The ABCs of Love (5 page)

It was extraordinary. Inside, every wall was covered in doors, all hung in identical white-painted doorframes. I opened one at random, and all that was behind it was the wallpaper. I opened another, and then another, but all I could find was nothingness. It took me a long time to find the right door, the door out, and by the time I did, I was crying.

No one spoke in the car on the way home, and when I followed my father inside, I watched him kick our kitchen table when he thought no one was looking. My parents were upset that they couldn’t afford the house, but I was pleased. It took me a long time before I could open a door without a feeling of dread, but when I told my father about it, he wouldn’t believe me.

See also Doors; Kitchen Equipment; Magazines; Property; True
Romance; Yellow

I

ice cream

When I was six, I was taken to see The Railway Children but had to leave halfway through because I put my ice cream down the neck of the woman sitting in front of me. The funny thing is that I still want to do the same every time I go to the movies. Just to see what will happen.

I used to like to bite off the end of my cone and suck the ice cream out that way. It upsets me nowadays to see that even advertisements for ice-cream products are using sex to make them appealing. I once gave up sex for a whole year. It was amazing how much extra time I had. It wasn’t that I was doing it all the time. It was the side effects. If you’re not interested in sex, then there’s hardly a book, a film, a piece of music that you need to bother with. There are so many more hours in the day.

See also Glitter; Sex; Victim; Zero

illness

I hate being ill.

Other people at work have what they call “duvet days,” but I think they’re probably the ones who have never come across really sick people. Otherwise, they wouldn’t pretend.

When my mother was in hospital, my father and I used to go and visit her every day. We would take a picnic for after our visit and have it in the little garden by the side of the car park. It became important that every day we’d have the same things to eat. Cheese and ham sandwiches, apples, and to wash it down, we’d share a bottle of sparkling water.

My father would just sit there and cry silently. The tears would roll down his cheeks, and he’d not do anything to stop them. Sometimes people would look at us and then stare sympathetically at me, which confused me because Dad’s tears were something you stopped noticing after a while.

I used to talk to Dad, not about emotions or anything. I stuck to facts. I’d tell him how many trees were in the garden. How much every separate item of our lunch had cost. I’d read out the football scores to him, right through to the third division. I’d go through the television guide, what was on each channel, even the digital ones that we didn’t have. He’d nod away at me so he’d seem to be listening, but then he’d turn and say something like: “Your mum was so beautiful. I never knew what she saw in me. Even now, every time she goes out of the door, I think she won’t bother to come back. She always seemed so precious. I was scared to touch her, you know. Scared I’d break her or something.”

Then we’d go back up to the ward, and I’d look at Mum and try to see what he’d seen in her. We were never sure how much she took in, but the nurses said it was important to keep trying to stimulate her. I’d tell her some of the things I’d just told Dad, and he’d nod away again, as if I was right. As if he remembered. And then he’d touch her hand, and I saw that he still saw her as precious, was still worried he might lose her. She became whiter and whiter the longer she stayed in hospital, until she seemed to become part of the hospital bed. Her skin was as transparent and papery-dry as the sheet. Dad and I got browner, though, from all the picnic lunches we had in the sun. Then one day I looked at my parents’ hands together, and it seemed Mum had already died. Her hand looked like a marble effigy next to his.

When Dad went into hospital not long afterward, it seemed like a cruel joke. Some of the nurses even remembered us. I sat in the garden on my own then, although Sally came with me a few times. She took me out for lunch once. We had chips, I remember, and my tears kept flowing. Just like Dad’s.

Eventually, the waiter came over. “Is everything all right?” he asked. I guess he was worried I’d cause a scene or something.

Sally was wonderful. She looked him up and down, and then she said: “No. Everything is not all right. These chips have upset my friend very much. Can’t you see how sad they have made her?”

We laughed then. It was the first time I’d laughed for about a year and I had been afraid I’d forgotten how to, but when we got back to the hospital, they told us Dad had passed away while we were out. He’d just given up the fight, they said. But I knew he’d died of a broken heart.

This is why I would never pretend to be ill to have a day off work.

See also True Romance

imposter syndrome

There was another interesting speaker at work. She told us that we had to believe we were worthy of our positions in life, but that just made us laugh because she didn’t seem to understand that most of us secretaries think the opposite—that we’re actually much better than the position we’ve ended up in.

Still, she also said a lot of things that made sense. She said that many women have this arrow hanging over them. They think that at any minute, someone is going to walk over to them, whatever it is they’re doing—even if (especially if) they’re in the middle of something important— and tell them that they’ve been found out. That they’re not good enough to continue. Please, could they leave the room and let someone better carry on in their place.

My body felt electric. I couldn’t believe other people have this arrow too. It follows you around, pointing at you in a crowd and telling you exactly what you are doing wrong. Sooner or later, someone else is going to spot it and realize exactly how useless you are. Probably when your mouth is full of cheese sandwich and you can’t defend yourself.

It was reassuring to learn that this is a common syndrome. I could tell the others felt relieved too. We were more cheerful that afternoon than when we were writing our obituaries, although I have noticed that these personal development sessions have encouraged us to talk about our feelings more. I am not sure this is altogether a good thing. What happens when it all goes wrong and there’s nowhere to hide?

See also Codes; Happiness; Teaching; Why?

indecent exposure

It is a fact of life: in any town, even one as small as this, men often expose themselves to you. I feel rather like a nurse must feel about this. You see this little thing curled up like a shrimp and the expectant male face above it, waiting for you to react, and most of the time, it’s not remotely sexy or even frightening. Just a bit boring.

Sally has a number of set phrases designed to wither a man at fifty paces, but that seems rather unnecessary. We’re all just trying our hardest to survive—admittedly, some more than others.

See also Boxing; Weight

influences

My mother was a great one for lists. She even spoke in bullet points.

“And another thing,” she’d say. Even when she was in full flow of one of her furies, she could tick off on her fingers all the points that made her angry.

The list she particularly loved was all the bad influences on me. My problem was that I was easily led by so many people and things:

Every English teacher I’d ever had. Especially Mr. Shepherd in year ten, who wanted to take me and Marian Riley on a camping holiday in his two-man tent after we’d been reading Thomas Hardy in class. We were going to go to Dorset and explore Hardy country, but my mother wouldn’t let me go.

Suzanne Gibson. I never really understood this one. Suzanne lived in a hotel because her house had been repossessed when her father couldn’t pay the bills anymore. I always lived in fear that my mother would publicly accuse Suzanne of being a bad influence on me, for then Suzanne might think I’d been telling people we were friends when in fact she had never even bothered to look at me. She was far too glamorous.

The “Cathy and Claire” column in
Jackie
magazine. Mum had read it once and been shocked by the sex advice offered. She never knew I’d written to them, explaining how I’d fallen in love with a girl in the Lower Sixth. I got a letter back from them saying that it was just a crush and that I should join more sporting clubs to broaden my interests and make me a more rounded person.

Mr. and Mrs. Goodman, Sally’s parents. They were always too jolly and family-oriented for my mother. Apparently, it was a sign of how vulgar they were. I hadn’t realized until then that only common people are happy. It is posher as well as more interesting to be haunted by internal ghosts who make you miserable. Strangely, my mother liked Sally. She thought she’d come to a bad end and was therefore a good example for me of what not to do.

See also Danger; Telephone Boxes; Underwear; Zzzz