Original Cyn (4 page)

She and Cyn had met at the launch of another hair-care line—Victoria Beckham’s Posh Locks. Price Chandler Witty had been handling the advertising. Naturally the launch at Harrods was a major media blitz and the place was packed with press, photographers and TV crews. At one point Cyn stepped back to make way for a waiter carrying a tray of drinks and managed to collide heavily with the body behind her. There was a cry of “Bloody ’ell” in a thick Liverpool accent. Cyn swung round to see Harmony staring down at the spilled champagne, which was now soaking into her scarlet taffeta Vivienne Westwood dress. Cyn recognized her at once. “Oh, God. I am so sorry. What can I say? Please, you must send me the dry cleaning bill.”

“Oh, don’t be daft,” Harmony said with surprising jollity. “It’s only a frock. It’s not the end of the world.” Cyn said the least she could do was get her another glass of champagne. And that was it. For the next hour, the two women stood drinking champagne and chatting. Almost immediately, Harmony confessed that these events bored her rigid. “I only came,” she whispered, “because Victoria used to be a client and she sent me an invite. Plus, I need to keep an eye on what the opposition’s doing. Just between you, me and the gatepost, though, I’d much rather be at home with
Coronation Street
and a bottle of wine.”

“God, me, too,” Cyn said, realizing she had really taken to this un-starry, straight-talking woman. As the party began to break up, Harmony suggested they go out for Chinese. “I don’t know about you, but I could murder some sweet-and-sour pork.” Cyn said she would love to.

They loaded crispy aromatic duck onto pancakes and carried on yakking as if they’d known each other for years.

Harmony chain-smoked and talked about her family. “Me dad buggered off when I was seven and our mam raised five of us kids on her own in a crappy council flat on one of the worst estates in Liverpool.” She drew deeply on her cigarette. “But since I opened the business I’ve been able to buy her a bungalow and a little car. It’s just my way of saying thank you. And I help me brothers and sisters, too. I took ’em all to Florida last year. I’ll never forget the look on our mam’s face when I showed her the plane tickets. Totally made up, she was.” For a few seconds she sat staring off into the distance. Cyn could see her eyes were filling up. “So,” she said eventually, flicking ash into the ashtray, “how did you end up with a daft name like Cynthia? It’s almost as bad as mine.” This was typical Harmony. She never avoided saying what was on her mind. “You see,” she went on, not giving Cyn a chance to reply, “I was named after the make of my dad’s electric guitar. I was baby number two and our mam said it was his turn to choose the name. Apparently he was sitting strumming his guitar at the time and that was that. If he’d been holding a pint glass, I’d have probably ended up being called Special Brew. Special Brew Milhandra O’Farrell.” She laughed a hoarse, throaty laugh and lit another fag.

Cyn explained that her name was also music related. Her father had been a mad Lennon fan since the sixties. When Barbara got pregnant, Mal insisted that if the baby was a boy, they should call it John. When a girl arrived, he considered naming her Yoko.

“Omigod!” Harmony roared. “Yoko Fishbein! I love it.”

“Yeah, but my mum didn’t, so they compromised on Cynthia. Then two years later my brother came along and they named him John, but we call him Jonny.”

Harmony asked her if she liked her name. Cyn said the Fishbein bit had never bothered her, even though half the family had changed it to Fisher. “Anyway, there were loads of other Jewish kids at school with far weirder names. A boy called Benny Lipschitz took the heat off me by taking most of the flak.” She said her first name hadn’t bothered her either until she was about eight or nine. Then she’d started hating it. Even though she was too young to articulate it, at some primal, instinctive level she knew that Kate, Sophie and Amy represented sexy, while Cynthia equalled prissy, spinsterish, anally retentive librarian. It wasn’t until she was sixteen that she realized Cyn—the name her friends always called her—had a certain raw, streetwise edginess to it. “So, I went off to Camden Market with my friend Jude from school and we became punks. I bought this ripped black leather jacket, got my eyebrow pierced and my hair spiked and sprayed Day-Glo pink. From then on I started hiding out in my frilly pink princess bedroom playing The Stranglers at full blast. Mum and Dad went mad.”

They left the restaurant well after midnight, swapped phone numbers and that was it. They had been friends ever since.

Cyn hadn’t been sure how Harmony would hit it off with Hugh, but there had been an instant spark. Hugh adored Harmony’s ballsiness, that she said precisely what was on her mind and refused to be intimidated by his posh background. Within five minutes of meeting Hugh, she was accusing him of being a toffee-nosed, chinless toff. (In fact he had a perfectly well-formed chin.) He called her a chippy proletarian. The more they drank, the more they insulted each other, but Cyn could see they were loving it. Hugh didn’t have a truly snobbish bone in his body and the working-class chip on Harmony’s shoulder was an act more than anything else.

