by Isabel Wolff
‘Oh, fine,’ I replied casually. ‘Fine.’ As he hovered beside me I made a mental note to leave a copy of my Personal Freshness leaflet on his desk. Then he reached for my letters—in total breach of confidentiality!—so I quickly swept them into a drawer.
‘Anything spicy you can lead with on Wednesday, Rose?’
‘Like what?’ I enquired innocently though I knew.
‘Like “Dear Rose, ”’he said in a lisping falsetto, ‘“I am a nineteen-year-old glamour model with a huge bust and long blonde hair and my boyfriend likes me to dress up as a nurse. I’m tempted to tell him that I don’t really enjoy it but am worried that he’ll feel hurt”.’
I groaned. Our old editor, Mike, who was sacked last month, used to leave me alone; but ever since Ricky arrived I’ve been under pressure to put in more sex.
‘Got any problems like that?’ he enquired with a leer.
‘No, I’m afraid not,’ I replied. ‘However I have an accountant who likes to wear silk knickers under his pin-stripes; a farmer who wants to commit pigamy, and I’ve had a letter from a fifty-five-year-old nun who’d like to become a man.’
‘I said spicy, Rose—not pervy,’ said Ricky pulling a face. ‘And not too many woofters, okay?’
‘Ricky, kindly don’t trivialise my readers’ problems. My column isn’t entertainment.’
‘Of course it is,’ he guffawed, ‘that’s exactly what it is: other people’s problems give us all a lovely warm glow.’ I suppressed the urge to club him to death with Secrets of Anger Control.
‘I’ve also had this,’ I said, handing him the letter about the sick child. He scanned the paper and his face lit up.
‘Great!’ he beamed. ‘A Tragic Tot! We’ll run with it—if she’s cute.’
As he sauntered away I turned back to my final letter with a frustrated sigh. It was from a girl whose fiancé had just gone off with someone else.
Can’t believe it…she wrote, wedding four weeks off…the shame and humiliation…can’t eat, can’t sleep…should I ring him?…suicide…
‘Poor kid,’ I said handing it to Serena. ‘I’ll make this one my lead.’ And, as I quickly drafted the reply, it was as though I were writing to myself.
Dear Kelly, Thank you very much for your letter: you’ve obviously had a terrible time. But your ex is clearly the WRONG man, otherwise he wouldn’t have done what he did! So the sooner you’re able to put this behind you the sooner you’ll meet someone who’s right. You’ve had a huge emotional shock, Kelly, so you need to be radical now. All those nice memories? Erase them! Remember your ex at his worst. Remember him picking his nose, for example, or clipping the hair from his ears. Remember him drunk and snoring, or correcting you in front of your friends. Do this often enough, and you’ll find that pleasant thoughts of him will soon go. Do NOT remember the time he mixed you a Lemsip, or the time he played ‘Only You’ down the phone. Next, get rid of everything that reminds you of him—‘vanish’ him from your life. All the gifts he gave you—chuck them! And the photograph albums. Then tear up his letters—and the Valentine’s cards. Flog the engagement ring and treat yourself to a week at a health farm with your best friend. Finally, post up the ugliest photo you have of him and draw a red circle round it with a line through. You ask me if you should contact him. NO, Kelly! Do NOT!!! And in the unlikely event that he should call you, then I suggest you tell him to get stuffed! Salvage your dignity, Kelly—it’s so important—and just be angry instead. Those homicidal dreams you’re having? Indulge them! Don’t feel guilty—enjoy! Those sadistic little fantasies in which you pull out his nails—go right ahead. And if it helps why not simply pretend that your ex is dead? Kelly, you’ve clearly had a dreadful time, but I know that you’re going to be fine. And remember that none of these things will work nearly as well as finding another—and much better—man.
I breathed a cathartic sigh as I signed the letter. As I say, I sometimes take a tough tone. But if a man lets you down that badly then you have to kick him right out. And as I made my way home that evening I decided I’d follow my own advice. There were a few marital mementoes I hadn’t had the heart to discard but now I resolved to throw them away. I took the wedding photo out of the drawer, together with our engagement announcement, and my dried bouquet. In a file I found the air tickets to Menorca and the wallets of honeymoon snaps. There was a particularly nice one of Ed, standing on the beach in the evening sun. I could have delivered a deranged monologue to it—I was tempted—but instead I put it, with the other things, in an old shoebox which, to my bitter amusement, came from ‘Faith’. I tied the box tightly with string, pressed my foot on the pedal bin and prepared to let go.
