Getting Over It (5 page)

“All this way for a sausage roll” is one indiscreet but apt verdict on the aftershow party. Our Canadian relatives—having secured free bed, breakfast, lunch, dinner, entertainment, electricity, fluffy towels, and hot water from my mother—have repaid her by dragging their slothful selves to Wal-Mart and spending roughly three quid on a few loaves of white bread (economy), foul-tasting margarine (economy), tuna fish in oil (economy), four packs of potato chips (economy), and three packs of Lorna Doone Shortbread Cookies—which I refused to eat even as a two-year-old because there was no pink fondant or chocolate goo to offset the mouth-parching excess of biscuit.

My mother narrowly saves the day by picking the lock on my father’s drinks cabinet. Everyone falls upon the alcohol like alcoholics. My mother—who has a history of embarrassing my father at cocktail parties by demanding a cup of tea—swallows four double Baileys in ten seconds, then lurches up to me and sniggeringly confides, “Cousin Stephen is so tight that when he walks, his arse squeaks!” I am secretly impressed at this stunning transformation from griefstricken widow to guttermouth, but know if I reveal the smallest sign of amused acquiescence, she’ll run around braying this pertinent witticism to everyone, including Cousin Stephen. So I prise her fifth pint of Baileys out of her vicelike grip, replace it with a chill glass of water, and say primly, “At this precise moment, Mummy, you are in no position to be calling other people tight.”

I pour the Baileys down the sink and wish that everyone would leave. I don’t want to talk. Not even to my friends. It’s effort. I don’t want to hear how much Great-aunt Molly enjoyed chatting to my father about the Canadian property market or how he and Cousin Stephen went camping together when they were boys. I don’t give a shit. Trying to appropriate the lion’s share of the grief and limelight when they’re barely related! I don’t want to be sociable. I want my father to walk into the kitchen and say, “Helen, make me a cup of coffee, will you.”

The doorbell rings, and I sag, dramatically, like a sullen teenager and plod grumpily toward it. As I approach I can make out a familiar figure through the frosted glass. Surely not. I ping out of my slouch and curse myself for not changing my student skirt the second I returned to the house. As if on cue, Luke wanders out from the lounge. “Marcus said he might turn up later,” he says brightly. “Thanks for warning me,” I say, as I smoothe my hair and yank open the door. “Hell-ie,” says Marcus in a soothing tone. “You poor love. I am so sorry I missed your old man’s send-off. I so wanted to be there but some doll from this new girl group Second Edition needed showing round the gym. I tried to get out of it, but it was no-go.” I narrow my eyes disbelievingly and purse my lips in the beginnings of a pout.

“I’m sure you were desperate to escape from the glamorous pop star,” I say.

“Oh, Hellie, don’t be like that.” He grins. “I’d prefer to spend time with you any day. To be honest, she was a dog. Legs like tree trunks.” I do a token feminist tut to disguise a large smirk. Incidently, Marcus is the only person in the world I would ever allow to call me Hellie.

I have had an unrequited crush on Marcus for approximately nine years, ever since I spied him in the dinner queue at college. We had Luke’s friendship in common but as Marcus spent every waking hour at the gym, I only got to know him at close range three years ago—when he bought his flat in Swiss Cottage and needed someone, preferably more reliable than Luke, to rent a room. (Fortunately there wasn’t anyone, so Luke suggested me.)

Marcus is undeniably vain, excessively tidy, and an unrepentant philanderer, but alluring even so. His job—assistant manager and personal trainer at an exclusive London health club, pardon me, health spa—suits him to a tee and, not infrequently, into the bedroom. He knows that I fancy him, am humbly resigned to his romantic indifference, and that my lust is lying fallow. He therefore deduces—correctly—that I am delighted to be his friend and lodger even if he does charge slightly more than I can comfortably afford (there’s a surcharge for Fatboy). And he is fun to be with. He’s a monster bitch who is acidly critical of everyone he meets, yet superb at playing the sweetly caring friend. Marcus is adept at prising juicy chunks of gossip from his celebrity clients, and even more adept at blabbing them out to me and Luke. If I were ever to think about it—not that I do, of course—I’d say that Marcus is fond of me. We enjoy a flirtatious relationship which peaks when I’m going out with someone. When he’s going out with someone, it dips. When neither of us are going out with someone, it drops into freefall.

But today Marcus is touchy-feely. He kisses me on both cheeks in a sincere manner, lightly resting a warm hand on the back of my neck. A
zing!
of lust shoots down my back, my sourness dissipates, and my sunshiny temperament is magically restored. “Would you like a drink?” I purr.

“G and T would hit the spot, low-cal tonic if poss,” he replies immediately. I nod, direct him to where Lizzy, Luke, and Tina are sitting, and obediently trot off. “Nice skirt, Alison,” he calls.