Hugh came back with a bottle of beer and handed it to Harmony. “Get this down you. You’ll feel better.”

“Ta, ’Ewge.” Cyn said there was pizza left if she fancied some.

“God, no. I can’t go eating pizza now. I can feel this whole lack of estrogen thing is already making me put on weight.” She patted her nonexistent stomach.

“But you’re as thin as a reed,” Cyn said.

“Yeah, right. Oliver Reed.”

Hugh looked thoughtful. “Look, I know I’ve been taking the piss, but seriously, Justin will come round, you know.” Harmony shook her head. “We were up all last night, talking. The bank has offered him a job in Dubai. He said we could carry on as we are—you know, seeing each other two or three times a week—or he could take the job. I told him to take it.”

“Do you really mean it?” Hugh asked. She said she did. “Deep down I knew it was never going to work. I mean he’s an earth sign. I’m a water sign. Together we just made mud.” She gave a soft laugh.

“What about his investment in the business?” Hugh said.

“My accountant says I can afford to buy him out.”

Cyn and Hugh came and sat next to her on the sofa. Hugh put his head on her shoulder. Cyn squeezed her hand. “It’ll be all right,” Cyn said. “You’ve got us.” “Thanks, guys,” she said. Then she perked up and said she wanted to talk about something less depressing. Hugh changed the subject back to Chelsea.

“Whadda cow,” Harmony said after she’d heard the story. “You know, where I come from, if a woman does the dirty on you, you make blinkin’ sure she gets what’s coming to her.”

“Hmm, that would be one approach,” Hugh came back, “though not one I would necessarily endorse. Holloway Prison isn’t really at its best this time of year.”

“Er, hello,” Cyn butted in, “can I say something here? Look, I don’t know yet if she even did it on purpose. I can’t go blasting in, accusing her. I will talk to her, though.”

“You just make sure you get to the
bottom
of it,” Harmony giggled.

“Oh, God, no more arse jokes, please,” Cyn groaned.

“Well, you have to admit,” Harmony said, “it is quite funny.”

As Cyn cleared away the plates and pizza remains, Harmony noticed Hugh’s screenplay lying on the coffee table.

“
My Brother, My Blood, My Life
by Hugh Thorpe Duff,” she read aloud. “Wow, hev-ee.” Hugh gave her an outline of the plot.

“You’re kidding me,” Harmony said with a confused, slightly nervous laugh. She was looking at Cyn, who was standing by the door violently shaking her head and motioning her to shut up. “This is a windup, right?”

“I’m absolutely serious,” he said, looking exceedingly put-out. “
My Brother, My Blood, My Life
is a classic example of film noir.” He looked over at Cyn. “And Cyn loves it—don’t you, Cyn?”

“I think it’s very powerful,” Cyn said diplomatically.

“I’m sorry,” Harmony said, putting an affectionate hand on Hugh’s knee. “Look, maybe it was daft trying it out on me. What do I know? We didn’t have too many art house cinemas where I grew up. We didn’t even have TV until I was ten. If we wanted to watch something we went to visit our washing at the Laundromat.”

Cyn took the plates out to the kitchen and put them in the dishwasher. When she came back Hugh was trying to educate Harmony in the loftier aspects of film noir.

“But I just find it so depressing and boring. No offense, ’Ewge, but it isn’t me. I’m more of a chick-flick girl.” She jumped up, went over to Cyn’s video shelf and ran her finger along the line of boxes. “Wow, I didn’t know you had this,” she said pulling out a copy of
Working Girl
. “It’s my all-time favorite film. Why don’t we put it on? I love the way Melanie Griffith kicks that Sigourney Weaver’s tight little arse after she steals her idea.”

Hugh let out a sigh. “Christ, I’ve seen it a thousand times.”

Cyn looked at her watch and realized she was due at her group in twenty minutes. “OK, guys, I’ve got to go. Stay and watch a vid if you want to.”

“You sure?” Harmony said.

“No problem. There’s more beer in the fridge. See ya.” As she stood in the hall putting on her coat, she could hear them still discussing the film.

“Oh, come on, ’Ewge,” Harmony was pleading, “I know it’s a bit plebeian and not some black-and-white Japanese thing with subtitles, but can’t we just chill out for a bit?”

“I’m perfectly happy to chill out,” he replied evenly. “I like a bit of escapism as much as the next person. But chick flicks are just so tedious and idiotic.”

