The Cupid Effect (8 page)

After the initial shock of Drew meeting ‘The One', which resulted in me moving in with Whashisface Tosspot, I'd gone into denial. I'd hung up the phone, sat staring into space for ages until I reached a very important decision:
I'm not going to think about it. At all.
Drew, my love, my long-term plan for happiness had met his dream woman, so the best course of action was to enter denial, quietly and calmly, without any fuss, and not think about it.

Since I'd decided not to think about it, I could think about nothing else. It was always there at the back of my mind. Kicking away, dancing up and down, waving a red flag, demanding attention. When I woke up in the morning, when I got ready for work, when I sat at work, when I came home from work. When I made dinner, when I ate it, when I watched telly, when I was having sex, I thought about it. My stomach churned; dipping and rising, spinning and twisting. I found it hard to eat without feeling sick afterwards. I'd be sat at my desk, editing copy and find my right leg perched on the ball of my foot, bouncing nervously up and down. And all because I'd decided
not
to think about it.

Three months later, exhausted by the effort and nausea involved in not thinking about it, I decided to think about it. I decided to let myself off the hook, stop being such a brave little martyr and go into the pain. Go into it, embrace it, accept it. I was, at least, allowed to cry about it. I picked a weekend when Whashisface Tosspot went away to his parents' (of course, they had a huge house in the country but he was always pleading poverty). As he drove off very late Friday night, I got myself all the tools for grieving I'd previously denied myself – a couple of bottles of wine, a multipack of tissues and some appropriate CDs – and took to my bed.

Except, my mind, twisted as it was, refused to collapse. Refused to let me cry and wallow and give in to how much pain Drew's news had caused me.

As I lay under my duvet,
Can't Live If Living Is Without You
playing on loop in the background, there was no emotional retching. No physical heartbreak. No tears. No open-mouthed ugly cry. Not even when I squeezed really hard. All that came to me were all the negative things about him. About this Drew, this man who I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with.

My brain kept dredging up examples of his caddishness any time ‘but I love him' thought of rearing its pathetic head. How he'd cuddle up with me, but never made a proper move on me. How he'd go out with other people and flaunt it in my face (how many times had I heard how great his latest woman was, how sexy, how good in bed? Too many, that's how many). How he'd disappear from my life if he met someone else and only call me to ask for advice when they were going through a hard time. How he'd give me the cold shoulder for days if I snogged someone and would refuse to listen to anything about them, at all.' (When I'd admitted I'd been seeing Whashisface Tosspot for three months, Drew had blanked me for a whole month. Didn't return my calls, didn't text or email me, ended calls after a minute if I caught him in.
Nada
, for a whole month.)

It wasn't just that, though. I started remembering how most of his girlfriends hated me, would be blatantly rude to me, probably because he told them that I had a thing about him. How he didn't come to visit me when I was in hospital for a week with pneumonia – even though the hospital was only a twenty-minute bus ride away. How he'd once forgotten my birthday. Me, his best mate, he'd forgotten my birthday. How he'd got all our mates together for a do one Christmas after we'd all left college – and neglected to invite me. On and on my mind went. By the end of the weekend, I actually hated Drew. Every time I thought of him, I mentally growled. He was an emotional tease. He'd get me all whipped up, let me believe that some way along the line we'd be together. It wasn't all his fault, though, I'd been led on by all those movies and books which propagated waiting it out. Which told you that if you just hung in there long enough, he'll realise that you're the one for him and give up going out with supermodel-types who'll smash up his car windscreen because he didn't call. (Yes, one of his girlfriends did that once and I'd gone with him to get it fixed.) No, he'll discover he wants to be with the woman he comes running to emotionally and physically when he's single.

Suddenly, I realised he'd been a bastard to me but because I thought I loved him, I hadn't wanted to see it. And this falling for ‘The One' was the final act of treachery as far as I was concerned. It was all right for him to go meet his perfect woman, all right for him to fall in love, all right, even, for him to realise he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. But why the bloody hell was I the first person he called up about it? Because he had no respect for me or the feelings he'd nurtured in me, was the short answer. (I was good at short answers, but this was the first time I'd actually paid attention to one.)

