OY to the world

Like most people, I have a love/hate relationship with Christmas. It has gone from a black & white ‘Joan Collins switching the Regents Street lights on’ snap to a Hollywood 3-D movie with people jumping out at you on Oxford Street.

For me it’s the time I feel incredibly lonely, even when I’m surrounded by lots of people at a flash party. That’s the worst.  Yet, when I’m alone in my little cottage curled up in front of the fire reading with Sophie on my lap, I’m never lonely.  There is also that feeling of relief like when you are taking off your Spanx after a night out. All your fat that has been held in captivity can go back to its natural habitat. It’s just so tiring having to pretend you are somebody you aren’t, even down to your muffin-tops.

With me, it’s always the solicitous ‘are you okay?’ small talk.  How many times can I say to people I’m okay. One day I’m going to reply… You know what I’m NOT OK, I feel like crap and I’d like to hang myself with the fairy lights, but the ceiling would collapse on me, and I’d have a hell of a repair bill. The only good thing to come of it would be is that they’d never ask me again.

This was also the season of having to make the command performances at my in-law’s holiday parties. I was trotted out as their last link to their only son, which was fine because they were my last link also.

When I first met them at their home in Grosvenor Cottages, we fortified ourselves at The Antelope round the corner.  I had been warned I would need it. The minute we drove up into the cul-de-sac, it was obvious this was an area frozen in time.  You could tell the homes had been passed down throughout the generations, and not inhabited by Russian tycoons, Middle Easterners and the worst kind ever – football stars.

Their living room was traditionally decorated with ivory oversized sofas and chairs with fringes; red walls;  high ceilings with white crown molding and extremely large ornately framed paintings of their ancestors standing next to hunting dogs. Jamie’s father was as they say an “heir” and looked like Roger Moore circa now . He was so welcoming, kissing my hand but not in a smarmy way. His mother – an Honor Blackman doppelgänger – looked like her face was frozen in time.  Jamie told me her life was about being ‘maintained.’ She’d go around the corner to Dr. Greenburgh’s office (where he had two entrances so the wife wouldn’t run into the mistress) getting some sort of injections to stay young, then the hairdresser, facials and gym. Not a life I saw leading.

As I sunk into the chair, I whispered to Jamie to get me a drink and cheese/crackers for fear my mini-skirt would ride up if I got up. Honor slithered next to me, so thin she could share the seat, taking my hands in her translucent hands with bulging purple veins (reminder: put on hand cream twice a day.)  In a polite whisper instructed me that women get their men drinks and if need be, their food, not the other way around. It was like a page torn out of Courtesan 101. I wanted to say for gods sake,  I was from Surrey, not plucked from selling flowers in Covent Garden, but stopped short. In Surrey the men got women drinks, this just was another world to me.

Luckily Jamie wanted to escape that world, and who he grew up to be was an enigma to his parents. He had no interest in hunting, polo, yachting  or someday moving into their house. Simply put, they were SW people, and we were NW people and never the twain shall meet. My life was never about “maintaining” but more about how to carve out who I was when all anyone cared about was talking to my husband. Thus, the wine throwing incident which landed up on the cover of The Sun.

When my husband died, I felt horribly insecure since in most people’s minds I’m sure, he was the only thing interesting  thing about me. At Oxford, my game plan was by forty I’d change the world,  then marry. I’d done it all reverse. I was also starting to become invisible. Slowly fading away like women my age did. Men didn’t do a double take  anymore,  nor women give me the once over glance. I had no discernible talent and now was carving out who I was standing alone.

I’m off  for Christmas Eve dinner at the Connaught with the General.  Maybe he’ll smack some sense into me.

groundhog nights

There are no sweet dreams for the guilt-ridden.  Tossing and turning, feeling uncomfortable  in your own skin, just in that betwixt-and-between space.  Too hot, you toss some blankets on the floor. Too cold, you pile them back on. Punching the feather pillow trying to get your head settled in just right, but never seem to do.

I put down my book, turned off the light and stare at the ceiling, accepting that sleep won’t come easily. It was ironically my favourite time of the day.  Shades drawn, ear-plugs in, outside world blocked out.

You know how you hold a memory dear to your heart, replaying it over and over, to feel the silliness and  spark at that time, as clearly as if it was now.  Our heart is like a camera, capturing fleeting glimpses of unguarded moments on an endless reel that we never tire of watching, each time observing something new.

