Putting Alice Back Together Read online

  ‘Past all that.’ I shook my head firmly. ‘You’re only thirty-four, Roz. You’re nowhere near past it, though with that attitude…’ My voice trailed off as again Roz shook her head.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with my age.’ She gave a wheezy laugh, which turned into a cough. Then just when she managed to finally get her breath back, when the blue tinge left her lips and the broken veins bulging on her cheeks faded somewhat, she stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. ‘When I say past it, I mean I’m over it.’

  ‘Over what?’

  ‘Trying to please people—I had enough of it with Andrew. No matter how thin I was, no matter how good I looked, it was never enough. Look, I see how long you spend on your hair…’

  ‘It makes me feel nice,’ I smarted. ‘Believe me, Roz, I don’t want to spend all those hours, but better that than walking around like I’ve got my finger in a plug socket. It’s important to take care of yourself.’

  ‘I’m not going there again.’

  ‘Looking good isn’t just about pleasing people, Roz,’ I answered tartly. ‘This is about pleasing yourself, about self-respect.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Roz mumbled. ‘It just seems like such a lot of work and for what?’

  Okay, so softly, softly wasn’t going to work here. I’m not very good at being firm, but really I know I sound like a bitch, I know I sound superficial and I know I probably am all those things, but I truly wasn’t being bitchy or superficial at that moment. I was actually in a real predicament—one I hadn’t even told Dan about.

  Roz smelt!

  I would never say it to Dan because, well, with Dan it would be bitching, but it wasn’t just me who thought it. Since Roz started on my team I’d had four complaints about her personal hygiene. Yes, she smokes, but it wasn’t just that—I smoke, half the team smokes.

  The fact was Roz smelt.

  I really did think Roz was depressed, I mean properly depressed. I truly didn’t know what to do about it and I had no bloody idea how to approach her questionable hygiene, but I had to, because if I didn’t deal with it, I’d be complained about. One of the managers, like Claire, would then no doubt have a less than sensitive word with Roz—which would kill her.

  I’d bought her smellies as presents, but that was as far as I’d got. How do you tell a good friend, and one who is very sensitive, that, on occasion, she reeks?

  ‘Why don’t I rub in this hair mask for you and then we can both put on face-packs and then you can have a shower…’

  ‘I really can’t be bothered.’

  ‘Come on, Roz—you have to get back out there!’ I paused for effect, gave her a wide-eyed, very direct stare. ‘I mean, I understand you might need a break after your divorce but sooner or later you’re going to want to start dating again, and when you do, well…’

  ‘I’ve got a date.’ Her broken capillaries darkened, and she gave a shy smile.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow night?’

  ‘Who?’ My mind raced. When had this happened? The only person Roz went out with was me, and there wasn’t one person at work I could think of…

  Unless.

  ‘Trevor.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The computer whiz, the one who comes around…’

  ‘Oh, please!’ Roz was coughing again, clearly appalled at the suggestion, and in fairness I’d be appalled at the suggestion too. Trevor had Roz’s split-ends problem only his covered the whole of his face, and deodorant clearly wasn’t at the top of his shopping trolley.

  ‘Then who?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t want to talk about it, Alice; I don’t want to jinx myself.’

  I saw an opening.

  ‘But you want to look nice?’ I nudged the pack across the table.

  ‘I guess,’ she said slowly, and I felt her waver, took it as a positive sign and moved quickly to build on it. ‘I know it’s what’s inside that matters, Roz, but you’ve only got a small window of time to make that first impression. I read that it takes less that a second for a person to form an opinion, less than a second,’ I reiterated as Roz started to frown. ‘You can be the nicest person in the world but if you don’t look the part, no one’s going to come over and find out.’ She was frowning deeply now, so I put it in simpler terms: ‘It’s fabulous you’ve got a date, Roz.’ A bloody miracle really, I almost added, but held back. ‘It’s fabulous that you’re getting back into the swing of things. And whoever he is, he clearly likes you for who you are…’ She opened her mouth to speak but I overrode her. ‘Surely you want to show that you’ve made a bit of an effort for him.’

