Dave was cheeky, happy-go-lucky. He spoke estuary English, he talked about blokes not chaps, geezers not guys, unlike her posher consorts. He liked pie and mash and liquor, pints of lager, a night out at the dogs. Okay, he wasn’t as rich as the others, but, as she’d found to her cost, money wasn’t everything, right? She made a decent wage. And Dave had a very decent job halfway up a very ambitious ladder in the world of maritime insurance.
When she’d met him, at a bar in Spitalfields, she had viewed laugh-a-minute Dave as a work in progress. He wasn’t her usual impressive, finished article; he was someone who seemed impressed by her. He said he was lucky to have met her. Said she was different. Feisty, funny, classy. And she’d liked him, before he’d revealed his irritating true colours on that sixth date. (In hindsight, she wondered, did he have a rule? Six dates and it all hangs out?) He’d relaxed, got comfortable, too comfortable. He began referring to women as ‘birds’. Stroking his stomach as though it were a puppy. Eating with his mouth open. Her heart had sunk as swiftly as his decorum had deserted him.
For Paris’s sake, she’d valiantly tried to pretend the true colours weren’t shining through. She’d tried to ignore the fact that he was absolutely terrible in bed. When he’d laughed her into it that first month, he’d seemed quite good (although she was really drunk) but subsequent encounters had proved highly unsatisfying. Imogen had to do all the work, she had to go on top, he’d eaten too much, his ‘belly’ was hurting, could she shift over to the left a bit…?
The awful truth was that he was as far from her perfect man as you could get. She knew that even if he was the marrying kind, any proposal from him would be highly indecent and wholly unwelcome.
Only her good friends knew it, but Imogen wanted to get married. To everyone else, she put on a pretty good act of thinking it was all a load of rubbish, this marriage lark – she was ballsy, she was career driven, she took no nonsense or prisoners – but she wanted it. She wanted The Day, the years, the life; she wanted to be someone’s wife. When it finally happened, she would surprise everyone who didn’t know her as well and say she was trying marriage out as a giddy experiment, that if she made it to seven years like Madonna and Guy Ritchie it would be something. That it was a hoot, a mad adventure. But deep down she took it all quite seriously. That’s what this succession of no-hopers had all been about. Her end game was for one of these men to turn out to be amazing. Amazing enough to be her perfect husband.
One of these days, one of her Good on Papers would come up with all the goods.
Dave, less Good on Paper and pretty dreadful everywhere else, was never going to be that amazing guy. Imogen should have known it. She laughed to herself bitterly that she ever thought he was remotely marriage material, that she went to dinner after dinner with him hoping he’d magically become someone else.
If he had acted strangely protective over his bags or had anxiously patted his jacket pocket, as though checking something was there, at the start of the many amazing meals they’d had in Paris, she would have had a blue fit. The man was repugnant.
Three hours after she’d silent-screamed on the balcony, Imogen was on the Eurostar, sitting across from a slumbering Dave who was soporific from carbs and several hot chocolates with squirty cream and marshmallows. His eyes were firmly shut, greasy eyelids twitching slightly; hers were fully open. She not only saw the wood for the trees, she saw the entire forest and it was desolate and scrappy.
She’d had it. Men were a waste of time. Useless, hopeless, feckless disappointments, every one of them. She didn’t want to get married! What was she thinking? Why be saddled with one of the losers? She had a good life, a good job and good friends. It wasn’t like she even believed in love. Or wanted it. Love had happened to her once – just the once – and she had come out of it very, very badly. Love was not for her.
She didn’t even want to go out with any of these no-hopers any more. She was dumping Dave as soon as they stepped foot back on English soil and he’d put his last fast-food wrapper in the bin. And then she was swearing off men. For good.
Frankie’s silent scream was made at the sink, after another unappreciated Sunday roast. Three and a half hours it had taken her. Three and a half hours! Roast beef, roast potatoes, six – six! – different types of veg because the fussy so-and-sos all liked different things, Yorkshire puds, stuffing and gravy. The whole bloody works. For her family to wolf it down in five minutes without a word of praise or thanks; abandon all their plates amongst cutlery scattered like dropped straws; and push back their chairs, leaving them all out from the table like boats in a flotilla.
She was left sitting alone at the kitchen table, as usual, unhappily polishing off all the roast potatoes because she’d damn well cooked them and they were really nice, not that that any of those ungrateful sods had the consideration to tell her so. Well, her three-year-old had grinned whilst eating one, before she’d taken it out of her mouth with her hand and gleefully mushed it onto the table. It was a kind of appreciation, Frankie supposed.
From the rest of those ingrates there had not been one expression of thanks, not one murmur or slight hint that anything was remotely delicious, or even just passable. Or even edible. Although they did eat it. Some of them. Some of it. Not enough. Not enough for the slaving she’d done.
Her cheeks were bright red from the oven, her hair had frizzed up from the vapour off the vegetable pans; she had an exclamation mark of gravy on her white, straining T-shirt.
As Frankie scraped four whole starving children in Africa’s meals into the stinky pedal bin and clattered the dirty plates into the sink, her silent scream spiralled upwards like steam from a boiling kettle.
Last night Frankie had run away for the night to the local GetAway Lodge. An out-of-the-blue, unprecedented, solo flight away from the house and the husband and the four children. A long-overdue escape.
She’d been dreaming of it for months. Every now and then, in that house, she had imagined what it would be like to just take off to the local budget hotel, on her own, for a night of solitude. For a single night away from it all. She’d had that GetAway room in her mind’s eye like a beacon in the dark. She’d craved it. She could see it. She could almost smell it. Clean, sterile. A navy blue headboard and a single, solitary scatter cushion. An inexplicable strip of shiny material running near the bottom of the bed. A dark brown wooden unit housing a television. A black and silver kettle. A small wicker basket containing packets of not-very-nice biscuits and diddy milk cartons and sachets of sugar and sweeteners: these meagre offerings would have to be supplemented with a carrier bag of chocolate and treats from the nearby service station.
There would be a bathroom that smelt of bleach and had three toilet rolls, one on the holder and a tower of two on the floor, on a silver stick thing. A single wardrobe with hangers that couldn’t be wrenched from the rail. A rough, thin dark blue carpet.
She would add magazines, a book and silence. Bliss. Peace and quiet. No one to talk to. No one to talk to her. No one to bother her. More than just ‘me’ time. Way more. Time to save herself.
Yesterday, she’d finally gone. She’d fled to The GetAway Lodge on reaching the end of an extremely frayed tether that had been fraying for years.
It had been just after three on Saturday afternoon and Frankie had been upstairs considering whether to tidy the children’s bedrooms or not. They were all absolute tips and if she tidied they would only be absolute tips again in a couple of days. What was the point? She’d decided not to bother. On her way down she’d noticed an open screwdriver set on the hall floor and was coming to tell her husband, Rob, off about it. She found her family in the sitting room and had stood in the doorway, surveying the scene.
The