Further Under the Duvet (31 page)

Mind you, now and then I caught a glimpse of my behaviour, as seen from the outside, and wondered about it. But I’d had my husband stolen and all my left-foot shoes stolen. If I was a little unhinged, who could blame me?

Every night I went to the pub, sat on a stool and watched for one-shoed men. Every night I wore one shoe and left it behind when I went home. Although I had left nine shoes on nine different nights there had been no sightings of Hayley and Steven.

One night I arrived at the pub to find Nick bubbling over with excitement. ‘I have your Cinderella,’ he hissed. ‘He was
here the night before you found the shoe. And he’s the kind of bloke who’d have a cool shoe like that.’ He jerked his head discreetly. ‘It’s him over there.’

I looked and immediately I knew this wasn’t our man. This one was too good-looking. Wasn’t it traditional to make approaches to the ugly sisters first?

However, we went through the motions and, actually, he wasn’t even nice about it. He seemed baffled when I withdrew the purple shoe from my bag, then he looked at my feet, at the shiny black stiletto on one foot and the big toe poking through the hole in the tights on the other. (Yes, all my tights had developed holes.) Fear scooted across his face; he suspected he was being set up, that he was the subject of a big, shoe-based leg-pull and that the whole pub was in on it. ‘That’s not my shoe.’ He dropped eye-contact, then moved away as fast as anyone can in Oliver Sweeney Chelsea boots. Seconds later, he left.

Nick and I exchanged a look. ‘It was worth a try,’ I said, then Nick went back to polishing glasses and I resumed counting and drinking.

‘Give me another look at it,’ Nick asked later. ‘Remind me of the brand name again.’

I unfolded the pashmina and purpleness blazed around the bar counter. Nick and I shared another meaningful look. I knew what he was thinking: normal non-magical shoes don’t behave that way. The brand name was picked out in gold leaf on the leather insole. Merlotti.

‘I’ll look it up on the internet,’ Nick said.

‘No point,’ I said. I’d already googled the brand and got nothing…

Suddenly a voice behind me cut into our conversation. ‘Excuse me,’ it said, ‘but that’s my shoe!’

I froze. I knew that voice. And from Nick’s expression, he knew that face. I stayed as I was, facing towards Nick and all those nice shiny bottles behind the bar. Still and defiant, I refused to turn around because once I did, I knew that every single sprinkle of magic would disperse, the magic I had come to depend on.

Stupid bastard. He had to ruin bloody well everything.

I started counting. From the outside it might have looked as though the three of us and the shoe were in the grip of a hideously embarrassing silence, but I was far away inside my head. I’d got as far as twenty-four before he said, ‘Alice, won’t you look at me?’

‘Nope.’ Now I had to start again. One, two, three, four, five, six…

‘It’s my shoe,’ he repeated.

‘What do you want, a medal?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, but how do we know it’s yours?’ Nick challenged, a little sneery about the lip.

Silently, a plastic bag was placed on the bar top from which a shoe-sized flannel sleeping bag appeared. A second of hesitation, as if to build anticipation, then the sleeping bag’s drawstring was loosed and a purple shoe was slid out. From the violet light that burst forth, there was no mistaking it. It was the matching shoe, the other one in the pair.

He placed it next to mine and, almost hypnotized, I watched both shoes as they sat on the wooden counter. Side by side they hummed with a transcendent wholeness, such
astonishing completeness. Two things had never belonged more together and created a greater-than-the-sum-of-their-parts perfect oneness.

I sighed and swivelled around. There he was, doing his concerned face – furrowed brow, ‘kindly’ eyes – the face he’d presented the day he’d left me for Hayley, as he asked if I’d be okay. At the time I was meant to play ball and promise that yes, of course I’d be okay. But I hadn’t. I had assured him I would never be right in the head again. ‘Good,’ he’d said absently. ‘Good.’ And then he’d taken his leave – a guilt-free one because he’d behaved with honour by acting concerned.

‘Steven, what’s going on?’

‘These are my shoes. Hayley had them handmade for me in Paris. My feet were measured specially, they cost a fortune.’

I set my face in an expression of polite but condescending and-exactly-what-the-fuck-does-this-have-to-do-with-me?-ness. (Note to self: handmade shoes take a very long time. I’d never been able to establish just how long this Steven and Hayley thing had been up and running. Quite a while, it seemed.)

