by Austin, Lucy
‘So, have you found anyone yet? Claire says no joy.’ Linda does not ask, she states, treating my lacklustre love life the same way as job hunting.
Over the last couple of years, I have given up wondering why people feel they have the right to comment about my love life like I’m some sort of zoo attraction. It’s not like I quiz her all the time about her boyfriend – she is the one volunteering every single thing. Claire is also single like me, contrary to how she tries to come across and despite the energy she puts into spinning a yarn. The only difference is that whereas I just avoid talking about it for fear of opening up the floodgates, she employs smoke and mirror tactics and talks about who fancies her. Seeing as I am the single one who never wants to disclose much, I presume that is why my love life is an open book.
I take a deep breath and then reel out my stock answer about being happily single and not looking to settle down. My mission statement is so eloquent, but it would be wouldn’t it, because what with endless people asking, I’ve had the chance to fine-tune it. I used to supply too much information, but I then worked out that if you do that then people think you are lying about being happy, or that you want to talk about it. Now I keep it no more than three sentences.
‘You always were fussy’, Linda pants, giving my arm a friendly squeeze. ‘You need to get out there!’
Out exactly where? I think. That would require enthusiasm and confidence, both of which I appear to have left behind in Australia.
‘I’m cool Linda. I’m really happy with my life right now,’ I protest, thinking that if I say it enough times I might start to mean it.
‘I don’t believe you. You really need to meet someone Kate. You’re so pretty. You’re slim. And you’ve got good skin. Wait a minute.’ I wait, wondering what wisdom is going to pour forth. ‘I’ve just had an idea! You should do what I did. You know, try online dating,’ she says, as though she’s invented the Dyson. ‘I’m now really serious with Dave. And that’s how I met him. Yes, I got up off my arse and endorsed myself and got a man. You could too.’
Visibly flinching at the thought of Scary Linda being some sort of dating mentor, I cast my mind back to the time she drunkenly told me that her criteria for finding a man basically involved finding out his star sign, checking for a pulse and zooming right in. Oh yeah, it only takes a little booze and it all pours out of her. This newish boyfriend of hers must have the constitution of an ox.
‘Where does Dave live?’ I enquire, pretending I haven’t had the entire scoop from Claire.
‘Well, he’s actually based up north but comes down most weekends to see me. Between you and me, my flat is nicer.’
I like the fact that while owner of a travel agency selling long-haul holidays, Linda doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a complete home bird. The nearest she’s got to owning a passport is taking the imaginative leap to move all of three roads away from her folks and one floor down from me. Just when it seems that the conversation will continue to go down this course, the universe spares me.
‘Shit. Do you know what? This tyre has got a nail in it! And I have an office to run!’ Linda cries. What are you going to do? Call the AA? ‘Must go. To be continued! Hope to see you at Claire’s pamper session Monday?’ She bids me farewell and power walks off with the flat tyre dragging after her. It would appear Linda too has got baggage.
CHAPTER 8 - THE WAY IT NEVER WAS
Being out of work is fun at first, but then you realise that you’re no longer living out of a suitcase in a backpacker hostel and you have more pressing matters, like paying the bills on a flat you happen to own. So, no sooner do I get myself out of the Globe where I have spent an unproductive day surfing for unsuitable jobs and avoiding eye contact with an irritated looking Paolo (having bought only one coffee the whole time), than my phone rings. I automatically pick it up in the hope that it’s about one of the twenty jobs I applied for today but alas no, it is only Stan asking how my job hunting is going. My heart sinks as he’s already left three messages over the last week that I’ve not been in the mood to return.
‘Everyone keeps asking me that, I have nothing to report,’ I snap, as I’m not sure what is more exhausting, job hunting, or talking about it. I really have to ignore myself when I’m in this state of mind. All I can think of is him and Anna sitting on the sofa in front of some meal that she pretended to cook, watching a romantic comedy, with her interjecting with ‘Poor Kate’ every five. ‘I’ll be sure to send a circular when I get a job, promise.’ I say, as I’m feeling grumpy and am in no mood to explain myself, not even to one of my best friends, because only I know how it truly feels. Then I feel guilty for being mean. ‘It was good to see you guys for dinner the other night, thank you.’
