Just a Girl, Standing in Front of a Boy (4 page)

Matt’s only gone and brought me on the London Eye. Now, I know it’s a very loving gesture. Many people might call this the perfect romantic Friday night. They may be overjoyed to share such amazing views with their true love. Not me. I don’t do heights. At all. I haven’t opened my eyes since we started moving. Matt knows I’m afraid of heights. He must have forgotten. I can’t begin to explain how ghastly it is. Miles and miles and miles above and beyond ghastly, in fact. My mother’s come to stay and I’m on the London Eye. Someone up there is having a laugh.

‘Oooh, look, I can see the Houses of Parliament,’ people are cooing.

‘Ahhh, there’s Big Ben.’

Ahh, there’s my dinner, more like.

‘Oooh, can you see St Paul’s?’

‘Oooh, Trafalgar Square.’ On and on it’s been going.

‘Oooh, look there’s Nelson’s Column.’ Although that one did make me giggle.

I don’t even like London. Everyone seems to think it’s the centre of the universe. But if you ask me it’s full of strange people and it smells. Property prices went up in Tiddlesbury when they introduced the fast train from Nunstone to King’s Cross. London to Nunstone in an hour and twenty minutes. I was quite happy being an hour and forty minutes away, thank you. A while ago I’d thought I wanted to live in London. But then I went. Why would anyone live here? I got off the train and, OK, it was Friday late afternoon, but I thought some terrible disaster had happened, like there was a hungry lion let loose and everyone was fleeing for their lives. But no. Apparently it was just rush hour. And when I asked an old woman if I could help her with her shopping she told me to bugger off. I kid you not. Angry people and heart attacks, that’s what it said to me. Why would you do that to yourself?

Two of my worst things, London and heights, rolled maliciously into one. Oh-ho-oh, it keeps wobbling. I should have stayed at home with Mum. What if she’s scouring the streets of Tiddlesbury for some dope at this very moment? She might be arrested. Or she could have passed out somewhere. Or what if she’s been robbed? Is asking your daughter for drugs a normal response to finding out that your husband of twenty-seven years has been sleeping with your friend, I wonder? Mind you, it’s got to be more normal than going on a coach trip to Wales. No wonder she wants drugs. But even I don’t do drugs, and I have pink hair. I stick to Jägerbombs. Oh-ho-oh! Philippa’s at Bomber tonight, having a laugh. I am hundreds of feet in the air, dangling in a pod.

‘Don’t you just love it,’ Matt says.

‘It’s great,’ I say.

‘Fan, you’ve got your eyes closed.’

‘It’s better this way.’

‘Fan, come on, baby, open your eyes.’

‘Matt, babe, I’m really not good with heights.’

‘You’ll be fine.’

‘I’ll be sick.’

‘Really?’

‘No doubt about it.’

‘Oh, come on, Fan, it’s all in the mind.’

‘The mind’s a powerful place.’

My eyes are squeezed closed. The wrinkles I’ll get from this will be devastating.

‘Fan, come on now, open your eyes. There’s a beautiful sunset.’

‘Take a photo on your phone. I’ll look later.’

‘Go on, love,’ says a female voice. ‘Just take one little peek.’

‘Hello, nice lady. I’m afraid I can’t.’

Ooh, if I keep her talking this is a conversation with a stranger. Point four ticked off.

‘Go on, love. Just a quick one.’

‘Can you describe it for me?’

‘Well, OK, like he said, there’s a beautiful sunset and one of the greatest cities in the world is stretched at your feet. Oh, and there’s a handsome man before you on his knees and I think he wants to ask you something.’

‘Huh?’

I fling my eyes open and there’s Matt on one knee in a crowded pod holding out a box in which twinkles a little diamond ring.

‘Jenny Taylor,’ even when Matt says my full name it sounds like genitalia. ‘Will you marry me?’

‘Huh. OH, MY GOD!’ I whoop. Followed shortly by the word, ‘Oops,’ because I accidentally looked down. I looked down in the wobbly pod.

‘Oh, uh, uh, uh, Matt. I’m going to be…’ Sick.

I’ve just thrown up a little bit in the pod. It’s not ideal. But it could be worse.

‘But I will marry you,’ I tell him. ‘Um, I don’t suppose anyone has any tissues.’

Philippa has this saying, ‘you write your own love story’, actually, Philippa has many sayings but this is one of her favourites.

‘You write your own love story, Fan, gotta make sure it’s a good one,’ she eulogises.

