Just a Girl, Standing in Front of a Boy (13 page)

You know that feeling you get when you suspect that you’ve really cocked up and things are liable to explode? Well, I’ve got it. Strongly. Matt’s been away for ten days. He got back late last night and was in work first thing this morning as usual. Normally, I’d suggest me popping round to his, ordering us a takeaway, then running him a bath and giving him a massage in bed. That’s what I should have done. That’s Wife-To-Be-of-the-Year-Award stuff, that. What I’ve done instead is the stuff of How to Totally Pee Your Husband-To-Be Off In One Easy Step. But Mum has been so excited to meet Matt, and her excitement wore off on me. So I suggested we all have dinner out somewhere together tonight. Matt was humpy about it on the phone when I first mentioned it this morning but then Mum said, ‘Let me talk to my soon-to-be son-in-law,’ and snatched the phone off me. She seized it in her excitement but Matt’s not one for surprises. He tried to excuse himself by saying he wouldn’t be finishing work until late. But Mum said that didn’t matter, we could do a late dinner at the curry house. So Matt acquiesced. However, if there’s one thing that makes Matt cranky it’s being placed in a position where he can’t say no. It’s not boding well.

‘I think I want the prawn special, that sounds delicious,’ I say, looking at the menu.

‘That poor boy does work late,’ my mum says, checking her watch, and scooping mango chutney on to her poppadom. ‘It’s five past nine.’

‘I wouldn’t poor boy him, he likes it.’

‘Jack was like that.’

‘Hmmm.’

‘It’s a good trait in a man, being diligent about his job.’

‘Hmmm. Oh, here he is.’ I jump up. Matt stands in the doorway, wearing his navy suit trousers and a creased white shirt. He looks tired and unpredictable and wildly sexy, if I’m being honest. He’s my man, but somehow when I look at him I’m always surprised that he’s my man. I walk slowly towards him.

‘Hello, handsome, I missed you,’ I say.

He sighs, gives me a peck on the cheek and says, ‘This is the last thing I feel like doing tonight, Fan.’

Bugger. Bugger. Bugger.

‘Matt, this is my mum,’ I say, trying to keep my tone upbeat.

‘Hello, Matt! Aren’t you handsome!’ Mum stands up and holds out her hand. He shakes it. I wish he’d given her a kiss. ‘Now sit down, favourite son-in-law-to-be and let’s pour you a glass of wine.’

He flops into the seat next to me. I lean over for a peck on the cheek, but he swats me away like a fly and hangs his suit jacket behind his chair instead. Now, I’m used to the after-work Matt swat. But Mum isn’t. And I feel embarrassed to be swatted away like a pest in front of her.

‘How was the trip?’ I ask.

‘Tiring,’ he says without looking at me.

He’s blaming me because he’s here. Marvellous. Mum’s giving him a look I can’t read.

‘Poppadom,’ she offers. He takes one without thanking her. ‘So what do you recommend to eat here?’

‘We always have the same. One chicken korma, one lamb passanda to share,’ he says, closing the menu, placing it on the table and signalling for the waiter.

‘But, Jenny, you were going to have that king prawn special.’

‘Yeah, but, I think I’ll stick to our usual.’

‘Yep, stick with what you know,’ Matt says, emphatically.

‘Stick with what you know,’ Mum echoes. She’s looking at Matt in that strange way again. ‘Tell me about your work, Matt, what exactly do you do?’

‘I work for Sorton Ltd, which basically buys and sells either entire companies —’

‘Like Richard Gere in
Pretty Woman
,’ I explain.

‘Oh, he’s devastating in that film,’ Mum sighs.

‘Or parts of companies,’ he carries on. ‘I specialise in the finance arena as opposed to say manufacturing or marketing. So it keeps me largely in the UK although I go to Germany and the US a fair bit. The company, and in particular the finance team, which I lead, has shown tremendous growth in the past four years. So much so I’m expecting to be made a partner at the end of the year.’ He turns to me and smiles. Finally. And he takes my hand.

A waiter arriving to take our order brings some light relief to the conversation. When he’s gone I open my mouth to try to make the conversation a bit more user friendly but Mum has beaten me to it.

‘Jenny’s dad worked for IJD, well, still does we assume,’ Mum tells Matt.

‘IJD. You never said,’ Matt says to me.

‘Why would I say?’

‘Because IJD are huge. I modelled my finance team on IJD’s when I started.’

‘I said he was a finance something or other.’

‘What does he do there?’

