Game Over

‘Not sure. What day is it?’

It turns out to be Sunday. I haven’t slept or bathed in my flat since Christmas morning and before that a week last Tuesday. I did stay at my mum’s on Boxing Day, but besides that I’ve been using the facilities at the gym and work.

‘You need a rest,’ says Issie. But she’s wrong – I thrive on activity. I’m at my creative best when I’m hyper. Ordinary people may need to rest after such intensive work periods but I’m strong. I’m fine.

I think I’m going to cry.

‘I’m so tired,’ I wail. ‘It was awful. In fact, I can’t remember when I last had good sex. I’m so tense. I’m going straight from here to my masseur. My neck is so tight I can barely move.’

‘You can’t go to your masseur, it’s New Year’s Day. They’ll be closed. Look, Josh’s called. He’s missing us. He’s on a flight back down here. I’m going to the airport to pick him up. I’ll swing by your flat first. Then we can all go for a walk, clear the hangovers.’

Thanks, Issie. What a darling.

It is so bloody cold that the stag that are, allegedly, in Richmond Park are nowhere to be seen.

‘They’re hibernating,’ suggests Issie.

Josh wraps an arm around each of us.

‘If you think this is cold, you should have been in Scotland. Now that was cold.’

‘How was Scotland?’ As I say this I can see my breath on the air. I pull my jacket tighter round me.

‘Fine. Alcoholic. Tartan,’ he comments non-committally.

‘Gone off her, then?’ The ‘her’ in question is Katherine, Josh’s latest girlfriend. Issie and I quite like her. She’s been hanging around with Josh for a couple of months now. We had high hopes but I can already tell from the tone of his voice, and the fact that he’s back here with us instead of in St Andrews with her and her parents, that I ought to start talking about her in the past tense.

‘I finished it,’ Josh confirms. Issie and I slyly exchange glances.

‘Nice timing,’ we chorus.

Josh shrugs apologetically.

‘How was your night, Issie?’ I ask.

‘Really good, actually. Family all well and I met someone really nice at my parents’ party.’

‘Someone really nice and male?’ I try to clarify. It sounds unlikely.

Issie grins and nods. The cold wind has whipped up spots of colour on her cheeks. I understand why Elizabethan poets used to mither on about their heroines having cheeks like roses. Issie is glowing.

‘You look fantastic, Issie. Did you score?’

She grins sheepishly. ‘I was at my parents’.’ Good point, no opportunity. ‘But I did give him my telephone number.’

‘Home or work?’ asks Josh.

‘Both, and my mobile. And my e-mail and my fax,’ says Issie. This time Josh and I exchange the glances.

‘He hasn’t called yet, though.’ Issie suddenly scrambles for her mobile. She checks her message facility and the text messages. Nothing.

‘It’s far too early for him to call,’ Josh comforts her. Although neither he nor I think that Issie’s chap will call. He’ll have detected the fact that whilst one hand was handing over all her telephone numbers, the other hand was flicking through a copy of Brides and Setting Up Home.

‘Should I call him?’ asks Issie.

‘Do you have his number?’

‘Yes, his mother gave it to my mother.’

I stamp my boots hard on the freezing snow, enjoying the crunchy sound it makes and avoiding confronting the inevitable disaster Issie is driving towards. It sounds to me as though this guy is a social misfit, if his mother has to try to get him dates. I don’t share my theory with Issie. Instead I listen to hers on sexual equality.

‘I mean, it doesn’t matter who rings who, really, does it? I mean we are both adults. We don’t have to play games.’ Neither Josh nor I comment.

We stop and buy hot chocolates from a caravan, marvelling that the guy is open on New Year’s Day. The vendor assures us that he’d rather be freezing in his caravan in Richmond Park than ‘stuck in the house wiv me muvver-in-law and the kids’. We all do our best to ignore this condemnation of family life and sip the creamy drinks.

Issie continues. ‘I’m sure he’d respect me for calling.’

She believes the seventies’ hype that a man still respects you if you call him, that he’ll like you and want a relationship with you. I try to explain that the advice is thirty years out of date. In the seventies, single women would not have accepted the advice of the Land Girls. So why does Issie think that the burn-the-bra brigade have any relevance to how women of the twenty-first century should conduct their romantic and sexual liaisons?

‘Call him if you like, Issie. But he’ll know that you don’t just happen to have two tickets for the opera – no one ever does.’

‘Should I suggest the Turkish restaurant that’s just opened on Romilly Street?’

‘If you want to, but he knows it’s code for “I like you”. “I like you” leaves you exposed and will send him running.’

‘You call men all the time.’

‘I call because I don’t want commitment. They respond because they know that.’ Issie scowls at me. But doesn’t waste her breath arguing. ‘If you want my advice, wait until he calls you.’

Issie gives Josh her phone and makes him promise not to let her ring until 3 January, earliest.

‘What about your evening?’ asks Josh, turning to me.

‘Fine,’ I say, without committing. ‘Good food. Good company. My Versace dress stole the show. Crap sex.’

Josh’s charming, confident laugh rings around the park. ‘Your problem is that you are from Mars and you keep meeting men from Venus.’

I grin. ‘I just wanted some good sex to round the evening off but for all my fascination with other people’s sex lives right now, mine is going through a rough patch. I simply can’t conjure up the energy. Of course I’m still sleeping with men but it’s becoming tedious. For example, this morning I just wanted to slip away. I didn’t need a post mortem, but Ben wanted to be all twenty-first century about our encounter. He wanted to discuss what it meant. I told him it meant nothing.’

Issie gasps. ‘Why did you say that?’

‘Because it’s true,’ I state simply.

‘It is impossible to sleep with a stranger and not risk suffering or inflicting serious emotional carnage. Casual sex is what we enter into, not what we come out of,’ Issie chides.

I blame Josh for this outburst. He gave Issie the book Responsibility for Yourself Reconciliation with Others for Christmas. Apparently it was intended for me, and the book Women Who Love Too Much was meant for Issie. He got the tags mixed up. I thought it was hilarious.

‘But I do come out unscathed, without a fractured heart and absolutely free of bitter recriminations,’ I point out to Issie.

‘Do the men you sleep with?’ she asks.

‘Yes,’ I say without faltering.

Issie and Josh both draw to a dramatic halt and glare at me.

‘Yes,’ I insist and I try not to think of Ben’s hurt look this morning or the pathetic messages Joe keeps leaving on my answering machine or the numerous Christmas cards that I received from men suggesting that we could ‘do it again some time’. Problem is I can rarely remember doing it the first time. My conquests are a homogenous blur.

‘Well, in your case there are two options. Either you are internalizing the damage or you are an animal. I know you are not an animal.’ Issie is suddenly serious and she lets go of Josh’s arm and runs to hug me.

Poor Issie. This constant search for something deep and meaningful in me is exhausting. Why can’t she just accept me for what I am? Someone led by hedonism, eroticism and base animal instincts. I say nothing until at last