Woman Walks into a Bar (2 page)

Three

Just before
getting back to work, I unfolded the square of paper in my jeans pocket and read the joke that Beth had left for me.

How do you know when you've got an elephant in your fridge?

There are footprints in the butter!

I groaned but couldn't help laughing. That one was pretty funny, if you had the mentality of a four-year-old. Joy found it hilarious.

“Get a move on, girls!” Sandra bellowed across at us. “Break was over five minutes ago!”

The three of us stood up and started to make our way back to the shop floor. Marie first, then me, followed by Joy trailing behind. Joy was complaining because she was on tampons.

“I wish I was on tampons,” I said to her over my shoulder. “I'm on fresh fish. I hate fresh fish, it makes me want to gag.”

“Marie,” Joy called out as we filed out of the canteen. “You've got to get her off fresh fish. We don't want her stinking of fish guts tonight, do we?”

Marie was the shift checkout captain. Or Captain Checkout as Joy called her. Marie loved herself in her special orange blazer, tottering up and down the tills with her clipboard.

“I'll have a word with Sandra,” she said, slightly on the snooty side. Marie took her job very seriously. Checkout captain wasn't enough for her. She had her eye on section manager tomorrow and assistant manager the day after that. And the day after that, Joy often teased her, the world.

Joy, on the other hand, treated her job at the supermarket exactly the same way she had treated school. She looked upon it as a way to have as much of a laugh as you could without getting put into detention. That was why she was never checkout captain.

I was never checkout captain because I couldn't work a till without killing it. Even though you just have to put the bar code under a red light and the till reads it for you. It's not because I don't know how they work, I do. But I always seem to make electric things go wrong. I only have to look at them.

Whenever I'm on a till, it always gets jammed or broken within about ten minutes. It's always on a Saturday morning. There's always a huge queue and it's always some obnoxious woman I'm holding up, tapping her credit card like fury on the counter because she'll be a few minutes late picking her kid up from ballet in her car, which is the size of a bus. And when people start to look at me like I'm stupid, I start feeling stupid and all of the things I know I should do to put the till right go out of my head. I look at it but it's like I'm looking at something I have never seen before in my life. It makes no sense to me. So then I have to flash my light until the checkout captain comes over and presses two buttons to make it work again. And then I get sent on a break, and when I come back I'm back on fresh fish.

So I only ever get out on the till when there's been flu going around or on Valentine's Day when no one else wants to work in the evening.

Joy treats her job like a laugh, Marie treats it like a career path, and I treat it exactly like what it is. A way to support myself and Beth. A way to get her the latest pair of trainers or games for the Xbox my brother bought her, without having to answer to anyone but myself.

I'm luckier than some. Mum and Dad do pretty well—Dad's garage makes good money. I know he'd help us more with money if I let him. He tells me so every time we go round there for fish and chips on a Wednesday night. And I know Beth thinks I should let him, that a bit more cash would be a quicker route to whatever skirt, top, or DVD she wants—but I won't let him.

When Adam left I had to pick myself up and get on with things. I had to look after myself and my daughter. I had to do it for myself to prove that I could be strong. And sometimes it's hard, but I want to do it by myself, and whenever I look around at everything we've got, I know that it's almost all because of me and I'm really proud.

Four

“Don't get
me moved off fresh fish,” I said to Marie. “I'm not going to meet this bloke, remember?”

Marie sighed and picked up her clipboard.

“Oh, come on, Sam,” she pleaded. “You're never going to believe who it is!”

I blinked at her. That meant I knew whoever it was they were trying to set me up with.

“Marie!” Joy scowled at her. “We're not telling her who it is, all right?”

“I haven't told her who it is! All I've said is—”

“What, I know this person?” I said, looking at Joy.

“Yeah,” Joy said, looking a bit awkward.

“I know him and he's not one of your castoffs?”

Joy nodded.

I looked at Marie. “Who is he?” I asked.

“I'm not telling,” Marie said, “but when you see him, you'll be well glad you went, I promise you . . .”

A list of all the people I thought it might be flashed through my head in a split second.

“Brian?” I asked.

“No,” Joy replied.

“Mick, Dave, Jules, Ali . . .?”

Joy and Maria shook their heads on each name and I was glad. I didn't want it to be any of those names. But if it wasn't any of them and it was someone that I knew, who did that leave?

I thought of a name but I didn't say it out loud.

There was one person who I'd like to see sitting at the table waiting to buy me a drink at seven that night. But it couldn't be that person for two reasons. Firstly, neither Joy nor Marie nor anyone on earth except me knew that I liked him. And secondly, he was the bar manager at the White Horse. He'd be there to see me meeting up with whoever this geek was because he was bound to be working on a Friday night. Wasn't he?

