“Yes, please,” I sniffed, not at sadness of the end of a past shared with George, but at a future shared with no one.
Mick was dispatched to buy expensive croissants, while Maggie made me tea.
“I saw the article he wrote,” she said. “It was an absolute disgrace and full of lies. Plus it was so badly written. I thought he was supposed to be such a scribe. You should sue. Have you definitely split up?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t get back together? You promise.”
I nodded.
“Because this is the bit when I tell you what I really thought of you and George and then you go and get back together with him and our friendship is stuffed.”
“I won’t get back together with him.” As I said it, I knew my words to be true.
“And it’s not just me. It’s what everyone, me, Mick, Frank and the rest thought of him. We once held a summit meeting to work out a way of splitting you up.”
I groaned. “How humiliating. I’m so embarrassed. Frank? Camilla wasn’t there, was she? Please tell me she didn’t put her oar in. Did it ever occur to you that you should talk to me about it rather than each other?”
“That’s what I’m doing now.”
I lay back on the sofa with my head covered in a cushion.
“Here goes,” she said. “I, we, think he’s boorish and boring, he’s a snob and a slob. It really annoys me how he always talks about stuff being the new stuff, the new black and the new rock and roll all the time. He treats you like shit and you’re worth so much more than him. He uses you in order to have a place to live in and it’s not going anywhere. His daughter’s vile.”
“That’s harsh, she’s only six.”
“But so knowing. Of course, the fact that she told me that her mother would die if her arse got as saggy as mine does not in any way endear her to me.”
“She said that I looked like a cleaner in my Birkenstocks.”
“Quite apt, given the way you have to run around after her.” Maggie took a glug of tea. “He brings out the very worst in you, your insecurity, your obsession with appearances and glamour and silly parties and your concern for what’s in and what’s out.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m not criticizing you. I’m trying to tell you how much more you are than that. You’re clever and principled and profound, but you wouldn’t know it when you’re with him.”
“Or without him.”
“You can, you can. It’s just a bit buried.” With that I entombed myself still further behind the cushion. “And he drinks too much.”
“You think he’s a functioning alcoholic?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s something to be relieved about.”
“I think he’s a dysfunctional alcoholic. And you’ve got a codependent relationship with him in which you enable his drinking.”
“You read too much pop psychology.”
“I don’t need to define codependency for you as you define it yourself with the way you act. You pay the bills, you give him somewhere to live, you cover for him at work. Have you ever rung his office for him and told them he’s ill?”
“Yes, but…”
“Classic enabling behavior. All you’re doing is allowing him to spend all his money on drink and fags.”
“And Grace,” I lied.
“And Grace. But wouldn’t she be better off if her father wasn’t an alcoholic, the alcoholic you’re helping him to be? Poor thing can’t choose her father. You can choose your boyfriend and you’re much better off without him.”
“Oh.” I peeked out from under the cushion. “You’ve really got to hope I don’t get back with him after all that.”
“No, Iz, you’ve really got to hope you don’t get back with him. He’s a twat. And you know it.”
My eyes welled up but I suppressed tears with much exaggerated exhaling, blowing air out heavily like a parent making a pantomime show of filling a balloon in front of their birthday child. I did that thing of waving my hand in front of my face as if fanning myself on a hot day, attempting to blow away the tears. I couldn’t cry over George. I was the strong one, I had chucked him, hadn’t I?
Too late. I cried. Not cinematically in deference to the way Maggie lives her life, but with messy, snotty, simultaneous liquid pouring from eyes and nose.
Maggie rubbed my back as if I were vomiting rather than crying.
“Life’s so shit,” I wept. “Life’s so shit for me.”
“It’s not, it won’t be. It’s going to be all right.”
“Yes, it is. I’ve split up with my boyfriend and there’s a site with a death threat to me. And the only man I’ve fancied in months is the man behind it.”
“What? You fancy this Ivan guy?” He was not yet Ivan to her, only “this Ivan guy,” the systems bloke. I suppose he never would be familiar to her now. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“I snogged him.”
