Wishful Thinking (8 page)

The night came, after a week of tension at home, when he went out with the lads, got horrendously drunk, and turned up on her doorstep in the wee small hours. He told her he loved her and was promptly sick in a basin which she had had the forethought to provide: intelligent anticipation is one of Georgie's many talents. Then he crashed out in her bed till morning. She looked down at him – he was lying on his stomach, his head half-turned, his profile very young and somehow vulnerable in sleep – and felt a sudden rush of tenderness, catching her off guard, an emotion so strong that it was physical, squeezing her insides, a wonderful deep twisty pain which scared her and made her happy both at once. ‘You wouldn't understand,' she told Lin and me when she described it, long after. ‘You're too young. You don't know what it's like to go through the years being
so
strong, and
so
independent, and all the while underneath there's the fearing – the knowing – that you'll never feel that way again. You'll never be that alive again. Then it comes, when you don't expect it, and you think that no price would be too high for that moment, that
feel
.'

I don't know about Lin but in my case she was right: I didn't understand. Love hurts, so the songs say. Well, we all know that. Because of the rejection, and betrayal, and all that part of the package. But I couldn't conceive of happiness hurting; I couldn't get my head around that one. I thought that the hurt was because of his marriage, and the hopelessness of it all.

‘So you
do
want him to divorce Christine,' Lin said. ‘Divorce her and marry you . . .'

‘No,' said Georgie. ‘If I marry again it's going to be to a millionaire. I've done romantic marriage; now I'm going to be practical. It's just . . . until then . . . it's wonderful to be a little in love. Just a little.'

She should have known better. There's no such thing as being just
a little
in love.

So there we were. At the time of the three wishes, when I started writing this, Georgie was still more or less involved with Cal, I was shacked up with Nigel, and Lin was sinking in a morass of domestic problems. Another nanny had bitten the dust, Sean had fallen behind with his maintenance payments, Sandy's school had accused him of bullying, and the only thing in the house that ever reached a climax was the washing machine. So much for the power of the Wyshing Well. A couple of weeks after Vijay Ramsingh's launch party, I got home to find Nigel had set up a candle-lit dinner for two.

I should have done a better build-up to that, shouldn't I? I should have described opening the door, and the waft of romantic music that greeted me (actually an obscure folk band performing their own eco-ballads, with a soloist on the lute, but that was Nigel's idea of romantic), and the alluring cooking smells, and the pop of a champagne cork (Cava). Somehow, it's much easier to write about Lin and Georgie than it is to write about me. When you get inside your own life there are so many feelings to contend with, guilt and embarrassment and wishing you hadn't made such a fool of yourself and the urge to edit and tidy it all up and make yourself look better. But it's no good. I thought it was lovely, the whole thing, even when I saw the takeaway cartons from a nearby Italian restaurant in the bin – Nigel claimed he had done the cooking himself – and especially when he apologised for the Cava, saying champagne was too expensive and anyway, you paid for the label, other fizz was just as good.

I was so touched, I kept the cork, pocketing it when he wasn't looking because I knew he would say I was being sentimental. I'd gone away the previous weekend to stay with my mother and Nigel hadn't come with me (he never did, always providing himself with a cast-iron excuse), and he said he wanted to make it up to me. We sat and talked, or rather he talked, about how Big Business was ruining the environment (I agreed), and how J. K. Rowling was indoctrinating the children of today with an outdated bourgeois value-system (not sure about that one), and other such stuff, and I was dazzled all over again by his high ideals, and charmed by his baby-faced looks (ignoring the pocket-torch jaw), and we went to bed and had sex and he enthused over my earth-mother figure, and I felt beautiful in his eyes.

Which just goes to show that beauty isn't in the eye of the beholder. It's in the mind of the beheld.