  She didn’t answer, just stared into her empty glass, and for an appalling moment I thought she was going to cry. Actually, it wasn’t even a moment. About ten seconds later she started to howl, not delicately (this is Roz we’re talking about) but great throaty sobs that caught in her throat and made her cough at the same time.

  ‘God, Roz, I’m sorry.’ So much for softly, softly. So much for helping. Here was poor Roz blubbering on my sofa, crying her eyes out and feeling fat and ugly and worthless, and it was all my fault. ‘Don’t listen to me,’ I said, appalled at what I’d done, wrapping my arms as far around her shoulders as I could and squeezing tight. ‘What would I bloody know? You look fabulous,’ I said firmly, so firmly even I thought I sounded as if I meant it. ‘You’re going to knock his socks off…’

  ‘No, Alice.’

  ‘Yes, you are!’ I insisted as Roz took a deep breath and calmed herself, finally looking up as I cracked open a bottle of Baileys. ‘Feel better?’

  She gave a sort of sorry nod, forced a bit of a watery smile and stared at me as I handed her back a very full glass.

  ‘Tell you what,’ I said frantically, terrified she might start crying again or—even worse—leave, ‘why don’t I ring for a pizza?’

  ‘You don’t eat carbs.’

  ‘I’ll pick at the cheese,’ I said quickly, ‘and smoke.’ I held my breath, held it so hard I thought my lungs were going to explode but finally after the longest time she nodded.

  ‘Better?’ I asked again, and this time she gave a firmer nod.

  ‘Much.’

  ‘You’re not just saying that?’

  ‘No.’ She gave a loud sniff and I thought the tears were about to start again, but to my utter relief she started to laugh, really laugh. ‘Oh, Alice!’ She shook her head and then picked up my fifty-dollar cream and started massaging it into her hooves. ‘Oh, Alice,’ she said again, and something in her eyes didn’t add up, because for all the world I felt as if she were placating me, as if she was going on with the charade just to please me, when it was the other way around.

  ‘Tell you what…’ Roz gave a loud sniff and picked up the hair mask and read the back. ‘How long do I have to leave this stuff on for?’

  ‘Half an hour.’

  ‘Will you play?’ Roz was always doing this—always trying to get me to play the piano. The flat has one. It was there when I first moved in. Roz starts crying sometimes when I play and goes on about how I’m wasted at the paper. But that’s Roz—I could play ‘Trotting Pony’ and she’d tell me I was fantastic.

  I didn’t want to sit at the piano, with Nicole gone and everything, though if it meant that she stayed…

  ‘Deal!’ I grinned, dropping the mask in a cup and grabbing some towels from the bathroom.

  In fact, it turned out to be a great night. I played for forty minutes—I went through some of my old exam recital and then we had a little sing-along. She even let me pluck her eyebrows and a fun time was had by all working our way down a bottle of Baileys. By the time we were at the sucking on ice cube stage, she was so pissed I even managed to persuade her to stay over and it was kind of nice hearing her snoring from Nicole’s room.

  Not that I could sleep.

  Playing the piano always unsettles me.

  Oh, not when it’s ‘Coming Round The Mountain’ or ‘My Old Man’, but when I play the classics, when I’m
stretched, when I have to reach inside myself, I feel, for a while at least, as if I’m coming apart.

  Eight

  ‘Hey!’ Gus gave a smile of appreciation as I walked in. I had washed in the sink for two days, avoiding steam from the bath, and even dragging a couple of emerging curls out with the hairdryer myself in anticipation of this moment.

  And it was worth it.

  Oh, it was so, so worth it.

  ‘You look great,’ Gus said. ‘How was the wedding?’

  ‘Great.’ I beamed, because the wedding had been awful, but at the end of the reception I had got off with this guy, Lex’s best man, in fact, and finally had a decent snog and then a bit of a fumble in the loos.

