by Jane Green
No, Jules has always been one of those women that men go crazy about because she has enough self-confidence to say this is me, take it or leave it. And, invariably, they take it. Or at least try to. They love the fact that she doesn’t wear makeup. That her clothes, on her tiny, petite frame, are a mishmash of whatever she happens to pull out of the wardrobe that morning. That her laugh is huge and infectious, and, most of all, that she listens. She loves life, and people, and makes time for them, and even before Jamie came along men were forever falling in love with her.
I’ve tried to be more like Jules, but, even though there are rare occasions when I feel I’m getting close, at the end of the day I just haven’t got enough self-confidence to pull it off, and they bloody know it. So they start by falling madly in love with me—with the exception, it would seem, of Nick—and they end, about three weeks later, by disappearing when they realize that I’m actually a bundle of insecurities and not the woman they thought I was at all.
But anyway, enough about me, back to Jules and Jamie. Despite Jamie spending all his time tucked away in his study, their relationship does seem to work, and what I love about going out with the two of them is that we have fun. They have fun, and it’s catching.
So Jamie comes out of his study and gives me a huge kiss as I stand by the kettle and then says, “Tea? Excellent. I need a break. So,” he says, pulling a chair out from the kitchen table, “how’s the love life?”
He always asks me this because he knows I’ll have a story to tell, and, if I do say so myself, I tell my stories brilliantly. I tell them so they’re sparkling, witty, amusing. I tell them so they capture people’s attention and make them clutch their sides with laughter, shaking their heads and saying, “God, Libby, you are extraordinary.” I tell them so people think I lead the most glamorous, exciting life in the world. Except, when I’m telling them one-on-one to Jules, I can be honest. I can tell her how lonely I am. How I spend my life wondering why I never seem to have healthy, happy relationships. How I probably wouldn’t know a healthy, happy relationship if it jumped on my head and knocked me sideways.
And she listens to me quietly, and then thinks about it, and finally tells me why these men aren’t right for me, and that one day someone will come along who will fall in love with me, and that the trick is to stop looking and that it will happen when I least expect it.
Which is all very well for her to say, and it’s probably true, but how am I supposed to stop looking when it’s the one thing I want more than anything else in the world? Well, other than winning the lottery, I suppose, but only because it would increase my pulling power a thousandfold. But seriously, I’ve never understood all that rubbish that married women tell you about not looking, because how can you not look when you’re looking, and how can you really be happy on your own when you’re not?
Sitting here in the kitchen with Jules and Jamie, I tell them my funny story about Nick, and about him performing a striptease in the living room, and about him sitting in my bath with a shower cap on, and they laugh, and I laugh with them, and Jamie shakes his head and says, “God, Libby, what would we do without you?” and I don’t take offense, I just shrug my shoulders.
“So where are you two off to today?” he ventures, standing behind Jules and rubbing her shoulders in a gesture that’s so affectionate I practically sigh with craving.
“Just up the high street,” she says breezily, as he rolls his eyes to the ceiling.
“Oh, God. I know what that means. I’d better warn the bank manager.”
“No, darling,” she says, “we’re not going for me, we’re going for Libby. Except I might see something I like, in which case—”
“I know, I know,” he laughs. “So, d’you want a lift up there or are you walking?”
Jules looks at me, the disgust already written on her face because she knows exactly how I feel about walking—if God had meant us to walk he wouldn’t have invented cars—and I don’t have to say anything, I just give her a pleading look and she sighs an exasperated sigh and says, “You’re giving us a lift.”
We jump into Jamie’s BMW, and I do what I always do and insist on sitting in the front seat so I can pretend to be married to Jamie, and Jules does what she always does and prizes off her engagement ring for me to wear, and we drive up the road with my arm hanging out the window in case anyone I know should be passing, which naturally never seems to happen, and he drops us off by the station.
“Jules,” he calls out the window, just before driving off, “can you get me some socks?”
She nods and turns to me with a sigh. “And who said it was glamorous being married to a barrister?”
