‘So, you suit-wearing weirdo, do you think you could handle a weekend with my family? Will you come back tomorrow?’
‘Do you want me to?’ he asked.
‘After only three hours you’re like part of my family: Eric likes you; D2 thinks you’re a laugh and Mum was impressed with the suit and the “yes, sir”. But, apart from all that, I’ll miss you.’
‘Really?’ He was surprised. But not as surprised as me – all the nice stuff I’d been thinking had spilled out.
I pushed my lips on his. If I kept talking I might say something stupid. Greg pulled me away after a few seconds.
‘I’ll have to stop you right there,’ he murmured against my lips. ‘After three days a simple kiss could get very messy.’
‘OK, get in the car before I drag you back upstairs. And, Sunday night, no telly, no food, just sex,’ I said. I leant in through the car window as he shut the door behind him. ‘Did her parents adore you after about six seconds too?’
‘Who?’
‘The six-yearer, did her parents adore you straight away?’
Mid-breath, Greg froze. His whole body meanwhile seemed to drain of colour and life. Ahh, there it was, ‘something stupid’ courtesy of Ms Amber Salpone.
Maybe if I back away from the car he won’t notice that I’ve dredged up what is obviously a painful memory.
‘Do you really want to know? About her?’
Not really. Not when you have a penchant for telling me every detail about what you’ve got up to in the past. Not when you don’t yet know that I was highly selective about my past. ‘If you want to talk about it,’ I said neutrally. Please say no, please say no.
Greg leant across, opened the passenger door. ‘You’d better sit down.’
Great.
I got in the car, shut the door, twisted in my seat, pulled my knees up and draped Greg’s jacket over me, hooked it under my chin. It smelt of him. His soft but manly scent. It reminded me of going to sleep, listening to his heartbeat. Greg twisted slightly in his seat so he could look at me while he spoke. Do not say anything sarky or ‘clever’. Even if it looks like the conversation’s going to get heavy, you are not allowed to become Sarky Salpone, I warned myself.
‘Kristy and I slept with each other on and off during college but in the final year we got together properly. She was my soul mate. I know it sounds weird, a bloke saying that, but that’s how I felt. Anyhow, during our fourth year together we talked about going travelling. During our fifth year we talked about splitting up. During our sixth year she got pregnant.’
OK, heart, please start beating, this is no big shock. Greg’s got a child. I suppose nobody who shagged around as much as he did could not be a baby father to at least one child. No, heart, I’m not kidding, please start beating. Please . . .Thank you.
‘I was so excited when she told me. I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me. She said yes. Everything was so good, so perfect. There I was, about to marry my soul mate and have a baby with her . . . Kristy started doing forgetful pregnant things, leaving things lying around, leaving letters lying around. I was practically living at her flat then. I know I shouldn’t have read it . . .’ He stopped.
Greg, who had a key to her flat because he was practically living with her, had been there all alone. Bored, restless, wanting his pregnant fiancée to come home so he could take care of her. The letter was lying on the bedside table. He hadn’t meant to read it. It’s just, he saw his name on the blue sheet of paper. Like hearing your name in a crowded room, his name and the word ‘baby’ jumped out at him. This was odd because they’d planned to wait three months before telling anyone their joyous news.
I don’t think you should tell Greg the baby isn’t his, the letter read. You never know, it might be. Just hold off until after you get married.
‘And do you know what I did?’ Greg asked me.
I shook my head. I didn’t want to know. Not really. I just couldn’t be with a bloke who hit a pregnant woman. Or even hit a woman. My life had been through that too many times already.
‘I pretended it wasn’t happening. I cooked dinner as usual, sat and waited for her. I don’t know how I did it, but I put it right out of my head. Kristy knew, though. It might have been out of my head but it showed on my face. When she went into the bedroom she saw she’d left the letter out and guessed. The whole story came out then. That year we’d gone through hell, she’d got close to another guy. She’d fallen in love but leaving me would be like leaving her best friend so she stayed.
