My Legendary Girlfriend (33 page)

‘After all that time I’d invested worshipping that woman,’ I told Barbara, ‘don’t you think I owed it to myself to try and get her back? I’m glad she doesn’t want me. I want to move on. And now I can.’

‘Will, do you want to know what I think?’ offered Barbara. ‘I think that your ex has confused you so much you don’t know whether you’re coming or going. Sometimes when you’re the partner that has been left, you find it hard to get on with life. You ask yourself the question “Why aren’t they hurting as much as I am?” It’s not unusual for people in this situation to see hope in the relationship when there is none. I did it myself with my ex-husband. After we divorced I felt that if I was there for him one day he’d realise that he needed me like I needed him. Do you know what happened? He married a girl half my age and invited me to the wedding because he thought I was over him! Can you believe the nerve of that guy? I understand how you’re feeling, Will, more than you know. But you’ve got to ask yourself, why do you want to marry this girl?’

I surveyed my tiny room. I had my answer. ‘Because she’s made me realise that I can move on. I can finally live my life and think about the future.’

‘Marriage is a big step,’ said Barbara. ‘I know that this girl sounds like the answer to your problems, and she may well be. But I think you’ve got to ask yourself why this girl you’ve never seen is so important to you. This kind of thing happens all the time, Will. I had a caller last week who thought she’d fallen in love with the man she ordered office stationery from. When you’re on the phone you can be someone different. You can flirt and have fun, secure in the knowledge that you don’t have to meet this person face to face.’

‘It’s not like that,’ I protested.

‘I’m not saying it is, Will. But what I am saying is that you have to check that it’s not. Can I give you some advice? Try and work out whether you’ve really been
you
on the phone or whether you’ve been the
you
you wish you were. The girl at the end of the phone is in love with the person she spoke to. But will she be in love with you?’

A gust of wind blew a heavy sheet of rain against the window. Kate and Simon were making another attempt to escape from their box. I shivered. I placed the receiver on the floor and cradled my head in my hands. In less than half an hour Barbara had managed to crumble my rock solid faith into dust.

‘Right, that’s all we’ve got time for, Will,’ said a tinny sounding Barbara from the floor. ‘Thanks for calling. Please, please, call me, Barbara White on
The Barbara White Show
, in the next couple of weeks and tell me and the listeners at home what happened. We found your story riveting.’

1.13 A.M.

The doorbell awoke me from a nightmare in which I was a US Marine being held prisoner in a bamboo hut by a combination of the Vietcong and Aggi. At least I thought it was the doorbell. As no one had rung it during my week’s residency it was hard to know exactly what the noise could be. I attempted to ignore it, assuming it was just some dipsomaniac Archway dropout playing funny buggers, and hoped that they’d get bored before I’d be forced to go downstairs and throw water over them. It continued, long, shrill, angry bursts of doorbell for minutes at a time. I stared at the television and wondered if the TV licence people had the technology to monitor TV sets even when they were off. What can I say? It was 1.15 a.m. and I wasn’t really thinking straight. I turned over and pulled the duvet over my head. The TV licence people could just sod off too.

Consciousness was once again slipping from me, taking with it the worries of the day, when there was a knock at the door. I checked my watch again. It was now 1.23 a.m. Someone had either let the dipsomaniac dropout in or I was about to get fined £600 for having a TV in my room that was switched off. I pulled the duvet up a bit higher, determined to ditch reality as soon as possible before it all got too much. This time, the rain of blows that smashed against the door nearly took it off its hinges. I crawled out of bed, not even bothering to put on any sort of proper clothing, pulled the door slightly ajar and peered through the gap. The woman from downstairs (she of the Garfield slippers) peered back at me angrily. She wasn’t wearing her usual towelling dressing gown. Instead she had on these fluffy sky blue pyjamas with elasticated ankles that made her look like she was wearing a romper suit. Her face was all red and blotchy and her hair was flying off in all directions. Honestly, it would have been impossible for anyone, even the angriest man in Angryland, to have looked more thoroughly enraged.

