The Jackson Five
I WANT YOU BACK
Even from a young age, I’d never subscribed to stories that had an element of time-travel.
Yet somehow, in the space of one night surrounded by the love of friends – and the buzz of alcohol – I’d managed to come home and catapult the living room back to a state of absolute chaos.
There were Post-it notes and ideas scribbled everywhere and, as though dipping a toe into winter cold waters, I started with the most basic of ideas.
‘Yes, that’s a dozen pink roses… Could lilies be added, too? … Of course, and they’ll be delivered today? … That’s fantastic, thank you.’
‘Flowers, really?’ David stood in the doorway eating granola in his underpants.
If Eudora could see you now…
‘It’s a start. Consider it a bedrock.’
‘Okay, and what’s next?’
My tablet was lying on the table. I picked it up and lunged it in his direction.
‘You’re going to commission a piece of furniture?’ He spooned in another mouthful and spoke around the crunch. ‘That’s not altogether… romantic. Can you sparkle it up a little?’
‘With glitter?’ I asked, glancing down at Sheila’s contact form.
‘Not literally sparkle it up, you arse. What are you even going to ask for?’
‘A rocking chair,’ I answered plainly. ‘To match my own.’
There was a slow smile that appeared, a penny hanging on the edge of a dropper. I watched the realisation tip over. ‘Okay, I take it back. That’s actually very sweet.’ He turned and wandered off, as though signalling the end of our exchange.
‘I’m not finished with my ideas!’ I shouted after him.
‘I know,’ he answered, still chewing, ‘but I’m not finished with my breakfast and I’d like to keep it down if I can. I’ve a big day of writing ahead.’
David was already typing by the time I came to leave for work.
I skipped my usual Dock of the Bay visit and instead went straight to the shop.
My head was too busy, too loud to entertain Bill asking how my husband was.
Besides which, I’d become too honest at Janet’s party and it had carried through to the everyday.
I was now too comfortable answering questions about David by saying how loved up he was with his new girlfriend – which, of course, was an answer that only invited more questions.
After several strong drinks it was an easy thing to explain.
After a night of little sleep and only half a cup of tea at home, I decided I was better off brewing my own drink in my shop’s boxy kitchen than I was having my usual morning chat with Bill.
‘Delivery!’ Michel beamed as I rounded the corner into my road. He was standing on the pavement surrounded by boxes. ‘I had too productive a time this weekend, and I need to share the lucky findings.’
‘Good grief.’ I laughed. ‘You don’t have another dildo stashed in one of those boxes, do you?’ The memory was both beautiful and quite painful. But I had to hope the flowers might be the first of a few steps in taking some of that pain away – for one, or both of us.
Michel looked at the open mouths of boxes with a worried expression. ‘I don’t think…’
I reached out and squeezed his forearm. ‘To be clear, it would be a good thing if there wasn’t. I’m not actively looking for… those.’
He managed a laugh, though it was still fringed with something that sounded like nerves. ‘Oui, understood, it’s a no to… the… Well, a no to the things. We’ll take these in, though?’ he asked with a new note of enthusiasm. ‘You will have first pick over everyone.’
‘Oh, you’re very good to me, Michel,’ I answered as I unlocked the door. Not least because you’re giving me the distraction I need…
We took two boxes apiece and carried them in the general direction of the counter. I rested my two on top and peeled away the lips of the cardboard on the first one. There were no fewer than five porcelain faces staring back at me, and I bit back on the urge to physically recoil.
‘Dummies!’ he announced.
‘So I see…’ I part-lifted one out of the box.
There was a grimace fighting its way out of me, no matter how hard I tried to stifle it.
My grandmother had been a collector of porcelain dolls – two entire rooms full of them at her house – and it had always felt to me, from childhood onwards, that stepping into those rooms was like stepping into a kind of horror scene.
All face and no feeling; I couldn’t ever read those dolls.
Forty years later, and nothing much seemed to have changed.
‘They’re the sort where you’ – Michel bunched his fingers together and gestured his hand in an upward motion – ‘you put the hand in the…’ He gestured again, but the clink of the shop door opening interrupted his upward swing. Thank God.
Though I was less relieved when I saw what exactly had interrupted the exchange. There, in the entryway to my shop, was a young man clutching a ridiculously sized bunch of flowers.
