The speed with which my stomach hit the floor on hearing Nicholas’s nasal whine made me realize how much I really, really wanted to hear from Alex. Only to tell him a thing or two, of course. Or listen to him grovel. Where the fuck had Nicholas got this number anyway? I thought of Linda. She paid me back for not doing the washing-up in a myriad of different little ways.
‘Anyway, yeah, I’m pretty busy with all my friends, right. We’re off on some accountants’ night out. God, they’re nutters! But, hey, I might have some time on Tuesday night …’
Nicholas, it’s Monday now, you plank. Not that I had anything planned, but God, of course I’m not going to say yes at that kind of notice!
‘… or Wednesday, maybe … We could go out somewhere nice. Hey, give me a ring, it’s 555 8923 – just ask for Crazy Nick, they all know me here! Hyaw! Hyaw! Ciao!’
Ciao? Suddenly I felt as depressed as I’ve ever felt in my entire life – or at least, in a month or so. This was it then. I was going to get niggled at in a shitty job I didn’t care about, go to my so-called friends’ fabulous engagement parties, live with someone who thought hoovering was a positive life choice, drink sludge instead of espresso, and date men who said ‘ciao’ until I got too old and ugly to date anyone at all.
I slumped down on my desk – the enormous mounds of paper gave it a cushioning effect – and reached out to switch off the speaker mode.
‘A new message has been added to your voice mail,’ said the mechanical voice.
Immediately, I knew.
I pressed ‘2’. An annoying voice in my head was singing, ‘He’s coming home, he’s coming, Alex is coming home, he’s coming home …’
BEEP
‘Mel, hey, it’s me … like, how’re you doing?’ People in the background. I could feel that big lazy grin of his spreading over his face and therefore mine. ‘It’s four o’clock in the morning, we’re just hanging out … where the fuck are we?’ ‘The Village’ – American woman’s voice. Dirty. ‘Yeah, it’s absolutely brilliant and I am cummminngg’, he started to sing, ‘hooommmee tooooo yewwwww.’ There was laughter in the background, a couple of ‘whoops’, then a pause, then: ‘Hey, babe – I’ll be at Heathrow. Today.’ And then he hung up.
Oh. Oh! Chuffing hell. Every cell in my body renegotiated itself, and I shivered all over. Oh God. How was I going to cope? I would have to clean my bedroom for a start. And buy new pants. And start cooking again, boohoo. Could I reduce the size of my arse by – when? When was his today? Was it today or was it tomorrow? Piss! I started panicking. Why couldn’t he tell me when his stupid flight gets in? He obviously hadn’t been promoted from the space cadet corps.
Of course I would have to go. It never occurred to me otherwise. The adrenaline was coursing through my body: I felt as if I’d won; like I’d beaten America, his wanderlust and, well, any other lusts he might have experienced in passing. He was coming home. I was practically jumping up and down on the spot and decided to walk out immediately. Who would notice? Hey, it wasn’t like I walked out over emotional crises a lot! Well … maybe occasionally.
Alex was coming back! Alex was coming back! He loved me! He loved me! I looked pitifully at the beautiful handwritten note my boss had left me vis-à-vis the delicate diplomatic situation between us and the marketing department, and decided to leg it. I took a deep breath, strode out in front of the secretaries, and announced, rather too loudly, ‘Oh God, meetings all day. Ha! You know what it’s like!!!’ – then bolted, leaving them behind, hissing slightly. Free!
All the way to Heathrow I bounced up and down in the carriage like a toddler. Terminal Four was mobbed and I wandered off to buy myself a load of make-up and some magazines – who knew, he may be some time. I was just considering buying some shampoo and washing my hair when it hit me.
He’d phoned at nine o’clock. From New York. At 4 a.m. his time. And now it was twenty past eleven. Half past six in the morning? He probably hadn’t even gone to bed, never mind got up, packed, swallowed his hangover, got to the airport, checked in for two hours, got on the plane, watched a couple of films, got drunk again and got here. Yes, it appeared I might well have time to wash my hair.
I was back in the Land of Alex; the place that made me go completely out of my fucking head.
ARRRGGGH. I was the skeggiest creature in the universe. No one in the world could ever have been such a twat before. I counted it up on my fingers. The earliest he could possibly be here would be 6 p.m. I twisted about in an agony of indecision. A part of me wanted to wait, right here. A part of me wanted to get on a plane and jump out and meet him halfway. NONE of me wanted to go back to the office with my tail between my legs. What I really wanted was to turn back time and have none of this ever happen. Simultaneously clenching my buttocks and hopping up and down, I wondered what the hell to do.
Of course, when in doubt, one should always phone one’s closest confidante for their deep love and support.
‘I would say the best thing to do now is break into airport security where they keep all the confiscated firearms, confiscate one and hit him with a sniper bullet before he can make it to baggage control.’
‘Frraaannn! I’ve got to wait all day and I don’t know what to do!’
‘Grow up? Sort your life out? Start making some conscious decisions about yourself?’
‘I thought I’d read some women’s magazines,’ I mumbled.
‘Oh, now there’s a good idea for someone as sad as you. They’re full of articles on “How to keep that pathetic cheating low-down pigdog in your life happy”.’
I snuffled. As pathetic as I was, it made sense to play up to it.
‘Don’t try that snuffle bollocks on me. I refuse to be sympathetic because you’re welcoming back into your life a man who is only going to cause you pain – and you are entirely to blame.’
I said ‘bye’ and wandered back into the terminal feeling utterly lonely and unloved. That was a feeling I found was helped by being surrounded by young couples fleeing into each other’s arms and long-lost family members kissing, hugging and crying all around me.
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