My Legendary Girlfriend (34 page)

I pulled away from her in shock. ‘I can’t do this.’

‘I told you Toby isn’t here.’

I shook my head. ‘It’s got nothing to do with him. It’s to do with me.
I
can’t do this.
I
can’t cheat on Kate.’

Aggi’s face changed immediately. All the sadness seeped away leaving an expression of quiet defiance. ‘Is Kate your girlfriend?’ she asked with a touch of sarcasm clearly evident in her voice.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘She’s my fiancée.’

I explained the whole story to her even though it hardly made sense to me any more. She nodded at the appropriate moments and laughed at a few inappropriate ones. When I finished I could see that she still didn’t believe me.
Seven days ago I wouldn’t have either
. I weighed up the situation:

There was no explanation or rationalisation except to say that it wasn’t guilt talking, it was me. It wasn’t that I was over Aggi – three years of intense high-level obsession does not disappear overnight – but it was like this: I’d thought Aggi was the ceiling of my love but Kate had shown me there was something even higher. Overwrought? Yes. Melodramatic? Possibly. The brain-addled words of a troubled soul in love with love itself? No.

‘So that’s the way it is,’ I said after some moments of very uncomfortable silence.

Aggi laughed. ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this, Will. I really can’t. But don’t insult my intelligence with your pathetic stories. I knew you were bitter but I didn’t know it ran this deep.’ She stood up, straightening her top and wiping the stray mascara from her cheeks. ‘I suppose it’s what I deserve. Well, the score’s even now. I’ll never have to feel guilty about sleeping with Simon again and you get your imaginary girlfriend.’

I looked up at her dejectedly from the bed. ‘Yeah, whatever.’

Monday

5.45 A.M.

For a few seconds the end of the world was no longer nigh – it had arrived. I, as fully expected, had gone to hell and besides not being quite as warm as I expected, the most notable thing about Hades was that it was very noisy and looked like my flat. I glanced at my watch, it was 5.45. Monday morning. Thanks to Mr F. Jamal’s dodgy smoke alarm, The Rest of My Life had begun an hour earlier than anticipated. In less than five hours I’d be in Brighton with Kate, and the smoke alarm, flat, Archway, Wood Green Comprehensive, Italian newsagent’s, Simon, Aggi and everything else that sought to rain on my parade would be nothing more than a bad dream.

The fire alarm stopped ringing.

The front door belonging to one of my downstairs neighbours slammed loudly, the vibrations causing my windows to rattle. Peace was restored. I bathed in the silence.

This was the kind of thrill I’d been looking for all my life, a book with an ending you couldn’t guess – a Rolf Harris sketch that you couldn’t work out until he’d scribbled in the last details with his squeaky marker pen.

The duvet, which had slipped off the bed during the night, was lying perilously close to the ice-cream stain in the carpet that had refused to die. I pulled it back on the bed, tucking the edges underneath my bum to form a misshapen cocoon, with my head poking out from the top. The draught coming through the windows, seemingly unhindered by the curtains, indicated that the day of my emancipation was a cold one. Straining intensely, I listened out for any other meteorological news. There was no mistaking the gentle yet unrelenting tapping of drizzle against window pane.

My thoughts automatically turned to breakfast but excitement caused by the day’s forthcoming events constricted my stomach to a tight ball of muscle – no Sugar Puffs or Honey Nut Flakes, frozen bread or toast without margarine would make it in there today.

In the bathroom, Audrey Hepburn, hand aloft, cigarette-holder drooping daintily from her fingers, greeted me with her usual wistful smile. As I closed the door behind me I turned on the light, positively encouraging the extractor fan to lurch back into life. While in the shower I occupied my mind trying to imagine the Kate in the photo on my wall in three dimensions. Post-shower, I dried myself off using the Towel, wandered into the kitchen and dropped it into the bin. For some, redemption was out of the question.