‘Anytime. Sorry about setting you up, again.’ he blurts out. ‘The date wasn’t my idea. It’s Anna. She’s obsessed with finding you someone.’
I jangle my keys around and sit on the steps of my building watching someone get a ticket on their car. ‘She means well. Seriously, I’m fine, really.’ I am glad this is the phone or he could see from the rash on my chest that I’m bending the truth a little. ‘Mr Right it turns out is definitely not in the entire city of London or on a holiday to Afghanistan that matter,’ I joke, omitting the fact that this is probably not through lack of men but because I turn down most opportunities that come my way. Over the last two years, I’ve had several nice guys ask me out and yet I never seem to progress beyond three texts, or a drink induced kiss that barely keeps sexual frustration at bay, only for it to then fizzle out. I realise in today’s dating world that three texts do not a relationship make, but why invest anymore if I only get my heart broken?
‘Kate, you need to get over that bloke – you know, give other men a chance.’ Stan never refers to Joe by name, just ‘that bloke’.
‘Stan, I have to ask, where are you?’ The noise in the background is sounding very much like he’s at a football stadium.
‘I’m at Gatwick, coming back from a meeting in Zurich,’ he shouts. Yes, my friend happens to have a rather good job where you travel all over the world and have a fast-track card for customs.
‘Look,’ I interrupt, ‘I don’t really know what to say. If Joe hadn’t been on the other side of the world, it might have properly taken off and I then wouldn’t have to be set up on Monday blind dates.’ I add this last bit just to make a point.
‘But would you really still be together?’ Stan says. ‘I mean, how do you know? From what Anna tells me, he didn’t treat you very well.’ Standing up and turning my key in the lock, I wonder why on earth Anna is voicing her opinion about Joe to Stan when she never talks about him to me.
‘How on earth do you know what he was like?’ I say, opening the door and wiping my feet.
‘You never met him.’ And just as I’m thinking I’ve been cut off because I’m at the bottom of the stairwell, Stan comes back on the line.
‘Come on Kate, guys who pass up the opportunity to go out with you must be pretty stupid,’ he says, his voice softening. ‘He could easily have come home but he didn’t. It says a lot.’
Stan is talking absolute bollocks! If Joe hadn’t had that one-off career opportunity, he would have come back and taken on a job in London. That’s why I’m in this mental limbo, needing that same connection, that same feeling, and continually blaming myself for losing it in the first place. The fact it didn’t work out and that he kissed like a washing machine is neither here nor there – as far as I’m concerned, it was cut off in its prime.
‘Whatever Stan,’ I say. ‘It doesn’t change the fact that I have never felt that way about anyone before and probably won’t again.’
Walking up the stairs past Linda’s flat with its welcome mat outside, complete with umbrella stand and flat tyre, I decide to snap out of my funk. As much as the memory of Joe is a big, scary animal that I’m still obliged to feed on a regular basis, even I get bored with the subject.
‘Anyhow, enough about me! Glad it’s going s
o well with you and Anna though – nearly a year huh?’ Dazzled by the sun streaming through the window, I stop on the landing to look at the sailing boat going across the horizon and allow a wave of gratitude to wash over me. Day in day out, I barely ever acknowledge where I live and the vista that is right in front of my flat. If I’m not careful, I’ll behave like I did in Sydney and not bother appreciating the view. ‘You do know that in twentieth first century terms, the length of your relationship is the equivalent of a decade?’ I add, to which he sighs in a rather world-weary manner.
‘Yeah, it seems to be ticking along. Most of the time she’s amazing.’
