Dan Taylor Is Giving Up on Women (20 page)

Then I remembered another flash of Delphine’s crystal clear eyes, this one exhibiting something other than anger as she showed me some sort of Latin American dancing. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it involved her crotch being in remarkably close proximity to my groin. I also remembered my hand slipping a bit, during a particularly sudden and unexpected twirl, from caressing the small of her back to, well, caressing a little lower down. I saw Jamie was watching us at this point — I got a big thumbs up and a leer for that, but it was at a point in the night when I didn’t bother to put my hand back anywhere more demure.

Had that gone somewhere further?

Lying there mortified by my behaviour, I buried my head under the duvet, prompting another memory from a few hours earlier — I was claustrophobically closeted under the duvet again, and, from the muffled sounds I could hear above, doing some good work. But the moment was lost as my left leg spasmed and I involuntarily shouted out, ‘Argh, shit, cramp! Cramp!’ and somebody else yelped, ‘Ow! My knee!’ as the grip of my hand tightened in response to the pain. My head tilted back and I cracked it into another knee that was being reflexively pulled up. I tried to roll clear, but the second I put any weight on my cramping leg it collapsed on me, slamming my head down and my bruised eye into sudden contact with a hip bone. At that point I slid slowly off the bed as the room filled with shouts of ‘argh!’ and accusatory ‘ow!’s, if I remembered correctly.

I pulled the duvet back down to my chest and cringed. The constant humiliation-prompted bursts of adrenalin were at least keeping the worst physical symptoms of my hangover at bay.

But the more I thought that my brain must be trying to protect me by not revealing the identity of the person that had just left, the more I panicked about working it out. They’d been lying there in the bed for several hours. There’d probably still be a trace of their perfume or shampoo or other nice-smelling woman products on the
pillow.

Would I be able to remember who it was by their trademark scent?

I shifted onto my side and leaned tentatively towards the dented pillow. I couldn’t do it. Sniffing bed linen to try and identify a woman I’d just slept with was just too icky.

My phone! Maybe there’d be a clue on there. Another headrush hit as I leaned over towards the floor and delved into my discarded jeans pockets for my mobile.

A sense of foreboding tensed my fingers as I unlocked the keypad and went to check my texts.

At the top of the sent items there was a message, sent at about midnight, saying just 17 Lavender Hill Road Flat D — Jamie’s address.

After the dribs and drabs of memory that had been filtering through all morning, reading that message suddenly sent everything flooding back at once.

Holding up the queue for the loo as I sat in there on the shut toilet seat, swapping text messages until somebody started banging on the door.

Feeling the full impact of everything that I’d drunk previously hit me by stepping out into the fresh air of the car park to make a phone call.

A phone call that had been long on silences and words of sympathy, but ended with exhortations to get in the cab and get over to the party and have some fun.

And then of Hannah arriving, dolled-up and smiling but still a little puffy-eyed behind the night-out make-up, striding over in jeans and heels, waving a nearly full bottle of tequila lifted from their drinks cabinet.

Hannah leaving me on the building steps wiping away lipstick after a big smacker right on the lips as she headed into the kitchen, demanding I find out where, in the midst of this student squalor, they kept their salt and lemons.

The next couple of hours had been glorious. Laughing, joking, and dancing with everyone, Hannah had floated to the centre of a party she’d arrived at knowing no one, and taken me with her. I’d been swapping jokes and even managing what I believed was known as ‘a bit of banter’ with Jamie’s blokey mates, drinking shots with a string of impressionable young women, and even helping Weird Boring – now ‘Disco’ – Chris get some choreographed dance routines going.

Evidently I’d texted Hannah to apologise at some point earlier in the evening, and the response had come back that she’d hate to say she told me so, but that after early evening drinks in the pub with Angus and Sarah, just as they were all planning to grab some dinner, Rob had once again found there was a crisis at work that just couldn’t wait. He’d disappeared before they could even decide if Angus had drunk enough to even consider going to a kebab shop, and Hannah had left not long after. Her choice was leave, or stay and have to deal with the sympathetic yet probing looks that she was getting from Sarah, and with Angus trying to make a claim for ‘a really genuine Afro-Portuguese restaurant’ he’d read about on the other side of town on a council estate renowned for its gun-related crime.

