State We're In (5 page)

I've been actively trying to get married for over half my life. When I was sixteen, I begged my parents to let me attend a sixth form that had only just started to accept girls so that I'd meet lots of boys while doing my A levels. I only settled on a university after carefully studying the male/female quota of not only the university itself but my subject in particular. Naturally, I wasn't daft enough to think I'd meet men at
Loving Bride!
, but I was engaged to Martin when I took the job; I wasn't on the lookout then. Deal done. Or so I thought. Considering all my effort and vigilance on the matter of meeting a mate, it does seem a bit weird that I've mucked it up and I'm still alone.

I have made mistakes. Perhaps I have a tendency to pursue the wrong sort of man; not necessarily the marrying kind. I'm fatally attracted to the wilder sort of guy; the sort with chiselled cheekbones, cool clothes and eyes and a heart to match. I'm drawn to exciting, sexy, unobtainable men. Damaged or divorced men. Worse still, married men who ‘forget' to mention the existence of their wives until the said wife makes a phone call or – in one humiliating and heartbreaking case – finds me in her bed. Like metal shavings to a magnet I cling to bad and bold men; the sort of men who can undress women with a glance. Acutely improper and inappropriate men.

It is an issue.

Improper and inappropriate men tend to last only a matter of months or even weeks. My problem is, I don't see my potential boyfriends in such bleak terms as I approach the relationships. Of course not. I date each man I meet with renewed optimism. I'm a hopeless romantic. Lisa says I'm just hopeless and old enough to know better; I should learn from past mistakes but I don't. I hear her, I respect her view, it might even be advice I'd give a girlfriend, but I just don't seem to learn. If I meet a new guy, who is reticent when questioned about his romantic status, I never assume he's married with two kids. Instead, I have a tendency to construct an elaborate excuse for his monosyllabic responses and his reluctance to give me a landline number. I mean, it
is
perfectly possible that he's grieving for a tragic lost love; maybe his last girlfriend died, or maybe he's never dated because he's been nursing his terminally ill relative, or maybe he loved his last woman dearly but she turned lesbian … You do hear of such things. Maybe not often, but there's a shopping list of reasons why a man might be reticent.

I suppose I am inclined to spend a great deal of time and energy imagining how I might save him, how I – and I alone – could draw him back into the land of the living, fill his world with love once again, a love that would be better, deeper, more meaningful than anything else he's ever encountered. I don't believe I'm the only one who does this.

I always start with sex.

It's an odd thing to admit to, but I think I'm pretty safe in saying I'm good at sex (lots and lots of men have given me the thumbs-up; well, not thumbs exactly, but you know what I mean). And men like sex, so sex seems an ideal place to start. Experience never seems to teach me that relationships that start with sex usually stay with sex.

Martin was different. He isn't a bold and bad man. He is a steady and solid man. I dated him for four years; it was a proper courtship (to use my mother's term). We took things slowly. We were really happy in the beginning, or at least content. There's nothing wrong with Martin, and that alone sets him apart from my other exes. Martin is handsome (my mother was always saying as much, although my personal preference is dark hair and light eyes and Martin has blond hair and brown eyes). Unlike many of my other boyfriends, before and since, he had a good job; in fact during the time that we dated, he shot up the career ladder. He was promoted from analyst, to manager, to senior manager in the management consultancy firm he worked for. Lisa was always telling me that it was unreasonable to resent the long hours he worked and the way he appeared to always put his work ahead of his relationship. Of course the marrying kind often do that; they know the importance of being successful and creating financial security. I just wished that sometimes he'd get home when he said he would, that he'd take a day off work on my birthday or that he'd simply turn off the damned mobile phone when we were in bed.

Still, everything was on track. After dating for two years, we moved in with one another; after a year of living together, on my twenty-ninth birthday, Martin proposed and I accepted. Our plan was to get married on my thirtieth birthday. Well, the day before actually, so then I could say that technically I'd married in my twenties. We went at the wedding planning full speed ahead; me, Martin, my mother and my entire office. It was going to be a fabulous event, one with white doves, chocolate fountains and ice sculptures. I thought I had everything I'd ever wanted, until one day I realised I wasn't in love with him.

