Just a Girl, Standing in Front of a Boy (10 page)

I get home and shower. Then I bring my computer into the bathroom and Skype Matt in Chicago.

His face fills the screen. The poor boy looks shattered.

‘You look like you should go to bed and get some sleep.’

‘I’m so tired,’ he says in a childish voice.

‘Run a bath, baby. Go on, start it off now.’

He nods obediently. He’s very submissive when he’s tired, is Matt. I smile affectionately as I watch his slumped muscular frame stumble into a chest of drawers and ricochet into the bathroom. I hear the sound of running water and then he returns.

‘Now, what time do you have to be up in the morning?’ I ask.

‘Five.’ He yawns.

‘Matt, what time do you
have
to be up. Not what time does your extreme work ethic feel you should get up?’

‘I’ve got a breakfast meeting downstairs at eight,’ he says, with another yawn.

‘Set your alarm for seven thirty.’

He shakes his head, reaching for the alarm clock on the bedside table. ‘Five thirty,’ he says, adamantly.

‘Matt, you’ll be good for nothing tomorrow if you don’t get a good sleep. Seven twenty.’

I watch him programme the clock and place it back on the bedside table.

‘Nice try,’ I say. ‘Show me the time you’ve set the alarm for.’

He fiddles with it again before turning it to show me the alarm time of 7.20.

‘What have you eaten today?’ I ask.

‘Chips, sandwiches.’ He shrugs.

‘Are you hungry now?’

He shakes his head.

‘Right, get up and turn the bath off and then come back with the room service breakfast menu.’

I watch the tired way he completes his tasks.

‘Order yourself fresh juice, muesli and fruit, there’s bound to be piles of croissants and muffins at the meeting, but try not to eat too many because they’ll just make you feel drained.’

‘Thank you, baby,’ he says, as he scribbles on the room service menu.

‘You don’t need to thank me. I just wish I was there. I’d give you a massage.’

He smiles sleepily.

‘Get in the bath, handsome and then get into bed. Don’t forget to leave your breakfast order outside your door.’

He nods. ‘Are you OK, by the way?’

‘Yeah, fine. Mother being here is a bit freaky,’ I whisper.

‘I bet,’ Matt sighs. Matt isn’t at all close to his own mother. I think we’ve both appreciated the other’s lack of close family ties. I’ve never met his mother, and his father passed away some years ago.

‘She’s beside herself to meet you.’ I tell him tentatively.

‘I’ll be back soon.’ He smiles. ‘Love you.’

I blow him a kiss. ‘Love you too.’

I lean my head back against the bath. I don’t want to leave the bathroom in case Mother jumps upon me with the whole ‘talking about things’ again. I close my eyes. A picture of Joe King sitting in the sunshine playing his guitar fills my mind. I shake my head to remove it and I think about my Matt instead.

Two months after I bumped into him at the hideous pop-up car wash, Matt called me.

‘Fanny?’ he said.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s, er, Matt. Matt Parry. You cleaned my car. And, er, you you have tremendous legs.’

He sounded so nervous that I had a vision of him speaking, and in this vision he was blushing. Like a lot of women I love a blushing man.

‘Oh, hello, blimey. How are you?’ I said.

‘Not bad. Could I, er, take you out for dinner?’

‘Yes, wow, thank you, wow, lovely,’ I said. I was particularly inarticulate because no one had ever invited me out for dinner before. ‘Do you fancy meeting up for a drink?’ was the usual, and if you were lucky you might get offered chips after. But something in the way Matt Parry mentioned dinner conjured up images of linen napkins, sparkling water glasses and hand cream in the loos.

‘Great, I was thinking Saturday. If you’re free.’

‘Um, wow, thanks.’

He’d given me a Saturday night. Philippa says if a man asks you out on a Saturday then he’s very, very keen. A quick drink after work on a Monday, not that bothered. Mid-week cinema, you might be in there. But dinner on Saturday is practically a box from Tiffanys.

‘So, if you text me your address, I’ll pick you up at seven thirty.’

