I was in Pret, one of those seats by the window where you can eat your lunch and watch the world go by, when a woman slipped onto the next-door stool. Big blonde type, lots of legs and hair, ponging of White Linen. I was minding my own business, as you do, thinking about where I could find another job, when I became aware of this woman looking at me.
“Hello, love. You Daisy?” she said. Almost friendly, but not quite.
“Yes?”
“And this would be you in this photograph?”
She produced her iPhone—a shot of me and Sebastian—sorry, lying bastard Shittle (that was actually a mistyping, but I’m keeping it in!)—the two of us in a Greek restaurant. You couldn’t tell because of the tablecloth, but he’d got his hand on my leg, and he was leaning in to say something typically naughty, and I had a powerful sinking feeling about the woman holding the mobile, and I’m not talking about her horrid two-tone nail varnish.
“That would be me, yes. And a friend. Sorry, what’s this about?”
Her eyebrows were the sort that had been shaved off and drawn back on; now they seemed to climb halfway up her forehead.
“This friend of yours. Did he tell you he was single?”
“Divorced. Yes. Er, why?”
Her bitter laugh was a terrible thing to witness. She took a bite out of her sandwich, chewing for an age, something hypnotic about the way her face moved, her eyes never leaving mine, even for a second. She dabbed at her lips with a serviette; scrumpling it into a tight ball, knuckles whitening.
“Well, he ain’t.”
“Sorry?”
“He ain’t single. Or divorced.”
“I’m not following. What’s this got to? Oh. Oh my God.”
“Yes, love.”
The awful realization dawned. “Fuck.”
“You put your finger on it.”
“You would be…?”
“Yes, I would.”
“You would be the…” I couldn’t say it.
She nodded. “Bingo.”
“And he’s your—”
“Yes, he is.”
“I’m so sorry. I had no idea. I didn’t…”
“I know you didn’t, love. He’s told me everything. Well he did… eventually.”
“Christ. This is so embarrassing. I’ve been. Such a.”
“Yeah. You have. And now you’re not to go near him. Understand?”
She did another bittersweet smile and went into her handbag, I assumed for a tissue, or some such, but when her hand emerged from the bag’s aperture, it was wearing a knuckleduster. On her, it looked like a bit of bling, and she waggled her fingers, admiring the way it caught the light. Honestly, my heart was thumping like a thumpy thing.
She slipped off the stool and started to gather her stuff. “If I find out that any more has gone on, Daisy Elizabeth Parsloe”—and here she said my address; my home address, including postcode—“you should probably know that my fitness regime of choice is boxercise.” Perhaps reading the horror on my face she added, “Cheer up, love. Now you can find yourself a decent bloke. If you feel like you could do with losing a few pounds”—she passed me a business card—“you can always come up my gym. Ten percent discount if you join before the thirty-first.”
Cheeky cow! But I could hardly say anything, could I? I think I managed a dignified nod. Turned out her name was Mandy White.
White and Shittle. They deserved each other.
The last thing she said. “Oh, yeah. By the way. What did he tell you his name was?”
“Who, Sebastian?”
She shook her head slowly, a pitying sort of expression on her heavily made-up face. “Sebastian. Jesus. What a fucking joke.” Squeezing my wrist rather hard on the way out, she was gone.
All afternoon, I was in something of a state of shock, as I’m sure you can imagine, not helped by the scent-marker from her perfume that she’d left on my arm. For a couple of hours I just sat in a daze; Craig Lyons, the big chief, at one point sneaking up behind me and clapping his hands. “Wake up, Daisy!” he yelled, stupid bastard.
In the end, I texted him: Just had a charming encounter with Mandy. It’s over. Don’t bother getting in touch.
He replied: I can explain everything.
Me: I’m sure you will try. Would try. I’m not seeing you again.
Him: Don’t be like that.
Me: Fuck off.
Him: Meet me for a quick one after work. Drink, I mean. Believe me, there’s more to this than you know.
Me: What part of “Fuck off” did you not understand?
Him: Daze. Be reasonable.
Me: “Sebastian.” Be dead.
I was especially pleased with that last one and didn’t respond to any more of his increasingly pleading texts.
Cut to—as they say in the TV business—Exterior Tangent Television. Dusk.
I was just turning toward the Tube when he appeared out of nowhere. Eyes haunted, his face oddly turned away at an angle.
“Five minutes,” he said.
“I told you, I don’t want to see you.” When I tried to brush past him, he said, “Daisy, please,” and I noticed there was something wrong with his mouth. He’d lost a tooth. Then he angled his head back round to reveal a fabulous black eye! Actually, it was brown and purple and various sickly shades of yellow.
“Fucking hell. Did she do that?!” I couldn’t help laughing.
He grimaced. “Got a wicked left hook, that woman.”
I refused to enter licensed premises with him, so in the end we repaired to the upstairs of a McDonald’s with a carton of fries. He said he had things he wanted to say, but it turned out to be a stream of self-pity (“look what she’s done to me”), self-justification (“I always said you shouldn’t think of our relationship as exclusive”) and did I know a good dentist?
I even felt a bit sorry for him!
“I look like I’ve been mugged,” he whined. “I have been mugged.”
“Serves you right.”
“She actually put on gloves to save her nails, can you believe it? I thought, oh, she’s going out.”
“Idiot.”
“So it’s the end, is it, Daze?”
“Well spotted.”
“You won’t be renewing for the next twelve months.”
“Very amusing.”
“Still and all, we did have some