Peppering the rather short question, ‘Do you know what time it is?’, with an unfeasibly large number of expletives, Garfield woman began tearing strips off me. Bewildered as I was at being woken up in the middle of the night, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to indulge in a spot of neighbour baiting. ‘You’re banging on my door because you haven’t got a watch, you mad cow? Away with you before I call the police!’

She didn’t laugh. In fact I was sure that if the door had been open any wider, I would’ve received a swift Garfield in the crotch.

‘It’s not enough that you never take your turn with the fire alarm, now you want me to be your personal manservant! Next time, pal, answer the bloody doorbell when it’s for you!’

I attempted to look suitably chastised but in reality I think I probably just looked puzzled. ‘I take my turn with the fire alarm! If it’s fire alarms you’re moaning about, ask the bloke over there,’ I pointed across the landing, ‘that bugger’s never done it.’ The expression on her face was one of purest anger. I attempted to calm her down. ‘Look, I don’t know what you’re on about, okay? There was some mad person ringing my bell too, but as I don’t know any mad people I reasoned that it couldn’t have been for me.’

‘I think I can explain,’ said a voice just to the side of Garfield woman. ‘I thought I’d got the wrong number. I rang this woman’s doorbell by accident after you didn’t answer yours.’

I opened the door a little wider to take a look at the mystery woman. It was Aggi.

I looked her up and down, not believing my eyes. She was wearing black leggings and a purple kind of smock thing. Her hair was messy. While she wore an expression as uncompromising as Garfield woman’s she was still as beautiful as ever.

‘I think you’d better come in,’ I said warily. I threw a stern look in Garfield woman’s direction in case she thought the invitation included her.

Aggi came in, closing the door behind her, but remained standing. I sat down on the bed and felt ludicrously self-conscious. Not only was I wearing nothing but boxer shorts and odd socks, but they happened to be a green pair with Subutteo sized golfers all over them, a farewell gift from my mother. What’s more, there was nowhere for the flab around my midriff to hide, so instead it just hung there dejectedly, waiting for me to get The Message. This was the way that the love of my life saw me for the first time in three years – looking like a bucket of lard in novelty underwear. While I pulled on a T-shirt, Aggi averted her eyes, content to gaze despondently around the room, admiring the decor and saying nothing.

I finished dressing, looked up and smiled. ‘Hello.’

Aggi’s face suddenly contorted with anger as if she’d just turned on a switch marked ‘Screaming Mad Banshee Woman from Hell’. I was scared. The kind of woman that could get angry at a slightly overweight but cuddly bloke in silly boxer shorts, was the kind of woman that would get a six month discharge after pleading temporary insanity.

‘I am sooooo angry,’ she screamed.

I winced, assuming that she was still smarting from the comments made in regard to her popularity with sportsmen. I considered reminding her that I was wearing glasses but thought better of it.

‘Toby wanted to kill you, you know. He wants to smash your face in, and he would, you know. He knows how weird you are. He’s waiting in the car outside so don’t get any ideas into that warped head of yours.’

‘Is he a solicitor?’ I asked timidly.

‘Yes,’ she spat.

‘Does he play rugby?’

‘Every weekend.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

I felt about this small, which is to say just a bit smaller than a gnat’s knackers. It was like being scolded by my mum, only worse because I didn’t have any trousers on and well, my mum would never threaten to get her boyfriend to beat me up, even if she had one. The only good thing was that as far as I could gather, Aggi’s boyfriend hadn’t told her exactly what I’d said, although I was sure she’d heard enough to get the general impression. It was totally embarrassing. Aggi was unrelenting in her attack – she paced the room saying all kind of nasty and venomous things about me all of which, unfortunately, were true. Every sentence she said began with ‘How dare you . . .’ I didn’t have a leg to stand on. I’d phoned her out of the blue three years after I had any right to and assassinated her character in front of her boyfriend, who could clearly beat me to a pulp with both arms tied behind his back. It was ridiculous. I sat there, head bowed, and took it, if not like a man, then the nearest approximation I could conjure up – a creature half adolescent and half sheep.

