I read in one of my books that I have dysphoria and dysmorphia; maybe they’re the same thing and I actually have dyslexia. I’d like to read
Anna Karenina
or
Catch 22
or some Lorrie Moore – something funny or brilliant or profound, to distract me. But what I’ve been reading is a library of self-help books that Laura sent me while I was bed-bound during the dark days.
The pills are one thing, but I need to sort my life out. I’ve been off work for three weeks now. I sent Devron a
text a week ago saying sorry and that I’ll be in touch and that I’m not feeling well. He sent one back saying ‘Speak to Janelle about any forms you need to fill in. Let me know what your half-year profit forecast is.’
For two weeks, I read. A lot.
I have learnt about Freud and Jung and David Lynch’s views on Transcendental Meditation; CBT, NLP, EST, EFT. Yoga, Yoga, Yoga. The power of the breath, the power of positive thinking, the power of ‘no’, The Power of Now. Black Dogs, White Knights. Skilful vs. Unskilful. Change curves, grief cycles, Kubler-Ross, Transference, Projection, Object Relations. Seratonin, Dopamine, Good breast, Bad breast. Love Addicts, Love Avoidants, Sadists, Masochists, Commitment-phobes, Triangles of abuse, Circles of validation. Women Who Love Too Much, Men Who Love Too Little, Introverts, Extroverts, Perverts and Hair Shirts.
Look who’s a clever girl, James. Not me.
Here’s what I figure it all boils down to:
The greatest love of all. Start with yourself. (Darn it! Whitney Houston was right all along …)
You are on your own out there. Not in a ‘we all die alone’ way, merely this: you are responsible for building your own life. Depression can be a useful hiding place.
You are in charge of creating your own happiness and for your own reactions to the world.
That is what being a grown-up is.
That sounds hard.
I am a 34-year-old woman and I do not want to go to a museum or a gallery or join a book club or take up knitting or mountain climbing or go on an Exodus holiday or a Skyros or make new friends or do online dating or help those less fortunate in my community. I want to sit in my flat all day and eat myself into borderline obesity.
But instead, I call Devron, and tell him I’ll be back in on Monday morning, and not to worry about paying my wages while I’ve been away; I’ll take the time as unpaid leave.
On Sunday night, as I’m trying to restore order to the dumping ground that my flat has become, I’m sidetracked by a box of photos.
Here’s one from last August, of my grandma with Evie holding up my laptop, and my brother and niece on the computer screen. The look of amazement and joy on my grandmother’s face is beautiful.
Here’s one my brother must have taken, of me with my parents – I must be about four – sitting on my father’s lap in Marine Ices in Camden Town. I am dwarfed by a huge bowl of ice cream. My face is covered in chocolate sauce, under which I am clearly beaming. My dad’s arm is tucked tightly round my mother. She must be the same age as I am now. Her hair is still long, and she’s pinned it up behind one ear with a clip that looks like a butterfly. She’s turning sideways to look up at my dad and is smiling softly.
And another, of Nick – holding up a bowl of spaghetti with tomato sauce and meatballs, with a candle in it – as a surprise breakfast on my thirtieth birthday. He’d taken my grandma out for tea four times before she’d shared the secret of her outstanding tomato sauce with him: butter, butter and more butter – my grandma’s answer to everything. The butter tempers any acidity from the tomato.
Such a sweetness, that boy. Nick made me feel safe. He was on my side.
God, I miss him.
I miss being loved.
In one of my self-help books, there’s a long list of Dos and Don’ts. Turns out I’ve already done all the Don’ts with James: Don’t call him. Don’t see him. Don’t self-destruct. Don’t compound your problems by messing up at work. Don’t date on the rebound. Don’t park outside his house (okay, I made Pete do that one, but that’s probably even
worse). Don’t lie in bed for two weeks with dirty hair on dirty sheets. Don’t eat puddings out of the bin.
I think often of that day James and I went to the Tate. I live in that day. Not because of the sex, not because of the cake James bought me. But because of the way I felt en route to meet him – my best self, full of joy, full of hope.
I go to my wardrobe and look at the white cotton sundress I wore. It wouldn’t fit me now, I’m sure. I take it out and hold it up to the light. There are still tiny sparkles of silver glitter caught up in the hem. I take a Fletchers plastic bag from my kitchen and shove the dress into the bag, along with the purple dress I wore on our first date, the red sundress I wore the day James drove to Sheffield to win me back, and the jeans I wore the last night I saw James and shagged him in his car. Oxfam can have the lot, as long as they promise not to put any of it on display in the window.