‘She stayed out of pity. She was convinced the baby wasn’t mine because she never used contraception with this other man. We’d been talking about having a child, so she came off the Pill and we carried on using condoms until we definitely decided to start trying for a baby. So, the baby wasn’t mine. She knew that. She’d wanted his child, didn’t want mine. It all came out that night. How she really felt. How she’d wanted to leave.’
Greg paused, rubbed his hands over his eyes.
‘And do you know what I did?’
‘You started sleeping around?’
‘No. Oh, nooo, nooo, noo. I begged her. I begged her not to leave me. I lost all self-respect. I didn’t care about self-respect, I cried and ranted and broke things and begged. She lost what little respect she had left for me and asked me to leave her flat.
‘It didn’t stop there. For months I practically stalked her. I wouldn’t leave her alone, I kept ringing her, writing to her, turning up at her place. Then, one morning, I woke up and decided no more. I stopped. Left her alone. Literally just left her alone. And began my life of serial shagging.’
I bit my tongue to stop myself asking which was better, Cornflakes or Weetabix, during his time of cereal shagging. Then I had to bite my tongue harder. I did feel sympathetic. Which was why I had to ruin things by getting sarky. It was my natural defence mechanism against things getting too serious.
‘I couldn’t . . .’ Greg began, ‘I couldn’t risk getting into that situation again. When you sleep around you can have that close human contact, connect with people, be intimate, but not have to risk getting as hurt as I was by Kristy. I’ve always needed that contact, so I got it but didn’t have to feel that pain and humiliation again. Five years of it until you.’
‘Did you ever see her again?’ I asked in a sensible, grown-up voice.
Greg laughed humourlessly. ‘Once I decided I wasn’t interested, she wanted us to get back together. I was tempted. I was so tempted, but I decided no. Weeks I agonised over it. I even slept with her again. She’d had a termination. Her dream man didn’t want to father her children after all. We talked and talked. And then, I said no. She moved to Dublin a few weeks later.’
‘Oh,’ I said. Was it that bad a shag she had to leave the country? I thought, then instantly hated myself.
‘And to answer your original question, no, her parents didn’t adore me, or even like me. It took six years and just when they were coming round to the idea of this lad who wasn’t good enough for their daughter being in their lives, we split up. Your family’s cool, though, very cool. You really think they like me?’
‘What’s not to like?’ Apart from that ridiculous hair.
We fell silent. The car was suddenly too small and cramped for all those big confessions. All the information, all the exposure and soul-baring, should’ve been done somewhere bigger. And Greg, who wasn’t prone to such deep revelations, probably felt naked, emotionally vulnerable. I’d know how he felt if I’d ever done it myself.
‘Well, better be going back, they’ll be thinking we’re having sex down here – mainly because Eric will have told them that.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah.’
‘OK, good night.’
‘Good night.’
‘See you tomorrow.’
‘See you tomorrow.’
Painful. Like we were on our first date and didn’t know if we should kiss or not. To be honest, I didn’t know if we should kiss
or not. This revelation had altered the very fabric of our relationship.
‘Are you going to kiss me?’ I thought it, Greg said it. ‘You don’t have to. It’s just . . .’
‘Greg.’
‘Yes?’
‘Shut up and kiss me.’
Back upstairs, everyone had gone to bed. Mum had left a duvet on the sofa along with a couple of pillows. The side spotlights were still on, as was the TV. I sat heavily on the sofa, resting one arm on the pile of bedlinen.
Unexpectedly, sadness conquered me. Greg’s story made me so sad the corners of my mouth turned down. Sadness for what he’d gone through. Sadness for his pain. Sadness because he’d been in love before.
chapter twenty-three
good girl
‘Try this one on,’ Mum said, giving me an armful of dresses. We’d been out shopping for a good few hours and Mum had spent most of the morning pointing out nice dresses and pretty blouses and smart skirts. Mum had nightmares about my combats and jeans and jersey tops and didn’t realise I owned all the blouses I was ever going to own – none.