That’s what this time is like for me, watching my favourite movie where I know all the lines by heart.  Everything in life boils down to being a mystery, a curiosity to find out what it would be like for us.  If  mine was a Sherlock Holmes BBC drama,  it would be called The Case of the Missing Eyes, and begin like this.. ..

It was a typical dark, dreary English Winter day  We had a guest lecturer coming, a 30-something male and well-known snarky political writer,  so the school was all aflutter. I stood on the side of the library with a couple of girlfriends, looking like escapees from St. Trinians, getting in a quick smoke before it was time to go into the lecture.  Car pulls up, and he glides gracefully out of the back wearing very dark Ray Bans, like a rock star with a permanent sunny cloud following him about.

Very tall and rangy, he bounded up two steps at a time, being stopped by  students along the way who wanted to chat him up. Even though it was getting close to lecture time, he never let anyone feel rushed, but never took off the sunglasses.  He was wearing the prerequisite dark navy blue suit with faint white pinstripes, yet playing against stereotype he had over it a Bognor parka with  fur around the rim of the hood, nestled against his neck making his shaggy blonde hair seem even longer. As my American roommate observed later,  he looked an aging hippie with a good tailor.

Usually I enter all my classes late and a bit noisily. Or as one of my professors says,  ”stage right,” as if to announce my arrival. Today, I was right on time  feeling a bit like my emotions were inside out.  If this were public school, not University. I’d be hearing taunts of …Nicola likes a boy, over and over again.  I strategically chose an aisle seat by the back, but close enough to observe my prey to see whether he was worthy of my liking. I didn’t like this side of me at all, way too distracting and usually suppressed to concentrate on studies. Although barely 18, I knew I was going to be doing something amazing with my life that would change the world, and once established would marry when I was forty.  But this time it was harmless enough, there would be no mystery whether he’d call or not, no sitting on pins and needles.  This  had a beginning, a middle and an end when  he got back in his car to London.

He was at the lectern shuffling through his notes, occasionally stopping to chat with a  professor who had come over. There was a languid elegance about him, but as with the ski parka, he made a conscious effort not to be appear too stereotypical.  He had taken off his suit jacket to reveal a crisp whiter-than-white barely starched shirt. What was interesting, where the cuff-links should be, there were none. It was a bold move, but he could pull it off as only a really confident man could. The cuffs didn’t flop about, obviously a bit more starched,  instead they dangled gracefully around, then off his wrists.

It was his hands at repose that made my heart do a flip-flop. When he  wasn’t shuffling or shaking hands, his fingers were always slightly curled towards  his palm when talking to people.  There was something so child-like in the way he awkwardly held  them,  like Christopher Robin carefully dragging Pooh up the stairs.

I listened to his  lecture  much like the Corgis listened to  the Queen, it was all blah, blah, blah. I spent the whole time trying  to see what color eyes he had now that the glasses were off.  I kept going from brown with flecks of gold, or green with flecks of gold. They had that quality of wavering between. When he was finished answering questions, the auditorium of adoring fans clapped a bit too loudly, many with flushed cheeks – mostly male I might add. As he strode up the aisle followed by a coterie of people,  he was about to open the door, paused, turned around and looked straight at me.

They were blue.

travelling, yet never arriving

The night before the big move, I took an “accidental” overdose of pills. I was slugging back Bollingers from the bottle on an empty stomach, and took a wee too many Xanax.  Instead of passing out, I  just sat there crying in the corner of the front room, next to the velvet curtain that almost burned the house down. Obsessing about every slight I’d given to people, phone calls not answered, neglected friends and ruminating how I had let everyone down, especially my father.

Our home was run with military precision by my father, the General. It was as if he was the UK and we were the colonies. No one was allowed to argue with the sovereign head, never express anger and we must never tell people in other countries our life was anything less than perfect,  because that’s what colonization was all about. Happy! Happy! Happy!

If I was turning my life into a book, that would be the forward to explain everything. Ha! Always blame the parents til you can’t. I always thought of life being like a novel,  chapters ended, then on to the next one.  My problem was all of a sudden I was stuck in the middle of the book, not knowing what the next chapter would be. No last page to read to give a clue..

I had killed my husband, and can any one ever survive that plot twist?

hangover flu

Admittedly, I have had a very charmed life over the years. During that time I never thought of things like saving money. Me, get old?! Impossible. I was always going to be this young, pretty, madcap girl swanning around Kings Road with my wonderfully witty journalist husband who was my clothing and accessories sponsor.

