I pulled on my bathrobe and followed him to the bathroom, giving him a respectable couple of willy-washing minutes to himself first. When I got there, he’d wrapped a towel round his waist, and was enthusiastically brushing his teeth with the old green toothbrush he used to call his. He must have unearthed it from the back of the bathroom cabinet.
I leaned against the door frame and just said it straight out: ‘We’re not back on, so don’t get too comfortable.’ It came out a lot more harshly than I intended.
I wasn’t wearing my glasses so I couldn’t see the hurt in his eyes, reflected in the mirrored door of the cabinet, but I could hear it in his voice, indistinct through a mouthful of toothpaste: ‘But – I thought we….I need you, Shuv.’
With my blurry vision and his hairy back, he looked like a large doleful black bear standing by the basin. When he turned to face me, foaming at the mouth, I thought how his chest makes me feel as if I’m suffocating, all that thick hair up my nose when we’re in bed. I’d forgotten about that, too.
‘No you don’t,’ I said. ‘Don’t settle for something that’s less than what you want. You finished with me, remember? Don’t think that because you’ve been dumped, that makes things suddenly perfect with us.’
‘I haven’t been dumped,’ he said, turning back to the basin, brushing furiously again and then spitting violently. He always cleaned his teeth like someone trying to scrub barnacles off the bottom of a boat. I’d be surprised if there was any enamel at all left on them.
‘Oh. You dumped her, then, did you?’
He didn’t answer, although I saw in the mirror that he’d closed his eyes like a small child who thinks that if he can’t see you, you can’t see him either.
I had a brief pang, thinking of that fortnight in Portugal going to waste. I’m glad I had the writing class to think of, otherwise I might have been tempted to ask if I could take Lynn’s place. Perhaps I was being too hasty. There was a lot about Phil that was great, too; sweet and loving and patient. And his hairy body was lovely and warm on a cold night….
But no. I really don’t think it would work out between us. It was just one of those things - probably as much my fault as his.
‘Sorry,’ I conceded. ‘I’m being pissy. It doesn’t matter who dumped who. This is about you and me, not you and Lynn. We shouldn’t have slept together just now – it’s always a mistake to go back, I think. Let’s just call it one for old time’s sake, shall we?’
His shoulders slumped, and I felt really sorry for him. I went over and put my arms around him.
‘Oh Phil, it’s been lovely to see you, honestly, and I’m sorry that things haven’t worked out for you and Lynn. But I just don’t think it would be a good idea for us to try and pick up where we left off. I think you did the right thing, to break up with me.’
That was about as diplomatic as I could be, without recourse to the words ‘pencil’ and ‘dick’. It wasn’t his fault that he was bad in bed. And maybe he’d meet a girl who liked his little….foibles. I had loved him once. I didn’t wish him any harm, not really. It was just the sting of rejection that hurt – but now we’d had this liaison, actually, I felt better about it. For the first time I really started to believe that I could do better than Phil.
‘So I suppose you want me to leave, then,’ he said, drying his mouth on another of my towels.
I nodded, wincing at the rejection. ‘Sorry,’ I repeated. ‘I do care about you, Phil, but….’
‘I understand,’ he said dolefully, and took himself back off to the bedroom to get dressed. I left him to it, and went to fold my washing off the drying rack I’d positioned by the radiator in the living room. Biggles was curled up asleep underneath it – he loved it under there, playing with bra straps in the damp curtained hideyhole.
‘See you around, Siobhan.’ Phil came into the room, dressed once more, and jingling his car keys. He wouldn’t look me in the eye as he gave me a brief, minty kiss goodbye.
‘Take care of yourself, OK?’ I said, annoyed to feel tears stinging my eyes. I folded a pair of socks and threw them into the laundry basket, so he couldn’t see that I was upset.
He nodded brusquely, and let himself out of the house. I pulled back the curtain to watch him lower his bulky frame into his car, and heard the slam of the door echo round the deserted street. As his headlights flooded the stationary vehicles in front of him, I was sure I saw a sudden movement, like someone ducking down behind a car. I stared harder, but nothing else moved, so I thought it must have been a fox, or a cat jumping off the car roof. I hope it wasn’t a burglar.
I went to both front and back doors to check they were double-locked, sighing as I walked back upstairs. Alone again – naturally - as the song goes…. Just as I got back into my bedroom, surveying the rumpled bedclothes, the phone rang. I sighed again, this time with irritation, and picked up. What had he forgotten?
‘Phil?’
Nothing. The line was dead.
I sat on the bed for a long time, not moving, wondering if I’d done the right thing.
Sunday
My resolve is much stronger now. By the next morning I was convinced that I had done the right thing – better to be on my own than compromise with someone I wasn’t entirely convinced about. I spent the weekend at Mum’s in case Phil came over again and I let him talk me back into the relationship, but there’s been no sign of him since last week.. I told Mum a little about what had happened, about him splitting up with Lynn – the censored version, of course, although it made it very difficult to explain to her why I don’t want to get back with him, without telling her that he’s got a willy like a cocktail sausage and has no idea what to do with it. Mum always had a soft spot for Phil. I think she was more upset when we split up than I was.
She’s constantly telling me how worried she is about me, regardless of how often I reassure her that there’s nothing wrong: I’m just single, that’s all. It’s not a disease. Sometimes I feel like telling her I am ill, just so that she’s got something concrete to fixate on instead of this nebulous and misguided concern over nothing. Having said that, I suppose I do like knowing somebody cares about me enough to worry so much. And she’s my mum, it’s her job to worry.
It’s nice to be home again, although I’m not getting much work done today. I’ve been on a huge cleaning jag, running the duster all round the skirting boards, rolling up the rugs and washing the floors, chasing out the tumbleweeds of dust from behind the sofa. These Victorian houses are so hard to keep clean. No matter what I do, I can still feel decades of grime pressing down on me. I’d like to rip up all this woodblock flooring and replace it with laminate, but the original floors do look so much nicer. Plus, the thought of all the dust and crap that would be disturbed in the process makes my skin crawl.
While I was dusting the books, I caught sight of TLA on the shelf. It’s funny, I haven’t looked at it for months and months. I suppose I’m so used to it sitting there that I just don’t see it anymore – it’s as much a fixture of my flat as the velvet cushions and the Paul Klee print above the fireplace. I don’t get that shiver of pride at tracing my fingers over the letters on the spine; don’t pick it out and flip through the pages, unable to believe that I personally came up with all those words. (Although I do still wonder how on earth I did it. When did I have the time?)
But today I looked at it in a different light. Its appearance in class last week has made me feel aware of it as somehow an extension of myself, that old vulnerable feeling that I had when it was first published. I feel particularly concerned about Alex, for some reason – probably because of the review he wrote. What if he thinks that Tara is me? Worse – what if he thinks that what Tara does in bed is what I would do? At least there isn’t a lot of sex; I’d be mortified to put my name to a bonkbuster. There are only two real sex scenes in TLA and I’d say they’re both artistically appropriate, and necessary for insight into the characters…. I wish I did have that sort of sex!