The Perfect 10 (6 page)

‘That’s what I like to see, black coffee, not undoing all your hard work, not like us boozers. Where do you want it?’ he asks with a smile.

‘Oh, you didn’t have to do that, thank you. I can take it from here,’ I say, thinking, how lovely! How chivalrous! How unusual!

‘No worries. I’ll pop it on the table,’ he says with a cheerful grin. He has an Australian accent and thinning hair. He is equal parts muscle and fat, and I think his chest looks welcoming, and I decide he must give good hugs.

‘I’m sure she could have managed,’ Lisa mumbles under her breath, but both the Australian and I hear it and I give her a strange look.

‘That was my pleasure,’ he says to me pointedly, smiling, and walks back to the bar.

‘Lisa, that was a bit rude. Do you know him or something?’ I ask.

‘No, thank God! I mean, could he have been any more obvious? Jesus! And look at him – he’s all fat! Like you want some huge fat guy hitting on you.’

‘He was just being nice, I think,’ I say, blowing on my coffee, embarrassed.

‘Well, if you flirt with guys like that, Sunny, you only have yourself to blame,’ she says, and flicks her hair, picking up the leaflet again, not making eye contact with me.

‘I wasn’t flirting … I was just … being polite …’

‘OK, if you say so.’ She throws the pamphlet down and smiles at me with quite apparent disbelief.

‘What’s wrong?’ I say, confused.

‘Just don’t be so naïve, Sunny. I could have every guy in here hitting on me if that’s what I wanted, but it’s just about respecting yourself. I know you aren’t married yet, so it’s different, but … don’t be too obvious.’

I am sure my mouth falls open.

‘Are we still running on Thursday? I know the weather report is bad, but it would be such a shame to miss it. I love that we can jog together now. It’s so much nicer having somebody to run with in the week. I’m so happy for you, Sunny – and for me too, of course, because I get you to run with!’ She lifts her coffee cup and toasts it in my direction. It’s her way of apologising but still I feel hurt.

I check my watch. ‘I’m really sorry, Lisa. I have to dash. I have a delivery at three.’

I grab my bag, and peck her goodbye. She looks slightly baffled as I run off, and I’m completely unable to make eye contact with the big Australian as I dash past.

‘It might help if you talked about the incident in a bit more detail – the emotional impact you feel it may have had on you.’

‘No.’

‘Not yet?’

‘Never.’

‘But you understand that it will need to be confronted, at some point?’

‘Not really. It’s over. It’s done. I’ve told you what happened. I don’t want to think about it. You could do with some new rugs.’

‘All you’ve told me is that a child was snatched and you helped get him back – there must be more to it than that.’

‘It wouldn’t kill you to co-ordinate in here. It would make it easier.’

‘Make what easier?’

‘Focusing. Your books aren’t even in height order. I can see one shoe poking out from under that chair. That’s off-putting.’

‘Try and cut off from that. What do you want to talk about today, if not the incident?’

‘Where’s the other shoe?’

‘What do you want to talk about today?’

‘My life is too spotless. I want romance!’

‘Do you feel we may have covered that already?’

‘No.’

‘We have gone over it in most of your sessions.’

‘It’s not resolved. In my head.’

‘Which parts?’

‘All of it. I’m still having the daydream.’

‘Which is perfectly healthy. Daydreams aren’t necessarily harmful. They can simply be a manifestation of our hopes, harmless wish fulfilment. It is only when we find them disturbing that –’

‘Maybe if I told you again?’

‘Is it the same one as before?’

‘No, it’s different.’

‘Has Adrian made a reappearance?’

He sees me bristle like some old hen at the sound of the name.

‘Why would you ask that?’

‘I’m just trying to work out how is it different, Sunny.’

