Twenty Something (6 page)

And so I suddenly felt lower than I had done for ages. There Leila was in all her perfection, holding out for Mr Perfect and I was moping around on Valentine's Day feeling like a lonely loser. And perhaps the worst thing about feeling like a lonely loser is that you soon start acting like a lonely loser. It's a self-fulfilling vicious circle.

I reached for my mobile and composed a lonely-loser text to Lucy: ‘Missing you so much today. Thinking of you even more than usual'. It wasn't strictly speaking a lie. I'd thought about Lucy very little recently, and today I was thinking about her a little more than a little. But the sentiment was false and the
motives were self-pity and loneliness. I filled the remaining ninety-seven characters of the text with kisses — 2.5 for every day since I'd last kissed her. Options, send, search, scroll — she was the fourth name under L in my phone book after Laura, Lois and London Transport.

Which is pretty much where she ranks in my affections at the moment. Marginally below the Underground helpline, marginally above Ludlow Thompson, the house-letting agency.

Lucy is three years older and wiser than Leila and so far too practised in the rules of the game to text me back straight away. She also knows my excitability too well to reply instantly and get my hopes up. In fact, she practically wrote the rules of the game herself.

So the cunning little character didn't get in touch until this afternoon. And her text sounded all the right notes with such accuracy that I reckon she took half an hour composing it straight away on Monday, saved it and sent it with only a few edits today.

‘I missed you too big boy', it said. ‘Didn't really compare to last year's v day, did it?! Why don't you come round tonight and I'll cook for you? Wld be good to catch up.'

And in those four simple sentences you have irrefutable evidence that women are a more evolved species than men. ‘Big boy' — makes me feel special and sexy. Reminder of last year's Valentine's Day — I surprised her with a candlelit London Eye trip, after which we stayed up all night making the beast with two backs and a funny-shaped middle. Cooking — she's a wonderful cook. Motive of visit — catching up only, which arouses my hunter-gatherer instinct. It's a mini masterpiece.

I press options, reply, include original text — she had two characters left and didn't even include a kiss. She's never done that before.

But when I go round to her flat after work, I know that this is going to be the least of my worries. She's wearing a short, floaty skirt that's more suited to July than February. She leans forward to peck me on the cheek, which feels weird, as she's never kissed me on the cheek before. We'd kissed properly the first time we'd met. And that was over three years ago.

But the peck on the cheek turns into a quick peck on the lips. She hugs me tight. I can feel her breasts against my chest. I cup my hands around her face and start to kiss her properly. She slides one of her slender legs in between mine.
Oh Jack
, she was moaning now, her curves pushed up against me, her crotch taut against my bulging trousers, her hands gripping fistfuls of my hair. She reaches for my belt. I groan too. In expectation.

And then I'm inside her, and everything is pure white as we're lost in a commotion of grunts and squeaks, flashing unconnected images and explosions of a million little particles.

And the very worst thing was that, the moment we'd finished, I felt absolutely nothing. It was the most intense physical experience of my life; it was the least emotional. It wasn't making love, it was shagging. It was animalistic. It was bloody good. But I've felt more emotional connection shaking a friend's hand than I did in those brief moments of sweaty frotting. She had gone from being an unobtainable object of desire to an object of possession. And by repossessing her, I had nothing left in myself.

I stayed the night — she begged me to — when all I really wanted was to leave and go home and wash the smell of her away. And as she lay there cradled in my arms in our favourite spoons position, I knew that I was cuddling the past and not the future. She made me breakfast the next day. I kissed her on the forehead. And when she said, ‘Goodbye', I think she meant it. And when I said, ‘See you around', I'm pretty sure I didn't want to.

I had to go into work via Marks and Spencer's to buy a clean shirt. I didn't want to look like the kind of dirty stopout who had spent the previous evening with his ex-girlfriend after acting on a lonely-loser text message.

There was a card shop next to M&S so I popped in and had an idle browse through the reduced Valentine's merchandise. I realised with a jolt that this was the first year that I hadn't sent any cards at all since I was thirteen and sent one to myself at school (which doesn't really count). I bought one I thought Leila might like.