I hadn't started out fancying Brendan. It wasn't like the first time I saw him I couldn't speak and my heart was racing and I knew I was in love. He didn't blow me away exactly. In fact, I thought he was a bit too short for me and he was very quiet at first, shy. Marie was the first to notice he had nice eyes, and Joy liked his Irish accent.

He'd been working at the White Horse for a few months before I realized that the person I most looked forward to seeing on a Friday night was not Joy or Marie. It was him. I'd been getting ready to meet the girls as usual when I realized my belly felt funny. Sort of twisted. I thought it might have been the chicken tikka sandwich I had had for lunch so I went and sat on the loo, but nothing happened. It reminded me of something I had felt before, and I remembered the first time I had felt Beth moving inside me, fluttering against my insides like a bird beating its wings. But I couldn't be pregnant.

And then I laughed out loud sitting on the loo. It had been so long since I had had that feeling I'd forgotten it altogether. It was butterflies! It was the thought of seeing Brendan that night that was making me feel excited. I'd probably fancied him for ages before that night. It just took me a long time to realize it. I had thought that those sorts of feelings inside me had gone forever. I thought they had been kicked to death.

But I didn't tell anyone. Because if Joy found out, the world would have known by teatime. And because Brendan wasn't going to fancy someone like me, not when he had skinny twenty-year-olds throwing themselves at him every night of the week. And because while nobody knew, and it was just my secret, I could hold it close inside and enjoy it and pretend that it might be real one day.

I looked at Joy, then another thought of who it might be swept over me, and I found myself shaking. I must have gone white because Joy reached out an arm to steady me and took a step closer.

“Babe,” she said gently. “What?”

I made myself ask.

“It's not . . . it's not
him,
is it?” I asked in a whisper. The laughter in Joy's face was gone in an instant.

“Sam, no! No. I would never,
never
do that, you know that,” Joy told me firmly.

“I know you wouldn't mean to,” I said. “But you know what he's like. I thought if he wanted to see me he'd try and talk you round and maybe . . . maybe . . . maybe.” My words had got stuck, like a scratch on a CD. Only talking about Adam did that to me. I don't know what would happen if I actually saw him.

“Listen to me,” Joy said, putting her other hand on my shoulder. “It's not him. He doesn't even live round here anymore. And he'd never come back here. He knows what would happen to him if he did. It's not him, OK?” I nodded and Joy bit her lip as she looked at me.

“I hate it when you're like this, Sam,” she said. “When are you going to realize no one can hurt you now? You are a strong, independent woman, all right? And anyway I'm here, your mum and dad, Eddie . . .”

“And me,” Marie said, feeling left out.

“For what's it's worth,” Joy said, winking at me, “he's
gone
. He's been gone for years. He's never coming back. It's not him. You have to stop letting him frighten you.”

I nodded and took a deep breath. I felt in my other pocket and found my inhaler and took two puffs. Deep breath, count to ten. Deep breath, count to ten.

“Do you need to go to the medical room?” Sandra snapped too loudly in my ear.

“No, Sandra,” I said. “Just a bit wheezy . . .”

“Well, stop standing around gossiping and get on with it then, all right? This is not a holiday camp!” We watched her arse wobble as she marched off toward canned goods.

“Look, just be there tonight, OK?” Joy said. “You'll be glad that you did.” She was smiling again.

I thought for a moment. If it wasn't any of the people I didn't want it to be, then there was a chance, a small chance, that it might be Brendan.

Beth's always telling me that if I start thinking good things will happen to me, then they will. She says, “There's no point in moaning about not winning the lottery, Mum, when you don't ever buy a ticket. You can't expect the right bloke just to turn up right under your nose. You have to go out and find him. You have to take chances.”

It probably wouldn't be Brendan that I was going to meet as my blind date in the bar tonight. But there was a chance it might be. A chance worth taking.

“All right,” I said, finding myself smiling as the butterflies kicked off in my guts again. “Why not?”

“Hooray!” Marie cheered quietly, as she slotted her pen into the top of her clipboard. “And at least he's got to be better than that twat you met at Roxy's,” she said.

“Oh, yeah?” I asked. “Why?”

“He's not married,” she said.

The One Who Was No Good for Any Woman Including His Wife

I walked into the bar.

I hadn't been to Roxy's in years. And now I remembered why. The thump of the music made my ears ring and the flash of the lights made me squint. I don't know why this Graham had picked a nightclub on a Thursday night for us to meet. It was only just eight and the place was more or less empty. The air-conditioning made me get goose bumps on my arms and the dry ice made me cough. I unfolded the email that Beth had printed out for me with instructions on where we were to meet.

“Upstairs in the booths,” it read. I looked at his photo. Even in the pulsing strobe lights he was pretty good looking. Beth had written out a joke underneath the photo.

What does Dracula say to his victims?

It's been nice gnawing you!

