Kissing Toads (2 page)

‘I'll bet he did.' Delphi would have scowled if she hadn't had Botox injected between her eyebrows.

‘He assured me the marriage was strictly cosmetic, she'd only be staying at his place for a few weeks. Then I ran into someone from the drama department who told me this girl's an actress, a real one – she starred in some foreign film that won an award – and she wanted to come to London as a career move. So I went round to Kyle's flat, and Tatyana came out of the bedroom wearing nothing but his shirt like someone in an old movie, and I felt so stupid, so
stupid
 . . .' I broke off, knuckling my mouth like a child, horrified to find myself fighting tears. Pain is bad enough; humiliation makes it infinitely worse. ‘He said he was glad I found out 'cos it saved him the trouble of telling me. He said he's really in love with her. He said . . . sorry. Just
sorry
.'

‘Arsehole,' Delphi said comprehensively. ‘What's she like?'

‘Oh, you know. A dark Scarlett Johansson with a dash of Ingrid Bergman. Just your average Eastern European stunner.'

‘Yuk,' Delphi said. ‘I hate those Slavonic types. There are hordes of them coming over here. It goes to show we have to do something about the immigration problem.'

Delphinium has no truck with political correctness. She would happily screen out female immigrants on the grounds of youth and beauty, and the way I felt then, I almost agreed with her.

‘Still, they go off when they're forty,' she went on, trying to cheer me up. ‘One moment they're all cheekbones and flawless skin and the next they're wrinkled old peasants in head-scarves. It happens practically overnight.'

‘Tatyana's twenty-two.'

‘Bugger.'

There was a despondent silence. At least, it was despondent on my part; Delphi was obviously thinking.

‘You've got to be positive,' she announced. ‘It's a good thing for you: you'll realise that in the end. He was always messing you around – cancelling dates or rolling up at two in the morning pissed out of his brain. He never took you out for intimate dinners or sent you flowers or—'

‘He sent me flowers on my last birthday!'

‘That was only because he forgot to buy you a present. Anyway, they were
chrysanthemums
. There's nothing romantic about chrysanthemums. They're the kind of flowers you send your grandmother. Don't interrupt. The point is, you've got to move on. Find yourself a nice guy who'll adore you and make a fuss of you. It's a pain you'll still be seeing Kyle at work—'

‘No I won't,' I said. ‘I've quit.'

‘
Quit?
How quit?'

‘I sent my resignation in by email this morning. I can't go on working with Kyle. It would kill me.' I suppose I was exaggerating, but not much.

‘You can't do that! This is your
job
. Worse still, it's your
career
. If anyone has to leave, it should be him. He's behaved like an utter bastard, and now you're committing sooty—'

‘Sooty?'

‘Like those Indian women. Throwing yourself on a bonfire and turning into a heap of black ash. Sooty.'

‘Okay . . .'

‘I'm not saying you shouldn't make a change – it would be a great idea, you need to move up as well as on – but you
never
leave a job until you've got another one lined up. It's like with men. Sort out the new one before you ditch the old. Roo, darling, sometimes you're . . . you're
deliberately
hopeless.'

My name is Ruth – Ruth Harker – but Delphinium's called me Roo since childhood, hence the Winnie-the-Pooh spelling. A lot of people pick it up from her.

‘I know,' I said. ‘No job, no man. Total sooty.'

‘We have to do something,' Delphi said. ‘We don't want people to think you're suicidal.'

‘I
am
suicidal.'

‘Yes, but we don't want people to think so. We have to do something
quickly
.'

My heart quailed – a curious verb, when you come to think of it, since a quail is a small game bird with fiddly little bones that make eating it awkward. Of course, quails are very shy, prone to hide from people with shotguns, which would explain the verb. Anyway, my heart contemplated Delphi, thinking as if it were a small bird looking down the twin barrels of a twelve-bore, and scurried out of sight into the undergrowth.