‘Bank-to-bank finance.’

‘Interesting.’

‘So, is yours a sociable company? Do the wives mix?’

‘I think some of them play golf.’

I start strangling myself with my napkin.

‘You’re not funny,’ Matt tells me, but the corners of his mouth do turn up a fraction.

‘I am. I’m hilarious,’ I say, cheekily.

‘We’ve been having a lot of fun discussing ideas for the wedding,’ Mum gushes.

‘Yes. Let’s tell him about the amazing cheap wedding we’ve planned. It’s practically free, Matt, you’ll be very impressed.’ Right, now I’ve got the conversation tiller I’m not letting anyone get hold of it. ‘So, we have this big list at home, which we drew up, it’s all on a whiteboard to show you. It’s in categories like, Food, Entertainment and Decoration. And under each category there are lots of things, so under Food is coronation chicken, potato salad, cheesecake, etc. And under Entertainment is sing a song, read a poem, play crazy disco for an hour on your iPod speakers, bits and bobs like that. Under Decorations are pick eight small bunches of wild flowers and put them in jam jars for each table, buy and blow up balloons, etc. And basically my list is based on inviting eighty guests and everybody says they’ll do or bring at least one thing. Two ladies at the surgery have both offered their gardens for free and we can use Marge’s dad’s marquee that he bought for her brother’s wedding and intended to hire out but never got round to it and pitch it in someone’s garden. We borrow the chairs and tables from the Rotary Club, a chap at the surgery will sort that out for us.’ I pause. This is quite a vigorous presentation, I need to breathe. Still I think I’m nailing it. ‘And then we have a wedding, cheap but ever so cheerful, I would say. And we can either do the booze, or ask everyone to bring a bottle and then we just have to pay for the Jägerbombs.’ I smile. Phew.

Matt doesn’t look well.

‘Jägerbombs, jam jars and coronation chicken,’ he says quietly. Then he says, ‘Jägerbombs, jam jars and coronation chicken,’ a bit louder. ‘I can’t invite my bosses to a wedding where there’s Jägerbombs, jam jars and coronation chicken, that they’ll have to make themselves!’ Ooh, he’s getting quite impassioned now. ‘And someone doing shuffle on their iPod, Fan. I’d already decided to use my bonus and have it at the golf club. I called them today and booked the eighteenth of August.’

‘The golf club!’

‘Yes. The golf club that I’ve just joined, that all the partners play at. That has a function room overlooking the first hole.’

‘The golf club. The male-dominated least sexy place in the universe where we’ll pay a fortune for horrible food and uptight people serving it!’ I’m raising my voice. It’s very unlike me. The golf club!

Matt looks shocked, then annoyed.

‘We’re having it at the golf club, Jenny,’ he says, firmly.

‘But… but… I…’

I swallow. Tears prick the corners of my eyes. I feel like a child who’s been told off.

‘But I…’

He sighs. ‘It’s booked. I’ve paid the non-refundable deposit. Come on, baby, cheer up.’

I think about telling him where to shove his cheer up. I really do give it a lot of consideration. But I don’t.

‘Can we maybe do a theme?’

‘A theme?’

‘Yeah, pimps and hookers.’ I couldn’t resist.

‘Fan!’

‘I’m joking. No, like a time period. I’d like to go for sixties or seventies. Then I’d have the option of wearing a short dress.’

‘Fan, I’m hardly going to invite my bosses to a wedding and tell them to dress up in clothes from the sixties, and you can’t get married in a minidress.’

‘But you like my legs.’

‘I’ve got the rest of my life to look at them, I don’t want to on my wedding day. On my wedding night perhaps, but that’s a different story.’

I’m about to make a futile protestation when the food arrives. Mum’s looking at me strangely. Matt’s fishing his BlackBerry out of his jacket. I spoon the chicken korma onto my plate. I wish I’d ordered the prawn.

If forced to come up with some adjectives to describe the evening I’d worry that hideous, atrocious, abysmal were falling short and have to insist that they were preceded with adverbs such as unimaginably, eye-wateringly and pant-poopingly. However, even this wouldn’t adequately convey quite how uncomfortable the nice Indian for my mum to get to know my future husband felt. I’d probably have to resort to mime and cover myself in chicken korma and then invite rabid dogs to eat it off me. Although thinking about it, even that might not get the point across.

The three of us will have to do something at the weekend together, so Mum can see that he’s not all bad. Because he’s not, far from it. Well, having seen him tonight, not that far from it, next door to it possibly or a flat above it in the same building. But Matt is capable of being the sweetest, funniest, sexiest man alive.

