‘So, what are you asking for?’ Amy enquires.
‘Hmm, let’s see… How about that I fall in love with Mr Right, ASAP?’
‘Beats the Mr Wrong you’re with now,’ she teases, before changing her tone to a more serious, concerned one. ‘You’re not yourself, babe.’
‘I’m fine, just a bad day,’ I tell her and leave it at that. I won’t tell her about Will pushing me underneath a desk because she’d hit the ceiling.
‘Not just today – generally. You’re like a different person. He quashes your spirit.’
I laugh it off. ‘Just a bad day,’ I tell her again, but I feel my eyes filling up. Stupid alcohol, letting my emotions get the better of me. Suddenly, it’s all flowing out.
‘My life is passing me by,’ I admit. ‘With each second that ticks by, my death gets that little bit closer. I watch the seconds turn into minutes, then hours, days, weeks, months and eventually years. I see the so-called “best years of my life” vanishing before my eyes. And I hate my job so frigging much.’
‘So quit,’ Amy suggests.
‘I can’t, because I need the money, and it’s the only time I get to see Will. But it’s just so boring, and all the women in the office hate me – I don’t know if it’s because they have suspicions about Will and me, but it only pushes me closer to him, because he’s the only person there who cares about me, which only fuels their suspicions,’ I babble. ‘Argh, I am miserable.’
And drunk, apparently.
‘So do something about it,’ Amy insists, wrapping her arm around me.
‘I am,’ I sob. ‘That’s why Will is taking me away, so we can sort out what we’re going to do. I don’t want to lose him, but I told him that I can’t go on like this. He says we’ll figure it out.’
‘Well, there you go,’ Amy replies, although she sounds unconvinced.
Despite telling Will that I cannot go on like this, the truth is that I would rather go on like this than call it a day. Sometimes I worry that he’s only organised this trip to appease me, and then when we return things will just go back to normal, except it will be worse because I will have had a taste of what life would be like as a proper couple. It has appeased me, whether it was intended to or not. The mere suggestion of us spending a few days alone together was enough to drag my mood from my impending death to filling me with hope that one day we will be a proper couple, when he can finally go public about the fact he’s separated from his wife. But with enough alcohol in my bloodstream to kill an elephant, all my worries are at the forefront of my mind. If all goes well I’ll feel on top of the world, but if not then it’s back to reality, back to our hopeless situation.
‘Look, you know that I think you can do much better, but if you want him to get serious then you need to show him that you’re not just this thing that will wait around until he’s ready to love you.’
‘Tried that before – remember?’ I remind her.
‘I’m not saying you should get with someone else, but show him that other people do want you. Is that Geordie guy at work still bugging you for a date?’
‘He asked me out during his first day on the job last week. That was when Will saw and told him off. Since then he hasn’t asked again. He does sit on my desk every day and chat to me though.’
‘Good. Let your boss see.’
I nod thoughtfully, but the truth is I couldn’t do that to Will. In fact, despite the new guy being nothing but friendly with me (and ridiculously gorgeous – probably way out of my league), I am borderline rude to him. The thing is, I don’t want Will to be upset by seeing the two of us together, and the new guy just won’t take the hint and leave me alone.
‘Try and get some sleep,’ Amy insists, climbing out of my bed. ‘Things won’t seem so bad in the morning.’
‘Thanks for everything. Dinner was great,’ I call after her.
‘You’re welcome,’ she calls back. ‘I’ll be listening out for you throwing it back up.’
Megan McLaughlin isn’t just my childhood best friend. Despite us not really keeping in touch, she means so much more to me now. Megan is an idea, a gauge that shows me just how far off track my life is, a living example of what my life should probably be like right now, as I approach the big 3-0 (just six short years away).
Thanks to Megan, I am fast realising that my life isn’t taking the same route as the chicks I grew up with. School is like a massive competition where everyone – your friends especially – are your competitors, your life rivals. Who got the best Christmas present this year? Who has the best trainers? Who can get the hottest boyfriend? Who is doing the best in English? And you think that you’ll turn sixteen, grab your GCSE certificates and leg it into adulthood, and that all of that crap will be behind you. While that might have been true once upon a time, we millennials have things so much tougher now that social networks are a thing. Everyone from your school days is going to want to keep in touch with you on Facebook – even the bullies, bizarrely – and we all know that Facebook is nothing but a platform for boasting. So now these childhood rivals follow you into your grown-up years, and serve as a reminder of how badly you’re doing at life compared to them.
Take my secondary school bestie, Megan, for example. Megan and I met in nursery and our lives pretty much mirrored one another until one day, suddenly, they didn’t. We both lived on pretty little cul-de-sacs with our happily married parents, we were both into the same hobbies and the same music, and we were even both on the chubby side all the way through school.
Both tomboys through middle school before going all-out punk in secondary school. Both ash blondes. We were one and the same until sometime during sixth form when Megan got her first boyfriend. She’d had boyfriends throughout her teens but this was different because Megan’s new boyfriend was older – much older – we were seventeen and he was about to turn thirty. He had a job, his own house and the social life of a grown-up. When Megan started going out with him, not only did she abandon being my fun friend, but it aged her like a fifty-a-day smoking habit too – which is incidentally a habit she took up because he did. Over the past ten years I have watched my friend fly through the motions of growing up, not unlike the way I do when I get bored playing The Sims while I’m trying to kill time on the computer at work. Megan left school, moved in with him, got engaged, got married and had a couple of kids.
So Megan isn’t just my former bestie, she is symbolic of the life goals someone at some point decided that we, as women, are supposed to be achieving as adults. Find a man, settle down, put whatever kind of career you have on hold and pop out some babies. I am doing terribly on all counts, and there Megan is, every time I log on to Facebook, posting photos of her newest smiling baby or the latest addition to the work she’s having done to her kitchen that never seems to be finished. She’s like an alternative reality version of myself, if I’d made different (better?) life choices. I don’t own my own home; I am in the weird position of both having never been in a traditional serious relationship while at the same time not being truly single. And as for kids, well, in the presence of the truly annoying ones you often find splashing in puddles next to you while you’re wearing a white dress or