“Oh, Iz. I’m sorry. Do you like him?”
“Did like him. Yes, I really did like him. Even though he was a techie and stuff, he was lovely to me. He’s got the kindest face with huge eyes and really thick lashes. He has a long, straight nose, I’m a sucker for noses. And his body was perfect, slim but no six-pack. You know how six-packs are so disgusting as they make you wonder what agonies of boredom they’re prepared to put themselves through doing stomach crunches. And his flat is amazing and he does this art, which is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, but he’s modest about it. He’s funny too, he’s serious but he doesn’t take himself seriously and certainly not me. He took the piss out of me and I felt like I could be better by being with him. But what do I care? Now I find out he’s a git too. And you know what?” I didn’t wait for her reply. “I’ve found out that every man I’ve ever been out with has been a git. Well, not William, but that’s not because he’s not a git, because he is, but because I haven’t caught up with him yet and it would only be a waste of git time. I didn’t find out that any one of them was responsible for the site, apart from Ivan, but I did find out that they were all gits. Except, perhaps, Married Man, and him being married and sleeping with me pretty much means he has to be a git too, or at least that’s what his wife and her friends would conclude should they ever find out.”
I put the pillow on my stomach, aping Maggie’s stance on the opposite sofa, except her bulge wasn’t a cushion.
“I don’t think you’re quite right. Frank’s OK. But I understand.”
“No, you don’t. How could you? You’ve been happily trotting along with Mick all this time and he’s lovely. You’ve never gone to a party on your own and left with a stranger, you’ve never had the feeling of yet another relationship going wrong and wondering whether you’re ever going to have a normal one. You don’t have to frantically fill your Saturday nights and put on a performance should you find yourself out with a couple. You don’t have to parade your dire love life for the amusement of others. You don’t have to worry about everybody forgetting about your birthday. You don’t understand.”
“I think I can empathize. And anyway, it’s not all been an episode of Little House on the Prairie with Mick, you know. I’ve had my doubts. I have them all the time. His silences drive me mad. I wonder if I want him to be the father of my child or the partner to me. I’ve fancied men at work, and I’ve flirted with them too. And I think Mick has, with women I mean. I have fantasies about George Clooney. That’s how much of a frustrated thirty-something cliché of a woman I am.”
“But your fantasies and flirtations are just a sideline. When you’re single, they’re all you’ve got.” I continued to cry, yet even then I knew that I would feel good about ending it with George someday soon. I would enter the brief optimistic phase, of having fun with other single female friends and obsessing over heels and beauty treatments, of relishing the expectancy and excitement of being in that on-the-pull, every-day-is-like-Christmas-Eve time. When I knew, even then in my period of mourning, that life with
George had been a permanent February. I wailed some more at the boredom of being miserable and the mourning of all the time I had wasted.
“Iz, you’re supposed to be a feminist. Surely there’s more to you than having a boyfriend?”
“Yes, I know, of course you’re right, but everybody defines you as single, the single thirty-something woman. It never used to be like that, but when we hit twenty-seven suddenly whether you had a boyfriend became significant. It was a lifestyle choice and we were no longer the same, those with and those without, different species, lining up on different sides, like boys and girls at a school disco.”
“Everybody? Your site doesn’t, does it? It never mentions George or any of your exes. It talks about your job, your studies, your day-to-day habits, and it says you’re great, irrespective of your love life.”
I wailed some more. “The site. That site has taken away my life. I never would have split up with George if it hadn’t been for it. It’s like a voodoo doll of me and any information on it is like sticking a pin in to produce awful consequences in my real life. I sometimes feel that izobelbrannigan dot com is more 3D than Izobel Brannigan, that it leads and I follow. I feel like the site has robbed me of my identity; I’m an aborigine thinking his soul will be stolen by having his photograph taken. Mags, you’ve no idea what it’s like, I don’t have an identity anymore. You’re so lucky to have your own.”
