It's Got To Be Perfect

by Claire Allan

  The second message was from Fionn. At 3.18 p.m. She sounded less chipper.

  “Annie, what have you done?” she breathed – and that was that.

  I crawled into bed – my usual hiding-spot – pulled the duvet up tight over my ears and ignored my phone when it rang. I can’t say I slept – not when there was so much to think about. Tomorrow, I sensed, was going to be a long and interesting day. And, by interesting, I meant utterly terrifying.

  14

  Four missed calls. One from Fionn. One from Ant (mini-yay!) and two from Pearse.

  No messages.

  I should have tackled it all head on, of course, but hey – that’s what Darcy was for. I just had to get through the day without doing any more damage to my life than I had already done. It should be relatively easy, I thought, as long as I just kept my head down, talked to no one and got my work done.

  Adopting a distinct must-fly-under-the-radar approach, I dressed conservatively in plain black trousers, a white pussy-bow blouse and some low slingbacks. I tied my hair back from my face in a loose chignon and slipped a black jacket on. Make-up was minimal – some Clarins foundation and loose powder and a slick of lip-gloss. I even left for work early – in time to beat the school-run traffic and avoid attracting Bob’s attention by arriving my usual ten minutes late.

  I stopped at Starbucks on the way and picked up a grande latte, then stopped in and bought a newspaper to adopt that educated-and-interested-in-the-world-around-me appearance.

  By eight fifty, I was at my desk and my computer was on. And no, I wasn’t on Facebook or Twitter or Bebo or any social-networking site. I was working.

  I checked Bob’s end-of-day report from the previous afternoon and saw one of his patented smiley faces beside my name. Once again I felt like a complete whore. The dull ache in my thighs reminded me of my misdemeanour as I realised I had slept with two different men in the space of forty-eight hours. This was an unprecedented level of hoor-dom for me. And it didn’t feel good. I didn’t feel racy. I didn’t feel like an empowered woman. I probably should have. I mean I was a feminist – surely I was setting the agenda for my life but the truth was that I had slept with one man who might, or might not, have been using me for sex (flowers confused that particular issue) and another man who, despite having rediscovered his mojo in the bedroom, left me cold everywhere else. Neither were particular good choices.

  On any ordinary day this would have resulted in a specially extended double FSB with Fionn but this was no ordinary day. This was no ordinary day at all.

  Fionn arrived just after nine and she took to her desk without so much as glancing in my direction. Whether that was because she was in a big giant huff or whether she knew there was generally no point in looking in the direction of my desk before 9.10 a.m. was anyone’s guess at that moment. I just put my head down and kept on working, following up leads and making a list of must-calls for the day.

  There were two more missed calls from Pearse. None from Ant (not yay).

  By nine thirty Bob had arrived and had smiled beamingly at me as he walked into the office. In a slightly creepy voice (the same one he used when he was thinking about me and the red lingerie) he said: “I don’t know what you did yesterday, but well done. Feel free to do it again any time soon.”

  For a minute or two I imagined the call he must have taken from Pearse. “Hey, Bob, I’m just calling in to double our PR this month for Annie. Ads everywhere, please. Yes, double page, colour, centre-spread. Yes, repeat ad next month. Budget? Feck the budget! You set the price, Bob. She has just fecked me sideways – no, really! Seriously it was out – of – this world!”

  I cringed.

  I was sure (almost) that conversation hadn’t happened but it felt as if “dirty hoor” was written all over my face.

  At nine thirty-five the silence from Fionn was deafening. So I took the coward’s way out and sent an email.

  “I was only trying to help,”I typed.

  “I know,” she typed back and yet when I sent my usual half-ten FSB email she replied that she was too busy. And she had something to do at lunch-time. And then she was too busy again in the afternoon.

  I was in the shit. I might have made a lot of mistakes in my life recently but it was clear that I was right when I thought that our relationship was perhaps fatally wounded.

  Balls.

  At three, Bob called me into his office. He had a sly grin on his face. He knew – damn it – he knew exactly what had happened the day before.

  “So I hear the big romance is on again?” he said with a wink.

  “I don’t think that is any of your business,” I replied with fake confidence. I knew exactly that his “business” was exactly what it was all about for him. He didn’t care about the wellbeing of his staff as long as the figures were right.

  “Well, if you are off conducting business on my time, then it is,” he said.

  And he had a point. And God knows he had given me enough chances.

  “So while I’m delighted with the sales figures from yesterday, Annie, I have to let you know you are on your final, final warning. There are people out there who would kill for your job – if you don’t want it, someone else will.”

  “I’m sorry,” was all I could muster, and I left his office, tail between my legs, in a vague state of desperation.

  When I got home (two more missed calls from Pearse, one from Ant), I poured a glass of wine and drank it in approximately 3.5 seconds. I needed it. I didn’t care much if I would be three sheets to the wind by the time Darcy arrived. My plans to cook her dinner and prove to her I wasn’t a complete waste of effort had gone out the window. I would order Chinese, or pizza. Or make toast.

