The Armchair Bride

by Mo Fanning

  The Armchair Bride

  Mo Fanning

  Spring Street Books

  THE ARMCHAIR BRIDE

  First published in the United Kingdom

  by Spring Street Books

  PRINTING HISTORY

  This edition published in 2012

  ISBN: 978-0-9559885-3-0

  Copyright © Mo Fanning 2012

  The right of Mo Fanning to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any

  resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is

  purely coincidental

  Conditions of sale

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

  Set in Garamond 12 and 14.75pt

  Book Design & Artwork

  Mark Hadley

  “Do not dwell in the past; do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment”

  Buddha

  “Thanks to the Internet, we’re driven by the strange compulsion to preserve our lives in digital formaldehyde.”

  Some posh bloke of the telly

  For Mark and Bertie

  Also available by Mo Fanning

  Having It All

  The Karma Chameleon

  Shorts

  Thanks

  Thanks to Mark for putting up with me reading chapters as they were written and listening patiently while I read them aloud - often doing the voices. Thanks to every single person who reads this - whether you bought it or found it in a skip. Extra special thanks are due to those who read this when it was little more than a pile of mucky print-outs and helped shape it into what it became - Emma Frost (nee Bretherick) and Camilla Meidell. Also I owe thanks to everyone at The BookShed and YouWriteOn - particularly Edward Smith and Patricia J DeLois and Lorraine Mace.

  One

  Stalker is an ugly word and tonight isn’t the first time it’s been directed at me. The voice on the other end of the phone is hostile.

  ‘What gives you the right to phone at this time? I’ve only just got the kids down.’

  ‘I sent you an email,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah and I never replied. You were a freak at school and you’re a freak now.’

  The line goes dead.

  But that’s fine. It’s not like I was calling for a chat. In that brief exchange, she’s given me all the information I need. Married, tick. Children, tick. On the plus side, there was no talk of restraining orders.

  Andy looks up from his magazine.

  ‘Let me guess, she hung up on you?’

  I nod.

  ‘Did she call you a sad git?’

  ‘The phrase she used was freak.’ I close my laptop.

  Tonight of all nights, I ought to lay my obsession to one side. It’s New Year’s Eve; a time to look back on the twelve months just gone and plan for the ones to come. I shouldn’t be using the dying hours of the year to call old classmates and ask if their lives have gone better than mine. It’s not going to make anything go away. Least of all tonight’s staff party. Free drinks and a running buffet feel like a contractual obligation.

  ‘I can’t decide which shirt to wear,’ Andy says. ‘Pink or blue.’

  It won’t matter which one I pick, my selection will be wrong.

  ‘The blue one,’ I say and his face falls.

  ‘What’s wrong with pink?’

  ‘Nothing. You said to choose and I like the blue one.’

  ‘Does pink make me look fat?’

  We have this conversation at least once a week. He’ll ask my opinion, I’ll say the wrong thing be left talking him down from a ledge.

  ‘It’s a staff party,’ I say. ‘Not London fashion week.’

  ‘That’s no reason not to look fabulous. You and I have a responsibility. We’re the beautiful people. Or at least I am. They expect effort. We work in the arts.’

  ‘I manage a box office, you sell tickets.’

  ‘It’s no wonder you’re single,’ he says with a sigh. ‘Why don’t you by yourself a t-shirt that says loser? Big yourself up. Make people think you’re someone.’

  ‘I’m nearly 40, Andy. My days of bigging things up are over.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Says anyone with a brain. I’ve seen my future and it doesn’t involve cocktail frocks and high heels. Any day now I have to start buying my outfits from the back of the TV guide.’

  Andy nods at the dress that hangs on the back of my door.

  ‘Is that a case in point?’

  ‘I got it in Debenhams.’

  ‘In the sale?’

  ‘It was half price?’

  ‘Even then you were robbed,’ he says ‘I mean green? With your hair? Find a yellow choker and you can go as a set of traffic lights.’

  ‘Sharon reckons it’s lovely.’

  ‘She’s blonde. Blondes get away with stuff. Redheads, not so much.’

  ‘Just get ready,’ I say and reach for my make-up bag. ‘Order a cab for seven.’

  Andy looks at his watch.

  ‘That only gives you an hour. Are you sure you don’t want to add a bit for to cover unexpected crows feet?’

  I launch a pillow at his head.

  ‘I need wine,’ I say. ‘There’s no way I’m tackling this party sober.’

  Bagpipes, streamers, paper plates and rubbish cocktails. These are the things I’d consign to Room 101. Along with warm wine, fat sweaty men with mistletoe and dullards who tell you to smile, because the world isn’t going to end, darling.

  Basically, the ingredients of an Empire Theatre staff party.

  ‘How do I look?’ I say as we trudge up narrow stairs past posters of recent productions.