Cold and naked I stood on the bed to prevent dust, dirt and carpet fibres clinging to my damp feet and meditated on what to wear. First impressions, I reasoned, counted for an awful lot, in spite of what Kate had said. I wanted her to be attracted to me the moment she saw me so that there could be no doubt in her mind that she had made the right decision. Following several changes of clothes I went with a pair of navy blue trousers that I’d bought from Jigsaw’s summer sale – a minor blip in my strictly second-hand policy – and an ancient chalk blue Marks and Spencer shirt with huge collars purchased from Aggi’s Oxfam. I examined my ensemble in the largest shard of broken Elvis mirror I could find: I looked good enough to eat.

Checking my watch, I began hurriedly packing my rucksack, throwing in the remainder of clean underwear – roughly three pairs of pants. I say roughly, because I had included a black pair that my mum had purchased when I was younger than some of the kids I teach now. It had been my intention to go to the launderette over the weekend – it had been one of the things To Do – which, sadly, I never even got around to thinking about let alone doing. I threw in an assortment of T-shirts and jumpers, and cursed my lack of clean socks, throwing in a couple of dirty ones instead, swiftly followed by my duty free cigarettes and picture of Sandy the donkey. My eyes scanned the room in search of things I might have forgotten, while in my head I ticked off a mental list of things I usually forgot: toothbrushes, soap, shampoo – stuff that Kate would be bound to have in her flat. Thinking about Kate reminded me of her cheque. I slipped it into the side pocket of the rucksack.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the ceiling, I attempted to prepare myself mentally for the day ahead. A radio alarm clock in the next door flat went off and Thin Lizzy’s ‘Waiting For An Alibi’ broke my concentration. A random thought entered my head: I wondered whether I ought to take a present for Kate. Within five minutes this thought had taken precedence over all others and turned itself into a national emergency. I scrambled around the flat searching for something that might constitute a present. My eyes fell on my
Star Wars
video. If she liked
Gregory’s Girl
, I said to myself – my reasoning faculties had all but disappeared by now – then she’d probably like
Star Wars
. Genuinely at a loss for a better present, I dropped it into the rucksack and made a mental note to look out for a florist’s at Victoria Station.

Ready to brave the elements and with my essentials on my shoulders I took a final look at what I was leaving behind. This flat which had been my worst enemy for over a week now felt like a close friend. We’d shared good times, bad times and mad times. But somehow I was grateful to it.

I was halfway down the stairs before I got the feeling I’d forgotten something important. I tried to fight it – after all, Lot’s wife had been turned into a pillar of salt – but the feeling would not subside. I returned to the flat. I checked that the lights were off. They were. I checked the cooker was off. It was. I checked the toaster was unplugged. It wasn’t. As I unplugged it I laughed to myself. I had finally become my mother. Every family holiday as far back as I could remember always commenced with the ritual of my mum running around the house maniacally unplugging household electrical items. ‘If the house gets struck by lightning,’ she used to say, ‘anything plugged in will go up in flames and burn the house down.’

Before closing the door I glanced down at the phone. The answering machine wasn’t switched on. After rectifying the situation I closed the door, walked out of the flat and stepped into a brand new day.

1.48 P.M.

‘Right,’ I said, addressing my year eights as they shuffled into the classroom, knocking over chairs, tables and anything else that stood in their paths, ‘get out your copies of
Wuthering Heights
, please, and turn to where we left off on Friday.’ This simple request resulted in a flurry of fruitless activity: Kitty Wyatt, a tiny mousy-haired girl whose diminutive stature and continually flushed cheeks gave her a remarkable similarity to a garden gnome, ran out of the room crying, swiftly followed by her friend Roxanne Bright-Thomas, who informed me that Kitty was having ‘women’s problems’. Colin Christie, a thug whose reputation preceded him all the way to the staff room, and the child most likely to have spat on my back, hadn’t got his book and was locked in a struggle with Liam Fennel who, quite rightly, wasn’t pleased that his own copy was being forcefully commandeered. I ignored them all.

