Single in the City Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Single in the City

  Michele Gorman was born and raised in the US, but did indeed know where Scousers come from when asked on the Britishness test and is now a card-carrying Brit. She lives happily today in a central London flat (with big closets).

  Single in the City

  MICHELE GORMAN

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published 2010

  Copyright © Michele Gorman, 2010

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-195833-0

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  For my parents, who never said ‘You can’t’, but instead,

  ‘Why can’t you?’ And for John, who challenged me to put

  my money where my mouth was and never let me quit.

  Acknowledgements

  I’m eternally grateful to Caroline at the Marsh Agency and to Lydia at Penguin. You are fab, both professionally and personally. Emma, thank you, you’re exactly as pedantic as I could hope an editor to be. Thanks to Lucinda, for your invaluable advice, which put Single in the City on to the road to publication. Kisses to Yasmeen, Josephine, Annabel and Lizzie, my early, brutally honest readers, and to Bellini, who was instrumental in helping translate Hannah’s Americanisms into English and has indulged my work-time witterings for years.

  1

  Every other storefront is a sandwich shop without a low-carb advertisement in sight. Are Londoners really willing to embrace the doughy delights of an Atkins-free world? It’s a thrilling prospect for a girl raised in a culture plagued by cellulite bogeymen.

  The customers are directing the deli man with the unnerving efficiency of Starbucks regulars babbling coffee instructions.

  ‘Next.’

  ‘Erm.’ That stuff in the metal bowl is unrecognizable beneath all the mayonnaise.

  ‘Next!’

  ‘Tunafish sandwich, please.’ Is that corn mixed in there?

  ‘Bap?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  He’s pointing to a roll.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Butta?’ he says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Butta!’

  But a what? ‘Oh, no thanks, no butter.’ Who puts butter on a sandwich?

  ‘Salad cream?’

  Now what? ‘Uh, no.’

  Carefully he arranges a tablespoon of dry tuna on the roll.

  ‘Um, can I have mayonnaise?’

  ‘Tsch. I did ask.’ A pea-sized blob lands judgementally on the flaky filling. ‘Salad?’

  I don’t see any salads. ‘No, no salad.’

  He closes the sandwich and starts wrapping it.

  ‘Uh, can I please have some tomatoes?’

  The lady next to me is staring at me like tomato is a dirty word.

  ‘You didn’t want salad.’

  ‘That’s right, no salad. I want tomatoes.’ There she goes again, like I’ve said hairy penis.

  ‘Tamaydas?’ he mimics. The lady sniggers.

  ‘Yes, please.’ I can feel my face going red. Red as tamaydas.

  Congratulations, Hannah. You’re an expat.

  What am I doing? I’m living in a room too small to open the closet without standing on the bed, in a city I’ve never set foot in before, whose language I obviously don’t speak, 3,000 miles from everyone I know.

  ex·pat·ri·ate

  1: (noun) A person living in a foreign land.

  2: (verb) To withdraw oneself from residence in or allegiance to one’s native country.

  That makes me a noun with slight verb tendencies.

  Thinking about it now (admittedly a little late), I probably got carried away with the idea of starting afresh. Perhaps Stacy was right; a new haircut would have done the trick. But sometimes we’re swept up in a seemingly unstoppable tide of events. Or we get drunk and do something stupid. The verdict could go either way in my case, given that I’ve just landed upon England’s gentle shores without the faintest idea how I’m actually supposed to build myself a new life. I’m not an expat in the traditional sense. I haven’t just finished school, with a network of acquaintances to leverage for a job. This was no overseas posting, with the usual electronics allowance to buy my flat-screen TV and straightening irons whose voltage won’t set my hair on fire. I don’t have British cousins or a long-time family friend in the city. I arrived at Heathrow with a freshly minted passport, 5,000 dollars and a vague idea that an adventure awaited me in London.

  You know how, in any group of friends, there’s always one who organizes the nights out, the holidays and surprise parties? That’s not me. I’m the one most likely to arrive at the wrong theatre/restaurant/airport and miss the whole thing. So here I am, jet-lagged, with no clear plan beyond dinner.

  ‘Stace? It’s me.’

  ‘DO YOU LOVE IT?!’ Stacy’s been my best friend since we were seven. Being at least 50 per cent responsible for my being here, there’s hope in her question.

  ‘I haven’t even unpacked yet.’

  ‘How’s the hotel?’

  Somewhat disingenuously, it declared itself ‘charming’ on its website. Translation: last habitable during Queen Victoria’s reign. Its rooms are perfumed with Eau de Oodles of Noodles1 and there are dust bunnies2 in the corners from the Thatcher era. Hookers trading sex tips in the hallways wouldn’t be out of place. Evidently this is what a hundred bucks a night buys you in London.

