Material Girl (19 page)

‘Well turn the heating up when you get in, and sleep well, lovely Gavin. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

I push myself to my feet and grab my bag.

‘Wait.’ Gavin stands up and ducks automatically, in case
of low-flying aircraft or birds. ‘Wait. Do you want me to get you a cab or something?’

Gavin hasn’t found his switch.

‘No, it’s fine. It’s a Monday, there will be loads.’

‘No, let me get you a cab.’

Gavin grabs his jacket and gestures for me to climb the stairs up and out. We fire out onto Shaftesbury Avenue and a stream of black cabs with their lights on flow past us. I hail one down and mercifully he pulls up inches from my heels.

‘Hey, Scarlet, wait. Where do you live?’ Gavin asks, grabbing one of my hands and pulling me around.

‘The opposite direction to you. Goodnight, Gavin, I’ll see you tomorrow,’ I say, and jump in the cab.

‘Central Ealing,’ I tell the driver, and wave to Gavin. The numbers on the clock immediately start to tick as we pull off. Gavin gives me a half-hearted wave back.

The cab pulls up outside my flat at 2.20 a.m.

I pay the driver and look up. The instantly recognisable blue haze of a TV in a room with the lights turned off streams out from my living-room windows. Amazingly, Ben is still up.

Climbing the stairs I can hear giggling from the living room, but it’s strictly male. Ben’s friend Iggy is here.

Iggy is five years older than Ben, and moronic in its purest sense. Whenever he sees me he stares as if I’m the only woman he’s ever been this close too – which I probably am. He’s almost primeval: short, with a lot of hair everywhere – on his face, on his arms, poking up out of his T-shirt at the front and back, and he has slightly wonky eyes that follow me around the room, and yet can never actually meet mine when I speak to him. He has a large belly and a big round woman’s arse. I have never known him have a girlfriend in the three years since we were introduced, but he always
crosses his legs approximately two minutes after I enter any room that he is in. I don’t flatter myself that this is peculiar to me. I could send my grandmother in before me and I’m sure he’d do exactly the same. He was the best man at Ben’s wedding, apparently, and made an appalling speech that died like a pheasant full of shot. He is also very confrontational, and tries to contradict everything that I say, but without imagination. Often he just says, ‘I don’t agree.’ For instance, I’ll say ‘It’s hot today’ when it’s ninety degrees in the shade outside, and he’ll sit there, with sweat dripping off him like a whore in church, and say, ‘I don’t agree.’

He works at the store with Ben. They play a lot of Championship Manager. From the giggling I can tell that they are both drunk, and I smell skunk wafting through my flat.

I hear Iggy mutter, ‘Is that Scarlet?’

‘Sounds like it.’

‘Do you want me to, you know, clear off?’

‘Don’t bother, she’ll go straight to bed.’

‘But don’t you want to, you know …’

Ben doesn’t answer.

I consider going straight to bed like the man said, but instead walk into the living room, flipping the overhead lights on.

Both of them cover their eyes and swear like teenagers in a town precinct. ‘Jesus, Scar, turn the light down,’ Ben says.

I dim it slightly. Ben curses again.

‘What you watching?’ I ask.

‘
Revenge of the Sith
,’ Iggy replies. ‘All right, Scarlet?’

‘I’m okay, Iggy, how are you?’

‘Yeah, good, thanks.’ Iggy snatches at his jeans and crosses his legs.

Ben just sits there staring at the TV.

I shrug at him.

‘What?’ he asks like a stroppy teenager.

‘But thanks for asking how I am, Iggy, it’s nice to know that somebody cares.’ I smile sarcastically at Ben and fold my arms.

‘Jesus, Scar, you just said you were okay.’

Ben doesn’t drag his eyes away from the vengeful Sith.

‘Do I get a kiss hello perhaps?’ I ask, raising my eyes.

‘You don’t even give me a chance!’ he says, and sighs, making a huge deal of pushing himself up off the sofa.

Just as he makes it upright I say, ‘Don’t bother’, and walk into the kitchen.

