Crazygirl Falls in Love (32 page)

I flick my hair, straighten my dress and power walk out of the
meeting room, to the lifts, and to freedom.

***

The Tale of the Terrible Thing

Six months ago my ex-fiancé sent me a text, asking me to have
a drink with him at the Churchill. It had been our favourite pub
while we were still a couple. I wouldn’t have met up except he
still had in his possession two very precious items of mine, my
eyebrow plucker and my SpongeBob SquarePants DVD box
set.

The problem was, I’d double booked myself. I’d agreed to meet
up with an old mate who’d recently moved to Berlin, Nathaniel
Theodore Ormond-Jones the Third, who was in town for the weekend.
We met at uni and he was by far the hottest lad at Law School. I’m
talking hotter than lava hot. He was also super smart and super
successful. He’d recently made partner at Clifford and Chance
Germany, hence the move to Berlin. In fact, that was what we were
celebrating. He was in London to meet and greet the first client
he’d be the signing Partner for, which is a big deal in any
lawyer’s career.

I refused to cancel on Nate because lava should never be put
aside for a cold plate of ex, but I really wanted that plucker
back. My face was starting to look like a giant furry caterpillar
was crawling across it. Me Jane, you Tarzan. Jane need
plucker.

The place Nate and I agreed to meet for supper was a stone’s
throw away from the Churchill Arms, so I thought I could kill two
birds with one stone – meet Nate and have a couple of drinks, duck
out for a few minutes, meet He Who Shall Not Be Named, exchange
things then duck back for dinner, never to see my ex
again.

[
Boy was I wrong on
that front. Who would’ve thought that a few months later I’d be
having a very public, career-destroying meltdown in his
office?
]

Anyhoo, I met Nate that Saturday afternoon at Kensington Wine
Rooms. He was even more beautiful than I remembered. He’d chopped
off the shaggy locks, the jaw was more defined and he’d been
working out. His formerly tall, lean frame was bulked up but
nicely, not in that gross over-testosteroned way I find so
repulsive. On seeing him, I immediately wanted those strong manly
arms around me.

We shared a bottle of wine, then another, and I noticed him
smiling at me in that way he always used to smile at me during
Torts lectures and Evidence tutorials. Shame we were never single
at the same time back then, one of us was always dating someone.
But now things were different. He Who Shall Not Be Named and I were
no longer on the road to matrimony and Nate was enjoying his single
manwhore life in Germany.

I think I’d had a few too many by the time it came to meet the
ex. Thinking it was a fabulous idea for Nate to join, I
giggle-asked him whether he wanted to chaperone. I would never have
suggested it if I had been sober, composed and non-idiotic. Nate
agreed, so we cancelled our dinner order at the Wine Rooms (royally
pissing off the waiters) and headed off, arm-in-arm, to the
Churchill.

He Who Shall Not Be Named was waiting at the
bar. At first I observed him from a distance, noticing he’d grown a
bit of stubble and was looking slightly more scraggly than usual.
But remnants of his metrosexuality were still there. He wore a
shirt that accentuated his man-cleavage and on his nose were those
obnoxious bug-eyed sunnies he always loved (made even more
obnoxious by the fact he was wearing them
inside a dark pub
). I had gripped
Nate’s arm a little more tightly and continued watching my ex from
afar, wondering for the thousandth time what I’d ever seen in this
badly coordinated hipster.

Nate took a seat by the window, leaving me to make my way
over. Time to get that damn eye plucker back.

“Hey Dumpling,” he’d said, standing from the bar stool to give
me a kiss on the cheek.

“Hey doucheface,” I’d replied, a tad confused.

We were kissing on the cheek now? When did
it suddenly get friendly?
Last time we saw
each other I’d locked him out of our flat and was throwing his
clothes out the window onto the street.

“How have you been Penny?” he had asked, “please, take a seat,
what would you like to drink?”

He pulled out a stool for me, ignoring my jibe.

At that point I should have known something was up. He hadn’t
shaved and was pulling out chairs? Most out of
character.

“I’ve been good, thanks,” I’d replied, “but no drink for me I
need to dash. Here, I bought you the rest of your things. The ones
I didn’t burn or throw out the window.”

I handed over the rest of his stuff. I’d shoved it
unceremoniously into a Morrisons bag. I knew he’d hate that. He’d
always been a Marks & Spencers guy, thinking that shopping
there made him superior to everyone and a bit posh. No Tesco
tortilla chips or Sainsbury’s crunchy nutty seed bites for him. It
had been one of the many little differences we had throughout our
almost-four years together. I would always buy basics and
necessities from Aldi or Tesco. M&S was reserved for Christmas
and random international holidays like Cinco de Mayo.

I gotta admit I was mildly disappointed that doucheface didn’t
notice the brand on the bag. It was the most clever revenge ploy I
could think of with my limited imaginative capacity.

Instead, he looked confused when I plonked the Morrisons bag
in front of him. He looked even more so when I reached into my
jacket pocket to bring out the engagement ring.

“What are you doing?” He had asked.

“Giving it back to you. It wouldn’t feel right to keep it.
Maybe you can give it to your new girlfriend, you remember, the
girl you were doing at lunchtimes while we were still together?
Anyway, where’s my fucking plucker? I need to get
going.”

He looked at me blankly,

“Got a hot date?”

“Yep, he’s sitting right over there.”

I had pointed to Nate, who noticed us and raised his pint of
lager in greeting.

He Who Shall Not Be Named had given me a disgusted
look,

“What the fuck, Penny?”

“Oh please, like you can talk? It’s okay for you to treat me
like garbage but I’m not allowed to date after you break up with
me? Get real. Now I’m going to ask one more time. Where’s. My.
Plucker?”