If I had known then what I know now, I would have done crunches and leg lunges every day when I was growing up. Put on hand cream religiously every night before bed. Certainly, on the rare occasion of a sunny day,  not have sat in the backyard,  sun reflector in hand with baby oil and iodine slathered over my skin,  burning up like a pig on a spit.

But more importantly, I would not have spent all that money on exquisite clothing and designer bags which would have been better spent deposited in a bank account for emergencies like…

..after a long, financially draining bout with cancer, traveling the world looking for a magical cure,  the only man in my life since 19, died. I was barely 40. Exactly mid-life. Usually a time of taking stock, but all I felt was completely and utterly gobsmacked.

The state of my house was like the old magician’s trick of pulling the table-cloth off without disturbing the place settings.  Everything was in place, no matter how much my life felt like it had been leveled in a tsunami. Even my husband’s clothes were still neatly lined up, color coded by varying degrees of blue, greys and whites, plus sorted by fabric. Cashmere, Merino Wool, Pima Cotton and so on. My closet has never been in order. The pretty objects of desire that I wanted to have, NOW, always carelessly thrown about.

It was if I just closed my eyes when picking something to wear, and threw everything in the air waiting to see what  landed. It worked in the past, but now it felt like traveling, but never quite arriving.

It was very clear, I was on the verge of becoming a post-modern Miss Havisham. Next step would be curtains drawn, wax lights illuminating my walk-in-closet, receiving guests among rubble, albeit designer rubble. Soon after that, I’d be stopping all the clocks to read  twenty to nine.

Miss Havisham wanted to stop her life, and so did I.

clueless

My job in life was being able to travel with my husband when he was on assignment, and dabbling in ‘interior design’, but that was more about  getting a professional discount at Sandersons.

I was torn out of my comfort zone when my husband died of  lung cancer after a  long, valiant battle. Most of our  money had been exhausted searching for the most cutting edge treatment here, then Paris, Switzerland and Tibet. Typical of me to not really get it, that my best mate could die. Talk about self-medication, I shopped away my feelings. I loaded up on semi-precious opulent jewellery and of course, pashminas in every colour – even ones I didn’t know existed.

Never knowing anyone who had died, I was very unprepared on every level when it happened. How could he be there one day, and gone the next?  I went from being not particularly religious to being a bit spiritual. My trip to Tibet had obviously made an impact, besides on my closet.

Remember that  show “Eli Stone” where Jonny Lee Miller kept hearing George Michael sing? Instead, I was followed about by Peggy Lee humming  ’Is that all there is‘.  It was like the constant buzzing of a bee caught in your earlobe which you just couldn’t shake.

Unfortunately, I  needed to start looking for a job which was going to be a challenge with my limited experience. As much as I only wanted to lay in bed wrapped in my husband’s flannel robe like a cocoon, I had to support myself.

There is only way to describe going back to work at my age. It was as though I took a massive dose of LSD and was transported back in time to Beverly Hills High School in 1965. I was Tai in Clueless, but there would by no nice sweet, kind Cher to take me under her wing. I didn’t know the language, buzz words and more importantly what it was like to interact with young people.

A very wise friend told me that I would get through it, just had to remember that work life  is just like high school.

But then again,  isn’t everything ?!

you say hello, i say good-bye

Pathetically, I had my mobile programmed to “Never Say Never” if Nigel called or texted.

Not the Beatles. Not Oasis. But a twit of a boy who knew absolutely nothing about heartbreak.

After about a year,  Nigel called me at 2:00am.

At first I wasn’t sure if it was dream or another Ambien induced hallucination.

I knew I wasn’t drunk dialing him.

So I picked up.

My heart was in knots when he told me that he had straightened out his life (for about the tenth time) and wanted to be with me.

Nigel’s voice made my body tremble, My skin felt alive again. It was the same feeling I have sloughing of the superficial layer of facial skin with oatmeal and honey then running my fingertips over it, marveling how smooth it felt.  Unfortunately,  after 40 you still have to slather it with moisturizer to protect the raw skin.  Until the next time. You couldn’t just do it once and with a click of your heels,  all was young and fabulous again.

As I listened to him, I thought of the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over, hoping it would turn out differently. But it never does, does it?

If I told him no, he would just pursue me more, thinking no meant chase me more which it always had in the past. Our little game of win me over, make me his again.

So in the end, I white knuckled it by never returning his  calls or texts.  Instead of feeling proud of the path I took, it just made me cross with myself.  Like giving away my mini-skirts,  it was a step towards packing away my childlike-immediate-gratification behavior.

