The Art of Keeping Faith (16 page)

“Yep, have you changed your mind?” She sounds excited that I may have done. She clearly does not understand the magnitude of the flabby tummy nightmare I am currently living.

“No. Don’t be so lazy. I am sure we won’t fart, that would be ridiculous.”

10.00 p.m.

I farted.

I am still laughing so much I can barely write.

Hold on.

10.30 p.m.

It was a fanny fart.

Yes that’s right, my vagina decided to make its own annoyance at the exercise class loud and clear. It happened about half an hour into the lesson. Meredith collapsed on the floor and spent the next hour suffering from compulsive giggling.

Every time she stopped I started, which made her giggle even more.

I can safely say that yoga is not for me.

10.50 p.m.

“I’m still laughing,” Meredith shouts through our bedroom walls.

“Me, too,” I shout back.

I fanny farted in public. That has got to be the single most embarrassing thing I have done to date.

19th November

Shit, my ribs, I think I may have broken them. I can hardly breathe.

At breakfast I find Meredith in the kitchen with her head on the counter.

“What are you doing?” I ask, although, nothing truly surprises me in this house.

“My ribs ache so bad.”

“Oooh, mine too. Do you think it was the yoga?”

She turns her head to look at me. She has her hair in a ponytail, which I don’t think I have ever seen before.

“No, Lilah, it was the laughing.”

I didn’t think of that. “Shit.”

“Shit,” she agrees before starting to snigger into the counter some more.

“What’s with the pony?”

“It hurt too much to put my hands above my head and Tristan wouldn’t straighten my hair for me.”

“Well, at least we worked some muscles.”

We both wince as we start to laugh some more.

”Lilah.” Tristan has walked in and found us bent over and clutching our middles. “I heard the only thing you exercised were the cobwebs gathering in your vagina. Sorry I meant exorcised.”

Smart arse.

Skype

“Bloody hell, Lilah, are you sick? You look terrible.”

“No, I am not sick.” How rude.

“What’s wrong with your face then? Your cheekbones are all funny, have you been experimenting with make-up again?”

“Well, what’s wrong with your cheekbones?” Ben looks even thinner than he did last week.

So do I, it seems—Yippee!

“Nothing.” He runs an embarrassed hand through his hair.

“New watch?” I ask.

I can’t help but notice. It is blinging away in the light and is so far from what I would expect him to wear I can’t stop myself from commenting.

He looks embarrassed again as he glances at it. “Yeah, it was a present.”

“Wow, that’s a pretty big present?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

He does not offer any explanation as to who the gift may have been from. I don’t push the subject even though the question is burrowing under my skin and I know I am going to obsess about it later. I bet it was that frickin’ bitch Mihraandah.

“So what you been up to this week?”

“Same shit as last week,” he tells me, rubbing his jaw with his right hand. I notice my ring is still in place where I put it. For some reason I find this oddly reassuring even though I didn’t even know it was something I was worried about.

“Are you okay, Ben?”

It’s quite obvious that he isn’t.

“Yeah, sorry, Lilah, I am just tired and Dave and I’ve had a few words. I guess I am a bit distracted.”

“Oh, okay.”

For some silly reason this makes tears sting in my eyes. I don’t know if it is because he is distracted from me when I spend all damn week waiting to be able to speak to him properly. Or if it is the harsh fact that Ben is down and tired and bloody thousands of miles away so I cannot do anything to help. Whatever the reason is, my throat starts to tighten.

Don’t cry.

He shakes his head as if he is pushing unwanted thoughts away and then turns on his megawatt smile.

“Sorry, my love. Right, I am with you.”

“That’s okay,” I say with an element of hesitation.

“So how’s the detox going?” he asks, the blues crinkling.

“They are a bunch of fuckers—who was it? Meredith or Tristan?” I know one of them has dished my diet plan to Ben.

He giggles a little and I watch the freckles crinkle, momentarily mesmerised. “Both of them,” he laughs.

“They’re wankers.”

They so are.

“How’s Kit?” he asks.

“Your Kit, is bloody demented. He has to sit on my chest or if I am trying to study he has to sit on the open book. It makes studying just that little bit harder.”

”So how’s the studying?”

“Good. Really, really good. Did you know that once there were two popes?”

Ben cracks up some more and I revel in the fact that I can still make him laugh, even though his life is so different from the small one he used to live with me back when we used to make each other laugh all the time.

“So how are the big party plans going?”

“Uh, what big party plans?”

“For your birthday, I thought something was being organised?”

“Nope, that’s the first I have heard of it and the only plan I have is to spend some quality time with you.”

“I like the sound of that,” he says. His voice a fraction lower.

“I can’t wait.”

“A few more days, Lilah, it will be worth it.” Voice even lower.

I start to feel a little hot.

“It better be.”

“I’m not going to be home until late though. I’m sorry, it’s the only flight I could get, the band have got some stuff on and then I will be on my way home.”

The word home hangs there between us and I flush with the pleasure of hearing it.

“That’s fine, Ben. You being here at any point on my birthday will be the best gift I could ever receive.”

“Well, let’s hope I manage slightly better than just turning up,” he chuckles.

Well, let’s hope. And it had better involve sex and lots of it.

We chitchat some more until my yawning starts to get out of control.

“Go to sleep, Lilah.”

“Sorry, I think I need to.”

“See you on Saturday.”

“See you on Saturday.”

Four days to go and my Ben will be here. It’s going to be short, it is going to be sweet (hopefully the hotter side of sweet) and I am going to make sure that it is bloody amazing.

