Crazygirl Falls in Love (34 page)

And suddenly I can’t help it – I’m crying like a big, dumb
bimbo. I’m forced to announce to the concerned people around me
that, no, I’m not dying, I’m just feeling a little
fragile.

I check my phone constantly even though I know I don’t get
signal until I reach Paddington. When I finally reach Bayswater I
check and see with horror that Angrypants has tried calling eleven
times and has left three voicemails. I decide not to listen to
them. Ever. I delete the call log and the voicemails without
hearing a word of what she’s got to say. I owe her nothing, just
like the song says.

There are also a few missed calls from He Who Shall Not Be
Named, and a few numbers that aren’t saved in my phone that I don’t
recognise. There are a few text messages too. I delete all and
sundry without reading a word. None of it is from anyone I actually
want to hear from. I want my sister and I want my friends, and none
of them have responded.

As I walk through my front door I take off my sweat soaked
pregnancy dress and jump in the shower. I stand there for hours,
crying, soap running down my face.

***

By 8:00 p.m. I’m eating a jar of expired olives straight out
of the jar while sitting cross legged in the sitting room watching
Jeremy Kyle reruns. In previous depressions Jezza K has always
managed to cheer me, basically because I end up making direct
comparisons between my life and the show’s guests’. It goes
something along the lines of, ‘My life may suck, but at least it’s
better than Mad Dog Dion’s or the obese mother of thirteen who
wants to marry her aunt’. I savour the scenes of angry spit being
hurdled between the deadbeat dads and cheating boyfriends and
slutty mothers. Then Jeremy deals out a hefty dose of chav bashing
and there’s a happy ending and that’s enough to make me smile
again.

But for the first time since I moved to the UK, those wretched
council estate monkeys buried in an avalanche of their own
inelegance haven’t made me feel good about my life. In fact,
they’ve kinda done the opposite, because I’m betting even Mad Dog
Dion has a couple of friends, which is more than I can say for
myself.

I’ve checked my phone every thirty seconds for the past two
hours (I know, it’s an exhausting pace of text checking, but I
can’t help myself). I thought someone, anyone, would have replied
by now. But no one has. Not one fucking friend, no Emma, no Chloe,
no Mags, not even Maya in remote, last-stop-before Antarctica
Melbourne.

I’ve decided to deal with the realision I have no one left the
only way I know how – turning on the telly and hitting the fridge.
Except there was nothing on except Jeremy Kyle, the Alan Titchmarsh
Show and London’s Burning (I chose Jezza), and nothing in the
fridge besides some spilt Aunt Jamima syrup stuck to the bottom
tray and a jar of bad olives. I chose the olives.

In other phone-related news, Angrypants has been giving it her
all. She’s currently averaging one call every half hour. I haven’t
answered any of them. Other numbers I don’t recognise have been
trying to reach me too, but since they’re not saved in my phone I
also don’t answer. It’s not safe, they could be Angrypants if she’s
being sneaky and calling from a different number, or Old Man Gin or
Voldemort using a new phone.

I’ve also had a missed call from Lord
Robbins.
Lord Tony
fucking
Robbins
. The Big Kahuna, the toppest dog of the Top Dogs, Senior
Partner and European Head of Real Estate, and Angrypants’ boss’s
boss. When I saw his number pop up it made my knees buckle and I
also peed myself a little. Only a little! It’s just that... well,
when Gribbles Corporate call it’s either because of something
ridiculously, stupendously, out of control good, candy factory
good, ‘you’ve-won-Solicitor-of-the-Year-Award’ kinda good, or it’s
something very bad.
You’re-going-to-an-Indonesian-jail-for-dealing-hard-drugs kinda
bad. I’m thinking it’s the latter, and that is truly
scary.

So I let the numbers ring out and delete my call log and
voicemails as they do. I don’t want to hear. I don’t want to know.
I don’t even want the faintest possibility of knowing how much
trouble I’ve gotten myself into this time. So whatever awful things
that were recorded have now been lost permanently. And surely that
can’t be a bad thing, right?