‘Goodbye, Ed,’ I said firmly. ‘I am ex-iting from you; I am ex-pelling you; I am ex-cising you. You are ex-traneous,’ I added firmly. ‘You are ex-cess. I am making an ex-ample of you, because I do not want you any more. I do not want you any more,’ I repeated as the bin began to blur. ‘I do not…want. You. I…do…’—my throat began to ache and a tear splashed my hand—‘…want you.’ Oh fuck. My heart had been hijacked by nostalgia, and I couldn’t let my memories go. As I reached for the kitchen roll I decided instead simply to hide the box; for if I was going to get through this I couldn’t let myself be ambushed by sentiment. So I went up to the top floor, into the large spare room, and pushed the box under the bed. As I straightened up—feeling better already—I detected a wisp of smoke. I glanced out of the window into Trevor McDonald’s garden. There, at the end of the short lawn, a bonfire was smouldering away. But what was being burned on it wasn’t autumn leaves, but two hockey sticks—how odd.
Chapter 3
After a nasty break-up it’s a good idea to put a few postcodes between yourself and your ex. The further the better in fact. There’s nothing quite like it for distracting you from the fact that you’ve just been given the push. Dumped in Devon? Then why not move to Dumfries? Given the big E in Enfield? Then uproot to Edinburgh. You’ll be too busy focusing on the newness of your environment to give a damn about Him. Not that I am thinking about Him. He’s history. My campaign to exorcise Him is going well. It’s already eight weeks since we split and I can barely even remember Ed Wright’s name. I’ve done what I advised that girl Kelly to do—I’ve neatly excised him, like a tumour; I haven’t even sent him my new address. So I think it’s all going to be plain sailing from here. Were it not for one thing…
I was coming downstairs yesterday morning when I had this terrible shock. I heard Ed’s voice, quite clearly. My heart zoomed into overdrive.
‘You are IMPOSSIBLE!’ he shouted as I clutched the banister. ‘This marriage is HELL!’ By now I was hyperventilating while a light sweat beaded my brow. I stood, paralysed with amazement, in the kitchen doorway, staring at Rudolph’s cage.
‘I don’t know why I married you,’ the bird muttered shaking his head.
‘Don’t talk to me like that!’ Rudy sobbed in my voice now. ‘You’re really upsetting me.’
‘Oh, Rose, please don’t cry,’ ‘Ed’ pleaded as Rudy bounced up and down on his perch.
‘Uh, uh, uh!’ I heard ‘myself’ sob as Rudy lifted his glossy black wings.
‘Please, Rose,’ ‘Ed’ added. ‘We’ll work it out. Please, Rose—I’m sorry. Don’t.’
I gazed, horror-struck at Rudy as the dreadful truth sunk in: he was obviously a very slow learner but he’d got us both off to a tee. I reached down the mynah bird handbook to have my diagnosis confirmed. With a young Java Hills mynah there can be a delay of several months between it learning its vocabulary and actually speaking, the book explained. But don’t worry—once they’ve started, nothing will stop them! Oh God. They tend to repeat words spoken with enthusiasm or excitement, it went on. So be very careful what you let your bird hear. Oh. Too late for that.
‘Problems problems!’ Rudy yelled in Ed’s voice.
‘Don’t be horrid,’ ‘I’ replied. ‘And would you take your shoes off before you come in!’
I glan
ced at the book again. The thing about mynah birds is that they are truly brilliant mimics. Parrots only ever sound like parrots, but mynahs sound like human beings.
‘Anorexic of Axminster!’ shrieked Rudy. ‘Your cooking’s awful too. You couldn’t put Marmite on a cracker with a fucking recipe!’
‘Ed, that is SO unfair!’
‘It’s true!’
I stared in stupefaction at Rudy, as the implications of his sudden loquacity sunk in.
‘You’re selfish!’ he shouted as he stared at me, beadily.
‘And you’re Rude,’ I replied. I pulled down the cover to shut him up.
‘Nighty night!’ he said.