  ‘I hate the owner.’ Not just because she looks like a slightly less feminine Mrs Doubtfire and
has sofas that need flea-bombing.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘She asked me if my husband was joining me. When I said I don’t have one, she made that face. You know the one.’ Like I’d just confessed to an STD.

  ‘Brutal. What’d you say?’

  ‘Nothing. You know me.’ My retorts are subject to long delays.

  ‘You’ll come up with something eventually. Have you seen any royals yet?’

  ‘Between Terminal Five and the hotel?’

  ‘Right. I guess it’s still early. You could go see them now.’

  ‘Stace, you can’t just drop in on them, you know.’

  ‘Well then, what do you plan to do?’ She sounds disappointed by my unwillingness to stalk the Queen.

  ‘English stuff, obviously.’

  ‘So?’

  I made a list on the flight. ‘So, have a pint at the pub, go for tea, try fish and chips, ride the big red buses, uh…’ I guess it’s more of a doodle.

  ‘Call me when you get back. I want all the details.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘And Han, I just know this is going to be great.’

  ‘Sure.’ Stacy’s confidence is legendary, if sometimes rather premature.

  She wasn’t like that when we were little. She was painfully cautious, hanging back till she worked out whether a situation was likely to hurt her or not. Ever the compliant friend, I was her canary in the coalmine. Then fate blindsided her where I couldn’t help. Her dad skipped town, leaving them a note propped on the kitchen table. That was the last anyone saw of her vulnerability. Eventually she believed her own bravado and the confidence became a natural part of her. Being the world’s cheerleader must get exhausting but I’m constantly grateful to have her on my team. And I think she’s happy, as long as she doesn’t think too much or dig too deep. As her best friend, it’s my job to keep those shovels out of reach. It’s remarkably easy–I’m not exactly the poster child for careful reflection. I did, after all, move 3,000 miles out of spite (well, spite and a realization)…

  Sometimes small events have long-lasting consequences. A simple conversation about my sister’s weekend plans set the wheels in motion for me. She told me she was running errands, maybe renting a DVD. She’d done the same thing every weekend for at least two years. This was a woman who used to get arrested more often than she got her roots done. She seemed constantly to be chained to something in protest. What had happened to my cool, slightly felonious sister, the one who was interesting?

  ‘I don’t need to be interesting,’ she said. ‘I’m past all that.’

  Chillingly, those were Mom’s words. How did that happen? We’d made a pact to be vigilant against the creep of Momness, not to let it insinuate its way into our personalities. And yet Deb believed that her life didn’t need to be interesting. And yet, who was I to cast stones? I hadn’t met any new friends, or tried anything new (or anyone), or even gone to New York in months. They call it a come-to-Jesus moment when people face their own mortality and realize that their lives haven’t turned out as they expected. I’m lucky I didn’t have the same epiphany from a hospital bed. In that moment it dawned on me: my life is not a dress rehearsal. At twenty-six I was cruising into a lifelong holding pattern. Is it inevitable? Do we march methodically towards middle age, shedding our sense of adventure, our desire to spread our wings as we go?

  It was then that I realized something even worse, something I dread more than running into my ex and his model girlfriend at the supermarket while wearing pyjamas after a three-day ice-cream binge. I was becoming my mother. I once had exciting plans for my life. Now I didn’t even have exciting plans for my weekend. Knowing me, I’d have cultivated this vague sense of doomed future indefinitely, dying a bitter old woman in Stacy’s basement, if fate hadn’t intervened one morning a few weeks later. But that’s another story.

  Meanwhile, if I’m truly in the grip of destiny, I only need to surrender to the forces at work. Camberwell Green. How idyllic. When I find a nice-looking pub, I’m going to get off the bus and drink my first English pint. This is so exciting! And my mother would wholeheartedly disapprove, which naturally adds to my pleasure. She hates when I ride the bus because, like most steadfastly suburban parents, she suffers from an upwardly mobile contempt for anything that could stigmatize us as the wrong kind of person. Incidentally, that list also includes leaving the house with a dirty face or unchanged underpants, and sharing woolly hats with classmates (lest they harbour head lice, aka social suicide). It’s no wonder America has more psychologists than dentists.

  ‘How much, please?’

  ‘Pay before boarding.’

  ‘Right. How much?’

  ‘Pay before boarding.’

  We’re not understanding each other. ‘That’s what I’m trying to do, if you’ll tell me how much the fare costs.’

  ‘Buy a ticket.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Please get off the bus and buy a ticket.’

  ‘Ahh.’ I may have just run aground on the tip of the cultural iceberg. Who knows what other misunderstandings lie in wait for this lone traveller. And considering that my next of kin, geographically speaking, is the hotel owner, I am definitely alone. This is not a comfortable realization.

