The Art of Keeping Faith (42 page)

“For f-e-e-d-i-n-g the b-a-a-a-b-y?”

”Yes.”

“T-h-a-t-s g-r-o-s-s.”

This makes her laugh harder.

“What else were you searching for? There is no way you could have been looking at nipples for that long.”

This sets me off even more.

“B-e-n-n-n.”

“Oh. Did you find him?”

“N-o-o-o d-o-o-o y-o-o-o-u k-n-o-w w-h-e-r-e h-e i-s?”

She gives a little shake of her head.

“No, I am sorry. I don’t.”

“O-h o-k-a-y t-h-e-n.”

Me:
Ben. I have strange spots on my nipples. It looks like my nipples have chicken pox. I wonder that you would say if you were here?

5th May

Ben:
Nothing

Bank Holiday Monday

What will I be doing this year? Last year I spent the day in perfect bliss with Ben; lazy morning, brunch with friends, romantic walk to the pub and lots and lots of sex.

This year?

Well this year I shall be continuing to try and find him on the Internet. Someone must have spotted him. I just need to randomly keep searching in the hope that something will come up. Yesterday, after Meredith calmed me down, we found a blog site completely dedicated to Ben. A whole blog, every picture that has ever been taken of him is on there, along with every video ever made and every gig ever secretly filmed. And can I just say there are some seriously dirty bitches commenting on that site.

I kind of like them.

Well, I would if it was not my ex-boyfriend they were talking about.

Anyway my point is they have not managed to track him down either. It has been noted on the Dirty Bitches R’ Us site that Ben is missing in action. I am just glad I am not the only one who has noticed. I was beginning to think I was going crazy.

Never.

Richard texted earlier; he is sorry about the whole date suggestion thing he realises it was completely inappropriate and could I erase it from my memory.

I text back that I was only too happy to oblige.

He then texted me to see if I fancied watching the second to last movie we have left on History on Screen.

Gone with the bloody Wind.

Professor Pilchard is clearly having a bloody laugh. There is no way I am watching that, not in my present state of mind. Watching a movie about a demented woman who does not realise what she has until she loses it … I don’t need to watch that! I am living it!

I don’t know what the last movie is. Pilchard is keeping it as a surprise and we all have to watch it on the last lecture of term. We will then have two weeks to prepare for a one hundred per cent exam. Yes, that is right; History on Screen, the single most depressing module ever experienced by a history student does not have an essay / exam final grade. It is just all exam with no back up.

Saying that, I’ve just had a thought.

I am not going to be here next year, so who gives a shit?

Me:
What do you think the last film will be? I’m not sure I can cope with much more emotional upheaval. If you were here you would make me laugh about it, cook me Spaghetti Bolognese and play me guitar until I fell asleep and forget about all the mess around me.

6th May

Ben:
Nothing

What the fuck is that noise?

It sounds like the Lilah Locomotive is back and giving rides to the world but I know it can’t be because I have not touched a drop of alcohol in weeks.

Nope, it is definitely coming from outside of my head.

Shit, it’s only six in the morning. Someone must be having a laugh.

I march down the hallway trying to locate the origin of the incessant drilling. Tristan is standing out there too, hands on hips listening intently to gauge the direction of the noise.

Standing there in silence, I adopt his pose. It seems the best for listening.

“Upstairs,” we both exclaim at once.

”Hopefully it will stop soon,” Tristan helpfully comments before shuffling back to his room in his underpants.

Sod that. I am not taking the chance.

I march out the door to our flat and start to hammer on the door to the one next door. It’s a bit of a weird set up but because the flat is an old house split into a conversion, we share the external, pretty, stained glass blue door outside but have our own internal doors on the inside of an extra hallway.

It’s like living in the Tardis; I am cool with that. Normally.

After five minutes of dedicated hammering I hear the drill cease its eardrum-destroying noise followed by the thud of heavy work boots.

“You all right, love?” asks the man covered in some kind of dust when he answers the door.

Is he mad?

“Do I look all right to you?” I demand.

He looks me up and down. It’s only when he does I realise that I am wearing my fluffy Christmas pyjama’s.

Damn it.

“Well that depends on your definition of all right don’t it, love?”

Great, a smart arse at six in the morning.

“Okay, well let me explain it to you. I am not all right at all. It is six in the morning. It is the Tuesday after a Bank Holiday and you are disturbing all the nice people who live in this street, including myself, with your incessant and completely unnecessary drilling.”

There I think that cleared that up.

“Well, I think I will be the one who decides if it is necessary or not.” He tells me.

Oh, my God. He is going to argue with me. Does he not know that I am a crazy, hormone-driven, pregnant woman?

Oh no. Hold on. Nobody does.

“Drilling at six is never necessary, and I am pretty sure it is against the law.” I am not sure this is strictly true, but if I say it convincingly enough he may believe me. “Secondly, no one actually lives here, so I have no idea who you are in such a rush to drill for. But I think you should toddle off and make yourself a nice cup of tea and wait for a more suitable hour like ten, or maybe even eleven.”

“Eleven!” the man covered in dust snorts. “I will be finishing then, love, we have only got a few weeks to get this place finished. The owners want it rented out ASAP.” He actually says ‘asap,’ instead of ‘A.S.A.P.’

“What? What owners? No one lives here?”

