Altar Ego (26 page)

‘Would you believe menstrual problems?’ It had proven an above-average excuse with other bosses.

‘You don’t have PMT. You’re just a rotten cow. Period.’ She flicked at the paperclip chain I’d begun on my desk. ‘Well, that’s the most productive twenty seconds you’ve had since you met Zachary Burne. I’m telling you, Beck, I can’t lie for you any more. One more day off work and the Board is going to give you the sack.’

‘The Board? Didn’t you cover for me?’

‘Yes. But you don’t have enough toes, teeth, intestines or eyes for all the chiropody, periodontistry, endocrinology and ophthalmology you’re supposed to have had lately. You’d have to have vertebrae stretching from here to Paris for the amount of osteopathic hours you’ve had out of this bloody office.’

‘You can’t sack me! I was just about to ask for a ten-year advance on my salary.’

‘Don’t give me that starving artist in the garret routine.’

‘I’m not … I couldn’t afford one. Not until the divorce anyway. So, how did Julian take it? That I want a divorce?’

She drummed her fingers on my battered, antique desktop. ‘Oh, as calmly and rationally as could be expected … Last time I saw him he was running his car back and forth over your wedding dress.’

‘What did he say?’

Kate sighed. ‘He said that he felt a visceral revulsion
to
the idea of you naked and ecstatic in the arms of a lower life form. He said that marriage brought into play the basest impulses …’

‘So … that’s a yes?’

‘… as well as the highest aspirations.’

‘So what’s that?’ I looked up at her. ‘A no?’

The roll Kate gave to her eyes was magnified by her specs. ‘Maybe you can get the marriage annulled on the grounds that the immaturity of the female petitioner made you incapable of giving informed consent?’

‘With friends like you, who needs mothers? … What else did he say?’

Kate sat on the edge of my desk, slewed a foot sideways, heel hooked over the rung of my chair. ‘That you have to be married for a year before you can get a divorce. So you can’t give up your day job just yet. But believe me, anything you want from your old house you should take now. Blokes get really ugly during a divorce.’

Anouska appeared in my office doorway, signing into her mobile phone. She acknowledged us with a jaded flutter of a manicured hand.

‘How can you think so little of Julian?’ I reprimanded. ‘He’d never do anything unscrupulous.’

‘Sure, he’s at stage one now. The hurt, “I-Want-You-Back-I’m-Dog-Meat” stage. But soon he’ll reach the “You Bitch” stage. Followed by the “
Every
Woman Is A Bitch” stage. Followed by “Even Though All Women
Are
Bitches, I’m Going Out to get Laid” stage. And then, finally, stage five, when you’ll get a wedding invitation. I mean, how will you feel when Julian finds someone else?’

‘He’s a workaholic who dresses in lederhosen. Who’d have him?’ I joshed.

‘He may advertise,’ Kate devils-advocated. ‘“For Sale: One Husband. Has Had Only One Careful Lady Owner”.’

‘At least I now know what keeps couples together,’ sighed Anouska, detaching herself from her ‘It-Girl Earring’. ‘The cost of divorce. I’ve just been speaking to my lawyer. Darius is determined to take my purse to the dry-cleaners. He’s insisting I pay for him and Norbett, the South African towel attendant, to go on a holiday to recover from my shattering request for a divorce. Can you believe that … that …
bum-bandit
?’ She exclaimed, blushing at her own linguistic audacity.

What I couldn’t believe was the miserable prediction Kate had made about Julian. ‘What makes you such an expert on men?’ I asked her, heatedly. ‘I mean, hello.’

‘For the last time, Becky. I didn’t give up on sex; sex gave up on me. Okay? So, are you happy now?’ she said despondently. ‘So shut up about it. All right?’

There was a bleak silence while this sorry revelation was fully absorbed.

Kate stomped towards the door. ‘Jesus Christ. I wish I could divorce my bloody friends.’

But Kate was wrong about Julian. I knew it better than I knew anything. He was Mr Ethical. He was unswervingly honest and honourable. He was a Human Rights Lawyer, for God’s sake. He would never run me through with the sword of justice.

‘He’s changed the locks! I don’t believe it!’

We were standing outside the house I’d shared with Julian. It was midnight on New Year’s Eve. Earlier in the evening I’d made a New Year’s Resolution not to make any New Year’s Resolutions. But now, with Anouska standing next to me and humiliation imminent, resolutions were tumbling through my head – to go to fewer parties, to aid World Peace …
for my key to turn in this goddamned lock
.

