Game Over Read online

  ‘They’re hibernating,’ suggests Issie.

  Josh wraps an arm around each of us.

  ‘If you think this is cold, you should have been in Scotland. Now that was cold.’

  ‘How was Scotland?’ As I say this I can see my breath on the air. I pull my jacket tighter round me.

  ‘Fine. Alcoholic. Tartan,’ he comments non-committally.

  ‘Gone off her, then?’ The ‘her’ in question is Katherine, Josh’s latest girlfriend. Issie and I quite like her. She’s been hanging around with Josh for a couple of months now. We had high hopes but I can already tell from the tone of his voice, and the fact that he’s back here with us instead of in St Andrews with her and her parents, that I ought to start talking about her in the past tense.

  ‘I finished it,’ Josh confirms. Issie and I slyly exchange glances.

  ‘Nice timing,’ we chorus.

  Josh shrugs apologetically.

  ‘How was your night, Issie?’ I ask.

  ‘Really good, actually. Family all well and I met someone really nice at my parents’ party.’

  ‘Someone really nice and male?’ I try to clarify. It sounds unlikely.

  Issie grins and nods. The cold wind has whipped up spots of colour on her cheeks. I understand why Elizabethan poets used to mither on about their heroines having cheeks like roses. Issie is glowing.

  ‘You look fantastic, Issie. Did you score?’

  She grins sheepishly. ‘I was at my parents’.’ Good point, no opportunity. ‘But I did give him my telephone number.’

  ‘Home or work?’ asks Josh.

  ‘Both, and my mobile. And my e-mail and my fax,’ says Issie. This time Josh and I exchange the glances.

  ‘He hasn’t called yet, though.’ Issie suddenly scrambles for her mobile. She checks her message facility and the text messages. Nothing.

  ‘It’s far too early for him to call,’ Josh comforts her. Although neither he nor I think that Issie’s chap will call. He’ll have detected the fact that whilst one hand was handing over all her telephone numbers, the other hand was flicking through a copy of Brides and Setting Up Home.

  ‘Should I call him?’ asks Issie.

  ‘Do you have his number?’

  ‘Yes, his mother gave it to my mother.’

  I stamp my boots hard on the freezing snow, enjoying the crunchy sound it makes and avoiding confronting the inevitable disaster Issie is driving towards. It sounds to me as though this guy is a social misfit, if his mother has to try to get him dates. I don’t share my theory with Issie. Instead I listen to hers on sexual equality.

  ‘I mean, it doesn’t matter who rings who, really, does it? I mean we are both adults. We don’t have to play games.’ Neither Josh nor I comment.

  We stop and buy hot chocolates from a caravan, marvelling that the guy is open on New Year’s Day. The vendor assures us that he’d rather be freezing in his caravan in Richmond Park than ‘stuck in the house wiv me muvver-in-law and the kids’. We all do our best to ignore this condemnation of family life and sip the creamy drinks.

  Issie continues. ‘I’m sure he’d respect me for calling.’

  She believes the seventies’ hype that a man still respects you if you call him, that he’ll like you and want a relationship with you. I try to explain that the advice is thirty years out of date. In the seventies, single women would not have accepted the advice of the Land Girls. So why does Issie think that the burn-the-bra brigade have any relevance to how women of the twenty-first century should conduct their romantic and sexual liaisons?

  ‘Call him if you like, Issie. But he’ll know that you don’t just happen to have two tickets for the opera – no one ever does.’

  ‘Should I suggest the Turkish restaurant that’s just opened on Romilly Street?’

  ‘If you want to, but he knows it’s code for “I like you”. “I like you” leaves you exposed and will send him running.’

  ‘You call men all the time.’

  ‘I call because I don’t want commitment. They respond because they know that.’ Issie scowls at me. But doesn’t waste her breath arguing. ‘If you want my advice, wait until he calls you.’

  Issie gives Josh her phone and makes him promise not to let her ring until 3 January, earliest.

  ‘What about your evening?’ asks Josh, turning to me.

  ‘Fine,’ I say, without committing. ‘Good food. Good company. My Versace dress stole the show. Crap sex.’

  Josh’s charming, confident laugh rings around the park. ‘Your problem is that you are from Mars and you keep meeting men from Venus.’

