Turning Thirty (29 page)

Love

Matt xxx

Dear Elaine

I'm writing this e-mail all of six seconds after I wrote that last one (which I now give you permission to ignore . . . well, actually don't . . . you can keep it and call it exhibit A should I ever accuse you of cowardice). Three seconds after I pressed
SEND
I was overwhelmed with guilt. I mean really overwhelmed (the sweaty palms, the hot flushes, that tight feeling in your stomach like you're going to throw up at any second). In as roundabout a way as possible this is me telling you that I have some news – news that I'm not sure how you're going to react to. So here goes: Ginny and I got together as in ‘got together'. Obviously things are still complicated. We haven't even had a chance to talk about it yet – she went to work this morning without waking me up but I guess we'll try and sort things out tonight. I know this probably isn't what you want to hear (mainly because if the tables were turned this is the last thing I'd want to hear myself) but if I don't tell you then everything we ever had is going to fall apart. And if there's one thing I've learnt about turning thirty it's this: good friends are hard to come by so when you've found a few it's a good idea to keep hold of them.

That's pretty much it.

Mail me back soon?

love as always,

Matt xxx

Although I'd told Elaine that I thought Ginny and I would have The Talk, as the day wore on and Ginny didn't call, I became less convinced we would. I realised I was right to be sceptical. Not only did we not talk about it that evening but we didn't mention it the evening after that. Or the evening after that. Or the evening after that. It was like being in the sixth form again, only this time without having to pretend we didn't fancy each other. We behaved as if we were together – by which I mean that we were all over each other every night when she came home from work. She took to ignoring Ian's calls, which was deeply satisfying, and we spent every single second we could together, but we didn't talk – or, at least, we didn't have The Talk. We couldn't. Instead every day while she went out to work I went into analysis overdrive. Along the lines of:

Answer:
A resounding yes, followed by a brief furrow of the eyebrows and the question: but what is happy? If happy is feeling carefree then I suspect I'm far from happy. But if happy is laughing so hard at your new girlfriend/not girlfriend's very poor jokes that your sides hurt, if happy is looking into your girlfriend/not girlfriend's eyes and seeing the very something that you'd thought you'd lost a long time ago, if happy is these things then I am indeed happy. But if it isn't, then: no.

This would inevitably lead me to:

Answer:
no.

Despite all these questions to which I had no real answers, that week Ginny and I had a fantastic time. If our lives had been a film then the week that began with the kiss on Sunday evening would be represented by a cheesy montage: Ginny and I laughing as we held hands and walked barefoot across a sandy beach; Ginny and I splashing in a crystal blue ocean – Ginny falling into my arms for a kiss; Ginny and I staring deeply into each other's eyes as the sun set behind our heads. That sort of thing. Unfortunately this wasn't Hollywood, USA, this was Birmingham, UK, so our montage wasn't quite so glamorous.

It's Monday morning and I wake up with no Ginny beside me. There's a note next to the bed saying that she's got up early to buy us breakfast before she goes to work. I roll over on to my front, dangle an arm over the edge of the bed and brush against something. I pick up the object – a shoe-box. I know what it is immediately because I've seen her get some old photos of Gershwin out of it. I take the opportunity to look through them. Straight away I come across photos of Ginny and me that I haven't seen since the day she collected them from Boots. In these photos we are seventeen. I think about how young seventeen really is. She comes back. I hide the box and we kiss.

It's early evening on Tuesday. Ginny and I are sitting on the doorstep looking out on to the back garden even though it's raining and the garden is a jungle of weeds. She is feeding me a whole packet of Revels one by one, just as I fed her a small bunch of seedless grapes only moments before. We are being that sickeningly together. I decide that when we get to the end of the packet we are going to have a talk – The Talk. The one about us. And the future. And what we actually think we are achieving by doing this. Stuff we both know we need to know. I look into the packet and can see that there are only three left.

‘Do you know how cute you are?' she says.

‘You are cute, you know. Unbearably so,' she continues.

‘I think I might actually be . . .' she begins, then hesitates.

‘You think you might actually be what?' I ask, still chewing.

She shrugs, kisses me and says, ‘I think nothing.'

We're in the city centre in the late afternoon on Wednesday. Ginny's come here straight after work and we are wandering around aimlessly because that's what we did virtually every day during long, hot, post-exam summers. We wander into a shop that sells pictures and picture frames and look through some black and white prints. I point out one of Louis Armstrong that I like. He's standing next to Ella Fitzgerald and looking so happy that he must have been on the verge of exploding.

‘I'll buy it for you,' says Ginny.

‘No, there's no need.'

‘I think there is,' she says, ignoring me.

Five minutes later I'm walking around with the print and frame, and I don't know what it is I'm feeling but I am feeling something quite incredible.

It's Thursday evening and Ginny and I are over at Gershwin and Zoë's for dinner. I expect us to modify our behaviour – to keep it our secret for a little while longer but we don't. Ginny sits next to me the whole time squeezed right up against me, staring at me as if she really is interested in every word that comes out of my mouth, no matter how inane. I suspect I am doing the same. Gershwin and Zoë are really cool about it. They don't bat an eyelid, even though I can see that Zoë is dying to interrogate us. A couple of times during the evening I catch Zoë looking at me with a question in her eyes, but it's not really a question she's asking so much as a silent comment she wants to be confirmed. ‘You're in love, aren't you?'