It’s one of the only things we disagree on. And maybe I’m unusual, because I don’t want a love story in that way. Love stories have glorious highs and ghastly lows. I should know. I read enough of them, and I love reading about them. But, when it comes to my own life, I’d have to say, no, thank you, you can keep your fabulous highs and I’ll happily steer clear of the terrible lows. I’ve experienced one terrible low already and, believe me, that was quite enough. Philippa’s welcome to wait for the whole ‘I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy’ rom com caboodle. (That’s a line from
Notting Hill
, a film that Philippa can quote HUGE chunks of, verbatim.) I’ll take the sensible love that won’t lead me to despair, please, thank you very much.

My love story may not be the sort you read about in books but this is what I want, I think, as I look at Matt. It’s not a heady love, it’s a sensible love and it feels safe. I smile as I watch him. He’s tapping away at his BlackBerry, his nostrils slightly flaring as he raps at the keys. We need to order our food really, but Matt had a message on his phone when we got off the Eye, it was quite important and since then he’s been answering an email. Matt is proper high powered. Being honest, I do have a clue what Matt and the company he works for does, but it’s not really much more than that. Something to do with finance companies going bust and Matt’s company buying them up, quite often they have to move suddenly, like tonight.

‘You’re my love story,’ I whisper, reaching across and tapping him on the wrist as he pauses in his writing.

‘Sorry, gorge. With you in a sec,’ he says, looking up from his BlackBerry and giving me a quick smile.

I look at my left hand. The ring was too small. I got it on but then couldn’t get it off again, which was quite stressful what with having just been sick and being in a small suspended pod. Matt’s going to take it back to the jeweller and have it enlarged. I wish I was wearing it now, though, so that everyone would know I was engaged.

‘How can anything be happening now, on a Friday night?’

‘Huh? Oh, it’s end of working day in Chicago,’ he says, not looking at me. ‘I’ll have to fly out there tomorrow, ready to get going on Monday.’

‘Oh, how long will you be gone?’

‘Can’t say, Fan, can’t say.’

‘Oh, I wanted to get planning the wedding.’

‘We’ll get cracking when I get back.’

He smiles again, but this time at his BlackBerry. He is very adept at conversing with someone whilst tapping a message into a BlackBerry to someone else. Much better than I’d be. I’d be writing a load of nonsense in the email.
Dear Mr Turner, Further to our wedding on the 14th
I’d be writing to the very important finance person.

‘When were you thinking?’ I ask him.

‘Summer.’

‘Which summer?’

‘This summer.’

‘This summer?’

‘Yes, I don’t see the point in waiting.’

‘People will think I’m up the duff.’

‘Balls! Fan. Sorry, gorge. I’ve got to take this,’ he says, springing up and strolling out of the restaurant to take the call. An older lady at the table next to me gives me a sympathetic look.

‘Work,’ I say, raising my eyes to the ceiling, hoping she’ll respond and this can be another conversation with a stranger.

‘My first husband was like that. Worst twenty-two years of my life.’

I nod slowly. Whilst point number four on the Smiling Fanny Manifesto generally leads to pleasant exchanges, I can’t deny that sometimes talking to strangers can be a downer. I rummage in my bag for my book. Rosie did sleep with her handsome work colleague and now she’s very unhappy, things are uncomfortable for her at work and she’s been told off for playing maudlin love songs on her upbeat drive-time show. Ooh, my phone, text from Philippa:

Oh help.

Oh. Dear. God.

It’s 2.43 a.m. She’s not home and she hasn’t called. I’m too distracted even to read. At what point do the police take you seriously? Philippa isn’t answering her phone, she’s bound to be snogging someone and what will my mother be doing? Lying passed out somewhere, while someone steals her bag, most probably. She’s not used to alcohol and Jägerbombs can have an alarming effect, even on seasoned drinkers. I’ll give it till 3 a.m. before I call the police. How can this be happening? I don’t feel prepared for this. My mum once wrote a letter to the BBC saying that
Question Time
was on too late.

I wiggle under the duvet on my temporary settee bed and try to think of my blessings for the day.

I pause before number five, mainly because I can’t decide what it is, a blessing or a freakish nightmare? I decide that I should at least try to look at it as a blessing.

Oh thank goodness, I can hear a ruckus in the hall. I leap off the sofa and open the door to our flat. Philippa stands on the landing swaying before me, she’s holding her shoes and grinning drunkenly. I smile to see her, as I always do.