  Celeste didn’t comment on my lovely hair, just scowled up at me from the kitchen where she was standing. I didn’t smile back—I had heard them rowing from the street when I arrived, and it made Gus’s smile all the more worth it, that he could manage to be nice, unlike Celeste.

  We went through and I set up my music.

  It was my favourite piece.

  Tchaikovsky, ‘January’, from The Seasons.

  I’d been focusing, amongst others, on this piece for a good few months now. It was for my exam and it was so bloody hard.

  Not so much technically, but my playing strength is emotion and that is the hard part to explain. At home when I was practising, every now and then I got it. Sometimes I played it so well, even I cried. I just had to work out how to do that for my exam.

  You see, my sisters think it’s just a matter of playing. They can’t understand that it might take a year to learn one piece of music, but Gus understood, and he was so patient—except he wasn’t this evening.

  ‘You haven’t been practising.’

  ‘I have.’ I screwed up my face as I lied.

  ‘Pianissimo!’ he said. ‘It’s supposed to be soft but it’s like a herd of fucking elephants.’ I didn’t mind that he swore—it made me feel older. I knew he wouldn’t swear with some of the little kids. Over and over we went but we never got past the first page—and I could hear the mistakes and feel him wince. It must have given Celeste a thumper of a headache, because when we went over the hour, she came in.

  ‘How much longer, Gus?’ She didn’t even look at me.

  ‘When I’m done!’ Gus didn’t look at her either, just sat in silence as Celeste slammed the door.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I felt as if the row was my fault; I mean, it wasn’t exactly a row, she’d just slammed the door, but I knew he was proving a point when, instead of closing my music, he told me to go from midway.

  God, I loved this bit; there’s a lot of hand crossing and I ached to play it right—I yearned for the day I did it perfectly, but still I messed up. He was behind me, and he played the right hand and I played the left. He did it so much more easily, and then he mucked up too—well, he had an excuse because he was over me, and not sitting down, but he laughed at his own mistake and then I laughed too, and everything suddenly felt a bit better.

  Anyway, there we were, me trying to sort out the hand-change thing and he was still leaning over and I messed up.

  His hands went over mine to show me a move, just as he did in every other lesson, I guess, but it was different, I could feel his fingers. Before it was like he was showing me, but now I could feel them.

  He moved his other hand so that his arms were under my armpits and he played for a moment. I could feel his arms against my breasts. They were sore; my period had finished so it wasn’t because of that. It was a nice sore, sort of heavy, and achy.

  I was looking down at his fingers, but all I could see were my breasts. The nipples were sticking out, and it was like I’d never seen them before. They were like thimbles under my dress and he was still playing the tune. I could feel his breath on my cheek but I had no breath. I wasn’t breathing; my breasts hurt and as his arms pulled back his hands brushed them.

  It was like watching in slow motion. His hands had the palms facing inwards, and as they slid from my chest they stroked the sides and I don’t know if they paused; as I lay in my bed that night I wondered if they had, but I don’t think so. They just slid against the sides and I wanted them to slide back, but they didn’t.

  ‘Okay.’ His voice sounded normal. ‘Let’s leave it there for now. Practise, Alice.’ I was closing up my music and I dropped a couple of sheets and I turned around to pick them up—I was head level with his crotch and I saw his erection. I wanted to touch it, but of course I didn’t. I stood up.

  I pretended that I hadn’t seen it.

  I wasn’t even sure if I had, but as I lay in bed that night all I knew was that I was having another lesson in a couple of days.

  Nine

  I hated my own company.

  That’s not what I said to Big Tits because I knew it wasn’t how I was supposed to be. I knew, because I’d read all the self-help books. I was supposed to have inner reserves, to be able to spend a thoughtful evening alone, lighting candles and playing music that meant something to me, as I spoiled myself by soaking in an aromatic bath with a deep and moving book. But the simple fact was, I hated being by myself.

  Hated bouncing questions I already knew the answers to.

  Hated watching a film when there was no one to pass the tissues to and share the ending.

  And where was the fun in candles and soft music and bubble baths when you were alone?

  Anyway, the flat didn’t have a bath.