“But you’re gay. Gay blokes are supposed to love chick flicks.”

“You’re right,” Hugh said, his sarcasm rising, “and we can watch it with me in a tank top, giving myself a leg, chest and back wax while at the same time whipping up a pomegranate mousse and arranging a vase of calla lilies. Ooh, why not go the whole hog and have a Judy Garland CD playing in the background?”

“Oh, for Chrissake, ’Ewge, get down from your blinkin’ high horse, will you? You know I didn’t mean anything.”

“I’m not remotely on my high horse.”

“Yes, you are. In fact your horse is so high I’m surprised you haven’t got altitude sickness. Anyway, I want to watch the film.”

“Well, I don’t.” Hugh’s arms were folded in childish defiance.

“OK,” Harmony said, “there’s only one way to settle this. Arm wrestling. Whoever wins gets their way.”

“Right, you’re on.”

As Cyn opened the front door, she could hear an occasional deep, primal grunt coming from the living room.

Chapter 3

Since the drive to therapy would take about twenty minutes, Cyn decided to phone her mum back as she’d promised. Of course now Barbara couldn’t remember the other thing she’d wanted to talk to Cyn about.

“There was definitely another reason I called. Now what was it? Oh, yes, I was talking to your cousin Miriam, you know—who got married last year while you were away. Anyway, she just had a baby boy. So sensible to get married and have a baby while you’re still in your twenties.”

Gawd. Cyn could practically read the sign. Welcome to Lectureville. Population: you.

“Mum, please. I’m thirty-two. Hardly any of my friends are married. I know you think my ovaries are shriveling as we speak, but I do have plenty of time.” Cyn screwed up her face. She knew precisely what was coming and had started to mouth the next part of her mother’s speech before she had even gotten going.

“OK, maybe at thirty-two your biological clock isn’t exactly going tick-tock, but it’s certainly going tick. And it’s been ages since you finished with that nice Mark.”

“No it hasn’t, it’s been three months.” Actually it had been three months, two weeks and five days. Three and a half months since she’d last had sex. If she carried on like this, pretty soon she would be qualified to go to the Vatican and hold master classes in celibacy. Of course she wasn’t about to admit to Barbara that she was missing having a man in her life. She and Grandma Faye would only get busy setting her up on blind dates with the grandsons and nephews of the women in Faye’s bridge club.

“Like I said, ages. Anyway,” Barbara went on, “it wasn’t your biological clock I wanted to talk to you about.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No. I just wanted to ask you if you agree with me that it’s in poor taste for Miriam to serve miniature frankfurters at the baby’s circumcision.”

Cyn giggled. “It’s up to her.”

“OK, I’ll get straight on to her mother and suggest Miriam has a rethink.”

“Mum, that’s not what I said.”

“Oh, by the way, I bumped into Sylvia Goldman the other day—you know, from the synagogue Ladies’ Guild. Turns out her daughter is your age and not married. Anyway she’s frozen some of her eggs. Sylvia promised she’d get her to ring you with the name of her gynecologist.”

For a while Cyn had been wondering what she was going to bring up at her therapy session. Now she had something: why she seemed incapable of getting her mother off her case.

“So what are you doing tonight?” Barbara asked. Cyn had blurted it out before she had time to think. “I’m on my way to therapy.”

“Darling, I really don’t understand all this therapy nonsense. You’re the sanest person I know. Why do you need therapy? I mean, it’s not like you’re mad. Not like your late Aunty Millie, God rest her soul. Your dad took her to see a therapist once because she had suicidal tendencies.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know, but I think the therapist made her pay in advance.” She giggled at her joke. “Seriously, though, is it me? Is it something I’ve done? Or your dad? You hate us because we called you Cynthia, don’t you? It was all your dad’s fault. Never forget that it was me who saved you from being called Yoko.”

“Mum, it’s nothing to do with my name.” One day she would discuss how Barbara’s cancer affected her, but she wasn’t ready yet. She didn’t want to hurt her—after all, her mother had been the one with the illness, the one who thought she was going to die. And even though Barbara had been clear of the disease for over twenty years, Cyn didn’t doubt that at the back of her mind, she still worried about the cancer returning. “I just find it hard to be assertive sometimes and therapy helps.”

“Of course, you get that from me. I’ve always been a bit of a shrinking violet.”

Cyn smiled to herself. Her mother was many things. Neither shrinking nor violet was among them.