  I grin. ‘I just wanted some good sex to round the evening off but for all my fascination with other people’s sex lives right now, mine is going through a rough patch. I simply can’t conjure up the energy. Of course I’m still sleeping with men but it’s becoming tedious. For example, this morning I just wanted to slip away. I didn’t need a post mortem, but Ben wanted to be all twenty-first century about our encounter. He wanted to discuss what it meant. I told him it meant nothing.’

  Issie gasps. ‘Why did you say that?’

  ‘Because it’s true,’ I state simply.

  ‘It is impossible to sleep with a stranger and not risk suffering or inflicting serious emotional carnage. Casual sex is what we enter into, not what we come out of,’ Issie chides.

  I blame Josh for this outburst. He gave Issie the book Responsibility for Yourself Reconciliation with Others for Christmas. Apparently it was intended for me, and the book Women Who Love Too Much was meant for Issie. He got the tags mixed up. I thought it was hilarious.

  ‘But I do come out unscathed, without a fractured heart and absolutely free of bitter recriminations,’ I point out to Issie.

  ‘Do the men you sleep with?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes,’ I say without faltering.

  Issie and Josh both draw to a dramatic halt and glare at me.

  ‘Yes,’ I insist and I try not to think of Ben’s hurt look this morning or the pathetic messages Joe keeps leaving on my answering machine or the numerous Christmas cards that I received from men suggesting that we could ‘do it again some time’. Problem is I can rarely remember doing it the first time. My conquests are a homogenous blur.

  ‘Well, in your case there are two options. Either you are internalizing the damage or you are an animal. I know you are not an animal.’ Issie is suddenly serious and she lets go of Josh’s arm and runs to hug me.

  Poor Issie. This constant search for something deep and meaningful in me is exhausting. Why can’t she just accept me for what I am? Someone led by hedonism, eroticism and base animal instincts. I say nothing until at last her face settles into sad acceptance. Weary of fighting with me, she grudgingly laughs, ‘Oh, OK, you are horrid.’

  We all go back to my flat. Josh immediately goes into the kitchen to see what he can rustle up. My fridge is surprisingly well stocked. This is because my mum has a key and must have popped round today. There are fresh vegetables, leftover turkey and a load of mince pies. She’s also left a small Christmas cake on the coffee table. Josh starts to chop vegetables and Issie opens some wine whilst I call my mum to thank her and wish her a Happy New Year. By the time I get off the phone, Josh has made a huge pan of thick vegetable soup. We sit with bowls on our laps in front of the TV.

  ‘Didn’t your mum want to come round?’ asks Josh.

  ‘No. I invited her but she said that she and some neighbour or other are going to put their feet up in front of the TV.’

  ‘Bob?’ offers Issie.

  ‘Could be.’ I shrug. Sometimes it seems as though Issie knows more about my mother’s life than I do.

  It’s a big night for me. The wedding episode of Sex with an Ex is playing out as an hour special. Half an hour on the wedding, then half an hour on the usual programme. The fact that I secured an hour spot on primetime TV on New Year’s Day is hugely exciting. For all Issie and Josh have made it quite clear that they don’t approve of the programme (which I thin
k is hypocritical of Josh, considering his behaviour was inspirational to the original concept), they both have to admit that it is compelling. Neither of them has missed a show.

  ‘Why is she wearing a leopard-skin tracksuit?’ Issie asks.

  ‘It goes with her hair,’ notes Josh. ‘Why do they do it at all?’ he adds incredulously.

  ‘Fame,’ I assert happily. ‘It’s compelling.’

  ‘She’s awful,’ says Issie, ‘she keeps clapping herself. Why does she do that?’

  ‘Too much orange squash as a kid,’ I offer.

  The scene cuts to some moody music, something that builds to a crescendo. The audience, in its entirety, is with Tom. They want him to resist. He doesn’t. The cries of protest and defence of the infidel, Tom, bleat from the TV. ‘It meant nothing – it confirmed the reasons we split up.’ His girlfriend ignores his wails and punches him.’ WhoooooWhoooo.’ The audience erupts. Turning at once. Deciding within seconds who they’ll support. Who they’ll hate. They know they should be supporting people because they seem nice – they ought to prefer the sweetest personality. But invariably they cheer for the bird with the biggest tits or the guy with the cheekiest grin. They whoop and cheer and sing and goad and cry and console and condemn in the space between one commercial break and the next. The overwhelming emotion is fear.

