Turning Forty (34 page)

Returning to the house having stopped off at Sainsbury’s to pick up supplies I make my way to the kitchen and am relieved to find it empty. Although last night had been enjoyable (my interaction with Rosa and her ‘friend’ aside) it was probably a one-off; most nights in the house wouldn’t be so convivial. No, the sooner I got into a rhythm of cooking alone, eating alone, and heading up to my bedroom alone the better it would be in the long run.

Unloading the shopping into my allotted cupboard still marked ‘Dave’s’ I set about making myself something to eat but without cooking for Rosa, making anything even remotely complicated seems utterly pointless. I make beans on toast and at the last moment I augment it with cheese because of a half-recalled fact that after the age of forty your body needs more calcium.

‘You’re quite the chef, aren’t you?’ says a voice behind me as I begin to tuck in.

It’s Aisling. ‘I didn’t realise anyone else was in.’

‘I was upstairs talking to the folks back home – never a conversation that takes less than an hour. How’s your day been?’

‘Good. Yours?’

‘Long, long, long. The kids were extra mental today, the parents more needy than usual, and a departmental meeting that was meant to take an hour ended up taking two. It was like
The Perfect Storm
, only in an inner-city school and with me in the Russell Crowe role.’

She heads to the fridge, pours herself an orange juice and sits down across from me at the table. ‘Me and the guys were wondering if you’d be up for letting us take you to the pub the night before your big birthday.’

I stare down at my plate. Rosa had been in charge of organising my birthday celebrations and now that I didn’t have her, other than the meal at my parents’ house I had no plans at all. Drinking myself senseless alone in my room had a certain downbeat glamour about it, but on the other hand perhaps a casual drink with the people I’d be living with for the next few months would help ward off my inevitable descent into despair.

‘How does eight o’clock in Pat Kav’s sound?’

‘I love that place!’ says Aisling eagerly, ‘Friday, eight o’clock in Pat Kav’s it is.’

I want the next few days to take an eternity so that I can cling on to the last vestiges of my thirties for as long as possible, but of course time is on fast-forward. Every day I wake up thinking about the problems ahead and five minutes later I’m heading to bed reflecting on how the day had simply run away from me. In between I run the shop, speak to a gloomy Gerry from time to time when I need advice; check my emails for messages of hope from Lauren (there are none: the house resolutely refuses to be sold); take calls from Mum (‘Yes, I will be there on time for my birthday lunch, no, Rosa won’t be coming with me,’) and generally try and keep it all together; but one morning I wake up following a dreamless sleep, and it dawns on me that today is the last day of my thirties.

‘So I’m assuming you won’t be in tomorrow?’ asks Anne when she arrives at the shop that morning.

‘No, but I did get a text from Gerry saying he’d definitely be back in so it shouldn’t be a problem.’

Anne shrugs, unimpressed. ‘I think you should know that as of Monday next I shall be taking my skills which are so desperately undervalued here to the Cancer Research shop on Kings Heath high street. I’m sorry that I can’t give you more notice, but it’s indicative of my strength of feeling over the way that certain issues have been dealt with.’

My heart sinks; it hadn’t occurred to me that Anne might have wanted the management position and had simply been biding her time until Gerry moved on but now it seems obvious.

‘You’re not undervalued, Anne. This place would fall apart if it weren’t for you.’

‘I have said everything I have to say on the matter,’ she says with a sniff.

The day gets worse after Anne’s ‘resignation’. I have to throw out a homeless guy who comes in shouting about squirrels; a teenager starts an argument with me over what he claims is a faulty computer game even though it works fine on the office PC; the credit card reader goes down three times and then breaks completely; and when we cash up the till is down by thirty-five pounds. From start to finish the whole day is horrible, so when I get a text from Aisling sometime after six asking if my pre-birthday bash could start earlier than advertised, I text her straight back:
I’ll be there in 5. Mine’s a pint of Stella
.