And what was Hayley doing giving purple, handmade, French shoes to Steven? Steven cared as much about shoes as I cared about the mating habits of crisp packets. But I understood that Hayley was such an unempathetic, self-obsessed type that the presents she gave would have to be something she wanted herself. (Like those stupid men who buy their wife a car global positioning system for her birthday and are baffled when she shrieks the house down.)

‘I’m very sorry about your shoes,’ Steven said. ‘About you
being left with all those single ones. I heard about you showing up here in only one shoe. Naomi rang me. I came over, I saw you leave the silver shoe behind. I thought if I left my expensive handmade one in its place, you’d know I was sorry.’

Behind my polite face, I processed this ridiculousness. The appearance of the magical purple shoe in place of my silver sandal was a coded apology from Steven for letting his girlfriend into my flat to steal my shoes. How lovely!

It would have been a million times better had he got my own shoes back for me, instead of leaving me one of his own. Dickhead. But what had I expected? I was reminded of the time I’d had an excruciating toothache and instead of Steven ringing a dentist and sorting me out with extreme painkillers, he’d lain down on my bed and cried with me.

‘But you kept coming here every night, doing that one-shoe thing. I realized you didn’t know I’d apologized. I thought I’d better tell you.’

‘Take your shoe back.’ I slid it over to him. I no longer wanted it, it had been leached of all magic. I’d miss it tonight on my pillow but I was going to have to get used to sleeping on my own at some stage.

I was on the tube when I saw a man I recognized. For a moment I couldn’t remember where I knew him from. Oh yes, I used to be married to him, didn’t I?

I couldn’t say it was nice to see him, it would never be nice to be reminded of my stupidity, but I was certainly able to be civil.

I enquired after Hayley. Unfortunately she was well. She and Steven were still together.

‘And you?’ Steven said. ‘You’ll meet someone else too.’

‘I already have.’

‘Oh?’ He looked a little shaken. ‘Is it… um… serious?’

‘Yes. I’m very happy. Here’s my stop, I have to go now.’

I jumped off the train, thrust back briefly into those terrible, terrible days when I was as mad as a cut snake, fixated only on single shoes. When getting through a whole day was out of the question, when even an hour was unmanageable, when I’d had to break the process of endurance down to each individual second. Hard to believe how hopeless I’d felt then, convinced utterly that I’d never meet someone else.

But I did. This time through an ad in
Time Out
. Her name is Jenny. Like me, she’s short and, like me, she loves high heels. Won’t wear anything else. It’s only been a couple of months but already it’s been a great success (two pairs of boots, one knee, one ankle, dull but worthy navy work shoes and some whimsical little pumps) and I certainly don’t anticipate having the same trouble with her as I did with Hayley.

Written for the BBC’s
End of Story,
2004
.

Q
.
Dear Mammy Walsh, I’ve been with my boyfriend for almost three years and last night we were sitting at home watching
EastEnders
and suddenly he blurted out, ‘Have you put on weight? You have, haven’t you?’ And yes, I must admit I have. I was a size twelve when I met him and now I’m a size sixteen, so I said, ‘Yeah, a bit, I s’pose. But you still love me, don’t you?’ And he said, ‘Course I love you.’ But he was looking at me strangely, as if he hadn’t really seen me for months. His eyes lingered far too long on my belly, which wasn’t fair because I was wearing my slobbing-around clothes, as you do, in the evenings after work, and obviously no one looks their best in them. So I sucked in my stomach and said, ‘Well if you love me, then there’s no problem.’ Then he said, ‘But I liked it better when you were thin.’ I was absolutely gutted. If people love each other, how they look should have nothing to do with things. What should I do?