Philippa is gorgeous, even at 3 a.m. after being out for the night. Her hair is so fabulous it makes hairdressers sigh and children ask to touch it. It’s so dark that you assume it’s black but then you notice that under certain lights there’s shades of toasted almonds or roaring fire in there. And it’s thick too. It doesn’t have to be backcombed to buggery to create body like mine does. And her ponytails have an eye-watering girth whereas mine look like the well-used head of a child’s paintbrush. Now you might think that God would have thought, I’ll put a ropey old face on that one with the hair, it’s only fair, but no, he didn’t. He only went and gave her green eyes. Yep, green eyes and raven hair. Not to mention pale skin, with rosy cheeks and a tiny waist and boobs. She looks like the sort of woman that men went to war over in the Scottish Highlands. I could well imagine mud-splattered men in kilts charging about in the rain trying to kill each other over her. She’s mystical and ethereal looking. Well, she is normally, right now she’s holding her breath to stop her hiccups and repeating the words, ‘I wish Al would hurry up with my kebab,’ in an impatient manner.

‘Where’s my mum?’

Philippa hiccups and then leans towards me conspiratorially.

‘Your mum’s twatted.’

‘Where is she?’

Philippa turns to her right and, with an elaborate flourish of the hand, gestures that Mum is at the bottom of the stairs. We both peer down, and silently watch as my mother, who is sitting on the second step, holds one leg in the air, and tries and fails to unzip one of my high-heeled ankle boots.

‘What have you done to my mum?’ I hiss.

I don’t know what is the more disturbing, the fact that my mother is so bertie bollixed that she is seemingly unable to undo a zip or that she’s wearing a pair of my wet-look leggings.

‘Fan,’ Philippa says. ‘Ah, thank goodness for that, they’ve gone.’ She smiles. She hiccups. ‘Oh, no, they haven’t. Fan, I have to tell you, your mum pulled.’

‘What?’

‘She had a little snog.’ She’s holding a thumb and forefinger a tiny bit apart to indicate just how little the snog was.

‘My mum snogged someone at Bomber,’ I pant. I cast my eyes back down the stairs. She still hasn’t managed the zip.

‘Yes, and he wasn’t that bad. Better than most I have snogged at Bomber, not that it’s saying much.’ She hiccups again.

‘Kebab time,’ Al calls, bursting through the communal front door.

‘Oh, I could marry you,’ Philippa sighs, and then hiccups.

Oh! I suddenly remember. ‘Matt proposed. He took me out on the London Eye, and he got down on one knee and I threw up and we’re going to get married. There is a ring but he took it away with him because it was too small.’

‘Wow,’ Al says. He’s stopped still in his tracks.

‘You’re going to marry Matt,’ Philippa says, scratching her head as though she’s confused. Perhaps I should have waited until she was sober before I told her the news.

‘Yes.’

‘Wow,’ Al repeats.

‘Matt! Bloody Matt! You’re going to marry Matt!’

I nod. She hiccups and then she starts stomping down the stairs.

‘Oh, I’m going home,’ she humphs. Then she hiccups.

‘What about your kebab?’ Al holds up the kebab-filled carrier.

‘She’s put me off my kebab,’ Philippa wails, climbing over my mother who’s now collapsed against the wall. ‘I didn’t think anything could ever put me off a kebab!’

I watch in silence as Philippa lurches out of the front door.

‘Um, your mum’s passed out, Fan-Tastic,’ Al informs me.

‘Do you think we can carry her up?’

‘Here, you take the kebabs, I’ll take your mum.’

I walk down the stairs and take the bag of kebabs from him. Al gently lifts my mum up and walks her carefully back into the flat. There’s something almost sombre or funereal about it. But that could be because Philippa’s just stormed off having heard the news that I’m going to marry Matt.

Al lays her down on my bed. We both lean over her passed-out figure.

‘Philippa will come round,’ Al whispers.

‘Do you think?’ I ask keenly. I sound almost desperate.

‘Well…’

‘I hope so.’

Al gives me a peck on the cheek.

‘I’m happy if you’re happy.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Kebab?’

‘No, you’re all right.’

He leaves Mum and me alone. I stare at her. I’m not sure if she’s breathing. I watch her chest. It isn’t moving, I crouch down and put my ear near her mouth. I can’t hear any breath. She coughs. She’s alive. Thank goodness. I unzip her boots then I haul the duvet from underneath and lay it on top of her. What if she’s sick in the night? She might choke. I think she’s stopped breathing again. I hover with my ear near her mouth. She just exhaled. Woah. The booze fumes are mighty. But she could wake up and not know where she is. She might get up and pee in Al’s room. When Philippa’s dad moved house, Philippa walked into the wrong room, sat on a chair and peed all over it.

I scurry back into the living room, fetch my bedding from the settee and lay it down on the floor next to Mum’s bed. I’ll worry less if I sleep in the same room as her.