My text had arrived with Hannah as she’d been settling down to her Kettle Chips and Chenin Blanc dinner. Then, after I’d called to see if she was OK, she’d decided to sod it, she wasn’t going to spend the last year of her twenties sitting in watching Saturday night TV and wondering what her tomcatting husband was up to. And more importantly why she was continuing to put up with it.

‘Hey, you know, you’ve picked up some new moves since we were last out dancing,’ she said as we slid out of the noisy, sweaty living room and into the kitchen, cooling down with cups of vodka and lukewarm ginger ale.

‘That probably was nearly a decade ago, so I’d hope I’ve moved the art form on in that time.’

‘Well, if abstract dancing didn’t exist before, I think you’ve invented it now.’

I blushed at the teasing of my best efforts at grooving.

‘Awww, don’t be embarrassed, sweetheart,’ she said, putting her arm around me for a squeeze. ‘I remember what you were like back in Manchester — queuing up to go to the toilet at parties to avoid having to dance with your pals, and when you were finally dragged up doing that strange shuffle that looked like you’d had an accident. It looked like you hadn’t been faking your enthusiasm for hiding in the loos.’

‘If my dancing now looks like I have full bowel and bladder control, I’ve done my job.’

‘You remember that party when we first met?’

‘Little Coronation Street house off Fairfield?’

‘You looked very cute with your little DMs and retro sitcom T-shirt.’

‘I remember you were dancing to Daniel Bedingfield…’

‘I remember you were getting very cross about that. That was cute too.’

‘It was about the only thing I could think to say to you. I was a bit shy and awkward around girls back then.’

‘Amazing how people change, eh, hun?’

‘You look even better now than you did then, you know? Being a proper grown-up woman suits you.’

‘It was a better option than the alternative. And you’ve turned into quite the smooth talker, haven’t you?’

‘Plus look, no more dance-floor incontinence,’ I said, mimicking some of the most elaborate steps I’d seen committed on the living-room dance-floor.

‘Funny how things could have turned out differently…’

Jamie staggered through, heading out to the yard with cigarettes and Delphine in tow. She gave me a pointed look that suggested that, after throwing me several chances to adore her tortured life already this evening, which I’d turned down to flirt with happy strangers and dance with late-coming interlopers, she’d moved on and was taking her foxy nihilism elsewhere now. Hannah grinned at me and pulled a mock tragic shocked face.

‘C’mon, let’s get home. Get a taxi,’ she said, and I hastily turned to the kitchen fridge door to get a cab number.

‘Colliers Wood, please, but there’s a stop in South Wimbledon first,’ I explained to the cabbie as we clambered into the back seat, a miraculously short twenty minutes later.

‘Don’t worry, just do the Colliers Wood stop first,’ Hannah told the driver as she buckled up next to me.

‘But it’s probably easier, and I wouldn’t want to leave you by yourself,’ I said before whispering, not nearly quietly enough not to be heard by the cabbie, ‘You know, taxi drivers…’

‘I think I’ll be all right taking my chances. I don’t think he wants to rape and murder us,’ she whispered back, before whispering even more loudly to the driver, ‘You aren’t planning to rape and murder us, are you?’

‘Long as no one pukes in the back,’ he replied.

We sat there in silence for a while, before Hannah stretched across the divide enforced by our seat belts and gave my thigh a punch.

‘Good party, matey. I needed that. Those women you work with? I think the clinical term is completely mental. The one with the swirly eyes? Yikes. And then Frenchie with her lolling about against the wall looking like she’s in a black and white movie? Eek. And that Weird Boring Chris is a dogger if ever I’ve seen one.’

‘And things with you…?’

‘Bup. Stop right there. I’m not one of your charity cases. I’m fine.’

