Don’t You Forget About Me(29)

She reminds me of the time I saw a security guard dressed as a toadstool arguing bitterly with a shoplifter in Lidl on Comic Relief day.

Lunch over and nothing but a drear Sunday evening to distract me from my misery, I make the rounds of social media, listlessly scrolling through Facebook on my laptop, mug of builder’s tea in hand.

You have 1 Message Request

Louisa Henry

Oh, no. Lou, as in Robin? I click to open it. We’re not friends on Facebook and if I want, I can read the mail from Lou without her being alerted I’ve done so. I dither for a moment about being magnificently icy and doing this and then think: no. I want her to know I’ve seen it. Let her wonder how it went across.

Hi Georgina. Um so – major awks at this end for what happened and soz if you were upset. Robin told me you & him were easy going about spending time with other people and I’ve never known R to be straightforward about anything!

Part of his charm I guess

Unsure where you guys stand now but totally happy to schedule around / give you some space to breathe, I’m back to London anyway.

I think you bring some really good vibes into Robin’s life and it would be a shame to lose youse twos magic over a misunderstanding. Peace out.

Lulu xxxx

I reread it three times. ‘Lulu’ is as estranged from reality as Robin is, then. A dose of traditional old shame is too much to ask for. ‘Major awks’ is as far as it goes.

I also concede she’s enough of a space cadet that when she said ‘love’ in the throes of passion she could’ve meant love with the force of when the butcher says ‘Will that be all, love?’

Good vibes. Youse twos magic. Loon. I thought it was sweet looniness but this is sour. On a fourth read, I notice there’s no suggestion she’d stop shagging Robin either, ‘schedule around’.

Unless what I consider an ordinary relationship isn’t ordinary? It’s just boringly outdated conventional, as Robin said? Is this the New Normal, fidelity isn’t what it was and this is as if she merely pranged my car, rather than TWOKKED and totalled it.

Oh hi yeah sorry you caught us in the act of frenetic penetration, my bad, here’s some Lindor chocolate truffle balls and a fairtrade bottle of rosé.

I know Clem said not to blame myself, but I find it impossible. I mean, how did I miss that this was Robin, and these were his people? I convinced myself something was something it was not. I’ve been here before …

I think of my family’s exasperation with me, and think, I am exasperated myself.

I type a sarcastic thanks-but-no-thanks-he’s-all-yours reply to Lou, and delete it, because there’s nothing left to say that I want sitting there on permanent record. That I want repeated, in incredulous tone, as Lou reads it from her phone screen in her Mockney accent, spidery legs in novelty hosiery sprawled across the crimson couch.

After which, Robin shakes his head, lets out a hiss of feigned embarrassment and says: ‘I didn’t realise Georgina and I were on such different pages. I told her I didn’t believe in the two point four thing but I suppose people hear what they want to hear. Shame; she was a nice girl, a good laugh. Needs to find herself a local lad who wants arguments in IKEA and lights-off missionary.’

Anyway, anger, even the controlled, wounding sort, would make it sound like I care. The trouble is, I don’t. I used to at least briefly convince myself I’d fallen in love with my poor choices of men, now look at me.

Lucas’s face swims into my mind’s eye. Amid the agonies of thinking about him, there’s a strange joy too. I am no one to him now. I was possibly no one to him then, but he made me feel things that no one has, before or since. However futile it turned out to be, I like remembering his touch, the things he said, the way he made me want to be the best version of myself. Unbeknownst to me, I was a treasure trove of interesting things, once someone turned up to be interested in them.

Lucas looked at me with – this is going to sound ridiculous and vain, but it’s the only word I can find – wonder. I contrast that with the blank look at the wake, and give a watery sigh.

I decide to wallow in some That’s Amore! takedowns and head over to TripAdvisor. A light dings on: I could write one. I’m no longer staff, why not?

I create a profile. I consider the crazy chutzpah of being ‘Georgina, Sheffield’ and then consider not only is it foolish to shine Tony on like that, it could also mean it’s reported as malicious. I decide instead to be Greg Withers from Stockport. I have no idea why.

I need to give it the texture of a genuine complaint. I cast my mind back to some of That’s Amore!’s Greatest Hits. How about a compilation? All things I recall actually happening during my shifts, which seems fair cop.

THE WORST RESTAURANT I HAVE EVER BEEN T

I feel like, in heated emotion, Greg neglected to notice the character limit. Damn, I am actually really enjoying this.

One star

Hard to know where to start frankly! It was my wife and I’s wedding anniversary and she said she didn’t want too much fuss. Well, if nothing else I can say That’s Amore! delivered on the lack of fuss front.

We were given plastic menus with globs of food on them. You’d have thought it wasn’t beyond the wit of man to give them a wipe down. And a squirt of anti bac, for that matter. The dining room has seen better days and they must’ve been around 1972.