‘Let me just tell you. I’m having an argument with my tall, handsome husband – who doesn’t exist – and we are bickering about unimportant things, but he can’t be mad at me for long. It’s a fight about who will drive to the dinner party we are going to. He is wearing a chunky-knit sweater. It doesn’t descend into any real kind of nastiness. It’s not one of those kinds of arguments, the way that people can be to each other, spitting out unforgivable venomous spite … You know. We don’t do that. Because my husband – my imaginary husband – loves me too much, and I him. I know he will never leave me, with a coward’s note about his lust for his secretary. And he knows that I will never get drunk and perform a sexual indiscretion on his brother –
he has a younger brother, reckless and attractive, possibly bisexual, always off trekking in the Himalayas, or skydiving. The point is this: we just can’t be unfaithful to each other, in my mind, because unfaithful is for other people with weak relationships, common relationships, relationships that stream past me daily. We don’t score points, I don’t demean his manhood – he is average in length but has great girth – and he doesn’t take food out of my hands for my waistline’s good. We don’t want to trade up or trade down or trade each other in. We are in love.’

‘I see. How exactly is that different to the previous daydream?’

‘We never fought about who would drive before. Because in my daydream I hadn’t passed my test. But I passed it last week in my dream. Really, I’ve been driving for years.’

‘Congratulations anyway.’

‘Thank you. Parallel parked.’

‘Why do you think you still want to talk about this? Why do you think this daydream is in any way unhealthy?’

‘Because I don’t think I understand love! And, seriously, it’s becoming more pressing! I think I have a picture of it in my head that isn’t real, and that is going to stop me ever actually falling in love, or even recognising it! I thought I was in love with Adrian, and that was five years of my life … but now …’

‘Do you think that you might know love when you find it, and that it will replace the daydreams?’

‘No! I think that while my perception of love stays the same I won’t be able to see it in reality. I think I am emotionally unhealthy in that respect.’

‘And what would you say your perception of love is?’

‘Love is the thing that keeps you safe at night. Love doesn’t hurt.’

My therapist adjusts his glasses. He looks as if he is in
his late fifties, but he is sixty-two, with dark brown hair smeared in grey. He wears a jumper and jeans. The jeans are old man jeans – they don’t really fit, in any acceptable way. His jumper is navy and cream and claret, diagonals and squares and lines. It doesn’t really fit either. His clothes just sit on him. He doesn’t write things down often, although he has a pad and a pen on the desk behind him in case of emergencies. He doesn’t have a deep or soothing voice. It’s quite bland. Some days I find it annoying. He sounds like a bank clerk, or a travel agent, or any of those faceless voices at the end of a phone line who just want to put you on hold. He crosses his legs. He always sits in the same position, and rubs his left elbow with his right hand every few minutes. He is divorced, but has a long-term girlfriend now, although they don’t live together. I have been seeing him for eight months. It costs me eighty pounds a session, and I come once a week, on a Monday afternoon, for an hour and a half. The ‘incident’, as I am now referring to it, was yesterday, but I’m feeling fine about it already.

I talk with my hands. I grab my knees and pull them up close to my chest. I do that a lot now that I can. I always sit in the big low chair, although there is a sofa. I scrape my fingers from the front to the back of my head when I am really thinking. Not hard, just to feel my hair. Today I am wearing jeans that fit, with a feint line that runs vertically down the middle of each leg, which is slimming. My black shirt is soft but has a large stiff collar that sits slightly away from my neck, avoiding foundation smears. I wear clear lip-gloss. I apply my mascara heavily at the roots of my eyelashes to give a lengthening effect without clogging the tips. When I see photos of myself I never look the way I think I might. My nose is slightly longer than I imagine it to be, my cheekbones slightly higher. I think of myself with a big round face, but it is actually quite angular now. I have
the ‘first signs of grey’ in dark brown hair, but I colour them out so you wouldn’t know, but then the world is turning grey these days. I look anywhere between twenty-six and thirty-two, depending on who you ask. I am actually twenty-eight. Everybody says I look younger now I’ve lost the weight, but in my head at least, I look exactly the same.

I don’t think I have ever been in love, which is the reason I started seeing my therapist. He doesn’t seem to think it’s a problem, but at twenty-eight I beg to differ. Of course, previously, when I hadn’t taken control of the fat situation, I couldn’t have seen him, for fear of the criticism. But now that I can say, no matter what he throws at me, I’m not hiding any more, I’m working hard, I’m being a good girl and I’m on a diet, we can talk about the possibility of fat being the problem. Now I am winning this battle I can consider dropping those walls of defence. He thinks I have bigger issues to confront, but he won’t tell me what they are exactly. We have to ‘find them’ together. I enjoy our time, though. It’s nice just to blurt it all out – things that you can’t say to the people in your life, who would be upset, or concerned, by the rubbish in your head.