‘Oh, I live above a kebab shop.’

‘Well, that must be handy,’ he said and chuckled.

I ended the call feeling like Cinderella about to be whisked away by the handsome prince.

So, he arrived promptly at 7.30 in his shiny Audi. Al was crouched down in the flat, peering out of the window and writing down his registration number, ‘Just in case I have to call the police, Fan,’ he whispered.

Matt was nervous at dinner as well. Weeks later, after we’d started sleeping together I asked him why he seemed so terrified on our first date.

‘Ah, was it very obvious?’ he said, with the hint of a blush.

‘Yep, ’fraid so,’ I said, smiling at his reddening cheeks.

‘You were this cool, hot girl. I was intimidated. I didn’t want to bore you.’

‘Cool hot girl!’ I exclaimed. ‘I work in a doctor’s surgery in Tiddlesbury. I live above a kebab shop.’

‘Yeah, but you had pink hair and biker boots and great legs. I was never a cool kid at school.’

‘Matt, I was definitely not a cool kid at school,’ I protested. I didn’t want to mention just how traumatic school had been for me at this point though.

Anyway, on our first date he took me to a lovely, posh Italian restaurant, in one of the affluent villages on the other side of Nunstone. He ordered these gigantic gooey balls of mozzarella, and laughed at the way I moaned with pleasure as I ate them. As he laughed, he relaxed, and I liked seeing him relax. I liked helping him to relax. I interrogated him then. Well, he claims I interrogated him. I maintain I was simply trying to get to know him. He said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever spoken about myself so much.’ Although that’s not what I remember most about our first date. What I remember most is how halfway through his main course he put his knife and fork down suddenly, wiped his mouth quickly with his napkin and looked at me seriously.

‘Fanny, I work extremely hard,’ he told me urgently. ‘People say I’m a workaholic, and when they say that I don’t think, Oh, I really need to take it a bit easier. No, I think, Good, I’m glad you think I’m a workaholic. You see, the thing is, Fanny, I’m going to retire from big business at forty-five, which sounds very young. But that’s my game plan. My, er, my dad died two days before he was due to retire at sixty-four. And so, well, that’s the game plan. That’s why I work so hard now.’ And he picked up his knife and fork and, without looking at me, said, ‘I just wanted to warn you. I’d like to see you again. But, I should say that my work can make me quite stressed, sometimes.’

‘Have you thought about yoga?’ I asked him.

He looked puzzled for a moment and then he laughed. I thought, Blimey, Matt Parry is intense, complicated, nothing like me, nothing like anyone I’ve ever met before. But I remember thinking, I’d be good for you. I, Fanny Taylor, could be good for you, Matt Parry. I’d never thought of myself as being particularly good for anyone before. But best of all, I didn’t feel scared, and that in itself felt like a very good thing.

Mother was up this morning before I left for work. She was sitting at the kitchen table. I thought, Oh, God, she’s going to hit me with another ‘let’s talk about that day’. But no. She wanted to talk about feelings.

‘Jenny, tell me how you’re feeling about me leaving your dad,’ she said. It was ridiculous. I hate talking about my dad. I hate
thinking
about my dad. Blimey, I wish I never thought about him at all, but unfortunately he does pop into my head fairly frequently. I suppose you just can’t help the fact that your dad is a seismic presence in your life, even when he is an arse. It’s normally when I see other people with their dads that I think of him. Sometimes dads bring their children to the surgery, and I get a little pang of ‘my dad would never have done that’, or we’ll be out in Nunstone and I’ll see a dad doing the pub quiz with his daughter and buying her drinks and meeting her boyfriend. You can see the respect in her eyes and the tenderness in his. That’s when I start to think, I wish my dad wasn’t so cold, or just, I wish my dad liked me. I have to force myself to think of his positives then, otherwise I’ll be stuck in the ‘my dad’s an arse’ headspace for ages. So I’ll consider how he’s not afraid to wear pink, he speaks very good conversational French, he was visibly upset when our dog died, he plays a phenomenal game of Scrabble, his name, Jack Taylor, could almost be a whisky, until other non-dad thoughts plant themselves in my mind.