When I thought she’d finished I looked up. But I was disappointed to discover that she was far from finished. ‘If you ever try and contact me by phone, letter or even try and send me bad vibes, I will go to the police, you bastard. Don’t think I won’t!’

She turned and opened the door without even looking at me.
This is it, this is her hello and good-bye. Surely I deserve more than this
? It was better to have her shouting at me in my flat than living in the knowledge that the second she walked out all memory of me would be wiped clean – she’d ditch the lot. The good and the bad. It was too terrible to contemplate because if I didn’t exist in her head then I didn’t exist at all.

‘What about you and Simon?’ I said, in a manner ranking lower than mumbling.

She turned around, her hand still on the door handle, the expression on her face puzzled. ‘What?’

I coughed and studied the soles of my feet. I had a verruca the size of a five pence piece on my heel that I’d never seen before. Without looking up I repeated the question. ‘I said, what about you and Simon?’

Slowly she came back in and closed the door carefully with both hands, crossed the room and sat down next to me on the bed.

‘He told you, then?’

I nodded.

‘When did he tell you?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘Why did he tell you?’

‘Because he’s in love.’

Aggi’s eyes filled slowly with reluctant tears. I watched them roll down her perfect nose, along the edge of her perfect upper lip and onto her perfect chin. I didn’t want her to cry. Everyone was crying this weekend.

‘I never meant to hurt you, Will.’

‘But you did.’

‘It just happened. I was angry that you weren’t there.’

I swallowed hard. ‘So you got off with my best mate.’

‘It was just sex. I didn’t love him. It didn’t happen again.’

‘Does that make a difference?’

She was staring into her lap now, but she met my eyes briefly and said: ‘No. I suppose not. At least not to you.’

I edged away from her and began to shake, as if just being in her proximity would cause irrevocable damage. Here she was sitting in my room reminding me of a betrayal that, though it had happened years ago, was as fresh in my mind as if it had happened yesterday – which in a way it had. ‘I worshipped you from the moment we met. I adored you. You were all that I wanted. What did I do wrong?’

She started crying. I put my arms around her shoulders. Holding her felt exactly the same. Nothing had changed. It was like travelling to the past in the present – none of it seemed real. I tried to brush away her tears but she just cried even more into my neck, making the collar of my T-shirt damp. She lifted up her head and stared right into my eyes.

‘I’m sorry, Will. I’m so sorry.’

I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t trying to be the martyr, I just didn’t have anything to say. She looked so pitiful, her eyes were red and puffy. All I wanted to do was make everything all right.

‘You know me. I’ve never regretted anything,’ she said, ‘and don’t think for a minute that I regret ending our relationship. I don’t. We were dead. Going nowhere. But if I could have my time again I would never have done that to you. You don’t need to tell me that you loved me. I always knew it. You were my best friend for those three years, Will. I can never repay you for all the wonderful things you did for me. I don’t know. . .’

Her words trailed off as she buried her face into my shoulder. I looked down at the top of her head, studying her crown sadly. In a perverse sort of way it was almost worth letting Simon sleep with her just to know that after all this time she really did care – albeit in an abstract fashion. She hadn’t forgotten – there was some small part of her that cared enough about me to believe in the concept of regret. I was locked in her head – the one thing she could never get over. This was beautiful. This was more than I could ever have hoped for.

Aggi gradually lifted her head up until her eyes were directly in line with mine, her lips parted, her nose barely an inch away from mine and her head tilted in that magical manner that only ever means one thing. I cast a glance at the door, I couldn’t help myself, my thoughts had already raced downstairs in fear that fifteen stone of rugby playing brute was about to burst in and beat me to a pulp. Aggi, seeing my distress, pressed her index finger up to my lips. ‘I lied,’ she said. ‘I just didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.’

And then she kissed me.

All at once the universe seemed to make sense. The weight of the world was no longer on my shoulders. This was the feeling that I’d been pining for all this time, and yes it was worth the wait. I couldn’t kiss her fast enough. I kissed her face, her hands, her neck – everywhere that was available – but within seconds I was overwhelmed by feelings twice as powerful, twice as destructive and twice as painful as those I’d just experienced.