Knowing me,  I was bound to do  something stupidly reckless again. It would just be bad form to do it with Nigel.  If the past was a foreign country, I’ll just  go to another continent!

mini me

When you hit a certain age,  you have to give up some of  the vestiges of your youth.

Mine was mini-skirts.

To paraphrase Disraeli,  you have to know when to leave the stage and not overstay your welcome.

I handed over the ’guaranteed to turn men’s heads’  torch  to my god-daughter  Pandora.

My (faux) feather skirt that I wore to my first opera at 20 and vowed never to go again – boring!       What kept me amused were the admiring glances I’d get when I was drinking champagne during intermission.

The Burberry mini  I wore with a simple white shirt and  boots, under a long black coat with the outfit peeking out.  That was my go-to outfit  when I was  on my own.  Just because you’re married doesn’t mean you are dead,  it still feels great to get admiring glances from other men.

My black and white tweed classic Chanel suit where I had the boring knee-length skirt lopped off  close to 13 centimetres. Then going to meet Jamie at Home House for lunch to shake up the old club a bit.

My closet suddenly looked as though  I had been robbed by a teenage fashionista high on glossy magazines.

Yeah, yeah I know I shouldn’t be so vain and after forty we have so many other things going for us besides sky-high legs and barely there skirts to showcase them.

It was  more about  inside every older women is a younger girl wondering  WTF happened?

meowwwwch

I tried to ‘friend’ someone 

Which we were of sorts

OK, maybe not in the ‘let’s get legless  and trash everyone we know‘ way

But we did travel in the same social circles, and even had the same fashion style

Every store sale we picked up the same dress

At the same time

About three months go by, of course you think of it as the telephone theory

He has tried calling, but your phone has been a  bit wonky 

It’s never that he thought you were a total brat-pratt

You friend her again

Nothing

What do you say when you run into that person?

Should they feel embarrassed?

Probably not

They have all the power by not answering your friend request

You certainly do

How pathetic are  you for being rejected not once, but twice

Facebook just opens up a whole new way of setting up cliques

I choose YOU, but not you

Because you just aren’t fabulous enough to be seen by my other friends as my friend

Next time,  just let her have the dress

3am ephiphany

To me, shopping is all about the ultimate high in pleasuring yourself.

The whole process of wooing.  The chase.

       You see what you want, then google it to see where you can find it for less money.

Then who has free shipping,  finally, scoring a 20% coupon off.

  You order it.

Feel that rush, the excitement

Imagining what it will feel like when you physically get your hands on it

It’s all a bit of a hazy dream with Vaseline covered lens, on how your life will improve because of it

Then you feel totally satiated from the rush,  dizzy and a bit flush   

Ten minutes later you are done

You email to cancel, sorry ordered by error

It’s not about actually landing  the object of your affection, but the process of pursuing

That giddy feeling

If I only knew before the psychology behind my madness, just can’t blame everything on Ambian,

I wouldn’t be stuck with a closet full of items to sell on Ebay

Then again, your  fleeting object of affection can catch you unaware and  turn out to be the real thing

The “how did I live without it item”

Somethings are just keepers

truly, madly, deeply

When a women hits 45, and her baggage is mainly Vuitton, does she go for younger or older men? I last dated when I was 19.  In fact, that was my last date. So here I am on a tear, juggling both generations.

Nigel – 32 – recovering cocaine addict, lives in his parent’s basement flat in Islington. We met at The Freud Museum which for some reason he thought was a Lucien Freud art exhibition tying in with his pharmaceutical pieces. Resembling a young Alan Bates, he had that rumpled look as though he had just rolled out of bed but forgot to fully open his eyes.    I felt positively girlish when I saw him, twisting my hair and wishing…please pick me. That serendipitous meeting started this intense affair. I soon discovered that recovering free-base cocaine addicts are always looking for that next rush, in this case it was me.         I was swept up in his wildly manic moods, so dizzying  it was though I couldn’t catch my breath  at times.  Tormented by demons, his moods always dictated my moods. If he wanted to shut down, I was shut out. Sometimes  for days on end. Voice mailbox full.

I needed an antidote.

Trevor – 49 – was a fix-up from my friend Poppy who felt he would be the perfect balance. Trevor traveled all over the world  for work so lots of emails back and forth before we met up. Every time Nigel went into one of his black holes, there would be an email from Trevor which  made me laugh. We endlessly bantered with each other. When we finally met up, it was like meeting an old friend. In person, I was struck by how tall and sturdy his body was, his face was very Clive Owen-ish.   Trevor exuded manliness, and gave off a feeling that he would protect you.