We go to Whistles, Kookai and agnes b. We mooch round Waterstone’s, Our Price and David Wainwright. We ooh and aah for hours in Nicole Farhi, and finally, in a tiny little sports shop tucked away at the top of the high street, I find exactly what I’m looking for.
“You’re not seriously buying those,” says Jules in horror, as I stand in the mirror with supertrendy Adidas sneakers on my feet.
“Why not?” I look innocent as hell, even though I know exactly what she’s going to say.
“But they’re not you!” she manages in dismay. “You’re Miss aspiring Prada, Miss Gucci. You’re not Miss Adidas.”
“Look,” I say to her slowly and seriously, trying to make her understand, “let me put it this way. I’m getting tired of being Patsy, so now I want to see what it’s like to be Liam for a change.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Patsy’s always in Prada and Gucci, and Liam’s in Adidas, so now I fancy a more casual look and these are exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
“But what are you going to wear them with?”
“T-shirts and jeans.”
“T-shirts and jeans!”
“Yes. T-shirts and jeans.”
“But you haven’t got any T-shirts and jeans.”
“Yes I do, Jules. Don’t be ridiculous. Thank you,” I say, turning to the shop assistant with my most professional tone. “I’ll take them.”
Actually that whole Patsy, Liam stuff is a load of shit, and, although Jules probably would understand, probably in fact does understand, I can’t be bothered to explain it to her right now. You see, it’s not that I’m trying to change myself for Nick, God no. I mean, I hardly know the guy, it’s just that these somehow seem more his style, and I can hardly go to his local Highgate pub in my designer togs, can I? These are much more appropriate, and anyway I’ve wanted a pair for ages. Honest. So, armed with my wonderful new sneakers (and what a bargain, 54.99!), we go for a cappuccino, and as we sit down I pull my mobile phone out of my bag and ring the answering service just in case it rang and I didn’t hear it, but no, the recorded voice on the end says, “You have [pause] no [pause] new messages,” and now I’m starting to get seriously pissed off, but Jules sees what I’m feeling before I’ve even started really feeling it and she says, “No. Stop it. He’s going to phone,” so I relax a bit, and it’s fine.
Over coffee, Jules says, “Are you sure you’re not going to get too involved?”
And I sweep her comment aside with a toss of my hair and laugh in a very grown-up, in-control sort of way and tell her she’s being ridiculous, but meanwhile why the bloody hell hasn’t he called? My mobile number’s on my answering machine at home, and I could ring in to pick up my messages, except that if I do that I won’t be able to press 1471 to find out who last called me, which is what I do automatically every time I walk in my flat, and he might be the sort of person who hates mobiles and hates leaving messages, so he might have phoned but not left a message, but Jesus Christ, Libby, SHUT UP. I’m doing my own head in.
“What makes you think I can’t have a fling?” I say eventually. “You know, sex with no strings attached?”
“Because you can’t,” she says firmly.
“Now that’s where you’re wrong,” I say. “I haven’t done it for a while, but I’ve had loads of flings with
men when I haven’t been emotionally involved. It’s just been sex. I’ve fancied them but I haven’t liked them, or I’ve realized they’re not for me.”
Jules sits and thinks for a minute. “And when was the last time you did that?”
“About five years ago, but I could have done it loads of times since then.”
“So why haven’t you?”
“I just haven’t.”
“You don’t think that perhaps we change between the ages of twenty-three and twenty-eight or -nine and that what was so easy for us when we’re in our early twenties becomes almost impossible when we’re nearing thirty, which is why we don’t do it anymore?”
“What do you mean?”
“The reason women generally stop having flings, or sleeping around, or whatever you want to call it, is because they realize they can’t do it, because the older they get the more they see you can’t sleep with someone on a regular basis and not want more, not when you’ve reached an age where society, unfortunately, still tells you that you should be married and having babies.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I think you’re either the sort of person who can or the sort of person who can’t, and I’m the sort of person who can.”
Jules doesn’t say anything. She just looks at me.
“I am, you know,” I insist.