48

It’s late (or it could be early, I have no idea because I have drunk an awful lot of beer and can’t focus on my watch), and I am sitting in the rear bar of Kav’s, nursing my umpteenth pint, gently ribbing and being ribbed by Aisling, Reena, Clive and Alexi.

‘And another thing,’ I slur, ‘what is it with your generation and the need to say “Yeah?” after everything like you’re in such desperate need of affirmation that you can’t go a second without checking that someone’s listening?’

‘Never mind all that, yeah,’ says Reena, oblivious to the irony, ‘what’s with your generation always harping on about the past? If you’re not getting emotional about going to see some rubbish band doing a twentieth anniversary tour you’re clogging up our festivals with the same rubbish bands! I barely want to see The Libertines get back together and they were my generation! Why would I want to see a bunch of grey-bearded old blokes being wheeled on stage in order to bang on about how their lives were changed when they discovered Acid House and dropped their first ecstasy tab!’

The whole table erupts in raucous laughter.

‘Do you know what? If anyone had told me a year ago that I’d be spending the night before I turned forty surrounded by a bunch of zygotes who hadn’t even been born when I was seventeen I wouldn’t have believed them.’ I raise my glass in the air, ‘I’m drunk, tired and more than a bit emotional but do you know what? You guys are all right!’

I get resounding applause for my speech and in return offer to get a round in. I head to the bar, then register that my bladder is full to bursting and so make for the toilet instead. All the urinals are taken so I have no option but to hide away in the stall and close the door behind me.

Struggling with my zip, I eventually manage to get it down and as I relax my bladder I reflect on how far I’ve come in a year: yes, my marriage is over; yes, I quit the best paid job I’ve ever had; yes, I moved back to Birmingham; yes, I fell in love with an ex and ended up losing a best friend in the process; yes, I fell in love with another girl and managed to screw that up too; but put all that aside for a moment and look at me now: I’m out in the pub, on the last day of my thirties, hanging out with a bunch of young people who might in fact turn out to be good mates. I’d been knocked down but not knocked out. I’d been bruised but was still alive and kicking. Everything that life could throw at me has come my way and I’m still here. And tomorrow I will turn forty, and though I won’t have a job, house, wife or even my beloved shed, I will have my dignity.

I zip up my jeans and am about to flush when I hear Clive’s unmistakable Glaswegian brogue and Alexi’s south-London-geezer tones. Clear as day Alexi says to Clive: ‘If I’m living in a dump like one-two-eight and think that working in a charity shop, flirting with girls half my age and trying to play the cool dude with a bunch of twentysomethings is a good idea for a grown man the night before I turn forty, promise you’ll kill me, yeah, because honestly mate, if I actually think that’s a life then I will need putting out of my misery.’

They erupt into raucous laughter and I’m not sure what to do but then I take a deep breath and step out just as they’re both zipping up their trousers. The look of horror on their faces says it all.

‘I thought you were at the bar,’ says Clive fearfully as Alexi looks on. ‘We were just shooting our mouths off. We didn’t mean anything by it.’

I don’t say a word. I leave the pub and take the money that I was going to spend on a round to the off-licence down the road and buy a small bottle of bourbon. After tearing off the wrapper with my teeth I take a sip and then another sip, then finish off the entire bottle and once I’m well and truly on my way to not knowing which way is up, I switch on my internal autopilot and head in the direction of Ginny’s house.

As my finger hovers over Ginny’s front doorbell, I have no idea why I’m here. I have no idea what to say to Ginny, how I’m going to respond if Gershwin answers the door or even what to do if they’re both out. All I know is that I have officially had enough. I haven’t just reached my breaking point, I have gone way beyond it and snapped in two. I’m not just in danger of losing it, I have lost it completely and have no idea how to get it back.

I ring the doorbell and my head starts spinning so much that I have to lean against the door. This is a really bad idea, I know it, and yet there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

I stare at the bell. Why haven’t they answered yet? Did they not hear? Maybe I’m so drunk I didn’t ring it properly. I reach out to press the bell again then I see Ginny’s face at the window. Moments later she opens the door.