I hear the pair of them trying to whisper, except half of Ealing can probably hear them.

‘Iggy, mate, you’d probably better go after all. She’s got the arse. I’m going to bed.’

I hear them shuffling around in the living room, the TV being turned off and papers being thrown in the bin, while I pour myself a bowl of Alpen and grab the milk from the fridge. Shuffled heavy footsteps fly down the stairs and the front door slams shut.

Ben leans in the kitchen doorway with his arms crossed. ‘Good night then?’ he asks, rubbing one eye and yawning, texting somebody on his phone.

‘Yeah, it was okay.’ I nod my head and take a mouthful of muesli. ‘Who are you texting?’

‘Nobody’ he says, and shoves his phone in his pocket. I shiver.

‘What’s this job?’ he asks, shaking his head to wake himself up.

‘A theatre, a play. Tennessee Williams. Dolly Russell, she’s this old actress. She won an Oscar.’

‘And who’s the bloke?’

‘Tennessee Williams? He wrote the play. He’s dead now.’

Ben pulls an impressed face and raises his eyes. Of course I can tell that he isn’t actually impressed. He would be impressed if I’d said Dolly played third Ewok on the left in
Return of the Jedi
, and Tennessee Williams wrote three episodes of
Red Dwarf
.

‘I could probably get us tickets if you want to see it?’ I say, taking another mouthful of cereal.

‘Maybe.’ He nods his head, wipes the other eye, crosses his legs. His T-shirt says ‘
So you wanna play?
’ in lime green on black. His pyjama trousers are red and black checked, the ones that my mum bought him for Christmas from Gap last year. He is barefoot. His hair is dark and scruffy, falling over his ears. He lifts an arm and deliberately messes it up with his hand, and stretches. He lets his hands drop back to his sides. His phone beeps in his pocket.

‘Yeah, or, you know, take your mum or something. Or Helen, she’s more into that kind of stuff, isn’t she?’ His eyes are closing as he speaks. He pulls out his phone, and presses a button, and smiles.

‘Who is that?’ I ask.

‘Jesus, it’s just Iggy, okay?’ he sighs, and stuffs it back in his trouser pocket.

I nod my head at him. ‘Okay. You just saw him, but, if you say so. And as for the theatre, well, I could take Helen, but I thought it might be something nice for us to do, Ben. We could grab a Thai afterwards, there’s a great one on Old Compton …’

I see him grimace at the word Thai. I’ve already kicked my shoes off in the hallway, but I feel the urge to go and pull one back on and boot him in the stomach with it. Instead I smile and wait for him to answer.

‘Maybe. But then I’d have to come all the way up into town …’

‘Yeah, I know it’s a long way. I mean I do it nearly every day, Ben, it’s such an inconvenience.’ I nod my head at him and smile sarcastically again and I see him raise his eyes to heaven. He sighs.

‘You know how tired I am by the time I’ve finished work, Scar. I just want to collapse on the sofa, eat my tea, watch some telly.’

‘Yep, yep, yep, I know,’ I say, nodding my head, trying not to cry. I have never cried as much as I do now, not even when I was a baby. My mum says I was never a ‘crier’, even when she threw me at my dad one time that he got home really late from work. She literally threw me at him down the length of the hallway. Luckily he dropped his suitcase and caught me. She apologised for that when she told me the story. But these days all it takes is one wrong word and my eyes flood like potholes in a hail storm. And I have never been this tired either.

‘Well,’ Ben stretches and looks guilty, ‘I’m exhausted so I’m going to go to bed.’ He smiles apologetically. He knows the direction I’m heading in, and tries to sidestep it, but something in me won’t let him.

‘I’m done here,’ I say, swallowing a last mouthful of Alpen and dumping the half-full bowl on the counter, ‘I’ll come too.’

‘Oh, okay.’ Ben looks nervous. ‘Well, do you want the bathroom first?’ he asks.

‘Why don’t we leave the bathroom for a bit?’ I reply, and muster up my bravest smile.

‘Oh.’ He drops his head with a pained expression: I am forcing him to have to explain something to me for the tenth time, like how to tune in the TV, or work the smoothie-maker. He sighs, embarrassed that I am putting him in this position.

