Material Girl (49 page)

Facing away from the wind our eyes stop streaming. The fish and chip shop has recently been renamed ‘Things Can Only Get Batter!’ There is a huge queue that snakes out of the shop and around the corner like a long and slippery jellied eel.

‘Let’s go tomorrow instead, it will still be there then,’ Mum says, frowning at the queue. ‘I’ve got toast and Marmite and cheese, that will do, won’t it?’

I nod and smile.

I stayed because I was scared. I jumped, at the zoo, because I wasn’t.

I’m thirty-one. I’m only thirty-one! Everybody else can pretend it’s ancient, but it’s not. It’s nothing. I’m a baby. I’m not ninety, I haven’t lived yet! The papers can sell their scare stories to somebody else, I’ve got a long way ahead of me yet. And I’ve learnt some stuff too. Love is just making somebody else happy, being made happy in return. You can do that with laughter lines. I’m going to love somebody again. What else could be more important than being happy, if you are lucky enough to have the choice? I’m not going to be mean with my feelings, or scared to give them. I’m going to give them as honestly and freely as I can.

As we get back to the house I hear my mobile ringing. I feel a nervous sickness, and look at the screen; it’s Gavin.

‘So … I called,’ he says sternly.

‘So you did. That was quick,’ I reply.

‘Was it too soon?’ he asks, but answers himself. ‘But I just thought, to hell with it – if you want to call somebody, you should call. You could have met a man on the train. I didn’t want to take that chance.’

‘I could have, I guess. But I didn’t.’

‘Was it too quick?’ he asks, hesitation creeping in.

‘No, Gavin. It’s nice that you called. It’s nice when somebody actually wants to speak to you. But … I’m not going to say yes.’ I take a deep breath.

‘I’m going to try and be really honest with you, Gavin, and even if it’s disappointing I hope that you’ll like me for it. I think that you are lovely, and strong, and funny, and dry. Christ, I think you’d protect me, you really would. But I don’t think we’d be lovely, as a couple, definitely not right now. I barely know you and I don’t know if you’re right for me, and I don’t know if I’m right for you. But even if we both feel like exploring it for a while, now is not the right time. My feelings are all bruised, and I need to take a while to get better. Please don’t think me awful for saying this, and tell me that I am wrong if I am, but a couple of things that you did, and that you said, well, they made me think that you have feelings for me, strongish feelings, already.’

I pause.

‘Go on,’ he says.

‘I haven’t been in a place to feel those things for you, Gavin, and I am certainly not in a place, right now, to feel them for you either. I’m not saying never, I don’t know how I’ll feel in a few days or weeks or months, but it wouldn’t be fair to you, right now, for me to say, “Let’s have dinner.” We’d be starting at such different places, and I’d be leading you on, and using you. And believe me when I say I’d quite like to use you, for a while, it would be the easiest thing in
the world, because you are bloody lovely! But I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that. I wouldn’t respect myself for doing that. I’ll just have to take my chances, Gavin, and when I come back up and out of this, and when my head is sorted out, I may well come and see if you are still free. But I’m not going to use you, Gavin. That wouldn’t feel very nice, for either of us, and somebody told me that it’s the worst thing that you can do to a person, and now I know that I believe them.’

‘Okay … fair enough. But what if I said I don’t mind if you just want to use my body for a while? Just for science or something?’

I laugh. ‘We’re too far gone for that already, Gavin. I like you too much to use you for weekend recreation.’

‘What about mid-week recreation?’

‘That too. I’m sorry if that wasn’t the answer you wanted, but I promise you I haven’t lied.’

‘It’s fair enough, Scarlet. Well then. Maybe I’ll see you around?’

‘I hope so.’

‘As long as it’s not on the cover of
Hello!
with Tom Harvey-Saint,’ he adds.

‘Not in a million years,’ I assure him.

‘Bye, Scarlet. Get well soon …’

‘Bye.’

I’m hopeful. The world still wants me, even if Ben doesn’t. And it still hurts now, of course, and maybe it will pass in weeks or months. But it will pass in time. And then, when my head is clear, and the opportunity presents itself again, to be really loved. Well, then I’ll feel fantastic.