Even though Mum had been on a mission to reinvent me for the past few hours and even though I was surrounded by my family for the first time in six months, I couldn’t stop reassessing my boyfriend.
Greg Walterson
I thought Greg Walterson was a slag because he could be. He had the tools for it: elegant looks; easy, unassuming charm; stamina. Greg was the man most men would be if they had two of the above tools, let alone all of them. At least that’s what I thought. There was no excuse for the way Greg behaved – there’s never an excuse for bad behaviour – but now I knew there was a reason for it. It didn’t vindicate him, but it explained him. And I couldn’t stop staring at him. When he was laughing with Eric, trying to impress Dad2 or flirting with Mum, I’d find my eyes were looking over Greg. Wondering who he was. Wondering what else there was to find out about him and be horrified by.
But why was I so freaked, unsettled, disassembled by this revelation? This was good news, no? The unveiling of Greg ‘Tart Face’ Walterson as someone who had a heart, who had layers, who was indeed a selection box rather than a lump of milked down, solidified cocoa was cause for celebration. He’d always defied classification before. He had Minstrel eyes, sure, but he was always changing, altering. In the three years I’d known him he’d been practically every type of confectionery made. He’d started off being one of those showy, tosser chocolates that was shiny and tasty-looking, but when you ate it, it went straight to that tooth with a tiny piece of exposed nerve and caused the kind of pain you never fully recovered from. Before I’d slept with him he’d become a Twirl – something I’d buy if I couldn’t get my favourite chocolate. The second choice on my list.
The unveiling of him as a possible Flake, something that crumbled and disintegrated, that fell apart under pressure, was only positive. Showed the ability to love. Showed he had a heart, one that could be broken. One that had been broken. He knew how to hurt. This meant I wouldn’t be the woman he tried out his emotions on.
It’d never bothered me before when boyfriends had experienced that mythical thing called ‘love’ pre-me. Which begged the question, why did I feel so weird about it? Why did I feel any way about it? The answer, of course, was blatantly clear. Was facing me every time I caught a glimpse of myself in a reflective surface. It was one of those answers I didn’t want to acknowledge.
If I acknowledged why I was so upset – upended, disturbed – then I would have to admit that I wasn’t as pure of thought and deed as I liked to suppose. I would be admitting that I, despite appearances to the contrary, had an ego the size of Ghana’s last cocoa harvest. I didn’t want to think of myself like that. It was like thinking of your parents having sex – you knew it happened, but if you didn’t think about it, you didn’t get upset by it. I didn’t want to be an ego woman who had a problem with someone loving someone before me.
While I’d been wrestling with my ego and reassessing Greg, Mum had been emptying the rails of dresses.
‘I can’t afford them,’ I said, relieving her of the bundle, then almost keeling over under the weight. ‘Not even one of them.’
‘We are paying,’ Mum said. ‘Just go and try them on.’
I turned towards the changing rooms. ‘Don’t forget to come show us,’ D2 called after me.
‘Why don’t you just call me Gerbil in front of Greg and be done with it,’ I mumbled.
In the changing room I took a proper gander at the dresses. All variations on a theme – Mum trying to get me to be more girly. She was fighting thirty years of comfort dressing. Besides, I was incompatible with dresses because they’re mostly made for right-way-up pears – small breasts, big hips – and I, with my big breasts and smallish hips, was an upside-down pear. Despite what Jen had said, I had lost weight. Not enough for me not to have a big chest, but my tummy was less round, almost flat in parts, and my hips more slender . . . Stop it, stop it, stop it. Stop thinking about your weight, I ordered myself.
I hated worrying about my weight, wondering about my inches. Since Jen had made that comment, even though I knew she was wrong, it kept coming to me. I was always thinking twice about eating anything. Had started reading the calorific value on things in the supermarket. (It drove Greg up the wall because checking the values in everything I normally bought added another half an hour to our shopping time. He’d taken to snatching things out of my hand and slinging them in the trolley, giving me the scowl of a man not to be messed with.) Maybe I am fat, I often mused as I got dressed in the morning. Maybe it was immoral how much I weighed. If my best mate, the woman I loved and trusted, thought I was fat, then maybe I should reconsider how I looked. Your friends are the ones who are meant to tell you these things. As if there wasn’t enough in my life to be neurotic about, onto my list had been scrawled ‘fat knacker status’ and ‘Greg being in love before’.