Having my marital rows re-enacted at top volume by a bird had shaken me to my core, so I did what I always do when I’m feeling upset—I got out the ironing board. And as the iron sped back and forth, snorting a twin plume of steam, my heart rate began to subside. I find there’s nothing more therapeutic than a nice pile of pressing when I’ve had a nasty shock. I iron everything, I really don’t mind—tea-towels, knickers, socks. I even tried to iron my J Cloths once, but they melted. I’ve never really minded ironing—something my friends find decidedly weird. But then my mum was incredibly house-proud—‘a tidy home means a tidy mind!’ she’d say—so I guess I get it from her. Now, as I felt my pulse subside, I thought about how appalled she and Dad would be: my marriage only lasted seven months, while they made it to fifty years. I wondered too what they’d have thought of Ed—they never met him—but then they were already middle aged by the time they ‘had’ me. When I say, they ‘had’me, I don’t mean in the conventional sense. They acquired me; got me, rather than begot me—I was adopted at just under six months. But since you’re asking I don’t mind telling you that my childhood was idyllic in every way. We weren’t well off but my parents were great—we lived down in Ashford, in Kent. Dad was the manager of an upmarket shoe shop and Mum worked in the town hall. She’d been told years before that she’d be unable to have kids, but then they got the chance to have me. Right from the start they told me that I was adopted, so there were no nasty surprises. At least not then.
When I was little my parents would tell me this story about how this pretty lady, seeing how sad they were at not having any children of their own, came up to them in the street one day and asked them if they’d like to have me. And they looked at me lying in her arms, and said, ‘Oh what a sweet baby—yes please!’ So she handed me over, and they took me home and I lived happily ever after with them. It was a nice story—and I believed it for a very long time. I used to imagine this well-dressed woman walking around with me in her arms, scanning the crowd for the kindest-looking couple who were keen to look after a special baby like me. Her search wasn’t easy, because she was very, very fussy, but then, at last, she spotted Mum and Dad. She took one look at their kind faces and just knew that they were right.
Mum and Dad were great churchgoers—really keen—and they said that God had sent me to them. And I did sometimes wonder what God was up to allowing my real mum to give me away. I remember once or twice asking them to tell me about her, but they suddenly looked rather uncomfortable and said that they didn’t know. And I guessed that my question had hurt their feelings so I never asked them again. But I thought about her a lot and I convinced myself that she’d had a good reason for doing what she did. I imagined that she was very busy caring for sick children in India or Africa. And although I was blissfully happy with Mum and Dad, I also thought about how my ‘real’ mum (as I thought of her in those days) would one day visit me. I imagined her walking up to the house looking very pretty, wearing a flowery dress and a pair of white gloves; and I’d run down the path to greet her, just like Jenny Agutter in The Railway Children. Except that I wouldn’t be shouting, ‘Daddy! My Daddy!’ I’d be shouting ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ instead. Then I’d imagine her picking me up and cuddling me, and she’d be wearing some lovely scent; then she’d take off her hat, and her hair would be red and very curly, like mine; it would almost spring out of her head, in long corkscrews, like mine does, and she’d exclaim ‘Rose! My darling! How you’ve grown!’ Then she’d hold me really close to her, and I’d feel her cheek pressing on mine. And we’d go inside for tea, and I’d show her all the drawings I’d done of her—dozens and dozens of them—which I’d kept in a box under my bed.
I never told my mum and dad all this because I knew that they’d feel hurt. So instead I let them tell me this nice story about how I came to live with them. But later on I discovered that’s all it was—a nice story.
I guess you’d like to know, but I’m afraid I simply can’t tell you—because I’ve never told a soul. Not Ed. Not even the twins. I never discussed it with Mum and Dad either, although I knew that they knew. I’ve always kept it to myself because it makes me feel somehow…ashamed. But when I turned eighteen I found out about my real mum, and all my nice daydreams about her stopped. I burned all the drawings of her on a bonfire and I vowed I’d never look for her. And I never will.
People who know I’m adopted sometimes express surprise at this, especially now that my adoptive parents are dead. ‘Why don’t you trace your natural mother?’ they ask, with staggering cheek. I’m always amazed that anyone should think I’d be interested in meeting the woman who’d given me up. It would be like tracking down the burglar who’d nicked your precious family heirlooms to shake his hand. So thanks but no thanks—I’m not interested: I’ve only ever had two real parents and they’re dead. So I never, ever think about my ‘birth mother’, to use the fashionable jargon, and if I do then it’s with contempt.
