Don't You Forget About Me (Page 53)

‘As you said. You don’t need complications with someone you work with.’

‘We don’t have any complications. We didn’t complicate it.’

Oh, boy. We didn’t sleep together, I knocked you back, so everything’s cool. I am angry enough that I have to fight to control it.

‘You think we’ve got no problem, after what you said to me?’ I say, with force.

Lucas looks taken aback; chastened, almost nervous of me. This role reversal where he feels under siege – and wants something from me I won’t give – it’s cold comfort, but it’s some comfort nonetheless.

‘I did say raking up the past wasn’t a good idea. You wanted to know.’

‘I did. Now spoken, it can’t be un-known.’

‘So I’m being punished for telling you something you wanted to know and I told you, you wouldn’t like?’

‘You’re being punished? Ha. Of all the barmaids in Sheffield, I’m sure you can find a replacement. I’m the one foregoing my salary.’

‘I don’t want you to!’

‘I can’t stay,’ I say, simply.

‘I don’t …’ Lucas puts his hand on the back of his head, his body taut with tension. I can see him trying to figure out how much more truth will help, or make things worse.

‘… Was it honestly that much of a surprise I felt that way? All I said was that what happened, it upset me. At the time, I mean. It’s like it happened to someone else now.’

I can feel an urge to pursue this, to point out he can’t simultaneously be indifferent and repulsed by me. But my simple steeliness is the only thing holding me together right now, more from him on this might break me open. I breathe deeply.

‘That’s not all, though, is it. You branded me a brassy slut.’ I say this emphatically, deliberately, and he can’t meet my eyes.

‘I didn’t do that!’ Lucas says, flushing. ‘Oh my God, we were kids, who cares, honestly.’

‘You do, obviously, given what it stopped.’

Lucas swallows. ‘I’m sorry if I offended you or misjudged anything I said. I felt we’d been down that path before and it didn’t need a revisit.’

Didn’t need a revisit. His attempts at minimisation are only going to offend me further.

‘… I meant to say: I like being friends, let’s not spoil that.’

‘I’m not happy with the whole “pretending not to remember me” thing either, the game playing. We could’ve got it out of the way at the start.’

‘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.

With shaky hands, I flick through the pages. This would be hard to read at any time, but after the showdown with Lucas, it’s excruciating. Like peeling back a bandage and plunging your fingertips into the surgical incision underneath.

… I lose track of time when we’re Doing Stuff, I mean completely, three hours had passed and all I can remember about the entire time is thinking about where his left hand was. Got home and felt like everyone could see on my face what I’d been doing all afternoon. Rubbish tea, I hate lamb stew with the fatty speckly bits. George Best has died and Dad seems sad about it. Mum said, ‘He had it coming with his behaviour’ and Dad said, ‘Mr Best, where did it all go wrong?’ and they had one of their moods with each where they’ve pissed each other off at some special level Esther and I can’t understand …

… Persuaded Mum I needed new bras and pants and so we went to Marks and Sparks and she tried to have THE TALK with me after about being safe with boys after aaaaarggh noooo. I said, ‘I don’t have a boyfriend’ which would’ve worked like a dream with Dad, probably because he doesn’t want to think about it. But Mum just raised an eyebrow and said, ‘they’re not always your boyfriend.’ I knew what was coming next, some 1950s code for ‘don’t be a slag’ and YES there it was: ‘Georgina, remember nice boys want to date nice girls.’ …