I went around in a glow for two days, undamped by Georgie, who nobly refrained from sneering at the Cava. On Wednesday evening I was putting the rubbish out when the bag split. Fortunately, it was a small split, and only a couple of things spilled from the bottom of the bag. One of them was a champagne cork. When I'd fixed the damage by the complicated process of inserting the full, slightly split bag into an intact one, I took the cork indoors, washed it, and went up to my room to check in my drawer. The cork from the Cava was still where I'd hidden it. That didn't mean anything, of course. Why shouldn't Nigel have had an earlier bottle of fizz while I was away, presumably to cheer himself up? Why should I assume he had shared it with someone? He couldn't do that – he
couldn't
– and then two nights later snuggle up to my earth-mother breasts, and make me feel beautiful.

I hid the second cork with the first like a detective hoarding the evidence, though I told myself no crime had been committed. I was over-reacting, over-imaginative, suspicious, neurotic, paranoid. Nigel loved me. After all, he lived with me. But my glow was tarnished, and that night we didn't have sex, and Nigel snuggled up to the pillow, and I didn't feel beautiful at all.

I told my friends about it eventually, over lunchtime sandwiches in the office.

‘D'you really want to know what I think,' said Georgie, ‘or would you rather I told you polite lies?'

‘Lies,' I said. ‘Definitely. I'm being paranoid. Please don't make it worse.'

‘If you really thought that,' she said, ‘you wouldn't have told us. The duplicate cork is just the clincher. There's also the circumstantial evidence. You go away for the weekend, he refuses to accompany you, then when you come back he turns up the volume on your romance. Classic compensation behaviour. Motivated by guilt or simply the desire to keep you sweet. He's got himself a cushy number, living rent-free in your flat. You can bet he doesn't want to screw it up.'

‘He pays me rent! I mean, he pays towards expenses – I can't ask him for rent, he's my boyfriend. That's – that would be crass . . .'

‘How much?' Georgie demanded inexorably.

‘As much as he can afford! Look, it varies. He doesn't earn a lot; idealists never do.'

‘
How much
?'

‘About fifty a week . . .'

‘And how much is your mortgage?'

‘Don't you criticise my financial management,' I retorted, rallying. ‘You're the one with the monster credit-card debt.'

‘It doesn't matter what he pays you,' Lin interceded. ‘What matters is whether he's seeing someone else. I think Georgie's being awfully cynical, but—'

‘But?'

‘You're worried,' Lin said simply. ‘And you're
not
paranoid. You need to know whether there's something worth worrying about.'

‘In other words,' said Georgie, ‘time to get sneaky.'

Lin demurred at this. For form's sake, so did I. I hated the idea of searching his drawers for love-letters (does anyone write them any more?), or stealing a look at his bills (probably uninstructive: he was too broke to be extravagant), or hacking into his PC to check his e-mail. I couldn't bear the vision of myself prying, and spying, and being jealous and pathetic and sad. At the same time, I
was
jealous, or at least twitchy, and only the truth would sort it out. If I really wanted the truth. And the phantom of a me who shrank from unpalatable facts and preferred to live in a dreamworld so I could keep my faithless boyfriend was even more pathetic than my paranoia. It was almost a relief to let Georgie, who has never had scruples about anything, ride rough-shod over mine.

‘Get his mobile phone,' she suggested. ‘Check for text messages. It won't take a minute.'

‘He doesn't leave it lying about much.'

‘You don't need much. Grab it when it's on recharge.'

So I turned sneak. He always left it charging up overnight, and I would creep into the living room when he was asleep and check it out. For several nights there was nothing. In desperation, I really did go through his drawers, but I only found the sort of things that you usually find in men's drawers – solitary socks, crusty underwear – and this, though unpleasant, was hardly incriminating. There wasn't even a porn mag: he had a soul above such things. I wanted to feel reassured, but I didn't.

I started to read hidden meanings into every nuance of Nigel's manner. If you've been there, you'll know how it feels. You look at the other person, and you tell yourself everything's all right: he's just been a bit grouchy lately, he's under pressure, work problems, he's too tired or too stressed for lots of sex, are you really going to write off the relationship because of a champagne cork which wasn't even real champagne? He keeps getting back late, but that doesn't mean a thing. And then one night it's
very
late, and he crashes out without a word, and you tiptoe into the room next door and press the buttons on his mobile, feeling sly and slimy and suspicious and vile, and there it is. The evidence.