He slowly removed a small bag from under his chair. I checked
inside and was happy to see it was all there. DVD, check. Best
plucker since Hendrix, check. I was still inspecting the contents
when he spoke again,

“This night isn’t going at all how I had planned.”

“What did you have planned?” I had said, absentmindedly
plucking a hair from my arm to check my anti-caterpillar tool was
still in tiptop condition.

“We were supposed to catch up properly. You promised we’d
catch up properly.”

I had looked up,

“We made no such arrangement. I agreed to meet to trade goods,
that’s all.”

“I thought... I was hoping... Fuck I hate it how you’ve rushed
me like this, but I wanted to tell you that I made a mistake.
Couldn’t you drop that guy and catch up with me tonight instead? We
could have some champagne, grab dinner, talk about old
times?”

I was momentarily gobsmacked. My gob literally had never been
smacked harder in my life.

“The old times where you were smooshing your privates against
another woman’s privates while still engaged to me?”

But he wasn’t listening,

“You’ve really hurt my feelings tonight, Penny.”

Clearly his ability to smack my gob was only ever increasing,
because there it was again. Gob Shock Syndrome,

“What the hell are you talking about?” I had replied,
aghast.

Hurt feelings? How hurt did he think I had been when I wanted
to throw myself off a bridge a year ago?

But he still wasn’t listening,

“I want to try to turn this into a friendship, start from
there and see how it goes. You owe me at least that.”

“I do, do I?” I was tempted to sing that
Bros song,
I Owe You
Nothing
, but it somehow didn’t seem
appropriate.

“Yes. We owe it to each other, because what we had was
special.”

Special?!

“... and even though you can be a bitch sometimes, when you
want to you can be the nicest, sweetest, best girlfriend a guy
could have. I think there’s still a lot of love here and maybe we
could try again?”

Do I need to mention that Toxic Gob Syndrome was exponentially
increasing in intensity? I hadn’t heard a peep from this man in a
year and he was suddenly back in my life saying there was still
love between us? That we owed something to each other? That he
wanted to be friends and ‘see where it went’? See how many minutes
it would take for me to start throttling him, more like.

I tried to sound reasonable as I’d replied,

“Okay... Firstly, I’m gonna skip the fact
that you just insulted me. If you want to be someone’s friend it’s
a good idea
not
to
refer to them as a bitch. Second, on what planet could you possibly
think that you and I could ever be friends, or get back
together?”

“Other couples manage.”

“We’re not other couples, and I think I need to set something
straight. Once a woman’s heart closes off from a man, there ain’t
no going back. I despise you. I want everything bad to happen to
you. I hope you lose your fingers in a deep fryer. I hope you get
sodomised by a gorilla. I hope you get some crazy ass tropical
disease where baby spiders start crawling out of your skin and they
have to amputate your arms and legs or something. I hope your
grandchildren get bombed in the faces in World War
Three.”

“Fuck, Penny.”

“That’s not even the half of it. You don’t
speak to me for a year and then barge back into my life expecting
reconciliation? If someone did that to Emma or Chloe or Mags I’d
have them castrated. So let’s set something straight. If you were
the last man alive and the fate of the human race depended on us
breeding, I’d take that opportunity to beat the living shit out of
you and probably kill you. Then I’d eat your face. That’s how much
I hate you. So no, we most definitely
cannot
be friends, and it’ll be a
cold day in hell if we ever get back together.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment.

“I need some air,” he said melodramatically, “will you mind my
stuff?”

“Yeah alright.”

He had walked out the back entrance into the beer garden,
leaving his stuff strewn around. The ring was in its box next to
his martini glass (yeah, he was one of those martini guys... please
don’t judge me for once liking this prick), his gym bag was under
his stool, his laptop on the bar counter.

I lugged his things over to where Nate was sitting. Plonking
down and thinking of what to do next, I barely heard my neglected
super-sponge-worthy friend from Law school ask what I wanted to
drink. I think I replied with “whatever has the highest alcohol
content” and started scrolling down my list of contacts. Prowling
for names, searching for someone who might know...

You see, it wasn’t just what my ex said
which left me shocked, confused and without a gob. It was how he’d
said it. Like he was humbled, like he was almost... begging? That
was what made me most suspicious of all. Something fishy was up,
and I needed to get to the bottom of it. He Who Shall Not Be Named
always had a motivation for acting a certain way. If there was one
thing I learnt from our time together, it was this –
Do Not Trust This Man
. If
he was trying to weasel back into my life, either as a friend or
lover, there was a darker reason behind it than love and devotion
(‘
love and devotion, baby, I can’t get
enough of all that love and devotion in my life...
Oh-la oh-la, oh-la
oh-la hey
). I
love that song.

Pretty soon I found just the contact I needed. Colin Morris,
He Who Shall Not Be Named’s broker trader friend person. They were
colleagues at James Peterson & Sons and they sometimes caught
up for a beer/martini on Friday nights. I’d met Colin a handful of
times while we were still together. He was alright.

I called Colin while Nate was up ordering drinks. He Who Shall
Not Be Named was still nowhere to be seen.

“Colin speaking,” a cheery voice answered.

“Hi Colin, it’s Penelope.”

“Penelope! Long time, how are you?”

“Good thanks, yourself?”

We did the polite back and forth thing for a short while,
during which Nate bought me a Long Island Iced Tea and my ex still
hadn’t come back to reclaim his things. Which was a good thing,
because I needed time to ask Colin some pertinent questions. I
thought I should gently ease into my inquisition, but to my utter
delight there was no need. It soon became apparent that Colin had
no idea Voldemort and I had split and he gave me the answers I
needed straight off the bat.