It's Got To Be Perfect

by Claire Allan

  I must have looked a little puzzled. Fionn looked as if she might throw up. Alex looked more than a little embarrassed by the whole female, over-the-top hysteria unfolding before his eyes.

  “I’m fine,” I said, even though my make-up streaked face and bird’s-nest hair said different. “I’m a little hungover, perhaps, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

  “But where have you been?” Her voice was several octaves above its normal level. In fact it was so high that “been” came out as a mere squeak.

  “Here,” I said, matter of factly. “And the beach. I went for a walk. And then I came here and worked. Called all the media contacts. Sorted things out. Didn’t you get my text about the courier?”

  She shook her head. “Do you think I would have been running around the country like a fecking eejit if I had a text from you?”

  “But I sent it. I sent it early afternoon. Or at least I’m sure I did.” I lifted my phone to check the message wasn’t still stuck in my outbox, but of course it was switched off.

  “Well, I didn’t bloody get it. And you didn’t answer your phone. And your mobile went straight to your voicemail.”

  “I had a sleep. And a wee drink,” I said, nodding towards the living-room floor where my wine bottle was upended. “I needed to drown my sorrows. It’s not every day that you finally cross that line between life being just a wee bit shit to life being a complete and utter balls-up.”

  I heard a mild snort from Alex and Fionn turned and gave him perhaps the filthiest look I had ever had the misfortune to see.

  “What?” he protested. “It’s not like it’s something new for Annie to mess up. It’s one of the things we like so much about her.”

  “Don’t you bloody start,” I started, feeling my hackles rise. “We can’t all be bloody perfect, you know.”

  “No one in this room is saying they are perfect, Annie,” he said, “but trouble does seem to follow you around.”

  I wanted to be angry. I wanted to maybe slap him across the face or tell him to get out of my flat or just stick my tongue out at him or something equally childish – but the man had a point. It was as if someone somewhere was selling maps to a little town called Trouble and those maps pointed directly at my big fat face.

  I looked at him. He looked more than a little scared of what Fionn and I might do next. Then I looked at Fionn, her face taut and pale with worry, before glancing back in the mirror and seeing my own – exceptionally dishevelled – face stare back at me. I tried not to. I really did. But it was either that or cry and I figured a big laugh was better than a big cry any day of the week. So I laughed like a crazy, crazy lady until Alex looked absolutely terrified and Fionn looked exceptionally confused.

  “You’re right,” I managed. “You are right. My life is a disaster and it’s all of my own making. I seem to have a self-destruct button that apparently I’m not one bit afraid to use. Oh God, I’m a bloody disaster, aren’t I?” I held my ribs as the pain of laughing so hard I thought my lungs were about to come out through my nose took over. Sliding to the bathroom floor, my body shuddered first with laughter and then – perhaps inevitably – with tears. If I had thought Alex looked scared at the hysterical laughing, it was nothing compared to the look of abject horror on his face when I started sobbing.

  “I think I’ll wait in the other room,” he said. “Or maybe in the car. Actually, I’ll just go home and, Fionn, call me when you want picking up. I’ll come get you.”

  Fionn looked at him, stricken, but nodded while I watched it all unfold as if it were happening to someone else rather than me.

  When he had left, she sat down on the floor beside me and pulled me into a hug.

  “You do know it’s going to be okay, don’t you?” she said.

  I shrugged then shook my head, then nodded just to complete the triple whammy. Sniffing very loudly, I told her I didn’t know if I knew anything any more. Except that my life was in the toilet – both literally and metaphorically. That one thought made me laugh again, then cry and then declare to Fionn that I truly believed I was having some sort of a breakdown.

  “I’m making a pot of tea. You have a shower and then we’ll talk.”

  I nodded, and did exactly what I was told to, because I didn’t have the strength to do anything else. That and I needed a shower.

  When I was clean and my hair was brushed, Fionn placed a cup of tea in my hands and sat down beside me.

  “Right, lady. We do not leave this room until you are sorted out. We do not leave until we know what we are going to do to make it all better and we do not leave this room until you have a whole new, non-laminated Life Plan.”

  “What if I need to pee?” I said churlishly.

  She rolled her eyes. “Then you go pee, but don’t think I won’t follow you. That’s not meant to sound creepy in any way but you aren’t going to disappear into that lovely bathroom of yours for ages on end just to escape.”

  “I’ll pee in record time,” I promised.

  “Good woman yourself! Now – tell me about it.”

  “Well, I suppose when you think about it, it all comes down to egg-and-onion sandwiches . . .”

  It wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be to tell her about Ant – and the extent of what we had got up to. Sure I left out some of the more salacious details but she got the gist. I had slept with him. Several times. I had even allowed myself to believe it was something more than that – which of course it wasn’t. I had allowed him and other things to distract me from actually getting on with my life – from moving on from Pearse, from resurrecting my career. In some ways I had even let him distract me from helping Fionn and being there for Darcy. Even when they were going through the worst of times, my ear was always straining to hear if my phone was beeping to life or wondering just what present might arrive next. I had been, as a woman and a feminist, officially horrified at the present of the edible undies – but as a woman and a hot-blooded creature I had also been turned on by it. I had felt desired. I had felt alive and it had been a long time since I had felt that way. I certainly hadn’t felt alive in the last few months of my relationship with Pearse and I had got into such a rut with work that I had stumbled from day to day, not really giving My All to either. But I had given My All – physically at least – to Ant. He had made me feel as if I was perhaps able to do anything and I had invested so much in him without even realising.