I was a smitten kitten.

-

Toxic Friends 101

 THE CONFIDENCE GAME

Men are pretty simple creatures, almost clueless at times.  They tell you who they are upfront, we just ignore the signs thinking we’ll be the one who changes them. We always cite a friend of a friend of a friend’s cousin who tamed a bad boy, to give us hope.  But they are the exception, not the rule.

If ‘manipulation’ was an Olympic sport, women would take home the gold year-after-year. They leave men in the dust regarding being competitive, cunning, devious and manipulative.

We are drawn into their web because they are incredibly charismatic. That makes it all the harder to know that, yes indeed, we are in a toxic-relationship.

These are the 6-simple steps to recognizing when it’s time for a friends-cleanse:

1.   They make cutting remarks about a mutual friend behind their back.

2.  They play people against each other, but shhhhh you can’t say it came from her that ‘so and so’ thinks you are a right wanker.

3.   You’re feeling a bit depressed and instead of wanting to hear about it, they say snap out of it.

4.. They never reveal anything personal about themselves, but know everything about you.

5.  They have at least 25 really close girlfriends and a coterie of adoring gay admirers around the world.

7.  They start sentences with any of following phrases: I’m telling you this for your own good; Don’t tell anyone I told you but;  No one else will tell you but…

As amusing and charming as they might be, you really want to surround yourself with an impregnable wall of friends who are your biggest cheerleaders – in front and behind your back.

Not to worry about doing a bit of friend house cleaning, they won’t miss you a bit. And that’s the saddest part of all, isn’t it?

treacly ever after

My theory about happiness being a big disappointment waiting to happen, is true.

I had settled into my cottage with my little moggy Sophie, and felt happy for the first time since Jamie died.  Not less-depressed, but happy.

Not to sound all Forrest Grumpy, but dating is a little like that first taste of chocolate.  You didn’t know what you were missing because you had never had it before.  Now that you have, without it you feel incredibly lonely.

I have to re-set my emotional clock back a year.

Warm evenings at the Holly Bush with my girlfriends. Colder evenings in front of a crackling fireplace curled up in an oversized velvet chair where you sink in so deeply you feel like a small child.  Sophie sleeping on my lap, while I  attempt to read something intellectually stimulating – i.e. Jamie’s books – and not one of my  Josephine Hart novels hidden behind Shakespeare’s complete works.

Giving up chocolate, but not sweets.  This go round, I’m going to learn how to make puddings on my own,  something I’ve avoided eating my entire life.

Pudding Rules!

snap

So about two months have passed since I’ve sworn off men. Am finally settled into my own little world, free of feeling happy which would only lead to unhappiness so let’s cut out the middle step.  Not depressed. but in a melancholy holding pattern which is my go to comfort zone.

Out of the blue I got a call from Trevor at 10pm on a Sunday night, asking if he come over to talk, nothing more. He is so tall it always makes me laugh because he has to stoop when coming through my front door into my living room. Never seen him like this. Ratty old jeans, a shirt with no cuff-links (horrors! buttoned cuffs!) no socks and muck about loafers. I was  in my flannel pajamas, very not-sexy and no make-up. OK, just a little concealer under my eyes because Benefit rocks.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the fireplace, we shared a bottle of red wine he brought.

Well, what happened?

I explained to him that I am not good at relationships,  I become too demanding, too needy and the only relationships that work is when the man bombards with attention, basically knocks me over the head so I can’t over think, sweeps me into obsessive relationship, then I’m eventually swept away. Or I just keep breaking up with someone before I can get hurt. That I need someone who will continually  reel me in.

Basically, I look more fun than I really am.

He said he couldn’t be in an obsessive relationship because he was running around all over the  world, and his first priority was that, second his daughter and I am third. The only reason I was attracted to that scenario is it’s just another avoidance of being in a grown up relationship.  I could cry that I was left, but it was set up that way. I was a willing participant.  So let’s take a small step forward, and he won’t talk about his ex-wife and what annoyed him about her, but in exchange I can’t keep my late husband’s memory shrink wrapped so he never got old and was perfection personified.

We had a deal.

me/n

What I’ve discovered about me/n since I’ve became a widow…

DATING

1. It’s all about the chase, men get bored easily.

2. I have to be very careful who I bond with, suffer a bit from separation anxiety when it ends.

3. Learned that I can’t hop into bed with someone without feeling a connection, so (see 1.) just enjoy the ride before you really take the ride.

