My Legendary Girlfriend

by Mike Gayle

  I still didn’t understand. ‘But why did you tell me and Tammy the truth?’

  ‘I told Tammy the truth because I’d never loved her. I’d never even told her I liked her. So the least I could do was tell her the truth. And I told you because this weekend I realised I’d made a huge mistake. The biggest mistake of my life. I’m still in love with the girl that I dumped and I don’t know where she is or how to contact her. I’ve never felt like this before. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t listen to music. I even split up the band today. The record contract, the album, everything I’ve spent my life working towards is history. On Friday I realised that if I’m like this after three weeks without her then what you’ve been going through this last three years must have been torture – and so I owed you the truth. I’m sorry, I really am. Will, I love this girl so much I don’t know what to do.’

  Simon was being real. He meant every word. It was hard not to feel sympathy for him but I managed it. I was glad he was hurting. I was glad that he knew what it was like to be in pain. I silently whispered a prayer of thanks to the gods of malice who had obviously heard my pleas and come up trumps. I had to rub it in. I didn’t even need to tell him about my forthcoming nuptials, Simon’s life was falling apart, and that was all that mattered.

  ‘What’s her name?’ I asked, wondering what kind of girl could bring the mighty, magnificent Simon to his knees.

  He took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘Kate,’ he said. ‘Her name’s Kate.’

  10.04 P.M.

  The world’s not that small. Of course it was her. I checked all the details. Where did she go to university? The University of North London. What was her surname? Freemans – like in the catalogue. What colour was her hair? Reddy brown. What was her favourite film? Gregory’s Girl. Where did she live? If I had any hope at all that our Kate Freemans were similar but separate Kate Freemans, cast into the public arena by the gods of fate just to pull my plonker more than was necessary or indeed, healthy, Simon’s answers crushed it instantly. Kate had lived in my flat. When Simon had dumped her she’d told him that she was going to leave London. As I was in need of a flat Simon, callous bastard that he was, had passed this information on to me but lied about his source. He asked me why I was asking all these questions so I lied, and said it was because I thought it was really funny. I put the phone down and fell into a deep shock.

  Kate and Simon.

  Kate and Simon.

  Kate and Simon.

  Kate and sodding Simon.

  The whole concept was too much to bear. It was impossible even to begin to comprehend the sheer scale of devastation Simon’s revelation was wreaking inside me. I just couldn’t face it. So I didn’t. I locked ‘Kate and sodding Simon’ in a box marked ‘Just don’t – all right?’ and tossed it into the darkest corner of my mind, promising myself on pain of death that I would never go there. Some might call it denial but the only word I had for it was survival.

  I needed a diversion and I needed one quick. I turned on the radio. The Barbara White Show had just started. She was telling the listeners (aka ‘you gorgeous people’) they were the most important part of the show: ‘You can have the best experts in the world,’ she said drooling over each word, ‘the best Agony Aunt money can buy, but without you and your problems, it doesn’t mean a thing.’

  ‘. . . and thank you, Patricia. I hope everything works out okay for you and the children. Okay, next on the line is Will, from Archway, North London. Hi, Will, or is it William? You’re through to The Barbara White Show. What can I do to help you?’

  ‘Hi,’ I said nervously. I looked around the room for something to drink. There was a tiny splash of yesterday’s tequila in a Tupperware cup that hadn’t been cleared away. I took a swig. ‘You can call me Will, Barbara.’

  ‘I know you feel nervous,’ gushed Barbara. ‘I am too. Just tell your story in your own time.’

  It was an utterly inane thought, but it suddenly occurred to me that she really did sound like she did on the radio. I took another sip of tequila, coughed and wondered what the thousands of listeners ‘out there’ thought I sounded like. When I was a kid I used to cup hands behind my ears and try and imagine what I sounded like to other people. It never worked, not unless of course I actually did sound hollow and echoey.

  Barbara mechanically peppered my narrative with reassuring ‘uh-huhs’ and the odd ‘hmmm yes’ – the same as she did with every caller – but as soon as I said the word ‘marriage’ she abandoned auto-Barbara.

