The Way It Never Was (4 page)

Moving around jars on the counter, Paolo shakes his head. ‘Ah no job. I win the bet. You see, I was talking to my wife,’ he points to the idle Paula who breaks off from wiping her son’s nose to look me up and down. ‘She said you are a very pretty girl but you always look very, what is the word... pathetic.’ All eyes are now on me, probably deliberating exactly how pathetic I am. ‘I said to her, “I wonder why Kate is the way she is, has she no life? I never see her with a man and she always wears bad suits”.’ Then as though he’s been holding in his breath the whole time, he quickly bangs his hand on the counter. ‘We think you make bad, bad decisions Kate. You are how do they say it? Yes, you are lost. Not even there six months.’

‘Paolo, with due respect, I was there 11 months and twenty-eight days,’ I interrupt, feeling compelled to correct a random timeline he’s just invented for dramatic purposes.

Paolo just shakes his head. ‘You split hairs. It doesn’t matter. You were there not even a year. That is terrible!’ he declares. ‘Take Liv and myself. We have worked together for what feels like eternity and although I dislike her intensely a lot of the time, we hang on in there as we have to. I don’t think you try very hard. You probably just hide behind a fern and then they forget you work there.’

Before I have the chance to tell him that if only it were that simple, that you could just blend into the background without prompting an email, he throws his tea towel over his shoulder and walks out into the kitchen.

‘It was a Yucca actually,’ I say loudly after him, in part to myself. Just two days ago, answering back didn’t feature in my repertoire, but then that was before I impulsively walked out of my job. ‘I used to hide behind a Yucca if you really want to know.’

Liv, who has been listening to the whole sorry exchange now follows me back to my table, with her mouth crammed full of croissant.

‘SowositBarbra?’ she splutters.

I shake my head. ‘No, it wasn’t her. Dan asked me that too.’

Liv nods and I wait while she swallows her mouthful. ‘You’ve seen your brother hey? God. How is he? Still busy being successful,’ she rolls her eyes. ‘Jesus, I’m still recovering from your birthday party last year where he bored the shit out of me.’

I laugh. ‘Yeah I know you are. I don’t blame you. Still, I think you both would actually get on if you hadn’t got off on the wrong foot.’

Liv waves her finger at me. ‘Not in this life you crazy lady! He’s just one of those, oh you know,
those
guys.’

Upon hearing this, I find myself feeling a little indignant on my brother’s behalf, as this is the same girl who fell for the biggest arsehole this side of the English Channel. My brother may fickle as hell but he would never leave a girl in the lurch like that. Okay, he’d probably take the news
very
badly, but he’d eventually come round and do the right thing. Eventually.

‘Anyhow, that’s enough about Dan. What happened with the job?’ she asks. ‘Tell me before I lose the will to live!’

I put my hand over my mouth as if pretending to be embarrassed. ‘I quit,’ I purposely mumble.

Looking for want of a better word, stunned, Liv automatically punches the air with a muffin in hand, sending it flying out the window, hitting a foreign student asking a customer a question for her language school quiz.

‘Sorry!’ she says to the girl, before turning around. ‘Oh. My. God. This is the most exciting thing I’ve heard all week! I never thought I would hear you say that. Ever.’

Okay, she clearly needs some excitement in her life, but she has got a point. This is most unlike me. I’ve been muddling along for a very long time and it has been a while since I did something even remotely interesting.

‘Take no notice of my rude colleague here,’ Liv points over at Paolo who is now whispering something to his wife, who’s just staring at me the way small children do but adults rarely get away with. ‘He’s a socially inept son of a bitch and that’s on a good day. You’ll find stuff. You always do.’

I think to myself that as it is ‘stuff’ that has unfortunately got me here, it’s ‘stuff’ I don’t want.

‘Sure,’ I say half-heartedly. ‘Anyhow, I need to get this shopping back home and start looking for a job,’ I gesture to the plastic bags with handles hanging on by a thread.

‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ Liv promises, hugging me again. ‘Let’s hang out this weekend. Come find me here.’ She does a sideways glance at Paolo and Paula who glare back at her. ‘And take no notice of them,’ she whispers. ‘Unlike me, they actually do need to get laid.’

CHAPTER 4 -
FLIP FLOPS

I first met Liv while living at a hostel in Sydney, where we happened to end up sharing a room – and a weekend job cleaning it. I tackled the loos and cleaned the kitchen – a traumatic experience given that backpackers just drank beer and ate beige food – while Liv had the slightly easier job of doing the hoovering and finding out who was shagging whom for the owner to then broadcast over the tannoy. Loud, funny and beautiful, Liv has no restraint about her whatsoever. And when someone speaks their mind like she does, it brings out the same feeling as when you go shopping with someone who is a size eight – you live vicariously through them. Liv is this strong, cold blast of fresh air, one of those girls that make life much more interesting by just having her in it.

I admit I was in awe of Liv when we were first introduced. She just went right in as if we had been friends for years, telling me the finer details of her bikini line and all about the man in room 16 who she’d caught peeing in the microwave. However, I then discovered that she too was a sucker for a celebrity gossip magazine and a good lip gloss and somehow we ended up spending the rest of time there putting the world to rights – well, as much as you can when you’ve led a relatively wholesome sheltered life with few cares and are cheerfully living hand to mouth, knowing fully well your parents could bail you out at any point. We would sit on our balcony overlooking the street with fags in hand, drinking our way through some indescribably bad wine and reflect on everything that ever happened to us that led us to this point. Given half the chance, we would still be doing that, only that there is now the small matter of her being very pregnant indeed.

When our time in Australia came to an end, we both went home to our respective countries and kept in touch sporadically, mainly by filling out those ‘round robin’ quizzes, the last question always being ‘who do you think is least likely to fill out this?’ – the answer inevitably being ‘Kate’ or ‘Liv’. Despite being able to email, writing letters added more gravitas to our friendship, exchanging news – news that went something like this. She, getting distinction in her MBE: Me, finding a job as a secretary and hating it as the office had no windows: She, getting onto the fast-track programme at a bank and seriously earning big bucks: Me, leaving that secretarial position for another secretarial position with windows: She, becoming the youngest ever director of a regional division: Me, taking a touch typing course in order to become a marginally better but still mediocre PA: She, getting a fiancé with a very American sounding name – Chip/Chad/Chuck or something: Me, still nursing a broken heart from an ill-fated holiday romance.

Then a while ago, I got an email saying that Chip/Chad/Chuck or something was cheating on her, so she was leaving everything behind and travelling to Europe.

The doorbell rang and there she stood with her Louis Vuitton suitcase looking fabulously blonde, dressed in skinny jeans and stiletto boots. ‘Jesus Christ, bitch, you could do with a makeover!’ was the first thing to come out of her mouth. She was right as I was spending my downtime wallowing in unlovable mode and had let it go a little, wearing my university sweater with old coffee stains on it, sporting eyebrows that were nearly joined in the middle and skin that could have done with a truckload of foundation. I hadn’t been particularly bothered, because as with all things, when it is only down to self-perception, I thought I looked okay. And besides, with no love life to speak of and no one to impress, what did it matter?

My flatmate Claire immediately hated Liv for the simple fact that she was pretty and had one of those figures where you not only have boobs but a waist – as my brother would say, ‘a rare treat’. On the other hand, Claire was perfectly attractive to look at, but definitely had two separate ‘domestic’ and ‘nightclub’ looks. Like the rest of us, she had to work a little harder.

During the time she lived with us, Liv showed us how it could be done if you had actually read the self-help book. Not only did she find work at the Globe, Paolo was so impressed with her business acumen that after a few weeks he made her a partner. Translated, this meant that he had found someone to work every weekend or any day when he fancied time out.

