by Claire Allan
This was his moment. It was his chance to beg me, plead and cry for another chance and promise to be the perfect trophy boyfriend from now on. Or he could just be honest.
“You’re right, Annie,” he said sadly. “And I wish this had worked out too but I think we need to cut our losses.”
I nodded.
“But about the dinner on Wednesday – can I ask you a favour? Please don’t mention this. Please pretend everything is fine and don’t make me look like a loser.”
He looked so worried and so pathetic that I could not say no. I was also keenly aware that NorthStar had arranged the charity dinner and it would not benefit either Pearse, or me, to feck up the proceedings at Manna.
And then he left. His losses cut. His soup uneaten. A dirty big garlic and herb ciabatta staring me in the face. And I walked to the cupboard, took out the still warm bottle of wine and opened it anyway.
In the bottom drawer of my dresser in my cavernous bedroom was a scrapbook. It was not so much a collection of my favourite pictures and ideas as a Life Plan. I’d even laminated the cover one weekend when I was working overtime.
I had added to it over the years but basically the plan hadn’t changed. Finish school. Go to college. Get a degree. Find a decent job (okay, so I failed on that score). Buy my own home. Meet someone. Fall in love. Date for approximately two years. Get engaged. Perhaps live together – although this was not vital. By the age of thirty-three get married. Have our first baby within a year or two – definitely no later than thirty-five. I didn’t want to risk scrambling my eggs.
It all seemed perfectly doable, especially when I was lucky enough to keep on top of the first few goals. Okay, so the job wasn’t my dream job and my flat wasn’t my forever home but I’d got there all the same. When I met Pearse Campbell, at the age of twenty-nine, I figured I was set. I was perfectly – absolutely one hundred per cent – on track for getting engaged at thirty-one, married at thirty-three and popping out our first little one at thirty-four or thirty-five. It was all happening like a dream. It’s just a shame that the “madly in love” bit hadn’t fallen into place.
When we’d met I’d been convinced he was the one, but now looking back I wondered was that because I wanted to believe it so much. I liked my life being ordered (contrary to outside appearances) and he slotted in nicely to the plan.
And we did have fun. Our first few months together were everything a relationship should be. We sat up into the small hours talking. We stayed in bed all day. I hung around Manna like a fragrant smell, sipping wine and making him laugh as he cooked. I put on 7lb in the first year, dining on rich foods. I dread to think how much I would have put on had we not also spent a considerable amount of time bonking away the calories.
When we’d been seeing each other five months and three weeks, we told each other we were in love. We were out for dinner (a competitor’s place, of course) and over the lemon sorbet he looked deep into my eyes and told me I was very special to him and he thought he was in love. I thought I was in love too and we glided out of that place on Cloud Nine.
It would only be a matter of time, I was convinced, before he proposed and we were sent hurtling down the road towards married bliss. Only it didn’t happen and after a while I didn’t mind that it didn’t happen. We were content and in our routine. The only time I felt a pang of jealousy was when Fionn flashed her diamond in the office and announced her forthcoming nuptials. Even then, however, I think I was only jealous of the ring. It was starting to dawn on me that I, perhaps, was starting to fall out of love with Pearse and that we would never be ideal marriage material. It made me incredibly sad to feel that way because he was the kind of man many a woman would give her right Jimmy Choo for. He was handsome. He was successful. He had even been on the telly.
I knew that if he asked me to marry him I would probably say yes and we would rub along nicely – well, adequately if not nicely – but surely marriage should be about more than rubbing along adequately? Fionn and Alex were mad about each other – Pearse and I were just comfortable with each other. Sometimes it felt as if I was a box simply ticked on his to-do list. One less thing to worry about. Girlfriend? Yes, I have one of those. Available for corporate dinners, parties and family gatherings at a moment’s notice. And she’s not the worst-looking either. She won’t show me up. Not much.
Maybe I wasn’t the only one with a laminated Life Plan.
Yet still I felt sad watching him walk out of my flat for what would no doubt be the last time. I was there, thirty-one and back at square one, with not as much as a decent prospect on the horizon and a whole can of worms to open when I told family and friends that I had broken up with the man they all perceived to be Mr Wonderful. (I figured, technically, since I’d done the shagging around, I had also done the breaking up. Of course, when I retold the story I would leave out the details of my indiscretion.)
I flicked through the scrapbook, running my fingers over the pictures of pretty dresses – one of which looked a lot like Fionn’s – and sipped my wine again. Of course I knew I was officially supposed to be off the drink but these were desperate times. It was a Saturday and I was alone. And I would be alone even after the restaurants and pubs closed. And – if I’m honest – I was afraid I would be alone forever. I admit I was starting to feel all melo-dramatic and Bridget-Jonesy and was about three seconds away from putting on an old Celine Dion CD and blasting out tunelessly about being “All By Myself”.
Instead, however, I crawled into bed, my Life Plan beside me, and fell into a deep sleep.
5
On Sunday mornings Fionn and I had a little tradition. I was terribly impressed that, even though she was so very much in love with Alex, she hadn’t broken our habit of going out for bacon sarnies and a nice steaming cup of tea at approximately 11 a.m. each and every Sunday.