  Roz had taken her weary liver out on her date and Dan hadn’t returned my phone calls all day. By evening I resorted to texting him saying I was really worried about work and needed his advice and he eventually texted back and said he’d come over.

  You see, Dan’s a careers counsellor: he goes around schools telling sixteen-year-olds they can be whatever they want to be and he takes it all very, very seriously, so I knew if I dangled that little carrot, he’d bite quickly. That he might manage to tear himself away from Matthew for five minutes.

  Yes, Matthew.

  Sorry to disappoint you—believe me I felt the same when I found out too.

  Worse!

  Dan, you see, was possibly the love of my life.

  Lisa, I’m sure, if she knew about Dan and me, would say that I was comfortable with Dan because he was gay, that because there was no sexual tension I was able to be myself and to relax with him.

  Bullshit.

  I loved him long before I knew he was gay.

  I wasted months, wondering what the hell I was doing wrong.

  You just wouldn’t spot it—okay, the fitted shirt, the Pilates and, I guess, the fact that he exfoliates might have been missed clues—but loads of guys look after themselves now.

  His friend Michelle was my flatmate at the time—they weren’t going out or anything—and Dan used to come around and I’d pull out all the stops.

  Then he became more regular at the flat and I stopped pulling out all the stops and he still liked me. I could answer the door in baggy pyjamas, still orange from a new spray tan and walking with my toenails splayed with cotton wool because I was painting them, and he still liked me.

  Then I got drunk and slept with some football player to make him jealous. Well, suffice to say it ended in tears—with a blotchy face and a rather fat lip (the football player did have anger issues). Dan was the one who held the ice pack.

  Dan was appalled when I confessed that I’d done it to make him notice me.

  And then he’d told me the truth.

  And he also told me just how much he hated the truth.

  That he’d rather slash his abdomen and dissect his own intestines than fess up and tell the world that he was gay.

  At first it had been a whoosh of relief—so that was why he didn’t fancy me.

  Then I had decided that, if I tried harder, one day he might—he had assured me he wouldn’t.

  He wasn’t bisexual; he said it as a warning.

  He was gay.

  So I got angry…

  And we
fell out, but we missed each other and made it up, though we hadn’t yet come full circle. There was still this… this… bitterness there on my part.

  I mean, how unlucky was I, that the perfect guy for me, the one guy who actually loves me, just wasn’t technically wired that way?

  I hated all the crap about ‘Oh, I’m not homophobic—my best friend’s gay’.

  I actually HATED it that he was gay.

  I cried at every episode of Will and Grace.

  I hated it that I would love the smell of him coming out of the shower for ever, that he could make me laugh with just a twitch of his lips, that he’s just the most amazing guy in the whole wide world, that he can pull me in his arms and make me feel safe—and that, faults and all, somehow he loves me and yet somehow he can’t.

  He loves me.

  Just not in that way.

  However, Dan had been a bit off recently. Every time I rang he was always just on his way out, and call me paranoid if you must, but whenever I got the answering-machine I swear he was home, hovering over the receiver and not picking it up because it was me. It wasn’t fair. We’d been through everything together. When he was in the closet, he’d been only too happy to drag me to every family function imaginable and pass me off as his girlfriend and then, when he was coming out, night after night had been spent metaphorically holding his hand as he worked up the courage to tell his family and friends. And once out! Oh, yes, he’s Mr Bloody Sensible now, but he was wild for a while there, dragging me along to gay bars where I’d sit and pretend not to notice how long it took him to go to the men’s room.

  Now, though, when I needed him, he was too busy being happy with Matthew.

  I was making lime margaritas—there was a mountain of limes that I was juicing and I had all the ingredients lined up to whizz in the blender but Dan filled the kettle.

  ‘I’m not drinking,’ he said, which meant that he wouldn’t be staying.

  ‘I got a couple of movies, though.’ More and more it was getting like this with Dan. Since he had started going out with Matthew I was slotted in, like a dental appointment or a quick dash to the shops on a lunch break. ‘Stay the night, Dan, you haven’t for ages.’