And she keeps looking at me. And eventually I say, “For Christ’s sake, stop looking at me,” and she shrugs and changes the subject.
And eventually at five o’clock we wander back down the high street, which I don’t mind in the slightest because it’s downhill and even my disgustingly unfit body can cope with practically falling down a hill, and I jump in the car and drive home, and when I walk in there have been three messages, and, as I press play, I’m praying, I’m seriously praying that Nick has phoned.
The first is from my mother. “Hello, Libby, it’s me. Mum.” As if I didn’t bloody know.
“C’mon, c’mon,” I urge her.
“Just calling up for a chat,” she says, “and wondering whether you’re coming for tea tomorrow. Call me later if you can, or otherwise in the morning, and if you’re going out tonight have a nice time. If not, there’s a really interesting documentary about magazines at nine o’clock tonight which I’ll be watching with your father and—”
“Oh, shut up,” I shout at the answering machine as she finishes. Anyway, what kind of sad git does she think I am, staying in on a Saturday night? Even if there’s absolutely nothing to do I’ll try to go out just so that I can tell people I went out. And yes, drinking coffee at Jules’s kitchen table and watching Blind Date and Stars in Their Eyes does count as going out because I’ve left my house, and all I need to tell people is I went to some friends for dinner.
Message number two is from Joe Cooper, which always sends me into panic mode. Not that I don’t like him, I adore Joe as much as, if not more, than when we first met, but every time I get a work-related phone call on the weekend I start having anxiety attacks, convinced that something has gone terribly and irrevocably wrong, but luckily this is just Joe asking for a phone number, and he ends the message by saying he’ll try to get it from someone else.
Message number three is a silence. Then the phone’s put down. Shit. I pick up and dial 1471.
“Telephone number 0.1.8.1.3.4.0.2.3 . . .” Yes! I don’t bother listening to the end of the number because it’s a Highgate number, and I don’t know anyone else who lives in Highgate! Yes! He rang! And it gives me the burst of energy I need to run the bath so that I’ll be ready whenever he calls again. Yes, I know I could call him, and I’m not playing hard to get, it’s just that, having spent so many years chasing men, I now realize it’s better not to call them. Ever. If you can possibly help it. And that includes calling them back. Except I’m not so good at that one.
And to make completely sure I don’t give in to the urge to call him back I jump in the bath, and then, just as I’ve submerged my head under water, the phone rings and I jump up as if I’ve had an electric shock and go running into the living room, leaving a trail of sopping wet footprints. I pick it up and, trying to sound calm and collected and sexy as anything, say huskily, “Hello?”
“Libby?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Nick.”
Oh my God, I’m having a serious clothes crisis. The sneakers are great, better than great, perfect, but what the hell can I wear with them? I’ve tried the jeans and T-shirt, and it doesn’t look quite right, and no, it’s not that I’m that excited, but hell, I still want to look nice.
The bed is strewn with clothes, and eventually, right at the bottom of the wardrobe, I find a crumpled-up black T-shirt that I haven’t seen for at least a year. I smell it tentatively, and okay, it’s a bit musty, but I can spray perfume on it and iron it and yes! It’s perfect. It hugs my body and sits perfectly around my waist, and with my black trousers it’s just right. But hang on, even though I’m wearing sneakers all this black looks a bit imposing. Not fresh enough, not young enough. Shit.
An hour later I settle on a white T-shirt with a babe-type logo emblazoned across the chest, my oldest, most faded, most favorite 501s, and the beloved sneakers. I dig out some chunky silver earrings from the bottom of the papier-mâché box I use as a jewelry box and, what the hell, stick on some chunky silver rings as well. Perfect.
I’m meeting Nick at the Flask in Highgate, a pub I vaguely remember from my teenage years, and I know I’m going to be drinking so I leave the car at home and order a minicab, and just as I’m about to leave the phone rings.
“Hello, love, it’s Mum.”
As if I didn’t know.
“What is it, Mum? I’m late and I’m going out.”
“Oh, that’s nice. Anywhere special?”