‘Do you mind if we don’t, Scar? I’m knackered. I had a really hard day. Maybe in the morning …’

‘Right. Right. It doesn’t really matter if I mind, though, does it?’ I feel the tears sting my eyes.

‘And as we both know, we never do it in the morning, because it will make you late for work, so …’

‘What now? Oh for God’s sakes, Scar, I’m sorry but I’m tired!’

‘You’re not sorry, and you are permanently tired. Are you having an affair?’ I ask. I haven’t turned the light on in the kitchen. We are badly lit from the light in the hallway behind him.

‘No,’ he says, shaking his head, feigning the kind of exhaustion that suggests he’s just climbed a mountain, or swum the channel.

‘Do you promise me, Ben? Because that would be a shitty thing to do, you get that, right? To promise me that you aren’t having an affair, and then to do it anyway. I mean, I don’t know what you told Katie, you know, if she ever asked, when we were, you know … But that would be a rubbish thing to do, to do it again. With Katie, well, that was unfortunate circumstances, but that doesn’t mean, you know, that you have to do it again …’

‘Yes, I promise I’m not lying. And no, I’m not having an affair. Do you think it wasn’t painful enough the first time? I wouldn’t put myself through that again.’ He smiles at me like I’m simple, but doesn’t make eye contact.

‘Then why do you never want to have sex with me?’ I shout as my voice breaks.

‘Scarlet, I am too fucking tired, all right? If you got home at a sensible hour it might make a difference. But it’s nearly three o’clock in the morning! And I’ve been smoking, and I just don’t feel like it!’

‘But you never feel like it! Never! It’s been months!’

‘You’re never here when I do feel like it!’

‘What if I try, Ben, if I promise I’ll try and get home
earlier … would that make a difference?’ I sound like a needy schoolgirl, desperate to please her teacher. As I say the words I hate myself even more.

‘Then we’ll see,’ he says, and nods his head. What does that mean?

I wait for him to come and give me a hug, but I could wait all night, he just stands in the doorway and looks away. So I throw the last of my pride down the sink after the last of my Alpen and walk towards him, and try and shuffle under one of his arms for a hug. He relents stiffly and rubs my back three times, up down up down up down, with all the affection of a windscreen wiper.

I look up to kiss him and he squeezes his eyes shut and pecks me squashily on the lips.

‘Open your eyes,’ I say.

He opens them, and pecks me on the forehead.

‘I’m scared we don’t try hard enough, Ben. I’m scared we’re falling apart.’

‘I need the loo,’ he says, and goes to the bathroom.

Ben is snoring by the time I’ve swiped off my make-up, but I can’t sleep. My eyes refuse to stay closed. I look over at him. He is firmly on his side of the bed, with his back to me. I know his back better than any other part of his body. I know every mole, every hair. I know the contours of his shoulders and the nape of his neck. I know exactly when his hair is getting too long because it sits just over the freckle at the top of his spine. But when I close my eyes I can’t picture his face at all.

I get up, pull the bedroom door closed behind me and wander back into the kitchen to run myself a glass of water. It’s that time of the night when all you can hear is electricity: the soundtrack of the washing machine, dishwasher and central heating hums around me. I retrieve the
Standard
from my bag and toss it onto the table. I gulp down my water.
The post lies half-opened next to the paper. I pick up the letter from the clinic, which looks well-thumbed around the edges by Ben. I watch my fingers tremble as I tear it open.

Dear Miss White,

Following your visit to this clinic on 2nd September, as agreed we are writing to inform you of the results of the tests you had taken
.

You were tested for:

•
Chlamydia

•
Gonorrhoea

•
Trichomonas Vaginalis

•
Candida (Thrush)

Blood Tests

•
Syphilis

•
HIV antibody test

And all of these tests were negative (showed no infection)
.

A negative HIV result means that you have not been infected with the virus that causes AIDS. However, if you have been at risk of exposure to this virus within the last three months you will need to repeat your HIV test to be certain of your status
.