3.  Lust is amazing, but you can get obsessed with it. If that is all there is, it’s not going to end well.

4.  Some girls can act very neurotic and it’s appealing.  With me it’s more irritable and off-putting.

5. If you are pissed off, tell him at that very moment. In fact, pick up  the phone, not a text.  Don’t wait for when it’s over and send him 3 long rambling emails telling him what  pissed you off.  You are doing it only for you, write them. Have a drink. Then erase them.

6.  The most intense relationship I had was Nigel. He was really the first who brought out that reckless side of me since Jamie had died. In fact, the last time I had felt that was when I ran off with Jamie at 19. That leaping off a cliff not caring about the consequences because it was just so intense, mad and wonderful.  I will be forever grateful to Nigel for letting me know that side wasn’t dead. (thank you)

MARRIAGE

1. The age you got married, will be your set-point age.

2. Hardest job in the world because it’s every day, no time off for good behavior, only for bad.

3. Your neurosis must mesh. You can’t have two very intense people, there has to be one who is more easy-going and not so wound up.

4. Forget the axiom don’t go to bed angry, I’d have had no sleep.

5.  Don’t keep him on a short lease, he’ll find a way to gnaw through.

6.  Keep some mystery in the loo.

7. You can’t be with someone who keeps the heat on, covered up with a thin blanket, when you like to have the windows open snuggled under a fluffy down duvet.

So in conclusion, I’ve learned a lot but in essence absolutely nothing.

LOST

Our “couple” best friends were Karen and Bill.  He was the political cartoonist, and she was a working artist, specializing in water colors of the South of France. They had lived with us for a bit when a pipe burst in their Battersea flat right after they’d just been married.

The two of them could not have been more different.

Growing up in Sussex, Karen’s father had been part of Pinewood’s special effects team, he was the go-to guy in the film industry to create the perfect snowstorm.  Bill was from the Isle of Wight, but not the posh side. Short, scrappy and a brilliant wit.  Listening to our husbands banter back and forth, was like watching two great tennis players at Wimbledon.

Everything made us laugh.

Like when my dad drove in from his sleepy life in Colemans Hatch for dinner. Bill arrived mid-meal and passed out on the rug without saying a word.  Jamie, totally mortified could not apologize enough. My dad pulled himself up like the Army General he once was, saying with no irony, “Not to worry old chap, I have seen someone drunk once before. It was 1947 at the Raffles Hotel in Hong Kong.”  Then promptly dug into dinner, paying no mind to a passed out Bill behind his chair.

Karen was my partner in crime, which I especially welcomed during my yearly knock-down-drag-out fight over The Academy Awards. Rubbish, a bunch of self-congratulatory smug actors, Jamie stretching out the word so it sounded like ACtorrrrrrrzzzzzz. It always ended in slamming doors, words hurled about. But we never, ever crossed the line in any of our fights, never exposing the little lies we told each other. …Of course you aren’t going bald in the back, or you don’t have cellulite on the back of your thighs, right below jiggly bum; we knew the truth, but they’re just the type of  lies married people never expose,  if they are smart.

Karen and I plotted our Academy Award plan. Just pack them off to the Lansdowne,  they’ll come home legless and not mind our being curled up in our flannel jammies watching the show in the middle of the night.

They were our BFF.

Until the second time they came to visit three years later, after another pipe burst. Bill was a bit meaner when he was drunk than the last time. He shoved Karen about, sometimes twisting her wrists so tight she let out a little yelp like a helpless kitten would. Then the black eye at breakfast and it went downhill from there.

One day when I was coming home from the market, I caught them in the middle of a fist fight. He’d been let go from the paper, came home drunk, mad as hell and took all his anger out on her. I had a feeling she would have won, but I broke it up nonetheless. I pulled them apart, shielding her with my body and screamed at him to get out. NOW. She collapsed in my arms sobbing as he packed.  I very naively didn’t get it,  she’d always choose him no matter how badly he treated her.

The night they left, our little Morgan + 4, which Jamie had lovingly refurbished, went missing. Jamie left in the morning to go wash the car and listen to football. He came back like a small child whose blankie had gone missing. The car was just gone. We went up and down Gloucester Avenue looking for it, round to Chalcot Square thinking maybe he had parked it on the street and not the garage.

Jamie thought I should have stayed out of it,  it was their business, not ours.  We heard they had gone to live in the Isle of Wight, though never confirmed.  I was devastated over the  loss of  my best friend, whereas Jamie was just really pissed off that they were tooling about in his car.