Drew, my beloved, was a bloody bastard who wasn't worthy of my love or attention.

By four o'clock Saturday afternoon I'd thrown back my duvet, leapt out of bed and called up a couple of friends to meet me in Soho for a late lunch. Three of us had sat in a café on Old Compton Street, London, drinking wine and eating cake. It'd mutated to going to a pub, going to a club, then staying at a friend's house in Fulham. We'd then gone for a pub lunch and got some more drinks in. By the time I got home, Whashisface Tosspot was back – unimpressed by how legless I was at six o'clock on a Sunday evening – and I'd re-entered my place called denial.

Except, this time, when I decided NOT TO THINK ABOUT IT, I really didn't. I wasn't nauseous and jumpy. I'd crossed the desert, the wide, barren landscape that was my feelings for Drew. I'd made it through the hardest times, the mirages of plentiful water supplies that were his jealousy at me seeing other people; I'd made it over the sand dunes of hurt that left me feeling worthless when he met someone else; and I'd survived those months of craving for the merest drop of affection to wet my lips on when he blanked me. Now, thanks to a weekend of negative thinking, of being surrounded by nothing except the cacti of his bad behaviour, I could see the other side of that desert and I was almost there.

Two months later, I finally reached the other side of the desert when someone called and asked if I'd spoken to Drew recently and I realised I hadn't needed to shove him to the back of my mind because he hadn't even entered my mind.

When you're so infatuated with someone, like I was with Drew, it's very difficult to see them for what they really are. But once I'd made that desert crossing, Drew stopped being the man who could do no wrong. He also stopped being the man who would one day wake up and find he loved me, because it was not going to happen. Once I could see him clearly, he became a good friend. A proper friend with no undercurrent of ‘What if ?' He became a friend because, well, I can forgive my friends most things, but I couldn't forgive the man I was supposed to love for not even liking me enough to make a pass at me. How embarrassing was that? He could cuddle me, he could flirt with me, he could talk sex with me, but he couldn't even close his eyes, think of Leeds, and kiss me full on the mouth.

Part of me clung to the notion that Drew was the one who got away, that I wouldn't feel this for anyone else – three years on, I could see that I really didn't want to. Because that wasn't love. Love is a two-way street, except with me and Drew it had been totally one way. If he'd loved me, even a little, he wouldn't have emotionally teased me.

I flicked through more pages in the photo album. We all looked so young.

I stopped over a picture of me that Drew had taken a few days after our final exam. I was lying on the grass in Hyde Park with sunglasses on, a huge smile on my face and sticking two fingers up at him. I looked quite good then, even if I say so myself. I was happy. I'd just finished my finals, I had a few weeks to go until the results. The world was my lobster. A group of us had gone to the park to play a game of rounders and I'd taken a break, lay on the grass not caring about getting grass marks on my short red dress (with white cycling shorts under it for decency).

As a shadow fell over me, I opened my eyes and found Drew stood over me, his camera poised. Just as he hit the button, I'd stuck my fingers up at him.

I didn't look that different in that photo, actually, not if you looked at the photos of me then. But when you looked at the photo then looked at me . . . I was older. Not particularly wrinkly (wrinkles weren't a worry of mine), just older; I suppose I'd done a lot and it showed on my face. I'd run a department on a women's magazine. I'd found out that love had to be two-way for it to mean anything. I'd discovered that I'd much rather stay in with a video than go out ‘on the pull'. And then, of course, I lived with a man I'd torn out of every photo he'd managed to infiltrate. This was against everything I ever believed in, I loved to take photos, to take snapshots of every time of my life. To have it there to look back on if I ever got pastsick. With Whashisface Tosspot, I just couldn't bear to be reminded of the biggest mistake of my life. It was bad enough that I'd slept with him for two years, did I really want to look at him too? No, was the short answer to that, too.