I smiled. The joke wasn't funny. But Beth going to the trouble to do something to make me smile when I was feeling nervous made me happy. Sometimes I wondered how, despite every­thing, I had ended up with such a great kid.

When I walked up the stairs, the noise of the music went down a little bit. All of the booths seemed to be empty, but I walked along the row from one to another until I found him, sitting in the corner. He had been watching himself in the mirrored wall and turned round when he saw my reflection.

“There you are,” he said. I wondered if he was talking to me or my chest.

“Here I am,” I said, feeling nervous. “Ha ha.”

He patted the seat next to him for me to sit down. I did. He pushed a drink toward me across the table. It was tall with lots of ice in it, a curly straw and an umbrella stuck in the top.

“I got you a cocktail,” he said. “Sex on the Beach.” He looked pretty pleased with himself so I took a sip. It tasted of Ribena.

“Cheers,” I said.

He looked at my chest again, and I began to wish that I hadn't let Beth talk me into buying a new top.

“You can't wear that old-lady stuff to a nightclub, Mum,” she'd said in Topshop. “How about this one? It's on sale.”

I hadn't liked it because it was too tight and you could see the little lumps of fat that bulged out under my bra. But Beth said it was “way cool,” so I bought it.

“Tell me about yourself, Sam,” Graham said. I didn't know what to say. No one had said that to me in years. Or maybe even ever.

“Not much to tell,” I said, sucking the cocktail through the curly straw. “I've got a daughter called Beth who's twelve. I work at the local supermarket—that's it really. Just what it says on my thingy. Profile.”

Graham leant a bit closer to me. He smelt of strong aftershave.

“That's not what I mean,” he said very quietly, so quietly that I had to lean closer to him to hear him above the music. “Tell me what makes you tick.”

It was funny, really, because the more of the cocktail I drank, the more I had to say. I ended up telling him a lot about myself. The words just seemed to tumble out. Once I got started I couldn't shut up. I didn't tell him everything, thank God. Just about what life was like for me and Beth on our own. By the end of the cocktail I found myself telling him I was lonely.

“A beautiful woman like you,” he said, “is bound to have needs a man like me could take care of.”

“Needs?” I said, remembering that I needed to pay the gas bill as the red one had come that morning.

“Needs,” he said. And he kissed me. I was a bit taken aback at first. It took my brain a few seconds to work out what my body was doing, and by that time my body was well up for it.

I was kissing him back. His hand was up my top, squeezing and groping, and my hand was on his thigh. His mouth was all over mine and, as we kissed, the edges of the booth seemed to blur and spin. I remember looking at my watch and being surprised that it was not even nine yet. After a bit, he broke off the kiss and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

“Shall we go back to your place?” he said.

“My place?” I said, thinking about my mum and Beth.

“Yeah,” he said. He reached out his left hand and traced a finger down the deep V of my top. Not just any finger. His ring finger. With a faint white band of skin around it. Skin that wouldn't have caught the sun like the rest of him because it was usually protected by a ring. I looked at the mark until I realized what it meant.

“You're married,” I said, not angry, just surprised. Graham looked at the finger too, then, and snatched it back. I think he swore under his breath, angry that I'd noticed it.

“Um, no . . .” he said. “Well, not really. I mean, in name only. We're getting divorced in a few months . . . so come on, what do you say? What we've got is special, isn't it?”

I looked at him and thought about how he had made me feel with his hand up my top and his mouth everywhere. For a moment I thought that I had wanted him, but now I just felt cheap, cut-price just like my bargain-bin top.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I don't go out with married men.” And I stood up.

“You slapper,” he said.

“What did you say?” I asked him. Normally I would have pretended I hadn't heard him, anything to avoid trouble. But I think the cocktail made me feel brave.

“I said, you fucking slapper.” He spat the words out loud enough to be clear over the music. “I know your type. Grown-up kid at your age. You've been shagging since you were a kid, handing it out to anyone. Don't tell me that a slapper like you won't go with me because I'm married. What is it? Do you want paying?”

I wanted to answer back, to stand up for myself and make him take back everything he'd just said, but I couldn't do any of those things. Not even the drink made me that brave. I'd been there before, standing in front of people with their faces full of hate, shouting insults at me. I knew there was only one thing I could do. So I just walked away as quickly as I could, pulling my coat across my chest as I walked out of the club.

As I was leaving, a bouncer nodded at me.

“Good for you, love,” he said. “Lucky escape. He's got a different poor cow in here every week.”

When I got in I told Beth he wasn't for me, and she just shrugged and smiled and made me a hot chocolate.

“Never mind, Mum,” she said. “Let's log on now and see if you've got any messages.” I didn't have the heart to say no, but I cried for a long time before I went to sleep that night. And the next day at work I made it into one big joke, until Joy and Marie were laughing so much
they
were crying, and thinking about it didn't hurt anymore.