‘Oh no.’ I hurried to greet him. ‘There’s been a mix-up–’
‘That’s what the last lady said,’ he answered, his tone flat, bored, unfulfilled with life.
Wait until you get older, I thought but managed to hold back on saying.
‘I took these to the first address and she said to bring them to this address. Should I… I mean, do you want them? Otherwise, I’m taking them back with me.
’ He shrugged. ‘The woman who ordered will still be charged, but whatever.’
‘I’m sorry, the first lady said to bring them here?’
‘Yeah, she was at…’ He lifted his clipboard and parroted back Sheila’s address.
‘She said to bring them here?’
‘Yeeees.’ He let the vowel hang long and deep, as though that might help me to understand. ‘Do you… Am I leaving them or…?’
I hesitated. She doesn’t want the flowers, Patti, a voice from deep in the back of my brain answered the situation. It was an effort, but I stretched my hands forward and took the bouquet from him.
‘Can you sign here?’
I ran on automatic to sign my name, and the delivery man bolted out of there like he’d narrowly avoided a flower-related emergency – which in some ways he had.
I took the flowers back to the counter with me, and in answer to Michel’s wide-eyed expression I only managed to shake my head, don’t ask.
I was grateful that he didn’t. I stared down into the box of blank porcelain faces that were upturned towards me, and I’m sure I saw one of them – a red-haired, pink-cheeked madam – smirk.
‘Michel?’
‘Hm?’ he answered, pretending to be distracted by something on a nearby shelf.
‘Does your wife like flowers?’ He turned to face me. ‘These are going spare…’
* * *
Like a teenager loitering outside an off-licence, I waited for the friendly expression of someone who might be willing to do a kindness for a stranger.
The shop had been open for thirty minutes, but their delivery service didn’t kick-in for another hour.
I’d had to get inventive with this particular step of the plan.
When a typical working-man – paint-stained overalls and a hungry air about him – was about to hit the entrance, I reached out an arm to stop him.
‘It looks like it’s been a long day for you.’
The man frowned and, without saying anything, he looked at the direction of the counter: so close and yet so far. Thanks to the crazy woman who just commandeered him…
‘It… has been?’ His answer upturned, as though he wasn’t, in fact, quite sure of it.
‘How do you fancy earning yourself a free dinner?’
Where there had only recently been a frown, the muscles of his face now relaxed into a wide smile; he had a hearty laugh that matched the size of his stomach. He rubbed at the stubble on his chin, and that’s when I noticed the wedding ring.
‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch, lady, not in my experience.’
I murmured agreement. ‘How about, a woman who’s in trouble with her wife?’
There came the same chuckle again, this time deeper. ‘Well, that’s definitely a–’
‘If you help me get back in the good books with mine,’ I interrupted him, ‘I’ll foot the bill for anything you plan on buying for you and yours.’
‘You’re in the dog house, are you?’
Trying though the entire situation was – and had been, for the thirty minutes I’d been waiting on a willing stranger – there was something heart-warming, encouraging even, about the fact that I had just made Sheila into my wife – and this man didn’t care.
I imagined my mother spinning in her proverbial grave, muttering all sorts of, ‘Fancy a woman being married to a woman…’ comments.
‘Well, I know that spot well,’ he added when I didn’t answer. ‘What do you need?’
A large fish and chips slathered in ketchup with a side of curry sauce – delivered to Sheila’s address.
She mightn’t forgive me for flowers, I reasoned, but maybe the route back to Sheila’s heart would be through her stomach – and through fond memories of eating fish and chips while standing her kitchen, bathed in our post-sex stupor.
The man gave me a head-start. While he ordered – fish and chips three times over with his choice of a side and whatever change he could get from the forty pounds I’d given him – I rushed to Sheila’s street.
She lived a brisk walk away from the fish bar and somehow I was desperately out of breath by the time I got there.
I felt for the cigarette box in my pocket and swiftly deposited it in the first rubbish bin I happened to spot, on the opposite side of the street to Sheila’s home.
Enough of those, I thought, though my trousers now felt uncomfortably empty without them.
And while I nervously shifted from one foot to the other – looking every bit like the suspicious loiterer, which was a strand of my persona I could have happily lived without – I wished that I’d waited until after the fish and chip delivery to decide to quit smoking again.