We’d spent the earlier part of the night at Darius’s New Year’s Eve Party, which had become way too
La Cage aux Folles
for Annie’s liking. Zack was playing in Aberdeen, and so – emboldened by alcohol – I’d decided to pick up some of my old possessions. Anouska had offered to drive me to Belsize Park.

‘You’re too drive to drunk.’

‘Of course I can drive. Hell, I’m in no condition to walk, now am I?’

‘If only Kate were here so
she
could drive,’ I lamented as we collapsed into the car. Kate refused to attend a New Year’s Eve party so close to the
Millenium
. She said she saw little to celebrate in a century that had given us the Holocaust, Hiroshima and the H-bomb.

‘Stop taking those bends so fast, doll,’ Anouska shrieked, as we nearly demolished Marble Arch, ‘I’m spilling my drink.’

‘Annie, um,
you’re
driving.’

The unexpected pang of nostalgia I’d felt as we juddered to a halt outside my old ivy-throttled house had quickly turned to dismay when I realized Julian had locked me out.

I leant on the bell. I banged on the door. I peered through the living-room window. The Christmas tree, or ‘horticultural festive element’, as Julian called it, was still standing and a confusion of pink and silver paper chains dangled from the chandelier like the toils of a gigantic spider on acid. Christmas decorations?
A week after Christmas?
What
was
this?

I buzzed again. No answer. I checked my watch. Five to twelve. Julian never went to bed this early. He had at least ten Belizean tribesmen to save from extinction before dawn. My finger had a buzzer indentation by the time I finally roused him. He didn’t open the door, but spoke to me through the letter box.

‘Your possessions are boxed up down the side of the house, Rebecca. And your Christmas present is behind the rhododendron.’

‘Can I come in …’

‘No.’

‘Is that your New Year’s Resolution?’ I said, with false gaiety. ‘To be a bastard? … Come on, Jules. I’m freezing my tits off out here. And I’m absolutely starving.’

‘Sorry. The only thing I’m serving is a divorce petition.’

‘
What?
’ I crouched down to peer through the slit at a silken pyjamed knee.

‘If you’re determined to make such a big fool of yourself, Rebecca, why should I stand in your way? I’m willing to divorce you. On the grounds of unreasonable behaviour.’

Unreasonable? Had he actually
seen
Zachary? It would have been unreasonable
not
to have an affair with such a man.

‘And for mental cruelty. In the shape of bran muffins.’

I guess the ‘not-reading-romance-into-this’ present had really worked then. Heavy skeins of fog hung in the damp air. The steps were draughty. In the sickly light from the street lamp Anouska and I looked grimy and grey-hued. ‘Great,’ I said neutrally. ‘Fine.’

‘Fine.’

I’d imagined this moment a hundred times – I’d feel sad and remorseful for, oh, about 2.6 seconds before it all fell away, like snow off a roof. But instead, the moment was tinctured by thoughts of the warm symbiosis we’d enjoyed. I started calculating how many hectares of honey on toast I’d buttered for him;
how
many socks I’d paired for him, how many vests I’d turned right-side out for him, how many ear hairs I’d trimmed for him. I even calculated the mountains of his dead skin cells I’d vacuumed over the years.

Nostalgia is that weird emotion which makes things seem a million times more wonderful now than they did when they were actually taking place. What makes ‘the good old days’ is a really really bad memory. This is what I told myself as I slipped off my sapphire ring and wedding band and passed them through the letter box.

‘Goodnight then,’ I said, adding ludicrously, ‘Happy New Year.’

‘Happy New Year,’ he replied formally.

Silk pyjamas, the whole house lankly strung with tinsel and streamers in January … ‘You don’t think he’s seeing someone else, do you?’ I asked Anouska, stopping dead in my tracks as we lugged my worldly possessions into her car.

‘An eligible heterosexual man in London? I would have thought he’d have been stripped down and sold for parts by now, doll.’

Dropping a box, I seized hold of her arm. ‘Do you like Zack?’

‘Yes, he’s lovely.’

‘Tell me the truth. Am I making a complete ass of myself? Am I too old for him?’

‘No.’ Her thin stream of breath dissolved in the air.

‘Please, Annie. What I value most about our friendship is your straight talking.’

‘Okay, he’s too young. You’re making a fool of yourself.’