  ‘Will, let me stop you there!’ exclaimed Barbara. ‘I need a recap!’ She let out a sigh of mock exasperation. ‘So let me get this straight! You got a call from the girl who used to live in your flat and after a couple of hours of conversation you’ve decided to get married?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said, pleased at having got her attention.

  ‘Will, let me tell you, this is a wonderful story!’ She clapped her hands and let out a little whoop of joy, the kind only Americans could get away with. ‘So let me guess, you’re worried that you might not be doing the right thing, huh?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ I said, considerably less smugly than before, because I was now feeling more than a little bit stupid and exposed.

  ‘Can I ask you when you first realised that you liked this girl?’ asked Barbara.

  I considered her question. It was hard to believe it was only a few hours ago. This morning I was me and now I’m someone else, I thought to myself. Or is it this morning I was someone else and now I’m me?

  ‘Some time this afternoon,’ I said staring around the room until I located what I was looking for. ‘It wasn’t anything in particular that she said.’ I put Kate’s photo up on the wall next to my bed with Blu-tac. ‘Something clicked in my head and I knew she was the one.’ The Kate in my photo smiled down at me radiantly.

  ‘Can I ask you how old you are?’ enquired Barbara.

  Barbara, I felt, was suddenly beginning to get on my nerves. Her fake politeness, accent and probing, grated against me immensely. ‘Yeah,’ I said, almost spitting. ‘I’m twenty-six. Today’s my birthday.’

  ‘Many happy returns for the day,’ said Barbara paying no heed at all to my annoyance. ‘Have you ever been in a long-term relationship before?’

  My anger subsided. ‘I went out with a girl for three years from roughly when I was twenty to when I was twenty-three,’ I said, hoping she wouldn’t ask for Aggi’s name.

  ‘Was it a mutual break-up?’

  I wanted to lie. I needed to lie.

  ‘No,’ I said remorsefully. ‘She wanted out of the relationship. I think she wanted more freedom. Maybe I was boring her, I don’t know. I loved her a lot. I thought she was the one, but I could never get her to think long-term. She got over me straight away, which really hurt. She got on with her life as if I was a minor interruption.’

  I’m pleased I’ve told the truth, I thought. It’s another sign that I have changed. The old me is dead. Long live the new me!

  ‘Is there anything else I should know?’ asked Barbara.

  I paused before answering and wondered what kind of details she required. Simon and Kate’s box rattled in its secret hideaway. I ignored it.

  ‘She also got off with my best mate while she was going out with me,’ I confessed, picturing Aggi and Simon in an embrace. I wondered, too, if I ought to have explained the phrase ‘get off ’ but decided against it. ‘I only found this out yesterday.’ I paused again. ‘Oh, and she also dumped me three years ago today.’

  ‘She dumped you on your birthday? That must’ve been terrible,’ sympathised Barbara.

  ‘It was,’ I replied.

  ‘Have you dated other people since?’

  ‘I didn’t for the first year,’ I confessed. ‘I couldn’t face even thinking about other girls. In the last two years I’ve been out with a few, some of them I quite liked too.’

  ‘Can I ask you what went wrong with these relationships?’

  ‘I don�
�t know.’ A montage of ex-girlfriends’ faces swirled inside my mind. What a question! It would have been easier to tell Barbara the meaning of life than to work out what had gone wrong with them all. I knew the problem was always me, but what it was about me I didn’t know. ‘They fizzled out, or they had to move away,’ I told Barbara while still trying to figure it out. ‘I thought I was cursed for a while.’ I conjured up a reason. ‘I think it all went wrong because at the back of my mind I always thought to myself, what would I do if the girl I loved came back and I was going out with someone else? I suppose that’s why they all failed.’

  ‘Will, can I stop you there? We’re just due for a commercial break. You hang on the line and we’ll talk to you just after this . . .’

  I was forced to listen to four adverts: Double glazing, a specialist bed company, an athlete’s foot cream and an agency that you pay to pay your bills for you. This was hell. I was in hell. I had sunk this low. I wanted to put the phone down but couldn’t. This was the first time I’d told anyone the full story. The director’s cut of My Life with all the scenes my parents didn’t want to know about, and the scenes my friends wouldn’t have understood.

