Dan’s attention. In fact, he almost jumps out of his skin.
“What the fuck, Hannah?” he says, fishing the sock out of his coffee, and making a face. “Why did you do that?”
“You were ignoring me,” I say. “Too busy ogling those girls with their boobs and arses hanging out.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” says Dan, who suddenly looks quite angry. Very angry, actually. I’m not used to seeing him like that, even during the stupid arguments we’ve been having recently. He did get a bit cross when I complained about him and Joel never putting toilet-roll inners into the bathroom bin the other day, but nothing like as cross as this. Now he looks as if he can’t stand the sight of me.
“I was joking, Dan,” I say, quickly. It’s only half a lie, but he spots it, anyway.
“Like hell you were.”
Dan glares at me, and then he adds, “All I wanted was to chill out in front of the TV, after a bloody long day dealing with Pearl, and it didn’t matter what I was watching, as far as I was concerned. But if I had picked this programme on purpose, then who could blame me? The only flesh I get to see these days is on TV.”
Dan seems almost as shocked by what he’s just said as I am, and there’s silence for a moment, as we both let his words sink in. Then I swallow, and say very slowly and clearly, “You mean that’s the type of flesh you prefer. You make that pretty obvious.”
Did I really say that out loud? I laugh, to lessen the sting, but Dan has lost his temper now.
“You can’t say something like you just did, and then laugh as if you didn’t mean it, Hannah,” he says. “And how exactly do I make my ‘preference’ so obvious?”
I wish I’d never started this conversation now. It’s one thing to feel inadequate, but ten times more humiliating to admit to it, and then to explain why you do.
“I just meant,” I say, keeping my head down and staring intently at a piece of fluff on the carpet, “that you make it clear that you don’t fancy me any more. I know I don’t look like the woman you married these days, but –”
“You don’t act like her, either,” says Dan. “In fact, you’re nothing like her. You want me to be as miserable as you are, and God forbid that either of us should have any fun. So I don’t quite get what I’m supposed to fancy about someone who’s more interested in Joel and Pearl than in me, as well as in their stupid job, and who’s so obsessed with losing their looks that they walk around with a face like a wet weekend the whole damn time. That’s really bloody attractive.”
I’m so stunned I don’t know what to say, or where to start, so I just sit there, twisting my hands in my lap, and trying to ignore the tear that’s rolling down the side of my nose and heading towards my mouth. Dan spots it and it seems to annoy him even more.
“I don’t know why you’re crying, Hannah,” he says. “You started this, and normally you’d be the one with the killer line to finish it. So why don’t we just get it over with? I know you’re unhappy with yourself, but now you’re blaming me for it, and making me feel like a useless husband, too. I’m sick and tired of you trying to push me into saying I don’t fancy you, so here you are: I don’t. Feel better now?”
I think it’s safe to say I don’t, and I feel even worse when Dan and I end up agreeing to separate. Happy New Year, Hannah Pinkman. Nicely done.
Huh. Dan’s still sleeping in the spare room and doing that “no-talking” thing the rest of the time, even though New Year’s Eve was days ago. How can you have a row so bad that you decide to separate, then fail to mention it ever again? That’s just bloody typical. He obviously didn’t mean a word he said, which is really annoying, as I haven’t slept a wink for the last three nights.
I’m like a sleepwalking zombie when I go back to work this morning, which doesn’t escape the notice of my boss, the Apprentice wannabe better known as the Fembot. At lunchtime, she writes my stats on the whiteboard in much larger writing than she uses for anyone else’s.
“Hannah’s having trouble keeping up with us young ones today,” she announces to anyone who’s listening, at the same time as rising up on her toes and twirling around to show her arse off to its best advantage. What sort of dingbat wears hot pants to work, for goodness’ sake?
“I’m sorry,” I say, when it becomes apparent that eye-rolling is insufficient, and some sort of verbal response is required. “I’m not feeling well. I’ve got a bit of a stomach upset, to tell the truth.”
“I see,” says the Fembot, in the tone of voice that means, I don’t believe a word of it.
I go to the loo four times in the next forty-five minutes, just to prove her wrong. Then, when she leans over the back of my chair to ask if I realise that I’ve been “spotted leaving my desk four times in the last forty-five minutes”, I tell her that there’s a highly-contagious bug going around.
“Joel’s been ill with it for days,” I say. “He looks like shit. I hope none of you will catch it.”
It’s only a small lie, given that Joel has had a three-day hangover since he overdid the drinking on New Year’s Eve, but it serves its purpose very nicely: the Fembot moves away as if she’s been electrocuted. She’s got a date tonight.
“Go home, Hannah,” she says. “Right this minute.”
“Are you sure?” I say, standing up and following her across the room, getting as close as I can and breathing heavily down her neck. I cough a couple of times, for good measure. Now she’s put the idea in my head, I really fancy an afternoon off – preferably spent sound asleep.
“Yes, I’m positive,” says the Fembot, glaring at me. “You can work from home instead.”
I hate modern jobs. In the olden days, when you were too ill to go into your place of work, no one expected you to work at all. Now you do everything on a computer or a mobile phone, you’d have to be dead and buried before you could get away with claiming to be unfit to work.
I particularly hate my modern job.
It isn’t the type of thing I thought I’d be spending my working life doing when I met Dan at art school all those years ago. Then we both thought we were headed for fame and fortune, or for something creative, anyway. Instead, Dan got such a boring job at the Council that he can’t even be bothered to explain to people what it is, and I ended up as a graphic designer for HOO, a question-and-answer site. (Officially, HOO stands for Helpful Opinions Online, but staff know it better as Halfwits’ Opinions Online, or Halfwits for short.)
“Ahem,” says the Fembot, who’s obviously noticed that I’m no longer listening to whatever it is she’s going on about. “As I was saying, Hannah, you can email me that artwork from home tonight, but don’t forget it’s very urgent.”
Only the Fembot would use the word “urgent” to describe a stupid “thumbs-up, happy face” icon. It’s not half as urgent as dealing with a husband who does his wife’s head in by saying something terrible that he doesn’t mean, then