‘Jenny,’ my mum whispers. She’s crept into the lounge in her nightie.

‘Hey.’

‘Are you asleep?’

‘Yep.’

‘Can I come in?’

‘Um, yeah. I’ll curl up. Sit on the end there.’

She sits down on the sofa that has become my bed.

‘Oh, love,’ she says, sadly.

I tense. It’s going to be another feelings chat.

‘What?’ I say. It comes out a little testily.

‘I don’t know how to say this.’

Never a great thing to hear.

‘What?’

‘I think you might be making a big mistake.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Oh, I can’t believe I’m going to say this… I think you’re making a mistake marrying Matt.’

I don’t reply.

‘Oh, God, Jenny. I’m so sorry. Matt’s just like your dad.’

I glare at her through the gloom. That was unforgivable. And untrue. Mum’s frozen, staring at me.

‘He’s nothing like Dad,’ I explain. ‘He was just stressed tonight.’

‘Oh, Jenny.’

‘Mum, stop it.’

‘Oh, love.’

‘Mum, please stop the pitying ohs.’

‘Philippa doesn’t think you should marry him either, does she?’

‘That’s different. She’s jealous.’

‘And Al.’

‘What’s Al got to do with it?’

‘He calls him Twat not Matt.’

I didn’t even know that.

‘He just does that because he thinks he’s funny. I don’t want to talk now, Mum. Can I go to sleep?’

‘Course, night, love.’

She gets up and goes back into her/my room. I lie still, listening to my breathing getting quicker and quicker. I’m cross. How much longer will Mum stay?

‘It’s me again,’ she whispers.

I pretend to be sleeping.

‘I know you’re not asleep. I can tell by your breathing that you’re awake. But I’ll just speak anyway.’

She doesn’t sit down this time. She stands above me. I don’t move.

‘Now, I’ve helped you plan this wedding, I’ve bought the dress. But I don’t think you should go ahead with it. I think, years from now, you won’t be happy if you marry Matt. I think you’ll be like me.’

My breathing is getting deeper. I don’t want to hear any of this.

‘I made the best of it, because that’s what you do, you get on with it, you celebrate the strawberries you’ve got growing in the garden – you celebrate the little things so that the big gloomy fact that you married the wrong man doesn’t weigh you down to your toes. And he adored me for that, Jack did, but not enough to allow me any freedom and not enough to keep himself faithful. And it was like looking in a mirror tonight, Jenny, seeing the two of you together. Seeing you succumb to Matt the same way I did to Jack.’

She pauses and sighs.

‘Jenny, I want you to be with a man whose face lights up when he sees you, who asks you what you want to do and doesn’t assume you’ll have what he’s having. You’re so full of this extraordinary energy and joy and I don’t want to see a man douse it, like Matt did tonight. I’m worried that you think you deserve to be treated the way Matt treated you tonight. Because you don’t.’

She sighs again.

‘Oh, well, I’ve said my piece.’ She tiptoes back to her room.

No, actually, it’s
my
room. It’s
my
flat. It’s
my
life. I am so angry I want to roar and scream and smash these windows. How dare she stand in my home and criticise my life.

I throw the covers off. Within seconds I’m standing over her, as she lies in bed.

‘Since when did you become Frigging Oprah?’ I’m shouting. I don’t know whether I’ve ever shouted at anyone before. It feels strange and hard to curb. There were so many times I wanted to shout at her when I was growing up. ‘Why don’t you stand up for me?’ I wanted to scream. ‘Why don’t you stand up for me against Dad?’ I never did then. Now I can’t stop myself. ‘I don’t remember you ever giving me advice when I’ve needed it. And it might have been nice then. When you were the person I looked up to. Or when you were the person who would just stand by as Dad was destroying me. But you can’t swan in now and tell me what to do. Because I don’t need you now! I’m fine with you being here and having hangovers and trying to forget about Dad. But please don’t start criticising my life. You don’t understand.
You
may not think I’m doing well, but I do.’

I stomp back into the lounge.

Of course I’m going to marry Matt. You don’t give up on the man you’re going to marry just because your mum cocked up her choice of life partner or because you meet a rock star who writes you a song. No one would do that. Would they? No.

‘I’m going to kill him.’