Right Brain is deciding to panic plummet on
me no matter how hard I try to drown its voice with vinegary
olives,
welp, you’ve gone and done it now,
haven’t you? You burnt every single bridge you ever had. All your
clients will find out about the Lloyds scene, hell, the
entire
European recruitment field
will find out about the Lloyds scene. And rent be
crazy, bitches. You’ll end up skint, destitute and alone, existing
on Co-Operative canned tuna and Nabisco crackers in a dirty London
hostel before finally accepting that London won. You’ll fly back to
Melbourne with money borrowed from your Dad and die a poor, lonely
old maid in the Australian suburbs. The
suburbs
. The place with all those
huge, hairy spiders. The place you swore you’d never live in
again.

Out of date olives, hyperventilation and Mad Dog Dion. That’s
a nice summary of the last three hours.

It’s 8:11 p.m. and no lights are flashing on my phone anymore,
not even from the people I don’t want to hear from. It’s as dead as
a doughnut.

I shuffle back into the kitchen to scrape that maple syrup off
whilst casually contemplating suicide.

***

I reckon I’m reaching new levels of
loserness. Jan Brady levels of loserness. It’s 9:30 p.m. and
still
no word from Chloe,
Mags or Emma. And I thought I’d hit rock bottom yesterday during
The Incident. How wrong I was. This is rock
bottom.

But I don’t want to give in, I don’t want to go down without a
fight. I’m still young, I still have money, I still have clothes. I
need a distraction and I need some liquor, and there’s neither of
those in my apartment at present. I need to feel good again, happy,
confident, and above all I need my brain to stop running through
the events of today like a broken record. With no friends to chat
with I have no option but to head out into the big wide world and
try to make new acquaintances.

I head into my bedroom and pull out an evening get up. I
choose skinny jeans, my black patent heels and my cream strapless
top with the gold trim things. I straighten my hair a little and
put on make-up, just eye liner and a lip gloss and more concealer
around my eye. I’m going out, and no one’s going to stop me. Sure,
it may be Monday and no one normal goes out Monday nights, but you
never know, the hospitality crowd might just be around. And it’s
not like I have a job to go to tomorrow anyway.

I’m at the Bayswater Arms chatting to my new friends, PJ
Staples and the barman, Professor Buzzkill. I’ve started calling
him that since he suggested I slow up on the drinking (“perhaps a
nice domestic, light beer would be preferable to another whiskey,
eh?”) Even though it’s fast becoming clear I’m terrible at drinking
brown spirits (as if the morning of the wedding wasn’t proof
enough), I’ve still had a lovely time hanging out with my new buds.
Heck, I might come down here every night now that I’m
unemployed.

PJ Staples and I have been drinking together since shortly
after I arrived. I had strolled up to the bar and ordered myself a
Prosecco with OJ, and within a few minutes a shaven-haired,
tattoo-parlour-loving, ripped and chiselled meathead was beside me,
asking my name.

I picked up immediately that he was from somewhere east. His
opening line had been,

“’
Ello luv, I’m Staples, but my mates call me PJ.”

“I’m Penny, nice to meet you.”

“My bruv used to call me PJ as a kid and it stuck, d’you know
wha’ I mean?”

“Sure.”

An awkward, quiet moment had then arisen. Normally I would
have asked a question to avoid said moment turning into one of
those horrible, strained silences, but I didn’t this time, because
I didn’t care. I’d stopped caring about anything. My life was in
shambles, my relationships a putrid slop of failure, my career in
tatters. So what did I care about social niceties at this stage?
Fuck this guy and his lack of conversational abilities.

Instead of making polite small talk like I
normally would, I had looked away and continued gulping my mimosa
in silence. What I wasn’t expecting was what he’d say next. It was
the
very last thing
I was expecting from Mr A Bit Romford,

“So... I fucked Sylvia Platt last weekend.”

Say whaaaaaaaa?
This new friendship had derailed even faster than I had
originally anticipated. Who starts off a conversation with a line
like
that
?

