by Louise Kean
‘Well, Miss Sunshine,’ he says it kindly now; it isn’t thrown at me like a curve ball, to smash my feelings, or bruise me somehow. ‘We don’t have to talk ourselves round in circles to know the truth. Most people today feel like they are worth shit, nada, nothing. But if somebody says, “I love you” then you are worth something. Somebody has seen something worth loving in you. And the only reason we need somebody else to give that to us is so we have some kind of responsibility not to go and live on a boat in the middle of the ocean and opt out of everything and go crazy if we want.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ I say. ‘Maybe it is just to stop us wandering off into the desert and never coming back.’
‘Maybe it’s the reason I turned to whiskey and you turned to doughnuts – we need something to numb the pain if we aren’t loved, because we feel worthless.’
‘So love is the cushion that stops me needing the doughnuts, and you the whiskey?’
‘You got it, Sunshine. It blurs the edges. It eases the pain.’ He smiles honestly at me. I think I could crawl up, climb in him, and sleep for ever. We sip our wine. I feel my eyes closing.
‘And there is one more thing, of course,’ Cagney says, and I force myself to prise my eyelids open.
‘I can’t shut you up now, can I?’ I say, exhausted.
‘Hey, you uncork the bottle, you drink the wine,’ he says, and when he looks at me his stare is serious and intense. ‘The person you love is the ultimate reflection of who you are. And who you want to be, and what you value.’
‘So … I feel like you are going somewhere with this, Cagney …’
‘So be careful who you love: make sure they deserve it. Make sure they reflect you well.’
‘I will,’ I say, and as much as I want to talk to him, and laugh with him, and get closer to him, and crawl inside him, I feel my eyelids, so heavy that they could sink fleets, slide shut.
Cagney moves round the desk and gently takes the glass out of her hand before it spills on Iuan’s tracksuit. He crouches beside her, and wonders how to wake her. And then it occurs to him – he doesn’t have to. Cagney sits down against the filing cabinets, and leans in closer to her. She fidgets and shifts her weight, and tries to rest her head on something, and with his arm stretched upwards she finds his chest as a pillow. He places his arm over her shoulders gently. Her face angles upwards towards his, like a scene from a 1930s film, when men and women locked together, and kissed passionately, and then tore themselves apart.
He could just kiss her now … Cagney turns his head to face the opposite direction, so he doesn’t have to look at her, or he won’t be able to stop himself.
Facing the wall, he too falls asleep.
I wake up with my head on Cagney’s chest. I am leaning against a filing cabinet in his office. I remember falling asleep, sensing the glass being taken out of my hands, and a body next to me, a chest offering itself to be slept on. I look up and Cagney’s face is pointing away from me, his eyelids flickering slightly, dreaming strange dreams. But then he shifts and his head turns towards mine, his eyes still closed, still darting behind his lids. I could just kiss him now, wake him softly, and claim it was a mistake if he rebuffs me, and say that I thought he was somebody else – Adrian perhaps – confused in sleep. I feel my eyelids fall heavily again, and I close my eyes.
I wake up to light streaming in through a large window opposite me, and I am immediately struck by how uncomfortable I am, lying on Cagney’s floor, my head flush with the carpet. I sit up and rub my eyes, and check my watch. It is half-past eight. I have been sleeping for six hours. My head pounds and my eyes feel like they are glued together with mascara. Cagney is standing staring out of the window.
‘Hello,’ I say.
‘Good morning, Sunshine,’ he says, with a small smile.
‘I should have gone home. I am exhausted. I ache,’ I say, stretching my arms, examining the orange tracksuit that I forgot I was wearing.
‘I meant to ask you last night, did Adrian leave you here to walk home on your own?’
‘Oh, yes, he had to leave.’ I remember that I broke it off with Adrian last night. A wave of relief sweeps over me.
‘Look, Sunny. Nothing happened last night.’ Cagney is staring out of the window, not even looking at me as he speaks.
