Susie, Anna and I sit glued to my enormous television watching the sing-off between single mum Lori and sixteen-year-old Steven. Lori goes home. She cries, but through her tears she says she’s doing it for her kids and the crowd cheer.
Jack should be coming home soon.
I confess to the girls I’m nervous, that it’s like a first date in that I want to skip all the formalities and get to the comfortable part when I can be myself. I tell them about the chemistry I’d felt that first night. What if I were imagining it?
‘I’m sure you weren’t,’ says Anna. ‘Chemistry’s either there or it isn’t.’
‘You seriously fancy him, don’t you?’ Susie asks.
I nod. ‘I probably should have lived with a woman, much simpler,’ I smile, glancing repeatedly at the front door.
‘He may not be back for ages,’ Susie says, urging me to relax. But I can’t. I find myself shoving a copy of
The Week
over a glossy magazine. Anna shakes her head and lifts it up, revealing
Heat
magazine underneath.
‘What’s she doing now?’ Anna asks Susie as I toss a random CD into the cupboard. In the run-up to Jack’s arrival I have been throwing away or hiding anything that hints of a lonely life before, for example the chicken Kiev for one in my freezer. A few flowery drying-up cloths have also been hidden and will make their flowery reappearance when Jack leaves after Christmas.
Soon Anna and Susie are helping me rifle through my CD collection. ‘
The Best of Carly Simon?
’ Anna suggests.
‘Cupboard,’ I say.
‘Enrique Englesias?’ Anna continues.
‘Cupboard!’ we all shout.
‘I love him, though,’ Susie admits.
‘Me too,’ I add.
‘No.’ Anna confiscates it.
Next, the three of us are rummaging through my DVD collection and the girls confiscate
Terms of Endearment, Mamma Mia!, Footloose
and . . .
‘
Ladies in Lavender
?’ Anna sighs, holding up the box. I burst out laughing.
‘Why don’t you suggest a cosy night in with Jack watching it,’ Susie mentions.
Why didn’t I check the bathroom either? I was so intent on making Jack’s bedroom perfect that I forgot all about the little things. From the mirrored cupboards over the sink we gather boxes of tampax and a box of unopened condoms.
‘Who knows? They might come in handy,’ Anna suggests.
I chuck each item over to Anna, Anna chucks to Susie, and Susie shoves the various embarrassments into a sponge bag. Anna holds up a tube of thrush cream. ‘Oh, thank God,’ I say, grabbing it from her. ‘And I don’t think Jack needs to see this first thing in the morning?’ Susie suggests, chucking my bikini-line kit into the bag. ‘Not that I need it right now.’ I smile at both of them.
‘Nor me,’ adds Anna.
‘Well, I certainly don’t,’ finishes Susie.
Next I show the girls Jack’s room. New life has now been breathed into this space. There are flowers on the dressing table, a jug of water with a glass by his bedside and clean sheets on his double bed. I’ve washed and ironed the blue-spotted duvet cover and I’ve taken down the Spanish olive grove painting, replacing it with an abstract print of New York which I thought was more Jack’s style. I walk over to the curtains and draw them. ‘Why don’t you pop a chocolate on his pillow too,’ suggests Anna.
‘And a “Do not disturb” label on the door handle?’ Susie adds. ‘I want to live here. When can I move in?’
We hear a taxi pulling up outside No. 21 and scarper out of his room and downstairs like naughty teenagers. We hear a gate clanging and the rustle of leaves. In a fury of activity we plant ourselves back on the sofa. I adjust my hair, apply lipstick, cross my legs, then uncross them. Susie grabs a magazine, it’s the television guide, and flicks through it. We laugh nervously.
‘Say something!’ I demand of Anna. ‘Tell a funny joke!’
Anna stares at us. ‘You two are pathetic,’ she states. ‘By the way sweetheart, you’ve got lipstick,’ she gestures to my mouth, ‘on your front tooth.’
‘I hope he won’t be too late,’ Susie says an hour later. ‘I need to get back.’ She calls Mark to check up on the children.
‘Here he is!’ I call, beckoning them over to my desk.
I have logged onto
Facebook
.
‘OK,’ Anna concedes, looking at his image on the screen. ‘He’s beautiful.’
There he is, sitting on a lawn modelling an open shirt and jeans. We read his profile. Jack Baker is interested in:
Women
‘Good start,’ Susie says with a vigorous nod.