Within a week of being back at work, I figure it’s time to find new employment for two reasons.
Firstly, I need a job where eating multiple free meals a day is not an option. The weight has been creeping up ever since I picked myself up from Laura’s hall floor. My trousers tell me I’ve put on a dress size. I tell my trousers to stop talking to me.
I am now a massive size 12. Two years ago, I’d have been happy being a 12. But six months ago, I was an 8. Size 12 means James was right and I can’t let him be right. I need to do something drastic, and soon.
Yesterday I gatecrashed two Phase 4 meetings before noon: Halloween Potato Snacking and Moultry Newness. (Moultry – Devron’s joint venture between our meat and poultry departments.) In the Moultry Newness, I almost spat in the cup for the first time in my career after eating a mouthful of chicken stuffed with pork belly and brie. Trust me, those textures in combo do not a happy three-way make.
Secondly, I need a new job because I have way too much time to fill. I am not exactly employee of the month and Devron has avoided handing me back any real responsibility. I have large chunks of the day where I sit at my desk, taking handfuls of wasabi peas from a large jar: Russian roulette for the nose, little balls of self-harm, the masochist’s best friend. I sit, I eat, and I continue to cyberstalk Noushka’s every move. Unwise.
Today I’m suffering from a particularly virulent attack of the Googles. Noushka’s been twittering like a songbird in the last few weeks. ‘In Sardinia,’ ‘In the penthouse at The Mercer,’ ‘In the presidential suite at the Burj Al Arab’. James swore he’d never go to Dubai.
Any day now I’m going to have to stop stalking her.
I decide to google something more constructive. I type various loser combinations that my IT department will no doubt have a field day over: ‘instantly thin + fat-farms + spanx’; ‘when will it ever end + lunch-break liposuction’; and finally ‘get sane in 24 hours’.
Up pops ‘Dr Dannika’s Guide to Getting Your Life Back’. Sounds promising; well, more so than a teabag.
‘I’m Dr Donna Dannika and I believe in TOUGH LOVE. In the twenty-three years I’ve been helping clients, many of them truly damaged along life’s highways, the one thing I have seen, time and time again, is that women will put up with a whole WORLD of bullcrap, just for the sake of a relationship.’
Even though her name sounds like a drunken Irish jig, I like her already.
‘Let me tell you: no man in the WORLD is worth losing your self-respect over. Heck, no man in the world is worth losing a night’s sleep over.
I love and respect men. But that’s because I LOVE AND RESPECT ME MORE.
My husband Kevan has brought me breakfast in bed every morning for the last twenty-one years. Am I the most beautiful woman in the world? To Kevan, yes. Because true beauty comes from SELF-BELIEF. Every day, while Kevan is flipping my pancakes, I say to myself Donna – YOU ARE AWESOME. I LOVE you, Donna. I VALUE you, Donna. You are UNIQUE.
Say it loud now. Say it: I am AWESOME.’
Eddie’s at lunch. I look over the top of my screen to check if Lisa has her headphones on. Yes. I should try it. And I get as far as saying ‘I am …’ when a message pops up on screen.
From Noushka’s Twitter-alert.
The worst three words in the English language: Noushka is engaged!
The thing I fear most has happened. He’s committed: just not to me. She won. She’s better than me. I hate her. Please let me stop hating her. She has come to represent everything that isn’t good enough about me in human form.
Except that when I cross-reference to her blog I see the man in the pictures is not tall and dark, with a big nose
and a beautiful smile. He is short and dark and middle-Eastern, and the two of them look very happy together.
And for the first time in a long time I feel almost okay.
Not because James is now free.
But because I am.
Time for a celebration.
I ask Lisa if she has a spare cigarette.
‘I thought you’d given up,’ she says.
‘Uh-huh, just the one.’
‘I’ll join you.’
It’s hot outside, the middle of May. How did that happen?
‘So, where have you been for a month?’ says Lisa, lighting my fag.
‘Having a mini nervous breakdown and waiting for my anti-depressants to kick in,’ I say, smiling nervously.
‘Cool,’ she says. ‘Which ones?’
‘Citalopram.’
‘20mg?’
‘Bingo.’
She high-fives me.
‘How long have you been on them?’ I say.