After she found herself a business to run though, things went a bit wrong. She met someone who she should never have clapped eyes on – Claire’s ex-husband and my old classmate, Andy Happy. Back in the day, Mr Happy was ridiculously mature looking for a fourteen year old. I remember thinking he looked about thirty years old but that I must be missing something, as the girls seemed to love him. The night we met him at the pub on the corner, nothing much had changed, just that he had finally grown into that chest hair and had a tan line where a wedding ring used to be. I introduced them thinking nothing of it, but to my dismay, instead of reading into my rolling of the eyes behind his back, Liv just laughed at everything he said. It turned out that my friend was vulnerable after her break up and was in need of some male attention.

The following day, Mr Happy stood at the bottom of our fire escape holding a bunch of garage carnations. It seemed so cheesy and reminiscent of
Pretty
Woman
that I naively thought the old Liv would take the piss but no, the new Liv thought he was just romantic and proceeded to fall, hook, line and sinker for him. Over the next few months, while his furious ex-wife and I would be trying to watch
Millionaire
Matchmaker
, he’d be sat there in our lounge, only to then stay over on the sofa bed and subject us to noises that through the paper-thin walls, sounded suspiciously like bad sex.

‘You do know that Andy’s idea of foreplay was putting his beer down,’ whispered Claire before snapping at me. ‘Thanks a bunch Kate, I’m now getting awful flashbacks.’ Relations were now at an all time low and she wasn’t going to forgive me anytime soon.

All that time I had joked with Liv in Australia about men who rev their engines at the traffic lights and walk a big dog to make up for their lacking in a certain department, and now there she was with a boyfriend who did just that. I just didn’t have the heart to say anything because what did I know? I misjudged my own big romance hadn’t I? Whenever out and about, Mr Happy was always saying hi to people and telling her how many parties he was regularly invited to. Liv would just think, wow, there he was with 300 friends on Facebook and she was the one he was choosing to spend all his time with. Not long afterwards, she announced she was moving into a new flat with him.

Claire just shook her head in dismay. ‘He’s the most immature, tight, selfish bastard you’ll ever meet. She’ll find out.’

While Liv and Mr Happy now co-habiting was good for Claire and myself as we got the sofa back, it also meant me having to hear all these anecdotes about how kind he was when as far as I could make out, he was anything but. Liv paid for everything – the nights out, the groceries and the bills –
everything
. And as he didn’t drive, she would give him taxi money to go visit his parents, as he never seemed to carry any small change.
I
ask
you
,
what
man
doesn’t
carry
small
change
?

As far as I could see, the only time he did shout her something was when he very generously made her pregnant – news that she delivered to him thinking he would be over the moon. Instead, he pretended to be okay with it to her face, only to immediately get a taxi back to his parents, leaving her shaking her mobile for signs of life.

When a note from him eventually arrived, delivered by his clearly mortified father, she just rang me up blubbing very loudly. ‘He says he has stuff he needs to do before settling down’ (sure, like maybe grow up?), before retreating to her new flat to mourn.

But while fickle Mr Happy may not be into the idea of parenthood, his parents most certainly are. Having found out about the situation, instead of turning a blind eye, they’ve become totally on board with the whole thing – a little too on board, says Liv. This enthusiasm must stem from relief that their divorced son has finally produced an heir (although, I still have my theories about a few illegitimate hairy-chested offspring walking around). When they are not apologising for their son, Yvonne and Peter are taking her to all her hospital appointments and buying stuff for their unborn grandchild – stuff that normally features some shade of yellow.

‘They take the tags off so I can’t even take them back,’ Liv moans. ‘Christ, this is a really weird situation. Got all the in-law hassle, but without the man. Gee, I’m one lucky lady!’

She’s right. This whole set-up is more than a little dysfunctional. But she knows and I know that for now, it’ll have to do.