Wednesday? Thursday? A day in the middle of the week, I know that. I’m not sure which. I’ve lost track …

I’m hanging out at the beach with my mum. I could live here for a while, but I’d have no money. There isn’t much call for a Make-up around here, unless I want to do weddings or portraits, and if I’m honest I’m not ready yet. I love London. I will go back up to town. But Ben can have custody of Ealing, he works there, it’s only fair. It was always more his than mine. My mum says, ‘Call your brother, you could rent his flat in West Hampstead for a while.’

I call Richard and he says, ‘Of course, but it will take me a couple of months to get the tenants out, so you can stay with us until then.’ Maybe I will, go and spend time with my nephews and their dirty eight-year-old jokes. I forget that Richard got married when he was twenty! Twenty! It seemed like madness to me at the time, but he and Hannah are still happy, and the boys are happy. They got it right. It happens!

I sent Ben a text a couple of days ago, saying I’d come and get my stuff next Friday afternoon, but I’d be at my mum’s until then, so he should move back into the flat. I
asked him not to reply. I can’t be sitting about waiting for something that’s never going to come, or, if it does, will just disappoint me again. If I’m going to move forwards I can’t keep one eye on my mobile phone, waiting for a text from the past.

But last night I got a drunken text message from him anyway. It said: ‘HOPE U R GOOD. I HAVE GOOD NEWS. TEXT ME BACK IF YOU WANT THE DETAILS.’

I showed my mum and she said, ‘If it was really good news, Scarlet, and he wasn’t playing games, he’d just tell you, darling. He’ll regret sending that in the morning. Don’t text him back. I’m angry with that boy. He doesn’t get to play games with my daughter any more.’ She moved to snatch my phone from my hands, but I darted out of the way.

‘It’s fine, Mum. I agree,’ I said, and reached instead for a pen.

So I took his number out of my phone. I wrote it down in my mum’s address book first, in case I ever need it, but I don’t need it in my phone now. Ben might not agree, but sometimes to have a future you have to let some people go.

I haven’t heard from him since then. Of course, a little part of me is still desperate to hear from him, but also, now, desperate not to. The thing that I realise already is that all that Ben and I will be, even in a few months’ time, is ‘I don’t love you.’ Nothing else will remain. He will just be the person who didn’t love me. Unfortunately I know that it will be bigger than all the other things, the fun things, the good things. And I need some happier thoughts than that, to still believe in what I might have to offer somebody, what somebody might offer me. I need to feel better about myself than that. So I am desperate, really, never to hear from him again.

I do think I expect a lot, maybe everything, maybe the world. I think I deserve it, just for being me, here, now,
living in London, in heels. Just for living. But you can’t expect to be happy, I see that now. It’s not a thing you write on a ‘to do’ list along with a list of names, ticking them off until you find it, and you can’t force it or make it happen. I’ll be lucky if I find it. I’ll try to remember that if I do. But my eyes should be open and ready to see it, and not tired from fighting all night, or bleary with frustrated tears. I’ll be ready if it shows itself, happiness, I’ll be warmed up and stretched on the sidelines, determined to throw myself in, as fearless as I can be, pretending the hurt didn’t happen. And I’ll be me, and living my life, the life that I choose and I want, and that I have a passion for. A bigger passion. It’s easier than you think. I am so very lucky to have the choices that I have. I have to remember that too.

My mum is shouting at the ducks on the lake.

‘Dave, you are violent! You are a violent duck.’

Pulling on her back-up wellies I poke my head around the door to see what Dave is doing.

‘Come on, Scarlet, for goodness’ sake!’ she says, giving me as stern a look as Dave just got. ‘If we don’t get down there soon the queue will be out of the door again.’

‘I’m coming, I’m coming! Mum, have you seen my lip-gloss?’ I shout, rummaging through the pockets of all her jackets that I’ve been borrowing over the last week or so when I walk down to the sea in the mornings, fresh-faced but for moisturiser, to let the salt exfoliate my skin and the wind redden my cheeks.

‘Scarlet, you can’t wear lip-gloss on the beach, your hair gets stuck to your face. Besides, we are going to be eating fish and chips.’