If it was dry and relatively warm we brought food out to the park and sat on one of the old green wooden benches and put the world to rights. If the weather was horrendous we went to a local café and if we were completely broke we had bacon sandwiches in one of our houses.
Today was a park day. It was cold enough, but not freezing, and we promised we would go for a long walk afterwards. After all, Fionn had a wedding dress to look gorgeous in and I was to be the bridesmaid with the mostest. The last thing I wanted was to look like a one-woman mountain beside the naturally slim and gorgeous Fionn – no matter how much it was her day and she was supposed to be the main attraction.
I also figured the walk around the park would give me ample time to break the news to her about the big break-up.
As soon as Fionn saw me, she twigged something was up. In fairness, it was probably down to my gaunt expression, lack of make-up and general Mother of Sorrows look. In fact, I had shocked myself when I looked in the mirror earlier that day – and saw my mother looking back. My hair looked greyer. There were a few more lines around my eyes and my whole appearance had taken on that of a sad old spinster destined for a life of loneliness with perhaps the occasional cat for company.
“Are you okay?” Fionn asked, setting down the polystyrene cups of hot tea on the bench and stretching out her arms for a hug.
I hadn’t cried before then – because, to be honest, I wasn’t that sad about saying goodbye to Pearse. But there in the park, with the thought that the only person ever to hug me again might just be this woman sitting across from me, I let out a big old snottery yelp of tears.
“Jesus, Annie, what is it?” Fionn asked, her soothing tones replaced by blind panic.
“I’m all alone!” I wailed and put my head in my hands. Somewhere in the back of my mind I figured that, as I’d already crossed the line of crying in public, there was no point in being precious about making a total eejit of myself now.
“I’m here,” she said.
“But you won’t be, not after you’re married and all familied up. Where will I be then? Just me.”
“You’ll have Pearse,” she offered and I wailed loude
r.
(I fully accept that this was not my finest hour.)
When eventually I was composed I explained that, no, I wouldn’t have Pearse.
“But surely this is fixable?” she offered, handing me the cup of strong tea.
“No, no,” I said. “It’s not fixable and I don’t think either of us wants to fix it.”
She looked puzzled for a second. “Then it’s a good thing? If you don’t want to fix it, it’s a good thing that it’s over.”
“Except,” I sniffed, “for the fact that I’m alone.”
“There are worse things,” she said.
But then again she would say that – as someone unlikely to ever be alone again.
“And who’s to say you’ll be alone forever?” she went on with the confidence of someone who reached thirty-five before she met her Mr Right. She had already confided in me that before she met Alex she had resigned herself to a life of spinsterhood. “Love tends to happen when you least expect it.”
Meeting him had been a bolt out of the blue and now, just twelve months later, they were planning a wedding and a very lovely happy ever after.
“You’re right,” I sniffed, trying to pull myself together. “Of course you’re right.”
“But it’s okay to be upset,” Fionn soothed, rubbing my hand gently. “I have to say I’m a little shocked. I just expected you and Pearse to be forever.”
“Did you really?” I asked, genuinely intrigued, because even though I was now in bits at my alone-ness I can’t say that I myself was too shocked that Pearse and I had parted ways.
“I suppose I did. You’ve been together a long time. You never seemed unhappy – well, not much anyway.”
I nodded, wondering to myself if not seeming unhappy was the same as being happy. Surely the one you love should make you delirious? They should make you want to lose the run of yourself and do mad things like bunk off work to spend the day in bed or perform a mad striptease. My mind flashed back to Chewbacca – his hairy arms, which were strong and muscular and had pulled me to him as if I weighed six stone – and I tried to remember the last time I’d lost the run of myself with Pearse. Generally we were both too tired for mad-passion sessions. And he had never, ever pulled me towards him and growled (yes, actually growled) with raw animal passion.
“Penny for them?” Fionn asked.
“To tell you this story, we need something stronger than tea and a setting a little more discreet than a park on a Sunday morning,” I said. I also needed to build up the courage to tell her exactly what had pre-empted my relationship break-up and, even though she was my dearest friend, I wasn’t sure she was up for hearing about my night of amazing nookie with a stranger.
“So how are you?” I asked, trying to change the subject. “How did things go with Rebecca?”
It was Fionn’s turn to grimace. “She’s not being awkward as much as being –”
“A bitch?” I interjected.
Fionn shook her head. “I’d like to think not but she said it would be hard for her to change shifts for a full week to give us that time without Emma. She has no one else who could mind her and, while she would like to help out, she just doesn’t know that she can.”
I sighed. Of course Rebecca could work something out. Surely she could take leave from her nursing job if necessary to mind her own daughter? I said as much to Fionn who just nodded quietly.
“But I don’t want to make a fuss. It’s hard enough being a part-time mammy as it is, without kicking up a stink and Emma thinking we don’t want a bar of her near us on our honeymoon.”
Ah, there it was – the Wicked Stepmother fear again.
“I was just hoping Rebecca would be more understanding,” she continued. “I mean it’s not as if she’s jealous or anything. Her and Alex, well, it was a long time ago and didn’t really mean anything. I doubt he’d even feature on her radar these days if they hadn’t had a child together.”