I guess that’s probably what’s put me off having children myself. I’m not really the maternal sort. When I was little I used to imagine myself with lots of babies, but later those feelings changed. Some adopted kids go the other way and have a big family, but they’ve probably got a nicer story than me. Anyway, enough of my ‘real’ mother—you must be bored with her: I mean, Jesus, I’m boring myself! All you need to know is that I had an idyllic childhood and that my adoptive parents were great.
I used to wish that they’d adopt another little girl or boy for me to play with. I was often terribly lonely and I disliked being an only child. I remember asking Mum and Dad if they couldn’t adopt a sibling for me but they said I made quite enough work for them as it was! And the next day I was riding my bike and I saw a pair of ducks on the river with eight babies, all squabbling and cheeping, and I remember envying those ducklings like mad. But then, luckily, not long after that, I met Bella and Bea. They moved in next door when I was eight and they were six and a half. From the start they fascinated me, not because of their identical looks, but because they were always arguing—that’s how we met. I was in the garden one day and I could hear these two little voices, disagreeing viciously.
‘Barbie is HORRIBLE!’
‘She is NOT horrible, she is very pretty and KIND. Sindy is UGLY!’
‘No she’s NOT!’
‘She IS. Her head’s TOO big!’
‘That’s because she’s very CLEVER. She can speak FRENCH!’
‘Well Barbie can speak AMERICAN!!!’
I remember climbing onto the garden wall and staring at them in amazement. I’d never known any identical twins before. They were dressed in the same blue shorts and pink tee shirts, with conker-brown Startrites, and red and white striped toggles bunching their short fair hair.
‘Barbie’s a DOCTOR! And an ASTRONAUT!’
‘But Sindy’s a VET!’
They looked up, saw me, and stopped arguing, then one of them said, ‘What do YOU think?’ I shrugged. Then I told them that I thought both dolls were silly and they seemed quite pleased with that. It was as though they wanted me to be their umpire. I’ve been adjudicating ever since.
I think it was the twins’ sense of completeness which drew me to them—the way they belonged together, like two walnut halves. Whereas I didn’t know who I truly belonged to, or who I was related to, or even who I looked lik
e. Nor did I know whether my real mum had ever had any other children, and if they looked like me. But Bella and Bea were this perfect little unit—Yin and Yang, Bill and Ben, Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Like Tweeldedum and Tweedledee they argued a lot, but the weird thing was they’d do it holding hands. They’d been coupled from conception, and I’d imagine them kicking and kissing in the womb. And although their mum would dress them in non-identical clothes every day, they’d always change into the same thing.
They did absolutely everything together. If one of them wanted to go to the loo, for example, the other would wait outside; and their mum couldn’t even offer them a piece of cake without them going into a little huddle to confer. Sometimes I’d watch them doing a jigsaw puzzle, and it was as if they were almost a single organism, heads touching, four hands moving in perfect synchronicity. And I found it deeply touching that they were so totally self-contained, yet wanted to make space in their lives for me. I was mesmerised by their mutuality and I deeply envied it—the power of two. They’re thirty-seven now, and very attractive, but they’ve never had much luck with men. They were complaining bitterly about this, as usual, when they came round on Wednesday night.
‘We can’t find anyone,’ Bella sighed as we sat in the kitchen. ‘It always goes wrong.’
‘Men don’t see us as individuals,’ said Bea.
‘Hardly surprising,’ I said. ‘You look alike, sound alike, talk alike, walk alike, you live together and when the phone goes at home you answer ‘“Twins!’’’
‘We only do that for a joke,’ said Bea. ‘In any case there are huge differences.’
‘Like what?’
‘Well, Bella’s quieter than I am.’
‘That’s true,’ said Bella feelingly.
‘And we went to different universities, and until now we’ve had different careers.’ Bella was a financial journalist and Bea worked for the V and A. ‘Plus Bella’s hair is short and mine’s shoulder length; her face is a tiny bit narrower than mine, she’s left-handed and I’m right-handed, and we have different views on most things.’