‘Do you feel under pressure to fall in love, Sunny?’

My therapist is trying a new tack today, it would seem. Good for him. He must be so bored with me by now.

‘No. It’s completely the opposite. I have never had any pressure, from anybody, to date or to marry. Nobody. Which is a relief, of course. I think they are all just too embarrassed to say anything. My mother doesn’t even meddle – how are you, still single? Why aren’t you seeing anybody? Your standards are too high! None of that. No pressure at all.’

‘Do you see her often?’

‘My mother? She comes to visit every couple of weeks, and vents about my father, and his obsession with the car
parking spaces in Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose … I think all men of that generation eventually become obsessed with supermarket car parks. Are you?’

‘No.’

‘Well, you’ve got a couple of years yet.’

‘We were talking about your mother.’

‘Yes. She comes to see me, on the train because my dad doesn’t like her driving the car – she mounts kerbs like a crazy woman – and she asks me to make her a cup of milky tea and then we chat about other people’s lives really. With a feigned interest, at best. We don’t mention mine.’

‘Do you feel that she is interested in your life?’

‘Well, sometimes she’ll ask about work, but only how I am getting on financially, whether it makes me happy working for myself. She doesn’t like to talk about the nature of my business – not that she officially disapproves of sex toys: she watches Channel Four.’

‘Do you think she might not want to intrude? Do you think she might be waiting for you to offer some information?’

‘I really don’t know what she thinks … about the lack of men in my life … I don’t think I want to know. Maybe she believes I am happier on my own, or assumes things go on that I don’t choose to share with her. She talks about the inadequacies of my sister’s latest flings as if they are all the same man, and all a disappointment at that.’

‘Do you feel inadequate compared to your sister? Do you feel that your mother doesn’t see you as enough, on your own?’

‘No, there has never been any suggestion from anybody that I am not enough on my own. I think they consider me more than enough on my own. Nobody seems to think that I might like to be taken care of. I just take care of myself. I always have.’

‘How does that make you feel?’

‘Strong.’ I run my fingers through my hair. ‘And sad.’

Some would say it was a strange sequence of events that led me to establish shewantsshegets.com. But rather, it was one rather pedestrian happening, coupled with a slightly crazier occurrence, in addition to my deep-rooted wish to quit my then job. In the first instance I just happened to catch a TV programme that I wouldn’t normally have watched. I fell upon it late one night as I lay in bed cracking my way through a family-sized bar of Galaxy and a mug of hot chocolate, after a vanilla-scented bath. There was European Championship football on BBC1,
Young Musician of the Year
on BBC2, a crime reconstruction show that terrified me on ITV, and a party political broadcast for the Liberal Democrats on Channel Four. So I flicked to Channel Five, and settled down with a documentary about an ex-porn star in the US who claimed to be called Elixir Lake. She had huge blonde hair that looked as if it must have been set in rollers every half an hour. She also had swollen, precarious-looking breasts, on the brink of explosion: the nipple of her left breast was constantly erect and pointing diagonally down towards the floor in rock-hard shame.

Elixir Lake had, after a particularly unpleasant attack of herpes, decided to get out of porn, but porn was all she had known since she was a girl – a common problem. It was then that Elixir had her brainwave. She decided to cherry-pick pornography that she believed would appeal to an underexploited sector of the market – women – and sell it via this strange new phenomenon called the World Wide Web. Elixir’s porn stream exploded, so much so that within eighteen months she was selling warehouse loads of soft-core videos. Elixir herself had only ever done soft core; ‘No shit, no anal, those were my rules,’ she said seriously through plumped-up frosted-pink lips and a deep red lip line. But as
well as the videos she was also being asked for dildos and vibrators and all manner of toys by her female clientele. So Elixir seized upon the demand, and now she was living in a six-bedroom house with a pool shaped like a vast pair of bosoms, and a tennis court shaped like a tennis court, in the hills above Los Angeles. Selling rather than swallowing proved more profitable for Ms Lake. But then maybe if she’d done shit or anal …