‘I know that,’ I say defensively. ‘I wasn’t trashed!’
‘I know, but I thought you might have wanted it to, and I wanted to explain –’
‘What do you mean, “I may have wanted it to” – what about you?’
‘What about me?’ Cagney turns to look at me, and his face is stern, aggrieved.
‘You might have wanted it to, more than me,’ I say angrily, pushing myself to my feet.
So he’s seen how I look in the morning and now he’s not so interested? Nice.
‘Well, what difference does that make?’ he says, and sighs.
‘A big bloody difference!’ I say, brushing myself down. I am not being rejected again!
‘I think we should just be friends,’ he says, and I nearly
gag.
‘Friends? Since when did hating each other seem friendly to you? Unless this is the closest you get,’ I say, with a smirk.
Cagney looks at me sadly. ‘I think you should go, before we say things we’ll regret.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m leaving,’ I say, and grab my stiff wet blazer and shorts. Without a backward glance, I walk out, slamming the door behind me. I need a shower, I need some warm clothes of my own, I need my bed, I need … I stop at the top of the stairs. This is definitely fear. See it, recognise it, do it anyway. I force myself to picture Cagney, who is in the office behind me. If I don’t say it, maybe neither of us ever will. Maybe I need to be brave enough for the both of us.
I turn round at the top of the stairs to walk back into his office, as the door swings open.
‘I don’t want to be just your friend,’ Cagney says, ‘but you’re with Adrian.’
‘No, I’m not,’ I say.
‘Well, that changes things,’ he says, neither one of us able to look away from the other.
‘It’s not such a big deal,’ I say, although still holding on to the door for support.
‘We don’t amount to much in this big old village.’ He takes a step forwards.
‘It’s nothing really. Well, maybe it’s a small something. But nothing will change.’ I let go of the door, and it swings closed behind me.
‘Exactly. I mean,’ Cagney takes two more steps forward, and I do the same, ‘if I kiss you now, the tree outside my office is going to keep on growing. It isn’t going to change the world if I kiss you.’
‘It will only change ours.’ I can’t smile or frown, or do anything. ‘And I don’t know about you, but I am just about ready for a change.’
I can feel his breath on my face, and his lips barely touch my lips, as he speaks.
‘You said it, Sunshine.’
Epilogue
The soles of my feet are on fire!
My therapist smiles.
‘I cannot even begin to tell you how constructive I have found this, and how positive … yet expensive …’ I wink at him quickly, and smile. ‘But I am going to stop coming, just for a while. I won’t say never again, but I just think that the next step is letting somebody in. I need to let him get close, I don’t want to hold him at arm’s length. I know it will be different, and that he will have an opinion on what I do, and what I say, and he won’t just ask, “How does that make you feel?” In fact he may never ask, “How does that make you feel?” But he needs to be the one that I share myself with now, and if I’m seeing you at the same time, well, in a crazy way it would be like cheating.’
He puts down his pen, stands up and offers to shake my hand. I accept. There will be no more notes on me for now.
I sit outside Starbucks, in size twelve jeans and a striped jumper. I look OK, not great, but OK, as I sip on a black coffee. And that is perfectly OK with me.
If you want to lose
weight, it’s not just about calories, and carbs, good fats and metabolic rates. It’s more than that. Just start on whatever day you start, even if you have just had lunch, and eaten a pizza, and garlic bread with cheese, and Banoffi pie. It doesn’t matter. Do it or don’t do it. Decide what makes you happy. If being fat depresses you, change it. It’s up to you.
You can’t just resent thin. It’s just a version of beauty that preoccupies us right now. From the cavemen on, there have been those who were deemed beautiful, and those who weren’t. The characteristics may have changed, but there will always be a beauty ideal. You can’t fight it, even if you don’t fit it. But you can’t let that jeopardise the life that you deserve. I’m going to run screaming at life now, like the soles of my feet are on fire. I’m going to take some chances, I’m going to try not to be scared. I wasted too much time shutting myself away, apologising for myself when I shouldn’t have. It took a diet to make me see that it’s my life and I’ll do whatever the hell I want with it. I won’t apologise for being me again.
