in a 1930s time-warp, but was just great at putting on old-fashioned voices. Which wasn’t the most helpful of leads. No, the character in her film would be older. She’d have been recorded at least twenty years ago for the idea to have enough gravitas, she decided, scribbling down some more notes. But wait, maybe that was why Lawrence had said the idea was far-fetched and silly? Maybe the curly-haired one was right, she thought, grinding to a halt again.

  She dwelled on this for a few minutes until she realised her gargantuan error. Of course, don’t attempt anything without reading the Bible! She stood up and went over to her bookshelf to retrieve Story, the screenwriting tome that Harry had given to her. She opened it up, sat down on the floor and began to read. She wasn’t two pages in when her eye drifted to the right, just enough to be struck by how messy the room was. The wardrobe – once reasonably tidy – now resembled the first floor of a Primark just before closing. Her underwear drawer was ajar, tights hanging half out, socks leaking out onto the floor. Her beanbag was piled high with discarded clothes and make-up. In short, it was not far off being a female replica of The Lawrence Pit.

  Little wonder she couldn’t write under these conditions! First things first then, a thorough spring clean – after which the script would write itself. She grabbed an empty carrier bag and began shovelling in old tissues and other break-up detritus.

  Having hoovered the entire bedroom floor (with the nozzle attachment and everything), she moved to do behind the bed, which involved pulling it away from the wall. She wasn’t prepared for what was down there. Buried deep among the dust balls and old coins was a time capsule of Lawrence. One of his old Sudoku books, a stray sock, and worst of all, his Che Guevara T-shirt, all crumpled up and smelling of Lawrenceness. She tried to imagine the last time she’d seen him wearing it – or worse, the last time she’d taken it off him. As she clutched it to her and inhaled its musty but manly scent, he was back in the room.

  She sat in the middle of the floor, studying the plate of leftovers from her longest relationship. She opened the Sudoku book and looked at all the puzzles filled out in his spider-like scrawl. She turned to one that was half-finished. She grabbed the pen and attempted to complete it, before quickly remembering she was rubbish at them and Lawrence had always finished hers off. Just like he would have helped her write this script now. What was she thinking, trying to write a script without him?

  Tears pressed at the edges of her eyes. No, don’t fall off the wagon, she told herself. What do alcoholics do when they can feel themselves slipping?

  Go to a meeting.

  She grabbed the blue carrier bag, which already had some of his things in, and shoved it all inside, tying up the ends. Behold The Lawrence Sack, went the maudlin voice-over in her head. Five years of happy memories, bound in fraying polythene. She shoved it into the hall cupboard, next to Bella’s More-reasons-to-break-up-with-Sam bag, which their house-mate Daniel had since dumped his ski-ing gear on top of. Poor Jezebel, the teddy bear that Sam had given Bella, was now buckling under the pressure, his beady, lopsided eyes peering out at her. Her heart ached for the poor teddy. Even he was feeling the blow, being caught in the crossfire of all the conscious un-couplings. C’est la vie, she thought, slamming the door and heading out, not before pinning back The Fringe with four hundred Kirby grips. Back in her bedroom, the blank page on the laptop got bored of waiting and turned itself to Sleep setting.

  As she rode the escalator to the Northern Line, she resolved to try and think positive. Remember Rule Number Eleven: ‘Eventually, you will be OK. You will recover.’ She stepped onto the carriage and sat down, hearing Clara’s familiar female voice announcing the stops, and finding it oddly comforting. She wondered whether hearing her voice again might magically stir something in the stagnant waters of her writer’s block. She got her notebook out in readiness, her pen poised in the long wait for inspiration.

  She looked across the carriage and her eyes landed on one of those lovely Poems on the Underground. She began to read, excited that she was about to have her creativity massaged into life by whichever uplifting verse just happened to be right in front of her on this particular tube train. And there it was, short, stark and staggering.

  Separation

  Your absence goes through me

  Like thread through a needle.

  Everything I do is stitched with its colours

  W.S. Merwin ‘Separation’

  20. When Harry Met Holly

  ‘For the love of shit! Even the Underground is out to get me now,’ Holly said as she, arrived at Olivia’s newly decorated lounge and helped herself to some baklava from the shiny new coffee table. ‘Now even TFL is the enemy,’ she said after telling them about the psychic poetry incident.

  ‘TFL is always the enemy,’ Olivia said.

  ‘It’s like everything knows, isn
’t it.’

  ‘No,’ Olivia said, taking away the tray of baklava just as Holly was going in for another. ‘Oi missus. You’ll ruin your appetite.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Her hands retreated.

  ‘Just think about how ridiculous you sound,’ reasoned Harry, ‘Do you actually think that the universe as a whole, that’s been around for squillions of years, could possibly conspire to bother you, little old you, with these things? It’s almost a bit narcissistic when you think about it.’

  ‘Eff off Harry,’ she said, although she’d never thought about it quite like that.

  ‘Maybe it’s about being selective, Hol. You know, you have to pick the coincidences to ignore, and the ones to take notice of? The ones that are useful or actually life-affirming in some way,’ Bella said.

  ‘As opposed to indulgent,’ Harry added.

  ‘OK, I’m going to try and be a lot more discerning from now on then,’ Holly agreed.

  ‘That would certainly be a start,’ Olivia said, heading off to the kitchen and then re-emerging soon after. ‘OK kids, it’s Guac o’clock,’ she declared, putting out a tray of fajitas and guacamole, which was then rapidly demolished.

  ‘Yum, thanks Olivia!’ Bella said as she took a huge mouthful and fajita juice dribbled all down her chin. ‘Now, Holly. I’ve got an idea that might make you feel better. How about we ring round the hospitals, see if Aaron the bike boy is OK?’

  ‘Bella, no!’

  ‘Oh come on, I just think there was a real spark between you two – I know he was only semi-conscious, but guys, you should have seen them together, it was electric!’

  ‘Bella – again, you’re being inappropriate!’

  ‘But he might take your mind off Luke? And Lawry? And—’

  ‘END of conversation,’ snapped Holly, ‘you utter mentalist.’

  Olivia looked at her phone and stood up. ‘Sorry guys, but I’ve got to go and meet someone,’ she said, looking uncharacte‌ristically sheepish, grabbing her handbag and stepping into her heels.