‘Saving up for next year?' asked the smiley cashier.

‘Er, no. Have just been a bit disorganised,' I mumbled.

‘Ah. In trouble with the lady, are we?'

‘You could say that.'

I tuck it into my jacket and get into a mercifully empty lift at work.
This time I'm not going to screw it up, this time I'm not going to screw it up
— I repeat my mantra to myself. Round one: Shredded flowers and a little love loch of awkwardness. Round two: Piss-poor coffee conversation. Round three: A clumsily botched email seduction on Valentine's Day. Round four: Knockout.

Leila's away from her desk, so I pluck out the embarrassingly large red envelope, hide it under my copy of the
Financial Times
(with which it clashes hideously) and open up a document on my computer so that I can have several goes at writing and editing the perfect droll message. After ten minutes or so, I've got it pretty much sussed. I open the card to transcribe it and, bugger me if the little bastard doesn't start playing a song. ‘I believe in miracles, since you came along, you sexy thing', etc.

I slam the card shut, but it's already too late. Not only are half the office looking in my direction, but Leila has returned from her meeting and is looking over my shoulder sniggering. Buddy is looking over her shoulder in fits of hysterics. I just
have sufficient presence of mind to minimise the document on my screen before Buddy launches into prosecutor mode.

‘Nice shirt, Jacko, boy. You've ironed it in such a strange way that it looks like it's come straight out of a packet this morning.'

‘Very good, Buddy. It did come out of a packet this morning.'

‘Dirty stopout. Who's the lucky lady?'

Was it my imagination, or did I see Leila wince at this point?

‘Rick was the lucky lady. I kipped over at his.'

‘And is the card for Rick, as well?' He delivers his killer line.

A little titter goes up around our section of the room. Twenty of the capital's premier bankers laughing at a gay joke.

Leila: ‘No, it's for his granny. It's a follow-up to the flowers.'

The little cow of a crowd-pleasing sheep (if that makes any biological sense). Only she and I really understand the significance of her jibe, but it stings like someone's rubbed citrus-flavoured excrement in my eyes. The crowd roars. Mingers have to crack funny jokes. Pretty girls only have to make an approximate stab at humour.

I sink lower into my seat as Buddy twirls Leila around to the polyphonic tones of Hot Chocolate's hit. I don't believe in miracles. Water into wine? A magician could do that. But I could certainly do with a few conjuring tricks in my current excuse for a life.

Came back from work to find Flatmate Fred hopping around with another letter in his hands. It went like this:

 

Dear Mr Hardy,

Thank you for your ‘ashamed and remorseful' letter. How considerate of you to lighten the workload of the Royal
Mail and deliver it by hand. I must apologise for the delay in replying; it took us a few weeks to wipe away the soil.

Thank you also for the kind donation of
£
1.25. Although this is approximately 0.5% of the value of the stolen winter-flowering cherry, it did allow me to buy a small
café latte
on the way home from work.

You mention the forbidden fruit. I'm sure I don't have to remind you what happened to Adam and Eve after eating the apple. If you don't want to be sent forth from the Garden of Eden that is Onslow Mews, to till the ground whence you were taken, I suggest you come up with a more weighty sum of money in the very near future.

Otherwise I would recommend that you ask Alcoholics Anonymous for your money back and donate it to a more suitable charity, such as Legal Aid.

Kind regards,
Bertrand Rogers MBE
(aka Flower Person)

‘Oh buggeroonies. We're doomed,' says Flatmate Fred when I've finished reading the letter. ‘Shotgun, Big Black Ron takes you up the bum first in jail.'

‘No, we're not,' I reply calmly. ‘All we have to do is find a bit of extra cash and Mr Rogers will leave us alone.'

‘But he's threatening us. He's going to prosecute us.'

‘No, he's not. He's just playing Billy Big-Bollocks. We'll pay him and then he'll leave us alone.'

I can see Flatmate Fred is still unconvinced. But then I look at the letter again and realise that it was addressed to him directly with the correct address.