Status: Single
‘Why?’ Anna asks.
Favourite activities: Making TV shows, making love
‘That’s what’s wrong with him,’ Anna proclaims. ‘He’s full of himself!’
‘I’d be if I looked like that,’ Susie insists.
Favourite TV show:
Stargazer
(because it’s mine)
Favourite books: Do magazines count?
(Stuff
and
Nuts)
Jack has a colossal four hundred and eighty-nine friends, mainly glamorous, pouting women, many with Russian-sounding names. ‘It’s fairly shallow, isn’t it?’ Anna remarks.
‘Do you want tickets to his show or not?’ Susie berates her.
‘I mean, who out of those friends is going to jump in front of a double-decker bus to save his life?’ Anna continues. ‘She certainly isn’t,’ she says, pointing to Theresa Hampton-Williams, who looks like a
Vogue
model. ‘I doubt she’d even break a nail for you. Oh, Gilly, I know I had to ask you something. Are you free next Tuesday?’
‘Next Tuesday,’ I mutter, opening one of my drawers to try to find my diary. Anna glances at a framed photograph of Ed and me, hidden underneath a mass of paperwork. It’s the only photograph I have left of him. I couldn’t quite throw the last one away.
‘Does Jack know anything about you by the way?’ she asks as I shut the drawer.
‘Nothing.’
‘They were too busy flirting,’ Susie adds.
Anna picks up a photograph on my desk. ‘Oh my God, I remember that holiday!’ she says. It’s a picture of the three of us in Ibiza. We’re standing outside our apartment, wearing dresses that show off our tans. We can have only been about twenty-two. It was at the beginning of the evening (more flattering) and the three of us were about to go dancing on a hot summer’s night.
The girls leave at 10.30, disappointed, and I leave Jack a note before heading to bed. That’s another thing about hitting your mid-thirties. You become more sensible about going home at a civilized hour. Anna has an important breakfast meeting tomorrow with her vile boss; Susie can’t stay up too late because she needs to be up early to feed baby Olly, and I . . . well I like my goosedown duvet.
I turn the light off.
Lying in the darkness I find myself thinking of Ed. Do I miss him or simply miss his presence? What I find so hard about our relationship was that it was like a great book, yet at the end, for no reason, the author went off the boil.
The story started so well in the park that day, when the mother and daughter were screaming at me because Ruskin had pinched the little girl’s bread. Ed had been reading his
Financial Times
on the bench and had come to my rescue, gently talking to the girl, telling her there was no need to be scared of dogs, that Ruskin was just a greedy monkey. I took a back seat and watched as he waved a magic wand over the crisis and peace and calm were restored. That’s what I loved about Ed; just by being there he made me feel safe.
My first impressions were that he took pride in his appearance and he had an authority about him, rather like my father. Kicked out of home when he was seventeen because he didn’t like his new stepmother, Ed was determined never to have to crawl back to his dad and beg for money. When I met him he ran his own company, selling advertising space on the internet. He’d made a fortune.
‘How can I thank you?’ I said when we were alone, sitting down next to him.
He closed his newspaper. ‘You can buy me a coffee,’ he suggested. Our coffee extended to lunch, which then extended to him taking me out to dinner. He whisked me off to a restaurant in Mayfair which his cousin ran, where we were given complementary champagne. We talked until the staff had to tell us it was time to leave. In the taxi on the way home, he reached for my hand and placed it in his. ‘I’m going to marry you,’ he predicted.
When we arrived at No. 21 he ordered the driver to go round the block. ‘I’ve scared you, haven’t I?’ he said, noticing how quiet I’d been since he had almost proposed. When the taxi driver pulled up outside my house for the third time, Ed ignored the driver’s impatient sighs. ‘Come back to my place,’ he said.
I wrote my telephone number on the back of his hand. ‘Let’s do this properly,’ I said with a smile as I stepped out of the taxi.
I look across to his side of the bed, now empty. When Ed and I first started going out he used to sleep over here for half the week, and I’d camp at his house for the other half. We’d had our own drawers to put things in and laughed, saying it’d be so much easier if we just moved in together for good. But we didn’t want to, not until we were married, partly because there was little point when we only lived round the corner from one another.