  Fionn hadn’t said goodbye when I left the office. I’d felt wretched. I had almost cried. But I didn’t. I kept my head held high and managed to stave it off till I got home and then I snottered into my glass of wine (not literally) and curled up on the sofa and waited for Darcy’s arrival.

  There was one more missed call from Pearse. And a message on my voice mail.

  “Annie, it’s me. Just wondered if I could call round later, after the restaurant closes? I miss you already.”

  I looked at the flowers from Ant and my heart lurched just that little bit. There were no more missed calls from him. Nothing at all. And nothing from Fionn. I didn’t know whether she was still on the proverbial Naughty Step, whether her wedding was still on or completely off and whether or not I was permanently banned from Sofas To Go (that thought crossed my mind as rather selfishly it dawned on me how uncomfortable my current sofa was).

  Two glasses of wine in, I was text-happy. Pearse got a text saying I would call him the following day (yes, I chickened out like the dirty big fecking chicken that I was). Ant got a text thanking him for the flowers. And Fionn got three texts.

  “I’m sorry,” read the first.

  “I’m really sorry,” read the second.

  “I’m so sorry I can’t even begin to say how sorry I am,” read the third.

  I was typing out a message about how I was so sorry I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror when my doorbell buzzed and heralded Darcy’s arrival.

  It would all be okay. My big sister was here. The Fixer had arrived.

  Darcy was three years older than me. But it might as well have been thirty. She was so together – ridiculously, perfectly together. She wasn’t married but she had a lover. She never referred to Gerry as her partner, or boyfriend – always just as her lover.

  They had no children. She didn’t want any. Never had, she said. I couldn’t imagine her with any either. She wasn’t at all maternal – which was strange because she was perhaps the most caring person I knew. She was my go-to person. If anything was going horribly, drastically wrong (which it did, a lot) she was the person on the end of the phone shushing me and assuring me it would all be okay. Luckily she had a very understanding employer (in the fancy fashion thingummy) and a very understanding lover who knew that on
occasion she would have to hightail it over the border to sort out yet another mess for me. She was the Hardy to my Laurel.

  It had been a brave while since she’d been called up North on a mercy dash. A month or two before, she had commended me on being so in control of my life at the moment.

  She knew about the Life Plan. She didn’t know I still had it, of course. But she knew about it in our teenage years and ribbed me mercilessly about it. When she made her grand speech about how I seemed to be in control of my life, she had quipped: “Hey, you might even make it down the aisle in line with your big grand plans after all!”

  We had laughed (well, I had blazed with embarrassment and then laughed) but we had felt she might just be right. I could have been heading for my happy ending – random acts of feckwittedness aside.

  Darcy could get away with wearing the sorts of clothes that would make mere mortals like myself look as if we were on day release from the local mental institution. When she arrived that night she was wearing a multicoloured pair of leggings, an oversized jacket and some very colourful plastic beads. If I had tried the same ensemble I would have looked like a mad Irish Floella Benjamin – but Darcy looked cool. She had “fashionista” written all over her and I was a little jealous. I just about managed to wear the Next workwear range with a certain degree of style – anything out of the ordinary just didn’t work.

  “Hey, baby sister,” she said, enveloping me in a huge bear-hug.

  I breathed in her perfume – Chanel No. 5, perhaps not the coolest perfume on the planet but one which Darcy could of course carry off.

  I felt myself breathe out. It would be okay. I knew then it would be okay.

  “Hey,” I replied. She handed me a plastic bag – complete with a bottle of Jack Daniels, two litres of Coke and a bag of crushed ice from the local off-licence. She headed straight to the kitchen, took out two tumblers and set about mixing us some drinks.

  “I have to say, Annie, you get yourself into some messes, but this sounds particularly impressive, even for you.”

  I shrugged, glancing momentarily at the display of flowers from Ant on the sideboard. Someone still liked me – even if I was dropping friends like a hoor drops her knickers.

  Darcy walked in and sat on the floor, crossing her legs in front of her and sipping from her glass, before exhaling slowly and leaning back against the sofa.

  “Okay, babes, you might as well start talking now and let’s see what we can do.”

  So I told her. I told her about Pearse, and Ant. I told her how things had been far from perfect with Pearse for a long time. She nodded, as if she knew all along. And when I thought about it, it was unlikely that Darcy – even with 200 miles of distance between us on a day-to-day basis – wouldn’t have known things hadn’t been perfect. Darcy knew everything. I would almost swear she had my house bugged. And then again she had an inbuilt radar for feckwits and Pearse was indeed a feckwit.

  “I thought you liked him,” I said with a sigh and she smiled.

  “I did, in a way. You have to admit he has a certain charisma, but there was something . . . I dunno . . . just something about him which kind of creeped me out.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the fact he is full of himself. And he talked down to you. And he thought he was only person in the whole of Ireland who ever cooked a fecking spud before.”

  “And you kept these feelings to yourself? Your only sister in a relationship with someone who creeped you out and you didn’t share your concerns?”

  Darcy shrugged. “Why would I? He didn’t appear to creep you out at all. In fact, you seemed quite besotted. And would you have listened to me anyway? You always were your own person, Annie.”

