‘So shall we go through these slides then, Tom?’ I say.
‘You know what?’ says Jeff. ‘I’ve got a better idea. We’re not going to get through these slides in eight minutes and still have time to talk through product. I’m doing some work on cheese next week, but let’s meet up the week after to go through the pizzas. You and me. The product should have moved on by then anyway.’
‘Good idea,’ says Tom. ‘I’ll set up a time.’
‘No, that’s OK, I’ll do it with Susie directly,’ says Jeff, smiling at me. ‘We can do it together. Just the two of us. If that’s OK with you, Susie?’
‘Yes!’ I say. ‘If that’s what you want. That would be more … efficient. And you’re so busy, aren’t you, Tom? That’s a great idea, Jeff,’ I say, meeting his look with a smile.
‘I think I should be there,’ says Tom. ‘To answer any questions.’
‘No!’ I say. ‘I mean, of course you’re welcome to come but I can email you afterwards if Jeff can’t answer something … if that’s OK with you, Tom?’
‘S’pose so …’ says Tom.
‘Listen,’ says Jeff, touching my arm lightly. ‘I’ve got to run. Great to meet you, Suzy Q. Good luck with the whips and I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.’ He looks again at my business card, smiles, then tucks it into his trouser pocket.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ says Tom, after he’s gone. ‘Jeff’s quite outspoken, he’s a bit of a maverick.’
‘Don’t be silly, that’s fine,’ I say. I like mavericks, especially hot ones. ‘Do you know Jeff well then?’ I say.
‘What do you mean?’
Do you know if Jeff has a girlfriend?
‘I mean do you work closely with him?’ I say.
‘Not really. He’s only been here about six months. Right, can I show you these charts?’
If you must. And for the entire hour that Tom’s taking me through the forty-eight slides he’s prepared, the only thing I can think about is the way Jeff touched my arm. And that sly smile on his face when he put my card in his pocket. And the way he looked at me; really looked at me.
It’s been a long time since someone’s looked at me that way.
Saturday
Some Saturdays I wake up, and before I’ve even managed to get out of bed a little grey cloud comes to join me under the duvet. The weekend should be the highlight of your week, should it not? Should. Now there’s a word.
When Jake and I split up, my best friend Polly told me something her therapist had said after Polly’s first husband, Spencer, walked out on her when she was seven months pregnant:
‘“Should” is the worst word in the English language.’
Funny, because I always thought the worst word was ‘jism’.
But no: ‘should’ should be eradicated from the dictionary. (Although you see what just happened there?) ‘Should’ means you want people or situations to be a certain way. But they’re not that way at all. ‘He shouldn’t have abandoned his pregnant wife.’ But he did. ‘I shouldn’t still miss my ex.’ But I do. Weekends ‘should’ be the highlight of the week.
Yet some Saturdays when I wake up, all I can see before me is a vast stretch of time that I’m supposed to fill up with ‘stuff’. And ‘good’ stuff. Fun, meaningful, stimulating stuff. Not just lying in bed, watching DVDs, eating ice cream stuff, because that would make me a loser.
As much as I hate my day job, at least there’s always stuff to do. Stuff I’m paid to do. Pointless stuff. Soul-destroying stuff. But at least it’s stuff that I have to do or else there’ll be a repercussion involving immediate pain. If I stay in bed all weekend watching Ryan Gosling movies there’s no pain. In fact there’s the opposite of pain. But where will it ever get me?
I’m lucky though. I have good friends. Friends from school, from uni, from all over. Yet when I stand back and look at how our lives have turned out, it seems that I’m the only one still hanging out here on the ledge of singleness. Everyone else has been busy, busy, busy. They’ve been having babies and twins and sometimes up to three babies, though not all at once. They’ve been moving to bigger houses, moving to the country. Buying Farrow & Ball paints, building glass extensions, razing, gutting and expanding into loft space. The only thing gutted in my flat is me.
Of course they haven’t all had a smooth ride. Take Polly, who’s coming round for dinner later with our friend from school, Dalia. After Polly’s first husband walked out she spent two years bringing up her little girl Maisie on her own. But Polly would never think of herself as a leftover; she got on with life without a fuss. Maybe when you have a kid whom you have to put first then it’s easy, though it didn’t look easy.
And then she met Dave, and Dave is amazing and it didn’t bother him in the slightest that Polly wasn’t young and perfect and baggage-free. He proposed after three months, down on one knee, singing Sinatra’s ‘All of Me’, in their local curry house. The wedding’s in six weeks’ time and I cannot wait to dance away the ghost of Spencer and celebrate Polly and Dave’s union. If anyone deserves all the happiness it’s Polly. And men like Dave restore your faith in the universe. Shame there’s only one of him in the universe.
And then of course there’s Dalia: successful and gorgeous and thick as four short planks where men are concerned. ‘Better to have loved and lost …’ That is so entirely not true when it comes to Dalia and Mark. Honestly I think Tennyson would have developed writer’s block when faced with making sense of the on/off relationship between Dalia and that douche ‘property-developer’ (i.e. trumped-up estate agent) Mark Dawson.
Perhaps, after considerable pondering, with quill in mouth, Tennyson might have come up with the following:
‘Better to have never loved. In fact better to have stayed home watching TOWIE repeats than to have wasted so much time at the beck and call of an odious man-boy who tells you, through word and deed, that you’re not quite good enough for him. Where is thy self-respect, girl? The man is clearly a cock-head.’
But I don’t suppose Tennyson would have used a word like cock-head.
So yes, there are worse things than being single. And there are worse things than being alone.
The girls are coming round at 7 p.m., and even though Polly’s meant to be on a pre-wedding diet, she’s asked me to make spag bol – her favourite. Dalia is off the carbs, since Mark poked her in the thigh a few weeks ago and just shook his head. But it pains me that a paunch-laden forty-four-year-old man dares criticise my friend’s weight. She’s been shrinking ever since she met him.
So I’ll make the spag bol. And if Dalia wants to eat the bolognese sauce on broccoli instead of spaghetti, that’s up to her. But after a glass of wine she’ll probably be herself again, at least for a while. And I’ll make the brownie pudding. Then I can take some in for Sam on Monday morning.
First things first though, chores: put the laundry on, tidy the flat, do the recycling. I head to the recycling bins round the corner armed with my cardboard wine delivery box, filled with bottles. Thank goodness no one I work with lives in my area and has ever witnessed me at these bins on a Saturday morning. Every time I stand here I curse myself for not having removed the thick tape from these boxes back in my flat, and yet I never do. Because now, not only do I look like an alcoholic (six glass bottles smashing the message home) I also look like I’m drunk. I mean, like I am currently drunk at 9 a.m., not just I am a drunk. I try to tear the tape but it won’t come off so I try to pull the box apart but it’s tougher to rip than the Yellow Pages. I stand wrestling with it like an old souse in a pub brawl. I grunt a bit, pull and shake it, then try