‘2nite ws gr8. Luv u. xR'.

You stare at it, and stare at it. In the end you go back to bed, because what else is there to do, and you lie on your back, not touching him, not even with your hair, not sleeping, and your mind goes round in circles and your heart churns, and in the morning you act normal, in a robotic sort of way, and he seems normal, and when he's gone there's this awful snide temptation to put your head in the sand and pretend none of it has happened, and then maybe it will just go away.

I called the locksmith from the office. After work I went back with Georgie and a couple of bottles of wine (Lin had to get back to the children), packed his stuff into boxes and carrier bags and dumped them in the street. By the time Nigel put in an appearance I was pissed and floating in the air three feet above my emotions. I yelled out of the window; he yelled back. Neighbours peered out to watch the show.

‘You're crazy,' he bawled. ‘What've I done?'

‘You've only been seeing someone else. You were with her when I was away. Don't bother to deny it. You were seen.'

Well, he must've been seen. By somebody.

‘Look, I can explain. It doesn't mean what you think. She's a regular customer – she's keen on me – I can't help that.'

‘You brought her
here
. To
my
flat.' I was guessing, guessing wildly, shooting arrows in the air and hitting the bull's eye every time. I wanted him to tell me it was all lies, but he didn't. ‘She rang me,' I improvised. ‘I know everything.'

‘Oh God . . . Cookie, please. She's confused. She makes things up. I
had
to bring her here – she was suicidal – where else could I take her?'

‘Her place?'

‘Don't be silly. There's her husband.' Panic was making him careless. ‘I couldn't turn away from her pain. I'm not that kind of person. You know I care for you—'

‘You care for my flat! You care for having an easy life! So much for left-wing ideals. You're nothing but a – a
gigolo
!'

‘Bullshit. It's those bitches at Ransome, isn't it? They've done this. They've been stirring shit for me, egging you on—'

Georgie swept towards the window, but I pushed her back and took a restorative slug of wine. ‘I don't need egging. You've scrambled my life. Just get out.
Get out
!'

‘Where am I to go?' He sounded pathetic now. ‘You can't do this. It isn't civilised. Where can I sleep?'

‘Park bench!'

Eventually, he went. I might have weakened and let him in, but Georgie kept me strong. I knew she would: that was why I'd asked her to come. The neighbours, show over, retreated back into their holes. Later, Nigel returned with a taxi and collected his stuff. I watched him from behind the curtain, but although he looked up at my window he didn't call out any more. By then, I'd put whisky on top of the wine and I felt as high as the stockmarket when it hits an all-time record, just before it's due to crash. I felt bold and decisive and in charge of my life. (And alone.) Later, I was sick. Georgie stayed over and put me to bed. The next night, I knew, I would have to deal with the emptiness, and the constant urge to phone him, and the feeling that if I could just find the right knob (no pun intended) and twist it, normal service would be resumed and I could be comfortable again. That, or turn to meths.

Nowadays we recognise the problem of addiction and do everything we can to help addicts kick their habit, whatever that may be. Alcoholics have AA and other support groups, junkies have methadone and support groups, smokers have Nicorette patches, hypnotism, and, no doubt, support groups. But there's no professional help if you're addicted to a person. No Ex-girlfriends Anonymous, no substitute drugs (except possibly chocolate), no Nigellette patches. I would have to struggle through on my own, trying not to dwell on the times when it had been good: the cuddles, the comfort of coming home to someone.

I'd never lived with a boyfriend before, and now there was a Nigel-shaped hole in my life and only time, or someone else, would fill it up. I missed his nagging principles, his sense-of-humour bypass, his little-boy petulance, his pocket-torch jaw. I missed all the things I shouldn't have missed. Georgie rated him so low I knew she wouldn't understand. But he had cared for me, or seemed to, and I missed that most of all.