Honeybee, page 24
‘I know I act like I might, but I don’t sleep with many girls,’ he says, quietly.
‘We didn’t sleep with each other, Matt,’ I remind him.
‘No, I know that. But we did … I just wanted to say that I came back to yours that night because I think you seem really smart. And you’re gorgeous, and I thought we had a connection. I still do.’
I laugh a little. Is he joking?
‘Matt, it was just some drunken fun. I’m sorry you wanted more but I’m not really up for a relationship right now, OK?’ I say, lying so hard I could cry. I’d marry Ben in my lunch hour if he asked me.
‘OK, well I just wanted to tell you that I liked you,’ Matt says. ‘Because I thought if you knew I wasn’t into messing around, then maybe you’d view me differently. But you don’t, so …’
‘No Matt, I don’t. I’m sorry. You’re a decent guy, just not …’
‘Not your guy?’
‘No.’
‘Well, whoever your guy is, they’re very lucky, Renée.’
OK, now I feel bad. ‘Thanks Matt, and I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.’
Imagine if you could just love whoever was available. Wouldn’t that have been the kindest gift Mother Nature could have given us? For love not to be so selective, but to be spread willy-nilly with whichever person is up for it, rather than the one who isn’t. Matt isn’t that bad. He’s a bit of an oaf and needs some training but with time he would be OK. He’s got a good job, looks all right and – despite the sexist overlay – there is obviously a heart in there somewhere. And yet, it’s just a no. Not even a maybe. I want nothing to do with him. Life would be easier out in the wild, where a mate is something you stumble across when foraging for food. You’d stick your ass in the air, let them do the thing, then bugger off with your babies and move on to the next. The love bit makes everything so difficult. And I love Ben, I do. I love him so much, and I cannot for a second believe that he doesn’t love me too.
As the weeks roll on, the monotony of professional, grown-up life sets in, and I can report that if this is adulthood, I want out. Let me try uni again, I’ll go this time. Put me back in A levels and tell me school will be the best years of my life, so I don’t wish it away. Let me try to crawl back into my mother’s womb and see if I can start it all again and do it differently. Because somehow, I’ve really ballsed this up.
Life revolves entirely around work. And if I know anything, it’s that this job is not for me. I imagine some people, like Carla and Gem, are riveted by the nine to five. For me, it’s a rigmarole I want to live without. I can’t go to bed late, because getting up is too hard. My alarm wakes me up every weekday morning and most Saturdays too because I always forget to turn it off. Meaning the weekends generally start with Flo being angry at me for waking her up too. We go to work, we come home. One of us cooks. We watch TV, we go to bed, we do it all again. At the weekend we cycle around, getting chips at the beach. We walk the cliffs, go shopping in town. It’s just as it was. We left, we came back, we slotted straight back in. I swore that would never be me. I’d be so much more than the same old thing. If we could look into the future and see where we end up, we’d probably be a lot less judgemental of other people along the way. It’s so easy to dream big when you’re young. To imagine the people you’ll meet, the places you’ll go. You believe that you will be enough to get you what you want. No one tells you that it probably won’t happen.
This island is safe, but it doesn’t feel like my island any more. It’s for younger people and families. I can’t help the feeling that I’m not supposed to be here. I am the demographic that is supposed to be away, striving, thriving, making shapes. More than ever before, I notice heaving groups of seventeen-and eighteen-year-olds everywhere I go, downing shots and shouting over each other. Young, loud and horny. It looks so exhausting to be that free, what do they even do all day? It’s their island now, not ours. I never imagined feeling old at twenty-two, but my guess is that no matter what age you are, you’ll feel old if you’re not where you should be. And yet, a voice inside is telling me that I can’t leave. That this is where I am supposed to be. I remain in a constant state of confusion. Who am I? Where should I be? Why is being a grown-up such a goddam slog?
I am trapped inside this cage of an office, possibly dying from a broken heart for eight hours every single day. Ben is like an expensive house I can’t afford, a dress that won’t fit, a meal that makes me sick. He is everything I want and can’t have. He’s staying out of my way. Not being rude, not being mean, just keeping it professional. Like the last month never happened. The days have never felt so long. I’ve tried a couple of times to suggest we talk, but he’s always busy, it’s never the right time. Doesn’t he just want it over with too? Maybe not. Maybe until we say it, there is still a chance.