I loved him.

Probably.

I
certainly
liked him. But he didn't make my heart (or any part of my anatomy) leap. The realisation came to me during my final dress fitting, just two weeks before the big day. Timing has never been my strong point.

But now,
now
I'm considering the fact that maybe I got it all wrong. Those four years that we were together were important, defining years. When I stepped into the relationship, I'd been a carefree twenty-something; by the time I returned the unwanted wedding gifts I noticed that practically everyone I knew had married and started families. Not to mention the years since. Where has the time gone? I have been left behind. Maybe Martin
was
my One, and what I experienced when I gazed at my reflection in the bridal shop wasn't horror, it was nothing more than pre-wedding jitters. It's a reasonable assumption, as I've certainly never met anyone I've liked more since. Well, at least not anyone I've liked more who has been available and suitable and has liked me back.

As I sit in the cosy restaurant with my big sister, sipping wine and eating tiramisu, the alcohol sweeps around my brain and shimmers through my limbs, and it strikes me that I've blown my best chance,
ever
.

I've urinated on my happily ever after.

‘D
o I hate you?' Dean murmured the question, his lips close to the sleeping old man's ear. He'd always thought he'd known the answer to this one. For as long as he'd been aware of the question, he'd been sure. Yes, he hated Edward Taylor, known as Eddie. Yes, he hated his father.

But now?

Now, when the old man was dying, his breath rasping and lumbering through his heaving chest, his skin grey and waxy like sweating cheese, his eyes closed, Dean was surprised to find that it was impossible to summon up the necessary passion to hate. The wizened old man who slept in the hospital bed looked nothing like the father of Dean's memories. That man had been virile and healthy. And cruel. The father he remembered had had long raven-coloured hair, almost blue black. This Edward Taylor was practically bald, and the bit of hair that remained was as white as the hospital sheets. Whiter. His head was blotched with age spots; it looked vulnerable.

Dean seemed to remember that Edward Taylor had always been vain about his hair. He
thought
he could remember that his father had a habit of checking his reflection whenever the opportunity arose: in the hallway mirror, the wing mirrors in the car, shop windows and shiny teaspoons. He was almost sure he could
actually
remember this, but it might have been something his mother or his great-aunt had told him a very long time ago and he'd allowed it to morph into a make-do memory.

It might have been something he'd made up.

In the absence of any sort of a reality – a presence, or even letters or phone calls – Dean had resorted to filling in the blanks. He'd done so for many years, and over time, the wishful thinking, the fantasies, the false memories had all solidified and now had a hardness to them that suggested fact. It was tricky to know anything for certain. Edward Taylor wasn't a presence at all, just an absence. Dean always thought it was ironic that he'd been tortured with feelings of missing an absence. How was that possible? Or fair? He had grown up with no idea whether his father smelt of cigarettes or aftershave. He'd not known if his voice was gravelly, stern or soft. He had only been able to guess which football team he supported. As a boy, he had decided it was Fulham, because all of his mates' dads supported Fulham. He went through a stage – it lasted two, two and a half years – where he used to avidly watch the Fulham games on TV, scanning the crowds for a glimpse of someone who might, just might, be his dad. He strained his eyes, expecting to see a mop of dark hair, stubble and tight designer cords, even though fashions had moved on and his father, by then, was probably wearing ratty oversized jumpers and ripped jeans in a grungy homage to Nirvana.

Eddie Taylor had once been so big, broad and strong. Not dependable, never that, but massive. One of the few memories Dean was certain was real was the one where his father's broad shoulders practically touched both sides of the door frame as he walked out of it for the final time. When he'd opened the door, the orange glow from the street light had flooded into the hallway, splattering across the floor, but then his bulk had blocked out the light as he crossed the threshold and left the family home. He'd been in a hurry. He hadn't even checked his reflection in the hallway mirror. Dean had watched the exit from the top of the stairs.

Dean was having trouble reconciling the shrivelled physical presence of this old man in front of him with the stories, hopes and hates that he'd carefully cultivated for a lifetime. The shadowy threat was a dying human being. There was no sign of horns. Dean resisted the urge to edge up the hospital sheet and check for claws or a tail, or any other physical manifestations of the Devil.

