Dumped, Actually(8)

Her face crumples into a mixture of anguish and frustration. ‘I don’t think . . . I don’t think we should . . . should see each other any more. It’s just not working for me. And this’ – she waves her hand around, taking in the crowd, the oompah band and the rollercoaster – ‘this just shows me why we shouldn’t stay together. It’s all just too . . . too strange.’

‘Bu . . . bu . . . bu . . .’

Samantha backs away from me even further, so she’s now at the edge of the crowd – all of whom are watching probably the most memorable thing they’re going to experience today, even if they take multiple rides on the sodding Blitzer.

‘I’m leaving now, Ollie,’ she tells me. ‘I’m really sorry, but I think it’s best we don’t see each other again.’ The crowd then parts to allow Samantha to disappear into it . . . and to disappear from my life.

‘Bu . . . bu . . . bu . . . but I love you,’ I say, to no one in particular.

From the crowd, Lauren moves forward, slowly walking over to where I am still knelt in utter defeat.

My brain is simply not allowing me to process what’s just happened. All I can do is stare at the flagstones and continue to let my jaw twitch up and down with the horror of it all.

Lauren approaches and looks down at me with what I think is the deepest sympathy a small child can muster. I look up into her innocent little eyes, trying to find some kind of answer in them.

How can this have happened?

How could Samantha do this to me? After all we’ve been through? After all this time?

Lauren steps forward, as if to give me a hug. It’s the sweetest thing I think I’ve ever experienced. A moment of pure kindness in a sea of cruel horrors.

I smile at her weakly and lift my head.

As I do she raises one tiny hand . . .

. . . and wipes a massive green bogey right down the centre of my nose.

‘Lauren!’ her mother screams with horror.

The crowd, who up until now have seemed deeply sympathetic to my plight, can’t let this moment of high comedy go without a robust group chuckle.

The trombonist in Horst’s band – a man who has so far displayed a remarkable ability to punctuate moments with just the right note on his instrument – gives us all a loud and tremulous waaaa-waaaa-waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

So, this is how it ends.

Not with a bang, but with a bum note.

My world has just utterly collapsed around me.

Time and space have become abstract concepts.

Existence has fallen into a void from which it will never escape.

I have become one with nothingness.

All I am now is a smeared bogey, and a single, pathetic trombone note.

Single.

I’m single again.

. . . and I’ve lost her. I’ve lost Samantha. I’ve lost . . . the one.

Oh, the horror.

The unbending, unwavering, unadulterated horror.

Roll credits.





CHAPTER TWO

WE WERE GOING TO RIDE AN ELEPHANT

We were, you know.

A big, happy, grey elephant, with massive flapping ears and a trunk you could pull a tree out of the ground with.

From almost the first time we met, Samantha and I both knew we wanted to visit India together, and ride an elephant by a jungle waterhole. There would be someone playing a sitar close by, of course. How could there not be? One of the first romantic movies we watched together was Monsoon Wedding, and I think the fascination stemmed from there.

This attraction to the country was one of the first things we bonded over.

Very soon, the idea of going on holiday to India together was firmly placed in both our minds. It was just a matter of raising the cash we’d have needed to take the trip.

Of course, it was my intention for India to be the place we went on our honeymoon, but—

. . . oh Christ, here come the tears again.

There have been a lot of tears in the past two weeks, and I would have a lot of trouble trying to describe that fortnight to you.

I’ve moved through it like a ship with no captain.

I remember calling work to let them know I needed some time off. My boss, Erica, didn’t sound happy about it, which made me wince, but I managed to convince her I’d come down with food poisoning. It wouldn’t have mattered if she hadn’t believed me, though. There was no way I could face work. I’d have quit before going in. How the hell are you supposed to write an ongoing men’s lifestyle feature for a bloody website when your own life has turned into a living nightmare?

I also called my parents.

I told them about what had happened with Samantha and received exactly the same kind of response I have had from them after every one of my other break-ups. Complete disbelief that something like it could have happened to me . . . again.

You see, my parents are, for the lack of a better phrase, the perfect couple. Their love for each other only seems to grow stronger every day, and I’ve never seen them argue.

Literally, never. Not even once.

This is an impossibility right up there with time travel – and yet if I could invent a time machine and trace their relationship right back to its roots when they were both eighteen, I bet I wouldn’t be able to find any indication that they’d ever had a serious, proper argument in their entire lives together. Dad doesn’t complain when Mum nicks his pudding, even when she doesn’t order any herself. He asks for two spoons, so she can have some of it with him. That’s how happy they are with each other.