“Identity?” Maggie stood up quickly and then looked dizzy so sat down again. “You’re talking to me of identity?”
“Yes,” I said grumpily.
“Izobel, I’m pregnant.”
“Exactly, you’re lucky, you know what you’re doing in life and who you are and your life has taken shape.” I looked at her profile with its wonderful curves, the pregnant belly and the arching back. “You don’t have to worry about which way your life is going anymore.”
“Haven’t you thought for a second what it does to your identity to be pregnant?”
I was about to mutter something about identity consolidation, but looked at her and shook my head.
“It’s shattered it. And that’s just being pregnant. God knows what it will be like after the baby’s born. Having a pregnant belly is like being the girl with massive tits, people talk to it and not to you. Nobody looks me in the eye anymore. All anybody talks about is the bloody baby. Even my body’s not mine now, as everyone else seems to think they know more about what it’s going through than I do, you should feel that, you shouldn’t feel that, my friend says morning sickness is psychosomatic, blah blah blah.
I am dispossessed of my own body. I’ve got a sitting tenant in there, a squatter with far more rights than the landlord, and every time I put food or drink into my mouth I am supposed to ask myself: “Is this the very best I can be giving my baby?” I found a Web site that accused women who have the occasional glass of wine while pregnant of being child abusers. How do you think that feels? I’m a child abuser. Nobody asks me about me anymore, just when’s it due, is it a boy or a girl, what names are you thinking of, are you moving out of your flat, what kind of car are you getting, have you read Contented Little Baby?”
“I don’t think I just ask you about the baby,” I protested.
“No, but that could be because you’re so preoccupied with yourself that you haven’t asked me about anything at all. I don’t know how you can lie there and talk to me of losing your identity. You’re still Izobel. I’m Maggie pregnant woman and soon I’ll be Maggie mother. It’s bad enough at the moment, but friends tell me that when you’re pregnant you at least feel celebrated and special, then when you’re schlepping a stroller round dingy London streets you feel very unspecial indeed. I don’t know if Mick and I will ever have sex again. Once the baby’s born, his life can go on and mine will be irrevocably changed. Up until now it hasn’t made any difference that he’s male and I’m female, but now it’s everything. I don’t know if I’ll ever have a career again, let alone any money. Or what my body will be like. I’ll have saggy tits and belly and, you know, bits. A woman I know put a Tampax in six months after giving birth and it fell out.”
I winced.
“Only women will talk to me now, not men. I am no longer sexually desirable.”
“There are those porn magazines devoted to pregnant women.”
Maggie snorted and walked into the kitchen area and put the kettle on again.
“Sorry, Mags.”
“Forget it.”
I hadn’t known it would be possible to feel worse than I already had done, but I was tripping into whole new potholes of remorse.
“I don’t need pity,” she said.
“No, but you’d like some support. And that’s completely reasonable of you.” I wanted to cry but knew I wasn’t allowed to anymore. The site could caption me at that moment with “Izobel’s a selfish solipsistic cow who completely ignores the needs of her best friend!” I needed to say something, anything, to absolve myself. “It’s the site, it’s distracted me…”
“It’s not since the site, Izobel. You used to be such a brilliant listener. You loved listening and your advice was better than anybody’s. You had a sense of people, the people generally—politics and the outside world—and then the people close to you. You cared about stuff. It’s not the site that changed you, it’s everything, your job and George. I wish you could do something that would make you like you were.”
I did too. I wanted to go back to being the girl with principles and optimism. I used to think I was great. I was great. I once was worth creating a cyber-paean to, but somewhere along the decade the pappy press releases and bad boyfriends eroded that girl.
“You’re right,” I said. “And you’re not just pregnant lady, you’re an absolutely brilliant friend. I only wish I could apply the same good judgment and discretion to my choice of boyfriends as to my choice of friends. I couldn’t be luckier with you.”
She shrugged.
“And I wish I could be as good a friend to you as you are to me. I really am sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
But I knew it wasn’t really.
