The Importance of Being Married (24 page)

To do

1. Find a new job

I felt like death the following morning. I wasn’t hungover; I was depressed. Humiliated. I’d allowed myself to think that Anthony Milton might actually like me—had slept with him, because I’d believed it—and now I’d discovered that Grandma was right, that I’d been as stupid as all those stupid girls I ridiculed on a regular basis. I was an idiot. And I’d never be able to look Anthony in the eye again. Or Marcia. Or anyone else. Morose, I emerged from my bedroom wearing a T-shirt. I’d picked up my dressing gown, but somehow hadn’t been able to put it on.

Despondently, I mooched into the kitchen; to my surprise it was a picture of domesticity, with Helen at the cooker once again, and boxes of cereal laid out prettily on the table with bowls, spoons, and a jug of milk.

“Morning!” she said brightly. “I’m making omelets. Want one?”

I looked at her suspiciously.

“And this is for what, exactly?”

“I reorganized the kitchen last night,” Helen said, frowning and turning back to her omelets. “So, how did it go?”

“You reorganized the kitchen? Why?”

Helen sighed. “Because it needed reorganizing. Jeez, it’s no big deal, is it?”

“No. I just thought that if you had some spare time you might apply for jobs instead of cleaning.” I was taking out my anger on Helen and I knew it, but somehow I couldn’t stop myself.

“I would apply for jobs if there were any that I was interested in,” Helen said tightly. “Now, do you want breakfast or not?”

“Sure,” I said, then sighed. “Look, I’m sorry. I think the kitchen looks great, for what it’s worth.”

“Well, thank you.” Helen brought over the omelet pan and put it on the table, then looked around for a chair. “So come on then, how was the date?”

“It was okay. Do you want some toast?” I stood up and walked over to the bread bin.

“Toast? No. I want to know all about your date.”

“My date…” I put two slices of bread in the toaster. “My date was….” I felt a lump appear in my throat. “It was…”

“It was…?” Helen prompted.

“It wasn’t great,” I said.

“You didn’t get on?” Helen asked worriedly.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, we got on really well. At least…Look, the truth is that it was all a joke on me. Project Marriage is over, Hel. The whole thing is over.”

“Over?” Helen’s forehead creased into fine lines. “Okay. You’re going to have to talk me through this. From the beginning.”

I bit my lip and popped up the toast, then scraped butter on it and returned to my chair. “It started off really well,” I said, keeping my voice as matter-of-fact as I could, keeping myself as detached as possible from the story. “I mean, we had drinks, then he took me to this little restaurant…”

“Little restaurant? I didn’t recommend any little restaurant.”

“It was a place Anthony knew. A bit quieter.”

“Oh.” She sounded put out.

“So, anyway, dinner was good…” I swallowed uncomfortably as I remembered the evening, remembered the glow that seemed to surround us all night long, until…I grimaced.

“And?” Helen demanded.

“And we shared a cab home and…”

“And?” Helen’s eyes were boring into mine, and I blushed.

“And he came up,” I said quietly.

“He came up?” She sounded amazed.

I nodded as imperceptibly as I could.

“You dirty stop-out!” Helen clapped her hands together in excitement. “And what happened then?”

I felt myself redden. “We…” I looked down at my hands, which were clasped together on my lap.

“You didn’t!”

I nodded as imperceptibly as I could.

“Oh my God. You did! So how was it? Was the sex not good? I mean, assuming you had…or was there a problem there?”

“No, there wasn’t a problem,” I said defensively. “The sex was fine.” I swallowed. “It was really good, actually.”

“So what’s the problem? What happened?”

“What happened is that…” I cleared my throat and told her about Marcia’s message.

Helen frowned. “Did you say anything to Anthony?”

“I told him to leave.”

“And?”

“And he tried to make out she was texting him about some client meeting. But I knew it was rubbish. So he left. And now it’s over. All of it.”

Helen digested this information for a few seconds. Then she took a deep breath.

“I think the important thing here is not to panic,” she said eventually.

“I’m not panicking. I’m just killing off Jessica Wiiiild. It’s easier being the old me.”

“Oh, poor Jess.”

“Not poor Jess,” I said stiffly, remembering Anthony using the same phrase, remembering how it softened my defenses. “I’m not poor. I’m fine. Fine on my own. I don’t need Anthony and I don’t need Grace’s money. My mind’s made up.”

“You can’t give up now,” Helen said, shaking her head. “You’re just having morning-after anxiety. It’s perfectly normal.”

“Is a text from Marcia perfectly normal?”

Helen frowned. “Maybe not. But that doesn’t mean we give up.”

“Yes, it does. He and Marcia obviously thought it would be hysterically funny if we went on a date. They’re probably laughing about it now.”

Helen shook her head. “You’re overreacting.” She stood up and picked up the phone.

“You weren’t there.”

“True, but come on, Jess, the stakes are too high to give up that easily,” Helen said, dialing a number. “We just need a bit of help, that’s all.”

“Not Ivana,” I said immediately. “I can’t see her today, I just can’t.”

“Give me a better idea and I’ll hang up,” Helen said tersely.

“I need more toast,” I said, after a pause. “And definitely more coffee.”