When we were children, it was always Delphi who thought of things. It was Delphi who thought of dosing the au pair with a cocktail made from brandy, vodka, cointreau, aquavite and a dozen pounded-up aspirin so she would fall asleep and we could run away to Hollywood. Fortunately, Ilse tipped it down the sink after one sip. It was Delphi who disguised her pony by painting it with black spots so we could be highwaymen and hold up the Master of the Hunt's vintage Jaguar. My dad's income didn't run to ponies, but I was allowed to ride pillion. It was Delphi, aged twelve, who went into the local jeweller's and asked to look at diamond engagement rings, in order to steal one for her elopement with Ben Garvin. Ben was seventeen at the time and only hazily aware of her existence, though he came to notice her a good deal more later on. Delphi the child lived in a world of glamorous make-believe, devoid of scruple and out of touch with reality; whenever she thought of something, it was always the precursor to trouble, usually involving me. I checked trains and planes to Hollywood, fell off the back of the pony in mid-hold-up, distracted the shop assistant in the jeweller's with a sudden attack of stomach cramp. I was both terrified at being dragged into adventure and ecstatic because I was able to help. Delphi was my playmate, my soulmate, closer than a sister, if I had had a sister – twin cherries on a single stem and all that. Bonds forged in the furnace of childhood never wear out.

The problem was, as an adult Delphi hadn't changed much. She wanted to be a star, beautiful and rich and successful, and at thirty-four she had made it. But she still existed on a slightly different plane from everyone else, believing she could bend the universe around her, push and pummel events into the shape she desired. The scary part was that sometimes it worked. Failures and disasters were brushed aside; her ebullient mind bounced on to the next project, the next objective, with a sort of resilient optimism I could never match. Occasionally, I suspected the bounces soared over deep gulfs of subconscious trauma – like when she was ten, and her father left, or nineteen, when Ben finally walked out of her life – but the gulfs remained unplumbed, even with me. For Delphi, tragedy was a lost earring, or arriving at a party to find Carol Vorderman was wearing the same dress (‘I mean,
Carol Vorderman
– sooo embarrassing. I could have laughed it off if only it had been Liz or Paris . . .'). But she always entered into my very different tragedies with an enthusiasm that was both comforting and panic-making. If she was a Barbie, she was Bossy Barbie, Benevolent Barbie, Jane-Austen's-Emma Barbie. And unlike Emma Wodehouse, no goofing and no gaffes disturbed her faith in her own omniscience and enterprise.

She sipped her latte, discovered it was cold (her own fault for lingering), and summoned a waitress to complain and order another. The waitress looked sullen, but Delphi didn't notice.

‘I've got an idea,' she announced. ‘But don't get your hopes up yet. I have to check it out.'

My hopes were incapable of getting up, even with Viagra, though I didn't say so. ‘What sort of an idea?' I said with misgiving.

‘A job idea. Look, cancel your resignation—'

‘I can't do that.'

‘Yes you can. Tell them . . . tell them you had PMT, it was a typing error, you sent it by mistake – whatever. They won't want to lose you – you're much too indispensable.'

‘I wish that were true. In any case, I've resigned, and that's that. I don't ever want to go back.'

‘Look,' Delphi said with the laboured patience of someone addressing an idiot child, ‘you cancel your resignation, they welcome you back with open arms,
then
you leave. Not in a huff but to go to a new and much better job which will have your rivals gnashing their teeth with envy and your bosses realising
exactly
what they've lost. It's much better for your image, and your image needs a boost right now.'

I grimaced. ‘I don't
have
an image.'

‘
Everyone
has an image,' Delphi insisted.

I didn't withdraw my resignation, of course; it was probably a good idea, but I'd left it too late. It was too late the moment I sent it. Neither the producer nor Dick Ramsay begged for my return on bended knee; they simply made regretful noises, and, in the producer's case, said things like: ‘Been expecting it for some time. Shame to lose you, but you're getting in a rut here. You've got your career to think of. Off to higher things, huh?' He'd obviously missed the gossip about Kyle and me which I knew was doing the rounds, and I didn't fill him in. I said I wanted a break first and left the rest to conjecture.