“Piss off,” I shout, as I bump into Great-aunt Molly. She looks straight at me and bursts into tears.

I grit my teeth. “I didn’t mean you, Auntie Molly,” I say in a saccharine voice.

“Oh, no, dear, I know you didn’t. It’s all got on top of me”—sob—“talking to Florence. I know it’s hard for you, too, dear, but losing a child, a child—no parent should ever have to bury a child—” Great-aunt Molly is revving up for a big, bosomy, tear-stained rant, breezily innocent of the fact that I am fantastically insulted and itching to slap her.

“My father was fifty-nine,” I say coldly. “He was hardly a child.” This, I know, is a truly evil statement, but I have no room in my heart for other peoples’ whinging grief. I can just about stomach my mother’s. I squeeze past her, snatch the gin bottle from a comotose Cousin Stephen, pour Marcus’s drink (full-fat tonic, I’m afraid), and speed back to him and the others.

Luke and Tina are deep in conversation about lord knows what, and Marcus is baiting sweet, courteous, well-mannered Lizzy about precisely why she ditched her last boyfriend. “Was he a marshmallow in bed?” he demands.

“No! No, I mean, I’d really rather not—” Lizzy protests.

Marcus rolls his eyes and nods knowingly: “He had a matchstick dick!” Lizzy nearly spills her glass of Perrier.

“Really! Really, I don’t think—”

But Marcus is relentless. “So what then? Was it big? Bite-sized? Medium?” Lizzy looks down at her lap and says in a small reluctant voice, “Medium.” I shove the G&T at Marcus without making eye contact, march out of the living room, up the stairs and into the bathroom. I sit on the side of the avocado green bath, and laugh and laugh and laugh. I refuse to cry.

Chapter 6

A
LMOST EVERY NIGHT
, from ever since I can remember to the age of thirteen, I dreamed one of three dreams. Like most of the young female population, I’d attend school wearing no knickers—an omission I’d discover as we queued for assembly. Or I’d fly around our house with Peter Pan, leaping carefree over the banisters and floating upward as weightless and airy as Tinkerbell. Most frequently, though, I’d walk alone into our local woods, in the terrible knowledge that a family of wolves lurked in the bushes. I’d start running, and they’d chase me. The dream never varied except on one memorable occasion, when I sped out of the wood and jumped over interminable lines of parked cars to escape them. Recently, however, my dreams have taken on a more urgent note. I dream I am hiding from a group of nameless baddies, in a huge empty house. I know they will hunt me down, and the dream always ends as they yank me out of the attic closet. I try to relate it to Marcus but he yawns loudly, turns on the TV, and says, “There’s nothing more boring than other peoples dreams.”

The bastard’s right, so I ring Lizzy and tell her about it instead. Lizzy immediately consults a book she has, titled
Definitive Meanings of Dreams Dreamed by People We’ve Never Met but
Whose Unconscious We’re Experts On.
Or something like that. “Your ambition is pursuing you and pushing you toward success,” she declares.

“Are you sure?” I say doubtfully.

Lizzy recommends that tonight, before I go to sleep, I imagine confronting the baddies and demanding to know what they want from me.

“Mm, okay,” I say, knowing full well I will do nothing of the sort. Anyhow, I know what my dream signifies: that I am tired of being hassled by relatives who I wish to avoid but can’t escape.

Last night—after the hoi polloi finally left and the beneficiaries sobered up—our family solicitor, Mr. Alex Simpkinson, read out my father’s will. Maybe I drank more than I thought because all I remember is my mother sobbing, Cousin Stephen whining, and Nana Flo shouting: “Silence!” I’m sick of the lot of them. I have two more days of compassionate leave and my mother is badgering me to “pop round.” In other words, to share the burden of familial duty. Joyously, I have a valid excuse: My car is at the vet. “You mean the garage,” she says. “Yeah,” I reply, because I can’t be bothered to explain. “Get a taxi then,” she says quickly.

I tell her I’m broke, and furthermore this week I’m on half pay. “I’ll pay,” she growls. I tell her thank you, but I’m urgently busy. This isn’t, funnily enough, a lie. I have to locate my car insurance details and I haven’t the least idea where they are, who I’m insured with, or indeed if I’m insured at all. My father was always instructing me to file important papers, but how monstrously uncool is that? Far trendier to shove them in the nearest drawer. Only now, they seem to have vanished. A red wave of frustration floods me, and before I know it, I’ve snatched up my breakfast plate—a square of marmalade toast still on it—and hurled it at the wall. The plate (one of a garish set Marcus bought from the Habitat sale) smashes loudly into a thousand sharp pieces and leaves a dent. The marmaladen toast, of course, sticks messily to the wallpaper. Good.