As he'd turned from boy to man, Dean had stopped hankering after his father in the same pointless, heartbreaking way. He had been left with a void that he couldn't fill with small details, so instead he stuffed the hollowness with the one big fact he was certain of: Eddie Taylor had left his wife, son and daughter and never contacted them again, not once in twenty-nine years. The longing had turned to resentment and then congealed into pure hatred.

What was he doing here anyway? If Dean hated Eddie Taylor, it made little sense that he was here. If he didn't hate him and was now indifferent towards him, it made even less sense. He hadn't meant to come. It was all down to his PA, Lacey. After that nurse had called, he'd put down the phone and then sat at his desk intending that business should carry on as normal. Thank you for the information, but the life or death of Edward Taylor was of no interest to Dean Taylor.

But Lacey, terminally bored with her job, had latched on to the crisis and made it into a full-scale, high-cost drama. She'd dashed into his office the moment the line went dead.

‘I listened in,' she'd stated, without any embarrassment or apology. Lacey was tiny; less than five foot. Everything about her was diminutive: her waist, her legs, her arms, the two notable exceptions being her big green eyes and her huge boobs. She was a walking, talking Manga cartoon, a doll every man wanted to play with, and as a consequence she'd never had to pay too much attention to details such as rules or propriety, as she was always met with indulgence. Indeed, Dean would have given her a quick go himself, if they'd met anywhere other than work. ‘I heard that nurse say your pop is, like, dying. I'm really so, so sorry.' Her eyes had stretched an unfeasible fraction wider. Dean felt caught in headlamps.

‘Right.'

‘That is so awful.'

‘If you say so.'

Lacey paused; she'd watched enough trashy reality TV shows to recognise this moment. She hurried back to her desk, returning to Dean's office just ten minutes later.

‘OK, I've booked you on today's 16:05 flight out from O'Hare. You'll arrive at Heathrow at 5:55. I didn't know which hotel to book. The usual one in Covent Garden, or would you like something nearer the hospital? Where is the hospital anyway? But England's small, right? London's even smaller. Wherever I book for you is going to be reasonably convenient, yeah?'

‘What?' Dean had gawped at his PA in bewilderment.

‘The 16:05 gives you plenty of time to go home now, throw a few things in a holdall and get over to the airport.'

‘I'm not going to London.' Dean had turned purposefully back to his screen, no longer able to hold Lacey's gaze.

‘Of course you are. Your father is dying.'

‘He doesn't need me for that.' Dean could not stop himself adding, ‘He didn't need me for living.'

If he had thought about it for a moment, he might have guessed that Lacey would relish this insight into her boss's more sensitive side. She knew more about his private life than was strictly professional; she'd often had to take calls from disappointed women who had hoped Dean really would call them as he'd said he would. She knew he was an aloof prick when it came to women and relationships, a classic love-'em-and-leave-'em type. Hopeful and hopeless women regularly turned up at the office pretending they were just passing (oh yeah, in their Christian Louboutin red heels – of course). They were hoping to have a word with him, maybe grab a sandwich lunch; Dean always told Lacey to get rid of them. Those were his words. Get rid of them. Lacey had made and cancelled enough dinner reservations on Dean's behalf to know that he dated regularly. She'd frequently been sent out for a fresh shirt and therefore knew that he was stopping over regularly too, but never with the same woman, at least not for longer than a couple of weeks.

Lacey hadn't yet been able to work out exactly why an otherwise decent guy – seemingly intelligent and a good brother and uncle – would behave this way. It was 2005, for goodness' sake; relentless variety was out of fashion and there was a trend in serious relationships. Didn't Dean know this? The trashy reality shows repeatedly insisted that there was always a reason behind why an emotional cripple became an emotional cripple. Lacey was actually glad to hear this first hint at trauma in Dean's life; she hadn't wanted to believe her boss was simply a douche bag. There was a father issue and he'd admitted as much! Lacey felt that such a declaration was clearly a cry for help. A cry she was compelled and determined to answer. Despite her size, she was a force to be reckoned with.