  ‘It’s fascinating,’ comments Issie. ‘The men justify straying on the grounds that it’s not about love and the women that it is.’

  ‘I don’t find that fascinating. I find it predictable. I’d like a woman to come on the show and say she fancied a shag,’ I argue.

  ‘It’s unlikely though, isn’t it? You’re the only woman I know who underwent an emotional lobotomy at the age of seven.’

  ‘Shush.’ I’m not embarrassed by what she’s saying, but the adverts have finished and we’ll miss some of the show with her chatter.

  His face is grey and his lips tight. He’s sweating from every pore. His eyes are darting left to right. He doesn’t know. He can’t be sure. Has she slept with her ex or not?

  ‘You know how we could improve the show?’ I ask rhetorically.

  ‘Pull it,’ Josh suggests.

  I fling him a filthy look. ‘No. We should have two signature tunes, depending on the outcome. One for jubilation, the other for…’

  ‘Humiliation?’ Issie interrupts.

  ‘Mortification?’ Josh offers.

  ‘Simply desolation,’ I say.

  I don’t shy away from it. I cast my mind back to Christmas Eve and Libby’s swollen, weeping face. She thought she was telling me something I didn’t know. She wasn’t. She looked just as my mother had the day my father left. I know all about desolation. I know the emotion I’m exposing on stage and I’m not frightened of it. I’m not the one creating it and I have no reason to feel ill at ease. I know that the couples with unfaithful partners are desolate, horrified, mystified, disappointed. But it won’t last. I firmly believe I’m doing them a favour. Better now than after they’ve signed the form at the registrar’s.

  We finish the soup and I heat the mince pies and slice the Christmas cake. Issie groans, insists she can’t eat another bite and then asks if there’s any brandy sauce for the pud. Josh has now put himself in charge of alcohol and is as liberal with the measures as he is with his sperm. We’re filthily pissed by 9.15 p.m.

  It’s brilliant.

  Thanks for the socks,’ he says, kissing me on the cheek and sitting next to me on the sofa. I grin and put my arms around him.

  ‘You’re welcome.’ I also bought him a number of more desirable pressies: big boy’s toys such as a palm pad, a Swiss Army knife and a mobile phone that you can send pictures on. The gift he liked best was the computer headset that gives you access to your favourite website by talking to your computer. He wasn’t even perturbed when my mother asked, ‘But isn’t there a button you could push instead?’ Buying these presents reaffirmed my belief that even the nicest men are truly incapable of growing up. The socks are a joke. We always buy each other an old-married-couple-gift. We figure that this is as close as each of us will ever get. Josh bought me a perfunctory rolling pin. Not even one of those nice marble ones. He knows I’ve never had a use for a rolling pin and unless someone comes up with a creative way of utilizing one in the bedroom I’m unlikely ever to. We’ve offered Issie the chance to join in our game. After all, if Josh bought two women wifey gifts it would be even more realistic. She’s steadfastly refused, complaining that it’s too depressing a notion. I think she fears she’s tempting fate. The irony is she hopes that one day she’ll exchange such gifts for real.

  ‘Have you made a New Year’s resolution?’ asks Issie, squeezing her slim bum between Josh and me and wiggling a bit so that we have to move to accommodate her. I slosh some more brandy into everyone’s glass.

  ‘Oh, you know, the usual – lose five pounds in weight, limit my alcohol units to just twice the recommended allowance and cut back to twenty a day. You?’

  ‘I’m going to play it cooler with men.’

  Josh and I are too drunk to bother to hide our amusement. We both spit out our brandy. Mine is aimed back into my glass; Josh isn’t as houseproud and he splatters his all over my cashmere cushions. I’m laughing too much to get cross.

  ‘What?’ asks Issie, indignantly. But she knows what.

  ‘Well, at least you are consistent. That’s the same resolution you made last year and the five previous to that,’ I comment.

  Josh is kinder. ‘To be fair, that is the very nature of our resolutions. I mean you always want to eat, smoke and drink less, Issie always wants to love less and I—’

  ‘Always want to screw more,’ Issie and I chorus.