Luke discovers me, thirty minutes later, hyperventilating on the bed. I whine out the tale of the horrid, spiteful car insurance papers and he gives a cursory glance around my bombsite bedroom, pokes aside a rogue pair of graying knickers with his toe, picks up a few sheets of paper festering underneath them, and says, “Isn’t this it?” I am too relieved to be embarrassed. Anyway, it’s only Luke.

“Thank you,” I say stiffly.

“No problem,” he replies. “What are you going to do now?”

I’m not sure, but I think he’s asking me less out of interest than to ensure I’m not about to smash any more of Marcus’s precious plates. “I’m going to put on a ton of mascara then call a cab and get my car back.” Luke nods approvingly. “Say hi to Tom,” he says.

Tom, it turns out, used to play football against Luke when Luke—fighting fit on a mere twenty a day—was a goalie in the Sunday league. I know this because as we drive home from the funeral, Luke demands, “How do you know Tom?” Not, you’ll note, “Why did you arrive at your dad’s funeral in a vet’s van?” But then, that’s Luke. I assume Tina didn’t notice and Lizzy was too polite to ask.

An hour later I am standing in the clinical-reeky reception of Megavet, attempting to be civil to Celine. Who is, pleasingly, on her hands and knees wiping up a yellow puddle of Labrador wee. But it’s impossible. I apologize, again, for denting the car—I refuse to refer to it by name. Her rude response: “Your negligance has caused me a great deal of inconvenience.” My rude response to her rude response: “What long words! Do you know what they mean?” We exchange details in the same manner as, I imagine, Batman and the Joker after a prang in the Batmobile. I employ my sneeriest, snootiest, shop assistant-est expression throughout, then realize I need to ask her a favor.

I decide to be brazen. “Is Tom around?” I say in a bored tone. She looks down her ski-jump nose and drawls, in an equally bored tone, “He’s busy.” I am on the verge of leaping over the reception desk and throttling her when the surgery door clicks open, a large dough-faced woman carrying a tiny Yorkshire Terrier waddles out, and Tom appears—a happy medium—behind her. I rearrange my expression to saintly.

“
Hel
lo,” he says when he sees me. He jerks his head toward the surgery door. “Come in—I’ll be one second.” Tom then turns his attention to totting up the bill, so I cross my eyes at Celine, smile nastily, and sashay into the surgery. I sit down, and am suddenly overcome with the irrational fear that I have spinach in my teeth (unlikely, as I don’t eat spinach) so I dig through my bag, extract a makeup mirror, bare my teeth, and peer into it. So when Tom walks in I am making a face like an aggressive baboon. I shut my mouth and the mirror about as fast as the speed of light. I think he didn’t notice.

“How was it,” says Tom, “if that’s not a stupid question.” I look at him blankly.

“How was what?”

“The funeral,” he says.

“Ohhhh! Oh, that. Terrible, actually.” He wants to know why so I tell him, at length. Then I wonder if he really wanted to know or if he was just being polite. In the past, I’ve been reprimanded by Jasper for engaging his boss in a long discussion about my recurring headaches. “Even if you’re in intensive care on a life support machine, you don’t tell people!” he’d squawked. “You say I’m fine, thank you very much, and you?’ ”

I remember this gem of advice after regaling Tom with tales from the crypt for a full eight minutes. “Anyway,” I say quickly, “it’s over now. I just really came by to get my car and say thanks again for the lift.” Tom’s face breaks into a smile and he says “Any time” like he means it. He is fiddling with a Biro. There is a short silence, then we both speak at once.

“I think you know my flatma—” I say.

“I wondered if you—” he says. He stops, quickly.

“You say,” he says. I giggle nervously, and say, “I was only going to say, I think you know my flatmate Luke Randall. Or at least, he knows you.”

Tom wrinkles his nose. “Luke, tactless Luke?” he says.

“Yeeees!” I say, in a disproportionate squeal of pleasure. Tom laughs. He then tells me about the time a bunch of them went on a boys’ night out to a rough East End nightclub and the screw on Luke’s glasses came loose. “So he goes up to the barman and says ‘Have you got a knife?’!”

We are sniggering fondly when there’s a sharp rap on the door as it is hurled open. Celine, in a voice of doom, declares: “Mrs. Jackson and Natascha Tiddlums The Third have been waiting to see you for twenty minutes and if you keep her waiting any longer she’s going to be late for her charity lunch.”

Tom mutters under his breath, “Who, Mrs. Jackson or Natascha Tiddlums?” Then he smiles at me and says, “I’d better get on.” He looks as if he wants to add something, so I hesitate. But he doesn’t, so I say awkwardly, “Okay, see you then. ’Bye.” As I walk toward the surgery exit, I am aware of Celine’s beady eyes burning a hole in my back like a laser sight, so I turn round and sing in a sarcastically gay tone, “Byee!”

I drive home in the dented Toyota, smiling.