Dumped, Actually(13)

Seriously. Do. Not. Laugh.

‘I was only in the flat because I had to move out of the house I’d been paying the mortgage on for fifteen years,’ Wimsy carries on. ‘My wife, Penny, cheated on me, you see. With our accountant.’ He looks utterly dismayed. ‘Have you ever heard of someone having an affair with their bloody accountant?’ Wimsy wipes another tear away. ‘His name is Reginald. He’s fifty-four. He’s balding, for fuck’s sake!’ He grits his teeth momentarily. ‘But there he was, pumping up and down on my Penny in our bed.’ Wimsy then gives me an amazed look. ‘He had a tattoo on his arse. It said, I got the long one in Phuket, 1997. What do you reckon the long one is, chief?’

I shake my head slowly back and forth. ‘I have truly no idea,’ I say in a hushed tone.

‘No, me neither.’ Wimsy trails off again, as if marshalling his thoughts. There can’t be more to this, can there? ‘She cheated on me with him because I lost my business. I was a graphic designer. One of the best.’ Wimsy actually looks proud as he says this. It’s a marked change of expression from what I’m used to. ‘Everything was going fine until that bloody mistake.’

‘Mistake?’

‘Yeah. I took a contract from a water-bottling company, who had just signed a deal with a Chinese distributor to sell their water over there. They wanted a new logo that would appeal to Chinese people, so I did one that had a lot of Chinese lettering on it.’ Wimsy suddenly looks absolutely horrified. ‘How was I supposed to know what those letters meant?? I asked a fella on the internet to send me the Chinese for the water of life. That sounds good, doesn’t it?? That sounds about right?’

‘Yes!’ I nod my head up and down vigorously. It seems incredibly important to agree with Wimsy right now.

‘How was I supposed to know the bastard was having me on?’ Wimsy balls his fists. ‘But out the proofs went . . . to all the people in the water company, and their Chinese partners. And you know what the Chinese letters actually said?’

‘No,’ I reply, knowing that something truly horrendous is coming.

‘You have big piss in your mouth. That’s what it said.’ Wimsy looks so utterly crestfallen, I want to give him a nice long hug, but I know if I step forward, he’ll be gone. ‘They all saw it. The Chinese were mortally offended, of course. The water company lost the contract, and they made sure that everyone knew what I’d done to them. Work dried up almost immediately. I was bankrupt in six months. I only hired the bloody accountant to help me out of the mire, and he ends up sticking the long one to my Penny!’

This is the saddest story I’ve ever heard. I’m on the verge of crying for this poor, poor man.

Also, trying not to laugh is taking every ounce of my willpower. It’s very confusing.

‘Aren’t you going to ask about the shorts?’ Wimsy says, pointing at his knee. I’d temporarily forgotten about the garish shorts he’s wearing in all the excitement about pigeon-chasing dogs and Phuketian long ones.

‘What about them?’

‘They’re Penny’s. Somehow, I accidentally took them when she kicked me out of the house with all my other clothes. So . . . ask me why I’m wearing them. Go on!’

‘Why are you wearing them?’

‘These are the only sodding clothes I’ve got left. The rental flat I’m in got burgled last week. They took everything. The TV, my iPad. And for some reason, all of my sodding clothes, except this stupid vest and these bloody flowery shorts!’ He grasps at them in sheer frustration. ‘The only reason Mr Sparkles went for that pigeon was because he was so hungry!’ Wimsy gives me one final look of suffering that is bordering on insanity. ‘They stole his fucking dog food! What kind of burglar steals dog food?’

‘One who owns a dog?’ It’s out before I can stop it. Damn my treacherous mouth.

‘That’s what the copper said. I didn’t think he was funny, either.’ Wimsy looks down. I’ve never seen a more dejected-looking individual in my life. And with good reason. Have you ever heard such a tale of disaster in your life?

When he looks up again, I can see the unfairness and bad luck of it all etched into the very pores of his skin.

‘So, that’s my story. That’s why I’m up here. What about you, then? What reason have you got to contemplate jumping? It must be bad. Look at all the stuff I’ve been through. It takes all of that to force a man to end it all, doesn’t it? So . . . come on, chief. Spill the beans like you agreed. Why are you up here, ready to jump?’

‘I . . . I . . . I got dumped.’

Wimsy’s eyes narrow. ‘You what?’

‘I . . . got dumped. My girlfriend dumped me.’

He blinks rapidly a few times. ‘You . . . got dumped.’

‘Yes.’

‘And that’s it, is it?’

‘Er . . . yes.’

‘That’s the reason you’re going to kill yourself?’

‘It was in front of a Bavarian oompah band,’ I add, trying to justify myself a little.

‘A what?’

‘You know . . . Bavarian oompah.’ I mime a trombone. ‘Oompah, oompah, oompah-pah . . . like that.’

One corner of Wimsy’s mouth curls up. ‘How does that go again?’