  ‘Before the break,’ announced Barbara, ‘we were talking to Will, from North London, who has asked a girl he’s never met to marry him after speaking to her on the phone on Friday. Will, can you continue your story?’

  ‘What else do you want to know?’ I asked.

  ‘Why do you think that this relationship will work when all the others failed because of how you felt about your ex?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure about that either,’ I admitted. ‘Which is why I phoned her up this afternoon.’

  Barbara could barely contain her excitement. ‘What did you say to her? Did you tell her that you were getting married?’

  ‘No. I called her . . .’ I paused, searching for the right way to say it. ‘I called her to give her one last chance. I didn’t tell her that, but that’s what the call was about.’

  ‘How did she respond?’

  ‘Well, I hadn’t spoken to her for three years. She’s living in London with her boyfriend.’ I added absent-mindedly: ‘She was surprised to hear from me.’

  ‘But how did she respond?’ repeated Barbara eagerly.

  I stared vacantly into the bottom of the empty Tupperware beaker in my hand. ‘I don’t know. I think I managed to get her back up. I was fed up that the fact that I’d been a major part of her life for three years didn’t mean a thing. I ended up being a bit sarcastic, I suppose.’

  ‘And she didn’t stand for it? How did you feel after the call?’

  ‘Devastated. All this time I’d been thinking that there might be a chance that we would get back together . . .’

  Barbara interrupted. She couldn’t wait to get stuck into that one. ‘What made you think that? Did she tell you that?’

  ‘Well . . . no, not really,’ I replied. ‘She’d told me it was over and that there was no chance that we’d ever get back together,’ I said blankly, realising how stupid it all sounded.

  ‘So why did you think that you’d get back together?’

  Barbara, in her own ‘subtle’ way was trying to imply that I was stupid for living a lie, and she was right. I helped her out.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m stupid. Perhaps I’m an optimist. I don’t know. It’s three years today that we split up. I suppose she was on my mind.’

  ‘So, Will, this girl you’re going to marry, does she know about all this?’

  ‘She knows about my ex,’ I said. ‘But she doesn’t know that I called her today.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell her?’ asked Barbara.

  ‘Because . . . because . . . because,’ I paused and examined the empty Tupperware beaker again. ‘I . . . er . . . don’t know . . . okay . . . er . . . I do know.’ I gave up. ‘I didn’t tell her because then she’d think that I only asked her to marry me because my ex didn’t want me back.’

  ‘But isn’t that the case?’ asked Barbara accusingly, sounding for all the world like a hot-shot lawyer in a court room drama.

  ‘No,’ I stumbled. ‘Well, yes. But it isn’t as simple as that. I had to know one way or the other about my ex in order to get on with my life. I must have had the idea of marrying my new girl in my head all the time. I knew that it wouldn’t work if there was a chance I could get back with my ex. I needed to know that my ex didn’t want me so I could get on with my life, otherwise I’d just keep thinking about her.’

  ‘Round and round,’ said Barbara wearily. ‘Just like a roundabout in a children’s playground. So what would’ve happened if your ex had said that she’d take you back?’

  ‘I probably would’ve gone back to her,’ I confessed dejectedly.

  ‘And what about this girl that you were going to marry forever and ever, forsaking all others ’til death do you part?’

  ‘I suppose I wouldn’t have married her.’

  ‘How can you consider marriage to someone if there’s another partner who looms so large in your past, Will?’ asked Barbara.

  She had hit the nail on the head. I got out of bed to take a look out of the window because my room felt like it was shrinking. My knees started to buckle before I could reach my destination and so, instead of continuing my journey, I opted to sit on the floor under my own steam before gravity came into force.

  ‘After all that time I’d invested worshipping that woman,’ I told Barbara, ‘don’t you think I owed it to myself to try and get her back? I’m glad she doesn’t want me. I want to move on. And now I can.’

