But when he got off that plane …
I decided to take in the entire airport experience, make it a positive thing. I went and had my hair done – not cut, just done, which made me feel like a TV weathergirl. I quite liked pretending to be the kind of person who had their hair done, however it may have clashed with the ladder in the inside leg of my tights (you could hardly see it). There isn’t that much you can do with a heavy scrunch of unshiny brown curly stuff, but they tried their best and made lots of interested-sounding noises when I mentioned I was here to pick up my boyfriend from the airport as he’d been in America.
I kept getting flashbacks. That time he walked into my office at eleven o’clock in the morning, straight past the vulture brigade, into the office, pulled down the blind, and gave me one right there. The time we got absolutely rollocksed and tried to break into St Paul’s Cathedral. That time the central heating broke down and we both refused to get up and get any food and stayed in bed for fifteen hours and we both peed out of the window … That time he ‘went to comfort an old friend’ for three days and I never found out who, or where … That time I met his mum and dad – oh no, I never did.
I blocked out the bad thoughts from my head, and decided that this time there were definitely going to be ground rules. If he wanted to come back, it was going to be on my terms. This time, Fran would be proud of me.
OK: we’d have lots of togetherness. No more him vanishing with the lads … But then, what if I was just being all clingy and wouldn’t leave him alone and he got really, really bored and I did too and we ended up just staying in and saying things like, ‘Err, do you want to go to the cinema then?’ ‘Errr … don’t mind …’ ‘What do you want to go and see?’ ‘Don’t mind …’ until we both killed ourselves! Maybe nitch that one then.
OK, we’d have lots of open public affection. Not snogging, necessarily, but a bit of hand-holding wouldn’t go amiss, so he didn’t look like my cousin from the attractive end of the family if I ever met anyone I knew.
And he could at least try and get on with my friends. Although they all hated him.
I phoned Fran again.
‘Leave me alone. You are no longer my friend. You fraternize with the untouchable ones.’
‘Fraaan.’ My genuine panic was beginning to show through.
‘OK. Here’s one test. He’s been away for ten months, right?’
‘Yep. I’ve had my hair done.’
‘Oh, that’s pretty subtle … Anyway, he’s been away for ten months. After vanishing completely and never contacting you again …’
‘Apart from the postcard.’
‘The postcard you got two days ago when he remembered he’d left Charlie in the shit and needed to find somewhere else to stay.’
‘Mmm.’
‘OK. Those are the facts. You are dumb enough to be there waiting for him. As a hypothetical test, one might think it would be the least little considerate thing he could do to buy you a present, right?’
‘Oh, Alex doesn’t really believe in giving presents. He thinks it’s bourgeois.’
Now what was she sighing for?
‘God, Mel, what are you doing? Tell me you’re not putting him up.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Fantastic. Have you told Linda about the new addition to your jolly little Kennington family?’
‘Oh, she’ll be fine. She won’t say anything.’
‘That means the same thing, does it?’
I was getting too upset to talk. I mean, what did my best friend since age four know about my life anyway?
‘Mel, you know I wouldn’t say anything if I wasn’t worried about you and if I didn’t care about you, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I mumbled ungratefully.
‘Give me a ring when he gets in then. When’s that going to be?’
‘Ehmm, anywhere in the next fifteen hours.’
‘OK. Cool. Bye.’
It was true. Alex did a horrid, horrid thing to me. It’s just, oh, Alex’s problems – where to start? Public school, weird distant parents who divorced early, that whole deal. I was psychologically-tastic when it came to Alex. When I’d met him he’d just emerged from his last finding-his-own-anus phase in Goa. Well, I wasn’t going to be his doormat any more.
Oh good, only six hours to go.
Wanting to avoid another ear-bashing, but desperate for someone to talk to, I phoned Amanda. Some bloke picked up the phone.
‘Hello, is Amanda there?’
‘No, she’s not. Can I take a message?’
I recognized that accent!
‘Frase! Hi, it’s Melanie!’
There was a pause.
‘Melanie …’
‘Melanie Pepper. You remember! Mel!’
Jesus.
‘Oh, hi, hi there. Yes. What are you up to these days?’
Oh, I’m just sitting in Heathrow Airport, where I’ve turned up fifteen hours early by mistake, having my hair set and waiting for my selfish ex-boyfriend who left me in shit nearly a year ago, and whom I still haven’t got over, to – possibly – return from America, having walked out of my job this morning with no explanation.
‘Oh, you know … usual stuff.’
‘Right, great.’
God! Could we be any more scintillating?
‘So, congratulations!’ I said heartily. ‘You’re marrying my old buddy!’
I tried to imagine him bending over to kiss Amanda, but I couldn’t make it fit. His curly hair would fall in her eyes. She’d hate that.
He laughed nervously. ‘So it seems.’
‘And you’re a laird!’ I added, helpfully.
‘Yes, right, yes. Anyway, can I give her a message?’
‘Ooooh … no message, actually. Just phoned for a girlie chat.’
‘Right. OK. Bye.’
I often had romantic dreams of what it would be like to bump into an old crush from the past, when their eyes would be opened and they would see me anew: suave, sophisticated and thrillingly desirable. Although played out in a variety of exotic locales, the two things the fantasies had in common were that they normally included the crushee remembering who I was, and then giving a shit. Me, and my hair, were starting to flop.
Stuff it. I was going back to basics. I called my mum. I owed her a call. Well, about nine, actually. My mum was sweet – really sweet; I mean, she bakes – but definitely a traditionalist in every sense of the word. She had looked like Miriam Margolyes since even Miriam Margolyes hadn’t looked like Miriam Margolyes. I was convinced that really she was only about forty and deeply frivolous but put an old mum costume on every day and got the rolling pin out. It was the only way to explain me, anyway.
‘Hi, Mum. How are you?’
‘Melanie, I’ve just this second been talking about you.’
Given that talking about me and Stephen, my elder brother, was my mother’s favourite thing after baking, this wasn’t surprising. Other non-surprising