Being single is hard. Friends say it’s good to be independent, and I agree, to a point, but what Nancy said is also true: that being single and over thirty in London is a lonely business. It is true that lots of women decide not to marry or thrive on being single and enjoying their careers, and I admire that. But for me, it’s not what I want. While friends are settling down, I feel as if I’ve missed the last bus home. Being single makes me feel like a boat without an oar. Sometimes I do feel adrift.
When Ed and I first started going out neither of us could wait to go to bed. Often we’d talk and make love until the light began to creep in through the curtains, and we could hear the early-morning London traffic, people returning home after night shifts, the recycling bags being collected. Towards the end of our relationship we didn’t have sex so often, but I thought that that was normal, like any other relationship. I do remember, however, one holiday in Spain, me trying to drag him out of the villa, as all he wanted to do was sleep and read his book. Had we become too comfortable with one another?
I used to ask Ed what he wanted out of life. He’d always tell me he didn’t even like to think about the next day, let alone the future, that he was much more a ‘live for the moment guy’. ‘What does that mean for us?’ I’d asked once, letting my insecurity creep into my voice.
After Megan’s death and my parents’ divorce, I yearned for some stability, though I couldn’t bring myself to tell him this.
I am jolted from my thoughts when I hear a key in the lock. Jack’s talking as he comes up the stairs. ‘I’ll be back this weekend,’ he’s saying on the landing just outside the bathroom. ‘We can talk about it then. Yes, lots of love.’
Who’s he talking to at this time of night? Next I hear the sound of footsteps outside my bedroom. Should I call out casually, ‘Evening!’ No, Gilly, I laugh at myself. I don’t think so. He might think I’m inviting him into my bedroom.
Now I hear him crashing around in the bathroom. I smile, thinking about Anna, Susie and I hiding all the unmentionables. I shut my eyes.
A tap is now running, he must be brushing his teeth. Minutes later he walks towards my bedroom. I think of Guy. This is the part in a horror film when he enters my room brandishing a carving knife with a mad cackling laugh.
Then I hear his door shut.
And I breathe again.
That night I dream that Jack Baker is in my kitchen. He has long hair down to his knees and eats like a caveman, gripping a wooden spoon. When I am closer to him, I see that he is eating my porridge.
17
The following morning, after my bad porridge dream, I wake up bursting for the loo.
Go, a voice tells me. Just go. It’s no big deal. You’ve got to bump into him at some point.
I hear vague noises coming from his bedroom.
I slip the duvet off me, open the door and, like a detective, glance to the left and to the right. Jack’s door is closed. I look ahead. The coast is clear. In my oversized T-shirt and baggy striped pyjamas I tiptoe down the hallway, down two steps and into the bathroom, shutting the door swiftly behind me. Now, this is when I wish I had a lock, for what I am about to do is unforgivable. I turn on the tap full blast, and just to make sure Jack knows the room is in use, that there’s absolutely no doubt about it, I turn on the shower. Then I rush to the loo, slam the loo seat down and go. Ah, thank God!
After a lightning-quick shower I open the bathroom door and sprint back along the landing, and am so close to reaching my destination, until . . .
‘Hi there,’ he says in his dressing gown. ‘Bathroom free?’
I pull the towel closely around me. ‘Yes, all yours!’ I squeak, scampering back into my bedroom.
When I hear the sound of running water I find myself smiling as I imagine Jack, naked in my shower, water running down his broad tanned back.
As I’m getting dressed for work, I decide to wear the new black dress I bought (with Jack’s rent) which shows off my cleavage. As I stick my pyjamas under the pillow, I decide I might upgrade them with next month’s rent. Maybe I’ll buy myself a skimpy silk nightie too.
Applying lipstick, I hear him whispering on the landing. I lean into the door to try to catch what he’s saying.
‘Yeah, I’m off. Thank God it’s Friday . . . I’ve been locked in the edit suite . . . She’s nice, hardly seen her though.’
He must be talking about me.
He laughs. ‘Any plans for the weekend by the way?’
‘Got to go,’ he says, when I walk out of my bedroom. He slips his BlackBerry into his pocket. We both head downstairs, Jack behind me. ‘Is the room all right, the mattress comfortable?’ I ask, as if I am running a bed and breakfast business.
‘Very comfortable.’
‘You have everything you want?’
‘It’s fine. Thanks for the flowers too.’
Our conversation is an ocean apart from how we reacted to one another the first time we met, and it occurs to me that Jack might be as apprehensive as I am.