The traffic was unusually heavy and Cyn arrived a few minutes late. There were no parking spaces outside Veronica’s house, so Cyn was forced to park around the corner. This was no bad thing she decided because it meant that when everybody left after the session, nobody would notice the Anusol ad.

Veronica always left the front door on the latch on group therapy nights so that clients could let themselves in. Cyn stepped into the hall and opened the door to Veronica’s large white office. There were four people plus Veronica sitting in a circle on hard black Ikea chairs. Cyn slipped in silently, hoping she looked sufficiently apologetic, and took the nearest empty seat. The woman who had been speaking broke off and looked up at Cyn. “Sorry I’m late,” Cyn whispered. “Traffic. Please, carry on.” The woman gave her a small smile. “I was just saying that sometimes I just don’t know who I am. I’m still really struggling with this whole identity crisis thing.”

“God, Jean,” Cyn said, “that must be awful, constantly trying to work out who is the real you.”

“My name is Jenny.”

“Omigod. Jenny. Of course you’re Jenny. I’m so sorry. You’ve been here for three months, how could I think you weren’t Jenny?” Cyn sat there, feeling her cheeks burn with embarrassment. Jenny was looking down, now fiddling with her nails.

“It’s all right, Cyn,” she said. “Not to worry. I know I don’t have very much impact on people. The thing is I just don’t know what to do to change.”

“I do.” It was Clementine, a bossy, Sloaney sex addict who worked as a fashion assistant on
Vogue
. “You’re forty-five. Losing the hair plait and calf-length florals might be a start.” Clementine could be blunt to the point of cruelty. Cyn watched Jenny recoil in shock.

“You know, Clementine,” Cyn came back. “I think that’s a bit much. I wonder why you always feel the need to be so unkind.”

“And I wonder,” Veronica broke in quietly, smiling at Cyn, “why you find it so easy to stick up for other people, but not yourself. Maybe you would like to say a bit more about that.”

Cyn shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, feeling cross with Veronica because she had managed to cast aside her good intentions about Jenny. She knew she needed to stand up to Veronica and tell her she was angry with her—practicing saying stuff like that was the main reason she was in group therapy—but she let it go.

It was hard to judge, but Cyn suspected most people in the group found Veronica as intimidating as she did. The woman had this quiet, almost smug confidence about her. Throughout the weekly one-and-a-half-hour session, she said very little. Instead she sat feet together, hands neatly folded in her lap, eyes constantly roving around the circle, watching and waiting for reactions and feelings to reveal themselves. Her silence and the fact that nobody knew anything about her beyond her name, address, telephone number and what they saw was, of course, very powerful. She revealed nothing about herself, while the group revealed everything.

She was in her late fifties, heavyset with thick ankles and an auburn bob so straight and symmetrical that it looked like it had been cut with the aid of a set square. Clotheswise she favored soft, elegant, loose-fitting layers, set off by chunky amber jewelry—very much the uniform of choice for postmenopausal Hampstead Brahmins who had piled on a few pounds lately.

Since it was the end of the month and payday, everybody had slipped a neatly folded check under the box of tissues that sat on the glass coffee table. Cyn had often noted how Veronica never discussed her fee beyond the first session. It was so British, she thought. She imagined how different it would be if this were New York instead of London. She couldn’t imagine a New York shrink having the same issues surrounding money. Quite the opposite, in fact: “OK, it’s March and these are my spring specials: schizophrenics and passive-aggressives half price. If you book now, there’s also a 20 percent reduction for hypochondriacs. This will include a complimentary MRI scan, a colonoscopy and a Barneys voucher. Also, look out for my twofer deals. Until April I’ll be taking on two anorexics for the price of one overeater.”

Just then, Ken, thirty-six, a deeply sensitive and earnest former Catholic priest who had left the priesthood three years ago and was still plucking up the courage to have sex (and whom Cyn was convinced had the hots for Clementine), turned toward Cyn. “I think Clementine was only trying to offer Jenny some constructive advice. I’m sure she meant no harm.” Cyn didn’t say anything. Instead she sat there wishing somebody would offer him some constructive advice along the lines of: “Ken, since you’re not actually Amish, have you considered the possibility that a beard with no mustache is not a great look?”

“Clementine’s right,” Jenny said. “Maybe my appearance is something I need to think about. Perhaps I could do with a bit of a makeover. I’ve been thinking about it for a while.” She turned to Clementine. “I want to thank you for having the courage to say what you did. It was important for me to hear it.” Poor Jenny, Cyn thought, you could mug her and she would put it down to a “valuable learning experience.”