  Darcy was right – of course she was. I wouldn’t have listened to her. I probably would have had a huge screaming row and Mum would have phoned me in a state that the pair of us had fallen out and would have insisted on some big family get-together to sort it all out. Pearse would have been invited, as would Gerry and it would have been very, very awkward.

  No, Darcy had done exactly the right thing by letting me figure it out for myself. I just wished I had figured it out earlier. And even if I hadn’t realised it earlier I wished I hadn’t allowed myself the moment of weakness which led me back into his arms and into his bed.

  And I told her about Fionn and Alex. I told her how my intentions had been good – how I wanted to make it all better and how I had in fact made it worse.

  She resisted telling me I was a complete disaster and made lots of “poor Fionn” noises, which was fair enough as Fionn was indeed the biggest victim in all this even if I was the one selfishly feeling very, very sorry for myself.

  I told her that it was particularly crappy because friends at work were few and far between – in fact, friends everywhere were few and far between. And then I told her how Bob had warned me not to mess up again and how – knowing me – it was unlikely that I could manage not to mess up again.

  She nodded again – which did not fill me with confidence. Surely she should have reassured me that I was being overly dramatic and that of course I could manage to stay out of trouble if I just focused. She was supposed to give me a plan – a new Life Plan (not necessarily laminated), with ideas of how to get out of this sorry mess.

  Instead she finished off her JD and Coke, then got up and went back to the kitchen where she rummaged through my cupboards until she found two of perhaps the largest tumblers in the world and poured two very large drinks.

  Walking back in and handing one to me, she said matter of factly, “Annie, my dear, we’re gonna need these.”

  I nodded. I didn’t question Darcy. No one ever questioned Darcy. “I’m sorry,” I muttered. “Dragging you all the way up here, away from Gerry and work.”

  She shook her head. “Sure isn’t Gerry glad to see the back of me for a while? He gets to lie in his scratcher all day now, and drink all night if he wants. He’ll be glad of the break – and, besides, don’t they say absence makes the heart grow fonder?”

  “And work?”

  “Never mind, petal. They owe me big time. I’ve been working my arse off lately so don’t worry about that.”

  It must be nice, I thought to myself, to have your work value you so much they agreed to your every request for time off because they could rely on you the rest of the time.

  Of course I always promised myself – every Monday – that this week would be the week when I gave work My All. But there were always too many distractions.

  I gave a weak smile.

  “Annie. Don’t worry. We’ll sort it all out. I promise. There is nothing here which can’t be fixed. You just have to figure out what you want and we’ll work out how to get it. But, first of all, you need to start sorting out some of the mess you’ve made with Fionn, and work, and yes, even Pearse.”

  I nodded. I had hoped in my heart she wouldn’t say that. I had hoped she would have some magic formula which would sort it all out without the need for me to go grovelling to anyone – but I suppose I had always known in my heart that was never going to happen. I took a long swig of my JD and Coke and lay back. This was going to be interesting.

  15

  By morning I had managed about four hours of sleep. Darcy and I had sat up chatting. It was going to be simple. I was going to apologise to Fionn and I was going to do it like a proper grown-up in a face-to-face capacity and not via email or text, like the big fat chicken I was. I would grovel. I would tell her it was all stupid and that I had been a tit of the highest order and then I would visit Alex (in my lunch break so as not to annoy Bob any further) and explain that it wasn’t Fionn who had sent me and that I was sorry for sticking my nose in their business in the first place. I would grovel. I would tell him it was all stupid and that I was a tit of a highest order.

  As for Pearse – you can probably see where this is going. There was no point in stringing it out, Darcy said. If I didn’t love him (and I didn’t) then I should be straight wit
h him. I would invite him round though – I didn’t want to act the cow in Manna in front of Toni and nor did I want to give him the chance to humiliate me in whatever way he saw fit. I didn’t want him to act the big man and make a scene – as he was likely to – and for us to be subject of gossip-mongers the city over.

  “I don’t understand why you ended up back with him,” Darcy had said.

  “Don’t you?” I’d asked forlornly. “I was lonely and he was there and he knows me and I know him and yes, he might be a complete eejit, but he was a big part of my life for a long time and he wanted me.”

  I cringed slightly at telling my sister – regardless of how cool she was – that a man wanted me. It felt all a little bit “too much information” but the JD and Coke had loosened my tongue and I was letting as much of these feelings out as possible.

  “And the new man? Doesn’t he want you?”

  “Fionn thinks he’s using me for sex.”

  “With those flowers? I don’t think so.”

  “But I’ve not spoken to him in a couple of days.”

  “But he has sent flowers. And texts. In this day and age that’s a full-on courtship. What some of my single friends in Dublin wouldn’t give for that sort of attention!”

  I smiled in spite of myself and bit back the feeling of something just not being right about the whole situation.

  Darcy had a way of making things seem simple – almost too simple. I went to bed believing that things were not half as bad as they really were and that it would all be okay.

  Despite the lack of sleep I even managed to make myself look respectable for work the following morning. Although, of course, Darcy laughed at my “terribly pedestrian” dress sense as I slipped into my Next trousers.