It's Friday night around eleven o'clock and we've just got back to the house after a night out at the Kings Arms. We're drunk but not ridiculously so and our breath smells of chips and curry sauce. All the way home I have been feeling subdued. I don't know how to say what I want to say. I turn on the TV and watch it silently wrapped in my own thoughts while Ginny makes popcorn for no other reason than that today I bought her a popcorn-maker because she said she'd always wanted one.

‘What are you doing?' she asks, entering the room with a small dustbin-sized container filled with enough popcorn to supply the local multiplex.

‘Thinking,' I return.

‘Is that what you're doing?' she says, with gentle sarcasm. ‘I thought you were just watching . . .' she looks at the TV ‘ . . . reruns of
Magnum PI
.'

I smile. ‘I know that's what it looks like I'm doing but I'm actually doing stuff. It's all in my head. I'm doing a very good job in my head. Just not anywhere else.'

She walks across the room, places the vat of popcorn in front of the TV, sits down and puts her arms around me.

‘Everything's going to be all right, you know,' she says.

‘Is it?'

‘Of course.'

‘How?'

‘Because I said so.'

‘Er . . . look . . . Ginny,' I began, unsteadily, to make the point that had been five long days coming, ‘I . . . er . . . know this is difficult but I think we need to talk.'

The two of us were sitting in All Bar One in Brindley Place, nursing a bit of a hangover, eating a fried breakfast, consuming orange juice by the litre (as if vitamin C were sufficient antidote to the aforementioned hangover) and I was determined that we were going to talk about the thing between us that we just weren't talking about. After six days of rolling it round in my head I hadn't come up with a single solution of my own.

‘I know, I know,' said Ginny, after a long moment of reflection. ‘You're right. I've been avoiding it like the plague. It's not that I don't want to talk about things, Matt, I promise you. It's just that . . .'

‘You're afraid that if we talk about it suddenly it will come to an end?'

‘Exactly. But even so, you're right, we've got to talk.'

Silence.

‘You first,' she said. ‘You're so much better at this talking thing than I am.'

I wished for a moment that Elaine could have heard that. ‘Okay. It's like this . . .' My voice faded.

Silence.

‘Maybe I should have a go,' suggested Ginny.

‘Be my guest,' I replied generously.

‘Well, the thing is . . .' Long pause. Followed by a sigh. Followed by a long pause. ‘This is impossible, isn't it?'

I took a sip of orange juice to combat a sudden case of hangover-head explosion. ‘The conversation or the situation?'

‘Both.'

‘Look,' I said, squinting – the hangover-head explosion was still attempting to shake my foundations, ‘I'll understand if this is just a fling, you know. I'm a big boy now. I'm nearly thirty. I won't fall apart if it's like that . . .'

‘It's not like that,' said Ginny. ‘It's nothing like that. In a lot of ways I wish it
was
like that because it would be so much easier. I have no idea what's going on here, Matt, I really don't. If you were to ask me how I felt about Ian, I'd probably tell you that I love him – which is true – but I also know that it's never going to work out with him and what I've got with him now just isn't worth having. I'm tired of all the lies and the deception. I want my life back the way it used to be. So, the way I see it, even if nothing more happens between you and me, even if we finish now and decide to be just friends, I'll have no regrets at all because this . . .' she gestured to the table, which I assumed represented the concept of ‘us' . . . will help me get over him. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that it's nice to be reminded that it's not all set in stone – it's nice to know that nice things do happen every now and again out of the blue.'

‘So, are you saying that you want this to be it?'

‘No.' She leant forward and kissed me. ‘Of course not. I'm saying that, yes, I'd like this to be more than a fling but if it can't be then I accept that.'

‘I couldn't.'

‘What?'

‘Accept that this is just a fling.'

Ginny looked over at me and smiled. ‘Me neither.'

‘But you just said . . .'

‘Keep up with the action, Matt,' she said. ‘I was lying. All that “I'll have no regrets at all because this will help me get over him” stuff was a load of rubbish, total fabrication, girls' lies, in case you didn't feel the same way. But I am glad you feel the same way because if you didn't the last thing you need before your thirtieth birthday is to be quaking in the knowledge that an ex-girlfriend/notgirlfriend from your schooldays has totally fallen for you.'

‘Totally?'

‘Incontrovertibly.'

‘So you'd like to make a go of it?'

‘Me and you?' There was a brief, barely perceptible pause. ‘Yeah, of course.'

‘You don't sound that enthusiastic,' I replied, reacting to the barely perceptible pause.

‘How can I be, when everything seems to be stacked against us? You're leaving to go to Australia, there's Ian . . .'

‘Well, the first thing's easily remedied. I won't go to Australia.'

Ginny looked shocked. I couldn't work out whether this was a good shocked or the bad kind. When she began her next sentence with the words ‘Listen, Matt . . .' I decided it was the bad kind. I suspected I'd come on a little too strong.

‘You don't want me to stay,' I said defensively.

She reached across the table and took my hand. ‘Of course I'd love you to stay . . .'

‘Then that's all there is to it,' I said, taking the proverbial bull by the horns. ‘We've made more progress in the last six days than we have in the last ten years. This feels right, Ginny.'