An hour or so later, Helen and I watched from the window as a bashed-up Mini appeared outside our house and Ivana got out of the passenger’s seat. She was wearing a gold lamé dress—the fabric clinging to her ample curves—and her mouth was painted bright red to match her patent-leather stacked heels. Then a lanky man in his thirties got out of the driver’s seat and followed her toward our front door. Immediately Helen’s mobile rang.

“Hello? Yes, I can see you. I’ll press the buzzer.”

I looked up, my heart sinking, as Ivana breezed in, followed by her lanky friend. He had a shock of blond hair that hung down over his face and, when you could see them, watery blue eyes. He smiled gauchely; Ivana stared at me, her eyes narrowing.

“You no look good,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“You’re welcome. You need more advice. Merrege advice?”

“I need to forget all about marriage,” I said, but Helen shushed me.

“Yes, she needs advice,” she said quickly. “We need a new strategy.”

Ivana nodded and pushed the lanky man forward. “So thees is my friend Sean. He arrange merrege. He know about men. Okay?” Sean smiled bashfully and shoved his hands in his pockets. I nodded again, this time a little uncertainly. Did she mean that Sean arranged marriages for a living, or that he was going to arrange my marriage? And what did he know about men? Just that he was one?

“So, who wants tea?” Helen asked, bustling around and taking jackets from Ivana and Sean. “Or coffee? Orange juice?”

“Bleck coffee,” Ivana said.

“Tea, please,” Sean replied. “Milk, two sugar. Cheers love.”

His accent was a strange mix—one part Eastern European, two parts Manchester. He grinned again and I found myself smiling back; I showed them into the sitting room, where Sean sat down on the sofa, his gangling frame filling the frame, while Ivana remained standing, scrutinizing our bookshelf as though looking for clues.

“So,” Ivana said when tea and coffee were duly delivered. “Now, we start.”

I looked at her apprehensively.

“We start?”

“Exectly,” Ivana confirmed. “You tell me exectly vat happen on your date.”

I told her. And then, at her request, I told her about Marcia. I didn’t cast her in a very flattering light.

When I’d finished, she whistled, then turned to Sean. “Vat you think?” she asked him.

He frowned. “It’s tough,” he said.

I sighed. “It’s not tough, it’s easy,” I said. “Anthony must have told Marcia about the date, like it was some joke or something. I’ve never felt so humiliated in my life.”

“Really?” Sean looked at me curiously, then shrugged. “Of course, it’s possible that he was telling the truth and she was texting him about a work thing. Or, it could be that Marcia did know about the date and thought it was a bit of a joke but that Anthony didn’t. She might just be jealous.”

“She might?” I felt a shimmer of hope and tried to ignore it.

“The sex was good?” Sean continued.

I reddened and, despite everyone’s eyes boring into me, I couldn’t stop a little smile from forcing its way onto my face. “Yes. I mean, I think so.”

“And he didn’t want to go?”

“No, but…” I said defensively. “Look, I saw the text. She called him
hon.
”

“Yeah. Yeah, I got that. So look, I think you’ve just got to play seriously hard to get for a while,” he said flatly. “I think things could go one of two ways.”

“They could?” Now I was frowning. “How, exactly?”

Sean looked at me strangely as if he thought it was completely obvious. “Well,” he said, speaking slowly as though I were a child, “even if this Marcia and him have got something going, he obviously likes you. Yeah?”

“You think he and Marcia have got something going?” I felt myself go white. I hadn’t even considered that. Oh God. They probably did. He’d probably slept with everyone in the office. After all, he’d had forty-two girlfriends.

Sean shook his head, his floppy fringe falling from side to side. “Probably not,” he said reassuringly. “But either way, you play it right, play it really cool, and he’ll forget all about her. You’ve got to make yourself unattainable so he wants you even more. You get me?”

I frowned. “Not really.”

“You’ve got to rise above it,” Sean said, smiling indulgently. “You know, play hardball.”

“Hardball?” I asked weakly. I’d never known that love and relationships were so complicated.

Sean nodded.

“But how? What does she do?” Helen interjected.

Sean grinned. “Ah, well, that’s easy. You ignore him for a while. Then you flirt with him. Blow hot and cold.”

“Ignore him? But I can’t. I work with him.”

“Even better. Easier to ignore someone when they’re right in front of you. Don’t mention the date. Go out with someone else. Make him realize that you’re not someone to be trifled with.”

“Trifled with?” I asked, confused.

“Exactly. Be elusive.”

“Except when I’m flirting with him?”

“Exactly.” Sean smiled, missing my sarcasm completely.

I looked at him suspiciously. “And how do you know all this? I mean, what is it exactly that you do again?”

“Sean just know,” Ivana said quickly. “He in merrege business. But that not how he know. He know because he is men. He know because he know about luff and merrege.” She looked at me and at Helen, and then she shrugged. “He know because he is merried to me.”

“You?” I exclaimed.

Ivana raised an eyebrow.

“His car, it need service,” she said stonily. “It cost eight hundred pounds for new radiator.”

I frowned, wondering if this was part of his experience and, if not, what the relevance of this information was.

“You mean, that’s his fee?” Helen asked.

Ivana nodded.

“No win, no fee,” she said, a smile creeping onto her face again. “No white dress and boom boom with this men, no car service. Okay?”

“Okay,” Helen said firmly. “So, Sean, let’s run over this just one more time…”

Chapter 17