Holly, London

A
. Dear Holly from London, have you tried Weight Watchers? Deirdre McMahon from four doors up got great results from it. She was quite stout before she started, but now she is down to her ‘target weight’ and is pure skin and bone. Mind you, we’ve heard about nothing else for the past year, except points and plateaus.
Sometimes when it was ‘Weigh-in day’ and I’d see her coming, I used to pretend to have cystitis, just so I wouldn’t have to invite her in. And since she reached that bloody ‘target weight’ she has got her hair cut and coloured, bought an entire new wardrobe and talks about nothing but sex. And this is a woman, like me, in her sixties. She was over only yesterday, wearing a tight top that said ‘Bad Angel’, a pair of ‘hipsters’ and a pink ‘thong’ sticking up for all to see, even though I happen to know that that ‘thong on display’ look is ‘so’ ‘over’. She never sits down any more, because she can display her weight loss better standing up. We were talking about ordering turkeys for Christmas and I said, ‘I need a nice big one,’ and she said, ‘Wehay, missus!’ and did that vulgar action where you thrust your hips forward and pull your arms back. Then she wasn’t able to open the biscuit tin (she always insists on having biscuits present just so she can show how great she is not to be having any). And I said, ‘Give it a good yank,’ and she said, ‘As Des said to me last night!’ Des is her husband, a huge big heavy man, who could do with a bit of Weight Watching himself. Helen, my daughter, sometimes calls him Dessy McFive-Bellies (to his face) and says that she bets he hasn’t seen ‘Little Dessy’ for over a decade. (Also to his face and he sort of broke down and admitted it was true and Helen was horrified because then she had to try to be nice to him until she could find an excuse to run away.)

So, as I say, I can personally endorse Weight Watchers. If you stick with it for a few tough months, it’ll be worth it, because at the end your boyfriend will love you again. (I know he’s saying he still does, but let’s face it, you know it and I know it: you’re on thin ice.)

However, if you are one of these people who is ‘addicted’ to chocolate and has to have it no matter what, Weight Watchers mightn’t be enough; you might have to be hypnotized. There was a
programme about it. There was this woman and in her own words she ‘just had to have it’. As Deirdre McMahon might say – Fnnarr! Anyway, this woman, if she hadn’t had chocolate for a day or so, used to start fights with people and crying in the street and whatnot, so this man hypnotized her by telling her to associate chocolate with terrible things – the Stalinist purges of the thirties, little calves in abattoirs, Westlife singing ‘Mandy’, especially how they keep reaching out their hands and clutching at the air, always out of sync with each other. It was marvellous television, really interesting. And the hypnotherapy worked. They started shoving bars of chocolate at her – Flakes, Crunchies, Snickers (or is it Snickers
es
? I’m never sure), Bounties, Yorkies – like they were baiting a bear with a stick, and she begged them to take them away. (To be honest, though, I thought I detected a little flicker of interest when they produced the Bounty, but maybe I was only imagining it.)

Anyway, she was going great guns, eschewing chocolate left, right and centre, but after three days she cracked and started milling into the Fruit and Nut, then lying about it and saying that chocolate still repulsed her. But because of the hidden cameras in her flat, we knew all about it and the producers did a surprise raid on her and she was brought into a viewing room and made to sit down and watch reruns of her guzzling. Obviously she was shamed to the core but three months later they did a follow-up show and she was still on the chocolate.

If you are lucky enough to be ‘mortally obese’ you could qualify to have your stomach stapled. This is an operation where they cut away several miles of your large intestine and staple up your stomach until it is the size of a pea (marrowfat, rather than petit pois). This means that if you have more than two spoonfuls of mashed potato at your dinner, your stitches will burst open and
you will die a slow, horrible, lingering death. Something to focus the mind when you’re looking at that slice of Black Forest Gateau!

Anyway, Holly, good luck with it all, whichever route you choose, but for God’s sake, don’t go for the cabbage soup diet. You will suffer from severe flatulence and if your boyfriend doesn’t leave you for being stout, he will leave you because of the smell.

Happy to be of help!

Q
.
Dear Mammy Walsh, thank you for your detailed diet advice. But that wasn’t the advice I wanted. I was thinking that if my boyfriend loves me, surely he should love me, no matter what I look like?

Holly, London

A
. Well, Holly, I’m sorry I misunderstood, so I am. But the thing is, in my day it was all different. Once you had the ring on your finger, you could go to hell altogether and guzzle scones and brown bread and jam all day long. You could put on four stone in four months and there wasn’t a damn thing your husband could do about it, because there was no divorce in Ireland. Mind you, all these eating disorders and whatnot weren’t invented in my day and although we certainly got stout, it was more to do with having a clatter of children than ‘compulsive overeating’.

But, Holly, my point is,
there is no ring on your finger
. And even if there was, he could divorce you in the twinkling of an eye. There isn’t the same security for women these days. To use a term I heard in an economics programme on telly (God knows why I was watching it) you are ‘a seller in a buyer’s market’.