“I’ve got a date.” Damn. I didn’t mean to tell her. Now I’m going to get an onslaught of questions.
“How lovely!” she says, and I can almost hear her brain clicking into gear at the other end of the phone. “Anyone nice?”
Which I know will lead to what does he do, what car does he drive, where does he live, and, basically, is he good enough for our daughter.
This is the problem with having The Suburban Parents from Hell. Not that I don’t love them, I do, it’s just that they’ve got this thing about me marrying way, way above my station, and I try not to tell them anything about my life, except sometimes things have a habit of slipping out. “Yes, he’s very nice,” I sigh, “but I really have to go.”
“Well,” she stalls. “You young things. I don’t know, always rushing around. Dad and I were wondering if you were coming round for tea tomorrow.”
“Oh.” I’d forgotten. “Okay,” I sigh.
“Oh, lovely dear. I’ve got some of your favorite chocolate marzipan cake.”
My mother thinks that my tastes are exactly the same as when I was six years old, and I don’t bother telling her that these days I try to avoid chocolate marzipan cake like the plague, because it doesn’t end up in my stomach, it ends up on my thighs.
“Okay, Mum. I’ll see you about four?” I’m already mentally planning my day. A lazy breakfast in bed with Nick, perhaps a walk in Kenwood, and then a long kiss goodbye. Yup, if I time it perfectly I’ll be able to make it to my parents in Finchley by four o’clock.
“All right, darling. What does your date do?”
“Look, Mum, I’ve got to go, the cab’s here.”
“He’s not picking you up?” There’s horror in her voice.
“No, Mum. I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye,” and I gently put the phone down with an exasperated sigh as the doorbell rings and the cab really does arrive.
Okay. Got everything? Clean knickers, toothbrush, makeup, moisturizer? Yup. My Prada bag’s so full it’s practically bursting, and I grab a jacket and run down the stairs.
And the closer we get to Highgate the more nervous I become. At Queen’s Park I check my lipstick. At West End Lane I check I’m not shining. At Hampstead I flick my hair aroun
d a bit. At Kenwood I start tapping my feet and trying to ignore the driver staring at me in his rearview mirror.
“You are going somewhere nice?” he eventually says, in a thick Eastern European accent.
“Umm, yes,” I say, because quite frankly I don’t need to get into a conversation with my minicab driver and I don’t like the way he’s staring at me.
“You look nice,” he says.
“Thank you,” I say, in a tone of voice aimed to discourage him. It works. And then I feel guilty so when we pull up I give him a two pound tip and then I stand on the pavement for a bit, wondering what it’s going to be like, and wondering where he is.
“Libby!” I look up, and there, sitting at a table outside in the large courtyard, is Nick, and as I walk over to him I feel all the tension disappear, because, after all, it’s only Nick, and he looks gorgeous, he is gorgeous, and suddenly I’m beaming because everyone turned round to look at him when he shouted, and most of the women are still looking, and hey! He’s with me! And then I’m standing in front of him, not sure what to do. Should I kiss him? Should I hug him? Should I just say hello? And then he leans forward and kisses me, aiming for my lips, and fool that I am I turn my head out of nervousness, so he just grazes the corner of my mouth, and he looks slightly surprised but then smiles and asks what I’d like to drink.
I can see that he’s already halfway through a pint, and vodka and cranberry juice—my usual—would seem completely out of place, so I ask for half a lager and he seems pleased, and then he disappears inside to get it as I sit down and congratulate myself on such a good pull.
And he comes back grinning and puts the lager down in front of me, saying, “I’m surprised at you, Libby. I would have thought you were a spirits sort of girl.”
And I pick up my lager and sip daintily, trying not to grimace, and say, “When in Rome . . .”
“Ah.” He nods. “So you’d much rather be having a gin and tonic.”
“Vodka and cranberry juice!” I say. “Please!” Because gin and tonics, delicious as they may be, always remind me of my parents, and it’s the one drink that I never order because I absolutely know that that, more than anything else, will give away my background.