‘So you think I’m too old, huh! Have
you
looked in the mirror lately,
wrinkle-breath
?’

I flounced off to search behind the rhododendron. Wrapped in black paper were the mouldy bran muffins and our wedding photo, shredded. I think it was safe to conclude that Julian had reached stage two.

28
Survival Of The Hippest

WHEN CONTEMPLATING LIVING
with your Stud-Puppy, five issues invariably arise – gynaecological thigh abductors, the Haircut From Outer Space, goats’ milk, a shaved pudenda and dimmer switches.

Let’s take them individually.

Months of all-night partying, irregular meals and too much alcohol, and not only will your liver be flying a white flag of surrender, but you’ll look as though you’ve been held captive at gunpoint by a group of deranged jungle revolutionaries. The only way to get rid of that look is to use every second you’ve got to beautify yourself.

When dating a younger man, the brain is obliged to cut a new deal with the body. And a hard bargain it is. Most of January, February and March, I spent in London ostensibly doing up Zack’s new house in St
John
’s Wood, but in reality renovating my own ageing façade.

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ I wheezed, staggering into the office three hours late. ‘Would you believe, Kate, that I was abducted by aliens to their Mother Ship for bizarre scientific purposes?’ Actually this wasn’t far from the truth as I was spending all my time in beauty parlours being tweezed in placed I’d never even noticed before. Any time left over I spent contorting myself masochistically at the gym.

‘Not the gym again,’ wailed Anouska as I dragged her off the tube at Tottenham Court Road. ‘Why?’

‘Because I want to be young and firm.’

‘What are you, doll? A tomato?’

A faster technique for looking young, of course, is to be seen out with much uglier women. ‘Kate, please come to Zachary’s gigs with me …’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘If you won’t come I’ll have to resort to plastic surgery,’ I moaned, sweating my way through my sixth set of abdominal crunches.

‘Yeah? What about the nasty side effects? Plastic surgery can lead to women developing thick Californian accents. Anyway, you big dag. There’s nothing wrong with your face. It’s a nice, lived-in face …’

‘Yeah, lived in by an old bag lady. Look at me!’ I peered at my reflection in the chrome frame of the
nautilus
machine. ‘I’ve seen better heads on a pimple.’

To lift my spirits even further, the horrifically gynaecological thigh abductor, on which I had to do sixty repetitions daily, was situated directly opposite the bench press. Every time I opened my legs it was to see a drooling insurance salesman staring directly at my vulva.

I now had more money invested in Estée Lauder products than in my pension plan. I seemed to have a special Swiss beauty treatment for each individual pore. I was buying only makeup with ‘concealer’ in the blurb. Pretty soon I’d be so concealed I’d be bloody invisible.

Which would not be a bad thing considering the Haircut From Outer Space. The disaster occurred when, in an effort to look younger, I abandoned my usual hairdresser for one of the trendiest, most expensive hair boutiques in London.

‘What look would’ja like, sweet’eart?’ the stylist lazily enquired.

I looked at his stringy, purple, raggedly razored crop. ‘Um … show me something you really loathe,’ I suggested.

The Haircut From Outer Space that followed meant that I then had to spend yet more money I didn’t have on ‘talking point’ hats, wigs and hair extensions.

Maybe I could distract from my hair by shifting the focus on to something I was wearing? Say a bellybutton stud?

‘Abso-bloody-lutely not,’ ordered Kate. ‘A woman does not need any holes in her other than those which are strictly speaking necessary.’

‘What about a new dress?’ Anouska pointed out a diaphanous shift in a Soho shop window. ‘That would look great on you, doll.’

‘Yeah. As long as I keep my weight down to
one stone
.’

Which segues me neatly on to point number three.

It’s impossible not to feel fat in the company of groupies half your age. A couple of minutes with these anorexic girls and you’ll want to rent space on the side of your arse to advertise major consumer goods.

Consequently, for three months I drank nothing but goats’ milk. No kidding. By the end of March I couldn’t pass a piece of furniture without scaling it.

‘What kind of bloody Feminist are you?’ Kate scolded me. ‘You’re obsessed with thinness.’

‘I’m not.’

‘You won’t even cook with thick-bottomed saucepans!’

No matter how many pounds I lost, it was never enough. Maybe bulimia was the way to go? This is one of the few diets that actually
does
work. Bulimia would give me a figure to die for –
literally
.