‘Matt, what are you doing here?’

‘Why haven’t you been in touch?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean why haven’t you been in touch? I was there for you! I was there for you when you needed me so why weren’t you there for me?’

‘Have you been drinking?’

I’m bewildered by the stupidity of her question. ‘Of course I’ve been drinking! Do you think I’ve turned up on your doorstep the night before my birthday by accident? My life has turned to arse, Ginny, pure arse. It’s falling apart around my ears, and you’re the only one who can save me.’

‘Matt,’ says Ginny desperately, ‘you can’t be here! Gershwin’s upstairs, he’ll be down any minute. Please go and I promise I’ll see you tomorrow and we can sort this whole thing out! But you can’t be here right now!’ She snatches a look over her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Matt, I’m really sorry.’ Then she slams the door shut in my face.

I don’t move a muscle, not quite able to believe that Ginny, my Ginny, the woman who I’d walk a mile over broken glass to see has slammed her front door in my face. It doesn’t compute. It refuses to penetrate my skull. And then the message reaches home: Ginny’s just slammed the door in my face; she’s turned away from me in my time of need. A response is called for: I determine to ring her doorbell until it falls off the wall. Focusing every last drop of energy I have into the index finger of my right hand I jab it right into the centre of that doorbell like an Olympic archer hitting a bull’s-eye and keep it there with a determination that would have made the little Dutch boy proud. I’m not moving it for anyone, not until I get someone to come and answer this door.

I have no idea how long it takes for the door to open again (time in my current state of mind has lost all meaning) but when I see Gershwin it’s as if I can no longer contain the rage that I have been desperately holding back since the day Lauren told me she no longer loved me. With my finger still fixed to the doorbell I yell at the top of my voice: ‘I shagged Ginny a week after I came home to Birmingham and the week before last we met up and I took her to a funeral!’

The confusion on Gershwin’s face as he looks from me to Ginny’s horrified expression would have been amusing had his fist not been drawing back at the same time. He launches it, fully primed, in the direction of my face with such speed that I watch in awe as it closes in on me. Reaching maximum velocity it completely fills my vision and then makes contact with my nose sending me spinning like a rag doll into the air.

For a moment, I feel nothing, and wonder whether I am dead, but then a small pinprick at the centre of my face gradually mushrooms into a nuclear explosion’s worth of pain. I am alive, as the taste of blood oozing from my nose down into my mouth attests, but only just. As I lie on the floor, I open my eyes and see my watch right next to me. It is a quarter to one in the morning and almost down to the exact minute forty years ago today in a hospital a few miles from here I came kicking and screaming into the world.

Ginny kneels down next to me; she’s crying and shouting at Gershwin to go and get some towels.

‘Are you all right? Is anything broken?’

‘I’m forty.’ My voice barely registers above a whisper.

‘You’re what?’

‘I’m forty,’ I tell her and then I pass out.

Days left until I turn forty: 0

49

It’s an odd feeling to open your eyes and not be in the place you hope you might be (lying in bed next to Rosa) or in the place you ought to be (my hideously uncomfortable bed in the hideous room in the hideous house that I share with the hideous housemates who despise me) but are somewhere you don’t recognise at all. I’m in fact in a double bed in a tastefully neutral bedroom. I turn my head slightly and my throbbing nose hurts so much I feel my head is about to fall off. Out of the corner of my eye I see my former best mate’s ex-wife sitting next to the bed watching me closely.

‘So you’re awake now are you?’ says Zoe.

‘Now I’m really confused. Why am I at your house?’

‘You’re not, you’re at Ginny’s.’

I look around the room. Yes, I am indeed in Ginny’s guest bedroom.

‘What are you doing here then?’

‘Gershwin woke me in the middle of the night worried that he’d killed you. He called me over to take a look even though I haven’t worked on an emergency unit in a decade.’