  ‘Like a 39-year-old spinster desperate for a shag,’ Andy says. ‘Tell me I look amazing.’

  I don’t have time to answer. On the landing, the double doors to the function suite stand open. Angela from HR is in charge.

  Nobody really likes Angela. We all put up with her gossiping ways and rancid halitosis because if you get on her bad side, she’ll connive to put you on an punitive tax code

  ‘Happy new year,’ she says and hands me a cardboard crown. ‘Everyone’s wearing them.’

  I look around. Everyone is indeed wearing silver crowns or pirate hats. They hang around in small groups, looking bored and sipping wine from plastic cups.

  Angela all but elbows me out of the way to snog Andy.

  ‘About time we got someone with a bit of life in them,’ she says. ‘You’re the first one tonight who looks to have made any effort.’

  ‘Cheers,’ I mutter and head for a table where the plastic beakers of warm white wine line up. Andy isn’t far behind.

  ‘One hour,’ he says. ‘Meet me back here at nine. We’ll talk our way into some gay club.’

  ‘Really?’ I feel my spirits lift and he reaches past me for a drink.

  ‘In the meantime, get wankered on free plonk.’ He takes a sip and shudders. ‘This is way beyond the call of duty.’

  Women old enough to know better clutch sprigs of mistletoe and chase men too far gone to
care.

  ‘Christmas kiss?’

  ‘Aw gerroff. Christmas was last week, you silly tart.’

  The dance floor - if it’s not too grand a term for a square of wood-effect lino - has been taken over by Angela and the rest of the misfits from HR. A few years back, I’d have been in the middle of it all, laughing and shrieking. But tonight, all I see is a future knee deep in cats. Life in a warden-controlled flat that smells of wee and antiseptic spray.

  Where did it all go so wrong? How come almost every girl from my class is married? How come I’m the one left up on the shelf ? Not Jane with the gammy eye or Sarah with the lisp? Or Narinder who, let’s be honest, looked like a man.

  There’s a flash and someone thrusts their phone in my face. On the tiny screen, I look like I’d rather be a million miles away. Anywhere but here. Andy’s right. The dress looks rubbish.

  ‘Lovely,’ I say and force out a smile.

  My boss Brian reaches round me for two cups of wine.

  ‘Having a nice time?’ he says.

  ‘It’s not the word I’d have used.’

  ‘Made any resolutions?’

  ‘Only to think up better excuses to get out of rubbish parties.’

  ‘When you come up with some, let me know.’

  There’s an awkward moment where I feel I ought to make more conversation. Brian’s a nice guy. Not at all boss-like, but because we so rarely find ourselves in social situations, it’s impossible to switch from work to play mode.

  ‘We’ve had a good year sales wise,’ I manage to say.

  ‘Yes, I suppose,’ he says and we both look around, desperate for someone else to talk to. I thank every God going when he makes his excuses.

  ‘I’ve left Audrey on her own,’ he says.

  Brian blends into the crowd and emerges across the room where his wife waits. From the tight-folded arms and disapproving face, I gather being left on her own was a bad thing.

  Nine o’clock comes and I spot Andy waving his arms and dancing with the girls from marketing. So much for escape. As always the drink has taken over and all plans are ditched.

  I get trapped talking to the wig mistress and her boyfriend. She’s really tall and he’s barely up to her chin. They act like they hate each other, but there’s true love under it all.

  ‘He’s such a jerk,’ she sighs. ‘I wanted to go to a fancy hotel in the Lake District and see the year out, but he insisted on coming here.’

  ‘Who said anything about the Lake District. I said Stone Henge.’

  ‘And do what? Sit on some rocks, freezing our arses off. You must be joking.’

  I leave them to it and help myself to more wine - which by the fifth cup tastes less like cleaning fluid. My head buzzes , though perhaps not in a good way. I know I should line my stomach if tomorrow isn’t to be a total washout, but the buffet offers nothing more than soggy sausage rolls and rubbery quiche.

  I keep looking at my watch. With the time fast approaching midnight, the mistletoe men are out in force and there’s no sign of Andy. He’s abandoned me. At some gay bar across town he’ll be having the best time. And I will get him back by scheduling him on double shifts every Saturday until July. There’s a tap on my shin and a hand disappears under the buffet table.

  I lift the edge of the tablecloth.

  ‘Get under here,’ Andy says.

  A rowdy conga weaves my way and so I shuffle out of sight. .

  ‘I thought last year was bad, but this beats them all,’ he says. ‘Angela’s got her cronies on the door to stop anyone from leaving. Why did I ever let you talk me into coming?’

  ‘You were the one who said it would be a laugh.’

  ‘Next time I say something stupid, do me a favour and kill me.’

  He ducks out from under the table, and returns with a half-empty bottle of Lambrusco.