  Him dumping me – even though technically I didn’t think we were ever in a position to be dumped as such – had shocked me more than I cared to let on.

  I had tried to hold it together but my core was shaken. Sobbing, I told Fionn how everything that had happened in the last few weeks had shaken me. From her falling out with Alex, to Darcy and Gerry breaking up, to me losing the contracts at work.

  “Oh Annie,” she said, pulling me in to her for a hug, “it’s not as bad as you think it is, you know. It’s all fixable. Look at Alex and me – we’re back together. We’re getting there. Darcy, she’ll be fine. And work – it will be fine too. You said yourself Bob is a soft touch at heart.”

  “But I really messed up, Fionn. Like, big time. I don’t think I could have messed up more if I tried.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Fionn said with a half-smile and I managed to smile weakly in return.

  “Oh, I know. I could. At the moment anything is possible. I’m sure someone is listening somewhere and testing me on all this. Just when I think I’m okay to do anything – just when I think I’m getting things back on track – something else goes spectacularly wrong.”

  “But you said yourself you are working to sort it all. You said yourself you worked all afternoon. Try and focus on that, not on anything negative. I’m all for positive thinking.”

  I sniffed. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right. We’ve been in worse pickles than this in the past.”

  “Does anyone actually use the phrase ‘worse pickles than this’ any more?” I
said with a smile.

  “Yes. I do. And I’m not afraid to either,” she said.

  “Well, regardless, I’m not sure if we have been in worse pickles than this.”

  “What about the time we went to check the air in your tyre?” she asked, eyebrow raised, and I snorted at the memory.

  If there had ever been an incident which proved the supposedly outdated theory that women and cars did not mix, then that was it. We had gone, feeling very empowered and in control, to check the air of my tyres – except somehow I had managed to deflate the tyre entirely and we had stood looking at each other with a creeping sense of horror as we couldn’t get the darned thing to reinflate. In the end we had to beg a favour from the (admittedly hunky) garage assistant who had looked at us as though we were completely cracked. Which of course we were. We were suitably embarrassed and stood – only the heat from our faces keeping us warm – for the fifteen minutes it took him to change the tyre because, of course, we didn’t have blasted notion how to do it ourselves. And we had to go back to work but there was no way we could do that with oil all over our nicely cut suit trousers.

  When it came to pickles that had been a big one.

  Admittedly nothing about it would have resulted in the loss of my job, or my apartment or my ability to find a happy ending with the perfect man. But it was a pickle all the same.

  “It will be okay, won’t it?” I asked pleadingly.

  “Of course it will, darling. Of course it will.”

  Fionn went home later, after she had encouraged me to press Send on the email to Bob and had tucked me into bed. I was, and always would be, eternally grateful that she had sat with me until I actually physically could not cry any more. She had even managed to make me laugh several times. To top it all off, she had made me a cup of hot chocolate and agreed that when I was feeling up to it she would help me make a very hairy voodoo doll of Ant and do weird and wonderful things to it. Of course we probably never would – because my anger at him wasn’t actually all that strong – but it felt all girlpower-y and pro-active to be thinking of actually doing something again.

  I wasn’t sure that I would sleep, given that I had spent a great portion of the afternoon and early evening drooling on the sofa but I needn’t have worried. I was out like a light and woke only when the first rays of the new sun started to stream through the bedroom window, gently warming the side of my bed where one day – I had to believe – my special someone would lie.

  A watched inbox never pings. That much was true. I knew that Bob would have read my email first thing. He always checked his mail as soon as he walked into the office. You could set your watch by him. So I had switched my laptop on just after nine and opened my email and sat there and waited, my eyes almost crossing over with the strain of staring so hard at the screen. So I waited. And waited. And the waited some more. Then I got up and went to the loo to see if stepping away from the screen would will a reply into my box. It didn’t. So I tried something a little longer – like walking to the corner shop for a packet of Hobnobs. I almost bounded up the stairs on my return, sure that by now (10.45 a.m.) Bob would have certainly replied. But he hadn’t. Nor had he left any messages on my voice mail. Believe me, I checked. Several times. I even phoned my landline from my mobile to check it was working. Then phoned my mobile from the landline . . . you get the picture.

  So I decided to take a bath – well, a shower first, of course, and then a bath. I decided to be exceptionally brave and leave the phone out of my reach and the laptop on the table. I had actually contemplated bringing the laptop into the bathroom with me and sitting it on a stool close to the bath, but knowing how life had been behaving towards me lately I wasn’t convinced I wouldn’t knock the darn thing over and topple it on top of myself. It wasn’t so much the thought of being electrocuted that freaked me out as much as the thought of someone finding me dead – and naked, with frizzy hair and a bikini line in need of a wax.

