Fine Young Cannibals
GOOD THING
So as Spotify is my witness, life soon became a medley of listening to break-up songs on repeat; though I was trying to limit that behaviour to the times when David was out of the house, lest I ruin what looked to be his authentic throes of romance.
Eudora still hadn’t come home with him – Janet and I used her five pounds to buy more cream horns – though David hadn’t confided in me explicitly that that was the case.
The flower deliveries and the poetry recitations and the constant ‘Are you sure this outfit is okay?’ conversations were enough to give him away, though.
It had been years since I’d seen him so smitten with one single woman, and on a daily basis it caused a bitter clash against the fact that I was…
well, also so smitten with one single woman.
I closed the shop door, locked up and started the drudge home, taking good care to avoid catching Bill outside the coffee shop on the way.
I was in no mood for a wave and a smile.
That morning, I’d even gone as far as going somewhere else entirely for my morning pot of tea.
It had been terrible, of course. No one brews a drink quite like Bill.
But given the chance that he might mention David and his girlfriend, or worse still, that he might mention Sheila, I’d thought it was better to avoid him altogether.
Since she’d rebuffed every effort I’d made, I’d started to wonder whether the woman Bill had seen her with those weeks ago might have been more than just a woman, after all.
Maybe she was someone who meant something.
Maybe she was someone who– Isn’t married, I thought with a sigh as I darted to the other side of the pavement to avoid a gaggle of teenagers who were bustling towards me.
I wasn’t sure whether it was a coping mechanism, to think of Sheila with someone else.
Maybe that was the reason she’d rebuffed my efforts, I told myself at least once a day now.
Somehow, it was easier to believe that than it was to think that I’d really hurt her so badly, and that she simply couldn’t stand the thought of knowing me anymore.
I crossed back to my own side of the pavement after the rabble had gone.
I briefly flirted with the idea of getting a takeaway for dinner as I walked through the waft of freshly cooked chips, then remembered that I’d never be able to eat fish and chips again.
Another sigh fell out of me at the thought.
But perhaps David will want wine and Chinese, I consoled myself as I rounded the corner into our street.
At least I could pay a nice young person to bring Chinese right to the door, which meant minimal movement – a bonus always, now.
Among the many things this heartbreak was doing to me, I was convinced it had aged me at least ten years in the last smatter of weeks.
Another fine reason for avoiding women altogether.
Leaving the house of an evening had become less and less attractive and, as I pushed open the first door to our building, I groaned at the thought of doing the stairs.
When David and I had picked this place – with a permanently broken lift – we’d joked that one day these stairs would keep us young.
Now, they just made noises tumble out of me, while reminding me that my fitness already wasn’t what it was when we’d moved in.
‘David, we need to house hunt!’ I shouted as I pushed through our front door. ‘I’m far too old for these– Bollocks!’
For what must have been the fourth day in a row, I kicked my foot up against the edge of the vulva canvas.
David had promised to hang it after the gallery had called for an alternative delivery address, informing me during the same call that my first delivery address had been “marked as unavailable” by the man with the van.
I was both annoyed and relieved that it was still sitting in the hallway.
I was at risk of causing arthritis of the toe if I kicked the sodding thing one more time, but I wasn’t convinced that I was brave enough to face it actually hanging in front of me every time I walked in the house either.
‘David,’ I shouted again, hearing the clink of crockery echo out of the kitchen, ‘can we forgo tea and go straight to wine?’ I shrugged my jacket off and hung it on the hallway stand. ‘And Chinese, if you’re not out breaking hearts this evening, please. I’m miserable, again, and I need–’
The sentence broke apart in my mouth as I walked through into the kitchen.
David was clanking about with a tea set I hadn’t even known we owned – is that our teapot?
– and there Sheila was, sitting at my kitchen table, her hands clasped in front of her and a totally unreadable expression on her face.
‘Marvellous, you’re home.’ David turned with a tray between his hands and a smile on his face that made me want to both slap him and kiss him at the same time.
‘I actually have a prior engagement.’ He lowered the tray to the table.
‘So I’ll be leaving the two of you now. Patti, I’m sure you can handle this? ’
There was a slight inflection to disguise the comment as a question, and I nodded.
‘Sheila’ – he set a hand on her shoulder with a level of familiarity that made me wonder what on earth I’d missed during a single day of work – ‘it’s been a pleasure. I hope we’ll speak more.’
Her expression softened when she looked at him. ‘Thank you again, David.’
‘Patricia.’ He caught my hand and squeezed it as he walked by me.
‘Thank you, David,’ I echoed Sheila’s sentiment, albeit in a near whisper.