Another punch to the thigh was meted out, then my hand was grabbed, and fingers entwined, resting against my leg.

‘Up this road here?’ the taxi driver asked as we came through Tooting, carrying on past the shortest route to Wimbledon.

‘Just keep going, thanks, mate,’ confirmed Hannah next to me. As we passed the tube station and went beyond the supermarket on the way to mine I could honestly say I wasn’t expecting what was going to happen next.

Or couldn’t believe it.

Or didn’t want to think about it in advance, because thinking about it would only have stopped me.

‘Dammit, I should have nicked someone’s cigarettes,’ said Hannah. ‘Seven years not smoking and just that one I had with Jamie in the garden has totally got me hooked again.’

I didn’t reply to her, I just took a deep breath and told the taxi driver to take a left where the road forked, and the next left straight after that.

‘I’ll get out here too, cheers,’ Hannah told the driver outside my block and handed him a crumpled couple of notes she’d quickly dug out of her bag. We didn’t speak as we got out of the car, and stood together in the car park as the driver pulled away before we could cross over towards the entrance. It was as we walked across the frosted tarmac with her arm around my waist and my hand draped across her shoulder that I turned again to kiss her, and this time there was no pulling back from Hannah. A soft kiss was followed by a harder one and then our hands started fumbling under each other’s coats like teenagers. It was not long after that that I had to step away for a minute, certain I was going to be sick. But now I didn’t think it was the drink that had caused it.

We somehow made it upstairs — my memory jumped forward a bit there to our getting to my front door. When we weren’t all over each other the tension seemed to come rushing back and the significance of what we were doing was wordlessly present. I fumbled through my coat pockets trying to find my keys, and, when I did find them, struggled to isolate the right one, and then get the door open.

‘I can’t seem to get it in,’ I grumbled to myself.

‘That doesn’t bode well,’ replied Hannah.

We looked at each other and both started giggling hysterically at that. Hannah took the set of keys from me, found the right one to actually open the door and let us in. We didn’t talk, and we didn’t turn on the lights, but headed straight for my room where, in the orange glow of the street light outside, we watched each other take off our clothes.

‘You look beau—’ I said.

‘Shh.’

‘You know I think I might—’

‘Shh.’

‘Are you sure…?’ I asked.

‘Shuddup.’

Then, with all the awkward grabbing, the false starts, the bumping and cramping, but most of all the intense wanting it to happen, it happened. Afterwards we lay apart, before Hannah inched closer towards me. ‘Wow’, she said, with her head rested on my chest. I ran my fingers through her hair, but I couldn’t see her face. I wished I could say I’d felt ecstatically triumphant, or epically guilty at that point, but I mainly just felt drunk, tired, and overwhelmingly confused. Shutting down, and shutting everything out, I’d fallen asleep with my arm going dead under Hannah’s shoulder. She hadn’t said anything more, but the last thing I remembered as I drifted away was the feel of a hot, fat tear dropping onto my chest, and Hannah burrowing closer to me.

‘BweeorghARGHorghorghARGHbweughurghurghurgh. Urk,’ is probably as close as I can get to putting into words my physical reaction, while clinging onto the sides of the toilet bowl, to remembering in full what had happened the night before.

I’d seduced and slept with the wife of my closest friend of my adult life.

‘Bwop-bwop bweARRRRRGGGGHHH.’

I’d fallen in love with her and made my move and now she’d gone.

‘Argh-heeyleyolleeyarghhhhYURGGHH.’

It was the stupidest thing I’d ever done in my life, and I didn’t know how I was going to face anyone again.

‘GreeYEOOOO-wud-wud-wurk.’

Also that kebab I’d had between pub and party had clearly still not been digested very much.

