Don’t You Forget About Me(91)
‘Well, were we going to chew the fat about it? Oh hey remember when we …’ He trails off, glowering. I ignore his sulky beauty, it can go to hell. ‘You baffle me, Gina.’
Is it deliberate, resurrecting his pet name for me? Much as I’d like to hate him for it, call him sassy things like ‘a player’, I suspect it isn’t. This is why he didn’t want to discuss the past, it makes him vulnerable. He’s forgetting himself.
‘I’m sure I do. If you’re so arrogant you thought I’d accept your poor opinion of me, and carry on.’ My voice nearly breaks on my last words but I’m holding this together while I still can. I will damn well leave with some dignity.
‘I don’t have a poor opinion of you. You’ve been great here, and we don’t want you to leave. Both of us, me and Dev. And if seeing less of me is what it takes to keep you, I’m going back to Dublin soon. It’ll be Dev and Mo running the show until they hand over to a new manager.’
Bloody hell, he doesn’t even want me here because he cares about me, it really is about professional competence. What he thinks is his ace card is in fact the worst thing he could’ve said. I’m not leaving for the reason I told Devlin, and I’m not actually leaving for the reason I’m giving Lucas, either, and this knowledge allows me to pull myself up, raise my chin and meet his eye again.
‘Thank you. I’m still going.’
I sidestep him and smash through the kitchen door, back out to the bar and say, loudly: ‘Yes, who’s waiting, please?’
Screw Lucas McCarthy, and not in that sense.
Funnily enough, telling Kitty is the worst. She cries.
‘I feel like you’re my sister,’ she says, hugging me.
‘I’ll still come in here, we’ll still see each other.’
‘Yeah but it won’t be the same. I feel like I’ve learned so much from you.’
‘You have?’
‘Yeah. You were the one who explained to me that “offal” is what the meat’s called, when I thought people were saying eating brains and bumholes was “awful”.’
‘We will be friends forever. I promise. I make friends for life,’ I say. Lucas walks past and I squeeze Kitty again.
‘How can you let her go?!’ Kitty wails to Lucas, in an excruciating moment I can nevertheless only commend her for.
‘Sadly, God gave her free will,’ Lucas says to Kitty. ‘To use as she pleases,’ he says to me.
‘Or misuse, apparently.’
This is a glib riposte, not thought through. I see a hurt look on Lucas’s face and tell myself I don’t care. I do.
39
In the end, I didn’t stay a week. That was my last shift as I knew I couldn’t bear to spend another second in Lucas’s presence. Dev was brilliant about it and after thrusting far more than he should have into my hands, he kissed my cheeks, twice, and gave me a hug that felt like it cracked my ribs.
‘Don’t be a stranger now, Georgina, d’you hear? There’ll always be a job here for you.’
I’d thanked him, gathered up the pink fluffmonster and left, not looking back, no goodbye to Lucas, who’d slammed upstairs, not to reappear. I told myself I was fine with that.
Now, sitting at home on my laptop on my first afternoon of unemployment, listlessly scrolling, I got an alert about Robin’s latest triumph. He never bothered with a personal account on Facebook, but I’d forgotten I’d ‘Liked’ Robin McNee’s fan page.
Once upon a time, you broke up with someone, and if they didn’t live in your postcode, you never saw them again. You might not have heard of them again either. I’m not a fan of this modern alternative where you can become a spectator of everything they do for the rest of their lives, simply by typing their name into the search bar on Facebook, or vice versa.
I promptly click Unlike. Then my eyes drift down to the item.
Hey everyone! See Chortle’s write up below! We’ve got a few tickets left for a special sneak preview of Robin’s new show which he’s doing at The Last Laugh tonight. Rolling out to a full tour plus Edinburgh in the new year!! SEE YOU THERE ￡5 on door / 7 sharp
Despite finding TV fame with Idiot Soup, Robin McNee’s long been a cherished secret of the comedy circuit. With this new self-revelatory work, Sheffield’s finest stand-up is unlikely to be secret much longer.
‘My Ex-Girlfriend’s Diary’ uses fictional excerpts of his lost, much lamented love’s journal, which he ‘finds’ when prowling in her bedroom. It’s My Dad Wrote A Porno meets Judy Blume. He recounts how his nosiness rebounds on him, as he’s privy to her lustful feelings towards her teenage boyfriend. By contrast, their time between the sheets is somewhat lacklustre.
McNee uses the diary discoveries as a jumping off point to ask – can men ever understand what women want from them, and have a hope of fulfilling it? By snooping on her fevered adolescent fantasies about another man, McNee realises his own inadequacy as a later life successor. Expect to laugh, cry and wince at the use of ‘cleft’.
I stop, palms slick with sweat. I read it. I re-read it. I read it four times more and pace the room, saying, ‘You utter BASTARD’ out loud. I tear up the stairs and check, hands clumsy as I push my clothes aside in the drawer. It’s there. It’s still there. I yank it out and riffle the pages, heart pounding. It’s all here. I hold it to my chest and sob, like a scene in a soap opera. My words, taken from me.