The Case of the Missing Boyfriend (24 page)

I seem to have been sitting at this table for years, and amazingly, nothing ever really seems to change. Summer, winter, now spring again . . . and here I sit, alone. Even the Leylandii seems to change faster than my life. Even the Leylandii is growing and broadening its horizons. That tree! It’s like an inverse barometer of my life – as it constantly gets bigger and stronger my life inexorably shrinks into greyness.

I can’t help but wonder if the problem is with Lady Luck – providing inappropriate opportunities at the right time, or appropriate opportunities at the wrong time, and no opportunities most of the time – or if the problem is with me. Would someone else be able to take my life and seize these moments and mould it into something different? Or am I destined to sit and wait for . . . well, for destiny, I suppose? Because it certainly feels like I do my best. And looking at the results – looking at the difference between where I am and where I want to be – I can only acknowledge that my best just doesn’t seem to be good enough to get me there.

Still, surely something will change soon, won’t it?

Autumn Blues

I sit and eat my yogurt and flip between flicking through the
Guardian
and staring out at the garden. I watch a red autumn leaf from a distant tree drift through the air and land in the lower branches of the Leylandii. Proper English trees at least have the respect to shed their leaves and let the winter light in.

But I can’t complain, it’s a beautiful day today – the weather people are calling it an ‘
Indian Summer
.’ I sip my morning coffee and think that I really should get out and make the most of the weekend. As the red leaf warns: winter will be with us soon enough. If only I could bottle a little of this sunshine up and open it in January, like jam.

I hear the metallic clack of the letterbox and drag myself from my reveries to the front door where I scoop up the letters. I know it’s weird, but I love getting post, even if it
is
only bills. Today provides the usual collection – Visa statements and electricity bills – plus one. A hand-written, purple envelope, which, on opening, turns out to be an invitation to Mark and Ian’s housewarming in Tower Hamlets. Confirmation, if any were needed, that other people’s lives really do move on. And proof that mine is about to become challengingly worse. For winter, single in this flat, without my old ally Mark living upstairs, is frankly a thought that terrifies me.

Still, I think, struggling to find the bright side, at least it shows that anything is possible. For this time a year ago, Mark would never have imagined such a happy outcome.

And at least the envelope isn’t from my mother . . . for a fleeting moment I had feared that it could be an invitation to a wedding. Not that she has mentioned any plans to marry Saddam, in her ‘e’ mails – she always writes
email
as
‘e’ mail
.

But apart from these regular ‘e’ mails about how much Saddam has been enjoying Camberley, the only actual conversation we have had since Kew has been a single phone call. A single phone call that degenerated, almost immediately, into an argument.

She had called to ask if I had any idea how to buy a goat over the internet. She wanted, she said, to buy Saddam’s mother a useful gift, and he had indicated that a goat would be most appreciated. With my usual tact, I told Mum that this was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard and she proceeded to hang up on me. Well. A goat!

Anyway, this argument was entirely my fault, because I myself had told her, she now claims, that you can buy truly
anything
online these days.

So, no . . . No marriage plans as yet . . . but, well, how can I put it? Nothing she could come up with would surprise me these days. Once your mum starts dating a Moroccan adolescent, you have to get ready for anything really.

I finger Mark’s invitation . . . it’s set for the eighteenth of October which also happens to be Darren’s birthday. I’m pretty sure that Mark will have chosen this date out of kindness, but it crosses my mind that Darren – being as sensitive as I am about being single – might well feel that he is having his nose rubbed in Mark and Ian’s happiness.

Still, perhaps by then Darren too will have a new boyfriend. Maybe this one will even be the right one. Maybe even
I
will have met someone by October. Maybe pigs will fly.

Mark once told me about Mona’s Law, which he had seen in a film, or read in a book – I can’t remember which. Anyway, Mona’s Law apparently states that everyone wants three things – that happiness is made up of a three-piece jigsaw: a good relationship, a nice place to live, and a good job. And Mona’s law states that it is mathematically impossible to maintain more than two out of the three. Thus, if you have a good job and a nice flat and you meet a lovely guy, bam – you lose your job. So you change jobs and find the perfect undreamt-of work opportunity, and wham, your landlord kicks you out on the street. I reckon that these days I’m
due
for a shake-up. Yes, I still love my flat, even though it’s now darker than Stockholm in January. And my job is perfect, especially now I am working regularly with lovely Tom on the New York Grunge! campaign. But the truth is that I would happily live in a tent and eat out of dustbins if I could find The Missing Boyfriend.

But how to shake it up? Should I quit my job? Should I sell the flat? For as far as I recall, Mona’s law never said that it’s impossible to lose
all three
bits of the jigsaw. It’s clear though that I have to do something, or I shall end up sixty years old, still wondering when things are going to change of their own accord.

I imagine this for a moment. In my mind’s eye I’m wearing a pinny like Mrs P’s, and her Leylandii has broken, Triffid-like, through my kitchen windows.

Even my mother says that it’s mad that I don’t have a boyfriend. But that, sadly, doesn’t provide any solutions. I laugh ironically, and stand and shake my head. ‘Enough!’ I say out loud. As long as there’s sunshine outside, I still have the force to shake it off.

I shower and dress in my new G-Star jeans and French Connection top (the advantage of a late summer – all the summer clothes are on sale!) and head out of the door determined that by the end of the day my head will be in a better place than it is now.