I do have one nice memory of my dad though. At least I think it’s a memory. It could just be a daydream that I’ve had so often, I’ve mistakenly started to believe it was real. It isn’t a particularly dramatic reminiscence. I am about three or four years old and we’re in the garden, he throws me up in the air and he catches me and swings me round. Afterwards we go inside, I’m tired and I fall asleep on his lap. He cradles me and strokes my hair. But it could well have been a dream, because I can’t think of another time when he voluntarily touched me. Nope. Not ever. No pecks on the cheek goodnight, no pats on the back to say ‘well done’ or ‘good luck’. Not one hug. Didn’t he ever read any books on parenting?

So if I was about to start discussing my relationship with my father it wouldn’t be with my mother at 7.30 in the morning after having spent a large portion of the night thinking about a man who wasn’t my husband-to-be. One Mr Joe King. So, I backed straight out of the kitchen. It wasn’t safe to breakfast in there. All in all, an unfortunate start to the day.

The cameraman, Disgruntled Dave, is back at the surgery to film Marge. He’s more fed up than ever. If he carries on like this I’m going to slip him the Smiling Fanny Manifesto. I actually think he could be quite handsome if he didn’t have the unattractive aura of a man who desperately didn’t want to be where he is. He’s in his early to mid thirties, swarthy, he wears his combats well, but he’s just not happy. Mind you, he has been filming Marge all day, in her head-to-toe leopardskin ensemble, so perhaps it’s unfair of me to expect him to be perky.

‘I met my Timmy on match.com. He’d just moved to the area. He winked at me. Well, at my profile. Then he sent me a message saying, “Hey, good looking, I like what you got cooking.” Well, if I’m honest, I wasn’t blown away.’

Marge said ‘blown away’. Joe King said he was blown away by me. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about me either. Perhaps he wasn’t with those nineteen-year-old twins after all. I keep drifting back to last night, in the garden, lying next to each other on the grass, listening to his breathing. The bit before I ran away.

‘No, I wasn’t blown away by my Timmy’s message. But, I was blown away by his picture.
And
he was twenty-seven. I was thirty-six. I wrote back, “It’s a sweet chilli chicken stir-fry, thank you very much, and if you play your cards right you can sample it one day.” And he said, “I would like to play my cards right very much.” And I replied, “Well, then I accept your kind offer of dinner,” and he came back with a restaurant and a date. I liked the fact that he’d taken the initiative then. So, we had a great first date and about three months later I made him my sweet chilli chicken stir-fry.’

‘Doris!’ I throw my arms open to greet my favourite patient as she walks into the surgery. ‘How are you, lovely?’

‘Oh, mustn’t grumble, Fanny, love, must not grumble. And I have been giving my Big Send Off a fair bit of thought. I’ll just sit myself here and discuss it with my best girl.’

I wink at her and mouth the words, ‘You’re my favourite patient,’ before saying, at full volume, ‘Right, so did you decide on a dress code?’

‘Yes, I’m very pleased with it. The film
Grease
.’

‘Oh, Doris, I love it.’

‘Do you really, love?’

‘Absolutely, it’s a great one. You can do the sexy Sandy or the sweet Sandy or go for the classic pink lady. It’s great for the guys too. All ages know the film.’

‘That’s what I thought! I hope you’ll be there as a sexy Sandy with that man of yours.’

‘Oh, Doris, I don’t like to think of you not being there.’

‘Oh, I’ll be there, don’t you worry.’

‘Just you make sure you are.’

‘And it has to be at the community centre. We had a lovely do there for my Little Stevie’s christening.’ She smiles, the dreamy smile that is always in attendance when she mentions her grandson.

‘Doris.’ Dr Flemming pokes his head out of his office.

‘Oh, I hate it when you’re efficient. I was enjoying my chinwag with Fanny here.’