I don’t understand how this has all happened in just over a month. Guernsey truly is the tiny thing where big things happen, in absolutely no time at all.
Flo
It’s taken a week of polite smiles and ‘oops, don’t mind me’s’ in the kitchen. But finally, Phil comes over to my desk with more purpose than he would if we’d run out of copy paper.
‘You seem well, Flo?’
‘I am, thank you, Phil.’ Said like a woman who didn’t do anything inappropriate to his bum-hole. Despite the last fortnight being a huge distraction, I’m still desperate to know what I did to him that night. It remains, even with everything that is going on in the world, the last thing I think about before I go to sleep at night. I just want to know.
‘I was worried about you when you were in London, I’m very pleased you got back OK.’ He’s being very nice. Does that mean he’s forgotten whatever it is I did? And if he has forgotten, would I be an idiot to remind him?
‘Thanks. Honestly, it was scary, but we weren’t in any actual danger. Ben got us home in one piece. We had each other.’
‘So look, I was wondering if you’d like to have dinner with me tonight? I thought we could go back to the Chinese restaurant. I think you liked it?’
‘I’m sorry, Phil, but tonight I am going to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and I’d better not miss it, because well, I am an alcoholic.’ I had not intended to tell a single soul about this. Ever. Let alone anyone at work. Let alone Phil. But I suspect that what just happened is that my paranoid brain was simply desperate for him to understand that I wasn’t myself that night. And so, I just outed myself for going to AA. I mean, I literally said the word ‘anonymous’ out loud. I hate myself, and I’m not even drunk.
‘Well, Flo. I’m really proud of you,’ he says. ‘That takes balls.’
‘Did someone say balls?’ Matt says, butting in. ‘Flo, we’re out of bog roll in the Men’s.’
Damn him, I was about to ask Phil what I did that night. The confession of alcoholism seemed like a really nice run-up to getting the information I need. But Matt and his big, brutish man ways just stole the show. ‘No problem,’ I say, the consummate office manager. ‘I’ll get that sorted right away!’
Later on, we pull up to the hospital and Mum seems more nervous than me. ‘What will you say?’ she asks, parking up.
‘I don’t think I have to say anything at my first one. I hope. I don’t know, it depends how many people are there.’
‘Small island, lots of pubs, I’m sure it will be busier than you think. You’ll have to tell me if there is anyone we know in there – Anne would never tell me. She said it would break “the code”.’
‘Then I won’t tell you either, Mum, and don’t ask me. OK? Don’t make this harder than it is.’
‘OK, OK, I won’t ask.’ I raise my eyebrows at this, she hasn’t kept a secret her whole entire life. Even her own affairs were public knowledge.
I put my hands on my knees and take three long, slow breaths. ‘OK, I’m going in.’
‘Good girl, I’ll wait here in case you change your mind. But if you stay the full hour, that’s OK. I have my book.’
‘Oh, what are you reading?’
‘The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. It’s wonderful, I’ll pass it on to you when I’m done.
‘What’s it about?’
‘Motherhood, I suppose. And the many different forms it comes in.’
I have to hide my shock at the thought of my mother reading a book about motherhood. I thought it would be her least favourite subject and that she would actively avoid any book that had anything to do with it. But she’s trying, and right now isn’t the time to rock the boat.
‘Come on, in you go,’ she says, opening the book to a page with its corner folded down. ‘Take your time.’
I walk in and take a seat at the back. I’d expected a circle with about ten people, but it’s more of an audience set-up, chairs in rows and a lectern at the front. There are around twenty-five people. I keep my head down, terrified I’ll meet someone I know. I appreciate that we are all here for the same reason, but still, this is my journey and right now I’m not interested in sharing it with anyone else. I didn’t come to make friends. I want to learn how I give up booze, because I know that I can’t do it on my own. I hope I don’t have to stand up and say I’m an alcoholic, like I saw in a film once. I just want to sit here, go unnoticed, and hear what it’s all about.