‘Lawrence,’ I said, pointing to an overweight boy sitting next to the radiator by the window, ‘I do believe it’s your turn to read today.’

‘But, sir,’ he complained, ‘I read last week!’

‘And you did such a good job of it that I’m going to get you to do it again this week,’ I replied tersely.

He was right, of course, he had read last week but given the mood I was in since returning from Victoria Station, I didn’t really care about being fair, nor was I ever likely to.

As Lawrence commenced reading and the class settled down into some semblance of peace, I sat down at my desk and took the opportunity to gaze out of the window and study the afternoon sky. In spite of earlier meteorological activities, the day had in fact turned out very pleasantly indeed: the sun shone brightly through the oaks, ashes and silver birches lining the playing fields, cottonwool clouds were dotted about the heavens, even the oases of grass amongst the sea of mud that constituted the football pitch appeared to have an added lustre to them. I opened the window to let a little air in.
Today
, I thought, as the dark clouds of depression slowly lifted from me,
is a day possibly worth living.

I’d actually been sitting on my freedom train. Not at the ticket office or even the platform – on the sodding train – rucksack in the rack above my head; in my right hand, the latest issue of the
New Statesman
(working that ‘I give a toss about politics’ look to the max), a Marlboro Light in the other and both feet resting on the seat opposite. I was literally five minutes from leaving Victoria Station and fifty-five minutes from becoming the happiest man alive. But it had felt all wrong. Not right. Just All Wrong.

I tried not to think about it. I looked out of the window, speed-read an article on European federalism, counted the change in my pocket but nothing could shake this feeling. Within minutes I was back on the platform watching the last carriage of the 8.55 to Brighton disappear into the hazy distance.

I called Kate. Dialling her number felt as natural and as necessary as breathing. I almost forgot why I was calling her – I just wanted to hear her voice. It was some time before she answered. She was just on her way to meet me – too excited to wait any longer – and she’d heard the phone ring just as she closed the door. She’d rushed back thinking the worst – that I’d had an accident and was calling her from hospital, or even worse, that the police had found her number on the body of an unidentified corpse in the Thames. I was sorry to disappoint her.

Straight to the point was what the situation called for, any side-stepping of issues was only going to cause more pain in the long run. I took a long, slow breath and patted all over my body trying to locate my cigarettes. ‘Kate . . . Listen, Kate. You know that I love you, don’t you? I love you more than anything, but I’ve got to ask you something. I need to know this: if your ex-boyfriend wanted you back would you want to be with him and not me?’

She was honest enough to mull over the question, which many, myself included, would never have dared. It was strange, she had become so used to the more bizarre aspects of my personality that the question and its abruptness didn’t faze her for a second. I was odd but she loved me. I was bordering on being unhinged and she didn’t care.

She took her time, which was nice of her. She really was weighing up her answer, in spite of the fact that I was so obviously the low fat option. She’d loved Simon so fervently that it would be impossible for her to lie without my knowing. Her love for him hadn’t fermented into bitterness. Neither had she stopped loving him. She’d simply filed her love away in a box similar to the one I’d put her and Simon in, and now it was open there could be no stopping it.

‘Will, I don’t know why you’re putting yourself through this. I love you. Nothing’s changed since yesterday. My ex isn’t going to come back to me. I haven’t got a clue where he is. He could be anywhere. And he certainly hasn’t got any way of contacting me. There’s no point in discussing it, Will. Don’t you see? We’ve been let down by other people but finally we’ve got someone that we trust. We’ve got each other.’

I was silent. I was right. I lit a cigarette and slipped another fifty pence piece into the pay-phone. Over the station Tannoy a nasally voiced BR employee announced: ‘This is a reminder: Victoria Station is a no-smoking zone.’ I returned my mind to the call. I could think of nothing more to say.