Clementine offered Cyn a victorious smirk, then said she had something she would like to share with the group. “I finally managed to give up my car maintenance class.” She had started the course, not because she had the remotest interest in learning about car engines, but because it was somewhere to pick up men. “I only slept with nine of the men.” Cyn asked her how many there were in the course. Clementine stared down at her French manicure. “Eleven,” she said without looking up.

“Oh, but you’re getting there,” Jenny trilled. “I mean, Rome wasn’t built in a day and all that. You should be very proud of yourself.”

“I wish I could be proud of myself,” Sandra, a Jewish yo-yo dieter, was saying forlornly. “My mother says her postnatal depression began when I was born and won’t end until I get married. How do you live with all that guilt?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Clementine snapped. “Can’t you get her on Prozac?”

Sandra shook her head. “She tried it, but she says it interferes with her suffering.”

“You know,” Clementine said, “I think my insecurities stem back to when my mother used to come and meet me at school wearing a brown corduroy Donny Osmond cap. Before I came here, I spent ages trying to find the right support group.”

The jokey, most probably apocryphal story was typical of Clementine. In the time that Cyn had been in the group, she’d never heard Clementine talk about her past—at least not in any significant way, in a way that might explain her sex addiction. Whatever happened to her while she was growing up, she still wasn’t ready to go back and face it. Veronica would prompt her from time to time—try to encourage her to talk about her mother, who had apparently brought her up alone. Clementine would go silent for a while and lose herself in her thoughts. Occasionally her eyes would fill with tears, but after a minute or so she would come to, brush Veronica’s prompting aside and make another joke or smart remark. It seemed that as long as she was making smart remarks, she felt safe.

“That must have caused you such unbearable pain,” Ken said to Clementine about the Donny Osmond cap. His face etched with sympathy, he reached for the box of tissues and handed it to her.

By now, Jenny-with-the-identity-crisis was looking more distraught than ever. “I would like to know why Ken hands the tissues to Clementine when she’s upset, but when I’m upset he just ignores me. I mean, am I really that invisible? Doesn’t anybody recognize that I’m in pain, too?”

“Of course we do,” Cyn replied gently. But nobody backed her up. Everybody sat in silence because the truth was that apart from Cyn everybody found Jenny a complete pain in the arse.

The silence seemed to go on forever. Long silences were common during group therapy, but Cyn had never gotten used to them. She always felt the need to take control and say something. Anything. Hey, how many psychotherapists does it take to change a lightbulb? Just one, but the lightbulb must want to change. Boom, boom.

Veronica had often made the point that Cyn wasn’t responsible for the welfare of the group and that she needed to learn how to be comfortable with the silence. She tried, but it wasn’t easy. Right now, she focused on the small vase of flowers on the mantelpiece. She liked the way Veronica always took the trouble to make sure there were flowers in the room. Then she started looking at the Mondrian prints hanging on the white walls, the shelves full of books on psychodynamic theory.

It was Sandra Yo-yo who broke the silence. “You know,” she said morosely, pushing her dark curls behind her ears, “if I had to write my epitaph, it would read: Sandra—Eight Stone Three to Eleven Stone Six.” Everybody giggled at this, even Veronica, who didn’t laugh much as a rule.

“I’m sensing a great deal of repressed rage coming from you,” Ken said to Sandra. “I mean, when you’re overweight, there must be some kind of payoff.”

“Ken, you sound like you’ve swallowed a bloody therapy textbook,” Clementine said. “Veronica is the shrink, not you.”

He sat there clearly grappling with the put-down. Before he could say anything Cyn spoke. She had noticed the empty chair next to Jenny.

“I thought we were getting a new member tonight,” she said to Veronica.

“Yes. Jo is coming,” Veronica said, touching her amber necklace. “I got a message on my answer machine just before we started. Apparently there’s a burst water main along Camden Road.” More silence. “So, Cyn. Maybe you could share your feelings with the group about not being able to stand up for yourself.” Cyn thought for a moment. Her mind was a blank. She felt as if she had been put on the spot. It was a bit like being back at school and the French teacher asking her to conjugate an irregular verb she hadn’t learned. Then her mind suddenly flew back to an incident that had happened a few years ago when she was working as a nanny for an English family in Hong Kong.

The job had only been meant to last a year, but she’d stayed five. It was the usual story: agency finds nanny a job with nightmare mega-rich couple. Nanny is desperate to leave but can’t bear to abandon kids.

Tim and Mimi Clydesdale owned a vast colonial villa in Chung Hom Kok. When Barbara and Mal came to visit, Barbara took one look at the closets and said, “My God, you could sit twenty down to lunch in here.”