*
I spent the rest of Saturday on my own, with only the site for company. It had not changed; the death date remained and with it my unease. My new life of exhibitions, seasons at the National Film Theatre and parties could not begin until they or I had been removed.
I rang the police apologetically. “I don’t suppose you’ve had time to get a report from CID asessing a threat made on a Web site.”
Blankness from the other end, then transferring me up to CID. They were laughing at me, I’m sure. “Silly bint reckons we’ll be onto this within a couple of days. Doesn’t she know we’ve got murders to solve?” “Reckons she’s more important than an abused kid, Sarge.” Chuckle, chuckle, especially from greasy-look hair, greasy-look face young copper. A different voice came onto the phone.
“Hello, Miss Brannigan. We are taking the matter seriously and it will be dealt with very soon. We’ll contact you when a decision has been reached. Thank you for your patience.”
I wasn’t patient. I thought about Maggie and George and Ivan in equal measure, though all were dwarfed by the amount of time I still spent thinking about myself. The site didn’t say anything about my relationships with others and it was as if, by ignoring them, the site had caused them to putrefy into nonexistence. Nothing outside of the site had the chance of life.
I thought about Grace, too, and this added another crust of guilt and misery to my mood. I should have been a better common-law stepmother to her. She was only six and I had treated her like a manipulative ex-girlfriend rather than a damaged little girl. I might have made a difference, but it was too late now.
I called Maggie, Ivan called me and I waited for George to call, but he did not. There was a text message. Bitch. That’s all it said. Text messages are the preserve of the newly in love, so that they can write billets-doux of abbreviated words, yr lvly, I wnt 2 b wv u. And then text messages play
no part in relationships until the end, when the spoken word cannot be trusted to express the bitterness, when people no longer pick up their phone for fear of the eruption of bile.
Two years of life with George and that’s all I get. One word. At least, I thought, it was fully spelled out.
There was a place where words were plentiful: izobelbrannigan .com. It provided me with Saturday succor. I closed the curtains on reading the new additions to the site.
There, ticking along across the bottom of the page, were a dozen messages from my “adoring public.”
“Following the article in a national newspaper, messages from her fans have been pouring in for Izobel. Here are just a few of them,” announced my narrator.
“Izobel is fit,” wrote fourteen-year-old GarethGreat, “where does she live?” “I like the dress she’s wearing at the supermarket. What shop is it from? Does she have a favorite designer?” asked Jenny5000. Wolfie said that the site should have more pictures of me in a bikini, while JGG demanded a live Web chat with me, possibly naked. RealGrrl wanted to know if I ever agreed to meet people through the site.
“But not everyone’s a fan…” it went on to explain. Here we go, I thought. “What a terrible testament to hubris that somebody should think a nonentity worthy of a testament. How characteristic of our age of the celebrity for the sake of celebrity. Who was this Izobel Brannigan anyway?” I shuddered at the “was” jeremy_jones used; he alone had interpreted the dates as I had. The rest of his criticism seemed a more predictable response from the stick-in-the-mud readers of George’s paper. “The elevation of nobodies to fallacious somebodies has to stop,” Jeremy concluded with almost an audible harrumph. “I think she’s unattractive,” wrote a rather less articulate fan.
I continued to watch as the messages trickled past. They were, on the whole, trite, but all suspiciously lacked spelling mistakes or abbreviations. I didn’t believe them. I wasn’t fit or well-dressed or hubristic, and I couldn’t believe that they wouldn’t use the strangulated slang of instant messaging.
The site didn’t seem to know I was single, either. Did Ivan care? Maggie was right; the site had never been much interested in my love life, when that was all that my friends and I had ever discussed. I felt a misplaced benevolence toward it again, despite the malevolence with which it reciprocated. While Izobel Brannigan had wasted the decade in pursuit of parties and men who were better in the telling than the doing, her alter ego izobel brannigan.com was vibrant, world-rocking and independent. She was the superhero to my flawed everywoman.
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