  As I lay in the water I tried not to think about what might or might not be happening to my inbox. I tried not to visualise what thought processes might have been going through Bob’s head. I tried not to panic about the possibility that this time had perhaps been the one time too far and that I would have to sell my flat and move to Spain to live on my parents’ couch while I tried to scrape together some semblance of a life for myself. On most of those counts I failed miserably, but I refused all the same to get out of the bath until my skin had gone wrinkly and the water had turned cold.

  Climbing out and drying myself off, I steadfastly ignored the living room and instead spent a good ten minutes slathering moisturiser on every available bodily surface. Surely by the time that was done he was bound to have replied?

  Nada.

  Things were getting desperate.

  So I tidied my kitchen cupboards, organising my array of seldom-used pots and pans into a neat order after bleaching them to within an inch of their lives. I even put the radio on to try and drown out the repetitive train of thoughts currently rattling through my head.

  And still nada.

  By that stage I was starving with hunger but loath to mess up my sparkling kitchen so I decided to nip out for a sandwich. Texting Fionn, she agreed to meet me to hold my hand. She hadn’t spoken to Bob, she said, and he had been enshrined in his office all morning.

  I wondered was she lying to me. I wondered had she spoken to him and had he laughed my email right out of his inbox. But, when I saw her, I knew she was telling the truth. The thing with Fionn was that she actually could not lie without giving herself away. There was always a short pause, one or two seconds at most, before she started to talk if she was fibbing.

  “Seriously, Annie, I saw him go in there this morning but he hasn’t come back out yet. I’m giving him until three o’clock and then I’m sending in a search party. Jeez, can you imagine it? Me sitting here joking about him and maybe he has had a massive coronary or the like and is lying dead over his desk?” She gave a half-smile.

  I suppose she thought I would have been comforted by her words, but I was far from it. So, yes, obviously Bob had been very busy all morning and not up to his usual management levels. But, he had also not left his office – which meant he had definitely, absolutely and without doubt read my grovelling letter and chosen not to reply. All of which pointed to the fact that this was going to end in a Very Bad Way. Crap.

  I pushed my ham and cheese Panini around my plate a little, suddenly not hungry any more while Fionn chattered on about work and the wedding and the fact that Rebecca suddenly seemed to be the most accommodating ex-girlfriend in the world ever. I was, of course, happy that Rebecca seemed to be changing but I was still suspicious of her motives. However, I knew that if I spoke up now I might just start a whole new row and I figured I had more than fulfilled my quota of annoying the bejaysus out of people for now. I sipped my Diet Coke and listened intently. It was a welcome distraction but no matter how hard I listened, or how much I tried to listen, there was this repetitive drowning feeling which came in waves – pulling me under. It was as if everything in my life revolved around whether or not I would keep my job – whether or not Bob would let me make up for my mistakes – whether or not I could prove myself to be good at something. It shocked me how much I wanted that something to be work It was like a moment of clarity then and there – that the rest of it could all go to hell as long as I could stand on my own two feet. My work was what defined me. When I wasn’t making stupid mistakes, I was damned good at it. It had never let me down.

  I felt stupidly emotional, right there in the coffee shop, but I was determined that I would not cry. I just sat there, willing lunch hour to be over, so that I could get back home to my computer and to my email and to waiting for a response from Bob.

  When lunch was eaten and my Panini had been pushed around sufficiently, I hugged Fionn and she whispered in my ear that it would be fine. I nodded and walked her back to her car before rushing back home and feeling my heart sink with disappointm
ent to find there had been no response.

  So I tried, and failed, to sleep. Then I got up and followed up on the emails I had sent out to the journalists the day before – snaring some great coverage in the Sunday supplements and discussing a promo with one of the glossies. Haven would be beyond happy and I hoped it would be enough to save my job – so I jumped on my email once again to send yet another message to Bob – hoping that it might just spur him into putting me out of my misery.

  You can imagine how my heart leapt when I saw the little icon on the left-hand side of my screen registering that a new email had arrived. I dared to hope. I actually closed my eyes as I clicked the inbox button and waited to see what was waiting for me. I prayed it wasn’t some eejit trying to sell me Viagra, or an email from my credit-card company saying my payment was overdue. I just wanted to see one name flash up on the screen.

  I was disappointed.

  There was indeed a name – a non-Viagra-selling name – and a non-‘We need your money’ name. But it wasn’t Bob. I sighed as I clicked open an email from Owen Reilly. Yes, that’s right. I sighed. And it wasn’t a dreamy sigh, or a lustful sigh, or anything remotely of that nature. It was simply a feck-it-you’re-not-Bob sigh.

  It seemed he was enquiring after my ankle – which was really very thoughtful of him but it wasn’t going to help me pay my mortgage. I tutted at the screen and got up to refresh my teacup before sitting back down – checking that there were no new emails – and reading the rest of his message.