There it is – that word that Stan uses to describes his girlfriend. Amazing. Surely, ‘Amazing’ should be used to describe the solar eclipse or the Grand Canyon or the feeling you get when you’re doing a parachute jump. Amazing. And while Anna is one of my closest friends these days, I have a little problem with such a big word being used. Sure, she’s a fun girlfriend but she is not amazing. Amazing builds rockets to the moon and pays off third world debt. Amazing does not make really damp trifles.
‘However, you never told me about Anna being engaged twice,’ points out Stan. I wondered how long it would be before he found out, as Anna when pressed on the subject of her past, has always been a little vague. ‘She just casually mentioned it to me the other night, as though I would be cool. Got to say, I wasn’t that impressed.’
Since we got back from Australia, Anna has been busy in the dating world, or should I say, busy with the business of trying to get hitched. Cut to the present day and she’s now got two ex-fiancés under her belt.
The first fiancé was Rob. A pastry chef by trade, she’d met him on a tour bus in New Zealand, just before she’d flown home from Sydney, prompting him to spontaneously follow her home. Initially, Anna was all hearts and flowers at the well, the sheer macho-ness of Rob. ‘One minute he’s making choux pastry, the next he sets up pig roasts on my patio!’ Anna proudly said. She soon changed her tune however, when her neighbour rung her complaining that he’d been distracted from his Jeremy Kyle show by a homesick Rob having a pee in his front garden, clearly thinking he was in a national park. He was then sent packing back to New Zealand nursing a broken heart and a resting pulse rate that was unacceptably high for his Ironman competition.
Anna’s second engagement was to Hayden an Irishman who’d played rugby for years and chatted her up at her local one Saturday night, when she’d been single from Rob for all of a week. I only met him a couple of times, but do remember he had these most enormous cauliflower ears that distracted me from my train of thought. Not long afterwards, Anna found out that he’d been buying jewellery for his secretary that she thought was meant for her. Anna then did a lot of dating. Now I consider one date every six months something of an achievement but not Anna who positively packed it in. Notable highlights included a ski-instructor named Franz who cried at the drop of a hat, a farmer Kelvin – oh and frugal George, who emailed her after she dumped him asking if she could still get him the wrist-watch she’d promised him for Christmas. Shortly after that, she slept with my brother too but it’s probably best we skip over that part.
‘Anna’s got history, but it’s her business,’ I clear my throat.
‘You’re right,’ he agrees, as I now stand impatiently outside my flat, in anticipation of bursting through the cellophane of a ready meal, wondering how I can get off the phone without hurting his feelings.
‘I miss chatting you know,’ Stan ventures. ‘We used to talk every day. It was never like this before.’
He’s completely right. Regardless of whom Stan was dating, it felt like second nature to speak two or three times a week. He then started going out with Anna and just like that, the calls stopped.
‘Stan, friendships have to change,’ I say, sounding genuine enough. ‘Anna’s funny about her men having female friends. And she likes having me to herself too. You just have to accept it.’
I know I’m right about this. My disappointment of no longer having him as my good mate has been long since been overridden by the general irritation that comes from being closely monitored on Anna CCTV. Quite honestly, it’s made my friendship with Stan no longer fun. We can’t banter, we can’t take the piss and we can’t use each other as a sounding block because Anna is closely watching us. If we do speak, like we are now, she makes me feel like I’m doing some illicit activity. Worse still, she has made me self-conscious about it as though there’s some sort of ulterior motive on my part.
‘Besides…’ I trail off as a loo flushes at the other end of the line. ‘Have you’ve just taken a pee in a toilet while chatting to me?’ Stan says nothing and laughs. I then lean against my flat door and stare at the wall in my hallway, which is looking distinctly grubby in the cold light of day. ‘As I was saying, Anna once said I treated you like a surrogate boyfriend and needed to get a life. I think she may have been right you know.’