‘Hello,’ says a man taking the seat to my left. I half smile and glance quickly at him. I can see his body is big. It’s spreading over his chair and touching me. I don’t want to be rude. He’s here for the same reason as me. But I don’t want to talk. ‘I’ve seen you about,’ he says. Oh God, I know him, this is horrible. So embarrassing. How could I think this was a good idea on Guernsey? Why didn’t I just wait until I got back to London, where that glorious big-city anonymity could swallow me up? ‘I’ve seen you down the Ship and Crown.’
I turn to look at him. Wow, oh wow. It’s the guy from the Ship. The one who was there after Sally’s funeral, who was there before we left years ago, always alone with a pint.
‘Hello,’ I say back. ‘You’re here.’
‘Third time. Couldn’t go on like that. Time to turn that ship around.’
Wow, I thought the mission ahead of me was long. This guy has been sitting in the same seat, in the same T-shirt, in the same pub, for as long as I can remember.
‘Well done,’ I say to him, offering my hand. ‘Flo.’
‘Dave.’
The irony of us being in the same pub so many times over the years and never saying hi, and it only taking one AA meeting to force an introduction. ‘I hope it works out for you this time,’ I tell him.
‘You too.’
We sit up straighter, as someone at the front begins to talk.
‘Well, who was there? I mean, how was it?’ Mum says, rushing towards me, having been leaning on the back of her car.
‘It was sad, mostly. And inspiring, and then sad again. It made me realise I do have a problem, and it made me realise that I’m not alone. But I’m not going back in Guernsey, I’ll do it in London. I can’t bear the idea of people being there that I know.’
‘London? Well, when are you going to London?’
‘I’m going to move back, Mum. It’s better for me. I’ll visit, of course, but I want to go back.’ I walk to the car door and get in.
‘But Flo,’ she says, considering her words as if they could upset me. ‘I’ll miss you, you know.’
‘Yeah, Mum. I know.’
Renée
To take my mind off Ben, I see if Carla and Gem fancy a night out. We meet in the Albion for wine, the Ship for shots. The De La Rue for a couple more. I do my usual hilarious routine of being their court jester, so they laugh and cheer me on, like I’m the hired entertainment at a posh party. Carla goes on and on about the wedding. The seat covers match the tablecloths. She’s doing ‘sugared almonds’ as the favours. Her bridesmaids are wearing sage green. I laugh and coo and tell her it sounds wonderful and fantastic and romantic, when really the whole thing sounds ridiculous and unnecessary. If I married Ben we’d run away and get married on a beach, just our closest friends and family there, our bare feet in the sand. None of this chair-cover nonsense, just pure, undeniable love.
I writhe around the stripper’s pole in Follies, my ball gown landing around me like a blancmange when I fall to the floor because I am too drunk to hold on. At 2 a.m. we get chips. They share theirs, I eat all mine with extra mayonnaise. They get a cab together, I start walking with some guy who may or may not be handsome. I guess I’ll find out in the morning.
The sun comes up. He isn’t handsome. I leave his house at 8.15 a.m. and walk that dreaded walk of shame back to Mill Street. It’s raining. The roads are busy with people who have their shit together. Adults going to work. Adults driving their kids to school. I just don’t know where I sit in this world at this age; there is nothing for me. The in-between bit. The perineum. The utterly useless time in your life when you wander around in a ball gown at 8 a.m., trying to work out who you are after a one-night stand with a guy whose name you didn’t catch but who had an overweight cat called Pamela Anderson that watched you have bad sex.
There was a smell of chemicals in his house. When I asked him what it was, he said he’d spent the day spraying furniture protector on his clothes to make them waterproof, to save him from having to do so much laundry. And there he was, in his own flat, cavorting as an adult.
My boobs ache. My period will come today. I feel particularly heavy. Heartache, hangover and PMT is a nasty and heady mix. I can wear this ball gown as much as I want but it won’t make me more interesting. It won’t change who I am. Like Pamela saw last night, you peel off this fancy exterior and the girl underneath has lost all her mojo. I think I fell asleep on the poor guy in the end. Not my best rodeo.
‘Renée?’
No. Oh God, no. I can’t bear to look around.