Marge has found out about Tim. She went into his phone. She wanted to change the ringtone that came on when she called him to that song that goes ‘I’m horny, horny, horny, horny’. But as she was doing it a text came through from another woman. I don’t know if it was pub quiz girl or someone else, what I do know is that Marge is terrifying today. She’s not shouting. There’s no rage. Just cold, calculating fantasies about how she can make Tim feel pain.

‘I will make him suffer as he made me suffer,’ she says calmly, taking another date slice from the box she brought in from the bakery this morning.

‘Do you want a cuppa?’ I offer.

She nods. She doesn’t even look at me, just chews the date slice with a vengeful look in her eyes.

I wait for the kettle to boil. This is terrible. She’s broken. What if she really does kill him? She’ll get sent to prison. Two lives ruined. Two careers scuppered, one in illegal house clearance, the other in health negotiations. Oh, and what about Disgruntled Dave? He filmed last night’s confrontation apparently, but he’s not here today. He can’t film Tim and Marge any more because there
is
no Tim and Marge. I’ll have to keep an eye on her. Crimes of passion are more likely to happen in the two weeks immediately after a major disturbance like this. But she could start calmly planning to do away with him. That could take years. Oh, God.

‘Jenny?’

‘Dr Flemming.’ I smile. ‘Cuppa?’

‘Lovely.’ He nods. ‘Decaf. Can’t take the excitement of the other.’

‘Coming up.’

‘Am I detecting some turbulence on the desk?’

‘You are. Marge caught Tim cheating last night.’

‘Oh, dear. What’s her mental state?’

‘Planning murder.’

‘Naturally.’

I don’t respond. Dr Flemming’s wife left him and Philippa for another man. Philippa was fourteen. Mrs Flemming had been back to the States to visit family when she fell head over heels with another man; her tantric sex instructor. They’re still together now.

‘Although we should watch Marge, I think someone in her family went to prison for murder.’

‘Yeah, I was thinking that. One decaf,’ I say, handing him the cup.

‘Jenny, did you, er, did you happen to mention that Mozart concert to your mother?’

‘Yes. Yes, did she not call you?’

‘No, not to worry, perhaps it slipped her mind.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry, she’s not been feeling herself.’

‘Well, of course. Well, if at anytime she feels like the cinema perhaps.’

‘Dr Flemming, I don’t think she’s ready to date yet after my dad.’

‘Oh, Jenny, I didn’t mean that. I thought she might like some company that’s all. She…’ He stops himself.

‘She what?’

‘Well. I thought she might be low and need cheering up. Do you know in all the times I met her when you girls were at school and I would pick Philippa up from your house or she’d come to fetch you from ours…’

‘Hmm.’

‘I don’t remember seeing her smile. She never seemed happy.’

I think about that for a few moments. But I’m still so angry with her I can’t muster much sympathy and I can’t reply because I fear it’ll turn into a rant against my mother. I’m sick of her being here, I really am. I wouldn’t turn up at someone’s place and loll around the place with a hangover on a daily basis and comment upon their lives. I wouldn’t do it.

I take a deep breath and return to Heartbreak Headquarters. I place Marge’s tea in front of her. She doesn’t acknowledge me, just picks up another date slice.

‘You know what we need?’

‘I couldn’t say,’ Marge says.

‘Destiny’s Child. There’s nothing else for it. The Rules of the Sisterhood state that in times of heartbreak we must worship at the alter of the Child of Destiny, the
Survivor
album. You’re a survivor, Marge. Listen to the girls.’

I play it on YouTube. Bashing my fist against my chest as I feel the power. I listened to nothing but this track when I was brutally dumped at the age of seventeen.

‘Great track,’ I say and I give Marge a squeeze when it’s finished. ‘What I suggest we do this evening is go on a girls’ night.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so.’

‘What will you do instead?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Stay at home and mooch?’

‘Hmmmm.’

‘Come out. Booze and man moaning is what you need. Come on. Philippa will be up for it. We’ll all glam up and then we’ll talk about all the awful things that have happened to us and that we’ve survived and we’ll laugh and we’ll cry and you’ll wake up so hungover tomorrow that you won’t even remember who Tim is.’

‘Can your mum come? She’s been through this too. Will she come?’ Marge asks.

‘Um, I’m not sure, I’ll ask her,’ I say, unenthusiastically. ‘Now the question is, where?’

‘Somewhere Tim won’t be.’

I think. But I can only come up with one place that Tim definitely won’t be.

‘My flat,’ I venture. ‘It’s central, close to buses and, more vitally, booze shops. That is a cordial invite. No, order.’