I wasn’t sure what I was thanking him for – finding Sheila, talking to her, getting her here!
The man was a God to all women, it seemed, even the ones who really never would sleep with him.
He’d got further with her than I had at least. I smiled and thought, Well isn’t that just the story of my life.
Sheila’s stare was fixed on the teapot, even as I sat down opposite her.
‘So,’ she started, ‘your husband came to visit me today.’
‘I didn’t ask him to,’ I said in defence; my voice frayed with worry already.
‘No. If it had been something you’d planned, there would have been a delivery man involved.’ She looked up at me and she managed a tired smile; a slight lift at the edges of her lips, but nothing that reached her eyes. ‘You didn’t need to send everything you did.’
I shrugged. ‘I did all right out of it.’
There was a long pause before she asked, ‘Did you eat the fish and chips?’
‘I couldn’t let them go to waste.’
Sheila’s smile cracked wider and a vice-like grip caught a hold of my stomach.
‘Patti–’
‘Please, let me?’
Sheila opened her hands in a ‘The floor is yours’ gesture and I realised very quickly that I hadn’t a fucking clue what to say, other than–
‘I’m sorry.’ I rubbed at my temples as though I might dislodge something other than a meagre apology.
‘I’m sorry,’ I repeated and quietly shunned myself for it.
‘The situation with David… He’s my best friend, and he has been for the longest time.
But he’s also an utter… an utter put-about, and I wouldn’t touch him with someone else’s bargepole.
’ I heard a light laugh tumble out of her but I tried not to let it distract me.
‘Not least as well because, despite myself, despite years of never really coming clean with it, I am…’ I petered out and thought of my mother, spinning in her grave.
‘I am very, very gay.’ A louder laugh came from her; not loud enough to interrupt me, but loud enough to encourage.
‘But until you, I’ve never given myself a real chance with anyone, for so many reasons, but mostly because of my mother and my upbringing and…
my steadfast belief that I haven’t needed anyone.
’ I checked the sentence over for inaccuracies and realised that I hadn’t quite told the truth.
‘I haven’t needed anyone apart from David.
When he and I got married, it was convenience.
It still is! Neither of us were involved with anyone, both of us were getting older, and we thought, Christ, most marriages wind up being two best friends who live together anyway, don’t they?
’ I didn’t give her time to answer that, though; now I’d started, all the thoughts were pouring out of me.
‘It was David’s suggestion that I use the app to meet someone.
Well, to meet people. David wasn’t exactly encouraging me towards life-long companionship and a picket fence.
And it never, ever occurred to me that of all the people I might meet through that godforsaken contraption, that one of them would be…
’ I risked a glance up at her and saw that she’d been watching me this whole time.
The tension in my stomach fizzed away, as though someone had dropped a soluble aspirin in me.
‘It never occurred to me that the person I might meet, would be you.
‘And I know, I know I should have told you about David. But to start with, I didn’t know that you and I would be serious enough to even justify having that conversation.
And then when we were, I simply didn’t know how to have it.
Of course, not having it at all now seems like the biggest cock-up I could have thought of.
I’m old enough to admit that mistake at least. And to admit that bombarding you with gifts mightn’t have been the best of ideas.
But when you wouldn’t answer the phone, I was running out of options.
And then Bill said he’d seen you with someone, with a woman, and the panic shot up a level until I was taking advice straight out of every Hugh Grant film I could find, and that didn’t bloody work either. ’
I threw my hands up in exasperation and let them softly drop to the table.
‘I don’t know what David has told you and what he hasn’t, but that’s the truth of it all.
I am married to my best friend, who seems to be courting one of your friends,’ I added with a huff of a laugh, ‘but I am single, and available, and…’ I sucked in a ridiculously deep breath and then forced it out, along with the last of my sentence.
‘And I think there’s a good chance that I’m hopelessly in love with you. ’
In answer, Sheila pulled in her own big breath as though she were about to speak.
But instead, she reached towards the teapot.
The silence was enough to lacerate me; there was an observable prickle in each of my hands and it crossed my mind that I might be on the cusp of a stroke.
Or another panic attack, I thought and I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes at myself.
She poured out a cup’s worth of deep brown tea – a perfect colour, under any other circumstances, but not even a good cup of tea could have saved this – and pushed it towards me.
She followed it with a small milk jug. And then, as though engaging in some quiet form of torture by British etiquette, she proceeded to pour out her own drink in complete silence, too.
Sheila wrapped her hands around the small cup and sighed. ‘You’re an idiot.’
Not exactly the response I was looking for…
I stared into my tea and nodded in stunned agreement.
‘And I love you, too.’