I have no idea why I am standing here talking to this guy in my pyjama’s, but I am intrigued now.

“The owners, they were going to live here but now they want to rent it out. Too right, too. Get a packet for this they will. And, they won’t want to live here with nosey neighbours like you, will they?”

Then he slams the door on my face.

“I am going to complain to the council you know!” I shout through the door mainly for my benefit, not his.

I can hear him laughing, followed by the drill starting up again.

I return to the sanctuary of my own flat with its drilling noise and a sarcastic round of applause from Tristan.

“Well done, sis.”

“Oh, go shag yourself.”

Me:
Ben please?????

7th May

Ben:
Nothing

So everyone knows—about Ben, that is.

It’s kind of okay. I knew it was going to happen at some point, but it would have been better if everyone had found out like on the last day of term so I never had to see them ever again.

Instead, I have to walk across campus looking dog rough with serious bad skin, greasy hair that never comes clean no matter how many times I wash it, and know I am being watched and sniggered at.

Oh, and I am. There was a gaggle of girls out on the lawn enjoying the early summer sunshine and they all stopped talking to watch me walk by. Then later a girl came up to me in the library. I’d made it all the way up to the top floor and the history books for the first time in weeks, and asked me if it was true that Ben and I had called it a day.

“Yep, sure is,” I retorted sliding further down in my study desk chair.

“So does that mean he won’t be visiting campus again?”

“Well how would I know?” I told her. And how would I?

“So do you think he is he looking for a new girlfriend?”

Deep breath.

“Maybe, I don’t know but I guess you will have to find him first.”

She looked at me a bit odd and then walked off.

Everyone is looking at me a bit odd at the moment.

Last night Jayne and Beth who seem to have put all the differences aside for the time being turned up at our place.

It was nine in the evening and it is fair to say I was feeling particularly tired, grumpy and hungry.

Tired because I had been up since six due to the wanker with the drill; grumpy because I had been laughed at on campus; and hungry because I had attempted some beans on toast and then threw it all up, which was completely gross.

They wanted us to go to Fez. Obviously there was no way in a million years I was going to go. Meredith stood firm by my side and said that she did not feel like going either, although it was pretty clear she may have been up for it.

Tristan gallantly diffused the situation by offering to buy the girls pizza and go on a booze run to the local off-license.

Beth and Jayne cannot turn down pizza. Or beer, for that matter.

They were all tiddled by the end of the night; Tristan’s idea of going for a booze run involves three litres of vodka as well as two cases of beer.

I drank water.
Hip, hip hooray.

The good news is we are all now on Ben watch and have set up a Google rota to make sure no possible sighting gets missed.

Beth, after eight bottles of beer and ten straight vodka’s, decided it would be far easier if she just texted him to tell him that I missed him and wanted him to come home. She grabbed her phone, typed something random and then announced to the room with one eye closed, “There we go that should sort it,” just before she fell over her own feet.

I leapt up out of my chair as quick as I could manage without being sick on her.

“What the hell did you write?” I screamed, but she had already deleted it by the time I sat on her where she lay on the floor.

“I don’t know, I can’t remember,” she helpfully informed me before pushing me off her so she could run to the toilet and throw up.

Bloody cheek, that’s my move.

Me:
Everyone knows about you leaving. I wish that I could explain that it was me who made you go and that it was not your fault. I just need to find you. Where are you?

8th May

Ben:
Nothing

Turns out Ben is not anywhere. He has not answered Beth’s message and it has been two days. She is pretty pissed and is threatening to put on her shit kicker boots to track him down and kick his arse.

I can’t believe he would ignore Beth. That’s not like my Ben at all. But then, he is not my Ben anymore and maybe I just don’t know him the way that I thought I did. I never would’ve thought that he would walk away from me. This time last year when I made him leave, he refused point blank. He sat on the fountain at Trafalgar for hours, waiting for me to realise what an idiot I was being by thinking we would be better apart than together. Now he is gone, and I am left coping, but in a way that I never expected.

I am going to have a baby and Ben is not here to share it with me. I wonder how he feels thinking that our baby is dead? I wonder how I would feel if I had lost the splodge that day. It would have destroyed me. I wish I could speak to him to tell him the truth, even if he has moved on and does not want me anymore he should still know about his child so he can make the right choices.

This morning I woke up in a state of panic to the sound of stupid drilling, and realised that the crazy row we had on Easter Sunday has made Ben turn into his dad. The one thing that he never wanted to be. I know it is Ben who is out of contact, but I know I am more than to blame for the current state of affairs. I allowed my inner green-eyed monster to ruin everything. Forever.

I have made Ben turn into his dad and the very worst bit is the fact that he does not even know.

I need to fix this. I need to tell him, so that even if he never wants to be with me again, (and let’s be honest who would blame him for not) he still knows the truth.

I am going to have to take drastic action.

If I have not heard from him by the weekend I am going to have to ring the mum’s. That’s right. The situation is desperate enough that I am going to have to speak to my own mother and not just her; I am also going to have to ring Ben’s in a bid to put all my mistakes right.

Me:
I am going to find you. I have to.

9th May

Ben:
Nothing

“Are you ready?”

“Uh, what? Ready for what, you demented person?”

I am worried that Meredith is starting to adopt a lot of my old characteristics, well, the characteristics that I used to have when Vodka Lilah used to drive things.