What with the ex-fiancés, my brother – and the million dates in between – there was always so much activity going on in Anna’s camp where as in mine, not so much. The queen of fussiness, since I lost whatever it was I had with Joe, my list of requirements for a boyfriend grows even longer – it’s a list Stan says I’ll never ever tick off. If someone does like me, I find fault, just like you do when you go house hunting and complain about the cosmetic stuff like the wallpaper or the light fittings. I then slag men off for being too available, or I attribute their interest to there being something wrong with them. I push back because quite frankly, what is the point when it only ends in tears and you then have to spend months trying to get over it, but are unable to as that involves having to get out there and kiss a load more frogs (who might not kiss properly). This way is safe. The strange thing is that lately I’ve been wondering if Joe himself would even make the grade, so high are my standards.
All of this indifference in my attitude towards men was okay when I had Stan as my friend, as I had male companionship without any of the relentless grief or the blinding lust. Okay, it was never going to be ideal, but having Stan meant I was still in touch with the opposite sex. And I admit I could have happily stayed that way if Anna hadn’t come along, surely serving to highlight that I wouldn’t actually know what a functional relationship felt like if it came and bit me in the arse. It’s been rather safe to hold a torch for someone called Joe who lives on the other side of the world. Unfortunately, this melancholy is signing me up to a life of psycho analysing memories that are getting more hazy as time goes on – that or I’m fast reinventing the truth of what happened, to the point that I can’t think straight.
‘I presume you tell Anna you phone me do you?’ I ask.
‘Yeah, sure I do,’ comes the reply. I might be imagining it but I swear Stan slightly hesitates, which makes me think he is lying.
‘Not that it matters, but you know how funny she gets,’ I say. Surely, he must have figured out by now what the rest of mankind has known for years. Anna may not wear a belly chain anymore, but she expends a disproportionate amount of time implementing complicated tactics to keep her men hanging on. She’ll spend three hours flirting with someone else, yet still demand an apology from her boyfriend as though it was his fault in the first place for not rescuing her. Or she’ll ask for flowers and then complain when she gets them that he picked red and she hates the colour. She’ll talk a lot about the importance of her acting, but then still make it very clear to her man that he has to stick with his steady job to pay for her nights out. You get the picture. Anna does not operate in a straightforward way, so the rest of us must fall in line.
‘Look, I can ring who I want Kate,’ Stan blurts out. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been rubbish of late. We’ve always been friends. Always will.’
‘Absolutely! Listen, I have to go. Speak soon,’ I say cheerfully, letting myself into my flat, wondering why all of a sudden Stan is being sensitive about the change in our friendship dynamics. What with all the calls, the texts, what on earth
is going round that brain of his? On paper, he has it all – a good job, a beautiful (albeit high maintenance) girlfriend – and a very expensive wine cooler in his kitchen filled with actual wine. What does it matter? Why can’t he let things go the way they’re supposed to go?
CHAPTER 9 - OPEN PORES
I don’t hear anything. Great, perhaps Claire has taken that exfoliated arse of hers down to Scary Linda’s flat below. Perhaps, I’ll finally have the place to myself instead of having to share space with a flatmate who conducts her entire social life from the comfort of my increasingly dog-eared couch.
‘Shit!’ I wince at the pain from the splinter in my foot. Okay, so I’ve still not quite got round to properly finishing the flat renovations, but it’s a big improvement from how it was when I first bought it and found myself physically recoiling at the amount of work to do. Flea-ridden carpets were chucked down five floors in preference for wooden flooring, walls were stripped bare and skirting boards were sanded down. I just lost momentum.
My favourite room in the flat is the lounge. It’s painted a garish raspberry shade with a big blackboard across the entire back wall, now filled with positive mantras and sayings that I don’t quite get but sound good. With an orange bathroom, and a stripy wallpaper in my bedroom, the only room in the flat that isn’t painted a garish shade of something is Claire’s bedroom, but that was before she decided to put up a giant Andy Warholesque print of her face fifteen different ways, having had her request to put it up in the lounge turned down. While I love what I’ve done with the place, all these little features do is serve to invite comments from Claire about the bad paint job, and constant complaints from the tenants below about the noise of the floorboards overhead, the most popular expression being that ‘it’s like a herd of fucking elephants up there’.