‘Two and a half years.’ She takes a deep drag on her cigarette. ‘So, is this all about that guy you were involved with?’ she says.
I nod. I explain the three-second version: girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl loses mind.
‘What did you do when you found the Russian in his house?’ she says.
‘Lay on the bathroom floor. Binge ate. Cried.’
‘But what did you do to him?’
I never really thought about revenge; revenge for what? Yes, he lied to me. I lied to myself – I pretended that everything was okay, when part of me knew it wasn’t. He didn’t love me enough. Along the way, I feel like he pulled my legs off one by one, like a fly under glass. But I flew under that glass, and I stayed under it. I could have gotten out with a few legs left. Instead I waited until I was just a dot.
‘Didn’t you stick his CD collection on eBay?’
Not a huge market for heavily played Dido …
‘I gave all Greg’s favourite clothes to Oxfam,’ she says.
‘I gave all
my
favourite clothes to Oxfam …’
That’s the thing. I don’t think James meant to hurt me. In fact, I’ve hurt me more than he ever did.
‘And, I had sex with Greg’s best friend. And I emailed all Greg’s staff, telling them how I’d once found him wanking off to a picture of Margaret Thatcher.’
‘Did it help?’ I say.
‘For twelve minutes. The only thing that helps is time.’
‘How much time?’
‘I’ll let you know,’ she says.
They say the best revenge is living well.
I suspect that doesn’t encompass sitting in a meeting with Devron and Tom, arguing about the packaging of Fat Bird! custard.
‘Right, we need some fresh, original ideas,’ says Devron.
‘I was reading in Marketing Week about Gü’s new range, packaging’s wicked,’ says Tom.
‘Great, get that in and see if we can do a me-too.’
‘Sorry, Devron, I thought you said original?’ I say.
‘And aren’t you going to Paris with Appletree for your inspiration trip?’ says Devron.
‘… Yeah, in a few weeks. Why?’
‘With Will Slater?
‘And …?’
‘Right – you can nick some ideas from the French. And pick Will’s brains too, he’s smart, for a supplier.’
‘I thought you wanted something fresh?’ Not stolen.
‘Julie’s working on illustrations for the labels, of three cute little fat birds. I told her to do a redhead, a blond and a brunette, Mandy’s idea actually …’
‘Devron, you aren’t seriously still thinking of calling it Fat Bird?’
‘Here we go, Germaine Greer …’ he says, rolling his eyes at Tom.
‘The research says Fat Bird! has huge recall,’ says Tom.
‘So would Shithead Custard, Tom, it’s an awful name.’
‘Sophie!’ says Devron.
‘Sorry. But I think Fat Bird is offensive. And derivative and stupid and unappealing.’
‘Your opinion goes against the research,’ says Devron.
‘You, your girlfriend and Tom? That’s research, is it?’ I say.
‘JFDI,’ says Tom.
I know I’ve only been back a week from my extended trip to La La Land, but I really think I need another holiday.
I return to my desk, click back on Google and take my credit card out of my wallet.
That night James calls.
How funny that he should call on the same day Noushka announces her engagement. No such thing as a coincidence, isn’t that what Freud says? Maybe he’s following me following her on Twitter and knows that I know.
Lord no. Men don’t sink to the depths that women do; not men like James.
When I see his number come up, my heart leaps to my collarbone. God, how I wish my body would obey Laura’s mind. Stay cool. Turn my back.
I pick up on the fourth ring.
‘We should meet,’ he says. There is a thin but definite layer of sadness to his voice, like the crispy edge on a chocolate mini egg.
‘Why should we meet?’
‘I think we have some unfinished business,’ he says, ever the romantic.
‘Do we?’
‘Soph. I know you think there was something going on between me and her …’ He can’t even bring himself to say her name. She must have wounded him.
‘She’s irrelevant,’ I say. She always was; she was a symptom, not the cause.
‘Yes. Well, anyway, I’d like to make dinner for you next week.’
‘Bad timing,’ I say. ‘I’ve just booked flights an hour ago, I’m off this Sunday.’
‘Where to?’
‘Italy.’ Sounds a tad cooler than ‘a fat farm in Italy for women with eroded self-esteem’.
‘When are you back?’
‘Next weekend.’
‘Okay, the following Monday.’
‘Busy.’
‘Tuesday.’
‘No.’
‘Wednesday.’
‘In Paris with a supplier on Wednesday.’