She gets up and tootles into his office.

‘We certainly do have an energetic sex life,’ Marge continues, wide-eyed and animated, confiding to the camera. Then, she leans forward so that her fully grown hounds escape the confines of her leopard-print top, produces a little breathy giggle and follows it up with a wink.

Next to her, I place my blurry head in my hands and slowly and gutturally utter the words, ‘Oh, holy mother.’

‘My Tim knows how to pleasure a woman.’

Surely, there’s only so much we, or the BBC Three viewers, need to know.

‘He’s very adventurous.’

‘That’s enough now, Marge,’ I say in my best head of reception voice.

‘And he’s very well endowed.’

‘Now, stop it, now. We are working, Marge. In a doctor’s surgery.’

‘Oh, Fanny, stop being a prude!’

‘Prude, I’ll have you know I’m a sex goddess.’

‘He likes a little spanking.’

‘Marge!’ That was my firm puppy trainer voice.

‘I know how to keep my man happy,’ she says smugly. As though I don’t!

‘So do I.’

‘He likes it outside.’

‘Outside?’

Oh, Disgruntled Dave, why are you encouraging her?

‘Yes, in the open air. I think it’s the risk of being caught he enjoys.’

‘Anywhere in particular?’

‘Dave,’ I sigh, wearily.

‘There’s a nice field out past B & Q.’

‘Marge, I run there. Now I’ll have images.’

Luckily, I’ve never met Tim so the image is somewhat blurrier than it could be. Not that I need to meet Tim. I know all there is to know already.

‘There’s a little lay-by, with a gate.’

I wait until she’s doing her titillating lean forward into the camera before I break the news.

‘My boyfriend stops to wee there sometimes.’

I have finally silenced the Marge. I tap away at my computer triumphantly.

‘I think I’ll stop now for some lunch.’ Disgruntled Dave sounds tired. He puts his camera in its bag. ‘Will it be all right to leave this under here?’ he asks, indicating his bag under the desk.

‘I might sell it on eBay. Or shoot myself a little pop video.’ I smile.

‘Should I move it?’

‘No, no, it’s fine.’ I’m grinning away at Disgruntled Dave, but he’s too disgruntled to smile back. ‘Leave the bag here, honestly. It’ll be fine.’

‘Thanks,’ he says, with absolutely no hint of a grin, before walking slouchily off to lunch.

That’s it. I lift my holdall onto my lap and pick out a neutral bloke-type card and then in capitals, not in my scrawly writing, I copy out the Smiling Manifesto for him. See what I did there? I left out the Fanny. It would be very obvious where it came from if I gave him the Smiling Fanny Manifesto, what with me being called Fanny. I wait until Marge has to go and see the nurse about a prescription and then I slide the card into the side pocket of Disgruntled Dave’s camera bag. I don’t know what he’ll make of it, or even if he uses this side pocket at all. It might lie untouched there for years and years. Disgruntled Dave might buy a better bag and take this one to the charity shop. But then someone could purchase the bag, discover the note and they may just think, Perhaps I should have a go at this.

I have never mentioned my anonymous note giving to Matt. He knows we gave Trudi, his ex-girlfriend, a note in Nunstone, on that first night. But he’s under the impression that it was an isolated occurrence because Philippa and I were moved by her pretty dress and a fair bit of wine. He doesn’t know about the Smiling Manifesto at all. He’s noticed that I often strike up conversations with random people when we’re out together though. He says it makes him feel like a carer for the mentally ill. There’s a lot that Matt doesn’t know about me. I suppose I didn’t want to put him off me by telling him all my stuff. But, somehow, I could imagine myself telling Joe King everything.
Like it’s meant to be
. That was a line in his song, I’m sure it was. He thinks that we are meant to be. And what if we are? What if Jenny Taylor and Joe King are absolutely 100 per cent meant to be together? How can you know? You can’t. The only way you can know is by taking the dangerous risk of finding out. Oh, why am I even having these thoughts? Why do I feel as though nothing will ever be the same again?