I had to go into work for the next few weeks, but most of the time I managed to avoid Kyle. If we were in meetings together, I didn't talk and he didn't listen, leaving most of the communication to others. On one occasion, he trapped me at my desk, hitching one buttock up on the corner and exuding good intentions and the fumes of Dutch courage from lunchtime in the pub. His jaw was unshaven, his jeans unwashed, his sweatshirt sweaty. The awful thing was, I still found him sexy, despite what he had done to me. I kept remembering the way his voice went gravelly when he was aroused, and the rough insistence of his hands, and the beery taste of his kisses. I could understand why people get so angry after a split-up, unnecessarily angry, even long after – anger sweeps away the ingrained response, the sweet tension in the body, the softening of the heart. But I couldn't bring the anger back; I suppose I'm not the type. I just clenched inwardly, freezing out my own feelings.

‘I think you've done the right thing,' he said, sounding suspiciously like the producer. ‘You need to move on. You've been bogged down here for too long: I was holding you back.'
What?
‘You're a great girl, Roo: I want you to know that. I really wish you luck.'

He spoke as if he were making a generous gesture to someone who had jilted him, rather than vice versa. I stared at him, confused, outraged, stunned by his twisted world view. Then the anger came back.

‘If you had any . . . any decency,' I said, ‘you'd be the one leaving. You cheated me and lied to me and let me down – and now I'm out of a job. I had to quit because of you. So don't you
dare
wish me luck. It's so fake – so—'

‘If you're going to take it like that . . .' He looked nonplussed and mildly huffy.

‘How else am I meant to take it?'

‘Look, it was hardly a serious affair, you and me. We didn't live together, we didn't get engaged—'

‘It was six years,' I said, trying to stifle the fresh hurt as every word stabbed.
Hardly a serious affair . . .
‘Your clothes are in my wardrobe, your razor's in my bathroom –' that was probably why he hadn't shaved – ‘your CDs are in my living room, your porn mags are under my bed. I'll send it all back, okay? Just leave me alone.'

I piled the lot into a dustbin bag the next day and left it at the office. I didn't care who saw, especially when
Leather Fantasy
fell out.

‘You're supposed to cut the crotch out of his trousers,' Delphi said when I told her. ‘It's traditional. And stamp on the CDs.' I hadn't mentioned the porn mags. Sometimes, Delphi can be quite easily shocked.

‘I was trying to do dignity,' I explained.

‘Dignity is fine in the right place,' Delphi said, ‘but you need to assert yourself. Kyle walked all over you from day one. You ought to have gone out in style.'

‘Yes, but whose style?' I sighed. ‘This
is
my style. Not a bang but a whimper. Other people do clothes-slashing and deliver horse manure to the office. It's just not me. Anyway, I don't see why I should imitate everyone else.'

Unexpectedly, Delphi hugged me. ‘We could think of something original,' she suggested after a pause. ‘Something no one's done before. Set a new fashion in revenge. Spike his drink and when he's unconscious give him a really stupid haircut, or—'

‘Been done,' I said.

‘By whom?'

‘Delilah.'

‘That's in the
Bible
.' Delphi was mildly scornful. ‘Nobody reads
that
.'

‘It isn't original. Anyhow, I don't want revenge. I want . . . I want to stop hurting. I want to stop feeling as if my whole future is grey and empty. I want . . .'

‘You want another man,' said Delphinium, bouncing over pain and loss, on to the next object.

I wasn't sure she was right. Kyle Muldoon had become a part of me, and I was afraid no other man could take his place.

On my last Friday, they gave me a leaving party. I wanted to slink away unnoticed, like an injured animal crawling into a burrow to lick its wounds, but no one on
Behind the News
was ready to miss an opportunity to get drunk. In any case, nowadays you're not supposed to lick your wounds in private: you're supposed to flaunt them in public and tell not just friends but strangers every detail of your suffering. Clever psychologists call this Achieving Closure and disregard the cost to your auditors, who collapse with exotic foreign symptoms like
ennui
and
Schadenfreude
. I didn't intend to talk about anything, but I couldn't get out of the piss-up.