I slammed shut the photo album. Didn't I just say to Ed that ‘What if ?' was no way to live a life? Erm . . . maybe I didn't say it, but I'd meant to. And, constantly dipping into my photo album was no way to live a life in Leeds, either.
Yer have to look forwards
I reminded myself.

And I will, right after I've watched a couple more episodes of
Angel . . .

chapter seven

Blurting

Before I'd touched down in Leeds this time around, I'd decided to doff my cap to health and fitness. Devote some of my time and effort to what probably should come naturally. Not go crazy, not become a gym bore, not even attempt to lose weight or start chasing that mythical dream of ‘firming up'. I simply fancied the idea of being able to walk up more than two flights of stairs without making the asthmatic donkey sound of someone who'd had a thirty-a-day habit since she was sixteen. It was downright embarrassing that Jess could do the stairs thing without a hint of a donkey about her when she had been a thirty-a-day person since she was
fourteen.

The gym on the college campus, a stand-alone annexe, was adequate for my purposes – a line of treadmills greeted you as you entered, flanked on the left by a large handful of exercise bikes. On the right was the weights area, plus rowing machines; further on and then down a short flight of stairs was a swimming pool and a circuit training gym.

I'd come here, the first day at college, straight from my final meeting with the last lecturer, Sally. (Sally had been lovely. The meeting with her had been left till last because she was the woman I'd be sharing an office with. Out of all the other three lecturers I'd met, she was the only one who seemed to be able to speak in short sentences.) That night I had my body introduced to the equipment and the ways of the gym. That should be reintroduced, welcomed back into the fold of the gym.

This wasn't information I liked spread around, it was a shameful secret I'd buried and hidden from – but I'd joined a gym once before.

I was in college then too. Young, impetuous, easily brainwashed. If that wasn't bad enough, I joined then, dot, dot, dot,
went on a regular basis
. To add insult to potential injury, I went every other day, in fact. On alternate days, I did aerobics.

It'd been a membership of necessity, though. Everyone I knew had gone travelling for the summer, or returned to their home towns, or had left college. They all had a life. I did not. And, that summer, I became depressingly thinner and healthy. Depressingly, because I'd always have lodged somewhere in my memory the image of what I'd look like if I took care of my body, exercised, drank less and slept more. And, much as I'd love to be bright-eyed, clear-skinned and a size ten all the time, I'd much rather have a life, see my mates, drink alcohol, eat what I want and watch telly. It was a fair trade off, as far as I was concerned.

Now, however, I was lost all over again. Whilst Drew worked as a management consultant in Leeds, he lived in York. So on those days when he left work on time, he liked to drive straight home to spend time with his girlfriend. Also, when I finally saw Drew for the emotional tease he really was, I stopped calling him as much. Didn't need to ring him up to say ‘hi' or to just listen to his voice. Didn't need to ring him to get a laugh. He was simply a good friend who I didn't speak to that often.

My only real anchor in this city was Jess. And she liked to see her daughters and husband quite often, too. With only a handful of acquaintances in Leeds, and the knowledge that it'd be a while to get some – particularly if the Mel/Claudine/ lunch/mouth-foot thing was any indicator – I was forced to take refuge, once again, in the high-energy embrace of the gym.

This time, though, I was treadmilling or cycling, just to sort out my lungs. To make my cardiovascular system work properly. Nothing more. My hands, my body were going nowhere near any weights or complicated machinery. I knew my mind, all it'd take would be one well-timed movement in front of a mirror and I'd be launched back into trying to get that final year of college body again.

Just in case my body decided it was going to stay any longer than necessary in the gym, I wore the most ridiculous outfit: royal blue, daisy-covered cycling shorts and a baggy sweat top with ‘Michigan State' emblazoned across it. My black socks were rolled down to just above my ankle bones and my trainers had seen better days. To stop my hair frizzing, I'd scraped my black bob under a scarf. Gorgeous was not the word for me. Truly.

I stood with my feet on either side of the treadmill's moving part as I keyed in
30 mins
to the treadmill.