‘Renée?’ It’s Ben’s voice. I’d recognise it if I was fifteen thousand feet below sea level and every creature in the ocean was screaming all at once. I shouldn’t be surprised. Guernsey is a tiny island; if you sleep with someone, you will just casually bump into them when leaving another man’s house. I have make-up down my face. I haven’t brushed my teeth. But what fool storms off in a ball gown pretending not to hear the man they love? I turn around. He is on a bike. He is pulling a little cart with a rain cover over it. I assume he’s just dropped his kids off at school.
‘Ben, hi. I’m wearing a ball gown and it’s 8.30 in the morning, how are you?’
‘I see that. Fun night?’
He feels like my boss, and not the only man I have ever made true love to. ‘This is not the walk of shame. I feel no shame. I slept on a friend’s couch, I …’
‘Renée, it’s none of my business,’ he says. I want to lie down on the pavement and bang my fists on the ground like a toddler who doesn’t want to eat carrots. I want to scream that it is his business. I am all of this because of him. Everything I am in my whole life right now is because of him. I am his business, and he has no idea. To him I am just something extra. I see that now.
‘Can I give you a lift, unless you’re planning on coming to work dressed like that? In which case I will go ahead and lock all the doors.’ He’s being funny with me again. It feels like ages since I saw him smile.
‘No, I’ll go home. I am queen of the quick change. I’ll see you there.’ I keep walking. I never imagined wanting to get away from Ben but, right now, I need him to stop seeing me like this. I worry the smell of sex is radiating from me and I just want to be clean. I am a hussy, a slapper. I bet he doesn’t see himself that way. No matter what he does on the side, he is still a husband, a father, a boss. I’m just a broke receptionist that he screwed.
‘Renée, come on, it’s raining. That taffeta won’t age well if you get it wet.’
I don’t know why I agree to squash myself into the small, rainproof cart that Ben is dragging on his bike. I have to sit to the side, my knees up to my face. In my gown. Wet. Hungover. Stinking of sex. When in, he pulls down the rain cover and does up the poppers. He then takes off, struggling a little with the weight of me, but soon we are gliding down the Grange, along the front and then up past the market and to the base of Mill Street. It’s quite honestly one of the most humiliating ten minutes of my life. Like I’m being dragged and paraded for all the town to see and shame. I’m surprised no stones are thrown. When he unpops the lid, I find my knees have seized up and I have pins and needles that are so intense, so agonising, he has to lift me out and put me on my doorstep like an empty milk bottle.
‘Please never mention this and eradicate all of this from your memory by the time I see you again.’
‘In twenty minutes, you mean? When you’re at your desk?’
‘Sure. Ben …’ I step closer to him, just to kiss him on the cheek. No one would think that was strange if they saw us, just a person, kissing another person on the cheek, saying thank you. In a ball gown. I hold still for just a second longer, just a second to feel his breath, to feel his cheek next to mine. He holds there too, I feel him wanting me. But something has changed.
‘Renée, I have to go, I have a nine a.m. call. I’ll see you in the office, go on, you’ve got seventeen minutes.’
I watch him cycle away, I want to run after him and tell him I love him. But it has to end, I know it does. Even though a part of me, a big part of me, still thinks he’s going to choose me over his wife. I go up to the flat and collapse onto the sofa. The clock says it’s 8.43 a.m. I roar with tears. With love. How is this what comes from something so fulfilling? Total emptiness.
I hear a noise. A buzz. A wasp, oh God, a wasp. I hate them so much. I hate them I hate them I hate them. It’s clearly in here, the buzzing is so loud, and no one is here to save me. I get up, a rolled magazine in my hand, and I head towards the window. I’ll smack it. I’ll smack the shit out of it. But it isn’t a wasp, it’s a honeybee. Maybe one of Aunty Jo’s, she said they flew for miles. I can’t swat it, I need to save it. Just like Aunty Jo did. They don’t want to sting you, it’s only if they’re scared. That’s what she said. So, the trick is not to scare it. I hold out the magazine, it climbs on but rolls off. I remember how Aunty Jo did it. She laid down her finger, the bee climbed on, and she let it go out of the door. Easy. I can do that, I can save the bee.