  We all laugh. It’s too true for any of us to take offence.

  ‘How about we do it for real this year?’ I suggest.

  ‘I do hope to screw more,’ says Josh seriously. His average is pretty high as it stands – I doubt if he has time for that many more conquests. His behaviour is already quintessentially male. I use him as a role model.

  ‘No, I mean this year why don’t we resolve to do something different, and really do it?’

  ‘What, like run a marathon?’ suggests Issie.

  ‘Yes, if that’s what you want to do,’ I encourage.

  ‘Is it a good place to meet men?’ she asks. I sigh.

  We drink a whole lot more. In fact, we finish the brandy and start on whisky. This is on top of the wine that we drank with the soup. I’ve certainly blown apart my resolutions, but that’s all I’m certain of. Everything else is a fog. I hold my hand out in front of me, but it’s blurry around the edges. Issie and Josh are both being wildly funny, coming up with more and more ludicrous resolutions that we could pledge, but I can’t keep up with their thoughts. My head is smudgy and, try as I might, I can’t seem to control the direction of my thoughts. I keep getting vivid flashes of Ben’s serious and earnest face as he droned on about his girlfriend and whether she’d forgive him for his infidelity. I advised him to keep his trap shut. He stared out of the window as though he hadn’t heard me and asked how could he forgive himself. I must be really drunk because Ben’s face keeps dissolving into Ivor’s and Ivor’s pleading eyes melt into Joe’s. I shake my head. Whisky, the devil’s own urine – it always makes me weird.

  ‘Learn a new word every day.’

  ‘That’s easy.’

  ‘And use it.’

  ‘Do the three peaks’ challenge.’

  ‘No way.’

  Issie’s ash misses the ashtray she is aiming for. She doesn’t seem to notice but I watch it sprinkle to the floor in slow motion. My eyes see this. My mind sees Ben’s matches scatter as he nervously tries to light a fag. I notice I’m surrounded by drooping tinsel and dropping pine needles.

  ‘Tell the truth for a week, the whole truth and nothing but,’ suggests Josh. Little white lies are a way of life for him and all philanderers. More natural than breathing.

  ‘No, that’s stupid,
you’d have no friends.’

  ‘More whisky?’ I offer.

  ‘Go on then,’ they slur and hold out unsteady glasses.

  ‘OK, how about I resolve to get married?’

  ‘What?’ Both Issie and I stare at Josh. We’re dumbfounded.

  ‘You can’t marry, dummy, you’ve just ditched your girl, remember? And she was great, the best you’ve introduced us to for a while. You are a commitment phobe, remember?’

  ‘That’s not true,’ argues Josh.

  I defend him. ‘Be fair, Issie, he is committed – very much so – in the beginning. It’s sustaining the commitment that he has a problem with.’

  Josh scowls good-naturedly. It’s a fair cop. ‘I’m very committed to you, Cas. And you too, Issie,’ he adds. ‘I’ve just never been with the right girl.’

  I’m not sure what he’s looking for.

  Josh and I are similar in many ways. We’ve both had numerous sexual encounters. The big difference is Josh does believe in relationships and does expect to settle down one day. He’s always telling me so. I don’t know why he still expects this with his track record. For eighteen years Josh has followed a pattern. He is always desperately in love or desperately in loathe. The difference is only a matter of weeks. He bores easily. But instead of thinking that it’s because there is something flawed in the concept of Happily Ever After (which seems obvious to me) Josh insists it’s because he hasn’t had the opportunity with the right woman yet. He repeatedly and forcefully insists that he knows she exists.

  ‘OK, maybe promising to get married this year is a bit over the top. The best reception venues will be all booked up anyway. I’ll take it in easy stages. I’ll find the One and propose.’

  ‘Can I be bridesmaid?’ asks Issie.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I be best woman?’ I’m humouring him.

  ‘Maybe.’ He swallows back his whisky and pours yet another. He swills the amber devil’s pee around in the glass and we silently watch him silently watching it.

  ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s time,’ he confirms. A cold finger traces its way along my spine. I shiver; it feels a lot like fear. Josh marry? I’d lose him. Or rather I’d lose my position as numero uno in his life. I share Josh with Issie but that’s different. Issie isn’t competition, she’s complementary. I’d miss him.