I kick my way through the ochre leaves as far as Camden market, and linger long enough to buy some organic goat’s cheese and some tiny but incredibly tasty Niçois olives.

I continue as far as the High Street and head for Waterstone’s. A deckchair in the garden, a good summer read, olives, a glass of rosé . . . that’s a plan. Three days of sunshine and we all want to live like Mediterraneans.

I drift inexorably to the
Self-Help
section. This, I note, has been halved in size to provide space for their ever-burgeoning collection of
Personal Pain Memoirs
. Glancing over my shoulder to make sure that no one is watching, I pick a few of these up:
Don’t Tell Mummy: a shocking tale of sexual abuse. Betrayed. Ugly.
It strikes me that situating the Personal Pain Memoirs next to Self-Help isn’t entirely accidental. Presumably when one is fed up with drowning in sorrow, one moves onto healing strategies. Or perhaps it’s the other way around. Maybe once one has tried all the healing strategies and they have all failed, the only succour left is to read about other people’s misery. Whichever way it works, I don’t need anyone else’s
Personal Pain
right now. I choose hope instead.

I proudly leave the store with a novel:
The Blue Bistro
(A Light, Fun and Intoxicating Summer Read), and
Depression – Be Gone!

The Ups and Downs
of Self-Help

When I get back to the house, I’m pleasantly surprised to discover a strip of sunlight shining on the mossy remains of my once-vibrant lawn.

The patch of sunlight is only an inch wider than my deck chair, necessitating constant and precise solar-tracking manoeuvres. But a patch of sunlight is not to be sneezed at, especially when trying to create Mediterranean ambiences in London in September.

I put on shorts and a tacky old halter-top and lounge back on my stolen Regent’s Park deck-chair with my stunningly pink bottle of Coteaux d’Aix, half a pound of cubed goat’s cheese and my tiny but incredibly tasty olives. The deck-chair, I hasten to add, was not stolen by me – I don’t, as Mum would say, come from that kind of family. The previous owner of the flat luckily did though.

I read the back cover and reviews of
The Blue Bistro
again and then start to speed-read
Depression: Be Gone!

I don’t really know how to speed read, but I have read so many of these books, I can pretty much skim the fluff. In a nutshell, you just look for anything with italics or bullet points.

I quickly learn that depression is caused by
unchallenged
mental untruths which fall into three major categories:

As none of these really ring my bell, I choose the closest –
Feelings of entrapment –
and start to mentally list all the things that seem wrong with my life that I can’t work out how to change. I’m supposed to do this exercise with pen and paper but paralysed by either the rosé or perhaps by my
latent depression
, I simply can’t be bothered to go inside to fetch either.

So my problem areas are: not having a boyfriend, not wanting to spend my whole life in London and not wanting to spend my life in advertising (selling things to people who don’t need them, as some arsehole once told me).

Three seconds’ thought produces three problems. And this is the snag with depression: feeling bloody miserable leaves you feeling bloody miserable about
all
of the areas of your life.

The book says that I have to verify whether what I have written is
True
– and delete any situations which would be
acceptable
, were all the other things in the list OK.

So, number one: the lack of a boyfriend.

Problem? Yes. It’s a problem. No discussion required.

Number two: London.

London’s OK, if I’m being fair. I have quite a bit of fun because I live where I do. It’s just that it’s all somehow a bit superficial – what’s
right
about London is all razzle and glitter. There’s no sense of feeling centred or fulfilled in my day-to-day existence. It doesn’t satisfy the
Earth Mother
in me.

At least I love my flat. Though even this, I have to admit, I am liking less now the Leylandii has turned it into a Siberian salt mine. And now that Mark is moving out.

So, on to number three: Advertising.

Advertising is the perfect way for me to earn a living within the life that I have
now
. It’s a problem only when placed in the context of everything
else
I want. I’m good at it, and it pays the bills with ease. It’s just that were I able to change that life for something better – say a husband and a child and The Good Life then everything that advertising represents would become an absurdity.

I sigh and slosh another quarter-bottle of rosé into my glass.

As ever, the whole equation just seems too complicated for my brain, for everything depends on everything else. My life, as set up, meshes perfectly with itself. But I have to change it. And to change any of it, I have to change all of it. And even trying to think how to begin that process makes me feel like I’m drowning.

I’m fed up with being single, fed up with being a consumer, fed up with being the resident fag hag for my gay friends and being left in the corner as soon as a man comes along. I want a child – no,
need
a child. Since the abortion I carry an emptiness around with me everywhere I go – a physical sensation of loss, that I think, hope,
know
only a baby would fill. My brother and father are dead. My mother is turning into a paedophile.

Jesus
, I think.
How many REAL problems do you want?

And so I close
Depression – Be Gone!

Muttering, ‘Depression – Be Gone! Be Gone!!’ I hurl it across the garden.

Listing my feelings of entrapment has not liberated me from them. It has simply produced a whole swathe of
feelings of hopelessness
. I expect that there’s another step to this process – I’m sure listing my problems was just the first stage. But sadly, right now, I just don’t have the willpower for any more self-help. I barely have the energy to slosh more wine into my glass. But of course I just about manage that.

The patch of sunlight reaches the point where I can no longer sit in it (without sitting on my rose bushes) at exactly the same moment my bottle of rosé finally expires.

I scoop up my depressing book on depression and move to the lounge. Phase one has left me feeling quite dreadful.

I take a deep breath. Let’s hope phase two –
Acknowledging Your Personal Power
– is more uplifting.