I run into the kitchen to get my gloves. My lip-gloss is sitting on the side, next to my mobile phone. I pick them both up guiltily.

I stop and stare at them in my hands.

I throw my Juicy Tube on the kitchen table. And then my phone too.

‘Two plaice and chips,’ Mum says as I lean on the hot glass protecting lines of fish and sausages, in ‘Things Can Only Get Batter!’ ‘Lots of salt, lots of vinegar,’ Mum tells Al, the old Greek guy who runs the place.

‘Is this your sister?’ he asks, winking at her.

‘It’s my daughter, Al, and isn’t she beautiful,’ she says, smiling at me.

‘She is. Just like her mother,’ he says, and my God do we smile, all of us, it’s helpless, it just spills out.

Happiness isn’t a white dress. That’s just a day. Happiness isn’t the word ‘marriage’. I am talking about passion, but not the kind that needs to scale mountains or scuba-dive. Just living, cooking, working, sleeping, kissing. All the day-to-day stuff. Unless it’s right you have to be brave.

I remember something that Dolly said to me. ‘You girls these days, you have so much more choice. Why don’t you use it?’

Mum and I sit on a bench. The sun has come out but it’s still cold by the sea. I peel off my gloves to eat my chips.

‘Blow on them, darling,’ my mum says.

‘Are you happy, Mum?’ I ask, blowing on my chip.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Good. You know you watch all your films, Mum, have you heard of Dolly Russell?’

‘Of course. She won an Oscar. Very beautiful. She must be dead by now.’

‘No, not dead. Still alive and kicking. I was doing her make-up before I came to see you.’

‘Oh, that’s lovely, darling! What was she like?’

I think for a minute, contemplating a chip.

‘Crazy,’ I say, nodding my head, ‘but wonderful.’

‘But do I make you happy, Mum?’ I ask, as we walk back up to the house, stuffed full of grease and comfort.

‘Yes, but that was for me. I got lucky. You have more choices. I wouldn’t trade you, Scarlet, but I am me and you are you. Stay here.’

Mum goes into the newsagent’s to buy a paper.

We sit by the lake, watching the ducks, the wind flipping our hair. I found a grey hair this morning, sitting right in the middle of my crown. I managed not to pull it out. That’s a big deal, for me.

It’s threatening to rain, but we’ll wait until the last minute to go in.

‘What do you want to do this evening?’ I ask.

‘I have some films,’ Mum says. ‘We could watch
Some Like It Hot
, have some cake and some tea and get the fire going.’

‘That sounds perfect,’ I reply.

‘Oh, look, there’s a thing about your Dolly Russell in the paper,’ Mum says, slapping it crisply, then pushing the glasses up on her nose to read it properly. ‘Oh dear. Oh Scarlet, she was nearly kicked off a BA flight for throwing a drink over an air stewardess who asked her if she needed help going to the ladies.’

‘Ha!’ I say, without thinking.

Mum looks at me with reproach, and then back at the paper.

‘She’s gone to New York on a family matter it says here. Oh, that’s nice, she’s got a daughter there apparently.’

Mum folds the paper and looks up at the sky. ‘It will rain,’ she says, ‘but God knows the garden needs it.’

‘So, what about your Ben, then? Is that it?’ my mum asks, as we sit on the sofa, sipping tea, the remote control in her hand, her finger poised above ‘play’.

‘He’s not my Ben any more,’ I say.

I read something important somewhere, and it said ‘Don’t waste time’.

In the process of writing this book about a woman in search of some strength and a little courage, and who finds inspiration in the women around her, I realised how lucky I am to be surrounded by a band of such incredible women. They are my inspiration in business and in pleasure. Their strength in the face of the rubbish that life sometimes dishes out never fails to amaze me.

So, in no particular order, I’d like to let them know that I deeply value their strength and support: Maxine Hitchcock, Helen Johnstone, Ali Gunn, Julia Bennett, Amanda Koster, Nicola Mumford, Natalie Whitehead, Naomi Conway, Alice Weston, Rachel Kennedy, Karen Sheard, Clare Bradshaw, Amy Kean, Laura Kean and Eileen Kean.