  The conga line of buses proves the truth of our grandmothers’ adage likening them to men.

  ‘Hello. Here’s my ticket. Okay?’ The driver has either just acquiesced or he holds a blink longer than is normal. In any event, he obviously prefers his customers to ricochet off the walls before settling into a seat. He’s careening round the corner at 126 miles per hour. This would never fly with the Health and Safety people at home. I’m thrilled! The passengers wear fixed expressions ranging from ‘I’m bored’ to ‘I’ll cut you if you come near me’. A few are sleeping with their mouths open and one teen is singing along with Shakira at middling volume. Actually, he’s not bad.

  This isn’t exactly the sociable scene I’d hoped for. Not that I’m expecting to meet my new best friend, but I’d at least like the chance to talk to someone who may know of a good pub along the way. Surely it wouldn’t be awful to simply introduce myself to someone interesting, assuming I can find someone interesting. You never know what chance meetings like these can lead to. Consider the case of Joseph Pulitzer, of journalism prize fame. He migrated to America from Hungary as a teenager but, after fighting for the North in the Civil War, couldn’t find a job (not because he fought for the North). To occupy his days he played chess in his local library, and there he met an editor for a local German-language newspaper. The editor, recognizing Pulitzer’s potential, though probably not his own hand in altering the journalistic fabric of America, offered the boy a job as a junior reporter. From that start, Pulitzer went on to become an influential media tycoon.

  There, that woman looks–never mind, she’s talking to herself. It’s possible that she’s got one of those ear doohickeys, but either way she’s unlikely to welcome the interruption. Men are out, obviously. It’s too easy to be misinterpreted, as in: ‘Your idle chitchat must mean you want to be hit on until there’s enough evidence to bring assault charges.’

  Wait, what about her? She looks normal enough. She’s probably a little older than me (in the sensible end of her twenties, as Mom would say) with no obvious signs of mental illness.

  ‘Hi, I’m Hannah.’

  She’s staring at my offered hand, surprised perhaps that a stranger would leave her own seat to squish in next to her on a mostly empty bus.

  ‘Excuse me, em, I have to go.’ Her coat catches on the back of the seat in her rush to leave. It’s just my luck to pick someone as we reach her stop, though she didn’t look like the kind of girl who’d live in this neighbourhood–by which I mean she wasn’t wearing an electronic ankle bracelet. In the time it took me to choose a target to befriend we’ve travelled from Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament to one of Guy Ritchie’s film sets. Perhaps I should have picked a route that didn’t involve boarded-up buildings and gan
gs of skinheads and…is that guy getting mugged?

  The bus stops. The lights flicker on and off. I hope he hasn’t run out of gas.

  They flicker again.

  ‘Last stop. Last stop.’

  Oh, no no no! The ride can’t just end; it has to continue its circular route back to civilization. ‘Excuse me, sir. Isn’t the bus going back towards Victoria Station?’ (Read: Won’t you please get me out of this suburb cum ghetto?)

  ‘Catch the one opposite.’ (Read: No, you stupid American. Find your own way out.)

  It’s going to be okay. The #185 is waiting right across the mostly empty street. Knocking on the door encourages the driver to ignore me even more intently.

  ‘Come on, open the door!’

  He turns another page, not looking up. ‘Bus doesn’t leave for eight minutes.’

  I’m supposed to stand out here for seven and a half minutes while he finishes his article on Playmates of the Year? I’m a fare-paying cust– No, I’m not. I’ve got no ticket, only a couple jingly silver coins and £20 notes. Those boys are starting to take an interest in my handbag, and they don’t look like fashion scouts. Stacy’s going to be very disappointed if I get myself killed before I’ve seen the Queen.

  Perhaps the liquor store will let me sleep behind their beer cooler until daylight. At the very least, I can get the proprietor’s thoughts on the merits of fortified wine.

  ‘Fifty-five pee.’ His eyes narrow when I exchange his potato chips for my note. ‘Don’t you have anything smaller?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Tsch. Nineteen pound forty-five change.’

  He knows I’m lying.

  The driver is pretending to have no recollection of our earlier chat. ‘Ticket.’

  ‘Here, thanks.’

  Looong blink. They must be trained to do this, in the same way that civil servants learn to move at the pace of a retreating glacier when faced with a room full of impatient customers. I’m not holding a grudge though, given that my life is in his hands…I’ve been thinking about that girl on the first bus. That wasn’t really her stop. In fact, she may still be in Camberwell, unwilling to risk another assault on the ride back to Victoria. I feel bad having struck fear into the hearts of the English public like that.