it together with a girl, you know that.’
I did know that. Charlie had a different girlfriend approximately once every five months. And once every five months I absolutely did not spend (on average) two hours online stalking the shit out of her and praying to a god I didn’t believe in that she would just go away without me having to resort to violence. So far, those prayers had been answered. I probably owed every major religion at least a fiver: the girlfriends never lasted more than a couple of months. One did almost six, but Charlie was travelling around Australia for three of them and I knew for a fact that he’d cheated. Not that he was a cheater. Most of the time.
‘There’s a reason we’ve never got together.’ Charlie seemed to be choosing his words very carefully. I hoped they were the right ones. ‘What if it doesn’t work out and we end up hating each other? I’ll let you down, Tess, I will. I don’t want you to hate me; I want you to be checking the football scores for me in the old people’s home when I’m too old and blind to read the screen. I want you to be in my life for ever.’
One by one, Cupid, the puppy and the kittens limped away, whispering awkwardly between themselves. I assumed they were uncomfortable with tears because dear God was I about to bring out some pretty impressive crying. The tears I’d busted out that morning were nothing compared with the biblical flood that was about to drown everyone in the room.
‘Ah, fucking hell – this is what I’m talking about. We’re not even going out and I’ve made you cry.’ Charlie dived across the sofa and pulled me into a hug, trying to stem the sobs. ‘See? It would never work.’
‘But … but we did it?’ As the words came out of my mouth, I wondered if I’d actually gone mad and we had, in fact, not ‘done it’ at all.
‘I know.’
‘After ten years? After never doing it at all?’
‘I know.’
To his credit, he looked terribly guilty. Not that it mattered in the slightest. My heart hurt. My everything hurt.
‘Why?’
‘I honestly don’t know,’ he replied.
We sat locked in silence on the sofa, half disengaged from the least sexy embrace in the history of embraces. I was staring at Charlie’s messy hair, his pale face, his sad eyes. He was staring at my Eeyore nightie. All I wanted to do was hug him again and tell him it was all going to be all right, that it didn’t matter and that we could just pretend it had never happened. We would just go back to being best friends and I’d go back to waiting for him to work out that I was the one. Even though I could still feel the red-hot tears spilling over my cheeks, every single part of me just wanted to make him feel better. Somewhere in the corner of the room, my self-respect shook her head in disgust. He didn’t say anything else. I couldn’t say anything else. Luckily, someone else didn’t have quite the same struggle.
‘Oh Jesus Christ, what’s going on now?’
In the midst of all our emodrama, I hadn’t heard the front door open. And I hadn’t seen Vanessa loitering in the hallway. But I heard her.
‘Don’t tell me you two are shagging?’ She hung her keys on my hook next to the door and inspected her nails. ‘Don’t bother, Tess, he’s shit in bed.’
‘What did you just say?’ I couldn’t possibly have heard her right.
‘I said don’t bother, he’s shit in bed,’ Vanessa repeated slowly, disappearing into her bedroom. ‘And between me, you and Mr Wilder, he’s not exactly packing down their either. Not. Worth. The effort.’
I let go of Charlie at exactly the same time he let go of me, and slid off the sofa into a graceless pile of too long limbs and donkey T-shirt at his feet.
‘You?’ I pointed at him. ‘And her?’ I pointed to Vanessa.
‘OK, don’t go mental, but—’
‘Oh my God, you and her.’
It was too late; I was freaking out. The Andrex puppy had morphed into a Rottweiler and Cupid had traded his bow and arrow for an AK-47.
‘It was nothing,’ he said insistently, grabbing hold of my wrists a fraction too tightly. ‘It was just one of those things. I don’t even know. It was nothing.’
‘It was several times,’ Vanessa called from behind her closed bedroom door. ‘Your place, this place, that hotel for the weekend in Wales.’
‘You went to Wales?’ I breathed. ‘You went on a mini-break?’
Truly this was the last straw. Everyone knew that a mini-break was the universally accepted sign of true love. Bridget Jones said so.
‘Remember you asked me not to tell Tess until you “knew what we were”?’ she called. Exactly what he had said to me that morning. ‘And because she’d probably have a nervous breakdown.’
‘I didn’t say that.’ Charlie squeezed my wrists until they hurt. ‘I didn’t. Tess, it wasn’t anything. It wasn’t worth upsetting you.’
‘I didn’t say anything because, really, it wasn’t worth upsetting you,’ she agreed from her bedroom. ‘It wasn’t worth upsetting my yeast infection either.’
‘Oh, fucking hell,’ I whispered to Eeyore. From the look on his face, he really got it.
‘And after all the effort he put into getting into my knickers, I never even came. I’ve had more fun with an electric toothbrush,’ Vanessa said as she reemerged, holding her passport aloft. ‘And he was such a whiner afterwards. I’d let you listen to the messages, but I deleted them after that time I played them at the comedy phone messages open mike night. Anyway, Tess, are you even listening? I’m going to be away for at least a week, longer if I can help it. Honestly, I know you don’t care, but I have had such a stressful few days. Council tax is due next week – pay it, yeah?’
Of course she didn’t bother to lock the door behind her, which made it all the easier to grab hold of Charlie and bundle him out of it. By his face.
‘Get out,’ I shouted, grabbing hold of a handful of hair and physically pushing him away from me. I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. My skin was crawling at the thought of Charlie and Vanessa. Him kissing her. Her touching him. ‘Get out of my flat.’
‘Tess, I love you,’ he said, desperately clinging to the door frame.
‘Please fuck off!’ I slammed the door, really not giving two shits whether his fingers were still inside or not. I sort of hoped that they were. Eeyore approved. ‘Go away, Charlie. Don’t come back.’
I counted to ten, panting hard and waiting for the pleading to stop and the crying to start. Eventually, all that was left was silence. He was gone. Charlie had said he loved me. Charlie had had an affair with Vanessa. The council tax was due. So this was what heartbreak felt like? Bollocks to that. Having never actually been in love with any of my boyfriends before, I’d never actually had my heart broken before. I waited to feel the urge to consume large quantities of ice cream and cry. But I didn’t want to cry, and I certainly didn’t want dairy products. I felt sick. I felt angry. I wanted to break something. I couldn’t break Vanessa, but I could break some of her things.
With