I nodded, thinking that there was no reason why Rebecca wouldn’t still be jealous even if she didn’t want Alex to herself. I didn’t want Alex and yet I was jealous of what the pair of them had. Who’s to say, with my reckless behaviour of late, that I wouldn’t stoop so low as to use a defenceless child (if I had one) to throw a spanner in the works of their happy ever after?
I wanted to think that I wouldn’t and I was pretty sure that on the Big Day, when I stood beside them at the top of the church, the smile on my face would be utterly genuine. But in a way, a small way, I could understand where Rebecca was coming from.
“I’d still say she’s jealous,” I offered and explained my theory (of course leaving out the bit where I would possibly do the same in her position).
“You might be on to something there,” Fionn said, running her fingers through her hair and sighing. “But I mean, what me and Alex have – it is lovely, but there’s nothing to say it isn’t around the corner for her – or you for that matter.” She gave me a warm smile.
Somehow, somewhere deep down, I doubted it was around the corner for me, but I simply smiled back. I’d had enough of emotional trauma for one day and I couldn’t stand the thought of another mad crying session in the park.
“I’m sure Rebecca will come round, given time,” I offered. “It will be an adjustment for her. You know, it must be hard seeing someone else playing mammy to her daughter.”
“But I’m not,” Fionn protested. “Wicked Stepmother, yes,” she said with a wink, “but not mammy. Emma loves her mum and I’m not trying to replace her. I’m only trying to do the best I can to be her friend.”
“Five-year-olds don’t have much of a need for adult friends though, do they?” I asked.
“Nor do they have a need for two mammies,” Fionn replied, “even if one of them is slightly gone in the head.”
“Are you referring to yourself or Rebecca?”
Letting myself into the flat, I switched on the gas fire and the telly for the EastEndersOmnibus. As I flicked on the kettle I realised I was glad of the distraction of Fionn’s complicated stepfamily arrangements. We had successfully managed to keep the conversation as far removed from Pearse and hairy Donegal men as possible – which is exactly what I wanted.
Except, I don’t think I really knew what I wanted. Sitting down in front of the telly – cup of tea and chocolate biscuit in hand – I wondered would I ever know what I wanted.
Sliding down into my worn but extremely comfy sofa, I pulled a throw over me and decided to lose myself in the misery of Albert Square.
Two hours later I was just getting ready for that dramatic drum-roll and end credits when my phone rang and I hauled myself from my Sunday afternoon stupor to answer it. No one usually phoned on a Sunday afternoon – leaving me to my alone-time with Pearse or my soaps. Of course, now that there wasn’t any chance of any alone-time with Pearse in the near (or indeed distant) future, and my soaps were coming to an end, I had nothing better to do than answer the phone.
A deep, strangely familiar voice spoke. “Is that Annie?”
I struggled to place him. I was pretty sure he wasn’t a client from work – and why would a client from work be phoning me at home on a Sunday – or any other day, anyway? And I was fairly sure he wasn’t a long-lost family member or old friend.
“Who wants to know?” I asked.
“Ach, you’re upsetting me now. Surely you know who it is?” he asked, with a hint of a smile in his voice.
But all my brain could do was draw a dirty great blank.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, thinking that for all I knew he could be a random crank caller who had picked my name out of the phone book or be stalking me from afar. “Can I have a clue?” Just in case it was in fact somebody really very important who would be mortally wounded by my not recognising them from voice alone.
“I didn’t think I was that forgettable,” he said.
I heard him dragging on a cigarette and it clicked.
Bloody Chewbacca.
But of course that wasn�
��t his real name. I didn’t actually know what his real name was – but it would seem exceptionally rude of me to admit that now. I couldn’t believe I had actually passed my phone number on to this stranger while not knowing his name. I could only think that I had completely lost my mind when I’d let him into my life, my house and my knickers. But none of that mattered now – what mattered was that I was on the phone to him, not having a clue what his name was, and not knowing how to get myself out of this fix.
Shit and double shit. I had the urge the hang the phone up and pretend I’d never answered it in the first place. In fact, I would just pretend I’d never met this nameless creature in the first place, let alone let him into my life and then obviously given him my number. But then again, there must have been something about him that had intrigued me enough to pass on my phone number – even if it was just great sex. A relationship could not be based on that – but I didn’t want a relationship with him. At least, I didn’t think I did.
But in the absence of any other offers from strange men on a Sunday afternoon, I figured he deserved a hearing – if only I could get over the hump of not knowing his name.
“I’m only teasing,” I bluffed – trying not to sound like a coquettish schoolgirl in case he got any notion he could get back in my knickers anytime soon.
“Glad to hear it,” he said. “Look, Annie, I really enjoyed myself the other night and it sounded to me like you did too.” He laughed – a dirty laugh which I somehow knew should have made me cringe but actually sent a shiver of excitement running up my spine. I was glad, in that instant, that he wasn’t in the room with me and had no chance of seeing my face redden. When you think about it, however, that was a little daft considering just how much of me he had clearly already seen.