But what PJ Staples lacked in style, he made up for in
intrigue. I found myself nodding, my eyes wide as saucers, eager as
punch to hear the end of his tale. I don’t watch TOWIE myself, but
I’d seen what’s-her-face on an episode on Celebrity Come Dine with
Me (best show ever!) where she’d insisted she doesn’t allow kisses
on the first date. I had thought it had sounded a little thin, a
little ‘the lady doth protest too much’ thin. Because let’s be
honest, we all kiss (if not more) on the first date.

It was a shame PJ Staples had the charisma of wet cabbage. His
tale of ultimate B-list Celebrity frivolity was about as
interesting as watching a scab form. He explained that he’d been in
Dubai last week to train a group of budding personal trainers.
Whilst living it up, Dubai-styles, he had met Ms Sylvia at a bar
somewhere and that was that.

I couldn’t quite believe the boringness of it, and had
declared his narrative simply wasn’t good enough. I needed details!
Saucy, scandalous details! I asked him whether she was any good in
bed. He said she was incredible,

“I’m not even joking, she’s proper fit, proper salt, d’you
know wha’ I mean?”

I had asked what he thought of her in general. He said she was
awesome and that he was in love, couldn’t get her out of his head
and had started stalking her Twitter account.

After that first wee chat I had taken a
mental step back. Here was a guy who refers to himself as
PJ Staples
, who is as
vanilla as they come (and tries to compensate with some interesting
arm-ink, which isn’t fooling anybody) and
he
picks up Sylvia Platt. Sylvia
Platt, guys! She’s so beautiful she’d hit a 9 easy, maybe even a
9.5. The ‘gentleman’ sitting beside me, on the other hand, is a 3.
So what exactly is going on here? Us girls are now settling
for
more
than two
points down the Dating Scale? That can only mean one thing – there
are no good men left. Or Sylvia Platt had some ridiculous beer
goggles on that night, were a below-average 3 suddenly became a
solid 8.

Seeing as he’d just declared his love for a raven-haired sex
goddess, I determined PJ would be a safe bet to continue my
drinking with. I would have preferred a less retarded chat-buddy,
but beggars can’t be choosers. It was either PJ Staples, the couple
in the corner both playing on their phones and ignoring each other,
another couple nearby sitting in a cloud of palpable awkwardness
(I’m guessing it was a Tinder date) and a junkie lurking near the
stairs.

Plus, I had to start somewhere with this whole ‘making new
friends’ experiment. So I ordered another round for myself and PJ,
then tried to engage the bar-guy in conversation too, because hell,
I’m not above a bit of bartender brown nosing.

The more drinks we had the less stilted the conversation
became, and I started noticing PJ inching closer, trying to put his
hand over mine, and I suddenly realised he was
interested.

I should have gone home at that point, but I stayed. I
stalwartly ignored the signs that this guy would be wanting much
more than to hang out for the remainder of the evening, letting me
go on my merry way at close. Stupid, huh?

More stupidly than that though, I moved onto hard liquor until
Professor Buzzkill told me I’d had enough. I immediately started
abusing the nice barman, then just as quickly decided that dancing
would be a really good idea. I dragged my new friend onto the dance
floor (read. an empty corner of the pub) with my last drink, and
soon my feet got too sore in my heels so I ripped them off and
threw them across the bar. Eventually, PJ started suggesting we
should leave. I had laughed it off each time until he got
frustrated, grabbed my arms and started dragging me towards the
door.

And here we are now. I have broken glass in my foot and am
being dragged out of the bar by a drunk skinhead, who is in love
with a celebrity fantasy but obviously thinks I’ll do for the
night.

I keep fighting him, pulling back with all my might, desperate
for someone to help. But the people in the pub are reluctant.
Professor Buzzkill is polishing a stein glass, deliberately looking
in the opposite direction. And I don’t begrudge him that, because
I’ve spent the last thirty minutes dancing barefoot in his fine
establishment, sloshing drink everywhere, yelling the lyrics to
songs at the top of my voice and making a right fool of myself. The
couple of patrons scattered about are looking down and around and
anywhere but the scene unfolding in front of them by the
door.