I flushed the toilet and knelt in front of it, not confident enough to go any distance in case I needed it again. I crouched there, staring at the bowl and the occasional drip of water coming down from the cistern, my mind going over the same accusations of wasted opportunities, sexual incompetence, and betrayal. It got to the point where my brain even started trying to distract itself from the recriminations, and I found I was thinking instead about how something similar happened once in
Mad Men
. Then wondering if I’d Sky+ed the new series, then thinking I’d do a catch up of missed episodes some evening soon, with a nice hot chocolate, all cosy on the beanbag.

But before long I remembered again the events that had me prostrate before the lavatory, sending the guilt washing over me into another spin cycle. I cursed my attention span for deciding today was the day it was going to really keep to the matters in hand.

Then the phone rang. I thought about not answering it in case it was Hannah, then thought about answering it in case it was Hannah. The latter hope of speaking to her eventually trumped the fear of the same thing. Grabbing onto the door, I limped to the phone by my bed and picked it up.

‘Hey, sport, it’s me.’

‘Rob.’

‘Listen, I’m sorry for calling so early on a Sunday, but I’ve been up all night,’ he said, sounding jittery and on edge. ‘I think she’s left me, buddy.’

The room swam around me in several directions at once while I tried to think of what to say, and realised what I might have caused to happen.

‘Jesus, shit, what are you saying? Are you sure? What’s happened?’

‘I got in late last night after a work thing, and she wasn’t here, and she hasn’t come back. I’ve been calling and texting for hours and haven’t heard anything. I don’t know what to do, Dan. I don’t know what to do.’

‘Slow…slow down a minute. What happened yesterday?’

‘I’ve called Angus and Sarah, but they say she left just after I did. They said she’d seemed a bit upset or angry. Our room’s a state with clothes everywhere but nothing seems to be missing. You don’t think she’s done something stupid, do you? Can I come around? I’m going fucking nuts here.’

The idea of Rob coming around was horrific. I imagined trying to reassure my friend that everything would be fine for them, and that Hannah was probably just a bit grumpy with him — just as he found a pair of his wife’s knickers down the back of the cushions. And I couldn’t believe that even at a time like this the thought of Hannah’s knickers was distracting me.

‘Don’t come over,’ I said quickly. ‘You’ll want to stay there in case she gets back, and should be by the phone in case she rings. I’ll get dressed and come over.’

With that, and some half-hearted reassurances that everything would be fine, we hung up. Why did I say that I’d go around? I wondered to myself. What was I going to say? What was I going to do?

One thing I knew for sure was that I wasn’t going to be able to function until I had a very large, very sweet cup of tea.

Kettle on, I stumbled back into the bathroom for a quick shower, paranoid that there’d be traces of Hannah lingering when I saw Rob. While I was shampooing my hair I started to think about how she’d looked as her jeans had dropped to the floor, and her top had come off over her head. And the way her mouth had tasted when we’d kissed in the car park.

Then I thought how Rob had sounded, so helpless and vulnerable and panicked, and felt like a bastard in a way I’d never felt like a bastard before.

Dressed, and with the most obvious physical evidence of guilt washed away, I headed into the kitchen for more headache pills and that tea. I looked at the clock. It’d been a good couple of hours now since Hannah had left, and it was only a twenty-minute walk home. Could she have had an accident? I couldn’t let morbidity add another layer of stress; I figured we’d have heard of any Sunday morning traffic smash by now.

What if she’d just gone for a long walk, and was back home by the time I arrived there? And had told Rob that the night before she’d just gone to a party with me, and crashed at mine?

That’d mean I’d arrive at Rob’s just in time to try and explain why I hadn’t thought to bring up this obviously pertinent information to my obviously distraught best pal and that, now I thought of it, his wife had kipped on my sofa the night before, and I was sorry I forgot to mention it.

Without stopping to think about it too much, I picked up my phone and called Hannah’s mobile. While I was expecting it to at least ring a couple of times, it went straight to message, and after the shiver I felt just from hearing her say, ‘Hi, this is Hannah, leave a message,’ I didn’t know what to say.

‘It’s me,’ I finally managed. ‘Look…’

I refused to say the phrase ‘about last night’, but was tongue-tied trying to think of something else.