  ‘Where did it all go wrong?’ he says. ‘How did I end up spending New Year’s Eve drinking warm wine with a forty-year-old spinster.’

  ‘I’m thirty-nine!’

  ‘I should be licking champagne off the chest of a twenty-six-year-old ballet dancer.’

  He’s talking about the guy he dragged home two days before Christmas. Skinny and lean with big buggy eyes that transmitted fear. Where am I? they said when morning sobriety hit. How did I get here?

  ‘I just don’t get why he hasn’t called,’ Andy says. ‘We got on great.’

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t meant to be.’

  ‘He told me he loved me.’

  For someone whose bedpost is in danger of dissolving under pressure from notches, Andy can be terribly naive.

  ‘There’ll be other impressionable boys,’ I say. ‘One day your prince will come.’

  We both leap back as the tablecloth gets pulled aside. The face that peers in belongs to Dopey Penny from Group Bookings.

  ‘I’ve found them,’ she calls to someone. ‘What are you two lovebirds doing under here?’

  Another gormless face appears. This time it’s Gaynor from Group Bookings.

  ‘Don’t they make a nice couple,’ she says.

  Penny rolls her eyes.

  ‘Angela is looking for you,’ she says. ‘She’s after her Christmas kiss.’

  Andy wriggles behind me, as if I’m ballast to be used for protection.

  ‘You’ll have Lisa getting jealous,’ he says.

  ‘It’ll be our little secret,’ Penny says and Gaynor nods.

  They make great show of tucking back the covers.

  ‘When did the world get to be so full of morons?’ I say and Andy shakes his head.

  ‘Those people pay our wages Lisa. It’s a world gone mad.’

  The DJ interrupts the music to announce the year is almost over.

  ‘So, lover, where were we?’ I faux smoulder.

  ‘I think you were about to make an honest woman of me,’ Andy says and someone somewhere drops what sounds like a tray of glasses. People cheer.

  ‘Sorry about calling you a spinster,’ he says. ‘Forgive me?’

  ‘I’ve been called worse.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘You, of course.’

  He grins. ‘That’s OK then, gay best friends have certain rights. Anyone else gets bitch slapped.’

  I peep out to survey the carnage caused by combining free drinks with minimum wage party-goers. Middle-aged men, who at any other time could command respect, slump in chairs, ties and flies akimbo, dribbling like babies.

  ‘Made any resolutions?’ Andy says.

  ‘No, what about you?’

  ‘Just the usual ones about being a better person and sleeping with a premier league footballer before the year’s out.’

  ‘It’s good to have a plan.’

  ‘Forty,’ he says with a heavy sigh. ‘How did we get to be old?’

  ‘40 isn’t old.’

  ‘Do you know what it is in gay years? It’s like a hundred million and one. I was never meant to be this old. I suppose I thought that somehow I’d skip from carefree at 21 to being a rich older man with a younger lover and fabulous lighting.’

  ‘Reality bites,’ I say and take a slug of wine.

  ‘It’s about time we did something with our lives,’ he says.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t be working in a glorified sweatshop for one thing. I should be lounging on breakfast telly sofas talking about my latest film.’

  Andy works part-time in the box office and fills the rest of his days trudging from fruitless audition to fruitless audition in the hope that one day he’ll get his big break.

  ‘You did that advert for facial electrolysis last year.’

  ‘I don’t want to be typecast as the man who plucks da
rk hairs from his mother’s chin. It isn’t something you can trade on.’

  ‘It doesn’t get you a shag, you mean?’

  A murderous look tells me I’m right.

  ‘Why don’t we both make resolutions to do something by the time we hit forty?’ Andy lights up at his idea.

  ‘My birthday is in April, yours is in May. You’ve got an unfair advantage.’

  ‘Don’t talk crap.’

  Even though Andy has been on the sauce for several hours, he still manages to look great. Give me a single glass of wine and my translucent Irish skin turns blotchy purple. Andy is blessed with an olive complexion. His dark short- cropped hair shows no sign of beating a retreat from his face. Almost every other bloke I know obsessively combs, gels, teases and waxes what little hair they have into place. He is also in great shape, not many men of his age can pull off a pink t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan ‘Head Boy - That’s an Order’. Andy does it with panache.

  We first met in a student house on a mildewed hallway carpet, queuing for the bathroom. Chris, my then housemate dragged him home. I’d been impressed and secretly quite jealous, to find a six-foot hunk loitering outside my bedroom door naked but for a pair of skin-tight white boxer shorts. Andy and Chris stayed an item for six months. I was between boyfriends, so they let me tag along and never once made me feel like the needy cuckoo in their gay love nest. When they split, I was devastated and begged Chris to give him a second chance. He refused. On the seventh day of my sulk, Chris handed over Andy’s number. Twenty years later, we share a flat.