‘Fred, how the hell did Mr Rogers know your name and address when you wrote him an anonymous letter signed “Stupid White Men”?'

‘Er, because I wrote it on headed notepaper.'

‘You silly, silly tit. You can find the money yourself.'

My fitness obsession has got so bad that, as well as having my corporate membership, I've now joined a local gym.

I don't know why I bother. I mean, it's hellish: the overweight women who look like they were poured into their Lycra and forgot to say when; the work-shy layabouts spending their dole money on Lucozade; the bored housewives who drive to the gym, walk on a treadmill while watching MTV, eat a Mars bar to celebrate the successful completion of their exercise routine, and then drive home again. Not to mention the middle-aged losers attempting to pull (the only time they'll hear heavy breathing is on the running machine); the city traders trying to out-stomach-crunch the intern; or the Nuremberg workout classes with rows of people slavishly aping the hectoring instructions of the short, moustachioed person at the front.

On the plus side, I now look a little better naked as long as I take a big breath and hold it in for several minutes.

Leila's intended Valentine Card followed Leila's intended flowers into the shredder at work today, playing the little electronic ditty as it went. The final requiem of mangled miracles.

I had thought of presenting it to her anyway — a grand, sweeping, comedic gesture — but she had annoyed me so much with her ‘Granny' jibe that she was still in the doghouse as far as I was concerned. But when I got back from the shredder room, there was an email waiting for me.

To: Jack Lancaster
From: Leila Sidebottom
Subject: Sorry
Wednesday 23rd February 10.28

Hey Jack, I just wanted to apologise for my joke about the card on Friday! I felt like a complete cow as soon as I said it!! Poor you, you looked so embarrassed! I hope you weren't offended. It looked like a really sweet card, and I'm sure the lucky girl who received it was very touched. Can I buy you a drink some time to apologise properly?!?

L
xx

OK, rather too many exclamation marks, but a five-star email regardless. Two kisses at the end — admittedly not capital ones — but two kisses nonetheless. And she signed it ‘L' — L for Lucky Leila, L for love, lust and longing.

Play it cool, Jack,
I thought.
Leave her to stew a little. Make her feel really guilty. Feign an aura of aloof mystique.

I emailed her back three minutes later with four kisses. We're going for a drink on Monday. And then I went to the gym to work on my abs a little more.

L for Lancaster. L for loser.

This is hell at work. Now that Leila is sitting so close to me, I can't concentrate on anything at all. She has to walk past me to get a coffee or to go to the loo, and I spend half the day trying to catch her eye and elicit a glass-shattering smile. I'm finding my Lent fast a little tougher than I thought.

Returned home to find Flatmate Fred dressed in a suit.

‘Are you going out?' I ask.

Most people get up in the morning and put on a suit to go to work. Then they come home and change into jeans before going out in the evening. Flatmate Fred gets up in the afternoon and stays in his dressing gown until 6pm. Then he gets changed into a suit to go out on the town.

‘No,' he says morosely. ‘I've just had an interview.'

I thought I'd misheard him. Flatmate Fred never uses the ‘I' word. An interview is the first step towards having a job, and that's a fate worse than death.

‘What for?'

‘Data entry.'

I snigger.

‘It's not bloody funny. I've got no transferable marketplace skills and I need to pay Mr Rogers
£
300 hush money so they don't set Big Black Ron on me.'

I think this is just about as bloody funny as you can get.

‘Why don't you get your dad to help you out?'

‘Cos he's a blinking accountant and he makes me produce spreadsheets every month on how I spend my allowance. You know how he's subsidising my writing career. This is his way of keeping tabs on me. I can't put down “Miscellaneous — one stolen
Prunus subhirtella
”. He'd kill me.'

I reflect that, if I were a financial whiz of a father and had a son like Flatmate Fred, I'd probably kill him anyway.

But Flatmate Fred is adamant. He's going to install broadband internet at home and do the first week of honest work in his life. And then he's going to pay the Flower People to keep the bum-police at bay. I almost offered to bail him out myself, but he seems so energised by his new sense of purpose that I leave him be.