  ‘Will, do you want to know what I think?’ offered Barbara. ‘I think that your ex has confused you so much you don’t know whether you’re coming or going. Sometimes when you’re the partner that has been left, you find it hard to get on with life. You ask yourself the question “Why aren’t they hurting as much as I am?” It’s not unusual for people in this situation to see hope in the relationship when there is none. I did it myself with my ex-husband. After we divorced I felt that if I was there for him one day he’d realise that he needed me like I needed him. Do you know what happened? He married a girl half my age and invited me to the wedding because he thought I was over him! Can you believe the nerve of that guy? I understand how you’re feeling, Will, more than you know. But you’ve got to ask yourself, why do you want to marry this girl?’

  I surveyed my tiny room. I had my answer. ‘Because she’s made me realise that I can move on. I can finally live my life and think about the future.’

  ‘Marriage is a big step,’ said Barbara. ‘I know that this girl sounds like the answer to your problems, and she may well be. But I think you’ve got to ask yourself why this girl you’ve never seen is so important to you. This kind of thing happens all the time, Will. I had a caller last week who thought she’d fallen in love with the man she ordered office stationery from. When you’re on the phone you can be someone different. You can flirt and have fun, secure in the knowledge that you don’t have to meet this person face to face.’

  ‘It’s not like that,’ I protested.

  ‘I’m not saying it is, Will. But what I am saying is that you have to check that it’s not. Can I give you some advice? Try and work out whether you’ve really been you on the phone or whether you’ve been the you you wish you were. The girl at the end of the phone is in love with the person she spoke to. But will she be in love with you?’

  A gust of wind blew a heavy sheet of rain against the window. Kate and Simon were making another attempt to escape from their box. I shivered. I placed the receiver on the floor and cradled my head in my hands. In less than half an hour Barbara had managed to crumble my rock solid faith into dust.

  ‘Right, that’s all we’ve got time for, Will,’ said a tinny sounding Barbara from the floor. ‘Thanks for calling. Please, please, call me, Barbara White on The Barbara White Show, in the next couple of weeks and tell me and the listeners at home what happened. We found your story riveting.’

 
1.13 A.M.

  The doorbell awoke me from a nightmare in which I was a US Marine being held prisoner in a bamboo hut by a combination of the Vietcong and Aggi. At least I thought it was the doorbell. As no one had rung it during my week’s residency it was hard to know exactly what the noise could be. I attempted to ignore it, assuming it was just some dipsomaniac Archway dropout playing funny buggers, and hoped that they’d get bored before I’d be forced to go downstairs and throw water over them. It continued, long, shrill, angry bursts of doorbell for minutes at a time. I stared at the television and wondered if the TV licence people had the technology to monitor TV sets even when they were off. What can I say? It was 1.15 a.m. and I wasn’t really thinking straight. I turned over and pulled the duvet over my head. The TV licence people could just sod off too.

  Consciousness was once again slipping from me, taking with it the worries of the day, when there was a knock at the door. I checked my watch again. It was now 1.23 a.m. Someone had either let the dipsomaniac dropout in or I was about to get fined £600 for having a TV in my room that was switched off. I pulled the duvet up a bit higher, determined to ditch reality as soon as possible before it all got too much. This time, the rain of blows that smashed against the door nearly took it off its hinges. I crawled out of bed, not even bothering to put on any sort of proper clothing, pulled the door slightly ajar and peered through the gap. The woman from downstairs (she of the Garfield slippers) peered back at me angrily. She wasn’t wearing her usual towelling dressing gown. Instead she had on these fluffy sky blue pyjamas with elasticated ankles that made her look like she was wearing a romper suit. Her face was all red and blotchy and her hair was flying off in all directions. Honestly, it would have been impossible for anyone, even the angriest man in Angryland, to have looked more thoroughly enraged.

  Peppering the rather short question, ‘Do you know what time it is?’, with an unfeasibly large number of expletives, Garfield woman began tearing strips off me. Bewildered as I was at being woken up in the middle of the night, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to indulge in a spot of neighbour baiting. ‘You’re banging on my door because you haven’t got a watch, you mad cow? Away with you before I call the police!’