I checked through the dresses hanging on the chrome hooks in front of me until I found the least offensive and most likely to fit. It was the palest blue in soft shiny material with long sleeves and a scooped neck. I pulled it on, the folds falling gently over my curves, caressing my skin.
I looked into the mirror, twisted slightly. It didn’t look too bad. I was quite presentable, in fact. It felt gorgeous on. For one moment I felt like a princess.
I stuck my head out of the curtain into the corridor to check it was clear, then dashed the short distance to the entrance to the changing room. As a bloke, D2 and Greg’s jaws dropped open as I stepped into view. Tears sprang into Mum’s eyes. Eric smirked.
Jeez, what’s this all about? ‘Is it that bad?’ I asked. Were they all horrified by the curves bulging in the dress? I wrapped my arms around my waist to hide them.
‘Stand up straight,’ Mum ordered, pulling my arms away from my waist and adjusting the position of the dress’s shoulders, blinking back her tears until they were a memory.
‘You look lovely,’ Dad2 said, tears in his eyes too.
‘My sister’s a girl,’ Eric smirked once more.
Greg clutched my black leather rucksack in front of his lap as though his life depended on it. He was a slight shade of pink. I’d know that shade of pink anywhere. I pressed my lips together to hide a laugh: he had an erection. And with my mother stood not two foot away. When he saw that I’d spotted what he was doing, he blushed deeper until he glowed.
‘I don’t know why you want me to get this,’ I said to my parents, ‘it’s not like I’ve got anywhere to wear it.’ Yes, it felt nice on, but that didn’t mean I’d wear it – especially when my mother had chosen it.
‘Well, the next time Gregory takes you out somewhere nice,’ Mum said, looking pointedly at Greg, ‘you will have something nice to wear.’ What she meant was: ‘I may not be able to stop Gregory having his wicked way with you, but he’d better at least treat you like a lady.’
Greg, under Mum’s scrutiny, blushed a deeper maroon. Any more blushing and he was going to
pass out.
Eric laughed, obviously finding this highly entertaining.
‘I don’t know what you’re laughing at, lad,’ D2 said, ‘we’re buying you a suit next.’
Ha! I thought as I poked my tongue at Eric’s scowling face.
Eric fought harder than I did.
Even though he must’ve known it was a losing battle from the moment Dad2 mentioned it, he still fought and fought. With our parents together on something, there were no ifs or buts. If they asked you, ‘Wouldn’t you like fish, it’s better for you,’ they weren’t asking your opinion, they were stating a fact. They were telling you that you would indeed prefer fish, what with it being so good for you. And you may well have been salivating over that moist sirloin steak, cooked slowly in its own juices, smothered in mustard, but you would prefer that nice bit of poached cod. OK.
I was path-of-least-resistance woman. In most things, but particularly with my parents. All three of them. (Mrs H, Dad1’s wife, did not count as a parent.) The path of least resistance for Eric would’ve been to try on the navy-blue suit with cream shirt and blue tie and be done with it. No. Eric argued. He wanted black, if anything. If not black, then brown tweed. If not that, then kooky green. On and on. We left with the blue suit, blue tie and cream shirt.
On the way back to mine Eric sulked. I did mention to him at one point that my dress had cost £60 while his suit, even though it was off the peg, had come in at £300. That’s five times more fiduciary love they had expressed for him, but you didn’t see me bealing on about it.
‘Sod off, Gerbil,’ had been his reply. He’d rooted in my bag for my mobile, took it and stomped off along the train platform to call Arrianne. If anyone would understand his outrage at being forced to own a blue suit it would be Arrianne. Oh well, I thought as I watched him dial, at least it’d made him call her.