Losing weight is like being on the breadline and then winning the Lottery – it is great to begin with, but then you get distracted by new worries. The weight off your hips isn’t a weight on your mind any more, but something else is.
It’s not about being perfect: there will always be somebody prettier, or thinner than I am. It’s about being the best that I can be. And it wasn’t the weight that I lost, but the effort that it took to lose it, that really earned back my confidence.
I allowed myself, feeling worthless, to be backed into a corner, because I was fat. It’s when you finally, finally, come out fighting, in whatever shape it takes, that you feel worth something again, and you realise that nothing significant is really influenced by your dress size. You are worth loving, letting yourself be loved, loving somebody in return.
I never would have guessed that this is how it would feel, to fall in love. If my therapist had mumbled it I would have given him a patronising smile, and looked for my answers elsewhere. But it’s true, for me at least.
Love isn’t the rush of infatuation. That’s how infatuation feels.
It isn’t the demanding urges of lust: that is just lust.
It isn’t fireworks, or nausea, or fainting, or any of the things that I thought it would be.
It is a feeling, that gently creeps its way around your body, and whispers in your ears, and tickles your back between your shoulder blades, and traces its finger across your palms, gently whispering the whole time until you just can’t ignore it any more: ‘You love him.’
It’s a feeling that doesn’t announce itself with trumpets or fanfare, it just nudges your lips into a smile, and that smile refuses to fade for a whole minute. It isn’t all-consuming, not every second of every minute of every day. But it’s often, and it’s random, and it emerges like a plane trailing a banner across your mind, emblazoned with those words ‘You love him.’
It’s the tiny conversation with him that fizzes and sparkles constantly in the back of your head, about everything you see, and the need to share it all with him, and hear what he thinks. You want him to see what you see.
So I learned that love is not explosions or drama. It idles up gently, and settles down beside you, and you may not even realise until you glance around and see it sitting back, comfortable and relaxed, as if it had been there all along.
My heartfelt thanks to my Dream Team, Maxine Hitchcock and Helen Johnstone at HarperCollins.
Of course, my profound appreciation also goes to everybody at HarperCollins UK, Australia and New Zealand for all their ongoing efforts and support.
Huge thanks to Ali Gunn – a fab agent – for steering me in the right direction. And to Carole and all at Curtis Brown for their continued support.
Thanks to Lip Sync for their understanding when deadlines come around!
I am forever grateful that I have such a wonderful, supportive, gorgeous bunch of people to call my friends. This is another crazy opportunity to say thank you for letting me pillage your words, your opinions, and whole sections of your lives, and stick them in my stories without paying you for any of them! So my love and thanks go to Ken, Jules, Alice, Nat, Karen, Nix, Nim, Mands, Clare, Watson & Jase. And thanks to Karl for Clues and kites, and Killers and stuff – steady!
Thank you to my wonderful family – Mum and Dad, Amy, Laura and Jase, for their love, help and support when I get busy, and stressed, and worn down by thinking too damn much. And for looking after me during a crazy year.
Finally, thanks to Bethan, my gorgeous new distraction! Only your favourite auntie would put you in her book – now say you love me best …
If you enjoyed The Perfect 10, check out these other great Louise Kean titles.
Buy the ebook here
Buy the ebook here
About the Author
THE PERFECT 10
Louise Kean was born in 1974 and works as a campaign producer for the film industry in Soho. A graduate of UEA, this is her third book. She lives in Richmond, and is ‘taken’, for now at least …
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
HarperCollinsPublishers
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A Paperback Original 2005
Copyright © Louise Kean 2005
Louise Kean asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9780007198924
Ebook Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN: 9780007389285
Version: 2014-02-11
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