21st November

I ran to lectures. I turned up bright red, cheeks stinging with a nasty combination of over exertion and bitter cold air. Who cares?

I will be thin in four days time, and that is all that matters. I can cope with looking like an idiot if it means I am going to look like super sexy in my some uber hot underwear next week.

Oooh, underwear. I had better remember to get some new stuff. Ben does not need to see my old granny pants again. He should probably never have seen them in the first place.

22nd November

Work = Dull.

I am too excited to do anything useful, not that I normally do. But today I am being even more useless than normal.

I am working a Friday and ditching Uni this afternoon because tomorrow is Saturday—my birthday—and I have a plan that I need to follow. The plan does not involve being bored in a music shop all day.

The B-Day Plan

Now, in normal circumstances the B in B-Day plan would stand for Birthday—obviously.

However, these circumstances are not normal. Therefore, the B shall now stand for Ben.

The plan is:

Breakfast with annoying twin (and maybe even more annoying parents—this is under debate).

Lunch. I am sending everyone out, Meredith is going to take Tristan somewhere so I can have the place to myself and I shall spend a couple of hours beautifying myself. I plan to buff, scrub and polish every inch of myself in preparation for what will surely be the birthday shag fest. Sorry. I mean the loving return of my boyfriend.

Dinner. Ben is not going to be home until about ten. His text this morning just said ETA 10pm with a smiley face next to it.

My God. I love him.

So. Because Ben is not going to be back until late, I have somehow been talked into having a small soiree to celebrate our birthday. Meredith wouldn’t take no for an answer (something to do with me making our birthday a disaster last year and that I owed it to Tristan to try harder this year). I gave in after hours of badgering so we are just going to have Beth, Jayne and Richard around for civilised drinks whilst I excitedly await the return of Ben.

Richard very much seems to be part of the gang these days and I am okay with that. I just look at him as if he is one of the girls. A fact he took most offence to when I told him the other morning when we were out for a jog.

Lunch time

“I’m going to lunch,” I announce.

“What, like going out for lunch? You never go out anywhere,” Baz says, looking surprised.

“Well I would hate to be predictable. Anyway I have got to go and get some sexy underwear for tomorrow.”

“Whoah. Okay, Lilah, and thank you. I don’t need to hear any more,” Baz tells me with his face scrunched up.

“You do realise you are not actually my dad and I can talk to you about sex and stuff?”

“Walk out the door now, and do not come back until you have a clean mouth.”

Baz is laughing, but I do think he takes his adoptive parenting role too seriously.

Marks & Spencer’s

It’s depressing, I have been to two shops selling underwear but there is no way I would wear anything they sell, well not unless I wanted Ben to think I had turned our home into a brothel during his absence. So I have ended up at good old Marks and Sparks.

“Can I help you?”

I may have been staring at the bras a little too long.

“Um, no not really I am just looking for a new underwear set.”

“Well, my dear, I think you may want to go for something slightly sturdier.”

“Pardon?”

“Well, more substantial with a supportive uplift.”

I am holding a bright purple scrap of slinky material.

I give the sales lady a withering glance. “Well I am only a thirty-four B.”

The sales lady whose own figure resembles an ironing board looks me up and down.

“Well I would say you are nearer a thirty-six C.”

“Um, no.”

“Oh, yes. I’m quite an expert and rarely wrong. Let’s measure up.”

Let’s measure up? I am not a pair of sodding curtains!

“Fine, let’s, and you will be surprised to see just how wrong you are.”

One hour later

“What on earth is the matter?”

I’ve nearly taken out Baz’ eye by throwing the goddamn Marks and frickin’ Spencer bag across the room.

“Do I have big boobs?”

“To be honest, Lilah, I try not to look.”

“Well just look and tell me if they are big.”

I thrust my chest out to make my point.

“Moderate I would say.”

“Baz, there is no such thing as moderate size boobs.”

“Can we stop taking about your boobs now? It’s making me uncomfortable.”

“Okay,” I grumble.

“So what happened?”

“The bitch in M&S made me buy a massive bra that would look okay on a granny and then sold me gigantic knickers to match.”

“I am sure it is lovely.”

I yank my purchases out of my bag. “Do these look lovely to you?”

I wave them at him and hold them up in demonstration but Baz can’t answer because he is bent over double laughing at my granny no-sex set.

“Very funny. I am taking them back for a refund.”

“Maybe Ben likes big knickers and scaffolding for a bra?”

“Ben has been hanging around skinny American girls for a month who don’t even need to wear a bra.”

Baz sobers up. “That’s a very good point, Lilah, go and get something much, much smaller and preferably red or purple. It doesn’t matter if you spill out of it.”

“Thank you very much. That is exactly what I told that crazy woman.”

With a big huff I pick up my bag and march my way back to Marks and Spencer’s determined on super teeny tiny pants, or at the very least my money back.

23rd November

6.00 a.m.

“Ben’s coming home, do dah, do dah day.

Ben’s coming home, do dah, do dah day.”

Tristan and Meredith do not like my song. Tristan has just banged on the wall and told me to “shut the fuck up.” I feel that is very unfair, especially on my birthday.

It’s my 27th birthday, but who gives a shit about that? Ben is coming home! That is far more exciting!

I think my singing has wound up Crazy Kit as well. He is tearing around my room like it’s a racetrack making a very strange growling noise. Who knew cats could growl? I sure as hell didn’t. This leads me to believe that my initial summation that he is a beast of hell was accurate.

“Are you trying to sing the daddy’s coming home song?”

Oh, my goodness. I just talked to the cat like it is a baby.